The use of spy satellites to gather intelligence has been criticized by many who feel a greater emphasis should be placed on human intelligence. Dwayne Day argues that spysats have been unfairly maligned.
The National Reconnaissance Office, the U.S. intelligence agency responsible for the U.S. spy satellite infrastructure, is in a financial and organizational crisis that could hamper U.S. ability to respond to emerging proliferation crises in North Korea and Iran according to this feature story.
Given enough commercial and spy satellites, supplemented by aircraft and a ground system to marry it all together, the intelligence community might one day achieve the ultimate in coverage: constant, real-time surveillance of the planet. But even without such coverage, imaging and other satellite technologies are already colliding with privacy concerns.
According to knowledgeable U.S. officials, a highly classified $17 to $19 billion replacement system, supposed to be completed around 2005, has gotten so far off schedule that the military could suffer an "imagery gap" as aging satellites in the current system flicker out.
The war against terrorism in Afghanistan has propelled the National Imagery and Mapping Agency into the future ahead of schedule. Faced with an urgent demand for intelligence on a region of the world not fully covered in its databases, the agency turned to private industry for products and services. And, it introduced advanced methods and products of its own to serve decision makers and warfighters.
Now anyone can see some of the high-resolution satellite images that the U.S. military studied as it plotted strategy in Afghanistan. An exclusive contract between Space Imaging of Thornton and the National Imagery and Mapping Agency - or NIMA, which purchases geographic images for the U.S. Department of Defense - expired late last week.
Earth-orbiting listening posts are on active duty in the United States-led war on terrorism. Signal-seeking spacecraft not only play a critical role in eavesdropping on nations from on high, but also within the borders of the U.S itself.
A high-level presidential commission plans to recommend that the Pentagon's three largest intelligence-collection agencies be transferred to the director of central intelligence in a major restructuring of the intelligence community, according to sources familiar with the panel's findings.
From new sources of intelligence such as commercial satellite photos and remote-controlled spy drones to familiar tools such as U-2 spy planes and secret satellites orbiting the Earth, US intelligence officials are working to provide the military with the most critical weapon in this war: information.
The U.S. military is spending $25 billion over 20 years to build the next generation of spy satellites. This will be the most expensive venture ever mounted by U.S. intelligence services. For its money, Washington expects to get a new system of electronic cameras that can be trained on potential trouble spots anywhere on the planet on a couple of hours' notice or less. It will be "an incredible improvement" in America's ability to spy from the sky, a U.S. official said in Washington. He said the satellites would be able to track objects as small as a baseball anywhere, anytime on the planet.