ABSTRACT

It is now widely known that no sooner had World War II ended than the race to launch a military satellite into outer space by the United States (US) and the former Soviet Union (USSR) began.1 It is estimated that approximately 75 percent of the satellites launched during the Cold War era were exclusively for military purposes.2 Although the ratio has since decreased to about 20 percent as of 2015,3 it does not mean that military uses of outer space have also decreased. Surveys on this issue indicate that military operations have been using commercial space systems extensively for more than two decades. Early examples include the fact that about 60 percent of satellite communications services in air operations against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1999 were provided from the commercial sectors4 and that both the US National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) and National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA) extensively purchased commercially-based images such as IKONOS and SPOT in the 2001 Afghanistan War.5