Turkey's military satellite program: a model for emerging regional powers

Turkey's air force is planning to spend at least $200 million to buy and launch an electro-optical reconnaissance satellite with a resolution of 80 centimeters. They hope to have it in orbit and operational by 2011. They are apparently not going to impose the onerous "local content requirements" that have recently bedeviled so many Turkish military procurement programs. This suggests that this is being treated as a priority and the Turkish military is not going to allow local industrial politics to get in the way of their need
for broad, persistent, and sovereign regional observation.

As a NATO member Turkey has some access to information from US satellites, and they can also buy imagery on the open market from Spot Image, DigitalGlobe, or others. In spite of this, they want to have their own satellite and later they will surely want to have an all-weather radar imaging system and multi- and hyperspectral capability. Turkey is in a geopolitically rough neighborhood, and their need to be able to keep track of what is happening throughout the region is all too obvious. Space-based observation is one important way that they can keep track of activities in places like Armenia, Iraq, or the Aegean Sea, where Turkey's national security interests are at stake.

The lack of "local content requirements" suggests that this is being treated as a priority and the Turkish military is not going to allow local industrial politics to get in the way of their need for broad, persistent, and sovereign regional observation. For $200 million Turkey may be able to buy a satellite with the resolution they want. However, it may not work as well as expected, because for that price they cannot expect to buy sophisticated pointing, maneuvering, and field-of-view technology. Effective space-based reconnaissance, even for a medium-sized power, depends on a minimum level of space situational awareness. Not only do they need to know exactly where their satellite is at all times, they need to also be able to precisely control where its sensors are pointing.

by Taylor Dinerman, SpaceReview.com , more....