Buccaneers of the high frontier: Program 989 SIGINT satellites from the ABM hunt to the Falklands War to the space shuttle

Flyaway

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In May 1982, the Royal Air Force developed a rather ballsy plan: launch two Buccaneer strike aircraft from Ascension Island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, fly them 5,000 kilometers in the dark, refueling multiple times, and then approach the Argentine coast. They would launch anti-ship missiles at the aircraft carrier ARA Veinticinco de Mayo in Argentine territorial waters, sinking it or at least damaging it enough to remove it from Argentina’s ongoing effort to defend the Falkland Islands that they had seized from the United Kingdom in April. The Buccaneers would have received intelligence on the location of the Veinticinco de Mayo from a Royal Air Force Nimrod long-range patrol aircraft. The Nimrod crew would obtain an estimated search area from “collateral intelligence,” according to a declassified Royal Air Force document, which also stated that “It cannot be overstressed that location and identification by a third party is essential to the completion of the task successfully."

The proposed RAF mission was secret until it was uncovered by Chris Gibson, who wrote about it in a recent issue of The Aviation Historian. The “third party” source is not identified in the RAF records, but information declassified in the United States in 2022 by the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) at the request of this author indicates that the British may have been anticipating receiving targeting information from a top-secret American intelligence satellite named FARRAH.
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I thought that the "third party" was likely to be ELINT/SIGINT data from patrolling SSNs. I suppose it's not unfeasible for it to have been GCHQ SIGNIT decrypts either (either from UK or NSA sources).
Subs, satellites, spies; take your pick I guess.
 
Hood said:
I thought that the "third party" was likely to be ELINT/SIGINT data from patrolling SSNs.
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After the Belgrano sinking, Argentine naval forces retreated to territorial waters, close to patrolling aircraft. Also very shallow. Royal Navy subs did not follow. A satellite did not have those limitations.
 
blackstar said:
After the Belgrano sinking, Argentine naval forces retreated to territorial waters, close to patrolling aircraft. Also very shallow. Royal Navy subs did not follow. A satellite did not have those limitations.
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You can detect a radar emission well enough to ID the transmitter type at least 4x farther than the radar can detect anything.
 

Titan’s spinners: the FARRAH satellites
by Dwayne A. Day
Monday, January 27, 2025

Behind an industrial building on the edge of the small airport of the modest city of Santa Maria, California, sits an oddly-shaped black-painted object, about three meters high and two meters in diameter. It is not labeled, but at one time it went by the nickname “Pathfinder.” It is leftover equipment from the Cold War, and a case of a secret program hiding in plain sight.

The object sits next to a piece of a Titan II rocket, which provides a clue about its provenance. The object is a crude mockup of a late 1980s Program 989 signals intelligence satellite codenamed FARRAH, designed to collect Soviet radar signals and relay their identity and location to ground stations, including US Army units deployed around the world. It has been sitting outside in the weather for decades, with perhaps only a handful of visitors ever knowing its actual purpose. No photos of the actual satellite have been released, but now a drawing of the satellite has also been declassified, and it looks like the object in Santa Maria.
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Well I doubt this plan was ever going to get past the conceptual stage. A bit of what-if thinking around the table.

There was no need to risk a pair of Buccs, plus Victors and Nimrods, when there was an SSN placed to do the job if authorised.

Veinticinco de Mayo was being trailled by HMS Splendid, which had at least one opportunity to engage with torpedoes but declined based on ROE.

By the time VdM was in territorial waters she had flown-off her A-4s*, which later wrought damage on the Task Force flying from land bases. So there was no point in attacking her. The moment had passed and the consequences were set by then.

* and more significantly their pilots, who understood anti-shipping free fall bombing better than their air force counterparts and therefore took a higher toll of the Task Force
 
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Stars in the sky: The top secret URSALA, RAQUEL, and FARRAH satellites from the 1970s to the 21st century
by Dwayne A. Day
Monday, March 10, 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.
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Jupiter on the Space Shuttle and the Titan II: the FARRAH signals intelligence satellites
by Dwayne A. Day
Monday, March 16, 2026

In 1980, the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) determined which of its satellite programs would transition to use the Space Shuttle and which would continue to use existing expendable launch vehicles.[1] With the KENNEN near-real-time photo-reconnaissance satellite now operational, the GAMBIT and HEXAGON photo-reconnaissance satellite programs were both scheduled to retire during the 1980s and thus would not be modified to fly on the shuttle. Because smaller Program 989 electronic intelligence (ELINT) satellites like URSALA, RAQUEL, and FARRAH had launched off the side of HEXAGON satellites, they would need a new way to reach orbit after the end of the HEXAGON program. Two FARRAH satellites, FARRAH I and II, were already planned for HEXAGON launches, but any further FARRAHs would need a new trip to orbit.

The NRO performed an “ELINT Mix Study” and related studies to examine issues related to the transition of low altitude signals intelligence programs to the shuttle. One possibility was combining existing low altitude programs, or to replace selected low altitude capabilities with an upgraded high-altitude satellite like the JUMPSEAT that had begun operating in the early 1970s. The NRO determined that existing systems should be upgraded but not combined. The upgraded satellites would also be launched along with Improved PARCAE ocean surveillance satellites on the shuttle.
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