American U-2 spy planes will begin flights over Iraq early this week, chief weapons inspector Hans Blix told the UN Security Council on Friday, probably followed by French, German and Russian aircraft.
According to experts contacted by 快猫短视频, including Bob Sherman at the Federation of American 快猫短视频s, the surveillance data they collect will 鈥渟ignificantly鈥� enhance the ability of UN inspectors to ensure that Iraq is disarmed of any weapons of mass destruction.
Just as with most aspects of the inspections, the UN teams will not reveal what data will be collected. An UNMOVIC spokesperson in Baghdad says simply that: 鈥淭he U-2 data will improve our ability to carry out inspections.鈥�
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However, Blix specifically mentioned trucks as a target of the flights, saying there are 鈥減ersistent intelligence reports 鈥� of mobile biological weapons production units鈥� in Iraq. The inspector鈥檚 current surveillance capability is not responsive enough to track moving targets. But, with the U-2鈥檚, 鈥渋t will be much faster,鈥� concedes the UNMOVIC spokesman.
Locked in orbit
The U-2 flights will increase the speed of the inspections in two ways. First, data will be available sooner. The UN does not have real-time access to satellite data, but the U-2鈥檚 have large, steerable satellites dishes on top, meaning images could be beamed back live.
Secondly, although an imaging satellite is believed to pass over Iraq every few hours, they circle the globe in fixed orbits and may not overfly the area of interest. 鈥淵ou have to wait for satellites to pass over the area you want,鈥� says surveillance image expert Bhupendra Jasani, at Kings College London, UK. In contrast, U-2 spy planes, with a range of over 7000 kilometres and speed of 800 km/h, can be anywhere at any time.
Some analysts believe Iraq may be able to track the orbits of spy satellites. If so, then movements of the illicit weapons could be timed to avoid satellite surveillance. U-2 planes will therefore give the inspectors an aerial element of surprise. Furthermore, unlike satellites, U-2s can circle over specific sites for long periods, gathering detailed information.
Sharper vision
For Patrick Garrett, analyst at the military think tank GlobalSecurity.org, the most dramatic change that the inspectors鈥� new eyes in the sky will bring is far clearer vision 鈥� perhaps six times sharper. That could make the difference between simply spotting a truck and identifying what it is being used for.
But this improvement in vision is not because the U-2鈥檚 cruising altitude of 20 kilometres is 10 times closer the Earth鈥檚 surface than the orbits of spy satellites. The cameras on the US鈥檚 premier Keyhole spy satellites are as powerful as the Hubble Space telescope, which, by pointing up instead of down, has captured the far reaches of the Universe in stunning detail.
It is, says Garrett simply because the CIA will not share its highest quality intelligence with anyone. The satellite images Secretary of State Colin Powell presented to the UN on 5 February were almost certainly taken with 12 centimetre resolution, but were 鈥渇uzzed鈥� to about 200 cm resolution.
The U-2鈥檚 cameras will provide 15 cm resolution 鈥� about the size of a petri dish 鈥� and can sweep up swathes of imagery, 120 km wide and many hundred of kilometres long. The commercial imagery that commentators believe UN weapons inspectors are using at present has 100 cm resolution 鈥� if they can afford it. A single set of commercial images covering Iraq costs about $10 million.
Plug-and-play
The cover of night could also be used to hide proscribed Iraqi activities. But the U-2鈥檚 synthetic aperture radar, tucked into its nose, could remove this blind spot for the inspectors, who have no night vision at present. Similarly, the U-2鈥檚 鈥減lug-and-play鈥� interchangeable payloads can provide infrared imaging. This also works at night, and could spot wisps of warm air leaking from hidden facilities.
Kit packed into the U-2鈥檚 wing-mounted 鈥渟uperpods鈥� can intercept communications on the ground, but it is not known if this will be available to the weapons inspectors. The planes will be provided by the US.
However, for Martin Streetly, editor of Jane鈥檚 Electronic Mission Aircraft, the supreme advantage the U-2鈥檚 will bring over satellites is not their technology, but their human pilot. 鈥淭he human brain remains the best and most flexible computer system that exists within intelligence gathering,鈥� he says. A US pilot off course over the Soviet Union during the Cold War serendipitously discovered an important space base, he notes.
The inspectors appear more likely to have the time to exploit the U-2鈥檚 capabilities, following the chief inspectors鈥� presentations at the UN on Friday. These have widely been interpreted as successfully appealing for a delay in any military action, while their work continues.
A significant number of the countries on the Security Council are thought to be unlikely to sanction war without the discovery of a 鈥渟moking gun鈥�. And there may be a precedent. The so-called 鈥淎dlai Stevenson moment鈥� came in 1962 when the US ambassador to the UN brandished incontrovertible images of Soviet missile bases in Cuba 鈥� taken from a U-2 spy plane.