IMINT is the acronym for Imagery Intelligence.

If you like maps and like saying say big words like coordinates, another acronym is GEOINT, which stands for Geo-spatial Intelligence. Some spies say IMINT, others say GEOINT. Some forswear any acronym in favor of saying the word imagery. The word sounds very technical (one of its charms), but it’s really just a fancy way of saying intelligence collected from photographs.

You might think sexy photographs are found only in glossy magazines, but spies know of another source: aerial reconnaissance — photos taken by a spy plane or spy satellite. That said, what a spy considers “sexy” may have nothing to do with sex. (It also means the spy needs to get a life.) In the U.S. Army and Marine Corps, the word reconnaissance is abbreviated as recon, whereas in the Air Force the abridged version is recce. The latter is pronounced WRECK-kee.

“That sounds a bit ominous.”

Yes, it can be.

Fighter pilots like to call themselves “hot stuff.” I find that kinda strange, considering what “hot stuff” really means. Perhaps they are envious of reconnaissance pilots. In the early days of propeller airplanes, back in the early twentieth century, the average recce pilot would fly over enemy lines, searching for where the enemy troops had gathered that day. He waved to them, graciously, and they waved back. It was all very civilized. And upon landing his airplane, the pilot would notify his artillery friends where to aim their big guns.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

Once the shell-shocked foot soldiers made the connection, they started shooting at the spotter planes. And alas, ultimately even the pilots themselves started shooting at each other. Thus were born fighter planes.

For an alternative method of aerial reconnaissance, and much less violent, the Germans mounted tiny cameras on harnesses strapped to pigeons. Really.

And it worked. In fact, the pictures proved to be panoramically pulchritudinous, truly a bird’s eye view. After each reconnoiter the bird would then rendezvous with his birdie beloved in the pigeon coup. Before being put inside the coup, however, his camera was removed, lest the inadvertent creation of any pigeon pornography.

You can’t make this stuff up.

During the Cold War the most advanced airplanes were spy planes, the most famous being the U-2. (No, not the Rock music band.) Created jointly by the CIA and the U.S. Air Force, the U-2 flew at extremely high altitudes, benefiting from its extremely long wings and because it was extremely light. So light, the U-2 was not much stronger than a compact car made of aluminum foil. Whenever a U-2 sitting on the ground got bumped by, say, a mechanic’s tool box, that clumsiness actually dented the plane. And it wasn’t a cheap fix. But the end product was a spy plane that did fly very high. So high that one pilot complained, “The worst thing about flying higher than anyone has ever flown before is that — you can’t tell anybody!”

For a time U-2 spy planes overflew even the Soviet Union itself. Those were tense years early in the Cold War, but the overflights were kept very secret — by both sides. The Americans kept quiet because they were sneaky. The Soviets kept quiet because they were embarrassed: they kept botching the chance to shoot the darn things down. One U-2 overflew a Soviet test site — just before the Soviets tested an atomic bomb. (Guess what the pilot saw in his rearview mirror?) Against another U-2 flight, the Soviets launched missiles even while the U-2 was being chased by Soviet fighter planes. BOOM! BOOM! (Oops. One boom too many.) The pilot of the U-2 survived, although he did get captured and was later sent back to America, traded for a captured Soviet secret agent. As for the luckless Soviet pilot — well, his widow married another pilot. From the same squadron.

You can’t make this stuff up.

After the U-2, the next generation was the SR-71. The SR-71 was a spy plane so sleek and sexy, you might call it a red hot lover. That’s because it loved getting red hot. Cruising at more than three times the speed of sound — that’s nearly 2,200 miles per hour, or three dozen miles every second — the SR-71 generated so much air friction, the airplane glowed red hot and actually grew several inches. To withstand all that heat, the airframe contained the metal titanium — imported from the Soviet Union. The Communists never got the metal back, despite more than 4,000 attempts.

Trying to shoot down the plane.

But if the speed and shape of the SR-71 rendered it hot and sexy, its soaring altitude gave it a soaring attitude. Its pilots flew so high that their chest medals included Astronaut Wings. Really. Their flight suits were later adapted for use on the Space Shuttle.

Communist fighter pilots could be forgiven for thinking that the SR-71 was some kind of alien spaceship. As their fighter planes tried, and tried, and tried again to reach its cursing altitude — and never succeeded — the lofty SR-71 would sometimes fly around in a circle, just to taunt them.

If you are a UFO aficionado, consider this: the SR-71 was flight-tested at the super-secret Area 51. And it was created by a secret organization called the Skunk Works.

You really can’t make this stuff up.

Respectfully (because all my readers deserve respect),

Reginald Dipwipple

Secret Agent Extraordinaire