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Budget Issues Force Spy Satellites Into The Open
Korsair25 points out this article about a U.S. spy satellite program. "Quote: 'Over the decades, spying from space has always earned super-secret status. They are the black projects, fulfilling dark tasks and often bankrolled by blank check.' It also talks about some of the technology used to disguise or camouflage some of the operational satellites."
blank checks rock...
I click "read more" and up pops.
Nothing for you to see here. Please move along.
I for one welcome my old NSA overlords.
So close and yet so far from the world's perfect ID number
I've been wearing my tinfoil hat all these years, it's finally paid off!
Original poster used Yahoo's version of the article. It originally is from Space.com. Here is the original URL with pictures.
lexbaby
"Be Brave, Be Loyal, Be True." -- Hawkeye Pierce
Yea, those super secret spy satellites did us a whole lot of good in Iraq...a desert, no trees, little clouds. Yea, alot of good.
Sorry, just being cynical.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't the constituttion mandate that congress make publicly available a DETAILED ledger of expenses? Oh well, it's not like the US government cares about little things like their founding charter any more. After all, who needs a pretense of legitimacy?
The all-seeing eye controls a lot of these satellites. They're used for missions such as the illuminati's plot to blow up Houston, TX on December 27 (which was aborted due to the tsunami/earthquake overshadowing any media circus this would have attracted) in order to justify invading Iran.
9 2)
At least, that's what my friendly local conspiracy nut tells me, so it must be true.
(reference: http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=25
You're doing it wrong.
Do NOT talk about Spy Satellites!
This is indeed a fine line that the article discusses:
There is now a delicate dance underway between issues of national security and open public scrutiny about taxpayer dollars being spent wisely or squandered. Meanwhile, the swirl of secrecy seems to be revolving around a top secret "stealthy" satellite project, codenamed MISTY.
I had the good fortune to read Michael Ignatieff's new book The Lesser Evil: Political Ethics in an Age of Terror during the winter holidays. It discusses this issue in depth, and it helped bring a lot of the issues into focus. At least in this case, it seems that the lawmakers are given this information - even if it is only in a 'closed' environment. Of course, the Bush admin should not be threatening lawmakers that are speaking out at all.
Now, some secrecy is needed; but really, there is both a pro and con to liberal democracy - I would say that in this case, the Bush admin should be as open as possible. The 'clear and present' danger at this time is 'terrorism', and is their knowledge of spy satellites really going to change things? Perhaps, I'm not an expert, but unless this can be demonstrated openness is required.
I'm going to try to pre-empt another claim, that of the People's Republic of China. In my opinion, they are not yet a threat, and policy can not be planned around hostilities - that's when you get a new cold war planned. Secrecy is a great debate for public policy - in this case, I'd say given the current situation, the prudent move would be to move towards openness.
"There's no success like failure, and failure's no success at all."
- Bob Dylan
As we see in the movie "Spies Like Us" (Chevy Chase, Dan Aykroyd), all spy satellites have a little sign on them that says
"This is not a spy satellite"
Easy.
"And then I visited Wikipedia
I mean like didnt yall see Enemy of the State ?
Spy satelites are most usefull chasing guys around whos kids toys get swapped at the store for some digital movie of a top level spook killing a senator, happens all the time
and they of course can see right through wall and stuff.
After reading your post, I'm struck by two things:
a) You are relatively well-read.
b) Your spelling and grammar make me want to claw out my fucking eyes.
No offense.
But the moon is actually a giant spy sattelite. There was no actual moon before 1954.
Wow, Im sure Bush had a lot to do with the spy sattelite programs in the late 80's early 90's. uhuh, keep thinking that.
And they said that was a power screwdriver. It certainly explains why DoD tools cost so much back then, they were really spybots!
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Sattelites also make a loud *whoosh* sound when the camera pans by them.
Military spy satellites have always been superior in both resolution, contrast-to-noise-ratio and magnification to their non-military counterparts.
Now these previously secret optics technology are partially out in the open, what will be done with them?
I'm sure they could be used to greatly improve the imaging resolution of space probes for example.
(After an elusive secret society of slashdot users uses it for a frikkin earth-blasting-laser that is)
is that you?
" However last month, several U.S. senators openly blew the whistle on a mystery spy satellite program, critical of its high cost while calling to question its utility in today's post-9/11 world."
People won't give them a second glance. Until they can't get their coffee...
Karma: Good. I'm hoping in the same way as pizza is 'good'...
It seems to me that this is a replacement for a project we (The United States) used to have but ditched for parochial political reasons.
One of the major problems with satellites, as everyone knows, is that they're relatively predictable. An opponent with a minor degree of sophistication can figure out when the satellite is going to be overhead, and if his project is small enough that he can hide it at that time, he will. It wasn't such a problem when one was dealing with the Soviets, who liked to build big things that were difficult to hide, but now that the major opponents are organizations like al-Qaida or the various factions fighting the U.S. in Iraq it's not so easy; they don't build aircraft carriers or industrial complexes very often, to say the least.
Traditionally the solution to this problem has been to fly over with an airplane. It's not so easy to predict when an airplane is going to fly over, so you're more likely to see the things that the opposition would hide if they knew you were looking. Right now, we're using the U-2 and the Predator drone for this task, and it seems to be working pretty well.
Should the U.S. find itself up against a more sophisticated opponent, one who has the ability to shoot down a U-2 or a low-speed/altitude drone, we've got a problem. There is, theoretically, a weapons system in the U.S. inventory which would be much less vulnerable to even a sophisticated opponent, the SR-71, but that program was permenantly cancelled in 1998.
MISTY would be a way of compensating for this loss. A stealth spy satellite would provide an aerial intelligence capability against an opponent sophisticated to shoot down a U-2 or a predator.
(It should be noted that FAS seems to think we have a plane to replace the SR-17, and they have some pretty good evidence, especially about unexplained sonic booms, but their conclusions are by no means certain. http://www.fas.org/irp/mystery/aurora.htm Besides, why would Uncle Sam want one system when he could have two for the price of two?)
Rule #3 is that governments lie about any and everything. Consider that it might not be a spy satellite at all, but that the "stealth" attributes described in the Yahoo News article might belong to some category of offensive orbital weapons system. That the Pentagon's Space Command has publicly stated its intention to deploy orbital nuclear powered weapons in the near future to "deny" space to other nations is public record. You can find links to lots of original documentation to this effect at http://www.space4peace.org/ For those who like audio, the director of that outfit is a guy named Bruce Gagnon, and you can find a number of interviews and speeches by him at http://www.radio4all.net, all downloadable free MP3 audio. My favorite one, a general discussion of the Space Command and our country's offensive military posture in space, is at http://www.radio4all.net/proginfo.php?id=6827
Now that the top secret data from these spy sattelites is being released, other crucial details of the US Government black-ops orbital-projects are being revealed.
Apparently most of the governments secret high-optical resolution sattelites were curiously locked in geo-synchronous orbits above St. Tropez, Copacabana and other great beaches of the world.
It was also revealed that image data from these locations while still 'classified and unreleased' was stored in a black-ops folder mysteriously titled "My Cleave Shotz". No further information is currently available.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
This "We don't need spy satalites in the current climate so we shouldn't develop them" is EXACTLY the kind of "get what we need for right now" thinking that got us in trouble with 9/11 in the first place.
We can't just react to the situation we're in now. We need a broad base of capabilities to address needs we have now, AND needs we may have in the future, AND needs we have no idea we'll have in the future.
We got burned on 9/11 because our entire system was still moving from being extremely focused on fighting the cold war to being extremely focused on being able to fight two regional conflicts. So we got hit where we were vulnerable - global terrorist conflict.
Just as ignoring that threat was a mistake in the past, deciding to scrap any equipment related to threats not currently present would be just as grave of an error, one we should hopefully avoid discovering in hindsight.
paintball
...how useful they are/were? The US intelligence agencies are not likely to tell folks where they got what information if they don't have to. For example, if information concerning the locations and orientations of anti-aircraft weaponry was obtained via satellite, the information would likely be passed to on-scene commanders, but not to CNN or such, so the average person is not going to know how effective the satellites are.
How do you know that that 6-ton communications satellite is just a communications satellite?
Since there is a Constitutional requirement that the knowledge needs to be public, this may be re-written as the public having a "need to know". However, if you then re-write this to say that those who have a "need to know" are the public, you can comply with the Constitution and omit 99.999% of the citizens of the US.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I always get a big chuckle when I see publicly disseminated satellite images of land and buildings. The resolutions are relatively poor and give the impression that satellites can give rough photographs of terrain etc but can't see too much.
The reality is that satellite photography can read your watch if it's left outdoors - oh and visible light isn't the half of it.
Si tacuisses philosophus mansisses. If you had kept quiet, you would have remained a philosopher.
An excerpt from "My Life From All My Veiwpoints: An Anthology" by John Kerry.
The only thing new in this world is the history that you don't know.[Harry Truman]
The article is not about discontinuing all spy satelites. It's about discontinuing the incredibly expensive stealth satelites, which our enemies *shouldn't* be able to identify the orbits of.
FTA: "The reason why, Aftergood explained, is because congressional appropriators are free to spend the money without being held accountable for their actions."
One central problem in our American government is the pursuit of necessarily secret projects, while our government is controlled by a system of oversight for accountability. Some projects are kept secret from the oversight, and at least some of those get out of control. Reagan's Iran/Contra operation violated several laws, as well as conflicting with several foreign policies regarding both Iran and South American drug cartels. And these satellites apparently violate any sensible cost:benefit*risk analysis. Just as extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, so does extraordinary secrecy require extraordinary legitimacy. We can't know about the essential secret operations that succeed despite lack of oversight. But the repeated abuse of secrecy, merely to cover up "enormous boondoggles" as reported in the article, threatens the specific project goals, as well as the ability to run *any* government project without oversight. It's now an open secret that the Federal Government is collapsing under its own weight, along fault lines of abuse huge enough to be seen from space for generations.
--
make install -not war
I thought it was just pretty much assumed we did this kind of stuff. Not really a shocker to me.
just because your a schizophrenic doesn't mean people arn't really out to get you
"Who Wants to Flip Off the Government" I'm your host, Porter J. Goss. This week, contestants try to flip off the government's spy satellites while a team of CIA agents hunts them down and arrests them for seditious behavior.
Interesting. Sen. Jay Rockefeller's comments were extraordinary. Why is the media now spinning this into a stealth-in-space story when the real story is a weapons-in-space story? I find it hard to believe that a stealth satellite program would be inherently dangerous to national security. A satellite that had weapons on board, however, would be a different story altogether. If true, this would be an obvious next step after BMD (ballistic missle defense).
In other words, a fat-ass lie. I think I'm going to adopt that one foy my next cost analysis meeting.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
... a democrat jeopardizing national security for political noise and gain.
ive seen that error a few times when trying to read slashdot stories with no new comments on them.
Still - yes its very appropriate
A recurring conspiracy of mine is that the 1990 debacle with the Hubble Space Telescope mirror being out of focus was intended. It was out of focus for astronomical observations, but was probably perfect for ground observations. This would allow the government to take the highest resolution pics available for the three years it was up there until they repaired the mirror.
Any takers on this idea?
When they went up to repair it, not only did they take "the fix", but they probably returned with some photographic negatives too.
Did you really think the government was going to spend all that money just for a big telescope to look at the stars?
it's simply not possible for 300-odd people, even with 100-person staffs, to micromanage every aspect of government.
Maybe that's a sign that we have too much goverment?
Chip H.
"I for one welcome my old NSA overlords."
I don't know if you noticed, but there was another NSA listed in the story. Another example of obscuring by misdirection.
...terrorists entering and leaving the caves...
Are you calling the White House a cave?
Now the government has some great pictures of you wearing your hat.
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
If you do the math, the theoretical resolving limit for a 2.4m mirror (Hubble's size, which is about the same as the KH-11 and KH-12 spy satellites since they're all launched from the space shuttle) works out to about 5cm in the visible spectrum at a 90 mile altitude. That's under optimal conditions. They might be able to see if you're wearing a watch, but there's no way they can read the time unless the government has figured out some way to bypass the laws of physics.
Typical excited reported verbage. No facts. Just a few code words, most of which i have seen elsewhere.
Actually, yes, he was involved then and before then directly-George Herbert Walker Bush that is. It may be that the founding poster of this thread was attempting humor by mention of Capo George W. Bush "protecting" the US from terrorists, but if you knew that you would not have made a serious response. From 1976-1977 H. W. Bush was director of the CIA, from 1981-1989 he was President Reagan's vice president, and from 1989-1993 he was President himself in the US. Now think before commenting in the future.
Re: Augustus. He was not a king, merely he held the Consulship, Tribunition, Censorship, and Pontificate perpetually and all at the same time.
Sweet jumpin' Jehosaphat -- a Classics scholar on SlashDot!
Excellent example, very applicable. Keep up the good work.
-kgj
-kgj
All warfare is based on deception.
-Sun Tzu
Can we infer, then, that all peace is based on truth, honesty, candor?
-kgj
-kgj
Is this the satellite that Tom Cruise used to see his girl friend kissing in Mission Impossible 2?!
Good argument for dramatically reducing the size of the government, isn't it? Although I doubt it will ever be possible to reduce ours to something which can be effectively supervised.
... government, "effectively supervised"?
... more government.
Ummm
Supervised by what? other than
-kgj
-kgj
... at least some of those get out of control. Reagan's Iran/Contra operation violated several laws ...
Iran/Contra did violate several laws (e.g. Boland Amendment), but not because the project got out of control.
Rather, the Iran/Contra conspirators deliberately circumvented the law from the outset.
Link
-kgj
-kgj
Whoa! Before you tar me with feathers or think I've drunk deeply of 'there was no holocaust' brew re-read the post headline. The emphasis is on SNEAK as in "we" (the US) were surprised by the attack on this day at this hour. Some very definitely were, but according to material recently released under FOI (Freedom Of Information) actions, our head of state, FDR himself, wasn't one of them. In fact (as the FOI record presents) he worked very hard to make it LOOK like a sneak attack. Here (below) is a partial from recently released transcripts:
The Final Secret of Pearl Harbor by John T. Flynn
The thesis of the following article was endorsed by many of the top-ranking U.S. Military commanders in the Pacific at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack. The evidence is clear that Roosevelt did everything he could to goad the Japanese to attack American forces as a back door into the war in Europe. At the same time he adopted this policy, Roosevelt did everything he could to weaken the ability of America to be warned of the attack and repulse it. A large body of evidence indicates Roosevelt actually had prior warning of the attack, but did nothing to prevent it so the ensuing catastrophe would galvanize America for war.
October 1945
On Wednesday, August 29, 1945, President Truman gave out the reports of the Army and Navy Boards directed by Congress to investigate the responsibility for the great disaster of December 7, 1941, at Pearl Harbor. These Boards had filed their reports nine months ago. Under the pretext that issuance of them would disclose important military secrets President Roosevelt suppressed them. But President Truman has not by any means given out the whole story. Portions of it are still suppressed. He says they will never be given out. And that is the simple truth. They will never be given out by this government until Congress compels the government to release all the information which it is hiding from the people and which it hopes to hide from history.
The Roberts Report ? which was also doctored before being released ? blamed Admiral [Husband] Kimmel and General [Walter] Short for the defeat. Now the two Army and Navy reports expand the guilt to cover General Marshall, Admiral Stark and former Secretary of State Hull. Marshall and Stark were the Army and Navy chiefs in December. 1941. All the top commanders have now been blamed, plus various lesser commanders. But the greatest commander of all is left out ? the Commander-in-Chief. In the 150,000 words of these findings and comments the name of Franklin D. Roosevelt stands out in almost monumental conspicuousness by its absence. The Army and Navy chiefs, the former Secretary of State and Congress have been blamed and the President of the United States has added to the culprits the 130,000,000 people of the United States. The only person not blamed is Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was running the whole show. However, in spite of all the suppressions, the story of Pearl Harbor is known. And here I propose to tell it. Put in plain terms the tragedy of Pearl Harbor was the dark fruit of three incredible blunders. First in importance was the manner in which the crisis was managed. The second blunder was the bottling of the fleet in Pearl Harbor. The third was the stripping of the defenses of Pearl Harbor. It was Roosevelt who personally managed the whole crisis. It was Roosevelt who bottled the fleet in Pearl Harbor. It was Roosevelt who stripped the base of its defenses. First then, let us look at the crisis as it developed in Washington. Let us see it now in the light of the facts which this government has hidden and which I will now reveal publicly for the first time.
We shall have to look at two battlefields. One was the Pacific, where Kimmel and Short brooded week after week over their deplorable condition, begging for more weapons, fighting against the inroads made on what they had and living almost completely in the dark as to what was happening in that vast, mysterious Pacific world in which they found themselves. We
No 'secret' revealed in the Washington Times or on C-span is worth anything.
The real secrets are the ones people have been trained to not believe in even if they hear them.
How do I know?
You wouldn't believe me if I told you.
-FL
Bet that some of these secret satellites could have provided a quick and reasonably accurate estimate of damage immediatly after the tsunami disaster. Would have at least let GW aviod the 15 million, no 35 million PR disaster.
I don't like how the US is invading our privacy more and more. Especially being a boylover who posts at http://boychat.org/ I just want to live my life in peace. I don't hurt kids, but everyone thinks I do. It is sad.
Go read Chaisson's book _The Hubble Wars_. Many of the technical problems that the Hubble Space Telescope had (wiggling solar masts, various areas of electromagnetic interference) had already been encountered by some of the black satellite programs, only the people in those programs couldn't say anything because their projects were classified. Not even a hint of "you might want to beef up those struts." Took a shuttle mission to fix that.
HST science was delayed *years* and costs skyrocketed because of this bogosity. This attitude of the military "blank check" projects really pisses me off and makes me want to stop paying for their projects. (Thus, letters to my senators and representatives).
Any sufficiently advanced technology is insufficiently documented.
Rats. And I had resolved for 2005 not to make fun of the perceptually disabled.
-FL
I think the argument for expensive intelligence was best put forward by the most underated Diplomat/Intel Officer in US History. He said...
"Americans have always had an ambivalent attitude toward intelligence. When they feel threatened, they want a lot of it, and when they don't, they regard the whole thing as somewhat immoral. "
- Gen Vernon Walters, Silent Missions (later Amb to the UN)
He went on to explain that policy makers need the best possible information to make the right decisions (Iraq anyone) and in the worst case pointed out "...thinking Americans must ask themselves whether we could survive a nuclear Pearl Harbor. If the answer is no, then we must understand the greatest deterrent to such an attack is the PERCEPTION by a potential enemy that the United States had the capability of detecting the preparations for such action and the means for massive retaliation."
Bitch all you want, but its a dangerous world out there.
www.vernonwalters.org
Damn, no mod points again, when I want to use those...
From what I know, the total Federal Dept. of Education's budget is about twice the total defence budget (I remember numbers of $B800 vs. $B400 from a couple of years ago, not sure what they are now), while education is not even one of the constitutionally-authorized duties of the Federal Govt! Not that I am saying that it is BAD, only that maybe, just maybe, it would be better left to the states, counties, towns, etc....
And on top of that _graduate_ _computer_ _science_ students in a decent (in CS) University do not have a clue what log() is, really...
Paul B.
The picture is somewhat bigger than that. If you try to piece things together using the puzzle bits provided by orthodox media, you are never going to get beyond the Fischer Price version of reality.
Should we be in Iraq? Jeezuz. That's a useless question designed for the people destined to do the dying. Try asking, "Why are there three slightly different and equally insane religions dominating the world, who put them there and how?"
And yes, it was bloody-well deliberate.
One can't think outside of the box if one refuses to acknowledge boxes.
-FL
I mean, come on! A sociopath doesn't care about the welfare of other people. Killing a few thousand to achieve his/her goals is no different than blowing up frogs during childhood. It's not like the U.S. hasn't recklessly killed innocent people before in the name of weapons sales and big business. Honestly! Why is this such a hard logical step for people to make?
I mean, it's the easiest and most rational solution. It fits all the evidence without requiring any mental gymnastics. And yet, people insist on coming up with laborious and clumsy explanations which all spin around the make-believe center pin wherein Bush and his fellows are not really self-serving, heartless liars. Anything but that!
That, in itself, is evidence enough of an even more important principal at work, I think.
-FL
As far as terrorists go, they're not going to be shooting satellites out of orbit any time soon, and I doubt they'll be tracking them without help from a nation-state. For dealing with terrorists, it would make more sense to spend your money on launching more conventional sats, so you had 24-hour coverage of the entire globe.
Unless 24-hour coverage is impossible, the only reason to have stealthy spy satellites is if you think somebody's going to try and take them down in a conflict. Or, alternatively, the company that's got the contract is a big campaign doner.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
These things have to be kept secret to avoid
embarrassing questions about their cost effectiveness.
If, for example, the Iranians want to avoid detection from spy satellites all they have to do is invest in a large number of large pieces of black plastic sheeting. Spread them around the country and then build whatever they want under a few of the pieces. Now if they don't do anything but just move the plastic sheeting around, they can cause the US government to go broke at a minimal cost to themselves as our hawkish Congress falls all over themselves to build more satellites.
We need to spend $100 billion for a single satellite and they only have to spend a few thousand bucks for plastic sheeting. The North Koreans are not quite as smart, they think they actually need to dig tunnels to keep our satellites from seeing anything on the 40-60% of the days that are clear enough to see the ground anyway.
But hey, its all about the kickbacks that ensue when these things are built in various congressional districts anyway. It has little to do with actual security. Do you really feel safer that $100 billion has been spent on a satellite rather than say to fix potholes in the road you drive to and from work every day, to upgrade the air traffic control system, or to ensure that the over-the-counter medications you take are actually safe? What is more hazaradous? You figure the probabilities.
Gosh, I love the silly notions of our constitution requiring a detailed ledger of expenditures. Good for a real laugh. Even if it were true, much of the constitution has been de facto repealed for quite some time now anyway. Its become largely a show document, mostly to impress visitors to the National Archives and others with our righteousness. Like Christianity, its not taken too seriously nowadays, even by its most ardent supporters.
P.T. Barnum didn't really have it right when he said "There's a sucker born every minute". Actually, its closer to 10 suckers/minute.
Think about it: the U.S. government isn't going to reveal any secrets in any article except for perhaps a few minor secrets from the 1950's. And also consider that any public statement by the intelligence community is made for a reason. Always. And it's not to reveal secrets. I consider this article part of a PR campaign: you are to accept being watched as the new reality.
So it seems the new world order will resemble a prison.
I would say that in this case, the Bush admin should be as open as possible...I'm going to try to pre-empt another claim, that of the People's Republic of China. In my opinion, they are not yet a threat, and policy can not be planned around hostilities - that's when you get a new cold war planned. Secrecy is a great debate for public policy - in this case, I'd say given the current situation, the prudent move would be to move towards openness.
OK, so if you're WRONG, then well, I guess we'll tell the history books that it's slashdot poster "Staplerh"s fault.
Please.
Everyone's entitled to an opinion, but could we have a modicum of respect for the premise that a GOVERNMENT has to have somewhat conservative views about the security of it's peoples? I mean, it's not just a 'judgement call' for the government, if they are wrong, people die, sometimes in horrifically large numbers. For a government it's not just a matter of opinion and judgement, it's a matter of choosing the MOST prudent and LEAST risky policy at almost all times.
-Styopa
I suggest you use them before loose them. Then again, its seems that yours may have been underfunded.
Shame cloning technology will be unable to come to the rescue.
My favorite story to recall is when in the late 80's or so, the Russian government called the US authorities and told them a plane crashed in a Wisconsin lake and that those people probably needed help. Not bad if they really did find out from satellites.
"we have a plane to replace the SR-17, and they have some pretty good evidence."
Oh, I agree completely, since I've seen it three times, at high altitude.
It was about 16 years ago camping at Mono Lake in California. I always went there for the annual Perseids meteor shower because it's nice and dark.
I saw it the first time and was blown away at how damn-fast that aircraft was moving across the horizon. Traveling from North to South it was faaar faster than anything I'd ever seen, and I've been lucky enough to see the X-15 rocket plane in person, and watch movies of it, and this aircraft was comparably as fast, or faster.
The sound it made was described perfectly a few months later in a small blurb in Avation Week and Space Technology magazine, of which I was a subscriber. It almost sounded like the sky was ripping... I agree, it was really weird.
The next year I saw it twice (different days) and it had a pulsed, morse code like trail following it this time. This time it sounded almost like those old WW2 buzz bombs, in a really weird sort of way.
What I saw is not an aknowledged aircraft by any U.S. military agency, or world government as far as I've ever been able to tell.
I've seen it, it's real for me.
Now put on your tin foil hat, and realize that it was flying toward Groom Lake...
Ok, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and accept that this may work against optical imaging.
How do you propose protecting against infrared imaging, microwave radar and radio/microwave communications?
Paul
Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate
They'd look like large warm things, they could use different paint to help dopple the effect making the radar look a bit more interesting.
You need longer waves than IR to look under the covers, microwaves will bounce straight off.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
It amazes me how easily Americans accept a corrupt government that keeps secrets from them.
I was losing 35% of my paycheck when I was working for McD's part time in high school.
Perhaps you were having 35% total held back from each check, but that has to do with what your employer decides to withhold rather than what your tax bracket is. If you were a high school kid working at McD's, you should have received a good sized portion of that 35% back as a refund at the end of the year.
Perl - $Just @when->$you ${thought} s/yn/tax/ &couldn\'t %get $worse;
The US Government has been preparing for the weaponization of space. With the USA unsigning the ATF Treaty it is now preparing, through the recently formed [i]Space Command[/i] department, to put nuclear weapons into orbit around the Earth.
Anyone notice all the stories, lately, about old space junk falling out of orbit? Hmm.
The SR71 was almost as predictable as a spy satellite. The stuff it burned as fuel was unlike any other jet fuel, so it had its own dedicated fleet of tankers for in-air refueling. In addition, it leaked fuel when cold, so didn't bother taking off with a full load - just enough to get up and heat up a bit. Then it would refuel in-air with its operational load.
So all one needed to do was keep an eye on the tankers for the SR71. When they flew, it was a good indicator that the SR71 was going to fly. See which tankers were flying, and you had some indication of where the SR71 was going to fly.
Certainly not as predictable as an orbit, but at least a clear indication.
To replace the SR71 with a "better" spy plane, you don't even need something to fly higher or faster, just something of roughly equal capability with simpler logistics.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Because in light of current events, clearly there was no threat to the US from terrorism, as evidenced by WTC1, the Cole, embassies, etc.
OTOH, there was a clear and present danger that required focusing ALL of our State Dept. attention on scrapping the ABM treaty and deploying some form of the old Star Wars program.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
But given the "outing" of MISTY into the public forum, has national security been compromised?
"I doubt it," Aftergood responded. "Other than its extravagant cost, very little concrete new information about the program has entered the public domain."
Nobody's let slip any info on the actual hardware used, they've just pointed out how much money we're spending on these projects and questioned whether we could be better spending it slesewhere. I highly doubt the technology will be released anytime soon.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
I don't think infrared imaging is going to be very effective when there's hundreds of square miles ofr fucking hot desert in all directions
Even at night, or in winter?
Paul
Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate
Actually, a very simple fix is all that is needed. Scatter heterogeneous dirt and grit and other debris onto the plastic to match or confuse the background. A perfect match isn't really needed to obscure detail that lies UNDER the plastic from either IR or radar. What makes such a strategy effective is that it is very low cost and would require huge investments in bandwidth and processing to discover.
One must keep in mind that imaging largely results from the properties of the surface being imaged, it doesn't really do a good job of imaging what is UNDER the surface.
Plastic gets as hot/cold as the background, actually a hotter if its black, which would make it very difficult to "see underneath" using IR.
While there is big money in put into getting people to believe that these technologies can "see through walls", read wristwatches, etc., like on star trek and other "reality-based TV" only a small hand calculator and a few basic principles of optics/imaging can be used to recognize that the laws of physics limit what can be imaged under what circumstances.
If people actually knew how easy it is to fool satellites, they would be far more reluctant to pay for the big contracts.
The fringe elements of the NSA and CIA under Bush Sr have taken control of those organizations, and the Pentagon, the White House, and the country as a whole.
... furthermore, the best laid plans etc. On top of which, what think we know is inevitably mucked up by disinformation and ignorance. Life's rich pageant, as scripted by murderers and thieves.
...
... the Syndicate, Lansky et. al. ... J. Edgar Hoover's blowjob photo ... heroin smuggling ... sweet deals for Lucky Luciano ... rise of OSS, CIA, etc. ... MK/ULTRA ... Hoover and LBJ ... LBJ's murderous rise to power ... Nixon and the "Bay of Pigs thing" ... Nixon and Jacob Rubenstein ... Farewell America, November 1963 ... strange deaths ... E. Howard Hunt et. al. ... Allen Dulles et. al. ... the Southeast Asia group ... COINTELPRO ... James Garrison's investigation ... more strange deaths ... the Huston plan ... Watergate ... spook umbrellas and shellfish toxins ... E. Howard Hunt et. al. redux ... (interlude: the Church Commitee) ... George Bush, CIA director ... (interlude: James Earl Carter) ... Iran hostages, October Surprise, the Long Hand of G. Bush ... cocaine, cocaine, cocaine ... PROMIS ... Danny Casolaro, RIP ... Eugene Hasenfus ... Ronald Reagan, Actor Laureate ... George "I wasn't in the loop" Bush, VP ... Tony Avirgan, Martha Honey ... Christic Institute, RIP ... President George Bush ... (meanwhile, back in the USSR: former KGB chief Yuri Andropov; spooky!) ... ECHELON ... crack wars ... Silverado Savings and Loan ... Arbusto ... BCCI ... Enron ... 9/11 ... Paul Wellstone, RIP ... Gary Webb, RIP ... America, RIP.
Thanks, Doc, for fleshing out my comments. We think alike.
Of course, one seldom if ever knows what the fuck is really going on, in any detail. There is no "conspiracy", singular: we live a world of conspiracies, plural and multifarious and conflicting
Nonetheless, one does get suspicious about chains of events
1920's bootlegging
Sorry, I was rambling. Did I miss much?
-kgj
-kgj
http://www.lib.byu.edu/~rdh/wwi/1918p/mesopo.html Spy satellites are handy but the current intelligence failure is of human and not technological nature.
Amen to that. Parent should *not* be marked as Flamebait.
.. Enron in Afghanistan via the Dabhol power plant is at least $35B ...
... and the $1.5T S&L heist.
....
I didn't know about that one.
Whoops -- I missed that one! And what a whopper it is, too!
And, oh yeah -- the whole "Prescott Bush, Nazi Profiteer" thing
The deliciously scandalous Neil Bush divorce.
And who could forget Dubya's military service record? (Other than Dubya himself, along with the lapdog -- uhh, mass -- media.)
-kgj
-kgj
If George Lucas cant keep Star Wars: Episode III under wraps, Then nothing can be truely hidden.. Including spy sat's.
You probably know about Neil Bush's divorce, initiated by his now ex-wife because of Neil's extramarital, umm, happenstance:
... Rick Flowers.
The women, [Neil Bush] said, simply knocked on the door of his hotel room, entered and had sex with him. He said he did not know if they were prostitutes because they never asked for money and he did not pay them. "It was very unusual," he said.
Link
But to me, the really creepy part is that his divorce lawyer is named
I dunno. There's just something about "Rick Flowers" that creeps me out.
-kgj
PS, memo to self:
Find out if there are any Republicans who actually believe their own ideology, and ask them to censure Neil for his free-hookers, anti-family lifestyle.
-kgj
Goddamn. I just remembered: Operation Northwoods.
...!"
I suppose a list like this will never going to be complete. "So much to do, so little time
-kgj
-kgj
The part that proves, to me, the active complicity of the corporate media, is that these stories are incredibly exciting, and directly relevant to every American personally. Yet they're unreported, because their free, secret operation is so important to perpetuating power to make money for those corporations and their ilk.
....
Agreed.
Similarly, consider the relentless, well-oiled effort that goes into mocking "JFK conspiracy buffs", shooting down straw men and "Oliver Stone's Assassination Fantasies". Forty years after the fact, and still the mighty Wurlitzer of Deception churns on. Evidence, to me, that "those who dunnit" (and their successors) fear exposure. Gotta keep the next generation ignorant, ya know
-kgj
-kgj
I'm hoping for some national exposure of Rudolph Mussolini^WGiuliani's own torrid affair ...
... on Salon, maybe?)
... Bernie Kerik's double affairs.
... and then marry them.
Affairs, plural.
You know who praised one of Rudy's affairs? Camille Paglia -- who opined that Rudy's mistress (Judi Nathan or Cristyne Lategano, I'm not sure which*) is a woman of substance, a genuine strong-willed career woman, with whom he conducted a decade-long relationship.
By contrast, Camille slammed B. Clinton for casually using vulnerable women like he was "riffling through a deck of cards". (Sorry, I can't find a link for this
Bernie appears to be just another self-important jerk. At least Rudy has the decency to cheat with only one mistress at a time
"Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac." - Henry Kissinger
With all these ugly asshole Republicans getting laid so much, Kissinger must be right.
There's power; and then there's money, which is to power what merit badges are to Boy Scouts. Either one will get a man laid, if he spreads it around.
-kgj
* Lategano, I hope -- she's quite a looker!
Link
-kgj
My Linux Command of the Day site : LCOD