Looking at the bright side
Despite all the threat of better attack planning based on space imaging, perhaps the silver lining is that preparations to attack tend to be more visible than preparations to defend. The primary utility of space sensors is not in the generation of unilateral advantage, but in the ability to limit the capacity of others to act in the secret.
Military thinkers tend to build an enemy hat has a perfect ability to exploit all the advantages that might be available to it. This mindset is useful when imagining all courses of action possible for an enemy, but rarely, if ever, can an enemy actually do each and every conceivable action. For example, the two Lacrosse American Spy Satellites KH-12 are in space like Hubble space telescope pointed back to earth. From 264 km up, their optical sensors can snap clear photographs of objects no larger than a paperback novel on the ground. They have radar-imaging cameras that can see through clouds and even the dust storms that swirl around India’s Pokhran test site. But this was thought to be infallible until Pokhran exploded this myth. India had kept the nuclear bombshell so close to its chest that it caught the world napping. This was in direct contrast to the situation in December 1995, when preparations to conduct a nuclear test had been picked up by US satellites and leaked to influential American dailies. Thus, with regard to commercial satellite systems, although they can certainly provide substantial capabilities, an adversary must be able to exploit them.
The future Scenario
The future battlefield scenario would be vastly different from its traditional version. Technological superiority, weapon effectiveness and force mix, capabilities for rapid response and precision strike will be more important than conventional numerical superiority. There is already a transformation in warfare towards the utilisation of GIS technology and advanced remote sensing which enhanced administrative efficiency and provides logistics support.
GIS is a decision-making guide through fuller control of the spatial data. As the 1-metre threshold in space imaging is crossed, the world had better learn to live with it and expect the skies to be more and more open. Commercial space imaging is probably here to stay, at better and better resolution and with better and better technology to penetrate attempts at avoidance, camouflage and other deception techniques. A giant step in itself and ambitious enough in many respects. But the full implications of GIS are still to be charted.
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