Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Cold War Satellite Pics Declassified

Posted by michael on from the magnifying-glass-required dept.

wwwssabbsdotcom writes "Looks like 25 years ago, we were taking pretty good B&W pics of the rest of the world, interesting story. How about those Cuban Missile Crisis pics, do they have that roll available?"

40 of 246 comments (clear)

  1. kodak instant moments? by greechneb · · Score: 5, Funny

    According to the article they were looking for "Kodak Instant Moments" - I wonder how they would use that in a commercial. "When want the best images of your enemies, use kodak film..." naah.

  2. Whose looking in your window? by Havoc'ing · · Score: 5, Interesting

    If you figure we can view a galaxy a bizzillion miles away through the hubble just imagine what we are capable of now right in our back yard. And the hubble aint even classified.

    1. Re:Whose looking in your window? by phil+reed · · Score: 5, Interesting

      just imagine what we are capable of now right in our back yard.

      Not as much as you might imagine. A Hubble-sized telescope in orbit at Hubble's altitude, pointed straight down, can resolve down to 15 centimeters. That would be enough to tell that you drive a Honda instead of a Surburban, but it couldn't tell much beyond that.

      --

      ...phil
      "For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
    2. Re:Whose looking in your window? by phil+reed · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Well, my comment was based on the laws of physics. You can throw as much technology as you want at the problem, but it's physically impossible for a Hubble-sized mirror, looking straight down from Hubble's altitude, to read a newspaper headline. You would have a hard time even telling that you were looking at a newspaper.

      We should avoid using spy movies as a basis for estimations on what our government is capable of.

      --

      ...phil
      "For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
    3. Re:Whose looking in your window? by ottffssent · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Or more than you might imagine. 1m resolution is fine enough to see the lines in parking lots and count full v. empty spaces and see opened doors (not sliding van doors). What do you think something 7 times as good will show? Make and model of car, all doors, how many people, whether and what they are carrying, and if they wear glasses. You can probably tell the make of shoe someone is wearing at that resolution.

      And that's just from one frame. With multiple frames, you increase dramatically the information you have available, and you can interpolate down much finer than the camera resolution.

      --
      High-speed Road Trip (18.000KPH)
    4. Re:Whose looking in your window? by phil+reed · · Score: 5, Informative
      Here's an older DejaView message on the topic. It addresses this very issue.

      Undergraduate physics:

      Resolving power R (resolution) of a diffraction limited telescope: R = wavelength/(2*diameter telescope)

      This means for the HST (2.4 meter) and visual wavelenght (500nm) R = 500nm/4.8m = 1*10^(-7)

      Since the Hubble is in orbit h = 680km (380 miles) high, this means it can theoretically resolve: Detail = R * h = 0.07. Thus 7cm (3 inch) details. Not enuff for reading license plates, even if someone would hold it up to the sky so we dont have inclination effects. Besides this, the best visual wavelength camera on board (the PC chip on the WFPC2 camera) UNDERsamples this signal by a factor of 2 giving an effective resolution of 14cm (1/2 feet).

      This holds only if we ignore atmospheric turbulence effects (which certainly DONT average out), the pointing instability (up to about 10mas (micro-arcseconds)) and thermal breathing (up to 10mas). This degrades the image even further. (10mas translates to about 5cm as seen from the HST)

      Furthermore, target acquisition is problematic. HST uses guide-stars, which need to be in the field of view, to lock on targets. Certainly no stars available on the face of the earth ;-p. Even then: A quote from the HST data hanbook: "It is also possible to take observations (primarily WFPC2 "snapshot" exposures) without guide stars, using only gyro pointing control. The absolute pointing accuracy using gyros is about 14" (one sigma), and the pointing drifts at a rate of 1.4 +/- 0.7 mas s**-1. "

      So, we have a 66% chance of 14" (arcseconds) acquisition accuracy. This translates to about 1400 pixels offset (if we were well sampled) on a ccd camera or 100m inaccuracy on the ground.

      Say we want a spy satellite with 1cm resolution (ignoring degrading affects) on orbit 300km high (if lower, atmospheric friction would cause it to fall back to the earth), then applying the same formulae as above we would need a telescope diameter of roughly 5 meters. (According the the space shuttle reference guide you would have to keep the payload doors open in flight to make it fit, hehehe)

      Conclusion:

      IMBO the NSA cant read license plates. The technology for space telescopes with this capability is only now being developed (look for NGST on the web) against HUGE costs, certainly not within the NSA's budget. Besides target acquisition is a severe limitation, and it's role becomes more important when the resolution increases.

      just my $0.02

      --

      ...phil
      "For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
    5. Re:Whose looking in your window? by Buran · · Score: 4, Interesting

      One of the later Keyhole satellites -- 11 or 12, I'm not sure which and I haven't had the time to look into it since deciding to last week -- actually is based on the Hubble design. However, the optics are not the same -- they cannot be.

      As others have said already, the primary mirror is not of the right design to look back at the Earth and actually yield the right kind of details. Hubble focuses to infinity and an earth-imaging satellite only has to focus to a distance of a few hundred miles -- the exact altitude depends on the satellite's orbit.

      Furthermore, Hubble's optics are too sensitive to be pointed at the Earth or the Moon -- both are so bright that they'd blow out the sensors.

      However, it is entirely possible for such a satellite to be launched by the Shuttle -- the size of the payload bay, don't forget, was set by a DoD request ("you set it up like this or we don't pay you to help develop it") and there were a bunch of DoD flights back in the 1980s and early 1990s. And Hubble is just about perfectly sized to fit in the bay -- it's the largest payload, physically, ever launched, I think.

      So it'd make sense that the civilian version of the KH-1x satellite in question exactly fits -- because that's the payload the shuttle was designed for. (A set payload bay size then leads to the overall size of the orbiter, which leads to the wing design, which leads to the requirements for engines, fuel, boosters, etc...)

      It also means that, since the Soviets copied the US shuttle design for Buran, ALL reusable space planes that have ever flown were designed to carry this mystery DoD payload! Even the one that's not ours! (I don't say "manned" because Buran carried no crew during its only flight.)

      --
      i am a soviet space shuttle
    6. Re:Whose looking in your window? by mesocyclone · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Problems with this analysis:

      1) Id doesn't take into account any electronic processing of resulting signals or using multiple images taken seconds apart to achieve higher resolution.

      2) Optical spy satellites are likely to use multiple mirrors, both to use adaptive optics to adjust for atmospheric turbulence, and to avoid the problem of fit in the shuttle payload.

      I believe it is the Keck telescope (which has adaptive optics) that has resolution sufficient to read a license plate from much higher orbits (all other caveats apply).

      A little tidbit... the Multiple-Mirror Telescope (MMT) on Mt. Hopkins, Arizona used to be (and may still be) owned by the airport. When it was built, it was built with an azimuth/elevation mount, rather than the usual polar mount, and used a computer steering system that was accurate enough to account for minute flexing in the very rigid metal frame.

      The mirrors were Air-Force surplus from the spy satellite program.

      The Air-Force used to "borrow" the scope from time to time. The Az-El mount was probably chosen to allow tracking of earth orbiting objects - Russian satellites.

      The spook folks work with very impressive technology. They are bound by the laws of physics, but they probably have engineering tricks that the public world has not heard of. Tricks in signal processing, adaptive optics in space, ultra-precision pointing, etc.

      Actually, if you just solve the problem of taking current earth borne adaptive optics telescopes into orbit, you can pretty well achieve the resolution you want.

      And then, of course, there is synthetic aperture radar. Synthetic aperture is a mathematical technique for creating a synthetic (virtual) antenna of very long length (very high resolution in one dimension) along the motion of the radar. Simple radar has, of course, much lower resolution than optics for the same size antenna, due to the much longer wavelength. But when you extend the antenna for hundreds or thousands of meters through synthetic aperture magic, that resolution gets very good.

      And then, of course, we can speculate about Lidar. I have no idea what the spooks may do with that.

      I think the problem of resolution is no longer of significance to the spook business. The bigger problems are areal coverage, data reduction and storage, and concealment.

      --

      The only good weather is bad weather.

    7. Re:Whose looking in your window? by EMH_Mark3 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      If I recall correctly, current military satellites have a resolution of about 10 cm (~4 inches). Compare that to commercial satellite that have resolutions varying between 1 and 10 meters.. (Although one satellite can acheive a 66cm resolution)

      --
      Burn the land and boil the sea, you can't take the sky from me
  3. The Cuban Roll by InvaderSkooge · · Score: 4, Funny

    The Cuban roll is still embargoed, I'm afraid.

    --
    Erik
    YOU ARE SAYING IMPUDENCE TO ME! THAT IS IMPUDENCE!
    1. Re:The Cuban Roll by BabyDave · · Score: 4, Funny
      The Cuban roll is still embargoed
      Darn, now what am I going to have for lunch?
  4. Might as well say it.... by LittleGuy · · Score: 5, Funny

    "I can see my house from here!!!"

    --
    Mod Karma -1: I sed bad wurds. If I cep my mouf shut, I wud be at riyses.
  5. Oh good!!! by Pig+Hogger · · Score: 5, Funny

    Will we finally be able to see Jackie Kennedy's pix while she was sunbathing on Onassis's yachts???

  6. Here are the images you wanted by ekrout · · Score: 3, Informative

    http://www.jamesshuggins.com/h/u-2a/u-2_62_cuba_mi ssile_base.htm

    --

    If you celebrate Xmas, befriend me (538
  7. ho hum.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    *Mozilla 1.0+, Netscape 6.0, and Netscape 7.0 uses the JAVA 2 Virtual Machine which does not support the original Java applet security model used with EarthExplorer applets.
    **EarthExplorer will not currently work with Macintosh systems due to the following:

    1. IE and the Microsoft Virtual Machine does not support LiveConnect for Macintosh systems.
    2. Old versions of the Java Virtual Machine (Netscape 4.6 and earlier) do not support LiveConnect for Macintosh systems.
    3. The Java 2 Virtual Machine does not support the original Java applet security model EarthExplorer uses.
    4. Signed secure applets don't communicate properly through LiveConnect when using the JAVA 2 Virtual Machine on a Macintosh. See http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=160274 for more information.

    Macintosh users may search for many of the same products at: http://edc.usgs.gov/webglis. You can also access EarthExplorer using the PC emulation package "Virtual PC" if you have this installed on your system

  8. Interesting, somewhat related by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    While working at nasa, a co-worker told me this story once:
    Apparently in the 80's, he had been working on a satellite which contained a sensor to measure ground temperatures. The contractors who were working on the image processing for the data were so far behind, that the program would not be ready until a couple months after the satellite launch (a major PR disaster - no pretty pictures for the public to see!). So he was put on a crack team to hack something together that would be ready by launch time. What they ended up putting together was better than the specs. So the satellite launched and they got back the pictures and saw alot of interesting things... Like, gee, what's that underground hot spot in Nevada, and so on and so forth... So they were all pleased with themselves until the Feds came, classified their program and all the images, dumped all their equipment in a truck, and drove off.. I guess this shows why it is never better to do more than "government work" :)

  9. Other News by stinkydog · · Score: 5, Funny

    In other news the website http://earthexplorer.usgs.gov/ has been crashed by unknown terriosts from the shadowy 'slashdot' organization. This massive 'Denial of Service' attack, know as the 'Slashdot Effect', is the orginizations trademark, much feared by webmasters and network engineers everywhere.

    SD

    --
    âoeWho knew something as harmless as willful ignorance could end up having real consequences?â
  10. Re:Interesting.... by mblumber · · Score: 3, Informative

    This joke is overused, and you used it incorrectly because you don't understand it.

    The reference is to "Underpants Gnomes" (a South Park episode) where a bunch of gnomes steal Tweak's underpants. Their business plan is as follows:

    1. Steal underpants.
    2. ????
    3. Profit! ...and so now you see how this often related to the .com's back a few years ago, but how your "conspiracy theory" list doesn't make any sense.

    --
    Anyone who posts about bad moderation are themselves off-topic and should be moderated accordingly.
  11. Cuban Missiles? by JohnnyBigodes · · Score: 4, Funny

    How about those Cuban Missile Crisis pics, do they have that roll available?

    Saaaaay, you wouldn't perhaps be Saddam Hussein shopping for a few missiles, would you?


  12. Re:Cuban Pics by meringuoid · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Yes, the intelligence pics that proved the Soviets had missiles in Cuba were taken by U2 spy planes. They were published immediately - if you're trying to force the Russians to remove their missiles, you don't keep it a secret that you know about the missiles. You tell the world.

    In the early sixties, satellite reconaissance was primitive - it was still at the stage of ejecting the film in a little capsule to be picked up on the ground :-) Planes were getting much better material then.

    --
    Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
  13. The probable limit of spysats by MtViewGuy · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I think the practical limit for today's KH-11 and newer spysats is about 6-7 cm resolution, not enough to read a newspaper headline but definitely good enough to tell what kind of vehicle you're looking at.

    Remember, even at 100 cm resolution the IKONOS satellite is capable of showing some amazing images. Remember that IKONOS image of the North Korean rocket test facility?

    I expect within the next 4-5 years several companies will be orbiting imaging satellites capable of resolution at 100 cm resolution. It'll be nearly impossible to hid any secret activity with that type of resolution.

  14. waste of tax dollars... by mr_gerbik · · Score: 3, Funny

    Why does the US spend millions and millions of dollars on expensive spy satellites when they could just use kites??

    -gerbik

  15. KH-9, Big Bird by wiredog · · Score: 5, Interesting
    It was the last of the bucket droppers. An interesting book, if you can find it, is Deep Black. It's a history of overhead imaging from the Civil War through the KH-11 program, including the U-2 and SR-71 aircraft.

    My father worked for the Defense Mapping Agency (the predecessor of NIMA) until 89 and he was surprised at some of the things that showed up in that book. Especially that the resolution of the KH-11 (best is 2.5 inches, so it can't read license plates) and KH-9 (9 inches) were in there.

    --

    Best Slashdot Co
  16. A number of interesting uses by d-Orb · · Score: 3, Insightful

    While much of the talk here is about either seeing celebrities naked baking under the Mediterranean sun or spying axis-of-evil governments and the such, the main use these images will have is that they are the first imagery of the Earth from space available. They do record images of the poles from where ice cover can be estimated. Again, forest cover can also be estimated from a time before civilian satellites were a reality. In other words, these images provide us remote sensing data from quite a long while ago. This should help the investigation of better climatic models and so on.

  17. 100cm by wiredog · · Score: 3, Informative

    That's 1 meter. IIRC, the French satellite has 1 meter resolution in the visible light bands. I think the latest Landsats are that good.

    --

    Best Slashdot Co
    1. Re:100cm by MtViewGuy · · Score: 4, Informative

      If I remember correctly, the resolution of SPOT (launched by the French) had a resolution of 10 meters in general. The current Landsat has a resolution around 5 meters, if I remember correctly. For many commercial imaging satellites, very high resolution is not really necessary because they're designed to cover wide areas for environmental research.

      It was only after IKONOS became operational in the late fall of 1999 that commercial imaging satellites reached the 100 cm resolution level. You'll see a lot more 100 cm resolution imaging satellites from multiple companies in the coming years--several American and several European companies are designing such satellites now. We may see commercial imaging satellites capable of imaging down to 50 cm very soon.

  18. USGS web page: Gale Norton strikes again! by mfago · · Score: 5, Informative

    As mentioned in another post, the USGS webpage itself is unusable unless you're running Netscape 4 (windows or linux only) or IE for Windows.

    I think it would be a good idea for as many people as possible to emailthe maintainer of the web page.

    Unsurprising for the gov't to so thouroughly screw-up like this, especially with Interior Secretary Gale Norton at the helm. FWIW, she is facing contempt of court charges for lying in Federal court during a trial of gross mismanagement of the Native American Trust fund. Mismanagement by completely failing to secure a computer system...

    Hell, why don't we all email Gale herself?!

  19. Insteresting Little Story by FatRatBastard · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I used to live on RAF Woodbridge in the UK back in the 80s (go Warriors!) and was there during the infamous Rendlesham forest UFO sighting (of Unsolved Mysteries and East at Left Gate fame). One of the better theories I've read about the whole thing was that the UFO story was a cover story for retrieving low flying spy satellite film canister, which, frankly, makes a hell of a lot more sense than the UFO nutters who are convinced we were doing all sorts of who knows what with ET.

    1. Re:Insteresting Little Story by mumblestheclown · · Score: 3, Insightful
      Absolute bollocks.

      While there may indeed have been film recovery of satellite films (this sounds marginal, but not outside of the realm of possibility), the idea that the film was designed at an airbase if the parachute failed is absolute bollocks.

      given the aerodynamics of a tumbling film canister and high altitude winds or whathave you, they'd be lucky to hit a given county, much less a given airbase. The plan is stupid--if the film cannister is designed to potentially survive a parachute-less fall, why would they bother with the parachute?

      That there was something top-secret flying near an airbase during the cold war is not hard to believe. The notion that this was a film cannister recovery device with lights on it (let me get this straight--it has lights on it AND is designed to renter the atmosphere?) is incredibly hard to believe.

  20. Unbelievable technology by HisMother · · Score: 4, Interesting


    I've read articles about the technology behind these -- it's pretty amazing. The pictures were not "beamed" back to earth -- they were taken on film and the film parachuted back.

    --
    Cantankerous old coot since 1957.
  21. Yup, the film was Kodak film -- no kidding by Buran · · Score: 5, Informative

    Actually, the Corona program did use Kodak film. Due to static problems with early film (which caused arcing on the exposed negatives), Kodak developed polymer-based film.

    I work in an electron microscopy lab and the film used for the EM systems is Kodak 4489 "ESTAR Thick Base" -- which means that my paychecks depend directly on something that was developed for use in space. (As a space buff -- Buran is/was the Soviet space shuttle -- I'm quite pleased with that situation.) A spinoff, as they're commonly called.

    The EM film is mounted on metal plates for exposing and when developed yields 8cmx10cm transparencies using Kodak D-19 developer. For Corona, the exposed film was placed in a reentry capsule which parachuted back to earth and was retrieved midair by a C-119 Flying Boxcar aircraft. It doesn't take that long to develop at all and can be ready for analysis the same day.

    According to the Kodak EM film page:

    "KODAK Electron Micrography Film 4489 has approximately half the speed of KODAK Electron Image Film SO-163 film, but exhibits less curl and shorter pump-down times. Coated on a 7mils Estar support, KODAK Electron Microscope Film offers exceptional dimensional stability and eliminates the use of traditional glass support products."

    We are still using film because (1) electron microscopes are very expensive, so ours are from the mid-1970s, (2) it's not that easy to retrofit them, at least as far as I understand it, for full digital, and (3) it's not all that hard to put the negatives on a lightbox and shoot them with a professional digital SLR, which is how we get the images into computers for processing. And, of course, (4) digital camera technology still hasn't beat out film for quality yet, though we're hoping to get a Canon EOS-1Ds soon that will start to close the quality gap.

    (The film is kept in a vacuum once in the microscope -- something else which I'm sure was a benefit for Corona.)

    If you want to see some sample EM images taken with the Kodak film, see our lab's image gallery. Don't bother with Kodak's sample images, they suck. ;)

    I'm pretty sure that Kodak also designed the Corona camera system, though I'm not certain who the actual builder was.

    --
    i am a soviet space shuttle
  22. Panoramic Imagery by briancnorton · · Score: 5, Informative
    This is all great and all, but I have worked with corona imagery (after 1996) and it's REALLY hard to use.

    First of all, the imagery is not vertical, it's panoramic. Great for intel agencies, not so great for mapping. It's almost impossible to orthographically rectify, and hence use for anything useful. The resolution of the film is very good. It's something like 150 lp/mm, and the stereo is very good, but it's a pain in the butt to do panoramic stereo without special equipment.

    second, geo-referencing was accomplished in a brilliant, if arcane way. A second camera was involved that took pictures of the stars 180 away from the image. To find out what the picture is of, you need starcharts and a lot of math to figure out what stars you are looking at, where the satellite was, and what the picture is of. The equipment to do this in a useful environment is VERY expensive.

    third, it's panchromatic and not IR sensitive. You can see some ground features, but nothing environmental, and not all that much of historical significance. Consequently, the imagery has not been used for as much as had been hoped.

    --

    People who think they know everything really piss off those of us that actually do.

  23. Facinating ingelligence! by mumblestheclown · · Score: 4, Funny
    Imagine - hanoi appears to be at the juncture of two rivers, and beijing seems to have some sort of big square.

    With intelligence-gather incapabilities like that, no wonder we won the cold war.

  24. Cuban missile pics by Sarin · · Score: 3

    They didn't use satellites to make those, but spyplanes.

    Geez, has no-one seen thirteen days?

  25. The ones that are still classified by smaugy · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Wouldn't it be possible to fit them together like a jigsaw puzzle to find out which ones weren't declassified?

  26. Re:Hello, this is the US, Israel's bitch. by lemkebeth · · Score: 3, Informative

    You wrote:

    Israel is quite fine with fighting, they took over Palestine, part of Egypt, the Golan Heights (they still occupy the Golan Heights and Palestine)

    I feel compelled to point out that Britain gave Palestine for the new Israel. Palestine was British controlled

  27. Common misinformation on HST by StupendousMan · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The parent is wrong about several things:

    As others have said already, the primary mirror is not of the right design to look back at the Earth and actually yield the right kind of details. Hubble focuses to infinity and an earth-imaging satellite only has to focus to a distance of a few hundred miles -- the exact altitude depends on the satellite's orbit.
    HST's instruments include movable mirrors which allow one to modify the focus. They could easily focus on objects at the distance of the Earth's surface. HST has taken pictures of the Moon, which is certainly not at infinity.

    Furthermore, Hubble's optics are too sensitive to be pointed at the Earth or the Moon -- both are so bright that they'd blow out the sensors.

    Some of HST's instruments would saturate if they took exposures of the Earth through wide filters. Others would not. The HST calibration team sometimes takes exposures of the Earth or Moon to use as flatfields.

    But, yes, as many have already pointed out, HST can't take images resolving newspaper headlines.

    --
    Michael Richmond "This is the heart that broke my finger."
    mwrsps@rit.edu http://stupendous.rit.edu
  28. Working site by tevman · · Score: 4, Informative

    http://edc.usgs.gov/webglis

    this is the site w/o java issues

    --
    sig is broken try again tomorrow
  29. Re:Hello, this is the US, Israel's bitch. by neocon · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Umm, hello?

    If you haven't noticed, we don't publish images of military facilities in any of our allies. Israel, being one of only two examples of a free, open democracy in it's part of the world, is very definitely one such ally.

    But since you don't see any difference between a nation (like Israel or the US) which has had nukes for decades and never used them, and a nation like Iraq which has used every WMD it has ever gotten it's hands on, including against hundreds of thousands of its own people, I guess expecting you to think logically about the matter is a little much.

  30. Russians nuked the Chinese by cilyrabit · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Rumor... a friend told me this story a year ago, don't know if its true and didn't find anything about it after a quick search on the internet... but here goes:

    My friend said "

    I had a friend who used to work for the government... years ago he processed the photos that the US spy satellites took. One night at dinner the discussion had wandered onto the topic of the atomic bomb and its potential uses in a modern conflict, and someone says something to the effect:

    "... the US is the only country that has used the atomic bomb against another nation..."

    At which the friend spoke up, "Except for the time when the Russians bombed the Chinese."

    Everyone at the table stopped talking and looked at him. "What!"

    "Oh you guys didn't hear about that did you..."

    A rough outline of the scenario...

    Back in the late 50's or early 60's sometime the Russians and the Chinese are glaring at each other across the Siberian border of which some remote corner's exact boundries are in dispute. Each country lines up some number of troops and tensions are a little high. Finally the Russians move their withdraw their troops back about 10 miles... the next day the Chinese advance 10 miles. A few days later the Russians retreat 25 miles... over the next few days the Chinese advance 25 miles (meanwhile the US spy satellites are catching all of this in photos). A few more days go by and the Russians retreate 50 miles and the Chinese advance once again. So the Russian retreat 100 miles and drop a nuke right above the Chinese! ... From that point on Chinese ceased their dispute over the Siberian border.

    Is this true! How come no one has heard of this story? Supposedly the Russians weren't going to tell because they didn't want to attract international condemnation. Besides, they had used in their own territory. They could claim it to be a test.

    The Chinese? They didn't want to have to answer the question, "What was China doing with troops deep in Soviet Siberia."

    The US? Why were they silent? That is top secret, but maybe some of the declassified photos show the events...