The top secret URSALA, RAQUEL, and FARRAH satellites (2025)
In 1963, the Air Force launched the first “hitchhiker” off the side of a larger satellite. This began a secretive program that lasted more than 40 years under a variety of names and designations. The satellites, about the size of a large suitcase, were festooned with antennas and spun rapidly as they orbited the Earth, sweeping their antennas over the ground and gathering radar and other signals, so-called electronic intelligence, or ELINT. They usually recorded the signals for later transmission to the ground, but occasionally directly re-transmitted them to a ground station.
For the first decade, the various satellites under this program chased whatever new ELINT targets appeared and were of interest to the intelligence community. The satellites were designed to be inexpensive and simple enough to be developed in a year or less in response to new threats. Their payloads were often bespoke designs, built only once or twice before they were replaced by something else.
But by the 1970s, the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), which managed the program, began to standardize the satellites and give them an operational mission supporting military forces around the world. Satellites with names like URSALA, RAQUEL, FARRAH, GLORIA, and CARRIE have only recently been declassified, with significant information about them released only in the past two months, including the disclosure of previously secret space shuttle payloads. These satellites represented a profound change in the collection of intelligence data from orbit, a change from serving relatively exclusive “national” leadership to supporting tactical forces of the Army, Navy, and Air Force. They brought the wizard war of space-based electronic intelligence to the warfighter.
The first of the small satellites were colloquially called “hitchhikers,” but Lockheed Missiles and Space Company, which built them, referred to them as Program 11, or P-11 satellites, and this designation seems to have been used by officials throughout the 1960s and 1970s as generic shorthand for the small satellites, even when they had official program designations and specific names. In 1965/66, the P-11 program was redesignated P-770B, then Program 989.[1] However, as fewer individual satellites were procured over the years, it appears from available documentation that officials often referred to the individual satellites rather than the program they were part of. The Program 989 satellites continued flying even after a larger series of signals intelligence (SIGINT) satellites known as Program 770 ended with the last launch in 1972.[2]
By the 1970s, the intelligence community began using the TALENT-KEYHOLE designation “Mission 7300” to refer to the collection of radar signals and their geolocation data by these low Earth orbit satellites. Mission 7100 referred to the ocean surveillance mission performed by the PARCAE satellites. Mission 7200 referred to payloads hosted on other satellites, such as the AFTRACK electronic intelligence systems carried on many CORONA satellites in the 1960s.[3] By the 1980s there was increasing discussion within the intelligence community of merging both Missions 7100 and 7300 by developing new satellites incorporating both of their capabilities.
During the 1960s, the satellites often lasted only a few months in orbit. Their lifetimes were often limited by their low orbits. Satellites with large antennas, such as large low-frequency spiral antennas or large flex-rib dish antennas, were dragged down by the thin atmosphere at their altitudes. It was typical for satellites to last one to four years before they burned up in the atmosphere, although MABELI was still operating when it burned up after seven years and TOP HAT II was still functioning when it burned up at six years.[4] The Secretary of the Air Force Special Projects office, located in Los Angeles, was the NRO’s West Coast organization responsible for managing Mission 7300, among other projects. Usually only referred to as SAFSP and mostly manned by Air Force officers, SAFSP sought to increase the lifetimes and capabilities of the satellites so that fewer were required to perform the missions. Improved electronics made this possible.[5]
Throughout the 1960s the satellites had names like PUNDIT, SAVANT, SOUSEA, and SAMPAN that were obscure references to people working in the intelligence field, or sometimes even inside jokes or puns. The program managers (all men) were told that they needed to avoid possible hints about the satellites’ missions, and so they decided to name them after movie actresses.[6]
Because the P-11s were carried into orbit alongside other, bigger, photo-reconnaissance satellites, the satellites were inevitably compromises. They were limited in size, mass, power, capability, and cost. Nevertheless, they were designed to pack as much capability into a small size as possible. They were notable for sporting several dishes around their periphery, most of which were spring-loaded to deploy using centrifugal force.
Radars produce main beams that radiate forward of the emitter, and side lobes that spread out to the emitter’s sides. The main beam is obviously the most powerful part of the emission, but it is focused in a specific direction and can only be intercepted if a collector such as a satellite antenna travels through the emission cone. The side lobes spread out over a much larger area but are fainter. A satellite with parabolic dishes can collect the fainter side lobes, whereas main beams can be collected in low Earth orbit without large dish antennas if the satellite travels through them. Thus, even though the Program 989/Mission 7300 satellites were not particularly large, their dish antennas provided a capability for intercepting faint, and more prolific, radar side lobes.
By the late 1960s and early 1970s, the NRO was also launching several new classes of larger signals intelligence satellites to much higher orbits, including geosynchronous orbits. Those satellites were designed to collect Soviet microwave communications, missile and rocket telemetry, and other signals. But they were primarily restricted to northern hemisphere targets, for the satellites in highly elliptical orbits, and to eastern hemisphere targets if they were located in geosynchronous orbit over the eastern hemisphere. In other words, a signals intelligence satellite located in the eastern hemisphere to monitor communications from Moscow could not also cover targets over Central America. Program 989 low Earth orbiting satellites were still necessary for intercepting radar signals in large part because the satellites were closer to their targets and covered the entire globe from their polar orbits. The low Earth orbiting satellites also could serve new users, not just the Central Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency and the “national” level customers of their intelligence like the White House and senior military leadership.
The Vietnam War played an important part in causing a redirection in the low Earth orbit signals intelligence program. In the mid to late 1960s, the NRO had launched more than a dozen P-11 satellites designed to intercept anti-ballistic missile (ABM) radar signals. But by 1969, hundreds of American aircraft had been shot down by missiles over Vietnam, and for several years overhead imagery had detected a Soviet radar system deployed in the field, but no electronic intercepts had been made (the identity of this radar is still deleted from declassified documents.) In addition, the existing satellites lacked the capability to search for Ku-band emitters in the 12-to-18-gigahertz range. Finally, radar experts expected the Soviet Union to begin deploying “double-agile radars” that could simultaneously frequency hop from pulse-to-pulse and jitter in pulse repetition interval (the time between pulses) from pulse-to-pulse. A new capability would be required to detect these emerging radar threats.[7]
The lack of specific knowledge about these emerging high-threat signals produced a set of requirements that could not be satisfied by a single system using the technology available at the time but led to the creation of two new satellite systems: URSALA and RAQUEL.
URSALA was designed to collect signals from double-agile radars in bands from 2 to 12 gigahertz. It searched radar side lobes, not their main beams. It was considered a “general search” system. RAQUEL was designed not to search from horizon-to-horizon, but to maximize the intercept time on relatively short slant range targets by using a spinning pencil beam (i.e. the narrow beam in which a signal could be detected by the satellite.)[8]: “Since the frequency of the signals was not known, it was necessary to develop a collection system capable of searching a wide frequency range. A means of associating the signals definitely with the [radar] was also required, as was a capability to measure technical parameters precisely.” The RAQUEL satellites required more time to develop than URSALA due to their increased complexity.[9]
Four URSALA satellites were deployed from HEXAGON photo-reconnaissance satellites during the 1970s. They were placed into approximately 509-kilometer (275-nautical-mile) circular orbits. They were designed to detect pulsed emitters primarily within the Soviet Union. URSALA represented a change in design philosophy for the NRO: rather than the custom approach that was used for many of the dozens of satellites produced during the 1960s, SAFSP sought to standardize the satellites and their payloads. URSALA satellites also had some ability to detect and geolocate ships at sea, although this was not a primary mission.
URSALA I and II were launched in 1972 and 1973 and designed for general search and electronic order of battle for pulsed and continuous wave emitters with a frequency range of 2 to 12 gigahertz. They weighed 178 kilograms (393 pounds) and had nine-month design lifetimes. URSALA I ultimately lasted 70 months, and URSALA II lasted 61 months.[10]
Although URSALA (and later RAQUEL) was intended to detect signals from surface-to-air missile radars that were deployed tactically, at least at first the satellites were serving national intelligence requirements, meaning that their data was evaluated in places like the National Security Agency, and then eventually used to better protect tactical aircraft. Tactical forces would indirectly benefit from the intelligence, but they would not receive it.
However, the 1973 war in the Middle East prompted the use of the satellites for “operational support,” and the success of the URSALA I and II satellites in this role stimulated the development of techniques for more rapid data processing, both on the satellites and on mobile ground terminals.[11] This was apparently the beginning of a new mission for these small satellites, the evolution from their use primarily in support of strategic intelligence gathering to providing data that could be directly used by military forces deployed around the world—electronic intelligence order of battle (EOB), or an indication of the types and locations of enemy deployed electronic emitters. For instance, detecting Soviet SA-6 mobile surface to air missile radars in a new location provided an indication that the missiles were likely protecting a moving armor column, or a high-value target like a field headquarters.
By the mid-1970s, Army and Air Force tactical users were becoming interested in directly accessing the electronic intelligence data collected by the low Earth orbiting satellites, bypassing the NSA. They funded a program called RTIP which in 1977 consisted of two vans—a mobile antenna van and a processing van—that demonstrated the feasibility of direct downlink and on-board processing operation using data from the URSALA III satellite.[12] This was the beginning of what became known as Tactical Exploitation of National CAPabilities, or TENCAP. As more customers began using the data produced by the satellites, they exerted a pull on NRO requirements (see “From the sky to the mud: TENCAP and adapting national reconnaissance systems to tactical operations,” The Space Review, June 19, 2023.)
After RTIP, the NRO’s West Coast office, along with the US Army, developed the Interim Tactical ELINT Processor (ITEP) vans, which were first deployed in 1979. A follow-on van, known as the Tactical ELINT Processor, was planned to work with the FARRAH spacecraft. However, ITEP proved suitable to work with URSALA, RAQUEL, and FARRAH. The Air Force later dropped the “I” from ITEP, referring to it as TEP. The Army renamed its vans as the Electronic Processing and Dissemination System (EPDS), and by 1990 they were widely deployed throughout the world.[13]
According to one person who worked on the satellites during this time, “Back in the early 1970’s the new mission was to get data directly to the commander on the FEBA (Forward Edge of the Battle Area). I h