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UK Plans Space Based Radar System
First time accepted submitter peepster84 writes "The UK government is to kick-start an innovative project to fly radar satellites around the Earth, with an initial investment of £21m. NovaSar-S would have a number of viewing modes that could enable it to perform a wide range of roles, from flood monitoring and land cover management to disaster mapping and maritime enforcement — notably ship tracking and oil spill detection."
The US has SAR in orbit for military and intelligence reconnaissance.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quill_(satellite)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lacrosse_(satellite)
So does Germany
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAR_Lupe
The US, Japan, Canada, EU, Germany and Russia all have or had satellite based radar systems some with very high resolution.
There are quite a few space-borne radars. For example, TerraSAR-X, Radarsat-2.
Canada's got two of them, with really imaginative names. :)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radarsat-1
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radarsat-2
They had Skynet in 1969, but the GCHQ got most of its bandwidth :) :)
The classic 1980's http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zircon_(satellite) shows what "initial investment of £21m" can really mean.
The New Statesman trial showed what happened when the UK lost close to 1 billion pounds into 1980's UK "satellite" tech.
In the end they used US tech for 500 million pounds.
So with any UK space effort watch the cash flow
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Considering that it's illegal to have weapons on a civilian vessel, yes it does actually. That's why when they inspect a vessel and find weapons, they usually confiscate weapons, rather then wait for an attack.