DSP thus showed its value in low-level wars. The system has relied on a controversial ground station in Australia, which drew opposition because it might have exposed that nation to nuclear attack. Richelson presents its story in detail. He also covers the efforts of recent years aimed at introducing a next-generation system. This book has its faults.
Early chapters are hard to read, lacking smooth narrative flow.
It uses an alphabet soup of acronyms, which is unavoidable in a book of this type, and provides a listing of the same that fills five pages. Yet that roster leaves out a number of acronyms that appear within the text. But with allowance for these shortcomings, this book is important. It valuably broadens the existing literature on space reconnaissance, which until now has focused almost exclusively on photographic imagery. 10 T. A. Heppenheimer Center for Space Science, Fountain Valley, California Content in the History Cooperative database is intended for personal, noncommercial use only.