Reuters September 4, 2002
Pentagon says satellite launch delayed
By Jim Wolf
The office responsible for U.S. spy satellites said on Wednesday it had delayed the launch of what experts described as a $1 billion eavesdropping spacecraft that could help plan and carry out any war with Iraq.
"The launch was postponed," said Rick Oborn of the National Reconnaissance Office, the Pentagon arm that designs, builds and operates U.S. eyes and ears in space. He declined to spell out the cause, sticking to the office's standard formulation of "spacecraft issues."
The payload, which the office declined to specify, had been due for launch aboard a U.S. Air Force Lockheed Martin Corp. LMT.N Titan 4 booster "sometime this summer" from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, Oborn told Reuters. No new launch date was announced.
In its issue dated Sept. 2, Aviation Week & Space Technology, the first to report the delay, identified the payload as of one of two $1 billion eavesdropping spacecraft that were meant to be operational by now but that remain unavailable to U.S. war planners and intelligence analysts.
The satellite put on hold will not be launched until the spring of 2003, pending modifications, the magazine said.
The other such satellite was destroyed when the Titan 4 booster carrying it self-destructed 40 seconds into launch on Aug. 12, 1998.
COLLECT INTELLIGENCE
"Whenever we lose one of these valuable assets, it creates a void in our capabilities that poses a serious national concern and seriously effects our ability to accomplish our reconnaissance mission," Oborn said in a Aug. 19, 1998, statement on the first satellite's destruction.
At that time, the National Reconnaissance Office said it was working closely with its partners and "customers" such as the U.S. intelligence community and military to compensate for the destroyed satellite "and still provide the space-gathered intelligence to accomplish their missions."
Aviation Week said these were the only two eavesdropping spacecraft due to have been launched during the past four years for the National Security Agency, the Pentagon arm that guides their eavesdropping and processes the intelligence collected.
Such satellites do not take pictures but rather use antennas that may span more than 100 feet (33 metres) to tap communications from such U.S. foes as al Qaeda, blamed by Washington for the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States.
The United States has a lot of other satellites that can be maneuvered to cover high-priority targets plus reconnaissance aircraft to boost local coverage, said John Pike, an expert on space and intelligence who heads GlobalSecurity.org, a defense policy group.
But the two powerful and improved satellites designed to have been aloft by now "would have added considerably to the U.S. global intelligence capability in the war on terror," Pike said.
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