Sensible Malaysians woke up on those two particular mornings and discovered that their country's national security had been breached.

Nobody can blame them for feeling very uneasy about this.

Nobody can blame them for feeling very uneasy about their own sense of security and that of the country. Now that the national security issue is on everybody's mind, it is a good time indeed to talk about one event that occurred recently that may be related to our national security.

The event in question is regards the purported deal between Singapore and Israel to develop and launch intelligence gathering satellites.

It was reported in the July issue of Jane's Defence Weekly that Israel and Singapore were expected to sign an agreement worth over US$1 billion (RM3.8 billion) for the joint development of surveillance and intelligence gathering satellites.

Israel is expected to provide the technology and Singapore the funds. It is estimated the deal is for four or five surveillance satellites.

From the same source, it was learned that the satellites would exceed the capabilities of those that Israel is using now.

Information regarding Israel's satellite capability is hard to come by.

Israel has a number of satellite programmes, but one called the Ofeq (meaning horizon) seems to be the likely satellite technology to be transferred to Singapore.

The Israeli Ofeq satellite programme is within their indigenous surveillance satellite series and is designed for photo-reconnaissance and electronic intelligence capabilities.

This is akin to the more illustrious United States satellite programme such as the Defence Support Programme or the Defence Satellite Communication System satellites.

The Israel Aircraft Industries and Israel Space Agency spearheaded the Ofeq programme. The first Ofeq satellite called Ofeq1 was launched on Sept 19, 1988 and the latest (Ofeq 4) on Jan 22.

The latest satellite failed to go into orbit and plunged into the Mediterranean Sea.

Officially, Israel never admits that the Ofeq satellite is their answer to the DSP or DSCS spy satellites.

But looking at operational status of Ofeq, one tends to believe it is indeed a spy satellite. The first give away is the Ofeq coverage since at least six daylight passes per day are possible for the Ofeq satellites.

This is a lot of passes even compared to the DSP or DSCS satellites.

The initial (morning) passes cover Western India, Pakistan, Central Asia, Iran, Iraq and the Arabian Peninsula.

As the day goes on, Middle East nations are targeted repeatedly. Iraq for example, is covered on every satellite pass.

Since information regarding the imaging hardware is hard to come by, one can only make an intelligent guess of its capabilities.

Being low earth orbiting satellites, the closest to a target Ofeq can get is around 400km and the average altitude is around 700km.

For a one-metre aperture camera on the 400km altitude satellite, a ground resolution of up to 50cm is very common.

Even if Ofeq has smaller optics, a one-metre ground resolution is still not out of the question. This kind of capability is certainly good enough for keeping an eye on the neighbours.

The US$1 billion agreement resolves the funding shortage that has plagued its space programme.

For example, the Israeli satellite reconnaissance system is currently facing acute budget constraints.

The system requires a number of reconnaissance satellites and an early-warning missile launch detection system that requires geo-stationary satellites.

Coupled with the Ofeq4 launchfailure and various budget cuts, the agreement seems to be the lifeline for the Israeli space programme.

On the Singapore side, the deal offers a very attractive solution to its long-standing interest in developing its own space programme.

For a long time, Singapore has been very interested in acquiring satellite reconnaissance capability, and Israel's space programme seems the perfect answer.


                                                                             Dr Azmi Hassan
                                                    Universiti Teknologi Malaysia
                                                                             Johor, Malaysia.