
The story behind National Reconnaissance Office's octopus logo - morisy
https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2016/jan/19/octopus-NRO/
======
drodgers
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)

~~~
s_q_b
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.pn...](http://vigilantcitizen.com/wp-
content/uploads/2011/06/015.png)

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chishaku
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.

~~~
schoen
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.

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daveloyall
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.

------
zeveb
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
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
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
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-...](http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/air-force-nuclear-missile-
damage)

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.

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

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mrweasel
Sinister or not, that's an awesome logo.

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ilzmastr
A nice book about patches from the "black world" of the US military:

[http://www.amazon.com/Could-Tell-Then-Would-
Destroyed/dp/193...](http://www.amazon.com/Could-Tell-Then-Would-
Destroyed/dp/193555414X)

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)

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jrumbut
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.

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

------
Fjolsvith
The organization is really a front for Hydra.

------
lectrick
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)

