

The U.S. military is using spy satellites to snoop on its allies in the Iraqi army.

The satellites are "imaging military installations that the Iraqi army occupies," a former U.S. military official tells the Los Angeles Times. "They're imaging training areas that the Iraqi army utilizes. They're imaging roads that Iraqi armored vehicles and large convoys transit." A source with American forces in Iraq just confirmed the story to Danger Room.

According to the paper, "the stepped-up surveillance reflects breakdowns in trust and coordination between the two forces. Officials said it was part of an expanded intelligence effort launched after American commanders were surprised by the timing of the Iraqi army's violent push into Basra three months ago." And that "puts the United States in the unusual position of employing some of its most sophisticated espionage technology to track an allied army that American forces helped create, continue to advise, and often fight alongside."

Our source says U.S. sats have been watching over Iraqi forces for quite some time. "Of course we want to know what the Iraqis are up to, and using imagery to get details on things like troop movements is not new," he tells Danger Room.

And since this snooping has been going on for a while, he disagrees with the* Times' *assessment, that this represents some new fissure between Iraqi and American troops. Iraqi army "movements down to the Brigade and sometimes Bn [Battalion] level are briefed everyday to GOs [General Officers]," he notes. It is freely provided by our Iraqi counterparts. Sometimes."

Because the Iraqi information doesn't move at the speed that ours does, we'll get orders a little late, but usually that's when an operation is finishing up, not beginning. Feedback from the field can be a little slow – when did such and such arrive n Basra, for instance. In that case we might use imagery. It has nothing to do with [Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-] Maliki or some sort of widening gulf between CF [Coalition Forces] and ISF [Iraqi Security Forces]. It's just speed of information, and GO expectations of instant feedback.

I'm not sure that speaks to a U.S-Iraqi relationship that's packed with confidence and trust, but ... OK. Why use satellites, then, instead of surveillance drones? From low earth orbit, the satellites "can be tasked to cover any part of the country on short notice. A UAV [unmanned aerial vehicle] does not have that degree of tasking responsiveness," says GlobalSecurity.org director John Pike.

U.S. intelligence officials assured the Times "that the satellites are not being diverted from other high-priority assignments – including tracking terrorist and insurgent activity – but are capturing additional images as part of routine sweeps."

That sounds a little off, to Theresa Hitchens, with the Center for Defense Information. She asks,* "If you are now spending more time looking at the Iraqi forces, doesn't that ipso facto *mean you are spending fewer resources looking for and at the bad guys – both in terms of imagery gathered and in terms of time spent interpreting it?"

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