8 ms·

The story behind National Reconnaissance Office's octopus logo

60 points by morisy 11y ago

akatechis 11y ago
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn
drodgers 11y ago
The NRO has a history of interesting patch designs. This one in particular has always felt pretty apt: "Better the devil you know" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NROL49_patch.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NROL49_patch.jpg There's also: "We own the night" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NRO_L11_missionpatch.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NRO_L11_missionpatch.jpg Earth in eagle talon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:USA200patch.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:USA200patch.jpg Earth being humped by dragon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NROL19_USA171_patch.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NROL19_USA171_patch.jpg Space devil with wrench https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NROL49_2_patch_sml.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NROL49_2_patch_sml.jpg Full list here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_NRO_Launches https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_NRO_Launches
- linkergames 11y ago
  And then there is NROL10: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NROL10_USA155_patch.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NROL10_USA155_patch.jpg
- lectrick 11y ago
  > "We own the night" That has such an 80's, "The Lost Boys"-esque flavor to it (reference for the uninitiated: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/lost_boys/ http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/lost_boys/)
- s_q_b 11y ago
  Here's my personal favorite mission patch: Which states, "Omnis Vestri Substructio Es Servus Ad Nobis", or in translation "All your base are belong to us."[0] These logos are a bit tongue-in-cheek. [0]http://vigilantcitizen.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/015.png http://vigilantcitizen.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/015.pn...
sanoli 11y ago
This book is pretty interesting: http://www.amazon.com/Could-Tell-Then-Would-Destroyed/dp/193555414X http://www.amazon.com/Could-Tell-Then-Would-Destroyed/dp/193...
ilzmastr 11y ago
A nice book about patches from the "black world" of the US military: http://www.amazon.com/Could-Tell-Then-Would-Destroyed/dp/193555414X http://www.amazon.com/Could-Tell-Then-Would-Destroyed/dp/193... Some more memorable ones: http://cl.ly/0p2g1H3y1p0P http://cl.ly/0p2g1H3y1p0P http://cl.ly/473h003u0f0z http://cl.ly/473h003u0f0z http://cl.ly/0M3h331s0d0j http://cl.ly/0M3h331s0d0j
mrweasel 11y ago
Sinister or not, that's an awesome logo.
chishaku 11y ago
Sweet patches with a gigantic octopus devouring the Earth "Nothing Is Beyond Our Reach" "Full Spectrum Dominance" "Total Information Awareness" "Five Eyes" This is the culture of a whole generation of career bureaucrats. I'm afraid even major legislative victories for privacy will struggle to change the culture.
- jrcii 11y ago
  There have been generations in the west who freely and easily enjoyed rights like privacy and freedom of speech by inheriting the fruits of their predecessors' hard-fought battles. The next generation will not be among them.
- schoen 11y ago
  I suspect it was already like this in the Cold War but the public heard much less about it. The flip side of this is the bureaucratic jargon that uses relatively neutral, even innocuous terms for spying on people, imprisoning them, or killing them.
- hanoz 11y ago
  Hank... are we the baddies?
lectrick 11y ago
About half the time the NRO has been mentioned in my lifetime, it's in relation to some story about a UFO that got away (but was tracked by NRO radar)
zeveb 11y ago
tl;dr: it's a geeky reference to an issue which arose during testing (the testing team's joke was that the 'octopus harness' had taken over the world). A harmless instance of esprit de corps.
- chris_wot 11y ago
  Evidently such geeky awesomeness might destabilise the national security of the United States. I mean, the news article that explained the origin of the patch was deemed "Top Secret". The patch, however, is not. Makes me wonder at what point a classification of secret or top secret will be entirely devalued. If this is a state secret, then anything could be a state secret.
  - bediger4000 11y ago
    The classification system has been abused to the point of devaluing classified contents for decades. I think there's only one real reason for this: only a very few things are real state secrets, but there's a ton of budget overruns, bad ideas, career ending blunders, "favorite" vendors, vendors that hire close relatives, "independent" consultants, and similar mixes of incompetence and borderline embezzlement. It's far too easy to just classify some episode, and keep it from blowing up into a rebuke or termination for cause. There's little to be gained by carefully examining something and classifying it appropriate, and a lot to loose by under-classification.
    - bediger4000 11y ago
      Just to underline this point, here's a very modern (incident in May, 2014, reporting apparently Jan 23, 2016) nuclear weapon mishap that was hidden: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/air-force-nuclear-missile-damage http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/air-force-nuclear-missile-... I will grant you that the Air Force tried double-speak and obfuscation to hide the incident rather than over-classification, but they did refuse a FOIA request about it and hid the incident from a Secretary of Defense appointed commission.
  - zeveb 11y ago
jrumbut 11y ago
Interestingly, though not at all surprising, is that the octopus' forward tentacle appears to land right at the intersection of Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran. Meanwhile, the octopus' body is climbing over the North Pole from the US to Russia (I've seen that in a bunch of these patches), and has a tentacle heading toward the Bering Straight.
daveloyall 11y ago
Er, doesn't a very similar octopus/earth image make up the main body somebody's squadron patch? Said differently: I'm pretty sure I've seen this image somewhere before! As others have mentioned, a lot of patches are downright creepy. Why? Well, I always assumed that it was a manifestation of the terrible power that these young men and women have been ordered to wield, and create for that matter. Before you reject that outright since I said it maybe a little too poetically, consider this: Which member of the team gets asked to design a patch? The guy who can draw. The guy who thinks too much and reads too much. The warrior poet. When you are asked to build something that you KNOW must never fall into the wrong hands, you take your job seriously. That weight is what is going to come to mind when you're asked to make an image to represent your work. NB. I am completely confident that the hardworking defenders of our nation generally believe in their missions. They know that their work would be evil IFF it wasn't all being carried out by good people, like themselves.
Fjolsvith 11y ago
The organization is really a front for Hydra.

60 points by morisy 11y ago

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn

The NRO has a history of interesting patch designs. This one in particular has always felt pretty apt: "Better the devil you know" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NROL49_patch.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NROL49_patch.jpg There's also: "We own the night" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NRO_L11_missionpatch.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NRO_L11_missionpatch.jpg Earth in eagle talon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:USA200patch.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:USA200patch.jpg Earth being humped by dragon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NROL19_USA171_patch.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NROL19_USA171_patch.jpg Space devil with wrench https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NROL49_2_patch_sml.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NROL49_2_patch_sml.jpg Full list here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_NRO_Launches https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_NRO_Launches

linkergames 11y ago
And then there is NROL10: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NROL10_USA155_patch.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NROL10_USA155_patch.jpg
lectrick 11y ago
> "We own the night" That has such an 80's, "The Lost Boys"-esque flavor to it (reference for the uninitiated: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/lost_boys/ http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/lost_boys/)
s_q_b 11y ago
Here's my personal favorite mission patch: Which states, "Omnis Vestri Substructio Es Servus Ad Nobis", or in translation "All your base are belong to us."[0] These logos are a bit tongue-in-cheek. [0]http://vigilantcitizen.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/015.png http://vigilantcitizen.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/015.pn...

sanoli 11y ago

This book is pretty interesting: http://www.amazon.com/Could-Tell-Then-Would-Destroyed/dp/193555414X http://www.amazon.com/Could-Tell-Then-Would-Destroyed/dp/193...

ilzmastr 11y ago

A nice book about patches from the "black world" of the US military: http://www.amazon.com/Could-Tell-Then-Would-Destroyed/dp/193555414X http://www.amazon.com/Could-Tell-Then-Would-Destroyed/dp/193... Some more memorable ones: http://cl.ly/0p2g1H3y1p0P http://cl.ly/0p2g1H3y1p0P http://cl.ly/473h003u0f0z http://cl.ly/473h003u0f0z http://cl.ly/0M3h331s0d0j http://cl.ly/0M3h331s0d0j

mrweasel 11y ago

Sinister or not, that's an awesome logo.

chishaku 11y ago

Sweet patches with a gigantic octopus devouring the Earth "Nothing Is Beyond Our Reach" "Full Spectrum Dominance" "Total Information Awareness" "Five Eyes" This is the culture of a whole generation of career bureaucrats. I'm afraid even major legislative victories for privacy will struggle to change the culture.

jrcii 11y ago
There have been generations in the west who freely and easily enjoyed rights like privacy and freedom of speech by inheriting the fruits of their predecessors' hard-fought battles. The next generation will not be among them.
schoen 11y ago
I suspect it was already like this in the Cold War but the public heard much less about it. The flip side of this is the bureaucratic jargon that uses relatively neutral, even innocuous terms for spying on people, imprisoning them, or killing them.
hanoz 11y ago
Hank... are we the baddies?

lectrick 11y ago

About half the time the NRO has been mentioned in my lifetime, it's in relation to some story about a UFO that got away (but was tracked by NRO radar)

zeveb 11y ago

tl;dr: it's a geeky reference to an issue which arose during testing (the testing team's joke was that the 'octopus harness' had taken over the world). A harmless instance of esprit de corps.

chris_wot 11y ago
Evidently such geeky awesomeness might destabilise the national security of the United States. I mean, the news article that explained the origin of the patch was deemed "Top Secret". The patch, however, is not. Makes me wonder at what point a classification of secret or top secret will be entirely devalued. If this is a state secret, then anything could be a state secret.
- bediger4000 11y ago
  The classification system has been abused to the point of devaluing classified contents for decades. I think there's only one real reason for this: only a very few things are real state secrets, but there's a ton of budget overruns, bad ideas, career ending blunders, "favorite" vendors, vendors that hire close relatives, "independent" consultants, and similar mixes of incompetence and borderline embezzlement. It's far too easy to just classify some episode, and keep it from blowing up into a rebuke or termination for cause. There's little to be gained by carefully examining something and classifying it appropriate, and a lot to loose by under-classification.
  - bediger4000 11y ago
    Just to underline this point, here's a very modern (incident in May, 2014, reporting apparently Jan 23, 2016) nuclear weapon mishap that was hidden: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/air-force-nuclear-missile-damage http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/air-force-nuclear-missile-... I will grant you that the Air Force tried double-speak and obfuscation to hide the incident rather than over-classification, but they did refuse a FOIA request about it and hid the incident from a Secretary of Defense appointed commission.
- zeveb 11y ago

jrumbut 11y ago

Interestingly, though not at all surprising, is that the octopus' forward tentacle appears to land right at the intersection of Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran. Meanwhile, the octopus' body is climbing over the North Pole from the US to Russia (I've seen that in a bunch of these patches), and has a tentacle heading toward the Bering Straight.

daveloyall 11y ago

Er, doesn't a very similar octopus/earth image make up the main body somebody's squadron patch? Said differently: I'm pretty sure I've seen this image somewhere before! As others have mentioned, a lot of patches are downright creepy. Why? Well, I always assumed that it was a manifestation of the terrible power that these young men and women have been ordered to wield, and create for that matter. Before you reject that outright since I said it maybe a little too poetically, consider this: Which member of the team gets asked to design a patch? The guy who can draw. The guy who thinks too much and reads too much. The warrior poet. When you are asked to build something that you KNOW must never fall into the wrong hands, you take your job seriously. That weight is what is going to come to mind when you're asked to make an image to represent your work. NB. I am completely confident that the hardworking defenders of our nation generally believe in their missions. They know that their work would be evil IFF it wasn't all being carried out by good people, like themselves.

Fjolsvith 11y ago

The organization is really a front for Hydra.