U.S. Air Force Security Service
Encyclopedia
United States Air Force
The United States Air Force is the aerial warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the American uniformed services. Initially part of the United States Army, the USAF was formed as a separate branch of the military on September 18, 1947 under the National Security Act of...
's cryptographic intelligence
Military intelligence
Military intelligence is a military discipline that exploits a number of information collection and analysis approaches to provide guidance and direction to commanders in support of their decisions....
branch; its motto was Freedom through Vigilance. It was created in October 1948 and operated until 1979, when the branch was re-designated the Electronic Security Command. It was later re-designated Air Force Intelligence Command, Air Intelligence Agency, and is currently called the Air Force Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Agency.
Composed primarily of airmen culled from the cream of the Air Force's enlisted recruits (the top 1/2 of 1 percent), the USAFSS was a secretive and tight-knit branch of Air Force cold warriors
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
tasked with monitoring, collecting and interpreting military voice and electronic signals of countries of interest (which often were Soviet and their satellite Eastern bloc
Eastern bloc
The term Eastern Bloc or Communist Bloc refers to the former communist states of Eastern and Central Europe, generally the Soviet Union and the countries of the Warsaw Pact...
countries). USAFSS intelligence was often analyzed in the field, and the results transmitted to the National Security Agency
National Security Agency
The National Security Agency/Central Security Service is a cryptologic intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the collection and analysis of foreign communications and foreign signals intelligence, as well as protecting U.S...
for further analysis and distribution to other intelligence recipients.
Individual airmen — stationed at locations scattered across the globe, ranging from Alaska
Alaska
Alaska is the largest state in the United States by area. It is situated in the northwest extremity of the North American continent, with Canada to the east, the Arctic Ocean to the north, and the Pacific Ocean to the west and south, with Russia further west across the Bering Strait...
to Pacific Islands
Pacific Islands
The Pacific Islands comprise 20,000 to 30,000 islands in the Pacific Ocean. The islands are also sometimes collectively called Oceania, although Oceania is sometimes defined as also including Australasia and the Malay Archipelago....
to The Far East to Mediterranean Countries to The Middle East to Western Europe
Western Europe
Western Europe is a loose term for the collection of countries in the western most region of the European continents, though this definition is context-dependent and carries cultural and political connotations. One definition describes Western Europe as a geographic entity—the region lying in the...
to North Africa
North Africa
North Africa or Northern Africa is the northernmost region of the African continent, linked by the Sahara to Sub-Saharan Africa. Geopolitically, the United Nations definition of Northern Africa includes eight countries or territories; Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, South Sudan, Sudan, Tunisia, and...
— did a variety of jobs, almost all of them related to listening to and interpreting Eastern Bloc, Communist Chinese, and North Vietnamese military communications. Some airmen were linguists who listened to voice communications. Others - known as morse intercept operators, or "ditty-boppers" - monitored Soviet and other nations' military Morse code
Morse code
Morse code is a method of transmitting textual information as a series of on-off tones, lights, or clicks that can be directly understood by a skilled listener or observer without special equipment...
broadcasts. Others, such as non-morse intercept operators, were engaged in monitoring other types of radio signals such as single and multi-channel radio printer signals and facsimile transmissions. Some locations like Elmendorf AFB and Clark AFB were equipped with direction finding shops from which "fixes" on targets could be obtained by requesting a line of bearing from other direction finding shops in other locations around the world. This would give a triangulation fix on a target and that target could then be plotted on a board and the coordinates then forwarded to take proper action on the targets. All this was accomplished by using the AN/FLR-9
AN/FLR-9
The AN/FLR-9 is a type of very large circular "Wullenweber" antenna array, built at many locations during the cold war for HF/DF direction finding of high priority targets. The worldwide network, known collectively as "Iron Horse", could locate HF communications almost anywhere on the planet...
antenna (or the Flare 9 or elephant cage) as it was sometimes called. The antenna array covered 35 acres (141,640.1 m²) of ground and was composed of A, B and C band elements that covered the high frequency (HF) range of signals that targets of interest transmitted on. Some were assigned to clandestine missions to monitor telephone exchanges in the European Theater of Operations. The information collected in the field was usually sent via encrypted land-line and radio systems to a co-located group of USAFSS analysts who would interpret the data, format reports and send them on to the National Security Agency or other recipients.
These jobs, which required top secret codeword clearance, were extremely high pressure and were considered essential to U.S. cold war efforts. Members of the USAFSS were not allowed to discuss their jobs with outsiders — in fact, USAFSS members could not talk amongst themselves about their jobs unless they were in a secure location. Because of their value as targets, e.g. in Cold War Berlin, the capture of a USAFSS member was worth several thousand dollars, their off-base travel was severely restricted. Many adopted "cover jobs" to more easily conceal their real work.
The USAFSS had two major areas of operations: ground based and airborne. Ground based units were scattered throughout the globe and collected information from fixed sites with large antenna arrays. Airborne units flew from bases around the world, skirting sensitive areas and collecting data in a variety of aircraft, including C-47s, C-130s, and EC-135s. Some airborne units were associated with the strategic reconnaissance units of Strategic Air Command
Strategic Air Command
The Strategic Air Command was both a Major Command of the United States Air Force and a "specified command" of the United States Department of Defense. SAC was the operational establishment in charge of America's land-based strategic bomber aircraft and land-based intercontinental ballistic...
, and flew aboard SAC (and non-SAC) reconnaissance flights to collect data from shorter range communication systems and other types of signals. A primary job of USAFSS airborne linguists and Morse Intercept Operators aboard SAC reconnaissance aircraft was to provide self-protection early warning of impending fighter or missile response by a target nation's air defense system.
The command also maintained a cadre of TRANSEC (TRANsmission SECurity), later known as COMSEC (COMmunications SECurity) personnel. Their mission consisted of monitoring and analyzing US military radio and telephone communications to identify practices and individual communications that could compromise and endanger sensitive or classified operations. TRANSEC/COMSEC teams operated in both tactical and strategic environments, utilizing both fixed locations and deployed (TDY) teams, and their reports were frequently provided directly to field commanders involved in the targeted operations. Many USAFSS personnel were dedicated to this mission throughout their Air Force careers, while others moved between TRANSEC/COMSEC and the more traditional intelligence operations. The TRANSEC/COMSEC mission was occasionally used as a cover story by the intelligence gathering operations.
The activities of the USAFSS were declassified in 1997.
Country music icon Johnny Cash
Johnny Cash
John R. "Johnny" Cash was an American singer-songwriter, actor, and author, who has been called one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century...
was a USAFSS member AND morse intercept operator hile stationed in Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
in the early 1950s.
The USAFSS command emblem seen here was designed by Airman 2/C William "Bill" Rogers of Miami, Florida. His design
was selected from a command-wide contest of entries.