Consider: We wouldn’t bother offering mutual inspections and overflights unless our counterpart was (a)powerful enough to really threaten us, (b)of a disposition that we already regard as threatening, and (c)conducts itself with such apparent belligerence that we would need inspections and overflights to allay our concerns. If another nation refused under those conditions, it would indeed be perfectly logical to engage in a buildup, and satellite imagery wouldn’t change that one way or another. No tense situation has ever been de-escalated due to lack of evidence, and that’s the most satellites can offer in that regard.

Chance: This is the kind of thinking that caused us to go into Iraq.

There was no thinking involved in the invasion of Iraq. Just a whole lot of money and an upcoming Republican election season. In fact, it’s the perfect example of my point: They just interpreted the satellite imagery however they pleased, and then used it to facilitate the invasion. They could not have gotten away with such naked chicanery if the invasion weren’t so easy – they would have had to fish around for far more plausible excuses, and take their time fabricating better information. And because of that, it likely wouldn’t have happened – it couldn’t have been orchestrated in time for the election season.

Chance: In a single day, the CORONA sats yielded more images of the Soviet Union than did the entire U-2 spy plane program. This helped disprove the “missile gap”.

Yes, that’s true. The early recon satellites finally opened an eye on the great enigma, everyone in the know breathed a collective sigh of relief, and then……set about acting as if the exact opposite were true to get more funding for their programs. No general ever got promoted downplaying the threat of a Designated Enemy. Ditto CIA. Military satellite imagery doesn’t change anything, it only makes war easier. It just keeps getting easier and easier, more and more convenient for our government to point a finger and say “kill.” That in itself is unacceptable, but if the result is to all but deny space for an indeterminate time due to vast debris swarms, that is a threat to long-term human survival.

While space based assets have their limits, getting rid of them altogether just doesn’t make sense. In a single day, the CORONA sats yielded more images of the Soviet Union than did the entire U-2 spy plane program. This helped disprove the “missile gap”.

And to “curious”. I wonder if you’d be as courageous to a soldier’s face as you are behind your keyboard? I don’t glorify all aspects of the military like some of our friends on the right, but your “f the troops” comment sickens me, and shows you inability to make a rational argument.

http://www.space.com/news/spacehistory/nro_at_forty_000926.html

They agreed to inspections of their nuclear forces as part of arms reduction treaties, which did far more to avoid WW3 and defuse tensions than any number of ambiguous satellite photos. Orwellian notions that trust comes from paranoia are not born out by history.

Al: Our spy satellites flying over the Soviet Union — and their spy satellites flying over the U.S. — helped prevent WWIII.

Quite to the contrary, satellite imagery was more often used selectively to exaggerate potential threats according to political directives. It may have been initially helpful back when the USSR was still a complete mystery, but after that it was just another component of the Frankenstein’s monster Eisenhower warned America about – the “military industrial complex” existing only to perpetuate itself. The purpose of military reconnaisance satellites has long been (and remains) to find excuses for saber-rattling and increased funding, not to provide an accurate picture.

Second, we have ZERO inherent right to fly over somebody’s facilities, or to inspect them, unless they agree.

And if they do not agree, despite the offer being mutual, then that in itself is highly revealing about their disposition. The advantages of pursuing mutual inspection regimens (or those handled through a mutual body) are simply obvious, and the only people on either side likely to object are those with belligerent intentions. That way you know who is in control in the government of your counterpart, regardless of their rhetoric – warmongers or reformers.

The suggestion that we depend on over head flights by airplanes is fantasy.

First off, the only reason the military should be doing that sort of thing anyway is an all-out war situation, so if they’re going to shoot down either satellites or cheap, mass-produced drones, the cost and logistical advantages are obviously on the side of aircraft. If they put the same money into enhancing the stealthiness, networkability, and loitering capabilities of these drones that they’ve spent on mindless fantasy projects for defending satellites, you can bet the technology could be considerably more advanced.

Al: Reconnaissance satellites are a GOOD thing. They keep the peace.

To paraphrase a line from the NRA, technologies don’t keep the peace, people keep the peace. The unacceptable consequences of WW3 are the reason WW3 didn’t happen, not satellite imagery – military contractors couldn’t spend their money if they’re dead from a nuclear holocaust. In fact, not a single war has been stopped by reconnaisance of any kind: If the U2 images of Cuba hadn’t shown missiles, the military would still have wanted to invade, and would have gotten their wish if Nixon had been president then. If reconnaisance showed the NVA wasn’t involved in South Vietnam, Johnson would still have sent in the Marines. And if satellites could have somehow definitively proven that Saddam didn’t have WMDs, we all know Bush would still have invaded Iraq. The government doesn’t use reconnaisance to judge threats, it uses it to look for excuses to attack countries that are already targeted, and to facilitate that attack. Our national security at this point would be greatly enhanced by reducing the capabilities of our military, and this is especially crucial as it applies to space – a medium that is already very difficult without having to fly through a Kessler shooting range.

SWIDERSKI: Inspection regimens by treaty work quite well, and can allow for low aircraft overflights and surprise visits to facilities – something that provides a great deal more responsive, accurate, and better quality information than spy satellites on fixed orbits.

Brian,

Please get out of your idealistic world, and face reality. If we are in a major adversarial relationship that has gone south — which is exactly the environmental condition that exists before war starts — inspection regimes don’t work well, if at all.

Did the Soviet Union agree to “inspections” of all their facilities? Our spy satellites flying over the Soviet Union — and their spy satellites flying over the U.S. — helped prevent WWIII.

Second, we have ZERO inherent right to fly over somebody’s facilities, or to inspect them, unless they agree.

The suggestion that we depend on over head flights by airplanes is fantasy. The Soviet Union shot down a U2 flight over their territory. They had the legal right to do so. They told us “Do it again, and we will shoot you down again.” The U2 flights stopped.

Now consider Soviet Union had the capability, but NOT the legal right, to shoot down satellites that pass over their territory. Over the last 50 years, the Soviet Union/Russia has NOT shot down one American spy satellite.

Flying over somebody’s territory with an airplane is a violation of their national sovereignty. Flying over somebody’s territory with a spy satellite is legal for all nations.

Reconnaissance satellites are a GOOD thing. They keep the peace. They are a stabilizing deterrent to war. They are legal, and everybody who wants them should have them.

– Al

Inspection regimens by treaty work quite well, and can allow for low aircraft overflights and surprise visits to facilities – something that provides a great deal more responsive, accurate, and better quality information than spy satellites on fixed orbits.

Another example — what do you think will happen if we go to war without a space program?

Let me be clear: I would not be opposed to the military using space if necessary in an actual, declared, defensive war with a well-defined beginning and end, where failure to use space militarily could plausibly result in the destruction or conquest of the United States – which is traditionally the definition of “defense.” What I absolutely reject is the idea that space can be a playground for the military under normal conditions, or a medium in which it can “enhance its capabilities” just as a matter of course.

Al: Eliminating “space militarization” in the form of GPS (which enables precision strike) is not going to eliminate war — it is going to make the wars we have much much nastier, with lots of friendly and non-combatant casualties

There are other options to explore, such as UAV networks with a lot of loitering capability. But I think you miss the point – several completely unjustifiable conflicts have been all but caused by the military’s ability to undertake them conveniently, and that will get worse in the future. Also, it’s imperative that we avoid a Kessler Syndrome to keep space available for human expansion.

Al: BTW, military people train for war, and train to win, but generally want to avoid wars.

You’re speaking of troops, not the people who make decisions. Pentagon generals and politicians have the biggest hammer ever built, and see only a world full of nails. That must change or we’re all screwed.

I fully agree with this. See below.

In response to curious: Long-term inmates here will know that I am no war monger, but Afghanistan was a “just” war. We were attacked. We had every right to respond.

Iraq, on the other had, especially since it “freed” Iran to act and took our eye away from Afghanistan, was pure insanity. Al is correct: it was, and usually is, the civilian leadership in and above the Pentagon (read Donald Rumsfeld, et al.) that get us into these messes of our own making. It is the soldiers who, unfortunately, have to get us out.

— Donald

Oh really! I guess that explains Iraq and Afghanistan then.

They are the people dying, and they get to see the dead bodies of their friends buried.

I suppose those million or so civilian casualties don’t count then.

Just like NASA and the DOD, the typical belligerent, unapologetic and unashamed militant American (that would be you) does not understand the cost of wars. This is one ashamed and apologetic America who who is able to quantify the costs of wars, who is also going to take the time to exercise my first amendment freedom of expression to proclaim right here and now – F*ck the Troops. You people are pathetic. It’s no small wonder that the state of space development is where it’s at right now.

Brian,

Have you thought through what you are saying?

For example, what do you think would happen if the United, Russia, Europe, and every other country with nuclear bombs COULD NOT SEE what was going on around the world?

Eliminating “space reconnaissance” would be totally destabilizing, and would lead to war.

The most valuable “militarization” of space is the “eyes in the sky”. This should be both allowed and encouraged by ALL countries. It is critical to keeping the peace.

Another example — what do you think will happen if we go to war without a space program? (Remember WWI? WWII? Korea? Vietnam?) Eliminating “space militarization” in the form of GPS (which enables precision strike) is not going to eliminate war — it is going to make the wars we have much much nastier, with lots of friendly and non-combatant casualties. We used huge armies, and massive bombardment campaigns, in those previous wars.

Your suggestions about eliminating “space militarization” will

1) Increase the chance of war, and

2) Make the wars we enter much much worse.

– Al

PS — BTW, military people train for war, and train to win, but generally want to avoid wars. They are the people dying, and they get to see the dead bodies of their friends buried. The problem is people who have no first hand concept of war, who are making the decisions, and who may not fully understand the consequences of their decisions (or the positions they advocate.)