WASHINGTON -- Pentagon officials said the only "story" regarding the video would be that having to send such video in the clear underscores a lack of technology among NATO allies.

The unclassified video is made available by agreement with the U.S. and any NATO allies who have troops deployed in the Bosnian region.

A NATO spokesman in Brussels told CNN that it was a U.S. issue and the Pentagon had decided on the level of security at which it would accept the material.

Locker said he was able to identify the spy aircraft, Hunter and the P-3 which were helpfully identified in the corner of the screen.

Geoff Bains, editor of Britain's "What Satellite TV?" magazine, said any satellite TV enthusiast in Europe could tune in with a one-meter dish costing about £60 ($90) and a free-to-air DBS digital satellite receiver costing from £150 ($220) upwards.

"There's nothing complicated about the hardware to receive the signal." he told CNN.

Viewers tuning into the satellite this week were able to watch a security alert round the U.S. Army's headquarters at Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo.

Last week, the spy plane provided airborne cover for a heavily protected patrol of the Macedonian-Kosovo border near Skopje.

The pictures, from manned spy aircraft and drones, have been broadcast through a satellite over Brazil. The links, which are not encrypted, have also been transmitted over the Internet.

Locker said: "Obviously I'm not a military analyst and I'm not an expert in this field but I am just amazed this type of material is going out free-to-air.

"They put up data quite often which identified vehicles and the area to within two meters. That to me is a risk." Richard Perle, chairman of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board, told the BBC: "There are plans to encrypt this data.

"We have discovered in the period since September 11 how important this sort of real-time intelligence is. Now we are making much better use of this kind of information and it will make sense to encrypt it in the future." Defence analyst Andrew Brookes of the International Institute for Strategic Studies told CNN the information being transmitted did not pose a risk to the planes or crew, and seemed designed for training purposes.

He said the decision to use channels accessible to the public was a question of prioritizing as there are only limited numbers of secret military satellite channels available.