tneff@dasys1.UUCP (Tom Neff) (12/08/88)
I understand why the sun synchronous orbit is desirable for spy photography, but wouldn't there be exploitable weakness in it too? If all your pix of the Leningrad shipyard show it at 2PM local, aren't there games they can play with light and shadow to camouflage stuff? -- Tom Neff UUCP: ...!cmcl2!phri!dasys1!tneff "None of your toys CIS: 76556,2536 MCI: TNEFF will function..." GEnie: TOMNEFF BIX: t.neff (no kidding)
wats@scicom.alphacdc.com (Bruce Watson) (12/10/88)
In article <8143@dasys1.UUCP>, tneff@dasys1.UUCP (Tom Neff) writes: > I understand why the sun synchronous orbit is desirable for spy photography, > but wouldn't there be exploitable weakness in it too? If all your pix > of the Leningrad shipyard show it at 2PM local, aren't there games they > can play with light and shadow to camouflage stuff? > -- They can play games at 11am local. ;-)
karn@jupiter..bellcore.com (Phil R. Karn) (12/10/88)
>I understand why the sun synchronous orbit is desirable for spy photography, >but wouldn't there be exploitable weakness in it too? If all your pix >of the Leningrad shipyard show it at 2PM local, aren't there games they >can play with light and shadow to camouflage stuff? There undoubtedly is. I'm not an expert on photoreconnaissance; I'm more familiar with remote sensing when you don't have humans actively trying to defeat what you're doing. But you might well have multiple satellites that come over at different local times, e.g., one morning satellite and one afternoon satellite, as is done with the low altitude polar orbiting weather satellites. You can also get multiple pictures of a site during a single pass from a variety of perspectives, even when the lighting is (essentially) constant. See the KH-11 pictures of the Soviet shipyard in Deep Black (an excellent book, by the way). Phil
ftoomey@maths.tcd.ie (Fergal Toomey) (12/13/88)
In article <8143@dasys1.UUCP> tneff@dasys1.UUCP (Tom Neff) writes: >I understand why the sun synchronous orbit is desirable for spy photography, >but wouldn't there be exploitable weakness in it too? If all your pix >of the Leningrad shipyard show it at 2PM local, aren't there games they >can play with light and shadow to camouflage stuff? Quite so. I remember seeing a TV program about this some time ago. Apparently the cunning ruskies in Leningrad or some place used to haul out giant rubber submarines just when the american spy satellites came overhead. The americans were completely fooled until a storm came up and blew the rubber subs onto the piers.