Operation Burnt Frost was a military operation to intercept and destroy non-functioning U.S. National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) satellite USA-193. The mission was described by the Missile Defense Agency as a "mission of safeguarding human life against the uncontrolled re-entry of a 5,000-pound satellite containing over 1,000 pounds of hazardous hydrazine propellant". The launch occurred on 21 February 2008 at approximately 10:26 p.m. EST from the USS Lake Erie, using a heavily modified Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) to shoot down the satellite. A few minutes after launch, the SM-3 intercepted its target and successfully completed its mission. The operation received scrutiny from other countries, mainly China and Russia.

The National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) is a member of the United States Intelligence Community and an agency of the United States Department of Defense which designs, builds, launches, and operates the reconnaissance satellites of the U.S. federal government. It provides satellite intelligence to several government agencies, particularly signals intelligence (SIGINT) to the NSA, imagery intelligence (IMINT) to the NGA, and measurement and signature intelligence (MASINT) to the DIA. The NRO announced in 2023 that it plans within the following decade to quadruple the number of satellites it operates and increase the number of signals and images it delivers by a factor of ten.