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回答先: 米情報機関 民間頼み〜衛星画像 「イコノス」から大量購入(産経) 投稿者 FP親衛隊国家保安本部 日時 2000 年 5 月 15 日 16:52:01:
元記事はこりですかね？
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Friday May 12 5:36 PM ET
U.S. Spies to Rely on Private Satellite Companies
By Jim Wolf
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. spy world will increasingly rely on private companies to take close-up pictures
from space, concentrating its own multibillion-dollar satellite systems on targets vital to national security, top
military officers said on Friday.
``We have made an unambiguous commitment to commercial products and services,'' Army Lt. Gen. James King, head
of the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA), told a panel discussion on security implications of
high-resolution commercial spacecraft.
NIMA supplies U.S. intelligence agencies with maps and charts used in national security planning. With $51 million
in planned purchases this year, it is the government's lead agency for buying imagery collected by privately owned
remote-sensing satellites.
NIMA has budgeted $500 million to buy such imagery and ''geo-spatial information''
from private industry in the five years through 2005 and would like to double that
amount if Congress approves, King said.
President Clinton gave the go-ahead to put privately owned eyes in space in 1994 as
other countries prepared to enter the high-resolution market. At the time he limited
U.S. companies to selling images of ground objects no smaller than 1 square meter (11 square feet).
Now, the industry is talking of orbiting systems capable of picking out things half that size, closer to the reported
10-centimeter (4-inch) resolution of super secret U.S. military satellites.
The applications include everything from urban planning to mining, farming and spying on one's neighbors or
neighboring countries.
King said the question was ``when we will go to half-a-meter (5 square feet), not if.''
He spoke at an annual conference in Arlington, Virginia, of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.
Air Force Col. Richard Skinner, who heads a Pentagon office that oversees space-based intelligence systems, told
the forum he expected a decision in ``the next couple weeks'' on possible relaxation of the one-meter limit.
John Copple, chief executive officer of Satellite Imaging Inc. of Thornton, Colorado, said it would take at least four
or five years to fund and build the higher-resolution systems.
Space Imaging won the race to orbit the first 1-meter resolution satellite with its Ikonos satellite, launched Sept.
24 to snap digital images from 400 miles up.
Investors in the Ikonos system include Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and Mitsubishi Corp.
``We have a new era of mutual assured observation,'' Copple said of the demand for and availability of spy-quality
pictures once the exclusive province of rich countries' national security e
stablishments.
Two other U.S. competitors -- Orbital Imaging Corp., a unit of Orbital Sciences Corp., and Earthwatch Inc. of
Longmont, Colorado -- are aiming to put one-meter-resolution satellites of their own in space by early next year.
Air Force Secretary Whitten Peters told the conference that the military for its part was unlikely to make a
``revolutionary jump'' into space.
``We are more likely to see an integrated and evolutionary migration into space,'' he said. ``Our goal is to move
functions and capabilities into space when there is a significant need, significant military utility, or cost savings.''
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