"In this profile booklet, the former DNROs [directors, National Reconnaissance Office] reflect upon the influences and experiences in their lives that prepared them to lead this organization and what they did after leaving it. They then delve into their vision for the organization and/or major challenge thy faced in leading it. They each end with the legacy they believe they left behind for the organization and the national reconnaissance discipline. Each director shares his thoughts in a single page"--Page 6.

Part of our comprehensive series on the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) and its "spy satellite" network, this volume covers additional aspects of the history of the NRO as an organization, with a special focus on leaders, pioneers, and founders. It also includes the "lost" Volume IV history written by Robert Perry. Contents include: Section 1: Pioneers of National Reconnaissance Section 2: Program Directors of The NRO - ABC & D Section 3: Founders of National Reconnaissance Section 4: Leaders of The National Reconnaissance Office 1961-2001 Section 5: Directors of The National Reconnaissance Office at 50 Years Section 6: NRO History - Robert Perry -Identified by the NRO History Staff on 10 June 1999 as Being Robert Perry's Volume IV NRO designs, builds and operates the nation's reconnaissance satellites. NRO products, provided to an expanding list of customers like the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Department of Defense (DoD), can warn of potential trouble spots around the world, help plan military operations, and monitor the environment. As part of the 16-member Intelligence Community, the NRO plays a primary role in achieving information superiority for the U. S. Government and Armed Forces. A DoD agency, the NRO is staffed by DoD and CIA personnel. It is funded through the National Reconnaissance Program, part of the National Foreign Intelligence Program. The NRO Vision: Vigilance From Above. NRO Mission: Innovative Overhead Intelligence Systems for National Security. In recent years, the NRO has implemented a series of actions declassifying some of its operations. The organization was declassified in September 1992 followed by the location of its headquarters in Chantilly, VA, in 1994.

Overview: Provides a history of the Corona Satellite photo reconnaissance Program. It was a joint Central Intelligence Agency and United States Air Force program in the 1960s. It was then highly classified.

The United States developed the Gambit and Hexagon programs to improve the nation's means for peering over the iron curtain that separated western democracies from east European and Asian communist countries. The inability to gain insight into vast "denied areas" required exceptional systems to understand threats posed by US adversaries. Corona was the first imagery satellite system to help see into those areas. Hexagon began as a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) program with the first concepts proposed in 1964. The CIA's primary goal was to develop an imagery system with Corona-like ability to image wide swaths of the earth, but with resolution equivalent to Gambit. Such a system would afford the United States even greater advantages monitoring the arms race that had developed with the nation's adversaries. The Hexagon mapping camera flew on 12 of the 20 Hexagon missions. It proved to be a remarkably efficient and prodigious producer of imagery for mapping purposes. The mapping camera system was successful by every standard including technical capabilities, reliability, and capacity.

The influence of space power pervades almost every sphere and level of human existence, from politics to military affairs to commercial activities to cultural mind-sets. Yet there is little to be found today in the way of coherent space power doctrine and strategy, particularly in national security circles. To what extent do our national interests rely on space? How shall we defend our interests in space and how shall we deny our adversaries the benefits of space power in time of conflict? How can we control and exploit the space environment? How can we effectively wield space power against the full spectrum of threats -- from the lone terrorist to global peer competitors? What should be our long-range strategy and objectives if our goal is to achieve and maintain long-term space superiority? The purpose of this paper is two fold: first, to illuminate the historical and ever-increasing importance of space in modern society; and second, to prescribe, in view of this importance, the foundations of a strategy for achieving lasting space superiority and ensuring national and world security.

Contains papers presented at the Air Force Historical Foundation Symposium, held at Andrews Air Force Base, Maryland, on September 21-22, 1995. Topics addressed are: Pt. 1, The Formative Years, 1945-1961; Pt. 2, Mission Development and Exploitation Since 1961; and Pt. 3, Military Space Today and Tomorrow. Includes notes, abbreviations & acronyms, an index, and photographs.

A comprehensive & authoritative history of the CIA's manned overhead reconnaissance program (MORP), which from 1954 to 1974 developed & operated 2 extraordinary aircraft, the U-2 & the A-12 OXCART. Describes not only the program's technological & bureaucratic aspects, but also its political & international context. The MORP, along with other overhead systems that emerged from it, changed the CIA's work & structure in ways that were both revolutionary & permanent. The formation of the Directorate of S&T in the 1960s, principally to develop & direct reconnaissance programs, is the most obvious legacy of the events in this study.