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INTRUDER

COMMERCIAL SPINOFF FROM SPY SATELLITE
The Hughes commercial geomobile communications satellite system features an innovative, lightweight, 12.25-meter deployable antenna, and onboard digital signal processing and beamforming. The APMT satellites are high-power versions of Hughes' top-selling, body-stabilized spacecraft, the HS 601. Each APMT will have two solar wings covered in gallium arsenide solar cells generating about 7 kilowatts of power to provide 6 kilowatts of payload power.
The INTRUDER geosynchronous SIGINT spacecraft represents a consolidation of previously discrete COMINT and ELINT collection programs into a single collection platform under the Integrated Overhead SIGINT Architecture [IOSA]. When NRO presented its five-year program to Congress in the fall of 1995, the new satellites under development -- including the INTRUDER signals intelligence satellite -- was estimated to cost roughly a billion dollars apiece. IOSA will improve SIGINT performance and avoid costs by consolidating systems, utilizing medium lift launch vehicles wherever possible, and using new satellite and data processing technologies. At the urging of Congress, NRO initiated the study phase for the follow-on architecture, IOSA-2. These systems are intended to be increasingly responsive to operational needs and the military is an integral partner and participant in NRO space missions.

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Originally created by John Pike
Updated Sunday, March 09, 1997