After three years of Program 206-type flights with the Atlas Agena D, launches with the Titan IIIB first stage began in Jul 1966. The Titan IIIB is substantially more powerful than Atlas, and only one object was cataloged for each flight, [Three flights in Jan, Aug and Oct 1971 jettisoned some kind of object into orbitat the end of their missions, possibly associated with the recovery vehicle.] confirming that the Agena stage remained attached to the payload. This suggests that the switch of booster and the upgrade to the new KH-8 payload are correlated, in contrast to the phasing in of the KH-4B and Thorad booster in the CORONA program. The KH-8 carried two SRVs. The probability is that after recovery of SRV-1, a fairing was ejected prior to separation of SRV-2, as in the CORONA satellites. The long mission durations from 1970 onwards require that the KH-8 GAMBIT had solar panels; NASA's SERT 2 satellite launched in 1970 had such solar panels attached to the Agena D aft rack and a declassified diagram existis of a late KH-4B CORONA with such solar panels.
The first few flights had lifetimes of one to two weeks; starting in 1970 this was gradually increased to three and then four weeks, with 30 day flights becoming standard in 1972. Program flights 56, 57, and 62 in 1968-69 are anomalous, with high apogees ranging from 730 to 1090 km. The 42nd KH-8 mission (GAMBIT program flight 80) in Jun 1974 saw a jump of mission duration to seven weeks. This jump probably corresponded to a major system upgrade, possibly including an extra recovery vehicle. By the time of the last GAMBIT flight in 1984, on-orbit life had been extended to four months.