National Public Radio (NPR) December 13, 2004
John Pike discusses funding for a controversial intelligence satellite program
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
This past week witnessed an unusual argument in Washington, starting in the US Senate, over something that no one in authority will actually name or confirm the existence of. Senator John D. Rockefeller, Democrat of West Virginia, alluded on the floor to an item in the intelligence spending bill, an item that he considers unjustified and wasteful. He later modified that judgment to just say it was stunningly expensive. The senator, who is vice chair of the Intelligence Committee, said the Senate has voted for two years to terminate the program, but it survived the Senate-House conference report.
One thing Senator Rockefeller did not say because of security concerns is what the item actually is. News report say it's a new stealthy intelligence satellite program, and one source for that information is John Pike, who used to be with the Federation of American Scientists and now runs GlobalSecurity.org.
Welcome to the program once again.
Mr. JOHN PIKE (GlobalSecurity.org): Glad to be here.
SIEGEL: What is a stealthy intelligence satellite program?
Mr. PIKE: Well, this is a program that originated under the Reagan administration. The first of these satellites was launched back around the time of the Gulf War in 1990; there was another launch in the late 1990s. And we knew that there were going to be additional launches in the future because the Air Force has decided to stop releasing satellite tracking information that they think might help an adversary track the new stealth spy satellite.
SIEGEL: But what is the difference between a spy satellite that is stealthy and one that isn't, and what's the advantage?
Mr. PIKE: Well, the fundamental difference is that the regular spy satellites, they're about the size of a city bus. And if you go out in the back yard in the evening or in the morning, you can see them flying overhead. They're really hard to miss.
The concern would be that an adversary knows when these satellites are going to come overhead, and so they would run indoors if they had something that they wanted to hide. The other concern, of course, would be that in time of war, an enemy might destroy all of the satellites that they were able to track. And if we had a stealthy satellite up there, they wouldn't be able to shoot at it.
SIEGEL: Is a stealthy satellite much smaller than a city bus?
Mr. PIKE: No, they're about the size of a city bus. And unlike a stealth airplane, which you can make effectively disappear from the radar screen, you cannot make these stealthy spy satellites disappear. What you can make them do, however, is have a much smaller radar signature, a much smaller optical signature, so that instead of looking like something the size of a city bus, they would like something about the size of a coffee can. Now the advantage of doing that is that there are about 10,000 pieces of space debris in orbit that are of about that size. And so if you can reduce the apparent size of your satellite, you can make it blend in with this space debris.
SIEGEL: Now if this idea goes back to, as you say, the Reagan administration, it goes back to the days of the Cold War. There seems to be an argument now: Is it as appropriate to a post-Cold War world as it was to the days when NATO opposed the Warsaw Pact, which is...
Mr. PIKE: Well, I think that it's probably less useful today than it was during the Cold War simply because the nature of the adversary has changed. During the Cold War, we had the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union was the photo interpreter's friend. It was a target-rich environment. They had an enormous number of test ranges and all kinds of things that they would try to hide from us. Today, the challenge is very different. In the case of North Korea or Iran, they don't have very much in terms of test ranges; they do have a lot in terms of underground facilities that a spy satellite, regardless of whether or not it's stealthy, is really not going to help very much with.
SIEGEL: There have been other criticisms of this project from a technical standpoint. What are they?
Mr. PIKE: Well, one of the concerns is that it's an optical satellite, which basically means that it can get a look at things on a clear day, but 75 percent of the Earth's surface is covered by clouds. For that you'd need a radar, and it's not clear that this satellite's going to provide that.
SIEGEL: The debate over this, as the public gets to hear about it, is a Democratic senator alluding to an anonymous program in the intelligence spending bill. Has there actually been a fairly vigorous debate over this behind closed doors? Have the pros and cons been argued by various people?
Mr. PIKE: This has been a controversial program ever since it was originally conceived back in the 1980s. It's been controversial all along. What's new now is that we're understanding that that controversy has not died.
SIEGEL: John Pike, thanks a lot for talking with us.
Mr. PIKE: Thank you.
SIEGEL: John Pike of GlobalSecurity.org.
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