Title from title screen (viewed on Sept. 22, 2008).
"December 2005."
The original document contains color images.
Summary
High-quality space-based imagery, once among America's most closely held secrets for force enhancement, is now openly available through commercial providers. The United States faces questions of how to keep this source of valuable intelligence information from its adversaries, and whether it is even possible or desirable to do so. This paper addresses strategies for countering the threat to military operations posed by commercial earth-sensing satellites. The paper emphasizes technical countermeasures, using a combination of nodal and value analysis to arrive at possible solutions. It also considers strategies necessary to make those countermeasures militarily useful and politically acceptable. The result of the research is a recommendation for long-term pursuit of co-orbital weapons with reversible effects, while in the short term, integrating current technology into ground-based and airborne radio-frequency jammers and low-power lasers for point defense. In the process it highlights the need for surge capacity in space lift, so the United States can have a defensive space-control capability without accelerating the arms race in space.
