Global Security Newswire August 13, 2002
Commercial Satellites Track Suspected WMD Facilities
By Bryan Bender
 Fallujah I, CW Plant, Iraq |
WASHINGTON - Using commercial satellite images, U.S. intelligence agencies, independent analysts and arms control organizations are mapping possible weapons of mass destruction facilities in Iraq and have found evidence that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein has rebuilt at least some facilities previously destroyed in military strikes or dismantled by U.N. weapons inspectors.
U.S. officials and private analysts said the satellite images cannot definitively determine what activities are going on inside Iraqi facilities. Nor do they help uncover covert activities at facilities unknown to U.S. intelligence officials.
The exercise, they said, is nevertheless providing a window into Iraq previously unavailable to the public as the international community seeks to restart U.N. weapons inspections, and the Bush administration considers plans to depose the Iraqi leader for his suspected pursuit of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.
This unparalleled level of transparency could be also be a defining characteristic of any U.S. military assault on Iraq, offering public images of military forces and battle damage as never before. Commercial satellite images published by the New York Post last week showed dramatic infrastructure improvements made during the last six months at an air base in Qatar, being readied as a possible launching point for a U.S. military operation against Iraq.
Another satellite image of an Iraqi facility, analyzed by independent experts, provides evidence that Iraq has rebuilt a phosphate-producing fertilizer plant north of Baghdad. The experts said the plant could be used for the dual purposes of making industrial materials, such as insecticides, as well as chemical weapons.
U.S. Spy Agencies Ordering Commercial Imagery
Both governmental and nongovernmental customers are taking advantage of the availability of commercial satellite imagery to create a digital database of the entire country and to analyze the scores of Iraqi military and industrial facilities long suspected of developing weapons outlawed at the end of the 1991 Gulf War.
According to David Burpee, spokesman for the Pentagon's National Imagery and Mapping Agency, the U.S. military is buying more imagery than ever before from companies such as U.S.-based Space Imaging and DigitalGlobe, which operate high-resolution imaging satellites and sell satellite photographs to government and private customers depicting objects smaller than one meter square.
"We continue to buy imagery and use it for a variety of purposes," Burpee said, although he would not comment on which U.S. agencies requested commercial imagery or the countries they were investigating. Commercial imagery provides the government a lot of benefits, Burpee said, including the ability to share the data with humanitarian groups, coalition partners and nongovernmental organizations, which are not cleared for the classified images taken by U.S. intelligence satellites, which have resolutions believed to be measured in inches.
CIA Director George Tenet designated NIMA earlier this year to buy commercial imagery wherever possible so that spy satellites could be reserved for the most sensitive missions and to ensure a robust commercial remote sensing industry, envisioned as a valuable tool in verifying arms control agreements and exposing would-be weapons proliferators (see GSN, July 3).
"We can take images of very large areas and overlay that with elevation and other data," Burpee said. "And there is plenty of good information from commercial satellites for planning purposes."
International and Private Institutions Benefit
While supplementing its own satellite intelligence, the U.S. purchase of commercial imagery enables international organizations, such as the United Nations, and independent arms experts to look at some of the data that most interests the intelligence community. Images ordered by NIMA, except in special circumstances, are placed in the general archives of Space Imaging and DigitalGlobe, where they can be subsequently purchased at much lower costs.
"Somebody with a heck of a lot of money has been quite busy at getting good coverage of Iraq," an industry official said, suggesting the U.S. government. "Somebody has gathered all of digital Baghdad," where experts believe many of Hussein's hidden WMD programs may be located, including a potential biological weapons facility along the Tigris River in Baghdad that one industry source said "U.S. intelligence officials don't know what to make of."
International organizations such as the U.N. Monitoring, Verification, and Inspection Commission and the International Atomic Energy Agency are taking advantage of the newly available imagery. UNMOVIC is seeking to return to Iraq and finish its chemical, biological and missile inspections, as stipulated after the Gulf War. The IAEA, meanwhile, is using the data to prepare to go into Iraq to monitor nuclear activity.
In its 2001 annual report, published in late July, the IAEA said that one way to supplement its lack of on-the-ground inspections in recent years has been commercial satellite imagery.
"Activities were focused on the improvement of computer-based inspection and analytical tools as well as the detailed analysis of information accumulated from previous field activities and on recent information such as that provided by commercially available satellite imagery," according to the chapter entitled "Verification in Iraq Pursuant to UNSC Resolutions." "These analytical activities have confirmed the validity of the agency's technically coherent picture of Iraq's past clandestine nuclear program and nuclear related capabilities as of December 1998," when the U.N. inspection team was pulled out of Iraq after the Baghdad failed to fully cooperate. The report notes IAEA's "readiness to resume monitoring activities in Iraq."
Independent analysts are also for the first time gathering a digital picture of Iraq.
"UNMOVIC and IAEA, they've been to Iraq," said John Pike of GlobalSecurity.org, an arms control group that frequently uses commercial satellite imagery to conduct independent analysis of nuclear, missile and military facilities. "We have not been to Iraq. They are checking up on old friends, whereas we are looking at facilities that have been talked about but not seen. We want to collect a complete set of special weapons facilities and suspect sites in Iraq, as well as palaces, terrorist training camps and Republican Guard facilities. There is significant archival coverage" between Space Imaging and DigitalGlobe, Pike said.
Snapshots of Iraqi Facilities
According to Corey Hinderstein, a remote sensing expert at the Institute for Science and International Security, there is at least one chemical plant that appears to have been rebuilt in recent years. "Al-Qaim, a former phosphate production facility, appears to back up and running," she said. The facility is located 300 kilometers north of the capital.
There are "factories for the production of chemical weapons precursors for use in the insecticide business or potentially for dual use, such as nerve gas," Pike added.
A set of Iraqi chemical plants - known as Fallujah 1, 2 and 3 - have also drawn interest. A June 4 DigitalGlobe image of Fallujah 1, which occupies 68 acres about 60 kilometers northwest of Baghdad, shows a "precursor production plant and a secured storage area for probable use in housing finished chemical weapons," according to images and analysis posted on GlobalSecurity.org. "On closer examination, the buildings appear to be in a state of disrepair and there is a large quantity of debris strewn about." Fallujah 2 "looks more operational," according to a satellite industry official.
Other facilities being analyzed by Pike and Hinderstein include Iraq's central nuclear research facility south of Baghdad, as well as twin uranium enrichment facilities at Tarmiya and al-Arqat, neither of which appears to have been upgraded. Tarmiya was a full-scale, operational electron-magnetic isotope separation facility that was destroyed in the Gulf War. It still has collapsed roofs and raised buildings, according to Hinderstein. "There does not appear to be anything going on there," she said. "It doesn't even appear that they cleaned it up."
"We have had no idea what these places looked like, or whether they have been rebuilt or are just a parking lot," said Pike. "The question we're trying to answer is how many [weapons and other military facilities] have been rebuilt since [the U.S. bombing of Iraq in December 1998] and how much new construction there has been in secure areas."
Not a Substitute for On-Site Inspections
While commercial imagery is providing more transparency than ever before, experts acknowledge that the data only does so much to help determine Iraqi intent or weapons activities. They say the imagery reinforces the need for on-site inspections.
"I have looked at recent [images] of sites that are known weapons-related sites," said Hinderstein. "Those are not the sites we are most interested in." It is the covert facilities previously unknown by inspectors that have been gone for four years that are "harder to nail down."
"You're not looking for biohazard signs on the roof," Pike said. "We want people to understand what can be done overhead and what can be done on the ground."
The information, Pike hopes, will help increase international pressure to address the WMD problem in Iraq.
Copyright 2002 Global Security Newswire
