Unlocking Declassified Military Imagery

Part I: Historic Images and Their Usefulness Today

The U.S. Geological Survey’s Earth Explorer portal released roughly one million declassified, historic satellite photographs from military intelligence following U.S. Executive Order 12951 in 1995, which resulted in three consecutive acts of declassification. The images were captured by a pioneer satellite system intended for global surveillance and mapping.

Some of the images were digitized and made public while many others are only available through paid purchase. None of the images are georeferenced, so they all require individual, manual work after downloading. The value of these images for global studies and the prospect of more high-res imagery being made available in the near future is exciting for Sergio and many other enthusiasts and professionals.

The films from these pre-digital era cameras would be ejected back to Earth from the KH (KeyHole) series of reconnaissance satellites by Lockheed Corporation, codenamed Corona, Argon, Lanyard, Gambit, and Hexagon. The capsules were sometimes retrieved from the ground after impact and sometimes they were fished right out of the air by plane. Some contained high-resolution images up to two feet or 60 centimeters (stereographic), while others used lower resolution for global mapping purposes. The high-resolution images in the collection have “greater resolution than any of today’s public open data satellites for Earth observation.”

They can also offer invaluable support to academic, governmental, and private research related to the era in which the images were captured. Sergio believes the images have “incomparable value”, especially to researchers who deal with temporal resolution.

When asked what still-classified areas he would like to see released, Sergio said, “I would like to see the test sites of the greatest nuclear explosions both of the USA and USSR, just before and after.” The areas that have been declassified so far were done so after about 25 years. Sergio hopes more images will be declassified when they’re no longer politically relevant. A recent Tweet of a classified image by Trump reveals “not just that they can provide a really valuable super-resolution 10 cm images, but also that they are still operating.”

· The D-1 Collection of 1995 (1960–1972): low-res images of the entire Earth, including land and oceans.

· The D-2 Collection of 2002 (1963–1980): high-res images of all continents except the United States.

· The D-3 Collection of 2011 (1971–1984): high-res images of most of the United States and Antarctica, with sparse coverage elsewhere in the world.

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