Industry sources say the Pentagon has been scrambling to buy up access to commercial satellites to bolster its own orbiting space fleet. The military needs the bandwidth to support an information-age battle plan that depends on the ability to transmit huge amounts of data to troops in the field, planes in the air and even weapons in flight.
At least a dozen nations will watch the war with Iraq unfold from space, including some countries that oppose U.S. policies in the Middle East. That means a hostile government could share satellite intelligence about U.S. war strategy with Saddam Hussein.
Iraq could try to jam US communications and intelligence satellites in a war, but is unlikely to succeed according to a senior U.S. Air Force officer.
The structure of Iraq's internet makes it very vulnerable to being shut down by U.S. military forces and it appears that they lack the home-grown talent to defend or retaliate against such attacks.
The U.S. military will likely use the potential Iraq conflict to test out their information warfare training. They'll use this whole thing as a big training ground," according to James Bamford. "They'll experiment with everything they've been thinking about for a long time."
A campaign to reach out and touch the Iraqi people through e-mail apparently hasn't been as successful as the United States had hoped, because the Iraqi government censors all e-mail coming into the country.
In the wake of reports this week that the United States is considering ? and planning ? pre-emptive nuclear strikes against Iraq, experts said a nuclear threat might deter Iraq from using weapons of mass destruction, but could also distance the United States from its allies.
The White House chief of staff refused yesterday to rule out the possibility of using nuclear weapons during a war with Iraq to prevent what he called a "holocaust" caused by the possible use of weapons of mass destruction by Baghdad.
William Arkin argues that U.S. preparations for the possible use of nuclear weapons against Iraq set a dangerous precedent that will ultimately make the world "infinitely more dangerous than it was two years ago."
The author examines the impact of commercial high resolution satellite imagery on recent crises in Iraq and North Korea.