Two years ago, the Future Imagery Architecture system was cancelled, and ever since then, the United States has been researching and mulling over various project plans to develop the nexgen of spysats. Now a multibillion dollar program is being further explored for a new system called BASIC. Initial startup costs are said to range from $2 to $4 billion with the first launch of this system to occur in 2011. As a photo reconsat, visuals can capture miles above the Earth’s surface, revealing terrorist camps and group locations, government activites by countries who are not considered “friendlies”, and nuclear site development.
Such sats could also have another role, that of natural disaster surveying and other implementations to assist first responders. There are a range of options being considered for BASIC. It could be a new photo imagery sat or a comercial imagery sat, with the latter appearing to be the most feasible approach, given cost overruns on other spysat programs that were called to a halt by the Pentagon. Costly, with no public oversight due to the classified nature of such a sat network, details of such work are usually kept from the public by the intelligence community—and for good reason. Proposal solicitatations for such a BASIC project are expected to commence in the spring of 2008.
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