The National Security Archive, from sources at US national security agencies, principal of which were the US Aerospace Defense Command; US Department of the Air Force; US Air Force Space Command; US National Security Council; US Air Force; US General Acco

On 2 May 1946, the Research and Development Corporation (later RAND Corporation), a US non-partisan government policy guidance institution, produced a report commissioned by the US Air Force entitled 'Preliminary Design for an Experimental World Circling Spaceship'. It focused on the utility of a satellite for gathering scientific information on cosmic and terrestrial features. The report also identified potential military missions for a satellite: missile guidance, weapons delivery, weather reconnaissance, communications, attack assessment and observation. The RAND study was followed by further studies and, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, by the research and development of military space systems which centred on the provision of intelligence, launch detection, weather and navigation data and communications links. By 1991 the US military space program had developed distinct components: military space support systems, space weaponry, launch systems and launch centres, ground control facilities and the organisations for the formation and implementation of policy concerning military space operations. Military support systems represent the major component, both currently and historically, of US military space operations. The systems are used to support military and national security operations by the provision of data or establishment of vital communications links. Specific military space support functions include imaging, signals intelligence, ocean surveillance, missile launch detection, navigation, nuclear detonation detection, meteorology, geodesy, and communications and data relay relating to Soviet Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) fields, command, control, and communications centres, shipyards, ports, missile launch sites and military developments in the Middle East, Africa, Asia and Latin America. Satellites included the CORONA imaging satellite in 1960; the KH-11 electro-optical imaging satellite in 1976; ocean surveillance PARCAE satellites, 1976-1989; and, missile early warning Missile Defense Alarm System (MIDAS) satellites. While military support systems represent the main emphasis of the US military space program, two types of space weaponry have been under development since 1945: anti-satellite weapons and anti- missile weapons, including the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). SDI emerged under US President Ronald Wilson Reagan in 1983 and from the outset of the program, the functions of the SDI system were to identify ballistic missile launches, discriminate between warheads and decoys, track missiles, and point and fire the necessary weapons at the missiles and warheads. An element in placing military payloads in orbit is the launch system that can carry the payload and deploy it. From 1945 to 1989, the US relied on expendable launch vehicles (ELVs), and from 1990-1991 on space shuttle orbiters. US ground control consisted of inter-agency tracking and monitoring of satellite location and telemetry in ground control centres such as the Consolidated Space Test Center, Sunnyvale, CA, and the Consolidated Space Operations Center, Colorado Springs, CO. As for all areas of national security operations, the US National Security Council (NSC) was, and is, the policy making body with respect to space activity. Since 1958 it has reviewed space matters in committees and has issued policy decisions concerning military and civilian space activities. These decisions were represented by the respective Presidential, National Security Decision and National Security Directives on national space policy issued during the administrations of James Earl 'Jimmy' Carter, Jr, Ronald Wilson Reagan, and George Herbert Walker Bush. Below the NSC, organisations such as the National Reconnaissance Executive Committee were responsible for making policy decisions regarding the types of US reconnaissance satellites to be developed and their capabilities, the US Department of Defense considered matters specifically related to military space activity, and, in 1985, each of the military services formed a space organisation, under the US Space Command, to deal with space policy and operations, launch satellites, monitor foreign and US space activities and operate satellite systems.