Air- and space-based sensors apparently played a vital role in helping corroborate the HUMINT and providing the assault team a detailed view of bin Laden’s compound — likely right up to the minute of the raid. “I would say, in terms of trying to get the initial confirmation of intelligence tips they got through the HUMINT, and all way up through the [final] mission planning, they would have found value in overhead assets and would have used them,” says Barry Watts, a senior analyst with the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments/…/ In short, the sats sketched the infrastructure. The drones appear to have tracked the people. To tie it all together, NGA has the capability to build virtual models — computer simulations, basically — based on the data provided by the sensor systems.
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