Pictured is a U.S. Space Force depiction of the future Space-Based Airborne Moving Target Indicator (SB-AMTI).

Moving target indication (MTI) from space has been a reconnaissance dream for decades--and a challenging one to achieve. Witness the National Reconnaissance Office's (NRO) Discoverer II effort with the Air Force and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency in the late 1990s. But now Department of the Air Force (DAF) leaders, without explanation, have said that they have the problem much more in hand and that such space-based MTI (SB-AMTI) will lessen or remove the need for vulnerable, manned reconnaissance…