Thread

The top secret URSALA, RAQUEL, and FARRAH satellites (2025)

306 points · 162 comments · Bluestein

Almondsetat · 1790809198 · focus · HN ↗
The incredible and futuristic technologies the US managed to deploy decades before the competition reminds me of the story of how the NRO gifted NASA a couple of their old decommissioned satellites in 2012 and they turned out to be basically upgraded Hubble telescopes pointed at earth. The US from the 90s to the 2000s had multiple Hubble-level telescopes just for spying while NASA was fighting for scraps to study the entire cosmos.
1. walrus01 · 1790812512 · focus · HN ↗
  We see a few bits and pieces released to the public of optical/infrared wavelength mirrors and hubble-like hardware from IMINT systems. One thing that's never really been shown to the public, not even 50 year old 1970s era stuff, are photos/examples of the SIGINT systems that the NSA likely has in orbit. Or good details of other things that also fall within the RF engineering domain like synthetic aperture radar satellites to monitor naval activity, construction activity like digging bunkers, etc.
  If you think the public DEM/DSM datasets like the ASTER GDER v3 or SRTM GL1 V3 are pretty good, I would bet that the DoD has things far more accurate than those as digital models of the surface and built environment of the earth's surface.
  1. throwaway456744 · 1790817094 · focus · HN ↗
    An RF domain where there seems to be a dearth of information is passive radar. (Kraken passive radar was shutdown.) It makes sense that NRO satellites would be doing passive SAR.
    walrus01 · 1790817244 · focus · HN ↗
    I'm not sure that it needs to be passive, a sufficiently advanced adversary nation-state (Russia, China) is assumed to have their own equivalent of this, and to be aware of the orbits of US satellites:
    <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Space_Surveillance_Network" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Space_Surveillan...
    Much as the US is aware of the orbits of their satellites.
    If you already assume that it's hard to 'hide' the existence and orbits of your satellites from an advanced observer with good telescopes and ground radar and ways of correlating the data, the fact that your ocean surveillance satellites emit radar might not be a problem. No need to be passive about it.
    MegaDeKay · 1790823733 · focus · HN ↗
    And passive SAR is a lot less accurate than active SAR.
    There isn't much need for stealth in all this the same way there isn't for an optical spy satellite. The adversary knows it is there and what it is looking at. The adversary just doesn't know its exact capabilities, and there's not much they can do about it being up there that doesn't lead to a sudden military escalation of some kind.
    scottapotamas · 1790829577 · focus · HN ↗
    <a href="https://github.com/30hours/blah2" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/30hours/blah2
    someguydave · 1790856908 · focus · HN ↗
    This is because it is essentially illegal to work on proprietary VHF/UHF passive radar (you need a government license to talk about your work with foriegners) in the US due to itar laws
    NetMageSCW · 1790864422 · focus · HN ↗
    That doesn't make it illegal at all. Lots of what SpaceX does is covered by ITAR and they have no issues building rockets.
  2. beerandt · 1790818229 · focus · HN ↗
    The SAR stuff is crazy good and and scary- the publicly released stuff from drones sort of hit a ceiling in quality over a decade ago. And it seems to be rarely released at all now.
    It was good enough then to track individuals movement and 'replay' where they had been over the last few days to figure out where they came from and associate them with other people/ vehicles/ rf signatures.
    I think it's safe to assume that the quality kept quietly improving from orbit since then- it's just too good to publicly release / declassify.
    dmd · 1790819583 · focus · HN ↗
    If it's so good - who is using it, and to what effect? Because it sure doesn't seem like it's doing much for the US.
    walrus01 · 1790819974 · focus · HN ↗
    You wouldn't see the results when the data is applied successfully, like, a tomahawk cruise missile that goes over a mountain pass at only 20 meters altitude over the terrain and trees and structures on its way to a destination.
    scottyah · 1790826817 · focus · HN ↗
    Prevents a lot of wars and skirmishes.
  3. buckle8017 · 1790819833 · focus · HN ↗
    High probability the NSA has satellites intercepting cellular radio traffic world wide with triangulation.
    Pocket backdoors.
    aorloff · 1790828590 · focus · HN ↗
    Cell triangulation is practically consumer grade technology now
    For a while just before smartphones, at least 15 years ago now, carriers were experimenting with APIs that allow opted-in dumbphones to be triangulated (via cell tower) and tracked via API.
    throwaway85825 · 1790870969 · focus · HN ↗
    Trilateration is an inherent requirement for beamforming which is the only way they've been able to squeeze in more bandwidth for the low bands.
    throwaway2037 · 1790832637 · focus · HN ↗
    Is this traffic encrypted?
    buckle8017 · 1790859734 · focus · HN ↗
    It's... enciphered.
    They rolled their own.
  4. rpcope1 · 1790824452 · focus · HN ↗
    Honestly I'm sure if they're releasing stuff as good as 3DEP (which is extraordinary, by the way), the spooks probably have every leaf, pebble and dirt mound mapped out across the entire face of the earth.
    walrus01 · 1790825554 · focus · HN ↗
    Probably good enough to tell by its shape if the car parked in your driveway is a Toyota Corolla or a Nissan Sentra or a Honda Civic.
  5. somenameforme · 1790828006 · focus · HN ↗
    What would be the point of going much more high tech than what's already commercially available? You can buy commercial satellite footage at a native resolution of 25cm, optionally upscaled to 15cm, for $20/km^2. [1] A bit of processing and you could certainly do high precision geographic mapping. In either case that's already enough to track individual people from space.
    I suppose even higher and you could start resolving things like license plate numbers from space, but it just seems like sharply diminishing returns in general.
    [1] - <a href="https://xrtechgroup.com/who-has-the-highest-resolution-satellite-imagery/" rel="nofollow">https://xrtechgroup.com/who-has-the-highest-resolution-satel...
    walrus01 · 1790828923 · focus · HN ↗
    I was referring to radar for building a point-cloud or three dimensional digital elevation model/digital surface model of the terrain, buildings, vehicles, trees, not photogrammetry or direct overhead visual spectrum or IR imagery.
    Different thing. But in answer to your question, revisit time and immediate availability of data would be a major thing. The size/scale of the commercial earth observation satellites that have been launched are quite small and likely nowhere near as capable as even what 'black' programs had 20 years ago. Or even having the capability to get near-realtime live visual spectrum imagery for military command/control purposes (e.g: Is that long boxy vehicle rolling out of a warehouse right now a regular semi truck or a transporter-erector-launcher?).
    goodmythical · 1790865565 · focus · HN ↗
    Can't wait for Flock 2 - "This time it's everywhere"
    Can you imagine the false positive rate and creepy stalker cop capabilities if they had global live 4d-gaussians?
    ozim · 1790837317 · focus · HN ↗
    Still far from cheap, decent sized city is 200km^2 that’s like $4k.
    Much rather contribute that amount one time to OSM and have details from all cities from there.
    TeMPOraL · 1790841060 · focus · HN ↗
    It's that cheap?
    I mean, it sounds like $4k and maybe again as much on compute could fix OSM for a city?
  6. thrawa8387336 · 1790835590 · focus · HN ↗
    One recent theory I heard is that Starlink works as a synthetic aperture radar. I mean surely space internet is an ok business but how profitable can it be?
    hersko · 1790866124 · focus · HN ↗
    > space internet is an ok business but how profitable can it be
    "Space internet?" It's regular internet from space available anywhere open to the sky. Seems like it would be incredibly profitable.
    sire-vc · 1790918183 · focus · HN ↗
    Very. In most places in the world starlink is the fastest internet available. The global internet business is VERY big. In developing countries most people do whatsapp/ott calling over internet so their only cost is wifi.
  7. preisschild · 1790859808 · focus · HN ↗
    The Soviets also had passive and active naval radar satellites during the cold war (RORSAT), which could downlink directly to cruise missiles (SS-N-19 Shipwreck)
  8. OmicronCeti · 1790952456 · focus · HN ↗
    >One thing that's never really been shown to the public, not even 50 year old 1970s era stuff, are photos/examples of the SIGINT systems that the NSA likely has in orbit.
    See High Jump: the JUMPSEAT signals intelligence satellite
    <a href="https://www.thespacereview.com/article/5151/1" rel="nofollow">https://www.thespacereview.com/article/5151/1

Open on Hacker News to reply ↗

Unofficial Hacker News client; not affiliated with Y Combinator.