50 Years Since the First Civil Applications Committee Meeting

Overhead imagery of the Earth is critical for both military and civilian purposes.  The former includes locating and assessing the strength of enemy forces, monitoring their movements, and, if hostilities begin, the most effective ways to attack them.  Civilian uses include mapping, evaluating the scope of natural disasters and determining where relief is needed, monitoring agriculture and forests, and tracking environmental changes over time.

For many years, military and civilian aircraft were the only platforms that acquired overhead imagery.  However, their coverage was limited and there were many areas of the world over which they could not fly.  In contrast, satellites can operate above any country without generating protests, photograph much larger areas of the Earth, and do so repeatedly.  Nevertheless, satellites have never completely replaced aircraft. 

The U.S. military and intelligence agencies jointly developed the first operational satellites with cameras in 1960 under the CORONA program.  Subsequent programs in the 1960s and 1970s developed much more capable satellites with longer lifetimes and higher resolution (the amount of detail that can be seen in an image).  Both the programs and their products were highly classified, and the public had no knowledge of them. 

Astronaut photography with handheld cameras in the early 1960s generated considerable scientific interest in developing satellites to regularly acquire imagery for use in a wide range of fields.  Because the military and intelligence community at the time would not permit the building of unclassified Earth observation satellites, the only option was to give a small number of federal civilian scientist security clearances to access classified imagery.

This started in the mid-1960s when the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) established a special facility to use classified aircraft and satellite imagery for mapping.  Under Project ARGO, scientists from other agencies such as NASA and the Departments of Agriculture and Interior soon received clearances and began to examine classified aircraft and satellite imagery at it.  For example, U-2 aerial photography was used to monitor the Santa Barbara oil spill in 1969.  CORONA satellite photography from the same period was employed to assess the extent of drought in Chile.

To put Project ARGO on a permanent footing, President Gerald Ford directed the Secretary of the Interior in October 1975 to establish the Civil Applications Committee to oversee and facilitate access to and use of classified overhead imagery.  It held its first meeting in January 1976 and has regularly held them since.  Today, there are 13 voting members from federal civilian agencies and seven nonvoting members from the intelligence and related agencies. 

During the 50 years of the Committee’s existence, it has managed the increasing use of classified overhead imagery from aircraft and satellites for a wide range of civilian purposes.  Beginning in 2010, the Department of Defense also started providing access to unclassified satellite imagery it purchases from commercial firms.     

The following are just a few of the many examples of the enormous benefits to the public from the program.  In recent years, it has tracked the infestation of southern pine beetles in Mississippi and monitored endangered Beluga whales in Cook Inlet, Alaska.  The program keeps continuous watch over 150 potentially active volcanoes worldwide that pose a major threat to public safety.