U.S. quietly declassifies Cold–War era ‘JUMPSEAT’ surveillance satellites
February 1, 2026
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US quietly declassifies Cold War-era “JUMPSEAT” surveillance satellites
The National Reconnaissance Office has declassified a satellite program used to spy on U.S. adversaries.
National Reconnaissance Office
About forty years ago, the United States launched a series of secret satellites, intended to spy on the country’s adversaries.
Launched between March 1971 and February 1987, these satellite missions, nicknamed “JUMPSEAT”, were declassified by the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO).
The NRO and the US Airforce developed the satellites together to strengthen the US government’s “space intelligence portfolio” to monitor “the development of adversary offensive and defensive weapon systems”, according to the NRO. It is not clear what the JUMPSEAT satellites were monitoring.
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“The historical significance of JUMPSEAT cannot be understated,” James Outzen, director of the NRO’s Center for the Study of National Recognition, said in the same release. “Its orbit provided the United States with a new vantage point for collecting unique and critical signals intelligence from space. »
National Reconnaissance Office
The first JUMPSEAT mission was launched in 1971 from a military base near Santa Barbara, California, and provided information to the U.S. Department of Defense and the National Security Agency, among other national security agencies.
According to a December memo signed by NRO Director Christopher Scolese, the JUMPSEAT satellites performed “admirably” but were decommissioned in 2006. Declassifying the missions, he said, would pose little risk to “current and future satellite systems.”
More detailed information about what the satellites did may become available in the future. “After limited declassification,” Scolese wrote in the memo, “we will evaluate the program for more comprehensive programmatic declassification as time and resources permit.”
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