That satellite that’s due to be shot down this week was bad news, even before it got off the ground. The failed orbiter, USA-193, is widely believed to be part of a classified surveillance in space program known as Future Imagery Architecture, or FIA. And FIA is known as one of the biggest defense-technology boondoggles in recent history — "perhaps the most spectacular and expensive failure in the 50-year history of American spy satellite projects," The New York Times once wrote.

FIA was originally supposed to be a constellation of satellites using electro-optical and radar sensors to "gather clearer and more-frequent images — even at night and when there is a cloud cover — of enemy military activity than current satellites can,” the Los Angeles Times notes. Initially scheduled to launch in 2005, FIA looked like it might become the “most expensive program in the history of the intelligence community,” according to Globalsecurity.org.

When Boeing won the FIA contract, back in 1999, it was something of a coup. Lockheed was the country’s big satellite builder, not Boeing. As the Los Angeles Times observes, the company "had little experience manufacturing satellites with optical lenses that can take close-up pictures from space of objects on the ground.”

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