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2004
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Claude Carlier, « Les armées françaises et l'observation à partir de la troisième dimension. Du ballon au satellite. », Revue historique des Armées (documents), ID : 10.3406/rharm.2004.5567
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Résumé
Gathering intelligence on an adversary has always been a vital element of success. Man’s conquest of aerospace (the Third Dimension), beginning in 1783, opened up fresh perspectives. Reconnaissance was one of the first missions given to lighter-than-air vessels, balloons and dirigibles and then, from 1909, to aeroplanes. A half-century later the Third Dimension experienced an almost-limitless expansion with the conquest of space. Almost another fifty years on, new means to utilise the Third Dimension started to come into service with UAVs (known sometimes as drones). New aerospace military reconnaissance systems are increasingly capable, complex to operationalise, and very expensive. The naval, army and air force military budgets must face up to additional costs because the new assets do not always simply replace older ones, they add to them. The development of such assets, by France and the European Union, is strategically crucial. A lack will condemn them to paralysis.