Since they can see the ground. buildings and people so well from satellites?

Question

why dont they have people looking for people setting out road side bombs?

They could have a satellite placed right above thats stays there in space with people monitoring & anilizeing the pictures.
if they wished to.

Answer 1

Think low-tech and simple. As the previous posters have stated, satellites are mondo-expensive to operate and maintain, and tasking one for anything specific means it's extra-super urgent and important. Hell, the fuel they use to maneuver is finite and must be recharged by space shuttle missions. Getting the picture? Cheaper solution, the military has already sent a bunch of different size aerostats (blimps with noone in them) to go up to certain heights with good cameras and look around for unfriendly activity. Set them up in sensitive areas and observe. Only problem, as stated before, is that roads are long ribbons and cannot be examined along the entirety of their length with anything approaching efficiency. You gonna mad-dog everyone changing a flat tire in all of Al Anbar province?

Answer 2

Devil Dog makes a good point about the cost effectiveness of constant satellite surveliance.

Another point to consider is the fact that the camera on a satellite would have to zoom in enough for analists to observe if an IED is being placed. You can not zoom on every mile of every street. The best that could be managed is to concentrate on areas with historically high IED incedent levels, at which point it would be easier and cheaper to use a UAV to monitor. I also believe that even if constant monitoring of all the roads were possible, it would be ineffective against VBIEDs.

Answer 3

The geosynchronous orbit is 22,000 miles from the Earth. At this distance, the resolution of the cameras and image sensors is not that great. The high resolution images that modern satellites produce come from low orbit vehicles that pass every hour or so.

Can one person watch an entire city block all at once? I don't think so. But even at that resolution, it would take thousands of people just to keep watch on the city of Bagdad.

We can use all that high tech stuff to keep an eye on one spot, maybe track one person at a time, but watchine everything, everywhere just isn't going to happen.

Answer 4

We don't have satellites looking everywhere all at one. There is no streaming video from satellites, only photos. The amount of time to process the images doesn't enable instant results.

Answer 5

Geosychronous orbit is extremely difficult to maintain. Additionally, the sat images have to be analyzed and interpreted, and that takes time. It isn't cost effecient or even feasible to use sat images to monitor for IEDs, considering the vast amount of data that would have to be analyzed (by humans, not computers) in the alloted time.