Center for a New American Security

Just as the U.S. government is working to integrate environmental change into its smart power approach to security and foreign policy, critical tools for conducting this work are at risk. The United States is facing a looming capability gap in its earth monitoring systems that provide geospatial data, radar imaging, and other information crucial to responding to disasters, monitoring environmental change and population movement, and verifying international treaties with billions of dollars on the line. By 2016, for example, only seven of NASA’s current 13 earth monitoring satellites are expected to be in operation. Previous programs aimed at addressing this problem were plagued by skyrocketing costs, chronic delays, and poor interagency coordination.

The Center for a New American Security (CNAS) is leading a research program to evaluate the role of earth monitoring satellites in U.S. national security and foreign policy making. This research program is intended to demonstrate how these space technologies can help policymakers manage unconventional national security challenges, including humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, and environmental and climate change. CNAS will convene top experts and stakeholders to examine ways to shrink this capability gap through international cooperation, intelligence declassification, and targeted investments. CNAS experts will use this research to map a way forward for policymakers that will ensure that the United States can sustain this crucial capability. Examples of this work include:

Blinded: The Decline of U.S. Earth Monitoring Capabilities and Its Consequences for National Security (2011)

Sentries in the Sky: Using Space Technologies for Disaster Response (2012)