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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!
Tor like oatmeals!
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.
suck it you cheese eating surrender monkeys
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Is it a secret we both have unmarked satellites, or are their locations the secret?
French = Cheese-eating, blackmailing, surrender monkeys
I'd keep the French satellite info under wraps as long as they promise to stop idolizing Jerry Lewis.
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 (1) French military rifle. Never fired. Dropped once.
This sig is a test. If this had been an actual sig, you would be reading something quite a bit wittier than this now.
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**
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
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.
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 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
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).
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.
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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 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 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!".
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"
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...
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
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.
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.
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 *** +-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-
.. 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.
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.
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 ?
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!
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.
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
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.
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.
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/09/06/1630257&threshold=-1
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.
Point Google Earth to: 4720'53'',00530' 55'' for the emission site.
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
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.
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 :)