Title: New Tactical Collection System Joins the War on Terrorism

Release Date: 2014-02-10

Document Date: 2005-03-03

Description: This extract from a 3 March 2005 NSA briefing acknowledges that the use of geolocation technology to facilitate drone strikes “represents the dawn of a new era”: see the Intercept article The NSA’s Secret Role in the U.S. Assassination Program, 10 February 2014.

Document: (S) New Tactical Collection System Joins the War on Terrorism (repost)
FROM: name redacted

Technical Advisor, Target Reconnaissance and Survey (S316)

Run Date: 03/03/2005

DISTANTFOCUS pod is new system for tactical SIGINT and precision
geolocation... first deployed in December (S)

(U//FOUO) What resembles "LITTLE BOY" (one of the atomic bombs
dropped on Japan during World War II) and as LITTLE BOY did, represents
the dawn of a new era (at least in SIGINT and precision geolocation)?

(S) If you answered a pod mounted on an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV)
that is currently flying missions in support of the Global War on Terrorism,
you would be correct.