THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, May 28, 1996 TAG: 9605250492
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: C8 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY ROBERT BURKE, THE FREE LANCE-STAR
DATELINE: DAHLGREN, VA. LENGTH: 61 lines
With a few clicks of a computer keyboard, Navy Lt. Billy Pullin can scan the coast of Haiti, a mountain pass in Bosnia or a harbor in North Korea.
Such images, gleaned from satellite data and crafted by Pullin and others at the Naval Space Command in Dahlgren, are in demand among many U.S. military commanders these days.
``It would have been great to have this'' a few years ago, Pullin said. ``This is neat stuff.'' The images help commanders plan troop movements, and reveal details about such things as vegetation and water depth.
``We have more-sensitive satellites that can provide more detailed pictures of small areas . . . to support intelligence,'' said Navy spokesman Gary Wagner. ``What we didn't have before was this broad picture.''
At the base in King George County, Pullin oversees a staff of seven people - five military and two civilian contractors - that produces the images and ships them around the country.
They recently produced an animated fly-through of terrain along the coast of the former Yugoslavia in support of a Marine squadron flying electronic jamming aircraft. They've also supplied images for Marines in South Korea, the Enterprise off the coast of North Carolina and a Navy exercise near Spain.
``Once they find out about the stuff they just really like it,'' Pullin said. ``They just ask for more and more.''
The Navy buys data from two commercially owned satellite systems. One is the U.S.-based Lansat satellites; the second is the French-owned SPOT system. The Lansat system detects light and heat, and computers sort the information.
The Lansat satellites each pass over the same point on the Earth every 16 days, which allows images to be compared. This technique helped identify Iraqi troop movements before the Gulf War in 1990.
The images aren't cheap. One scene from the Lansat satellite costs about $4,300. A SPOT scene costs more than $2,400. Because the data is bought from commercial sources, the images aren't classified, Pullin said.
``What's good about that is I can get it to the poor grunt who hits the beach, and if he loses it, it's not a big classified risk,'' he said.
The equipment is in place to retrieve the images. The biggest problem now is getting them quickly into the right hands. Despite all the powerful computer equipment Pullin's crew uses, when the images are ready, they often end up being delivered by the U.S. Postal Service or Federal Express.
Commanders usually get the images on poster-size paper. Such a volume of digital data would require hours to transmit by phone, even on the fastest computer modems.
One option they've tried is using an existing military satellite communications network. Last month's outbreak of fighting in the west African nation of Liberia gave them a chance to test it. Pullin said that shortly after CNN aired scenes of combat near the U.S. embassy in Monrovia, he sent a thumbnail image of the region to the commander of the Sixth Fleet on the LaSalle at port in Italy.
``They said, `We'd love to have it,''' he said. So on the day before Navy ships were to arrive off the coast of Liberia, Pullin's crew drove up to the Naval Research Lab in Washington and sent a 23-megabyte image of the region to the LaSalle, via satellite. The transmission was complete in a few seconds. ILLUSTRATION: Associated Press
Navy Lt. Billy Pullin by CNB