While the satellite gap may now appear to be unbridgeable, the wide array of communications, navigation, reconnaissance, and weather satellite services commercially available means that other states can meet much of their need for space power in the marketplace. The imagery offered by the French Systeme Pour l'Observation de la Terre (SPOT) corporation is good enough that the United States relied heavily on it in the Gulf and Kosovo and has developed the Eagle Eye Vision program to facilitate its use. Militaries that can not afford communications satellites of their own can lease transponders on the satellites orbited by other countries, and some -- like Australia -- have already done so. Navigation aids like the Global Positioning System can be used by anyone with a cheap receiver. The commercialization of space is also likely to progress even more rapidly over the coming years. Given the usually civilian character of such services, it may be more politically difficult to cut off their signals or attack them outright than would be the case with dedicated military satellites. Attacking a commercially owned satellite, even one which is partially leased to or providing information to a belligerent's military, would be broadly equivalent to attacking neutral shipping in wartime. A conflict in which this became a regular practice would be comparable to the unrestricted submarine warfare of the world wars. (It also would represent a practical inconvenience for the United States given the reliance of its economy and military on commercial services.) The number of such services available may offer such redundancy as to make it impossible to totally deny a sophisticated enemy access, even after it has executed its initial strike.

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Elhefnawy, Nader. "Four Myths About Space Power." Parameters. (Spring 2003): 124-32. [ 6 quotes ] [ page 124-5 ]