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2022-05-12 Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia

‘We know everything about Russians.’ How Western intelligence helps the Ukrainian army

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Posted by badanov 2022-05-12 00:00|| || Front Page|| [6 views ] Top

#1 Some of the commercial small sat constellations are getting quite dense and quick. One has a complete new multi-spectral (and side-band radar) image of the complete earth in 3 meter detail every hour. As their network gets bigger they are hoping for a complete earth image every 15 mins. by next year.

Posted by 3dc 2022-05-12 05:55|| 2022-05-12 05:55|| Front Page Top

#2 Those are very small sats at most 2 kg. They would be easy to attach to the much larger communications sats like Starlink or Amazons. StarLink has too many up to modify right now but Amazon hasn't started launching yet. 2kg would not effect those sats one bit.

Posted by 3dc 2022-05-12 06:00|| 2022-05-12 06:00|| Front Page Top

#3 Space Force general - commercial satellite internet in Ukraine showing power of mega-constellations of sats

Posted by 3dc 2022-05-12 07:24|| 2022-05-12 07:24|| Front Page Top

#4 And this: It's eurasiantimes.com!

China ‘Deeply Alarmed’ By SpaceX’s Starlink Capabilities That Is Helping US Military Achieve Total Space Dominance

“SpaceX has decided to increase the number of Starlink satellites from 12,000 to 42,000 – the program’s unchecked expansion and the company’s ambition to use it for military purposes should put the international community on high alert,” said the article on China Military Online, the official news website affiliated with the Central Military Commission (CMC), China’s highest national defense organization headed by President Xi Jinping himself.

Here is the referenced China Military Online article (in English). Note that apparently the CCCP does not countenance TLS encryption. Perhaps they know something we don't:

ChinaMil: Starlink's expansion, military ambitions alert world

Also note the .htm extension on the web page filename. Hopefully they have been keeping that ancient Windows NT server patched up. And I'm starting to suspect their lack of standard website encryption is not indicative of a beyond pedestrian understanding of such matters. Rather, I now suspect that China Military Online is really just someone with English skills at a desk in an office in Beijing.

Posted by 3dc 2022-05-12 07:33|| 2022-05-12 07:33|| Front Page Top

#5 ...or someone(s) at an American university on the payroll.

Posted by Procopius2k 2022-05-12 12:12|| 2022-05-12 12:12|| Front Page Top

#6 The ChiComs are just pissy because all their anti-satellite weapons are designed for single large satellites. Blowing up one of those makes a difference. The Starlink birds are small and distributed. Losing a handful of them would not matter much.

Posted by SteveS 2022-05-12 22:28|| 2022-05-12 22:28|| Front Page Top

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