"Space War"

Bill Stewart bill.stewart at pobox.com
Thu Aug 23 09:42:29 PDT 2001


Bamford's book "Body of Secrets" has a lot of good discussion on
moon-bounce work by the NSA.  As Phillip wrote, two of the main
applications were passive eavesdropping on Soviet communucations
(though satellites later did a *much* better job) and
very non-directional communications to/from spy ships.

At 04:03 PM 08/06/2001 -0400, Phillip H. Zakas wrote:
> > John Young Wrote: [...]
> > What else is being done there remains to be disclosed.
>
>Two applications I've heard of:
>
>1.  Here's an excerpt from a US Navy press release:
>"Jim Trexler was Lorenzen's project engineer for PAMOR (PAssive MOon Relay,
>a.k.a. 'Moon Bounce'), which collected interior Soviet electronics and
>communication signals reflected from the moon."
>URL: http://www.pao.nrl.navy.mil/rel-00/32-00r.html
>
>2.  On another site: "...The new Liberty was a 455-foot-long spy ship
>crammed with listening equipment and specialists to operate it. The vessel's
>most distinctive piece of hardware was a sixteen-foot-wide dish antenna that
>could bounce intercepted intelligence off the moon to a receiving station in
>Maryland in a ten-thousand-watt microwave signal that enabled it to transmit
>large quantities of information without giving away the Liberty's location.*
>*The system, known as TRSSCOMM, for Technical Research Ship Special
>Communications, had to be pointed at a particular spot on the moon while a
>computer compensated for the ship's rolling and pitching. The computers and
>the antenna s hydraulic steering mechanism did not work well together,
>creating frequent problems."
>URL: http://www.euronet.nl/~rembert/echelon/db08.htm
>
>phillip





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