South China Morning Post April 30, 2001
View from above
This picture of the stricken US spy plane might have been one of the first uses of a satellite image to gather news on a breaking story. Glenn Schloss reportsWHILE THE WORLD was waiting for photographs of the crippled United States Navy EP-3E Aries II reconnaissance aircraft sitting on a runway at a PLA base on Hainan Island, Mark Brender had an idea.
As the international media converged on the tropical island in the South China Sea, photographers arriving on the outskirts of the base realised the aircraft, which had been forced to land without permission after a mid-air collision with a PLA jet fighter, was out of range. Television news reports showed pictures of guards at the base gate and palm trees.
Meanwhile, Mr Brender, Washington operations director at Space Imaging, a US company selling images from the Ikonos satellite, commanded the eye in the sky to turn its lens on the Lingshui airfield.
Hours later, the former journalist knew he had a world exclusive - the first independent photos of the US aircraft.
The grainy colour image taken on April 4, three days after the mid-air incident, from a satellite orbiting over Hainan at about 677 kilometres and travelling at 25,600 km per hour became a defining image of the spy-plane crisis.
It was splashed over the front pages of newspapers around the world, shown on television and discussed in detail by military analysts on the international television service Cable News Network, or CNN. Even mainland newspapers carried it, Mr Brender said.
"The remote-sensing industry is a small industry, and we have no megaphone. Our photo of the EP-3 was a megaphone for us," he said.
The satellite photograph's place in the spy-plane crisis was further reinforced when Space Imaging took another shot five days later which showed a convoy of trucks next to the aircraft.
After days of speculation about whether the Chinese military would plunder the surveillance secrets aboard the aircraft, the photograph showed the PLA was taking a strong interest in the plane.
The photographs not only provided the first images of a plane which had contributed to the death of a Chinese pilot and threatened to destabilise Sino -US relations, it highlighted the increasing public access to satellite images which until recently were mostly restricted to intelligence agencies and the military.
"The thing that I am immediately struck by is how quickly they were able to get the image," said intelligence and space analyst John Pike as he viewed it on CNN.
"This is quite a breakthrough in satellite news gathering, that we're able to get the satellite image almost as quickly as the classified community."
The revolution will benefit not only the media in their attempts to illustrate stories better and to adopt a watchdog role, but others will also gain.
Experts say the increased access to satellite imagery from commercial satellites will have far-reaching consequences, ranging from helping less -developed nations and non-governmental agencies monitor the actions of repressive regimes and their militaries to helping humanitarian organisations monitor refugee flows.
Until the end of the Cold War, satellite imagery was mostly taken by spy satellites belonging to the US or the Soviet Union.
Among the first such images to be shown to the media was a series of pictures used by then-president John F. Kennedy during the Cuban missile crisis to show Soviet missiles when Moscow denied there was any buildup.
In 1986, news media obtained satellite photographs of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster showing a reactor fire. Soviet authorities had closed off the area.
The sensitive technology was made available to the private sector after the Cold War standoff ended, and governments in the US, France, Russia and India have encouraged the industry by allowing images to be sold.
The media have been quick to take advantage of this availability.
The New York Times has featured photographs showing the Chechen capital of Grozny before and after Russian troops swept through early last year, with numerous buildings clearly demolished or damaged.
So far as the spy-plane crisis is concerned, Mr Brender says the satellite shot played an important verification role.
"The only photograph that was available (until the satellite shot) was one taken on the ground by the Chinese news agency (Xinhua). It was not independent confirmation of the plane's whereabouts. It was a government handout," he said.
"It is the role of journalists to confirm what they are being told, and that's what the satellite photos were able to do.
"That was the first time satellite imagery was used as a news-gathering instrument on a breaking news story," Mr Pike claimed.
At CNN, producers will use satellite imagery "judiciously", said John Beeston, news director for CNN Interactive in Hong Kong.
He said the media needed to be aware of privacy concerns, and the use of satellite images would be constrained by a desire "not to look over people's shoulders".
Cost will also be a factor for media exploitation of the new imagery.
Although Space Imaging's charge for images of areas already photographed by the Ikonos satellite are not exorbitant (US$ 500), requesting that it shoot an area not yet covered can be expensive.
It would cost at least US$ 6,500 to cover a 100-square-kilometre area, Mr Brender said.
Monitoring a buildup of troops would cost a news organisation millions of dollars, said Mr Pike, a director at consultancy GlobalSecurity.org.
And Washington has the power to order commercial-satellite companies not to take images of areas it deems militarily sensitive, he said. This power has not yet been exercised.
Technology has not yet advanced far enough to allow satellites to provide video images of events similar to scenarios portrayed in Hollywood films such as Patriot Games, in which US intelligence officials watch a live Special Forces raid on a guerilla-training camp, according to experts.
"Hollywood greatly exaggerates the capability of remote-sensing systems," Mr Brender said.
Mr Pike said the availability of images from space was the most important breakthrough for policy analysis since government documents became available through freedom-of-information requests.
He orchestrated a major breakthrough in the use of satellite imagery last year while working as an analyst at the Federation of American Scientists.
The organisation teamed up with the Centre for Defence Information and used the Space Imaging satellite to photograph China's air bases facing Taiwan.
Using the high-resolution imagery, the analysts were able to count the number of fighter jets, aircraft and capabilities of the Chinese air bases.
Their conclusion was controversial: China's strike force within short and medium range of Taiwan comprised about 1,100 aircraft, compared with about 300 Taiwanese aircraft, giving the mainland a superiority ratio of 3:1 rather than the generally accepted 10:1 in favour of China.
Mr Pike said intelligence analysts in Washington later told him privately they had reached a similar conclusion.
In a recent report on the impact of commercial-satellite imagery, analysts at the Washington think-tank Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said it would allow governments, international organisations and non-governmental groups to publicise humanitarian atrocities, track sudden movements of refugees, monitor environmental degradation and manage international disputes before they erupt into wars.
But the report warns that satellite imagery can also be used to collect intelligence, conduct industrial espionage, plan terrorist attacks and mount military attacks.
The authors, Yahya Dehqanzada and Ann Florini, say the US should resist the temptation to use "shutter-control" laws allowing it to suppress imagery.
"For the rest of the world, this new form of transparency will do far more good than harm.
"Countries that now live in fear of one another will be able to learn whether those potentially hostile neighbours are in fact mobilising for attack, and would-be attackers will be deterred by the overwhelming likelihood of detection."
Glenn Schloss (schloss@scmp.com) is a staff writer for the Post's Editorial Pages
GRAPHIC: (Photo: Reuters, Spaceimaging.com); The damaged EP-3E Aries II reconnaissance aircraft sits on the runway at Hainan's Lingshui airfield. The scene was captured from an orbit of 677 kilometres above the Earth by the Ikonos satellite, an artist's impression of which is below. An aerial view of Hong Kong, taken by the Ikonos, shows the satellite's ability to focus on selected parts of southern China. The runway image became a defining element of the spy-plane drama.
Copyright 2001 South China Morning Post Ltd.
