This is sort of aviation related.
A recent
page from the SBAC website informs us that a UK space industry body has recently released a paper about the UK in space. It can be found here at
Case4Space, or downloaded from the website as a PDF file.
Naturally they are keen to promote UK space related activities, and the Security page includes the following:
The asymmetric nature of contemporary security threats means all countries are potential targets and sources of terrorism. Surveillance must therefore be available on a global basis. Earth observation also has an important role to play in understanding environmental pressures on society and planning for the consequences. At present the UK makes decisions based on foreign owned space surveillance assets.
The ability of the space industry to support the projection of UK international policy is largely predicated on the UK retaining an independent space capability with on-shore research and industrial knowledge and skills. UK expertise in optical and radar observation, combined with low cost smallsats, are increasingly providing utility in surveillance applications.
An independent UK space capability ensures:
• National control of space assets enabling greater fl exibility in both policy
and actions.
• The freedom to exploit intellectual property and develop spin off from the
space sector without restrictions being imposed by international partners.
• Benefits for UK industry and research, enabling dual technology exploitation
and reducing generally the overheads associated with developing platforms
and payloads.
This is consistent with the concept of Operational Sovereignty announced in the recent Defence Industrial Strategy.
Then the Conclusions:
6. UK should break the total dependence on foreign satellite intelligence. A smallsat demonstrator SAR is recommended as a first step.
7. The importance of retaining sovereignty over key skills in military satellite technology should be fully recognised in the Defence Industrial Strategy and a research and technology programme should be initiated to fund small demonstrators and risk reduction activities ahead of major military programmes.
So what exactly do they propose? If the smallsat SAR mentioned above is a demonstrator, what does it demonstrate and to whom? Are they thinking of something like
SAR-Lupe or
Cosmo-SkyMED, in which case larger satellites and larger budgets will be needed?
Do they intend that the UK should have a photo reconnaissance satellite capability? Whilst
Topsat demonstrated that a low cost system is feasible, how useful would it be to a threatre commander in practice? Topsat had/has a 2.8 metre resolution, this compares unfavourably with US (and other) reconsats, and basic physics dictates that a greater resolution demands either a larger lens (and therefore a larger satellite) and/or a lower orbit?
What about Sigint like the cancelled Zircon?
This link from the Federation of American Scientists may interest you:
France's intelligence services had also thought through the intelligence implications of the space age, and during the mid-1980s had come to very different conclusions. France had decided that its national commitment to space, exemplified by the Ariane rocket and the extensive complex from which it was launched at Korou in French Guiana, should be considerable. Spending heavily on military space projects did not frighten French ministers - in fact, it appealed to them. France committed itself to buying two photographic satellites code-named HELIOS. In 1986 funds were agreed for the development of a radar imaging craft called OSIRIS and later renamed HORUS. Research was also started into the only other significant area of space intelligence-gathering - the area that interested GCHQ - with the sigint project ZENON.
The price of developing three different kinds of space-based intelligence systems is obviously high. In 1995 the cost of the HELIOS project alone is estimated at about 950 million. France's annual spending on its military space programme grew from about 200 million in 1990 to around 390 million in 1994. Legislators in the National Assembly considered these plans too ambitious and tried to stop some of them. Paris tried to attract Spanish and Italian investment in HELIOS and to persuade Germany to contribute to HELIOS 2 - so helping to pay for a second generation of satellites - in return for allowing these allies to share in the tasking and product of the systems.
A British offer to take a large share - perhaps exploiting GCHQ's know-how to take the lead in ZENON - would probably have been welcomed by France, and would have had at least some benefits for British industry. To speculate along these lines misses the point, however; even in its 'go it alone' form, ZIRCON was at least partly conceived as a tribute to the NSA - a way of paying them back. Joining traditional rivals France in such a venture would have touched deep chords of national insecurity. Furthermore, taking even a one-third share in France's array of projects would, by the 1990s, have been costing Britain more than ZIRCON. One senior civil servant argues that the French programmes were not a real alternative: 'Investing anywhere else would have bought far less capability. The French don't even know how far behind they are.' By 1987 Britain had taken the decision, to borrow Geoffrey Howe's words, to play the role of beggar rather than chooser in the world of high-technology intelligence-gathering.
So, would this proposed capability make up for the capability lost when Canberra PR9 was retired/axed? This
news page from the MOD about RAPTOR suggests that it does at least in part. Would we be better off spending money on more RAPTOR pods, perhaps taking Tornado F3s as Typhoon takes over the air defence and converting them to be dedicated reconnaissance aircraft? Could another platform be found for the Canberra PR9's EO system?
These arguments are of course academic, as we all know there isn't a stash of money for intelligence gathering assets, but I include them in the hope of stimulating debate. Before the usual suspects pipe up, I would point out that intelligence collecting isn't limited to aircraft or satellites. Troops, ground installations, vehicles, surface warships and submarines all contribute to the intelligence picture.