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Ukraine’s Worst Enemy Might Be an American Company
It’s becoming increasingly likely that private satellite image providers may be selling highly sensitive, real-time imagery to the Russian military.
If we look at military history through the lens of time, we see that there has always been a desire to get a higher picture.
The ability to break out of our locally two-dimensional world and look down from a third physical dimension started with nature: He who occupies the high ground, perhaps a hill on an otherwise flat battlefield, had a distinct advantage.
This advantage began to manifest itself in the fortifications we built — towers and ramparts. We then graduated to balloons, progressing through high-flying surveillance aircraft, and now occupy the ultimate “high ground” in orbit around the planet.
Called “Remote Sensing” today, the US has a massive squadron of spy satellites operated by the National Reconnaissance Office, the Geospatial Intelligence Agency, the CIA, and all branches of the military.
However, the Russian military has a woefully inadequate spy satellite network. Specifically, they have too few of them and too few with high-resolution capabilities.
According to Bart Hendrix, a Brussels-based analyst and expert on Soviet and Russian space programs, “In principle…
