Private Eyes In The Sky
When the Air Force sent B-1 bombers and other warplanes to the Persian Gulf for another confrontation with Saddam Hussein, a small team headed by Lt. Col. Kevin Smith was using satellite photos to look over the Americans' shoulders to see if they were vulnerable to attack.
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"With the help of the satellites, we could determine the dispersal of aircraft and equipment around the airfield. We could look for security perimeters. We could look for living facilities, potential soft targets on the airfield," Smith told CBS News Correspondent David Martin.
But the satellites weren't America's top secret spy satellites. They were commercial satellites that zoomed in on an airfield in Bahrain, giving Sgt. John Weeber a bird's eye view of the operation.
"This is an example of a new potential threat that we in the military are going to have to deal with," explained Weeber.
The project was run by intelligence specialists at an Air Force base with guards at the gates and locks on the door. But it could just as easily be run by anyone who has a credit card and knows how to navigate the Internet, no questions asked.
"Anybody can get these pictures. Phone number and credit card, that's all that's required," said photo analyst Paul Sanders.
Sanders said the Air Force was amazed at what the commercial satellites revealed.
"This particular pattern here is very common for a U.S. tent city," Sanders said, as he pointed to images on a satellite photo. "That's where our troops would live in eight-man tents. It's very distinct, with a little security fencing around it. For an adversary trying to plan an attack on this base, that could be very important information."
The photos even showed the construction of an air defense site to protect against Iraqi missiles.
With the current imagery technology, Saddam Hussein could look at a base where U.S. aircraft were deployed and would able to tell whether or not it was defended by Patriot missiles.
During Operation Desert Storm, Saddam never saw the U.S. Army's left hook coming at him across the desert. But with today's commercial satellites, he could watch the attack unfold on the Internet.
"As these systems come online they will become intelligence assets for foreign governments that don't have that capability now. And that's what our concern is," Weeber said.
The Air Force recently discovered that someone - and there's no way of knowing who - has used the Internet to purchase hundreds of satellite photos of American military installations.
"I doubt if there's gonna be anywhere on Earth that you can go which we couldn't beÂ…observed and that's not gonna be too far off," Sander said.
Commercial satellites can alreay pick out an airplane - just barely. But a high-resolution satellite is scheduled for launch soon and here's what it will be able to see and what anybody will be able to buy.