SPACE V AIRBORNE ISR OR MIX AND MATCH

Owning satellite based ISR for military use is still an exclusive ‘club’, but airborne ISR still provides that most countries need.

- Martin Streetly

Until relatively recently, satellite-based intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) was restricted to an exclusive club that was made up of the world’s technological and military ‘superpowers’. Here, security considerations, enormous cost and the sheer difficulty in placing something like a 19.5-metre long KH series imaging satellite in orbit ensured the exclusivity of the ‘club’. For those able to capitalise on the technology, the rewards were (and are) enormous, with an American Lockheed KH-11 Kennen/ Crystal system being postulated as having a six-centimetre ground sampling distance from an altitude of 155 miles (250 kilometres). Again, orbiting satellites have been relatively invulnerable to attack (although America, China and Russia have all looked at antisatellite technology over time), offer global coverage and total persistence until orbital decay sets in when their power and fuel supplies are exhausted. In this latter context, it is interesting that America’s Space Shuttle was developed partly as a re-usable ‘service station’ to keep the country’s in-orbit fleet of imaging and signals intelligence (SIGINT) satellites operational for as long as possible.