OFFICE OF THE UNDER SECRETARY 

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DEPARTMENT OF THE AIR FORCE 

WASHINGTON 

April 30, 1969 

MEMORANDUM FOR THE RECORD 

SUBJECT: Meeting of Land Panel, April 24 and 25. 

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The Panel had been asked to make a recommendation with 

respect to MOL and so the Panel agenda was rearranged rather 

late to take account of the need to look at MOL. 

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Gardiner Tucker, Herb Bennington and Jim Stewart presented 

a rather dispassionate review of costs associated with continuing 

as-is and with cutting back in various ways. The alternative of 

principal interest to the Panel seemed to be the Hexador wherein 

the Dorian camera is flown on the Hexagon vehicle and launched 

by a Titan-IIID. Some interest was expressed in a Hexador 

launched by a Titan-IIIM, but this would of course not save 

nearly as much money. 

Later the Panel reviewed topics related to one of their 

principal interests; namely, direct readout capability. They did 

not seem very impressed with the Air Force-sponsored work which 

is based on the CBS line scan system, where the image is stored 

on the stainless steel tape. Several essential components of 

this system have been demonstrated. Colonel Bonner has put 

together a proposal which would lead to some systems design work 

next year under an integration contractor. 

The Panel reviewed the CIA work expressing a great deal of 

interest in the solid state transducer and they were essentially 

negative on the STX work being done by the Agency. For various 

reasons it appears! I 

I On the items of principal interest to the Land 

~P~a~n-e~r~;,~n~a~m_e_l~y-,-----="the solid state transducer, Les Dirks did say 

that he was planning on spending considerably more money next 

year if it were approved by our office. 

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Later in private session they told me that they were very 

discouraged by the huge amounts of money which are needed these 

days to put together a system and that this indicates that we 

have lost the original capability of the NRO which is to move 

quickly in areas of high technical risk and produce useful 

results. They had been told by the NRO staff that a system 

based on direct readout principles currently available would 

I I They think these figures are 

high by a factor of 3 or 4. They indicated that they thought 

a system for direct readout could be ready at anywhere from 

six months to a year's time--and two years at the most--using 

currently available technology. Incidentally, I should note 

that Dr. Land himself is much more vehement in these views than 

many of his Panel members, some of whom qelieve it would take 

3-5 years, for example, to put together any kind of a system 

and that it is not very useful to talk about hurry-up systems 

work. 

The Panel was also critical of the fact that whenever we 

get in financial straits due to overruns on some of our large 

systems contracts, we invariably rob the research and development 

accounts. I told them that I tended to agree with this philosophy 

and would do my best to practice it in the future. 

Some of the claims made by Panel members seem to me to be 

exaggerated. For instance, they implied that we are on the 

verge of being able to put up a system of satellites (perhaps it 

would take 3 or 4 satellites) which could be immediately on call, 

would be in orbit for a period of several years, and could read 

out high resolution photographic data on any place in the world 

on very short notice. This would be done by means of communications satellite relays. I suggested that maybe an alternate approach could be considered whereby if we are thoroughly convinced 

that the solid state array is going to be the detector of the 

future, then perhaps we should be doing some systems work leading 

to a relatively crude system which might produce resolution of 

the order of 10 feet or so with this to be refined over a period 

of time to the point where it was competitive with, for example, 

Hexagon. Dr. Land favored this approach. He also suggested that 

there were probably several companies in the country who would be 

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willing to push harder on the state of the art in solid state 

transducers and that perhaps conversations with people such as 

Pat Haggerty of Texas Instruments could lead to some acceleration of this effort either at our expense or at contractor 

expense. I agreed with him that this is a good idea and I 

intend to contact Pat and a few others. I stated to the Panel 

the general reluctance of people in DoD to rush headlong into 

a direct read-out system which might be very expensive and at 

a period when we are under heavy budget pressure while being 

committed to several very expensive systems whose development 

is already well under way. 

In the absence of cancellations of some existing systems, 

I do not see how we can absorb the cost of a new direct read-out 

system anytime in the near future. After two to three years 

perhaps we will be over the hump on development of major new 

systems now under way and will have some money free for the kind 

of thing they are talking about. I expressed to them my feeling 

that we needed to have a greater analytical capability in our 

office to see whether in fact all the systems we are now developing 

are needed and to take better account of our total national 

requirements in the future before new systems are started. I 

mentioned some specific personnel changes in our office and some 

potential changes which I am working on. I said that I was 

looking forward very much to working with this group and was sure 

that our office could benefit greatly from their advice. 

IJ'Yl , l 

John L. McLucas 

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For review with Harry Davis and the NRO staff several factors 

related to the PSAC meeting: 

1. Who are the companies that we might talk to about 

speeding up our work on solid state arrays? 

2. How best could we have some studies made of potential 

systems based on solid state arrays? Should we do this through 

the NRO staff, through contractors, through Aerospace, or what? 

I 3. How soon should we try to firm up an R&D budget for 

presentation to the ExCom? 

4. Let's have a more detailed review of the studies 

which are already underway on quick reaction satellites. I 

have been briefly exposed to this material already, but have 

not really absorbed it all. 

5. Let's check with DDR&E to see how we stand on responding 

to the JCS request for a quick-response satellite. 

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