Missing the most important piece of info about any NRO launch, the mission patch! Meow! https://www.nro.gov/portals/135/assets/img/L-70_Snow-Leopard...
Fyi, military patches look best when using lines with fixed-width. Anything pointy or jagged doesn't translate well into stitched thread. Avoid shadows too. Yes, there are some all-plastic patches that are carved into 3d shapes but those are evil. Real patches are thread over velcro.
I've made something of a hobby of learning new ways to manufacture things. Every time I learn a new manufacturing technique I start to notice things that were made that way in the real world, and I especially start to notice aspects of design that would have been influenced by how the thing in question was manufactured.
Case in point: injection molding. When you injection mold parts, the sides have to be tapered so that the part can detach from the mold easily (the term of art for that is "drafting"[1]). Once you know that, you see it everywhere.
Back to the topic at hand: owning an embroidery machine and learning how to digitize completely opened my mind to all the intricacies of patch design and why all of what the parent comment said is true. Case in point:
> military patches look best when using lines with fixed-width
This is because the thread itself is fixed width, and you can either do a straight stitch for really thin lines (they call that a running stitch[2]) or you can do a sort of zigzag stitch that's so tight that the thread runs horizontally and fills up the line width (they call that a satin stitch[3]). Satin stitches only look good within a certain narrow range of widths; wider and the threads are too loose, narrower and the needle holes are close enough that they impact the structural integrity of the backing the design's being embroidered on to.
Anyway. I could go on for hours, but to wrap up: DFM is a fascinating world to explore.
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_for_manufacturability
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft_(engineering)
Depending on how much time you have, this video[0] is a decent in-depth overview[1] of the various ins and outs of embroidery patch digitizing. I'd give it a watch while you're on a walk or something.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/live/jATHlfz8mtM?si=Lvw-ZTq8tmLg9ij-
[1] Heh, "in-depth overview" sounds like a total oxymoron. Hopefully you get what I meant!
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&sca_esv=841...
There's a lot of in-jokes and humor in the defense contractor community for team morale building and such. Same idea why challenge coins exist within the relationships between big defense contractors and the DoD agencies that buy services and equipment from them.
The "nothing is beyond our reach" and octopus seems like some sinister and scary thing for a military/intelligence agency to be putting out there in public, but it probably has a more specific meaning within the top secret capabilities of that specific program. I have no idea what it is, could be something like listening to all mobile phone traffic in Waziristan, whatever.