WASHINGTON -- Satellite surveillance has long been a central pillar of espionage and military intelligence.

Now, for the first time, a multi-nation human outpost -- the multi-billion dollar International Space Station (ISS) -- could prove beneficial in the world-wide campaign to root out terrorism.

It is not unique to include space-based assets are part of an American counterattack. The August 1990 invasion of Kuwait by Iraq brought about Operation Desert Storm, an allied response led by the United States. That Gulf War conflict made great use of space borne hardware, earning it the label of the world’s first space war.

An Intergovernmental Agreement on the ISS was first put in place in 1988, resulting in an exchange of letters between participating countries involved in the mega-project. Those letters state that each partner in the project determines what a "peaceful purpose" is for its own element.

"The 1988 U.S. letter clearly states that the United States has the right to use its elements ... for national security purposes, as we define them" said Marcia Smith, a space policy expert at the Congressional Research Service - a research arm of the U.S. Congress.

Smith told SPACE.com that using space stations to support military functions is not new. As example, the former Soviet Union assigned military work to their Salyut 3 and Salyut 5 space stations in the 1970s.

The crewed stations of the Soviet Union and now Russia, including the recently deorbited Mir, are known to have supported remote sensing of Earth, Smith said. Various types of Earth-monitoring devices were flown up to and used by crews on those facilities, she said.

"That line between remote sensing and reconnaissance is very fine. They certainly had an array of remote sensing equipment. But how useful the data was for their military activities, and compared to what their reconnaissance satellites can do, I can’t evaluate that," Smith said.

Space stations flown to date haven’t been in ideal, pole-to-pole orbits that provide full coverage of Earth and adequate revisit times over world trouble spots. However, they can be "in the right place at the right time," contrasted to an unpiloted spacecraft that might be in the wrong location when needed, Smith said.

U.S. Air Force space planners have long been interested in the role of military personnel in Earth orbit. Getting a real program off the ground, however, has been thwarted in the past - at least in open circles.

Following cancellation in late 1963 of the Air Force DynaSoar project -- a piloted space glider capable of making bombing runs among other functions -- then American President Lyndon Johnson approved the building of the U.S. Air Force Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL).

MOL’s mission was grand. Military astronauts would carry out reconnaissance using novel cameras and radar gear. Satellites could be inspected, retrieved, even intercepted, if need be. A variety of experiments and hardware were built to explore the usefulness of military command and control operations from Earth orbit. By 1967, the MOL project became the Air Force’s largest space program.

Cost growth in the MOL, technology advances in automated military spacecraft, as well as the expensive Vietnam war, helped force cancellation of the project in mid-1969. MOL systems later found their way on classified military satellites. Similarly, MOL experiments were later flown onboard NASA’s Skylab space station in the early 1970s.

The role of humans in orbit to perform military space operations continues to dog the U.S. Air Force.

"We’re still looking for that definitive mission," said Air Force Lt. Col. Steve Davis, an officer at Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, New Mexico. "Force enhancement is primarily what we’re doing today," he said August 28 during Space 2001, a meeting of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics held in Albuquerque.

Davis said there is increasing reliance on using space for national needs. "Space control is becoming more important as we have very high value assets in orbit. We depend on these assets and are interested in protecting them," he said.

Onboard one of the Soviet Union’s early orbital piloted stations, Davis said, a rapid-fire cannon was installed. The military outpost was armed, he said, "so they could defend themselves from any hostile intercepts."