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."

Headline

Shouldn't that be "French Threaten to ID Secret US Satellites"?

Re:Headline

It's a kdawson story... he just randomly clicks 'accept' without even looking at them.

Re:Headline

Shouldn't they just offer them for sale on eBay?

Re:

Shouldn't that be "French Threaten to ID Secret US Satellites"?

There was (apparently) a threat to ID secret US satellites. The threat was French.

Re:Headline

Nope, the headline should be:
"French discover secret US sattelites, but will not disclose the information, unlike the US does."

It's even in the summary: "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."

And I was thinking reading the article was difficult for some. Apparently just reading the summary is to hard for some people here. Yeah, i'm looking at you kdawson...

US?

They are hoping they are US satellites and not Chinese[insert evil empire name] satellites.

Re:US?

If they were Chinese why would the US be denying they existed?

a little distraction?

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.

Spy vs Spy

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.

If the USA knew about a secret satellite of a hostile country, it would be a poor decision to let them know, that you know. It would be equally unlikey to expect the other country to then respond in kind and let the USA know, that they know, that the USA knows, that they themselves know, about the secret stealth satellite.

Re:Spy vs Spy

Jim Hacker: It's a bluff. I probably wouldn't use it.
Sir Humphrey: Yes, but they don't know that you probably wouldn't.
Jim Hacker: They probably do.
Sir Humphrey: Yes, they probably know that you probably wouldn't. But they can't certainly know.
Jim Hacker: They probably certainly know that I probably wouldn't.
Sir Humphrey: Yes, but even though they probably certainly know that you probably wouldn't, they don't certainly know that, although you probably wouldn't, there is no probability that you certainly would.

Re:Spy vs Spy

We did, and it was. The difference is that the missiles could hurt us, even if the Russians had no idea that we knew about them. If we made an attempt to attack them, there was a great chance we would miss some that may well then be launched. Similarly, they might see us coming to attack the missiles and launch. The only way to resolve that safely for the US was to get the missiles out, and we accomplished that with worldwide political pressure (and some backroom deals).

The only way a spy satellite hurts you is if it sees something it isn't supposed to. If we know where it is and can track it, we can ensure that it never does. We may even be able to ensure that it sees the opposite of what we're actually doing if we do want to get up to something. It may even help us directly; if the Chinese think they have a secret satellite to help get the drop on us and it turns out they don't, that is our advantage.

Telling them not only removes that advantage, it puts us at a disadvantage. Almost certainly, they would move the satellite and we would have to locate it again. The game loops again and again. In that sense it's the same as breaking an enemy's cipher; you don't want them to know because you want them to use a code you can read instead of developing a code you can't.

Re:

I can't say much about it, but maybe they have visual confirmation of the satellites (US or not), possibly with US markings or corporate insignia on them?

Re:US?

Cuz if I were going to put a spy satellite up, I'd totally put a flag on it so they knew whose spy satellite it was.

Secret US Satellites?

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.

Re:Secret US Satellites?

I personally know the REAL head of the NSA. We lunch daily and discuss the latest sat feeds over fresh ground coffee and scones. No shit.

I don't think so

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.

Re:I don't think so

Crap, you mean Tom Clancy didn't just make that shit up?

let 'em

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.

Re:

Read the damn article - its detected them using a new radar system not with backyard telescopes.

But you don't get it, they "don't" exist!

Now, the US claims that if it doesn't appear in the ephemeris data, then it doesn't exist

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!

The actual situation is rather more complicated.

I believe it's a bit more involved than that.

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.

Re:

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

Re:

If they're really there, it's an empty threat.

But if they're not there, it's...serious?

Re:

"If the French can see them then so can anyone else with a telescope."

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 th

Re:let 'em

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.

Re:let 'em

Go ahead. I dare you to find and track a surveilance satellite with a telescope. It isn't impossible, but think for a minute what it requires.

Re:let 'em

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.

Re:let 'em

Amateur satellite trackers have been the bane of US secret satellite projects for quite a while, actually. You don't necessarily even need a telescope to do it, you just need to live somewhere without too much light pollution. (Which is probably why a lot of the notable amateurs tend to be from Canada or Australia.) Of course what the amateurs publish probably doesn't come close to the precise ephemeris data that the French are gathering, and likewise doesn't include radio frequencies.

oh god...

freedom fries all over again?

ground control to major tom

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?

'Lost' satellites

Numerous communications satellites have been lost over the years. Others may be a secret alien monitoring network...

Re:

"Numerous communications satellites have been lost over the years."

They tend to fall out of orbit and burn up in re-entry and/or are placed in geosynchronous orbit, not the globe-spanning polar LEO's favored by the spook community.

Also, for the kind of mon

Dupe?

First, this was from June, and second, I recall seeing this out here earlier.

Now they just have to duplicate GEODSS

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

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

Re:Easy to replicate

"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 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

uh hem...

"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..."

In their defense....

Considering recent history, they probably suspect the worst case scenario for exposing a U.S. spy satellite is a pardon.

Some pics and (French) text about Graves...

... and even some videos can be found here :
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:Oh no the French are mad

Wow, and the French though that your fat American fingers would never be able to crank out predictable trolls about their military with such speed :-P Clearly they underestimated you. Kudos.

Re:

Don't fuck with the French: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:USS_Stark.jpg [wikipedia.org]

Re:How many frenchmen does it take to defend paris

I'll see your cheap joke and raise you one:

Why do the French plant trees beside the road?

So the Germans can march in the shade. :-D

--
BMO

karma to burn baaaybe, karma to burn...

Re:This is easily winnable for the USA

After spending the last 20 odd year's playing Metal of Honor ; and thus being suitably "trained"
the American infantry will drop into Normandy, make a big mess of the coast and head for Berlin at high speed; reaching the operational "goal" in less than 24 hours as they can just take the train instead of grunting it out by foot.

The French will barely notice ; but the Germans will wonder why Checkpoint Charlie was rebuild overnight.Berlin disco's will put on a "retro" 40's theme.

The European Union will then spend the next six months debating who will pay for the environmental damage done to the French coast and whether or not the shrimp industry qualifies for subsidies.

Re:This is easily winnable for the USA

So they will be airlifted by Ospreys half of which will crash killing half the invasion force.

Wow. You really think half of the Ospreys won't crash?

Re:This is easily winnable for the USA

So they will be airlifted by Ospreys half of which will crash killing half the invasion force.

Wow. You really think half of the Ospreys won't crash?

I think he's saying half the troops will think better of getting into those deathtraps. In this case, he feels the glass is only half fools.

Re:For Sale -- Cheap!

One New republic. Twice invaded and saved by France. For sale to the highest bidding oil company

Re:For Sale -- Cheap!

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.

Re:For Sale -- Cheap!

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 :) ).

Re:For Sale -- Cheap!

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.

Re:For Sale -- Cheap!

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'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.