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French Threat To ID Secret US Satellites
SkiifGeek brings to our attention a story that ran on space.com a few months back but didn't get much wider notice at the time. "The French have identified numerous objects in orbit that do not appear in the ephemeris data reported by the US Space Surveillance Network. Now, the US claims that if it doesn't appear in the ephemeris data, then it doesn't exist. The French insist that at least some of the objects they have found boast solar arrays. Therefore it seems that the French have found secret US satellites. While they don't plan to release the information publicly, they do intend to use it as leverage to get the US to suppress reporting of sensitive French satellites in their published ephemeris."
Not the French, with such a mighty army, I'm scared!
Shouldn't that be "French Threaten to ID Secret US Satellites"?
They are hoping they are US satellites and not Chinese[insert evil empire name] satellites.
The US should just declare war on France, and they will surreder. Problem solved.
I trust that US and French intelligence services will bury this quickly. Lives are at stake.
I personally know the CEO of a company who is in charge of the positioning and random stuff of several US satellites. They don't keep the existence of "secret satellites" a secret, they just don't tell anyone what the satellites do. They don't have to hide their very existence as long as no one knows what they are for... it would be pointless and a waste of secretiveness.
If they're really there, it's an empty threat. If the French can see them then so can anyone else with a telescope. It's likely everyone else of consequence already knows about them.
freedom fries all over again?
geek page at KY speaks
Therefore it seems that the French have found secret US satellites.
If they're referring to the moon, that's been ours for a while (finders keepers), and it's not exactly a secret. unless you're referring to man-made satellites only?
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Numerous communications satellites have been lost over the years. Others may be a secret alien monitoring network...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
unless you're referring to man-made satellites only?
If you're referring to man-made satellites only, then, the U.S. will probably be forced to admit, that's no moon.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Start your war drums. How dare the french threaten us? How dare they expose our secret spy satellites? They are evil. They have nukular weapons. They are fundamentalists being led by an evil dictator (oh wait, was that Iran yesterday?) If you leave them be, we'll have a holocaust obliterating everything dear to the American way. It's time for a regime change.
looks like US has been taking lessons from New Zealand police...
But what about smaller organizations? Satellites tasked for pictures of, for example, terrorist training camps or drug-running? It's a bit easier to look up satellite coverage on a website than it is to scan the sky for a...
Oh.
It's a French website, isn't it?
Okay, here's a new idea: nobody teach French to terrorists.
Surely the wise course of action would be to deny the existence of all secret US satellites plus a smattering of somebody elses's satellites, too. Just to stir up the entropy pool a bit.
Is it a secret we both have unmarked satellites, or are their locations the secret?
I'd keep the French satellite info under wraps as long as they promise to stop idolizing Jerry Lewis.
Eventually, this troll will be worthy of an Insightful moderation. That will be the day I leave slashdot.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
So shooting a laser beam to blind something non-existent shouldn't be a problem. If you can knock this non-existent "thing" from the sky even better, now it would "doubly" not exist!
First, this was from June, and second, I recall seeing this out here earlier.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
One New republic. Twice invaded and saved by France. For sale to the highest bidding oil company
**Life is too short to be serious**
See ya.
Naah -- he'd at least have to be hip enough to tie in a current meme. EG:
I can haz oatmeals?
Paleotechnologist and connoisseur of pretty shiny things.
I'll show you mine if you show me yours or is that I wont show yours if you dont show mine to the world. Sounds like a bunch of preteens. Okay America is just 200 years old so its like a kid as far as nations go but what is France's excuse?
**Life is too short to be serious**
Well, considering that the French lost about 50% of their able-bodied fighting men in WWI and WWII, I dont think that it was really surrendering. I love how my fellow countrymen keep babbling about French surrendering. If lets say an equivalent number of Americans died - maybe 3 million or so, don't you think it would have an impact on this country's fighting ability?
People, stop already with the French surrender dumbness. We haven't fought a 'fair' war since the Civil War, and that we fought against ourselves. Even in WWi and WWII we waited until others had worn out the enemy...
Jesus Christ - no wonder people hate Americans. Thanks for that, people - I'm embarrassed to say where I'm from these days. Bunch of jingoist jerks.
Poor means hoping the toothache goes away.
The US has had the Ground Based-Electro-Optical Deep Space Surveillance system since the early 1980s. GEODSS is an automated sky search telescope system. Multiple sites with multiple 40-inch telescopes search the sky automatically every night, looking for anything that isn't in the catalogues. GEODSS will even detect dark objects that occult stars. Everybody has automated astronomy now, but it started with GEODSS, around 1980.
GEODSS has an unusual feature for a telescope - illumination. The system can use one of the telescopes at a site to aim a laser light source, while the other telescope looks at the target with the imager. This allows a good look at low-orbit satellites.
The original test installation for GEODSS, at White Sands, NM, is now used by MIT to look for near-Earth objects. They've found 1622 so far. It wouldn't hurt to have more systems working on that problem. A French version of GEODSS would be a win for everyone.
First consideration: It is a fairly involved and expensive process to catalogue these objects. Maybe some crazy EE guy could mess with them with a ground based laser for an affordable $20k or whatever (I honestly don't know the feasibility of that) but having to go back and classify near-earth space objects on top of that would probably push it being the range of feasability for any small scale endeavor.
And, another *big part* of defense/offense is simply making it more expensive to engage youl. This is the definition of why defense is always more difficult than offense--the defender has to defend every avenue of attack, the aggressor need only choose the most favorable to themselves. Sure, it might be possible for any modern nation to invest a few billion to making the identifications, and that might nullify the advantage you would have otherwise, but getting them to spend the money is itself an advantage. Even countries that starve their citizens to pay for missiles (ala, north korea) only have limited budgets. The thinner you can spread them, the better off *you* are.
Second consideration: In as much as identifying satellites is a statistical process, i.e., "We've looked at 70% of the objects in the sky, and have identified +/- 20% of those which are satellites " then sharing data is always beneficient in giving you more certain results. This is relevant not only because it means you get more satellites, but especially because the satellites you do get are more defintie to be representative of the whole. If you were going to organize some strategic strike against America's defense satellites, you'd want to get all of them. Otherwise you might waste a bunch of money to get the tactical advantage of taking out the satellites and America will just be like "Whoops, they got some of our satellites, time to change to the backups. Cool, our network is fully functional again. Let's go nuke whoever did that."
Third consideration: I don't think the location of all the 'public' satellites are disclosed. The French are able to identify which are secret satellites because we told them the ones that weren't. Anyone who didn't know that could certainly identify satellite objects in the sky, but they would be unable to distinguish between commercial GPS satellites and secret military missile-commanding GPS satellites.
Now, I don't really know how much any of those come into effect on their own, but my point is that just because it is possible for someone else to gain knowledge without your disclosing it does not mean that it doesn't make a difference whether you simply disclose it or make them work to figure it out.
When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
I'm sorry, but this and about half the comments above you should all be +1 funny. Disclaimer: comments at the time I posted this. My humor not transferable to others. Some are funnier than others.
If I recall correctly, the US didn't know where or when Pakistan (or was it India?) was about to detonate its first test nuke because the satellites didn't see the materials being moved in or out of the expected sites. They didn't see it because the Pakistanis (or Indians) were keeping track of satellites and not moving anything when there were unknown ones overhead. It's quite easy to do; it just requires a lot of manpower (which there is plenty of in the subcontinent)
vik
"I think it would be a good idea" Gandhi, on Western Civilisation
> Jesus Christ - no wonder people hate Americans. Thanks for that, people - I'm embarrassed to say where I'm from these days. Bunch of jingoist jerks. Actually you're the kind of American people hate. The gung-ho type we don't mind, they are consistent and wear their beliefs on their sleeve. They are honest and straightforward. It's this new, smug, "I'm ashamed of my country" kind of American that I cannot stand (I am Australian). Your country dominates the world (just as italy, england, greece, persia, france etc etc etc all did in their day) and you are ashamed? I'd hate to know how you'd feel if you were French and actually had to live with the knowledge that not only did your country surrender to Germany without a fight, they also aided and assisted the round-up of their own Jewish population. How would you feel then? BTW, if your country was invaded, you would be cowering behind those "jingoist jerks", you hypocrite.
I realize it's a joke but sadly, too many people use these lines as arguments in otherwise meaningful discussions...
And I know it doesn't seem that bad; after all the French have been making fun of us for a lot longer than most realize but it'll strike home the first time you hear it face to face and force yourself to laugh off the embarrassment of being from the US.
In short, please don't do that, it sucks.
You must be one of the refugees from Digg while they do yet more work on their site. This is slashdot, there is no bury.
There's a number of useful things you can know about a satellite, just knowing it's orbit.
* If it's geostationary, it's designed to look at or communicate with whatever is right underneath it. It's also unlikely to be a photorecon satellite, because your km-per-pixel sucks from 36,000 km away.
* If it's in a polar orbit, it's probably designed to look at big swathes of the Earth as the latter rotates under it. Polar orbits are too expensive otherwise.
* If it's in a low orbit with just enough inclination to get up to your latitude -- why, that sounds like it might be a photorecon satellite designed with you in mind...
* In which case, if you know when it's over you, and when it's not, then you have a rough idea of when you're in the crosshairs. That can be handy.
I don't necessarily disagree that the main way you keep your capabilities secret is to keep what the satellites do secret. But it probably helps, at least a little bit, to keep the existence and orbit of the thing secret, too.
Believe me, I've weathered far worse. (UID)
I think you miss the point of my extremely short and to the point post... If they want to publish "We have found satellites in orbits x, y, and z..." then, so what. It's not affecting our tactics (much). We can continue to deny they exist, if that's our plan. They can continue to expend money and effort trying to identify them.
I'm not concerned about amateur efforts to identify the satellites, they're irrelevant.
Any country of consequence, who would be capable of affecting our satellites in orbit, is likely to be doing mapping of their sky; and, as a result will have some statistics on what's there. The French publishing the additional data doesn't matter in that it remains true that no one knows to whom the satellites belong and what their capabilities are. Granted, the extra data points might be useful to another country; but, as I've said, I'm certain they are already mapping what's in their sky anyway.
"Pardon Moi, but does your secret satellite fire lasers?"
"No, it certainly does not."
"Oh...good. Then I'll just be orbiting this small camera platform over here next to it and...."ZZZzzzZZzzZzzzzzzZZZZZZZzzaaaaaaappppppppppppPPPPPPPP!!!!!!
"I thought you said your secret satellite doesn't fire lasers!!??"
"That's not my secret satellite..."
I'm neither American nor French, although I have visited both countries. Both have much to be proud of and much to be ashamed of. It is a bit unfair to say the French surrendered without a fight. It is true they were outclassed but they did try. How many Aussies surrendered to the Japanese in Singapore anyway?
But anyway, you would be able to find people to load the trains and man the guard towers in any country.
I'd hate to know how you'd feel if you were French and actually had to live with the knowledge that not only did your country surrender to Germany without a fight...
:) ).
At least I could seek comfort in the knowledge that the US, in all its world-dominating glory, wouldn't even exist if it wasn't for my country. (plus, can you really expect France to take care of the Germans every time?)
BTW, if your country was invaded, you would be cowering behind those "jingoist jerks", you hypocrite.
Somehow I reeally doubt it, for some crazy reason the "jingoist jerks" are never the first ones to line up to grab a rifle and defend the country. Go figure.
Point is, constantly bragging about something that other people did 50 years ago gets tiresome pretty quickly (besides, I'm Russian, so let's not get into the whole "Who won WWII" thing
sic transit gloria mundi
I love the French language, fantastic language, specially for blackmail.
... with silk.
"Zey told us, 'If we have not püblished it in our catalogue, zen it does not exist.' So I guess we have been trrrracking objects zat do not exist. I can tell you zat some of zese non-existant objects have solarrrr arrrrrrays."
It's like wiping your
Similar to the upcoming US election results
They are making a tour de force to show they aren't insignificant (we have skillz), and that they can be trusted with information as one of the good guys (let's work together for common security).
dont be such a negative nancy.
The gung-ho type we don't mind, they are consistent and wear their beliefs on their sleeve. They are honest and straightforward.
HAHAHAHAHA!
The current crop of jingoists are a bunch of cowards who think war is fine and dandy, as long as it's other people doing the dying. Damn near every top pro-war politician and commentator who was of age to serve during Vietnam found some way to stay out of uniform, and their kids aren't in any hurry to sign up for Iraq either. Oh, how "honest and straightforward" of them!
It's this new, smug, "I'm ashamed of my country" kind of American that I cannot stand
When your country does something wrong -- and when your country is a democracy, in which the leaders are theoretically responsible to the people -- it is good and right to be ashamed. Being ashamed isn't enough, of course; you should also do something to change it. Which, in the civilized world, includes bitching loudly and publicly. The idea that we should keep our mouths shut except to parrot platitudes of support for our Glorious Leaders is repulsive.
I'd hate to know how you'd feel if you were French and actually had to live with the knowledge that not only did your country surrender to Germany without a fight
If you really think France surrendered "without a fight" I'd recommend reading some more history. They were beaten, on the battlefield, by an army which could easily have done the same thing to any other country -- yes, including both the US and Australia -- that had the misfortune to be right next door to Germany at the time. And, in fact, did. The Wehrmacht in its heyday was unstoppable, and it took the Allies years (and a whole hell of a lot of lives) to swamp it in a war of attrition.
BTW, if your country was invaded, you would be cowering behind those "jingoist jerks", you hypocrite.
I served for ten years (two years reserve, eight years active duty, including Desert Storm) and I'm pretty sure that even as a fat old guy with a bum leg, I could still step up and defend US soil if I had to. The "rah rah USA" crowd would be screaming, crying, and pissing their pants.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
there, he's insightful now :P
why on earth they gave me modpoints i have no idea :D
I think you are missing the point entirely. No one is interested in this information so they can 'affect' the hardware. The crux of the issue is that if the French start publishing live orbital telemetry on spy satellites then it will be damn easy for any interested party to 'hide' as the satellite passes over.
Moreover, changes in the telemetry will tell the 'bad guys' when the US is interested in something and hence they will have a better sense if their activities have aroused US suspicion.
I'd wager that even the Taliban could muster the internet access and math skills to figure this out given up to date telemetry.
]{
Every story you read about these days is about France, Israel, or the USA (or the three trying to destroy/enrich each other).
Please help stop it. Humans could put persons on Mars, yet we still quibble about dumb things.
Brittan created America because they were bitchy.
France helped America become independent.
Americans came to be tired.
Americans think we should all work out our differences. Americans think we should just work it out. Americans think we should not fight unless necessary.
America does not agree with leader.
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
Considering recent history, they probably suspect the worst case scenario for exposing a U.S. spy satellite is a pardon.
Darth --
Nil Mortifi, Sine Lucre
I'm not ashamed of my country having a lot of power. And I'm not ashamed of my country using it- if you have power, you've got a responsibility to use it. With great power comes great responsibility, as Stan Lee said. I say, if a carefully planned, well thought out military intervention is the best option (not that war is ever a great option, but sometimes it is better than not going to war) then, well, bombs away.
What I'm deeply ashamed of is the shitty job we've done in using it. Bullying our allies, running secret prisons, detentions without trial, torturing people to death, losing much of the headway we made in Afghanistan, and making Iraq into a place so terrifyingly bloody that people actually long for the days when it was merely ruled by a psychopathic dictator... the past few years have been shameful. Anyone who could look at what we've done in the past few years and feel any sort of pride is either deeply in denial or a sociopath. I have no problem with America using its power to advance its own interests and improve the world, but we haven't been doing either.
Note that if the French had been on top of their game they could have been the ones rolling into Germany with overwhelming force and no doubt of their victory had they actually started fighting when they declared war instead of sitting on their hands and waiting for the war to come to them. But they chose not to roll in with overwhelming force, and ended up in a "fair" fight which they lost terribly.
I'm embarrassed to say where I'm from these days. Bunch of jingoist jerks.
No, you're actually a coward. You should move to France where they also do NOT defend their nation[ality]. (cite: German conquest x 2, unchecked Islamist immigrant riots/car-burnings for the past 2 years, et cetera, ad infinitum)
Trust me, you're not an American. Be 'proud'. Vous etes Francais. STFU or GTFO, you sniveling jerk.
> I'm embarrassed to say where I'm from these days.
Say it anyway.
I'm not an expert, but... changing the orbit of satellites is hard. I could maybe see changing them by a few degrees to get better coverage of some area, weeks before we thought we would need it. But it's not like someone says, "Hey look, I see some terrorist activity, divert 3 more spy satellites to the area immediately!".
As an American ally, I have never been bullied. In fact, our treaty with the US (ANZUS) is awesome. I can see how countries who are not your allies would feel bullied but where do you get bullying your allies from? In Iraq your allies are Australia and Britain, have you bullied them (well if you bullied the British, no problemo...we do that too)? If you feel that the people that refused to go with you to Iraq are your allies, then yes you may be bullying them but I hardly see France, Canada, or NZ (whom all hate the USA while worshipping it's culture) as your allies. Secret prisons, torture? War stuff. Did you think it was going to be fair and nice?
Hiding nowdays is a bit of a moot point. There are enough satellites up there to give a nearly 24h round the clock coverage for the more interesting locations.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
I dunno... None have ever tried.
[Not a Troll, just a man with cheap jokes]
The problem is that the US regularly writes about the French secret satellites, and the French want that to stop.
Thus the French are saying, "if you don't keep ours secret, then we will not keep yours secret." A sort of quid pro quo negotiation tactic.
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
Dude I wish I had mod points...
Your attitude is what brought America into WW2. America did not go gungho into WW2. It took America a LONG time... But when it did, it did with a mission and attitude! That is why people keep saying, "oh in WW2 we did such and such..."
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
Read this article about Ted Molczan and the amateur satellite tracking. It's hard to believe the French have any leverage here.
I'll see your cheap joke and raise you one:
:-D
Why do the French plant trees beside the road?
So the Germans can march in the shade.
--
BMO
karma to burn baaaybe, karma to burn...
Correction, this is the way the US *used* to operate. These days we just go in without the doubt of the victory and the bare minimum of force to blow stuff up. This does not work well when the goal is actually to hold and secure territory. If we had 3 Million soldiers in Iraq and 100,000 aircraft, I guarantee the country would be secure. Of course, large parts would also be rubble, but it would be secure rubble, dammit.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Battle_of_the_Marne
You dont have to be an analretentive nitpicker to be a tester.... But it helps
Excepting the fact that France fought on their own soil, while the Pacific Theater was, for the most part a war in neutral territory. I don't recall American cities invaded, their resources taken, nor their industry shelled. The European Theater was an entirely different scenario.
One attack on Pearl Harbour, some abortive amusement in the Aleutians, and some silliness involving balloons was all the USA suffered at home.
Honestly, Europe would have defeated Germany had the US not got involved at all, attrition and the turning points in Russia and over Britain assured that pretty much. The only difference would been how much of Europe spoke Russian.
But again, how is that even remotely relevant to the ridicule the French are associated with?
Nitpick all you want about a war you won and can easily claim glory on; we are freaking lucky that we haven't had to experience our country being invaded and reduced to a genocidal ground in wartime as some countries in Europe had.
Then again, I bet you'll be quick to surrender your wallet pants and dignity when a friend of yours plays a practical joke on you and mugs you with a black sock on his head and an airsoft gun painted black.
Think about it; are you seriously arguing towards anything meaningful when pointing out every little bit of information that seems to degrade an entire country of people who mostly have nothing to do with anything war or politics related, or are you just trying to be an ass since the French are such an easy target?
Disclaimer: my post was NOT an attempt to diminish the American soldiers in the Pacific Theater. It's actually my favourite part of that War, especially the engagements off the Philippines (go go Taffy 3).
Absolutely wrong. I know this is OT but I find these childish pro-US/anti-French comments very annoying.
What your ancestors did 60 years ago is irrelevant, and it is very annoying for it be continually used as a basis for your misguided brand of arrogant patriotism. In respect to the US involvement in liberating Europe you may want to consider the minor contribution of the Red Army which absolutely dwarfs the US involvement and losses.
Perhaps the main reason you are so proud of your ancestors performance 60 years ago is that it is one of the last times that the US fought a morally justified war with a satisfactory outcome. And even in WWII the US involvement was down to self-interest rather than due to any mutual protection pacts.
The US war in the Pacific was not a moral war. It was totally provoked by the US. If not what were US Air force and Army pilots doing flying Chinese air force planes and bombing Japanese bases long before Pearl Harbor and why did the US cut off oil supplies to Japan in time of war. Japan had a commercial agreement with the US but the US stopped selling them oil when they needed it most - when they were at war with China. Not only did they stop selling oil they put a blockade preventing oil supplies from Indonesia to come through to Japan. How would US react if Iran blocked the straits of Hormuz during the start of the Gulf war campaign? It would be considered an act of war. The pacific war was basically saying - its ok for white men to have colonies but not ok for yellow men to have colonies.
**Life is too short to be serious**
s/France/US/ for historical accuracy.
France never saved the US from anything; they merely squabbled with America's enemy of the day at the same time. Since France was in those days intermittently at war with pretty much everyone, this is little more than historical accident.
Now, French revolutionary thought had a great influence on the founding fathers of America, but if you look at how the French revolution played out, and what followed in the 18th century, you'll find that France was the ally of no-one but itself.
Pick you solution:
A) Bans or nukes any satellite. [ the missile anti-satelite doesn't exist if it is not in the catalogue ].
B) Launch 100 or more spyionage digital data satellites.
C) Launch 10,000 foreign unauthorized low altittude short-life recyclable satelites for spying U.S. territory.
D) Crack and shutdown satellites.
Each one satellite can carry photocameras, RFID snooping, weird signals capturing, etc.
One satellite is a digital weapon to steal top secret's digital information.
You know, you're perhaps a little too American-centric here. Switch "Americans" with "French" if you were also French and it would also apply.
I didn't say that it was a moral war, I said it was morally justified, i.e. the US was not the original aggressor in the hot war. I do not know a great deal about the 1920s/30s build-up in the pacific theatre.
However I think your argument is a little one sided against the US, Japan had big ideas about its place in the world and its superiority over other countries. Japan did not consider the US to be a significant force, but wanted to neutralise them so that it could expand at will to access the resources around the pacific rim.
I'm not familiar with that meme, could you fill in the uninformed? I stick with underpants gnomes since it has staying power; I can't keep up with all the new ones that come and go.
If I mod you up, it doesn't necessarily mean I agree with what you've said, sorry.
"the past few years have been shameful."
I'm curious - how exactly have the past few years been any different to the previous 50-100 years?
The main difference is that today the dirty laundry is aired, not that the dirty laundry didn't somehow exist a few years ago. It always was there if you knew where to look, it's just so much easier to find and so much harder for the authorities to bury thanks to the internet.
A lot of people would like nothing more than to cling to the notion that wars before Viet Nam (or even Iraq) were a fought by heroes (sometimes even the greatest generation), who always fought completely fair against the most dastardly enemies (who would pull the most shameless tricks, killing babies) etc etc, the same way most of us would much rather just shut up and enjoy our hamburgers instead of taking a tour of the local slaughterhouse or factory farm.
If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
True enough, I suppose ... but you have to admit, we did get one really cool statue out of the deal.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Empty pots rattle the loudest. You get the same shit from Arab mullah's sending little kiddies and drug addicts off with suicide bombs. Never supported the war and thought America deserved to get some shit kicked in its face, but it looks like it could end well and General Petraeus looks like a square deal. America, the Middle-East, and the world depend on it. I hope it ends up being a kick in the head for all the fanatics and shiny suits, whoever they are, wherever they are. Nobody needs 'em, and that's why I think it will turn out to be a good thing in a funny way. What goes around comes around.
I remember hearing the positions of all Satellites without exception were public knowledge many years ago.
Like most people my gut reaction was more along the lines of "yea right"... All we need is the ability to overlay TLE's in stellarium and get enough people with nothing better to do to report discrepancies.
I will have 10 days R&R (from a dusty, war-torn country) in about 100 days from now.
I could fly home to the States and see my family.
Now, after reading your post (and some replies), I think I'd rather like to go to Australia. Maybe I can buy you and your friends a few dozen beers?
Be forewarned, I'm one of the jingoist, God-bless-America types the GP hates, so I'll only tip the bartender/waitress my usual 20% instead of his 5%.
See you in 3 and a half months, pal.
as an Australian, I am totally ashamed that you are also an Australian.
you talk about ANZUS, our top politicians (Howard and Downer) don't even have a clear idea of what our obligations are towards that treaty. But then, that was probably just Downer being Downer.
I believe when the GP said "bullying allies" he didn't mean bullying every single person in the allied country. You being a single case doesn't count, and you being safely in some backwater country town probably precludes you from facing that anyway.
Did you see the news where Australia spent some $240 million on this little conference in Sydney, and Bush wasn't even sure what country he was in and which conference he was attending? That's how much he cares about his best international ally.
If you have ever spent just a little time outside of Australia, you will know that Howard has pretty much used up all of the goodwill non-US foreigners used to have towards Australians. Now, Australians are treated as if we are second-class US citizens.
I wonder, even though probably at the moment the altitude is too low, would this not be an issue for companies or amateurs trying to launch objects into space and getting struck by these space "debris"?
B.
Every experiment which ends in a big bang is a good experiment.
has secret satellites.
Seriously people. There are still Soviet Era spysats up there.
And of course the Grays still have some stuff in orbit last I heard. Not that I've heard anything substantial recently.
My Suburban burns less gasoline than your Prius.
Give the camera a good mooning?
-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+ *** http://www.mountainfort.com *** +-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-
Yeees, and that would be why the treaty which ended the war was signed in Paris and known as the Treaty Of Paris. Because the French involvement was so insignificant !
sigs are hazardous to your health
.. To detect assorted objects
http://www.itr-datanet.com/~pe1itr/graves/
Here in Sheffield with just a elderly AOR3000 and a dipole in my
loft I have detected what I believe are reflections from the moon
using the free Spectran software.
When I'm reminded about the defeat of 1940, I just think about Napoleon Bonaparte. The guy invaded Europe to the point he made the mistake to try to invade Russia. Dare calling us cowardly with that.
Wait crap, I posted as AC by mistake. I'm not really a coward :-/
You just got troll'd!
more political covering to keep the public subdued, well at least there is more then one big brother doing it !
then the US surely won't mind a few missile tests in the general direction of those holes in the sky?
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
I'm happy people like you are alive now, to watch your stupid country bleed itself to death in a war it started under false pretences. You've overstretched your military, you're up to your armpits in debt it will take a generation to pay off, and you're the laughing stock of the world, not because your military is weak, but because you squandered it out of your own ignorance.
http://www.onera.fr/photos/instexp/graves.php
http://www.onera.fr/dprs/graves/index.php
It also appears that a big, big part of the systems is invisible: a real time calculator, the size of which is unknown. But it may guzzle some Watts in my opinion....
As for the political aspects of the affair, well... It is certainly very unelegant from the US space authorities to publicize European spy satellites trajectories, and we cannot get accustomed to the sheer amount of unelegance that has flown eastward to Britanny since 2003.
Next, I doubt amateurs could do what Graves does, especially since trajectories can change, thanks to usefull thrusters. Graves is apparently a real time system...
And by the way, would it detect incomming balistic missiles too? That may be useful for the likes of Aster.
We French are generally too ambitious when it comes to weapon systems (not enough money for so many lethal ideas...), but we provide some amusing toys, indeed. I always wondered what were the real possibilities of this ship (http://www.netmarine.net/bat/divers/monge/photos.htm), for instance...
Last but not least: thanks to all Americans that are now bashing French haters, we have heard enough, your support is appreciated. I hope Sarkozy will not be the fool he pretends to be. :-)
I am not Remy Mouton, unfortunately: http://remy.mouton.free.fr/art/
Seti@Home, which is supposed to help finding extra-terrestrial life, is typically a project able to map the satellites. I wonder if they publish their discoveries ?
In Soviet Russia, our new overlords are belong to all your base.
We could threaten to expose the French restaurants that use rat meat.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
I find your sig
> I prefer conversation to moderation. Only moderate if there are already replies.
interesting. I moderate comments to make them more (or less) visible, not in order to discuss them. Until Slashdot implements some kind of weighted rating system where each replier can affect the rating of the parent comment (presumably with an ability corresponding to his karma or something), I will continue to moderate you (perhaps against your wishes) rather than reply "Your comment is insightful". Anyway, such a reply is real conversation to about the same extent that Monty Python's "argument" was real argumentation (ouch, I can already imagine what kind of replies that reference is going to bring...).
Coming in 2012: secret space stations!
Maybe the French are just mad they don't have their own network of secret satellites...I for one have my own society of squirels that have tiny cameras strapped to their backs.
'd hate to know how you'd feel if you were French and actually had to live with the knowledge that not only did your country surrender to Germany without a fight
The fact that the only country to survive a blitzkrieg on the ground - and no, I don't consider the 1944-45 Ardennes campaign to count - was the Soviet Union aside, I'm sure the 160,000 Germans and Italians killed or wounded in the Battle of France would agree that it was just a walk in the park.
"All that is necessary for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke
Funny, I thought I had a few thousand of 'em buried in my back garden. http://www.cheminsdememoire.gouv.fr/page/affichelieu.php?idLang=en&idLieu=2412
Watch this Heartland Institute video
I hope you are joking since you were moderated funny. For your information, I am French. A great-oncle on mine was killed in a last stand defending Marseilles on the last day of the war (17th june 1940), one of my grandfathers killed a bunch of 17-years old Germans in an ambush during the attack of May 1940 (and was forever ashamed of it, even trashing his medal one drunken evening, because he said they had no chance against him since he was a avid hunter and mountaineer), was captured, and escaped to fight in the Resistance and smuggling Jews to Spain across the Pyrenees mountains (admiteddly for a fee but he had lost everything he owned during his captivity). Another grandfather enrolled at 16 in 1944 to join the Free French and fight in the Battle of the Bulge. I can send you links if you want to French military archives proving all this. On a less personal side, maybe 300 000 French military were killed in between May and June 1940 and killed half as many Germans, and stopped Italy at the borders. The Luftwaffe lost maybe 1000 planes and it was a deciding factor in the Battle of England. Sure, the French army was older than the German one due to the heavy losses in WW1, ill equipped, badly led, unmotivated. What would you do if you were mobilized at 38 years of age after having already fought a war, with job, wife and children back home, opposed to fanaticized youth with ultramodern equipment, and only given a manual repetition rifle with the wrong ammo ? But it is not true that the French Army surrendered without a fight.
Google passes Turing test : see my journal
You mean we aren't being told everything due to national security concerns?
Wow, what a suprise.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers.
Of course, Napoleon was really Italian... :)
(Note: it's irrelevant. He was raised French and his armies were indubitably French.)
Our fleet was always bigger than Japan's. We had the second largest fleet in the world going into the war (and the largest coming out). The only nation to have a larger fleet was Britain, and they were fighting beside us.
The wars in both theaters were won before the really began for us. The turning points had already come in Europe (Battles of Stalingrad and Britain) and by attacking a US base the Japanese guaranteed that the US would see that part of the war through to the end. They couldn't win against our industrial power and access to resources, especially since we were assuredly going to blockage the holy hell out of them. (Which we did quite effectively.)
This is in no way to diminish what our soldiers, sailors, and pilots did: they did a hard, necessary, and stupendous job. But history wasn't holding its breath in 1941 as to whether we'd win.
Now, us europeans don't speak russian but eat Mc Dos... :-(
I've known quite a few amateur astronomers over the years. None of them have had Radar systems in their back yards. YMMV, of course.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
No it isn't.
In other news, a French space-surveillance radar monitoring team was reported missing. The space surveillance radar has also gone missing. Foul play is not suspected.
That's how much he cares about his best international ally
Outrage! The UK is the number one toady and lickspittle to the
great empire! Recall is you will the Australian joke: "Howard is
so far up Bush's arse that he can see Blair's shoes"
Happy to help (god save your soul), I can has cheezburger?
Waltz, nymph, for quick jigs vex Bud.
I'm not French or American, but I hate to hear the US bashing of the french.
It should be said that the US 'allies' waited at the last possible moment to act. If they would be certain the Axis would never target them they might have stayed home.
The strategy worked, at the end of the war the only country left with resources and manpower was the US, the commies where not too bad either but still lost "only" 20 million lives, how much was the US contribution in term of lives? (Humanity lost 60 Million lives).
When your the only one standing straight after the battle it's easier to become the boss in the near future.
Yes the US saved the day, but showing up 2 years earlier would have saved millions of lives; yes at the cost of a lot more American lives and resources.
When a friend calls for urgent help I say "I'm on my way" and not "I will see what can be done; Don't worry I will show up before you actually die."
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/09/06/1630257&threshold=-1
When a story about a Tor node powered by otameal makes it to the front page, let me know.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Yes, it was a troll. But a very successful troll, nonetheless. ;-)
This sig is a test. If this had been an actual sig, you would be reading something quite a bit wittier than this now.
OTOH, in the US, we expect that if your own country is invaded, you put up causalty figures roughly comparable to our Civil War (which you DID, during WWI, losing 1 or 3 of that generation, IIRC). You didn't during WWII (for good military reasons, to be fair), and then had the Vichy regime under a one-time French "hero" give the Germans a large portion of your country (and you collapsed faster than the Poles!).
It is not so much that you are cowards, you were just (seemingly) incompetents from Trafalgar on, and from 1700 to 1770ish before that. And worse, you go on about Napoleone Buonoparte as if he were a Parisian, and as if he were still around, which makes you look even more silly.
To be even more fair, my family has avoided the need for military service for 4 generations by choosing our birth dates with extraordinary skill, so any comments that I make are purely theoretical.
Now Drax Industries knows that they know, and he can move the plan forward and prepare a surprise for the inevitable arrival of the marines.
It would have been so much better if they had sent a single British operative to deal with the situation discreetly: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moonraker_(film)
It is all about international cooperation in the war against terror.
Freedom is the freedom to say 2+2=4, everything else follows...
France suffers the worst country wide mysteriously caused blackout in history this weekend.
If no one will admit to owning them, then they're useful for the Chinese (or anyone else) as targets in antisatellite weapons tests. Other than the resulting debris, they'd be doing everyone a favor.
The screenshot (along with photos) is here: http://www.european-security.com/index.php?id=5669
No, this is not correct. You will note, for example, that when searchers wanted new sat images in the search for Steve Fosset they had to wait 5 days before a sat would make a pass ... and we're talking Nevada here ... it is safe to say neither Asia nor Africa get the same sat imaging coverage as the US so really, knowing when sat is overhead would be very useful to any organization with something to hide.
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Well, first of all, there aren't "thousands" up there. In the low hundreds is more like it.
Secondly, almost all of them are very well known. So you can easily sort out the GPS satellites and whatnot.
Thirdly, of the few remaining "black" satellites -- why is it a big problem to stay out of their way? If you have some operation that is sufficiently big that it attracts the attention of a national spy satellite that costs $millions to put up and probably $50,000 an hour to operate, then you've clearly got some major resources, and major investments to protect. Keeping track of when a half-dozen black satellites are overhead would seem to be about as elementary a precaution as making sure your couriers don't draw attention to themselves by wildly exceeding the speed limit on public highways.
Indeed, the Soviets used to do this routinely. When they knew American spy satellites were overhead, they'd get out big earthmoving equipment and dig strange holes in the ground, move large draped loads back and forth, et cetera. All the kinds of things they'd do if they were building a missile silo, or some other major military installation.
By doing this all over the place, they forced the Americans to spread out their intelligence resources covering all kinds of bogus chaff, thus increasing the chance that some real military work would slip in beneath the radar, so to speak.
No major power would play such a dangerous game. I think it's been generally recognized since the 60s that "national technical means" a/k/a spy satellites are, first of all, not particularly bothersome. It's not necessarily a bad idea for your enemies to know what you're up to, e.g. that you're building a large force of nuclear missile silos, or you've got umpty heavy bombers on standby all the time. This can give your enemies cause for long, thoughtful pauses before engaging in boisterous military adventurism within your sphere of influence.
About the only time you really fear spy satellites is if you've been bullshitting about your capabilities and you don't want your enemy to find out. But since bluffing on the international stage is incredibly risky anyway -- spy satellites are only one of the many ways your bluff can get called -- it's not a course of action taken routinely by any major power run by actual adults (e.g. excluding Iran and other such Third World riff-raff).
Secondly, each major power recognizes that the early-warning "eyes" of the other powers are guarded exceedingly jealously. During the Cold War he Soviets knew very well that an attack on American early-warning assets -- even a suspicious "accident" -- would be regarded with extreme paranoia by the Americans and would be very likely to provoke a violent, even hysterical response. The Americans knew likewise about Soviet space assets, and, not surprisingly, both sides were quite careful to steer clear of each other's space assets, however many games of "chicken" they may have played with ground-based forces (and there were plenty).
A simpler way to put it is this: anyone who uses "black" satellites for ASAT target practice is likely to find his ASAT launch and control facilities used for surface-to-surface missile target practice by the owner of the satellites.
A statue that was originally intended for the French themselves. We basically got their trash.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Point Google Earth to: 4720'53'',00530' 55'' for the emission site.
About Vichy : in any country there are roughly 5 to 10% of opportunists and extremists on either side and 80% of indifferent people...once the war was lost most people just accepted the consequences, some chose collaboration, some chose Resistance. You are mostly right about our military history (add Dien Bien Phu and Sedan), but do not forget that we conquered Algeria in 1830, beat the Austrians in Magenta in the 1850s, beat Russia along with England in Crimea, won WW1 (with allies), and won the battle of Algiers in 1959 although the situation (similar to Iraq...) made us pull out later. On the other hand the White House was burnt in 1812 by the British, the Seminoles killed a whole army in the 1820s, Custer lost ignominously in Little Big Horn, and may I mention Vietnam and now Iraq ? So we can also laugh since we warned you about those two wars...
Google passes Turing test : see my journal
No, we did a fine job of winning the war in Iraq. What we fucked up was winning the peace after the victory, which is a different and significantly more complicated problem.
Of course one way to win the peace is to win the war so completely that there is nobody left to fight you, as was done with Germany and Japan, but it's harder to do that when your justification for the war is helping the people of the country you're invading.
We'd all be able to breathe more easily.
No matter how paranoid you are, you're not paranoid enough!
I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
(Bolding mine)
Yeah, thank god the country I live in isn't a democracy. We are a Federal Republic or Consitutional Republic not a Democracy. Go back and read the US Army Field Manuals from the 1930's. Generally they say: Democracy is a really bad form of government. Hell Plato and a few others have said the exact same thing. (Tyranny of the Majority I believe was Plato's term loosely translated)
So enough with this "The United States is a democracy" bullshit. We aren't a democracy and never were. Now it'd be nice if the speech writers remembered that when they go preaching the Gospel of "bringing Democracy to the world"....
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
On a more serious note if you are someone line Korea you have to be aware of Chinese satellites, Russian satellites, Indian satellites, French satellites, Japanese satellites and British satellites besides USA satellites. For locations like Bushehr in Iran and some "interesting" places in Pakistan, Korea, China, etc this probably gives a nearly 24h coverage.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
The first night Eurodisney opened they set off the fireworks. A nearby French army base surrendered to two passing German tourists.
Shoot them down and see who complains!
What if tens of thousands of people were to buy DVD burners, were to rip the laser diodes therefrom, were to install them into laser pointers and were to scan the skies on cloudless nights with the intent of blinding these orbiting peeping toms. A byproduct of this would certainly be a 'manpower check' and to see if the camps are operational.
Submission as evidence constitutes plaintiff and/or prosecutorial misconduct.
Keepers of the Kennedy torch would like you to think just that, but actually the Soviets took their missiles out of Cuba because Bobby Kennedy secretly told them we'd agree to take similar intermediate range missiles out of Turkey.
In other words, contrary to the Camelot mythology, the "resolution" of the Cuban Missile Crisis was that the Kennedys bent over for Nikita Khrushchev, and the old peasant got some fairly valuable concessions out of them for the price of some cheap, operationally-iffy installations in Cuba.
Oh, right...plus the USSR had to "look bad" in the UN, har har. That and $3 will get you a latte at Starbucks. All in all, not a bad day's work by Mr. Chairman, and kinda of a Bay o' Pigs Take 2 for the smug New Frontiers crowd, who were also in the process of dragging us into Vietnam. I believe modern Kennedy apologists tend to argue that Khrushchev lost power to Brezhnev a few years later because he was seen to climb down in 1962. Personally I think this greatly overstates how much the Soviets cared about how they were seen in the West, but whatever. PhD theses have been written on this, each contradicting the others.
> You are mostly right about our military history (add Dien Bien Phu and Sedan)
I used Trafalgar as an endpoint because the French Republic did do well in the beginning of the Revolutionary/Napoleanic Wars, but I cannot recall a victory after that point, except Borodino (and its aftermath rather cancels that out). You probably know of a couple, but was it a general run of successes or of failures after your fleets were destroyed? I know that Mahan was convinced that killed your chances, by letting the British do land/sea attacks wherever thay wanted.
> and may I mention Vietnam
Which we won, militarily, up until we pulled out, after the Paris Peace Treaty. Unfortunately, the problem was that the war wasn't just (or even largely) fought in the military plane, by the NVA, until after we had left. They then waited a year, and launched a conventional attack across the DMZ with more tanks than were in The Bulge. President Ford couldn't get the Democrats to let him give air support to the South Vietnamese (as required by the peace treaty), and the South was overrun.
> On the other hand the White House was burnt in 1812 by the British
> he Seminoles killed a whole army in the 1820s
> Custer lost ignominously in Little Big Horn
Single battles are not wars, though. We tied the War of 1812 (which was as good as a win -- would we have really wanted to be stuck with Quebec?), and won the Indian Wars that you mentioned (techncally lost the Black Hawk War, but won the followup about seven years later, despite Custer losing about 200 men, fewer than he would have lost in any Civil War victory, and he was *very* good in the Civil War). And the 7th Cavalry got to pay back the Sioux several times over, up to and including Wounded Knee.
As for Iraq, it looks like a standard counterinsurgency effort is required. Unfortunately, those require about 10 years of commitment to actually win, and it doesn't look like we will get it.
you are right about the Napoleonic wars (except that technically Napoleon won each and every battle in the defense of France but was forced to retreat until he abdicated) , but like I said in the 1850s we won the Crimea war and the war for Italian independence, not speaking of the many local colonial wars. However you are in a very delusional state if you claim that the US are victors in Vietnam or Iraq ; unless you kill absolutely everyone (which is in progress, like the Wounded Knee you mention) the situation looks pretty dire to me, exactly like what we experienced before in Indochina or Algeria. Quebec offers nice poutine and fun girls tough ; have you ever visited StCatherine street in Montreal ? I do not think that any city in the world can offer as much fun, especially not in North America.
Google passes Turing test : see my journal
That's an amusing part of American culture. From a European point of view hardly any Americans qualify as "Europeans" on the basis of their supposed "German-Scottish-Italian-American" ancestry.
The peoples of Europe are far more homogenous within our individual nations, and so even a mixed Caucasian-ethnic background makes the claim moot. Heck, even marriages within Europe makes your ethnic-national status questionable. White people have ethnic backgrounds too. It's a tribal thing believe it or not.
And unless you moved to the US as a grown-up you will never be considered European by Europeans. The culture you grow up in is more important. If your mother or father came from a European country, and married someone in the US, you would still not be considered a European - simply American. But we would still love you :)