A Spy Satellite You've Never Heard of Helped Win the Cold War: The Parcae Project Revolutionized Electronic Eavesdropping

IN THE EARLY 1970s, the Cold War had reached a particularly frigid moment, and U.S. military and intelligence officials had a problem. The Soviet Navy was becoming a global maritime threat-and the United States did not have a global ocean-surveillance capability. Adding to the alarm was the emergence of a new Kirov class of nuclear-powered guided-missile battle cruisers, the largest Soviet vessels yet. For the United States, this situation meant that the perilous equilibrium of mutual assured destruction, MAD, which so far had dissuaded either side from launching a nuclear strike, could tilt in the wrong direction.