Darkened skies: murky picture of what's happening in space worries Air Force officials.

OMAHA, Neb. -- One year ago, the esoteric subject of "space situational awareness" was the fifth or sixth bullet on Air Force PowerPoint charts listing needs for the military's spacecraft fleets.

The ability to know what is happening in the environment surrounding the nation's vital spy and military satellites was mentioned on conference podiums, but little progress was made.

Then came Jan. 11, when the Chinese military launched a missile at one of its own aging weather satellites to demonstrate its ability to knock spacecraft flying over its territory out of the sky.

Now improving space situational awareness is at the top of an Air Force wish list that has grown significantly since the anti-satellite test.

"We've got to get much better at our space surveillance capability," said Air Force Maj. Gen. William Shelton, commander of the 14th Air Force Wing.

The nation's commercial, military and spy agency satellites can peer down on earth and take clear pictures of objects of at least one meter in length, and less. Legions of analysts, and now automated computer programs, are trained to pour over these images. However, when it comes to aiming sensors upwards at what has been called the "ultimate high ground," the Defense Department has shortcomings in both the technology, and the personnel who can interpret data.

Officials said there are currently four serious gaps in the U.S. military's ability to know what is happening beyond Earth's atmosphere: the ability to track foreign satellites, predicting the effects of space weather, keeping tabs on orbital debris and reconstituting a corps of space intelligence analysts.

All these shortcomings add up to a murky picture of what is happening from low-earth orbit to just beyond geosynchronous heights 22,000 miles above earth.

A ground-based sensor network combines tracking stations designed specifically to keep tabs on satellites and debris. Cold War era missile defense warning radars are also used to help track spacecraft.

Some of these systems are "old and creaky" Shelton said at a U.S. Strategic Command conference sponsored by the Space Foundation.

In addition, the missile defense sites--not specifically designed for space situation awareness, but now applied to this task--were placed in the Northern Hemisphere to guard against the Soviet intercontinental ballistic missiles threat. There is virtually no coverage in the southern hemisphere and "this is a global business," Shelton added.

The Air Force actively has been making a case that its budget is too stretched and cannot pay for new space surveillance initiatives. Shelton said he expects the Bush administration and Congress to approve additional funds in the coming months, although he declined to state a specific number.

Bruce Wilson, deputy director of air, space, and information operations at Air Force Space Command, said since the end of the Cold War, the military's ability to track objects in space declined as the complexity of the environment grew.

Twelve missile warning sites have been closed in recent years, which was a 25 percent decrease in their numbers. Meanwhile, from 1995 to 2007 the number of objects being tracked in space grew from roughly 10,500 to 18,500.

"There's a growing need, a growing complexity, but decreasing capability ... for the space surveillance network to do its mission," he said.

Debris fields, such as the massive cloud created by the January anti-satellite test, are growing. There have been two major breakups in low-earth orbit since then, he added.

Objects as small as 10 centimeters can be tracked, but smaller objects are harder to see.

Gary Payton, undersecretary of the Air Force for space programs, said an object as small as a golf ball slamming into a spacecraft at seven kilometers per second would strike with the force of two 20 mm cannon shells.

"Do you think we know where all the golfball sized debris are located?" he asked.

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The three break-ups in low-earth orbit this year have increased the amount of debris by 20 percent, Wilson said. When an object is discovered, it is entered into an antiquated mainframe computer. The average cell phone probably has more processing power, he complained.

"How do we keep up? Quite frankly we don't," he added.

Among the systems that track debris for the Air Force and NASA is the Haystack radar in Tyngsborough, Mass. The fadlity, developed in the 1960s by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Lincoln Laboratory, is undergoing upgrades that will improve its ability to track debris and satellites. The radar is also used for scientific research. Testing on the new system is due to be completed in 2009.

Nature is another threat, Wilson said. Solar flares and the coronal mass ejections they send hurtling toward Earth have knocked out or seriously degraded the capabilities of satellites in the past.

A joint Department of Commerce, Defense Department weather satellite, the National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS), was slated to carry five instruments that would collect space weather data. However, the program ran into technical difficulties, suffered cost overruns, and fell victim to the Nunn-McCurdy law, which mandates cost controls when a defense program exceeds 25 percent of its budget.

The five sensors were cut out for budgetary reasons, according to a report to the House Science Committee posted on Spaceref.com.

Shelton added, "We as a nation don't have a good path ahead for space environmental information because of problems with the NPOESS program."

Knowing whether a satellite is under attack from an adversary or something less nefarious such as an electro-magnetic storm is key to protecting space assets, Payton said.

"Space situational awareness is key to ensuring our freedom of action in space, and securing our space assets. If you don't know what's up there, you can't protect yourself," he said.

The U.S. military relies heavily on its space-based systems. They have been called the nation's Achilles' heel.

Global Positioning System signals can be jammed from below, anti-satellite missiles can be launched to take out critical communications satellites. Spy satellites can be blinded. China on two occasions has aimed lasers at U.S. military satellites above its territory.

Nano-, micro- and pico-satellites are also proliferating, Payton noted. This raises the specter of so-called killer spacecraft.

The personnel who are tasked with figuring out what is happening in space are also in short supply, Shelton said. That goes for gathering intelligence from potential adversaries on what they are launching. About 45 nations now have assets in orbit, Wilson noted.

"As a nation, we are almost at a nadir point for our space intelligence capability," Shelton lamented. When the "wall came down" the nation let many of the experts in the field go. They either retired or moved on to other professions.

Space Command wants as much information as it can gather on a spacecraft before it goes into orbit "so I can back my timeline to the left." Intelligence gathered on the ground can help Space Command track a satellite through its lifetime.

Intelligence agencies are making a concerted effort to boost the numbers of space analysts, Shelton said. Most will serve at the National Air and Space Intelligence Center at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, which is tasked with interpreting the data gathered.

The center is hiring, but recruits have to undergo years of development, Shelton said. "It's a little bit of an arcane area," he added.

Ideally, space surveillance, weather data and intelligence will be fused together into a comprehensive picture available to anyone in the community who needs it, he said.

Army Lt. Gen. Kevin T. Campbell, commander of the Army's Space and Missile Defense Command, said much of the data that can give Space Command a better operating picture already exists. "This is squarely in the art of the possible," he said.

"Nothing has to be invented," he added. However, there must be some policy changes and software upgrades to deliver the data to desktop monitors in a timely manner.

Wilson said Space Command is taking a clean sheet approach and undertaking a study that will determine exactly what kind of new ground- and space-based sensors are needed, where they should be located and how they will fit in with the legacy systems.

Shelton said there is a deterrent value to space situational awareness that doesn't grab the attention it should. "If our adversaries know that we know what's going on in orbit, then they're going to be constrained."