Surveillance of Earth From Space for Security Purposes

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Surveillance of EarthFrom SpaceforSecurity
Purposes

• Presentation to
• MIT Space and Security Conference
• Bob Preston
• April 22, 2002

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Outline(Content Requested)

• Technical Background / Security Value
• Limitations
• Opportunities for Trans-Atlantic Cooperation

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Kinds of Sensing1 of 3

• Environmental sensing
• Determines operating conditions for security
  forces
• Cloud imagers
• Sounders
• Refractivity profilers (e.g. GPS occultation)
• Ionospheric electron content / scintillation
• Polarimetric scatterometers (surface winds over
  water)
• LIDAR

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Kinds of Sensing2 of 3

• Surface feature sensing
• Provides cartography, trafficability,
  bathymetry, force disposition, fixed target
  location / attributes, damage assessment
• Imagery (optical, radar)
• Polarimetry
• Spectrometry
• Interferometry

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Kinds of Sensing3 of 3

• Activity Sensing
• Tracks force movement, assists identification
  friend or foe, provides time-critical targeting,
  warning
• Signal intercept receivers
• Moving target indication radar
• Infrared event detection / characterization
• Friendly force reporting

Moving Target Indication
With Signature Identification
With Track Over Time
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Limitations

• Access
• Medium
• Illumination
• Capacity
• Quality
• Countermeasures
• Delays

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Access

• Line-of-sight (horizon)
• Scene presented (cover, contrast)
• Sensor field of regard (scan limits, etc.)

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Medium - Propagation

• Weather
• Scintillation
• Refraction

• Aerosols
• Absorption
• etc.

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Illumination

• Passive (solar)
• Active (e.g., radar)
• Power
• Range loss

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Capacity

• Sensor dwell footprint
• Boresight(s)
• Bandwidth
• Sensitivity
• Storage
• Data rate

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Quality

• Spatial resolution
• Spectral resolution
• Dynamic range
• Signal to noise

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Countermeasures

• Satellite warning
• Cover / concealment / obscurants
• Camouflage / disguise
• Decoys
• Interference (jamming)
• Attack (e.g., ground station)

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Delay

• Tasking
• Collection (wait for access)
• Data downlink / relay
• Processing
• Interpretation
• Dissemination
• Application

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Commercial Satellite Imagery May Help a Warfighter

• Even land-use data (e.g. Landsat) resolution /
  revisit enough for large ground unit disposition
• Hi-res (e.g., Ikonos, Quickbird) quality suitable
  for targeting if timely

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But Its Reasonable to Hide from or Deceive
Commercial Imagers Today
Night time
Daylight
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Even if They Accept Degraded Resolution with
Off-Nadir Scanning
Night time
Daylight
visibility depicted ignores illumination
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It Will Be Increasingly Difficult to Hide from
Announced Commercial Imagers.
6 EO with 45 Scan _at_ 600 km
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-- Particularly if They Accept Off-nadir Scan
Degradation and/or Use Radar
Undisclosed 60 Scan?
Announced 45 Scan
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Areas for U.S. - European Cooperation

• Technology?
• Generally comparable
• Issues
• Intelligence sources methods
• Industrial policy
• Intellectual property
• Investment Operations
• Could improve persistence, capacity, diversity,
  resilience, timeliness with coordinated
  architectures / operations
• Employment
• Shared experience
• U.S. depth of experience
• European fresh perspective
• Interoperability