Trust But Verify ...

B

:There is a delicious story involving deliberate US deception here.
:
:Our side misled the Russkies into NOT worrying about a bird that
:obviously WAS in a reccesat-type orbit, or so it is said.
:
:I have been assured by deep-inside veterans that a) the story is true,
:and b) the story is false.
:

: How does The Cigarette Smoking Man figure into all this? :-D

Woodward and Bernstein refuse to say while he's still alive. ;-)

regards,
-------------------------------------------------------

Pat Flannery wrote


Then there's the rumor that they actually took command of the satellite
and used it to photograph _our_ missile sites and send the data to them,
"Ice Station Zebra" style.

But that seems pretty far-fetched.

The fetchedness of that is pretty far. The location of our sites was
never very secret -- they tended to be marked by DO NOT ENTER
signs. And the command links on the KH-11s were encrypted.

(Interestingly, the command links on some earlier US and Soviet
sats weren't. There was an NRL engineer who figured out how the
Soviet RORSATs were commanded, and got scolded badly for doing
a little experiment...)

(Allen Thomson) writes:

(Interestingly, the command links on some earlier US and Soviet
sats weren't. There was an NRL engineer who figured out how the
Soviet RORSATs were commanded, and got scolded badly for doing
a little experiment...)

Are you just gonna let us hang there?? Have a heart!

-gc

--
"I am vehy 'appy. Is possible to push vehy hard. And is possible win"
- Valentino Rossi

"Allen Thomson"
There was an NRL engineer who figured out how the
Soviet RORSATs were commanded, and got scolded badly for doing
a little experiment...)

Anyone who can issue an unauthorized command to a Russian satellite needs
to be in the hacker hall of fame.

: (Interestingly, the command links on some earlier US and Soviet
: sats weren't. There was an NRL engineer who figured out how the
: Soviet RORSATs were commanded, and got scolded badly for doing
: a little experiment...)

: Are you just gonna let us hang there?? Have a heart!

I was told this was an old wives tale, and I'm inclined to
believe that it didn't happen. That would have been a treaty violation
and a quick firing (at the least), if only because if we thought we knew
how to do such a thing we'd be *very* careful to keep our knowledge
secret. Secondly, there are a variety of ways (above and beyond encryption
of the link) to ward off intrusion attempts.
Besides, it would be a little hard for an NRL engineer to command
a spacecraft from his cubicle. He would have to write a memo, calling a
meeting, to discuss issuing a message........ :-)

tech: What whould we set the transmit power level at?
engineer: Uhhh, just put it on maximimum and see who complains.

div O: This software has been tested, hasn't it?
engineer: just as soon as you go on-line.

engineer: "...suffered premature mission termination."
rocket: "BOOM!"

Brings back memories of the "Not Quite Ready for Prime Time" install team.

regards,
-----------------------------------------------------------------

Steven James Forsberg wrote in

I was told this was an old wives tale, and I'm inclined to
believe that it didn't happen. That would have been a treaty violation
and a quick firing (at the least), if only because if we thought we knew
how to do such a thing we'd be *very* careful to keep our knowledge
secret.

According to the story, that was why he was scolded -- he figured
it out and took a bit of unauthorized initiative to see if it would
work. To his perhaps apocryphal credit, the intervention was minimal
and subtle and there was no sign the Soviets noticed it.

Allen Thomson wrote:

According to the story, that was why he was scolded -- he figured
it out and took a bit of unauthorized initiative to see if it would
work. To his perhaps apocryphal credit, the intervention was minimal
and subtle and there was no sign the Soviets noticed it.

(Cut to radar imaging unit of the Soviet Navy as they peer down at a
two-mile long submarine surfacing off Leningrad.)

Steven James Forsberg wrote


I was told this was an old wives tale, and I'm inclined to
believe that it didn't happen.

Just for the sake of telling what I know of the tale, it was
told to me and some others in, probably, 1973-1975. The teller
was our branch chief, who had recently been on a rotational
assignment at NRL. Said branch chief was a painfully(*) moral
born-again Christian(**) with a PhD in physics or engineering or
something like that, a thoroughly nice guy to boot, and
I have no doubt he was telling the truth as he knew/believed
it. Which does beg the question of how well he knew it, but
further deponent said not.

(*) But not offensively.

(*) I still find it slightly startling to meet the genuine
article.

Allen Thomson wrote:

Said branch chief was a painfully(*) moral
born-again Christian(**) with a PhD in physics or engineering or
something like that,


If he had a degree in genetics he could have cloned a crab, and had a
born-again crustacean as a pet.

Pat (running)

: I was told this was an old wives tale, and I'm inclined to
: believe that it didn't happen.

: Just for the sake of telling what I know of the tale, it was
: told to me and some others in, probably, 1973-1975. The teller
: was our branch chief, who had recently been on a rotational
: assignment at NRL. Said branch chief was a painfully(*) moral
: born-again Christian(**) with a PhD in physics or engineering or
: something like that, a thoroughly nice guy to boot, and
: I have no doubt he was telling the truth as he knew/believed
: it. Which does beg the question of how well he knew it, but
: further deponent said not.

Well, I never say never. Sometimes the truth IS stranger than
fiction. One that I never confirmed: The Admiral had his offices on
the top floor overlooking the Potomac. But he complained that the radome
on the roof made too much noise. So a study was done on noise mitigation,
and it was determined it would just be more cost effective to move the
Admirals offices to the other side of the building.
But, the other side had no view of the Potomac. They spent XX million
moving the radome to the other side of the building.

Or the time a disgruntled employee released a message asking for
danger pay on account of the commute through the SE district, and asking
"If we can eject Saddam, why not Marion?" ;-)

regards,
-------------------------------------------------




I