Intelligence: From Secrets to Policy (20 page)

Read Intelligence: From Secrets to Policy Online

Authors: Mark M. Lowenthal

 
GEOSPATIAL INTELLIGENCE. GEOINT is a collection discipline that used to be called imagery or IMINT, also referred to as PHOTINT (photo intelligence). It is a direct descendant of the brief practice of sending soldiers up in balloons during the U.S. Civil War (1861-1865). In World War I (1914-1918) and World War II (1939-1945), both sides used airplanes to obtain photos. Airplanes are still employed, but several nations now use imagery satellites. NGA (which until 2003 was the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, NIMA) has overall responsibility for GEOINT, including processing and exploitation. Some imagery also comes via DOD’s airborne systems, such as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), or drones. Handheld cameras also are considered part of imagery collection.
NGA defines GEOINT as “information about any object—natural or man-made—that can be observed or referenced to the Earth, and has national security implications.” For example, an image of a city includes natural objects (rivers, lakes, and so on) and man-made objects (buildings, roads, bridges, and so on) and can have overlaid on it utility lines, transport lines, and so on. It may also include terrain or geodetic data. Thus, a more complete picture is drawn that may be of greater intelligence value.
The term
imagery
is somewhat misleading in that it is generally considered to be a picture produced by an optical system akin to a camera. Some imagery is produced by optical systems, usually referred to as electro-optical (EO) systems. Early satellites contained film that was jettisoned in capsules and subsequently recovered and developed. Modern satellites transmit their images as signals, or digital data streams, that are received and reconstructed as images. Radar imagery sends out pulses of radio waves that reflect back to the sensor in varying degrees of brightness, depending on the amount of reflected energy. Radar is thus not dependent on light and therefore can be used in bad weather or at night.
Infrared imagery (IR) produces an image based on the heat reflected by the surfaces being recorded. IR provides the ability to detect warm objects (for example, engines on tanks or planes inside hangars). Some systems, referred to as multispectral or hyperspectral imagery (MSI and HSI, respectively), derive images from spectral analysis. These images are not photographic per se but are built by reflections from several bands across the spectrum of light, some visible, some invisible. They are usually referred to as MASINT.
The level of detail provided by imagery is called
resolution.
Resolution refers to the smallest object that can be distinguished in an image, expressed in size. Designers of imagery systems must make a trade-off between the resolution and the size of the scene being imaged. The better the resolution, the smaller the scene. The degree of resolution that analysts desire depends on the nature of the target and the type of intelligence that is being sought. For example, one-meter resolution allows fairly detailed analysis of man-made objects or subtle changes to terrain. Ten-meter resolution loses some detail but allows the identification of buildings by type or the surveillance of large installations and associated activity. Twenty- to thirty-meter resolution covers a much larger area but allows the identification of large complexes such as airports, factories, and bases. Thus, the degree of resolution has to be appropriate to the analyst’s need. Sometimes high resolution is the correct choice; sometimes it is not.
During the cold war it was often popular to refer to the ability to “read the license plates in the Kremlin parking lot”—a wholly irrelevant parameter. Different collection needs have different resolution requirements. For example, keeping track of large-scale troop deployments requires much less detail than tracking the shipment of military weapons. The U.S. intelligence community developed the science of crateology, by which analysts were able to track Soviet arms shipments based on the size and shape of crates being loaded or unloaded from Soviet-bloc cargo vessels. (This analytical practice was subject to deception simply by purposely using misleadingly sized crates to mask the nature of the shipments.)
Several press accounts say that U.S. satellites now have resolutions often inches. Commercial imagery is available at a resolution of 0.5 meter (or just under twenty inches), meaning that an object half a meter in size can be distinguished in an image. (By agreement with the U.S. government. U.S. commercial vendors are subject to a twenty-four-hour delay from the time of collection before they can release any imagery with a resolution better than 0.82 meter, or just over thirty-two inches.)
Imagery offers a number of advantages over other collection means. First, it is sometimes graphic and compelling. When shown to policy makers, an easily interpreted image can be worth the proverbial thousand words. Second, imagery is easily understood much of the time by policy makers. Even though few of them, if any, are trained imagery analysts, all are accustomed to seeing and interpreting images. From family photos to newspapers, magazines, and news broadcasts, policy makers, like many people, spend a considerable part of their day not only looking at images but also interpreting them. Imagery is also easy to use with policy makers in that little or no interpretation is necessary to determine how it was acquired. Although the method by which images are taken from space, transmitted to Earth, and processed is more complex than using a digital camera, policy clients are sufficiently informed to trust the technology and take it for granted.
Another advantage of imagery is that many of the targets make themselves available. Military exercises in most nations are conducted on regular cycles and at predictable locations, making them highly susceptible to IMINT. Finally, an image of a certain site often provides information not just about one activity but some ancillary ones as well. A distinction must be made, though, between these military targets, which are familiar to the intelligence community, and the challenges posed by terrorism. In brief, terrorism presents a smaller imagery target. Although training camps may have been set up, as was the case of al Qaeda in Afghanistan, terrorist cells or networks are far smaller, less elaborate, and have less visible infrastructure than do the traditional political-military targets.
Imagery also suffers from a number of problems. The graphic quality that is an advantage can also be a disadvantage. An image can be too compelling, leading to hasty or ill-formed decisions or to the exclusion of other, more subtle intelligence that is contradictory. Also, the intelligence on an image may not be self-evident; it may require interpretation by trained photo interpreters who can see things that the untrained person cannot. At times, the policy makers must take it on faith that the skilled analysts are correct.
(See box, “The Need for Photo Interpreters.”)
Another disadvantage of imagery is that it is only a snapshot, a picture of a particular place at a particular time. This is sometimes referred to as the “where and when” phenomenon. Imagery is a static piece of intelligence, revealing something about where and when it was taken but nothing about what happened before or after or why it happened. Analysts perform a
negation search,
looking at past imagery to determine when an activity commenced. This can be done by computers comparing images, in a process called
automatic change extraction.
The site can be revisited to watch for further activity. But a single image does not reveal everything.
Because details about U.S. imagery capabilities have become better known, states can take steps to deceive collection—through the use of camouflage or dummies—or to preclude collection by conducting certain activities at times when they are unlikely or less likely to be observed.
The war against terrorism led to two major developments in the use of imagery. First, the government greatly expanded its use of commercial imagery. In October 2001, NGA (then known as the NIMA) bought exclusive and perpetual rights to all imagery of Afghanistan taken by the
IKONOS
satellite, operated by the Space Imaging Company. This satellite has a resolution of 0.8 meter (approximately 31.5 inches). The agency’s actions expanded the overall collection capability of the United States and allowed it to reserve more sophisticated imagery capabilities for those areas where they were most needed, while
IKONOS
took up other collection tasks. As noted earlier, use of this commercial imagery makes it easier for the United States to share imagery with other nations or the public without revealing classified capabilities. At the same time, foreign governments that may be hostile to the United States or may see the Afghanistan campaign as a means of gauging U.S. military capabilities were denied access to imagery. The purchase also denied the use of this commercial imagery to news media, which might be eager to use it as a means of reporting on and assessing the conduct and success of the war.
 
These satellite photos of San Diego. California, illustrate differences in resolution. (Resolution numbers indicate the size of the smallest identifiable object.) They also show recent advances in commercial satellite imagery. The top photo has 25-meter (75 feet) resolution; major landforms—the hills and Mission Bay—are identifiable at lower center. Larger man-made objects—piers, highways, runways at North Island U.S. Naval Air Station—can be seen on the peninsula to the right.
 
 
At 5-meter (15 feet) resolution, clarity improves dramatically. North Island and San Diego International Airport are visible, as are rows of boats in the marinas and wakes of boats in the bay. Taller buildings in downtown San Diego can be seen at upper center. Shadows indicate this image was taken in mid- to late morning.
 
 
At 4-meter resolution (12 feet), individual buildings and streets can be seen, along with each boat m the mannas. At the bottom, a cruise ship is docked at the terminal. Individual cars can be seen in the parking lot above the piers.
 
 
At 1-meter (39 inch) resolution, each building stands out. Individual cars are seen in parking lots and streets. Railroad tracks are visible on a diagonal at the top right, as are paths and small groups of trees in the Embarcadero Marine Park, just below the marina at the upper right. Photos courtesy of Space Imaging, Inc.

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