March 24, 2003
Military benefiting from power of spy satellites By SCOTT HADLY The newest spy satellites can read the headlines on this newspaper. They can pick out a football in a stadium. Their power is something akin to standing in San Diego and reading a license plate on a car in a traffic jam in the Bay Area. When it gets cloudy or dark, these satellites can pick up images of people, cars, tanks and buildings. They can read the "thermal signature" in parking lots or on tarmacs where airplanes were parked hours before. Other orbiting cameras can read the light spectrum from exhaust or emissions to determine their chemical makeup. They are used for tracking and guiding missiles and some are equipped with imaging lasers and can produce three-dimensional images of what's on the ground, right down to small rocks. Along with an arsenal of bullets and bombs, the United States military is depending on the latest in high-tech surveillance satellites to pick targets, direct soldiers in the field and collect intelligence. During the first Gulf War, so-called remote sensing for military operations came of age, and was used for everything from mapping to targeting to assessing the effectiveness of bombing. "There's been another whole decade to perfect the technology," said professor Keith Clarke, a UCSB geologist who has written on the use of satellite technology during the Persian Gulf War and the history of the Corona program, America's first foray into space-based intelligence gathering. The Corona satellites were launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base. As in the past, Vandenberg remains the most important site for launching satellites used by the military to gather intelligence. Along with improved precision and the use of new types of imaging, the military has been able to fully integrate this data and quickly get it to forces in the field. A soldier curious about what's around the next hill or on the other side of a building now could get that data transmitted almost immediately to hand-held devices. Aviation Week reported last fall that six 15-ton high-resolution imaging satellites, costing about $1 billion each, were maintaining almost hourly watch on specific Iraqi facilities. All were launched from Vandenberg and can provide images with resolutions as good as 4 to 6 inches. It wasn't always so easy. Just months after U-2 spy plane pilot Gary Powers was shot down over the Soviet Union in 1958, President Dwight Eisenhower endorsed the super secret program. The first successful launch and recovery of images from space was in August 1960.
At that time, the images were returned to Earth in nose cone separators. Once they reached the Earth's atmosphere, parachutes were deployed and the canisters were recovered by specially equipped planes that could catch the chutes. Vandenberg was chosen because of its location on the coast. A satellite launched from the base on a polar orbit would not cross paths with a land mass until it reached Antarctica. Poor quality images, weather and badly timed orbits made the recovery of useful information spotty, but the military quickly adapted and began gathering data on missile sites, airfields and other closed sites in the former Soviet Union. It still took experts to discern what they were looking at, but by the time the program ended in the early 1970s, the resolution of the photographs improved to the point of being able to clearly discern objects as small as 6 feet across as viewed from 500 miles above the Earth. Toward the end of the program, images were transmitted electronically. Up until 1992 the government didn't even acknowledge the existence of the agency that oversaw much of the technology -- the National Reconnaissance Office. It wasn't until 1995 that the Corona program was declassified, opening up the history of its development to researchers like Mr. Clarke. Satellite technology has gone through several generations since those early systems, Mr. Clarke said. "I don't have any sort of security clearance, but let's speculate a bit here," he said. "I think from open source data we know that they can see in any sort of weather, day or night. We know they have very precise three-dimensional views. They can see relief in such detail that they can make out boulders and rocks." Along with handheld devices used by soldiers in the field to receive data, they are also equipped with transponders that help commanders track the location of their troops. During his presentation to the United Nations, Secretary of State Colin Powell used satellite images to show the location of alleged biological and chemical weapons factories and other sites. Several analysts, including Mr. Clarke, said the resolution of those photographs appeared lower than what is available -- perhaps indicating that the military does not want to disclose its capabilities. Although the kind of technology and uses available to the military remain "in deep black," some of the images are available commercially. Private companies like Space Imaging and DigitalGlobe are selling detailed photos taken from space. DigitalGlobe offered complete photographic coverage of Iraq at a resolution down to less than 1 meter. Space Imaging's Ikonos satellite, which was launched from Vandenberg, has similar resolution. Space Imaging has offered photographs of nuclear power plants in both North Korea and Iran, and has detailed images of Iraq that show some of Saddam Hussein's presidential palaces. Similar images have been offered up by the Menlo Park-based Keyhole Corp. "People got a look at the power of some of these images when they saw views of the rubble at the World Trade Center," Mr. Clarke said. Just before the war with Afghanistan, the military bought up exclusive rights to many of the images of the country offered by commercial companies, but with public and private satellites from various companies, the military and intelligence agencies no longer have cornered the market on space-based surveillance. Civilians and other governments like France, Russia, India, Israel and China, with either their own orbiting cameras or access to satellite images, can snoop on our own country's activities. But there's more to remote sensing than gathering intelligence. Geographers use the systems for mapping, to gauge changes in ocean temperature, measure the fire potential in national forests and to look at urban sprawl, said Mr. Clarke. In his analysis of the use of remote sensing and satellite imagery in the first Gulf War, Mr. Clarke noted that after the war the technology became essential in coordinating aid to the Kurdish population and extinguishing the oil fires in Kuwait. "There's just immense potential for this technology," he said. |
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