French Threat To ID Secret US Satellites 355
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."
Headline (Score:3, Informative)
Secret US Satellites? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:let 'em (Score:3, Informative)
Dupe? (Score:3, Informative)
Now they just have to duplicate GEODSS (Score:5, Informative)
The US has had the Ground Based-Electro-Optical Deep Space Surveillance [fas.org] 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.
Easy to replicate (Score:5, Informative)
vik
I don't think so (Score:5, Informative)
* 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.
Re:Headline (Score:3, Informative)
Re:let 'em (Score:3, Informative)
Those are very small satellites in a very, very big sky (it's not called "space" for no reason). If you're lucky, you might see it with the naked eye go by near sunrise or sunset, so that it catches sunlight against the dark sky, but otherwise you'd have to use magnification, which means limiting your field of view dramatically to look for an object that is in your stretch of sky for less than a minute while it passes through your field of view (which happens maybe once or twice a day as the earth rotates under the satellite's polar orbit, and not always at night).
Or you'd need a sophisticated radar system capable of bouncing signals off of objects in low orbit, the kind of system only a first-world national government could afford.
It's easier to find earth-threatening asteroids than it is to catch a satellite you don't already know about.
Re:Oh no the French are mad (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Easy to replicate (Score:5, Informative)
It's not about knowing where the satellites are so much as understanding that, altogether, all the spy satellites will only be able to photograph your little corner of the world for a total of maybe 1 minute out of 1440. Make sure that the trucks from Habib's Fissionable Material Shipping Service are always parked in the same place, in the same position after you're done with them and the odds are in your favor that Langley won't see any difference between two consecutive satellite passes. The rest is basic camouflage techniques that had been used to counter reconnaissance aircraft long before Sputnik.
Realistically, the odds are in your favor if you want to do something small that you don't want satellites to catch and you think a little about what you're doing. They satellites are mostly there to catch gross, macro changes in another country's borders ("Gee, they just moved this tank brigade to their border and a surface fleet has left port!"), but the hopes of catching a single, solitary nuclear device on the move is a crapshot at best. Of course, it may not be an acceptable risk when the stakes involved are you clandestinely testing your first nuclear device, and Langley surely hopes that the fear of "We might see you do it!" gives them second thoughts, but unless they have the Hubble parked at geostationary above your sorry ass, "we have teh sattelitez!" is a bogeyman at best
Re:a little distraction? (Score:2, Informative)
We don't actively deny anything. We simply say, "Here's a list of all satellites known to us. If it's not on the list, as far as we know, it doesn't exist." I presume we leave off that list both our own secret satellites and at least some other country's secret satellites. I'm just puzzled why we don't extend the French the same courtesy. Last I heard, they were our allies.
Re:Easy to replicate (Score:3, Informative)
Did you RTF? (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Re:let 'em (Score:5, Informative)
Re:let 'em (Score:2, Informative)
Re:How many frenchmen does it take to defend paris (Score:2, Informative)
Re:For Sale -- Cheap! (Score:2, Informative)
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.
Re:For Sale -- Cheap! (Score:3, Informative)
Some pics and (French) text about Graves... (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.onera.fr/photos/instexp/graves.php [onera.fr]
http://www.onera.fr/dprs/graves/index.php [onera.fr]
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 [netmarine.net]), 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. :-)
Re:For Sale -- Cheap! (Score:1, Informative)
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.
Re:a little distraction? (Score:2, Informative)
Not since the XYZ Affair, in Washington's administration, except for about 18 months after we entered WWI, and a brief period after WWII. We were belligerents not officially at war during the period after the Louisiana Purchase (presumably due to problems related to France's OTHER war of that period), nonbelligerent enemies around the Civil War (see Emperor Maximillian), nonbelligerents with France (ie, Vichy) during WWII while working with their worst enemies, the Free French. DeGaulle's republic ended any alliance fairly soon after coming to power, if the Suez Affair didn't do so, before that.
This doesn't mean that we don't work with them on lots of matters, or that we are secretly enemies. It is just that there is no particular trust either way. They are not Poland, let alone the UK or Canada (where, if we spy on them, it is only so that we can give them the results where they are not allowed to spy on their own home territories, as they do for us). They are far more like Pakistan, where we work with part of the government, and nonobviously mention that other parts of their government (ISI, frex) are working more with our enemies than with us.
Thus, in this case, the French want all their secret satellites off our public registry, so are behaving like a Russian hacker who hits a website first, then confesses to the sysop and then offers his services. Presumably, there were originally high-level calls, and when we declined to delist (possibly just because we thought it trying to unring a bell, now) they decided to up the ante.