A History of Satellite Reconnaissance: The Perry Gambit & Hexagon Histories

Coinciding with the commemoration of the 50th Anniversary of the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), the Director of the NRO, Mr. Bruce A. Carlson, publically announced the declassification of the Gambit and Hexagon imagery satellite systems on 17 September 2011. This announcement constituted the NRO's single largest declassification effort in its history. The Gambit and Hexagon programs were active for nearly half of the organization's history by the time of the declassification announcement. Their history very much represents the NRO's history--one that is defined by supremely talented individuals seeking state of the art space technology to address difficult intelligence challenges.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 our adversaries. Corona was the first imagery satellite system to help see into those areas. It could cover large areas and allow the United States and trusted allies to identify targets of concern. Gambit would join Corona in 1963 by providing significantly improved resolution for understanding details of those targets. Corona provided search capability and Gambit provided surveillance capability, or the ability to monitor the finer details of the targets.For many years, Perry's histories have proven to be a significant resource for not only those concerned about the history of national reconnaissance, but for the practitioners of national reconnaissance as well. Perry's work captured the difficulties associated with the development of early national reconnaissance systems, and more importantly, the strategies for meeting those challenges. A reader of a Perry history cannot help but come away with a better understanding of national reconnaissance programs, their management, and how to be more effective in their own job.Perry's histories also serve as exemplars of the art and craft of historians. They are rich in detail, well-sourced, and written with engaging prose. This is true for the Gambit and Hexagon histories. Perry devotes considerable effort to telling the stories of each program based on the documentary evidence available to him at the time of the writing and those he was able to speak to about the programs. As a consequence, Perry's readers come away with insight into the technological opportunities presented by pursing both programs, the organizational tension that arose between the Air Force and CIA because of competing approaches for imagery satellites, and the force that human determination is for dealing with unknowns and set-backs that are hallmarks of efforts to acquire large, sophisticated technological systems.