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. reacharavindh · 1790844112 · focus · HN ↗
  The thing that always leaves me flabbergasted when I read such fascinating facts of such great technological power held by the US is that they seem to always waste it.... :-(
  If they had such "eyes" on our earth, couldn't they have clearly spotted those Methane emissions from Turkmenistan well earlier than the UN MARS program did? or many "beneficial" to humanity things I cannot even think of right away.
  Even militarily... US wanted to avoid the Hormuz Strait closure.. I think that was a clear enough military goal. Could nt they spot where the mines are, and where the attacking positions are from their mighty tech instead of this prolonged war? As in, the strikes they did already - couldnt they have taken out all attacking capacity right away if they had such powerful tech eyes?
  1. hexapus · 1790844840 · focus · HN ↗
    Counterpoint: The people running the government right now are very, very stupid.
    refurb · 1790847362 · focus · HN ↗
    The people running the government are the same ones running it 4 years ago. It’s only a handful at the very top that change.
    idiotsecant · 1790848638 · focus · HN ↗
    Yes... The ones who 'run' it. Mid level government employees are worker bees, they aren't setting policy.
    throwaway85825 · 1790871235 · focus · HN ↗
    If they don't want it they slow roll it a different policy is stated. If they want it they do it immediately, maybe it's illegal or unconstitutional, but it will take 20 years for the court to eventually rule on it and by then it's a forgone conclusion.
    pjc50 · 1790849750 · focus · HN ↗
    Dunno, I think Hegseth is changing more than a handful of top brass in a very Stalinesque ideological purge. 20% of generals feels like a lot.
    scrumper · 1790854875 · focus · HN ↗
    Yes it's quite bad what that muppet is up to but it's not Stalin level yet.
    Decades ago I wrote a paper, lost to time now, on the effect of his military purges on the fighting effectiveness of the Red Army during the back half of WW2. He purged not just senior commanders but mid ranks and up, think like down as far as their equivalent of majors. A vast amount of battle-relevant experience was swept away, much more damaging in the day-to-day grind than simply disappearing a few field marshals.
    My point is, hope is not lost for the US military. Yes lots of irreplaceable senior experience is being tossed aside for unforgivably stupid and pointless reasons, but there's a lot of recent, hard-won, actual shooting war experience in the officer corps which, if they don't all bugger off in disgust, will serve us well in future. Today's captains and majors are well aware of how drones in Ukraine have changed battle[1], to give one example, and the career-minded among them will be in doctrine-influencing and development positions before too long.
    I'm aware this is to some degree wishful thinking.
    [1]I chose this example because it's going to be one of that drunken fool's more consequential errors: re-tasking the Army unit charged with developing drone capabilities for the US.
    superxpro12 · 1790952603 · focus · HN ↗
    Russia won not because of tactical brilliance, but because they simply threw biomass at the problem.
    Just throw enough barely armored tanks and bodies at the problem, and the germans eventually run out of resources. It only took about 9M soldiers. Glorious sacrifices for the benefit of Stalin.
    Consider how many lives would have been saved with a shred of tactical brilliance.
    preisschild · 1790859892 · focus · HN ↗
    The current admin is waging a war on them (the deep state) and is trying to replace them with loyal MAGAts
    easyThrowaway · 1790859555 · focus · HN ↗
    They are not - at least not in the way we commonly think; they simply have other priorities. They simply couldn't care less anymore about telling better lies than their predecessors.
    mandeepj · 1790868972 · focus · HN ↗
    > They simply couldn't care less anymore about telling better lies than their predecessors.
    4 years ago, people didn't fill their pockets on the current scale, and they also didn't pitch their own businesses under the cover of national interests.
    throwaway85825 · 1790871084 · focus · HN ↗
    They absolutely did and have been doing so for centuries. Spoils system and all that. For a while they just got better at hiding it.
  2. pjc50 · 1790846121 · focus · HN ↗
    Mines are underwater and have no clear visibility from space. Shaheds require very little launch infrastructure - basically any airstrip will suffice.
    I think the war has been a lesson that the technological capacity isn't magic and US strike capability is not unlimited. Everyone assumed they were going to do a Venezuela or Ukraine "special military operation", decapitate the leadership, strike a few barracks and declare victory. Now the US leadership seem surprised that the Iranians are continuing to fight.
    (The definitive film on insane US leadership is of course Dr Strangelove, a film that came out when Trump was 18 years old. The character of General Jack D Ripper is shown to be an insane conspiracy theorist babbling about commies and fluoride who starts a world-destroying nuclear war on his own initiative)
    tome · 1790846745 · focus · HN ↗
    > Everyone assumed they were going to do a Venezuela
    When you say "everyone" do you mean "everyone in the US military establishment"? I remember very few independent commentators who suggested the US intervention in Iran was a good idea. (Personally I think it's too early to say.)
    pjc50 · 1790847078 · focus · HN ↗
    Yes, sorry, everyone in the decision-making bubble. Of course anyone watching could tell it was a bad idea.
    The last US troops withdrew from Iraq this week. I wonder how long the US will be able to tolerate not having an overseas ground war.
    hammock · 1790876715 · focus · HN ↗
    This is a space-focused post but you really think we don’t have underwater intelligence? What with the nuclear triad and all? What with threats something like a nuclear-armed P-700 being dropped by a merchant submarine secretly on the bottom of the ocean a few hundred meters from DC only to be launched remotely at a determined point in time?
  3. asimpletune · 1790846148 · focus · HN ↗
    Power just means capabilities not results. Often it just magnifies the wielder’s capabilities to harm themselves and others.
  4. refurb · 1790847490 · focus · HN ↗
    You’re falling for the fallacy of “if I can’t see it must not be happening”.
    Not to mention if it were made public, how could it be done without exposing the technology?
    “US govt sees massive methane emissions”
    “How?”
    “Uhh, satellites.”
    “Which ones?”
  5. Cthulhu_ · 1790849044 · focus · HN ↗
    > If they had such "eyes" on our earth, couldn't they have clearly spotted those Methane emissions from Turkmenistan well earlier than the UN MARS program did?
    Yes, but that would "show their hand" - secrecy has always been paramount.
    Of course, then Trump came in and freely shared sattelite photos of idk, an Iranian launch site or something which revealed the US's current day spy sattelite capabilities.
    pjc50 · 1790849697 · focus · HN ↗
    See previously <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plame_affair" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plame_affair : the state department didn't like someone disrupting the Iraq narrative construction, so they exposed her CIA status.
    iririririr · 1790849838 · focus · HN ↗
    huge BS. they have no problem doing alternate discovery hacks for information, that was often wrong, acquired via torture in dark sites.
    stop making excuses for people you don't even know
    kulahan · 1790914077 · focus · HN ↗
    You're right in a sense, but that's not necessarily how this works. Sources and methods are classified, but information is not necessarily so. If it could theoretically be obtained in multiple ways, you can release it without showing your hand. The USAF's Office of Special Investigation (used to, at least) informs companies and orgs of the fact that they were hacked, often before the company/org knows itself.
  6. MSFT_Edging · 1790873703 · focus · HN ↗
    This might sound dramatic but you have it a bit backwards.
    You can call back to Major General Smedly Butler and his "War is a racket".
    WWII got the US out of the remnants of the great depression. The massive industrial push for both our equipment and the lend-lease model was a massive infusion into our economy. It was so huge, that it never really stopped. Our economic model and system was sick, and the military industrial complex(dramatic but apt term) was a large-scale make-work endeavor that would double as an expression of global power and propaganda both home and abroad.
    One could take this and begin to see that conflict may be instigated for the sake of the MIC. Al Qaeda wasn't in Iraq, but it didn't stop us from invading, making up claims of WMDs that couldn't be substantiated, then destabilizing the region. The power vacuums then create later conflicts, for more military machinery to be built for.
    The HMMV was continued to be sent to the middle east long after we all acknowledged they were death traps for soldiers. Same thing for certain tanks, they kept making them to keep people employed.
    The big thing now, is the propaganda worked too well, and we became too focused on giving as much taxpayer dollars to lockheed and raytheon as we could.
    We didn't win Afghanistan, Iraq left ISIS in it's wake. But the point wasn't to win, it was to brutalize(externally facing propaganda) and sell weapons. Since the purpose of conflict was so extremely warped to enable the MIC, winning didn't matter, and our ability to win corroded greatly. We won WWII because of our logistics. Those logistics have broken down as we deindustrialized and moved to more and more expensive "smart weapons". Those smart weapons made promises of warfare so advanced, you only need a handful. So we pay millions per missile. Then we use them all up defending against dumb weapons, and we lack the capacity to make more.
    Our military is in effect a paper tiger. The real threat of the US military is mass civilian casualty. If we can't take them out with drones, land invasion would be a catastrophe, and then actual WMDs would be deployed to save face. Nuclear genocide is the US military's only real remaining card, as we've devoured the propaganda and rested on our grandparent's laurels while losing sight of what earned the respect.

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