CBS says US satellite tracked speeding Italian hostage car in Baghdad - huh?!?!

"Reed Snellenberger" wrote
credible speculations, with which I tend to agree.

Jim Oberg wrote:
"Reed Snellenberger" wrote
credible speculations, with which I tend to agree.

One other possibility that is somewhat credible is that
the Italians had one of the US rescue radio units which
were tricked out to send intermittent IFF pulses up to
the sigint birds.

It wasn't mentioned in the Army report which just...
well, Leaked isn't the right word, but it's out
on the net now with all the TS/NF stuff back in
it and readable (sigh). Apparently, Adobe Acrobat
should not be used to protect sensitive information.

It not being in that report doesn't mean it could
not have happened, however. There was no detailed
equipment inventory released that I can tell.
It wouldn't have been relevant to the primary investigation
as far as I can tell, so that's not suprising.

However, this is pure speculation on my part.


-george william herbert
/

I can't even find the original CBS story, just the AFP story
quoting the CBS story. Can anybody else find it on cbsnews.com?

"Jim Oberg" wrote
JimO asks -- what can this report mean? What technical capability
is being referred to, and in how garbled a form? As of now, I have no
reason
to believe this CBS/AFP story has any credibility. Can anybody enlighten
me?

George William Herbert wrote:
Jim Oberg wrote:

"Reed Snellenberger" wrote
credible speculations, with which I tend to agree.


One other possibility that is somewhat credible is that
the Italians had one of the US rescue radio units which
were tricked out to send intermittent IFF pulses up to
the sigint birds.


Even that may have been unnecessary -- the report also states that the
driver of the car was talking on his cellphone to a confederate at the
airport at the time of the incident. Given that the cellular system
there has been significantly upgraded over the past year, it's pretty
likely that an analysis of the control channel logs will provide
reasonably accurate position information (particularly along a known
route).

Finally, "driving while celling" is as good an explanation as any of why
the driver didn't respond to the initial warnings as he approached the
control point.

--
Reed Snellenberger
GPG KeyID: 5A978843
rsnellenberger-at-houston.rr.com

Here is what you can have in the public domain and is as accurate as
you are going to get anywhere. You may note that this source indicates
a nightime/poor weather resolution of approximately 1 foot. The
question is not whether the capability to image the Sgrena incident
exists or whether there are multiple satellites deployed imaging Iraq.
The question is whether the Sgrena incident was in fact within the
field of view of one of the birds when it occured.

You can go see daytime "commercial resolution" satellite pictures of
your very own back yard at the new google service "keyhole.com." A
free one week test can be downloaded. Enjoy and remember that big
brother might be watching. And the siblings in uniform get to see much
much much better pictures.

http://www.spacetoday.org/Satellites/YugoWarSats.html

In article , jonathon says...

"Jim Oberg" wrote in message
. ..

JimO asks -- what can this report mean? What technical capability
is being referred to, and in how garbled a form? As of now, I have no reason
to believe this CBS/AFP story has any credibility. Can anybody enlighten me?

The article seems pretty straight forward. Indicating a US spy satellite
caught the incident on tape. If I can pan and zoom any intersection
in Baghdad for free with enough resolution to count cars, I bet the
NRO can do much better. With all the car bombings is it surprising
at all that we're closely watching Baghdad with satellites?

You are perhaps confusing real satellites with the Hollywood variety.

Real satellites, usually aren't over Baghdad in the first place. The
number of high-resolution imaging satellites the NRO can call on is
numbered in the single digits, they all operate at low altitude, and
they orbit at high speed. Odds are, at any given time, none of them
will be able to see Baghdad, and if one can, it will be gone in fifteen
minutes.

Real satellites, don't do pan-and-scan. They theoretically could, if
they were in the right place, but there are at any moment several thousand
people who absolutely need to be on the joystick for every one satellite
available. So what you get is not a pan-and-scan joystick, but a form
that you can fill out and send up the chain of command, describing what
it is you want a picture of, and if you are in the top thousand prioritized
users you get it goes in the queue, and the next time a satellite is in
the right position it will snap one still picture for you (in between all
the completely diffeent still pictures it is taking for all the other
thousand users), of whatever it is you thought was important when you
filled out the form. You'll get the picture in the mail some time later.

If you decide that you are suddenly interested in something that happened
yesterday, tough ****. You would need to have submitted the form the day
before yesterday to have had the satellite take that picture. You can
ask and see if someone else, interested in something else, happens to have
requested and recieved a picture that caught whatever it is you are now
interested in somewhere in the corner, and you might get lucky.

But you can't *track* things, unless those things are as big and slow as
armored brigades. And you especially can't track things retroactively.


--
*John Schilling * "Anything worth doing, *
*Member:AIAA,NRA,ACLU,SAS,LP * is worth doing for money" *
*Chief Scientist & General Partner * -13th Rule of Acquisition *
*White Elephant Research, LLC * "There is no substitute *
* for success" *
*661-951-9107 or 661-275-6795 * -58th Rule of Acquisition *

Perhaps the data was actually from a JSTARS aircraft-borne
ground-target tracking radar, and CBS/AFP are merely very
confused as to the technical details? The former is a well-
known US capability very likely to be deployed in what is
still a combat theatre, moreover one where tracking individual
vehicles at night would likely be a very useful intel tool.
And the latter is also far from implausible. I'd bet on it,
if the US referred to the info as, say, "overhead surveillance
data", and all the reporter knew of such was from watching
"Enemy Of The State"...

Henry

Reed Snellenberger wrote:
George William Herbert wrote:
Jim Oberg wrote:

"Reed Snellenberger" wrote
credible speculations, with which I tend to agree.


One other possibility that is somewhat credible is that
the Italians had one of the US rescue radio units which
were tricked out to send intermittent IFF pulses up to
the sigint birds.


Even that may have been unnecessary -- the report also states that
the
driver of the car was talking on his cellphone to a confederate at
the
airport at the time of the incident. Given that the cellular system
there has been significantly upgraded over the past year, it's pretty

likely that an analysis of the control channel logs will provide
reasonably accurate position information (particularly along a known
route).

Finally, "driving while celling" is as good an explanation as any of
why
the driver didn't respond to the initial warnings as he approached
the
control point.


Yes. Most cellphones are set up to provide GPS
location now. Some U.S. cell phone providers
offer tracking options that allow employers to
track employees, parents to track children, and,
I suppose, spouses to track soon-to-be-ex-spouses.

Heck. I carry a GPS logger with me about half
the time (I use it for site surveys and I often
forget to turn it off when I'm en route) and
I'm not in a war zone. There's little doubt in
my mind that these guys had some form of GPS in
their vehicle.

- Ed Kyle

"Greg D. Moore (Strider)" wrote in message
...

"jonathon" wrote in message
...
"Jim Oberg" wrote in message
...





JimO asks -- what can this report mean? What technical capability
is being referred to, and in how garbled a form? As of now, I have no
reason
to believe this CBS/AFP story has any credibility. Can anybody enlighten
me?


The article seems pretty straight forward. Indicating a US spy satellite
caught the incident on tape. If I can pan and zoom any intersection
in Baghdad for free with enough resolution to count cars, I bet the
NRO can do much better.

Really? You can can do this for moving images? Or just static shots?

Keep in mind unless you have tech I don't those are all snapshots (and many
actually airborne, not space borne at that.)



Well, if the US doesn't have the capability now for such intelligence
gathering, we certainly are working on it.
http://www.fas.org/spp/military/prog...int/whelan.pdf


I would think with all these resources they could cobble
together some useful imaging of any hotspot. Baghdad
certainly qualifies.
http://www.fas.org/irp/program/collect/index.html

http://www.fas.org/spp/military/prog...ief/sld003.htm




In order to get better shots, the optical recon sats tend to be in lower
orbits, so their dwell time isn't all that impressive. Remember, Enemy of
the State is fiction.


With all the car bombings is it surprising
at all that we're closely watching Baghdad with satellites?



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http://www.keyhole.com/

penultimate wrote:
Here is what you can have in the public domain and is as accurate as
you are going to get anywhere. You may note that this source indicates
a nightime/poor weather resolution of approximately 1 foot. The


Nighttime resolution can indeed be 1 foot, much as daytime resolution
can be.
the kicker is that as illumination is some half a million times worse
(at best, with full moon), to one billionth as bright (starlight only).
so, you need exposures of around a million to a billion times as long.
Often the satellite will have gone over the horizon before you could
even in theory get a picture.
(lacking active illumination)