timeline of Navy Comm birds

Sen. Byrd's book: "Robert C. Byrd: Child of the Appalachian Coalfields."
talks about Sugar Grove, the National Radio Quiet Zone, and the plan
to use moonbounce for communications to Navy ships.

{There's background at http://coldwar-c4i.net/Sugar_Grove/history.html ..}

The timeline he used looks like this:

1956-57: Funding, land acquisition, engineering starts.

1961: Doubts emerge; the Navy talks about shutting it down...

1962:

At the time it had been proposed some years before, the
"radio telescope" seemed to be the best option for the
defense purposes for which it was designed, but in the
meantime the Defense Department had learned that satellites
could do the mission better, quicker and cheaper. The United
States now had satellites in orbit that would photograph
any point on the globe. Other satellites, equipped with
inconceivably sensitive instruments, could detect the heat
from a moving rocket within seconds of a launching and could
relay the information with the speed of light.

~1964: The facility morphed into NAVRADSTA, the HF receiving site
for NAVCOMMSTA Cheltenham, Maryland. Also, Naval Security Group
allegedly used it to intercept traffic to Comsat's Etam dish farm.

But my question is about 1961. What was the state of military comm
birds in 1961 such that the Navy could portend no need for moonbounce?

(Wrongly, I guess, given that the Navy/NSA was using TRSSCOMM in
1967....)


Granted, this is all from a politician's autobiography; and maybe
the Navy was just spinning to get out from under a loser of a project,
but...


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