Air Force Erased Bosnian Privacy for 625 Hours
By Miriam Adler ·
Private words spoken in Bosnian valleys were intercepted from 240 kilometers away by an Air Force fleet designed to ensure no signal escapes the record.
They call them "hogs." The name comes from the RC-135V/W's distorted silhouette—the extended "hog nose" and "hog cheeks" that house the appetites of the United States Air Force. To the crew, it is a nickname; to the people on the ground, it is the physical manifestation of an ear that never closes.
According to a mirrored program description from the FAS Intelligence Resource Program, these aircraft are designed to monitor the electronic activity of adversaries through an "extensive array of sophisticated intelligence gathering equipment." They are the vacuum cleaners of the electromagnetic spectrum, designed to locate, record, and analyze data without the target ever knowing they have been heard.
625 Hours over Bosnia
For the people of Bosnia-Herzegovina between December 21, 1995, and May 1996, the hog was a constant, unseen presence. The record notes that during Operation Joint Endeavor, the 95th Reconnaissance Squadron and the 488th Intelligence Squadron flew 625 hours and 72 sorties in support of the peacekeeping operation.
While the military frames this as "providing indications about the location and intentions of enemy forces," the ethical reality is a total collapse of auditory privacy. The RC-135V/W operates at ranges of up to 240 kilometers. It does not require permission to enter a conversation; it simply intercepts it. The public record identifies the RC-135 family as producing theater and national level intelligence with near real-time collection, a capability that shrinks the distance between a private word spoken in a valley and a decision made in a command center.
Document imagery from irp.fas.org From the files: irp.fas.org
"Limited Field of View"
Even a machine this gluttonous has gaps. For a long time, the Rivet Joint was plagued by what the document describes as a "limited field of view," restricted to 120 degrees on each side of the aircraft. This forced crews to engage in a clumsy dance: alternating antenna selection from side to side and changing the aircraft's heading.
This tactical maneuvering was not a failure of intent, but a failure of reach. The document notes that these sequential looks posed a "significant probability of missing short-up-time and low-probability-of-intercept emitters." In the world of signals intelligence, a "low probability of detection" signal is the gold standard of secrecy. The state’s response to this was not to respect the secrecy, but to evolve the tool.
To solve this, the program sought a 360-degree Search, Acquisition, and Direction Finding System. By mounting a circular antenna array on the underside of the aircraft, the Air Force intended to eliminate the blind spots. The goal is a seamless, omnidirectional net—a way to ensure that no signal, however brief or stealthy, escapes the record.
Document imagery from irp.fas.org From the files: irp.fas.org
Sanders and the JSAF
The evolution of the hog is a story of corporate partnership and escalating sensitivity. On February 12, 1997, Sanders, a Lockheed Martin Company, was selected to develop the Joint SIGINT Avionics Family (JSAF) Low Band Subsystem. This was not a solo effort; the record lists a constellation of subcontractors including Radix Technologies, Inc., Applied Signal Technologies (APSG), and TRW System Integration Group, all based in the Silicon Valley hubs of Mountain View and Sunnyvale.
This upgrade was designed to address a specific deficiency: the "insufficient capability to intercept modern modulation" and signals that were designed to be hard to find. The JSAF was intended to be a platform-independent suite, deployable not just on the RC-135, but on the Army's RC-7 and the Navy's EP-3.
This is the logic of the surveillance state: once a tool for non-consensual listening is perfected for one branch of the military, it must be scaled across all of them. The document describes the drive toward "near-real-time exchange of information for rapid signal geolocation and targeting." When the gap between interception and targeting reaches zero, the aircraft ceases to be a reconnaissance tool and becomes a trigger.
As the fleet grew to 15 aircraft by late 1999—including a converted C-135B that cost approximately $90 million—the hunger for data only increased. The program pushed for SHF High Gain Steerable Beam Antenna Upgrades to penetrate deeper into "low power emitters" and Wideband SATCOM Data Links to allow "reach-back to CONUS intelligence center databases."
However, the record ends with a glimpse of the frictions inherent in maintaining such a fleet. For the fiscal years 2001 and 2002, funding only supported JSAF modifications for three of the four aircraft undergoing programmed depot maintenance. This shortfall left the Air Force with two different aircraft configurations, necessitating dual qualified aircrews and increased costs for "out-of-cycle" modification.