The incredible and futuristic technologies the US managed to deploy decades before the competition reminds me of the story of how the NRO gifted NASA a couple of their old decommissioned satellites in 2012 and they turned out to be basically upgraded Hubble telescopes pointed at earth. The US from the 90s to the 2000s had multiple Hubble-level telescopes just for spying while NASA was fighting for scraps to study the entire cosmos.
For historical details of some of the subsystems/stuff that ended up in this category of craft, google "history of Ball aerospace" or "eastman kodak NRO history"
It occurs to me that projecting the image of NASA struggling (but always successfully) to deploy this kind of tech might intended be a part of the cover.
We see a few bits and pieces released to the public of optical/infrared wavelength mirrors and hubble-like hardware from IMINT systems. One thing that's never really been shown to the public, not even 50 year old 1970s era stuff, are photos/examples of the SIGINT systems that the NSA likely has in orbit. Or good details of other things that also fall within the RF engineering domain like synthetic aperture radar satellites to monitor naval activity, construction activity like digging bunkers, etc.
If you think the public DEM/DSM datasets like the ASTER GDER v3 or SRTM GL1 V3 are pretty good, I would bet that the DoD has things far more accurate than those as digital models of the surface and built environment of the earth's surface.
An RF domain where there seems to be a dearth of information is passive radar. (Kraken passive radar was shutdown.) It makes sense that NRO satellites would be doing passive SAR.
I'm not sure that it needs to be passive, a sufficiently advanced adversary nation-state (Russia, China) is assumed to have their own equivalent of this, and to be aware of the orbits of US satellites:
Much as the US is aware of the orbits of their satellites.
If you already assume that it's hard to 'hide' the existence and orbits of your satellites from an advanced observer with good telescopes and ground radar and ways of correlating the data, the fact that your ocean surveillance satellites emit radar might not be a problem. No need to be passive about it.
How? NASA budget is around 20-30bn in recent years, same scale as US Space Force department budget (26bn in recent years, 40bn in 2026). Comparable, but not minuscule.
The total 2026 US Defense budget is 1.06 Trillion dollars, or ~1,060 Billion dollars. NASA's 2026 budget is 24.5 Billion dollars, or 2% as much as the defense budget.
You chose to single out the Space Force, which has the smallest budget of the 5 branches of the US military. For contrast, the Navy's budget alone is 235 Billion $, close to 10x NASA.
For further comparison, the R&D budget of a single private company, Apple, was $34B in 2025.
Why is the space force budget relevant? The US has had spy satellites decades before the clown made the space force for his family and friends to feast.
We have organizations chartered for land, air, and sea superiority. It seems fairly reasonable to have an organization chartered for space superiority, instead of leaving that adhoc across the other forces.
The Space Force has existed for decades before Trump. It was part of the Air Force and is still organized under that Department. They have been slowly increasing its independence as a branch of the military for a long time.
It isn't much different than how the Air Force was eventually carved out of the Army Air Corps.
"Air Force", "Space Force" are maybe well known to the general population, not many people outside of military/government/tech circles even know the NRO or NGIA exists or what the acronym means. The line gets a bit blurry between Air Force money spent, NRO, NSA, in some regards it's just better to think of it as buckets of how things get labeled within the larger DoD.
NGIA (Natural Gas Innovation Act? Nursery & Garden Industry Australia? Next Generation Identification and Awareness) had me stumped until I realized it must be a typo:
> NASA's total enacted budget for fiscal year 1996 was approximately $13.9 billion
> a 1996 bipartisan commission report noted that the NRO possessed "by far the largest budget of any intelligence agency," and contemporary experts track the broader military space budget at roughly $10 billion to $11 billion annually for the NRO alone
So pretty similar budgets. The NRO imaging lens used in Nancy Grace was manufactured in 1999 but planning started in 1996.
One of the NRO optical imaging system gifts (from the canceled NRO Future Imagery Architecture reconnaissance satellite program) is in the recently launched Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope.
I am not entirely convinced. Was not Hubble damaged and got an upgrade lateron? I mean it could be possible that NASA is starved, but the repair involved other countries too, and I don't think the USA could keep mega-super-duper technology hidden from others in the long run. And NASA often wants more money - just take the whole search for life on planets. This is so pointless - life exists already here. What is the addiction to want to find life outside of the planet? Other than, of course, getting more money, which is understandable, but it doesn't answer the question. (Not that I am against better technology; the rationale just does not convince me at all here.)
probably what you mean, but to be clear there was an error in manufacturing the mirror. There was a calibration piece that was slightly larger then the design called for.
> I am not entirely convinced. Was not Hubble damaged and got an upgrade lateron?
It was made wrong (the mirror was shaped incorrectly).
Luckily the HST was designed to be serviced (it had components within it that would degrade over time, and some components could realistically be upgraded as technology became better), so they swapped out the optics so that it worked with the incorrectly shaped mirror.
---
> I don't think the USA could keep mega-super-duper technology hidden from others in the long run.
The only things being hidden are basically trade secret stuff, e.g. better materials, better software, better sensors, etc...
The US had a geopolitical advantage keeping their sensor tech secret. Other nations didn't know how good they were and only hid their actions to the degree they thought shielded themselves. When the knowledge eventually came out, other nations knew if they wanted their sercets kept, they would have to invest in better obfuscation.
---
> And NASA often wants more money - just take the whole search for life on planets. This is so pointless - life exists already here. What is the addiction to want to find life outside of the planet? Other than, of course, getting more money, which is understandable, but it doesn't answer the question.
Since you're not behind the rationale of curiosity, I'll present you with a utilitarian justification:
Ancient Rome had steam power (see: Aeolipile). But it was basically seen as a useless toy. It took almost 2 millennia until the Industrial Revolution happened and steam power took its rightful place in our history. Humanity got there, but it took a lot longer than it needed to.
Imagine what would have happened instead if Ancient Rome could have looked across an ocean and seen a civilisation harnessing steam power to its fullest. It would not have taken almost 2 millennia for them to catch up. They just needed a hint as to where to focus their attention.
History is littered with missed paths that could have accelerated our progress.
Newton was playing around with shaped glass and investigating optics. What if he heard of someone else seeing weird lines when they left their prism in the sun? He had everything he needed to stumble upon the ultraviolet catastrophe himself and we would have ended up with quantum mechanics centuries earlier.
Going back further, what if the Antikythera Mechanism's gearwork technology became widespread? What if the ancients had their own Babbage and created programming millennia before?
Penicillin could have been discovered even earlier.
All that's needed is a little observation of "Huh, that's weird" and everything spills out of that.
Investigating a line of inquiry doesn't guarantee that we're going to end up with something. So we have to investigate wide, rather than deep.
But imagine if we find an alien civilisation and make another "Huh, that's weird" observation. All of a sudden we have a higher confidence that an investigation down a specific path does lead to something new.
- An exoplanet not moving elliptically or hyperbolically? That'd focus a large amount of attention into overcoming previous assumptions about inertia.
- Lot of lensing effects and bursts of shifted light? That'd focus a large amount of attention into bending space.
- Seeing spectral lines that don't match known matter? That'd focus a large amount of attention into the strong nuclear force, exotic matter, magmatter, etc...
- An impossible star? That'd focus a large amount of attention into the processes powering that star.
- etc...
TL;DR: Finding another civilisation doing something basically changes the rate of return calculation for research.
I’m not going to be alive in 40 years, but I would like to have known what classified information will be released in 2066 dealing with satellites in orbit now?
Small error. In the 1960s TALENT and KEYHOLE were different things. TALENT was data from the U2 programs, KEYHOLE was satellites. The "TALENT-KEYHOLE" name today is a generalized classification ("TK") but in the 60s they were distinct programs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KH-11_KENNEN
For instance: https://www.thespacereview.com/article/5003/1
If you think the public DEM/DSM datasets like the ASTER GDER v3 or SRTM GL1 V3 are pretty good, I would bet that the DoD has things far more accurate than those as digital models of the surface and built environment of the earth's surface.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Space_Surveillan...
Much as the US is aware of the orbits of their satellites.
If you already assume that it's hard to 'hide' the existence and orbits of your satellites from an advanced observer with good telescopes and ground radar and ways of correlating the data, the fact that your ocean surveillance satellites emit radar might not be a problem. No need to be passive about it.
> in comparison
The total 2026 US Defense budget is 1.06 Trillion dollars, or ~1,060 Billion dollars. NASA's 2026 budget is 24.5 Billion dollars, or 2% as much as the defense budget.
You chose to single out the Space Force, which has the smallest budget of the 5 branches of the US military. For contrast, the Navy's budget alone is 235 Billion $, close to 10x NASA.
For further comparison, the R&D budget of a single private company, Apple, was $34B in 2025.
It isn't much different than how the Air Force was eventually carved out of the Army Air Corps.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_NRO_launches
"Air Force", "Space Force" are maybe well known to the general population, not many people outside of military/government/tech circles even know the NRO or NGIA exists or what the acronym means. The line gets a bit blurry between Air Force money spent, NRO, NSA, in some regards it's just better to think of it as buckets of how things get labeled within the larger DoD.
My personal favorite mission patch: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USA-247#/media/File:NROL_39_ve...
https://www.nga.mil/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Geospatial-Intelligen...
> NASA's total enacted budget for fiscal year 1996 was approximately $13.9 billion
> a 1996 bipartisan commission report noted that the NRO possessed "by far the largest budget of any intelligence agency," and contemporary experts track the broader military space budget at roughly $10 billion to $11 billion annually for the NRO alone
So pretty similar budgets. The NRO imaging lens used in Nancy Grace was manufactured in 1999 but planning started in 1996.
https://science.nasa.gov/mission/roman-space-telescope/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Grace_Roman_Space_Telesc...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_National_Reconnaissance_O...
But if you were looking at nearer objects…
It was made wrong (the mirror was shaped incorrectly).
Luckily the HST was designed to be serviced (it had components within it that would degrade over time, and some components could realistically be upgraded as technology became better), so they swapped out the optics so that it worked with the incorrectly shaped mirror.
---
> I don't think the USA could keep mega-super-duper technology hidden from others in the long run.
The only things being hidden are basically trade secret stuff, e.g. better materials, better software, better sensors, etc...
The US had a geopolitical advantage keeping their sensor tech secret. Other nations didn't know how good they were and only hid their actions to the degree they thought shielded themselves. When the knowledge eventually came out, other nations knew if they wanted their sercets kept, they would have to invest in better obfuscation.
---
> And NASA often wants more money - just take the whole search for life on planets. This is so pointless - life exists already here. What is the addiction to want to find life outside of the planet? Other than, of course, getting more money, which is understandable, but it doesn't answer the question.
Since you're not behind the rationale of curiosity, I'll present you with a utilitarian justification:
Ancient Rome had steam power (see: Aeolipile). But it was basically seen as a useless toy. It took almost 2 millennia until the Industrial Revolution happened and steam power took its rightful place in our history. Humanity got there, but it took a lot longer than it needed to.
Imagine what would have happened instead if Ancient Rome could have looked across an ocean and seen a civilisation harnessing steam power to its fullest. It would not have taken almost 2 millennia for them to catch up. They just needed a hint as to where to focus their attention.
History is littered with missed paths that could have accelerated our progress.
Newton was playing around with shaped glass and investigating optics. What if he heard of someone else seeing weird lines when they left their prism in the sun? He had everything he needed to stumble upon the ultraviolet catastrophe himself and we would have ended up with quantum mechanics centuries earlier.
Going back further, what if the Antikythera Mechanism's gearwork technology became widespread? What if the ancients had their own Babbage and created programming millennia before?
Penicillin could have been discovered even earlier.
All that's needed is a little observation of "Huh, that's weird" and everything spills out of that.
Investigating a line of inquiry doesn't guarantee that we're going to end up with something. So we have to investigate wide, rather than deep.
But imagine if we find an alien civilisation and make another "Huh, that's weird" observation. All of a sudden we have a higher confidence that an investigation down a specific path does lead to something new.
- An exoplanet not moving elliptically or hyperbolically? That'd focus a large amount of attention into overcoming previous assumptions about inertia.
- Lot of lensing effects and bursts of shifted light? That'd focus a large amount of attention into bending space.
- Seeing spectral lines that don't match known matter? That'd focus a large amount of attention into the strong nuclear force, exotic matter, magmatter, etc...
- An impossible star? That'd focus a large amount of attention into the processes powering that star.
- etc...
TL;DR: Finding another civilisation doing something basically changes the rate of return calculation for research.
The US has a history of keeping vehicles, weapons, and operations hidden for decades, even things in the past decade.
> What is the addiction to want to find life outside of the planet?
Knowledge. Trade. Technology. Weapons. Religion. Science. Sex (lol).
"to explore strange new worlds
to seek out new life and new civilizations
to boldly go where no one has gone before!"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensitive_compartmented_inform...