IMINT - Citizendia

This article is a subset article in a series under intelligence collection management. Intelligence Collection Management is the process of managing and organizing the collection of intelligence information from various sources For a hierarchical list of articles, see the intelligence cycle management hierarchy. This article is at the top level of a series of articles about Intelligence Cycle Management

IMINT, short for IMagery INTelligence, is an intelligence gathering discipline which collects information via satellite and aerial photography. Intelligence Gathering Disciplines HUMINT Human Intelligence - gathered from a person on the ground Aerial photography is the taking of Photographs of the ground from an elevated position As a means of collecting intelligence, IMINT is a subset of intelligence collection management, which, in turn, is a subset of intelligence cycle management. Intelligence Collection Management is the process of managing and organizing the collection of intelligence information from various sources This article is at the top level of a series of articles about Intelligence Cycle Management IMINT is especially complemented by non-imaging MASINT electro-optical and radar sensors. Measurement and Signature Intelligence, or MASINT, refers to intelligence gathering activities that bring together disparate elements that do not fit within the

1 Aerial
2 Satellites
3 Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
4 References
5 See also

Aerial

Aerial intelligence goes back hundreds of years. Long in the past (the American Civil War for example) hot air balloons were used to observe enemy formations long in the distance. Causes of the war See also Origins of the American Civil War, Timeline of events leading to the American Civil War The coexistence of a slave-owning South The hot air balloon is the oldest successful human-carrying Flight technology In 1888 Amedee Denisse (France) studied the possibility of cameras attached to rockets to obtain photographic evidence over great distances; unfortunately this vision was likely never achieved in full[1]. This article is about the country For a topic outline on this subject see List of basic France topics. Shortly after the turn of the century, the introduction of pigeons with small cameras attached to their chests became a short-lived long-distance reconnaissance option, but with obvious flaws and difficulties[2]. On the other hand, the 19th century use of fixed balloons survived into World War I, when it was accompanied by observation from airships (zeppelins) and the newly invented airplane. World War I (abbreviated WWI; also known as the First World War, the Great War, and the War to End All Terminology In some countries airships are also known as dirigibles from the French (fr ''diriger'' to direct plus -ible) meaning "directable" A Zeppelin is a type of Rigid airship pioneered by the German Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin in the early 20th century based on designs he had outlined Overview Fixed-wing aircraft range from small training and recreational aircraft to Wide-body aircraft and military cargo aircraft. In WW2 a Joint Imagery Intelligence unit was set up in Danesfield House, Medmenham in Buckinghamshire, UK for British and US Intelligence Officers to exploite imagery gathered on the Germans. Danesfield House in Medmenham, near Marlow, Buckinghamshire, England, in the Chiltern Hills is a former country house now used as Medmenham is a Village and Civil parish within Wycombe district in Buckinghamshire, England. Buckinghamshire (abbreviated Bucks) is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan home county in South East England.

Low- and high-flying planes have been used all through the last century to gather intelligence about the enemy. At the start of the Cold War, foreseeing the need to observe the enemy in peacetime as well as war, the U. S. developed high-flying reconnaissance planes. The first, the Lockheed U-2, is still in service; its successor, the newer, much faster SR-71 Blackbird, was retired in 1998. WikipediaWikiProject Aircraft. Please see WikipediaWikiProject Aircraft/page content for recommended layout WikipediaWikiProject Aircraft. Please see WikipediaWikiProject Aircraft/page content for recommended layout These planes have the advantage over satellites that they can usually produce more detailed photographs and can be placed over the target more quickly, more often, and more cheaply, but have the obvious disadvantage that they can be shot down. (However, there is no evidence an SR-71 was ever shot down. )

A new generation of unmanned reconnaissance planes has been developed for imagery and signals intelligence. Known as Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, these drones are a force multiplier by giving the battlefield commander an "eye in the sky" without risking a pilot. An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV is an unpiloted Aircraft. UAVs can be remote controlled or fly autonomously based on pre-programmed flight plans or more complex dynamic The US Army is significantly increasing the size of its current UAV force as part of the Future Combat System initiative. The United States Army is a military organization whose primary mission is to "provide necessary forces and capabilities. Future Combat Systems (FCS is the United States Army 's principal modernization program

Satellites

Though the resolution of satellite photographs, which must be taken from distances of hundreds of kilometers, is usually poorer than photographs taken by air, satellites offer the possibility of coverage for much of the earth, including hostile territory, without exposing human pilots to the risk of being shot down. Aerial photography is the taking of Photographs of the ground from an elevated position

There have been hundreds of reconnaissance satellites launched by dozens of nations since the first years of space exploration. A spy satellite (officially referred to as a reconnaissance satellite) is an Earth observation satellite or Communications satellite deployed for While the information about the vast majority of such satellites are strictly classified, some information (such as that concerning the US Corona program) has been declassified with the end of the Cold War. Corona was a US military Reconnaissance satellite system operated by the CIA Directorate of Science & Technology with substantial assistance from the Cold War is the state of conflict tension and competition that existed between the United States and the Soviet Union (USSR and their respective allies from the

Early photographic reconnaissance satellites used photographic film, which was exposed on-orbit and returned to earth for developing. These satellites remained in orbit for days, weeks, or months before ejecting their film-return vehicles, called "buckets. " Between 1959 and 1984 the U. S. launched around 200 such satellites under the codenames CORONA and GAMBIT, with photographic resolutions as high as 0. Corona was a US military Reconnaissance satellite system operated by the CIA Directorate of Science & Technology with substantial assistance from the Fluent Inc is a wholly owned subsidiary of ANSYS Inc, one of the world’s leading engineering simulation software developers 6- 1. 2 meters (2-4 feet). The first successful mission concluded on 1960-08-19 with the mid-air recovery by a C-119 of film from the Corona mission code-named Discoverer 14. Year 1960 ( MCMLX) was a Leap year starting on Friday (link will display full calendar of the Gregorian calendar. Events 43 BC - Octavian, later known as Augustus compels the Roman Senate to elect him Consul. Mid-air retrieval is a technique used in Atmospheric reentry when the reentering vehicle is incapable of a satisfactory unassisted landing WikipediaWikiProject Aircraft. Please see WikipediaWikiProject Aircraft/page content for recommended layout Discoverer 14 (also known as KH-1 9009 was a Spy satellite used in the Corona program managed by DARPA and the United States Air Force. This was the first successful recovery of film from an orbiting satellite and the first aerial recovery of an object returning from Earth orbit. ^[1] Because of a tradeoff between area covered and ground resolution, not all reconnaissance satellites have been designed for high resolution; the KH-5-ARGON program had a ground resolution of 140 meters and was intended for mapmaking. Codenamed Argon, the KH-5 was a series of Reconnaissance satellites produced by the United States from February 1961 to August 1964

Between 1961 and 1994 the USSR launched perhaps 500 Zenit film-return satellites, which returned both the film and the camera to earth in a pressurized capsule.

Satellites for imaging intelligence were usually placed in low-earth, high-inclination orbits, sometimes in sun-synchronous orbits. A Low Earth Orbit (LEO is generally defined as an Orbit within the locus extending from the Earth’s surface up to an altitude of 2000 km This article is about a class of orbits about the Earth For a class of orbits around the sun see Heliosynchronous orbit. Since the film-return missions were usually short, they could indluge in orbits with low perigees, in the range of 100-200 km, but the more recent CCD-based satellites have been launched into higher orbits, 250-300 km perigee, allowing each to remain in orbit for several years .

While the exact resolution and other details of modern spy satellites are classified, some idea of the trade-offs available can be made using simple physics. Optical resolution describes the ability of an imaging system to resolve detail in the object that is being imaged A spy satellite (officially referred to as a reconnaissance satellite) is an Earth observation satellite or Communications satellite deployed for The formula for the highest possible resolution of an optical system with a circular aperture is given by the Rayleigh criterion:

$\sin \theta = 1.22 \frac{\lambda}{D}$

where θ is the angular resolution, λ is the wavelength of light, and D is the diameter of the lens or mirror. John William Strutt 3rd Baron Rayleigh OM (12 November 1842 &ndash 30 June 1919 was an English Physicist who with William Ramsay, discovered In Physics wavelength is the distance between repeating units of a propagating Wave of a given Frequency. Were the Hubble Space Telescope, with a 2. 5 m telescope, designed for photographing Earth, it would be diffraction-limited to resolutions greater than 16cm (6 inches) for green light ( $\lambda \approx 550$ nm) at its orbital altitude of 590 km. This means that it would be impossible to take photographs showing objects smaller than 16cm with such a telescope at such an altitude. Modern U. S. IMINT satellites are believed to have around 10cm resolution; contrary to references in popular culture, this is sufficient to detect any type of vehicle, but not to read the headlines of a newspaper. ^[2]

The U. S. KH-11 series of satellites, first launched in 1976, was made by Lockheed, the same contractor who built the Hubble Space Telescope. The KH-11, also referenced by the codenames 1010, Crystal and Kennan, also commonly known as " Key Hole " was a type of Reconnaissance The Lockheed Corporation (originally Loughead Aircraft Manufacturing Company was an American aerospace company founded in 1912 which merged with Martin Marietta The Hubble Space Telescope ( HST; also known colloquially as "the Hubble" or just "Hubble" is a space telescope that was carried into HST has a 2. 4 metre telescope mirror and is believed to have had a similar appearance to the KH-11 satellites. These satellites used charge-coupled devices, predecessors to modern digital cameras, rather than film. A charge-coupled device ( CCD) is an analog Shift register, that enables the transportation of analog signals (electric charges through successive stages (capacitors

The primary purpose of most spy satellites is to monitor visible ground activity. While resolution and clarity of images has improved greatly over the years, this role has remained essentially the same. Image resolution describes the detail an Image holds The term applies equally to Digital images film images and other types of images Some other uses of satellite imaging have been to produce detailed 3D maps for use in operations and missile guidance systems, and to monitor normally invisible information such as the growth levels of a country's crops or the heat given off by certain facilities. Some of the multi-spectral sensors, such as thermal measurement, are more electro-optical MASINT than true IMINT platforms. Electro-optical MASINT is a subdiscipline of Measurement and Signature Intelligence (MASINT and refers to intelligence gathering activities which bring together disparate elements

To counter the threat posed by these 'eyes in the sky', the United States, USSR/Russia, China and possibly others, have developed systems for destroying enemy spy satellites (either with the use of another 'killer satellite', or with some sort of Earth- or air-launched missile). The United States of America —commonly referred to as the The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR was a constitutionally Socialist state that existed in Eurasia from 1922 to 1991 Russia (Россия Rossiya) or the Russian Federation ( Rossiyskaya Federatsiya) is a transcontinental Country extending China ( Wade-Giles ( Mandarin) Chung¹kuo² is a cultural region, an ancient Civilization, and depending on perspective a National Anti-satellite weapons (ASATs are Space weapons designed to destroy Satellites for strategic military purposes

Since 1985, commercial vendors of satellite imagery have entered the market, beginning with the French SPOT satellites, which had resolutions between 5 and 20 metres. SPOT (Satellite Pour l'Observation de la Terre is a high-resolution optical imaging Earth observation satellite system operating from space Recent high-resolution ( 4 - 0. 5 metre) private imaging satellites include IKONOS, Orbview, QuickBird and Worldview-1, allowing any country (or any business for that matter) to buy access to satellite images. History IKONOS was originated under the Lockheed Martin Corporation as the Commercial Remote Sensing System (CRSS satellite GeoEye ( (formerly Orbital Imaging Corporation or ORBIMAGE) is a commercial Satellite imagery company based in Dulles Virginia Specifications Sensors (137 μrad Panchromatic at Nadir (547 μrad Multispectral at Nadir

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Main article: Unmanned aerial vehicle

UAVs have developed until they span a spectrum of literally handheld imaging platforms for infantry tactical use, up to large multisensor platforms such as Global Hawk. An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV is an unpiloted Aircraft. UAVs can be remote controlled or fly autonomously based on pre-programmed flight plans or more complex dynamic An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV is an unpiloted Aircraft. UAVs can be remote controlled or fly autonomously based on pre-programmed flight plans or more complex dynamic The Northrop Grumman (formerly Ryan Aeronautical) RQ-4 Global Hawk (known as Tier II+ during development is an Unmanned aerial vehicle Global Hawk, with its long loiter time and global reach, has some of the attributes of a satellite in a lower earth orbit than would be feasible for a true orbiter. This article is about artificial satellites For natural satellites also known as moons see Natural satellite. For other meanings see Orbiter (disambiguation. An orbiter is a Space probe that Orbits a Planet or Natural

References

^ Discoverer 14 - NSSDC ID: 1960-010A. NASA.
^ Imint resolution comparison. Federation of American Scientists.

Contents

Aerial

Satellites

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

References

See also