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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."
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 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.
An amateur will have a difficult time. It's hard enough to track the ISS, which is a pretty damn big and well known target. However, we're not talking about amateur's here... We're talking about military resources of larger governments which, for the most part, already have space launch capability, or are allied with someone for access to space launch capability. They'll already have hardware to track their own equipment. They'll already have radar to monitor their own airspace. It's not a stretch.
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'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.
You'd still need far more cameras than you have alloted (because you'd need far more of the sky covered than just the horizon), with a high enough resolution and aperture for astronomical photography (in essence, each camera would need a telescope), at a suitably remote location, with suitable weather. Then you'd have to make sure that you're able to differentiate visible motion as "satellite" and not "meteor," "airplane" or "lightning bug" (realistically, you'd have to involve humans in this step). And then you'd have to go through to eliminate known satellites from your observations. Finally, you'd need to keep the whole operation running over at least a number of months (if not years) before you'd be able to say with reasonable certainty that the particular streak of light you saw three weeks ago will be visible again ten days from now.
This is, literally, rocket science.