The military value of commercial satellites

In a rare interview on CNBC’s “Manifest Space” podcast last May, the director of the US National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), Chris Scolese, said the agency’s plan is to quadruple the number of spy satellites operating in Earth orbit by 2033.

A commercial satellite. Photo: spaceflight now

To achieve this ambitious goal, Mr. Scolese said that the NRO needs to cooperate with private commercial satellite companies to share advanced technology and reduce the cost of manufacturing, launching and operating satellite systems. He emphasized that the NRO is looking for new technologies for spy satellites such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, quantum sensors and communications.

To demonstrate the important value of private commercial satellite companies, Mr. Scolese revealed that it was commercial satellite images that discovered Russia's plan to attack Ukraine before the war broke out on February 24, 2022, or the discovery of a Chinese spy balloon flying over the US mainland in February 2023.

And when the Russia-Ukraine war began, private US commercial satellite companies such as Planet Labs and Spire provided images of Russian troops on the battlefield, thereby serving the daily operations plan of the Ukrainian army. The US government encouraged commercial satellite companies to share images with the Ukrainian side before and during the conflict, even buying images and redistributing them to the Ukrainian government. At the same time, the Washington administration also promoted direct connections between US private satellite companies and Ukrainian intelligence analysts to increase the flow of information.

Notably, the Starlink satellite Internet system of the US private space corporation SpaceX has been used by Ukraine to connect civilians, government agencies and military units that cannot access the Internet through the ground system. In particular, the Ukrainian military has used Starlink to control unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in areas of conflict with Russia. These UAVs are tasked with detecting the location of the Russian military, allowing Ukraine to coordinate reconnaissance flights, identify targets from a distance and launch bomb attacks.

DUC TRUNG (Synthesis)

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