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



 
 
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  #1  
Old April 30th 05, 04:16 AM
Jim Oberg
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Default CBS says US satellite tracked speeding Italian hostage car in Baghdad - huh?!?!






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?




US satellite recorded checkpoint shooting, shows speed of Italian car: CBS
Fri



Apr 29,12:28 PM ET





WASHINGTON (AFP) - A US satellite reportedly recorded a checkpoint shooting
in

Iraq last month, enabling investigators to reconstruct how fast a car
carrying

a top Italian intelligence official and a freed hostage was traveling when
US

troops opened fire.



The report, which aired Thursday on CBS News, said US investigators
concluded

from the recording that the car was traveling at a speed of more than 60
miles

(96 km) per hour.



Giuliana Sgrena has said the car was traveling at a normal speed of about 30

miles an hour when the soldiers opened fired, wounding her and killing
Nicola

Calipari, the Italian agent who had just secured her release from a month's

captivity.



US soldiers said at the time of the March 4 incident that the car approached
at

a high rate of speed and that they fired only after it failed to respond to
hand

signals, flashing bright lights and warning shots.



The conflicting accounts were among a number of differences that have
prevented

US and Italian authorities from reaching agreement on what happened.



CBS, citing Pentagon officials, said the satellite recording enabled

investigators to reconstruct the event without having to rely on the
eyewitness

accounts.



It said the soldiers manning the checkpoint first spotted the Italian car
when

it was 137 yards (meters) away. By the time they opened fire and brought the
car

to a halt, it was 46 yards (meters) away. CBS said that happened in less
than

three seconds, which meant the car had to be going over 60 miles an hour.

CBS said Italian investigators refused to accept that the Americans were

justified in shooting so quickly, arguing among other things that the
checkpoint

was not properly marked.


  #2  
Old April 30th 05, 04:28 AM
Ed Kyle
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Default

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?

US satellite recorded checkpoint shooting, shows speed of Italian

car: CBS
Fri ...


I can only guess that this is a mangled report.
Maybe the Italian guards had a GPS receiver in
their car from which a log was retrieved post-
incident? (Thus the "satellite" part of the
story?) Even a cheap GPS receiver typically
stores a position log and calculates speed.

- Ed Kyle

  #3  
Old April 30th 05, 01:45 PM
jonathon
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Default

"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?



Free Trial
http://www.keyhole.com/


  #4  
Old April 30th 05, 06:40 PM
Greg D. Moore \(Strider\)
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Default


"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.)

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?



Free Trial
http://www.keyhole.com/




  #5  
Old May 1st 05, 12:35 PM
Jim Oberg
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Default


"jonathon" wrote
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 Bagdad 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 watching Bagdad with satellites rather closely?


How much you wanna bet?

We're not talking a view of some daytime corner sometime during a period of
a few months --
we're talking two views at night, within a few seconds of each other.

See the difference?



  #6  
Old May 1st 05, 12:37 PM
Jim Oberg
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Default


"jonathon" wrote
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


Is this an admission you've lost the bet
you offered in the top post? grin

Now pay up. One week's
embarrassed, contrite silence.



  #7  
Old May 1st 05, 03:22 PM
jonathon
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Posts: n/a
Default


"Jim Oberg" wrote in message
...

"jonathon" wrote
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


Is this an admission you've lost the bet
you offered in the top post? grin



It was a sure bet! All those ufo sightings
in Iran are prolly just our uavs stacked up
in a holding pattern.



Now pay up. One week's
embarrassed, contrite silence.


Never, never and never.

I have a vacation on the way in a week and was
planning an onslaught. I get two weeks to finally
try out my stock trading system based on the
concepts I ceaselessly spout. And it'll be a public
demonstration as I'll post each buy and sell
as it happens.

Since complexity science is the inverse of all things
classical, any trading system built from it...from nature...
will have the quality of working better the
more that know.

heh... got it all ciphered out now~


singin'

Money, it's a gas
Grab that cash with both hands and make a stash
...new car...caviar...four-star...day-dream...
think I'll go and overthrow Bei-jing



s








  #8  
Old May 1st 05, 06:32 PM
Reed Snellenberger
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Default

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?


A likely alternative here is that a Predator (or other UAV) was in the
air and captured the incident on video. Reports today say that the
checkpoint was put in place to support travel by Negroponte, and I can
imagine we'd want to keep an eye on him.

The reports also suggest the highway was lightly traveled (referring to
only 15 vehicles being turned away at the checkpoint prior to the
Italians' car). This would make it much simpler to isolate and analyze
any video or photographic info, since they certainly know the position
of the surveillance platform and the location of the incident.

Finally, the reports give the interval between the pictures of the
incident as "3 seconds", suggesting that either there were obstructed
views of an incident area that was under constant surveillance, or that
the area was being surveilled by a device that was scanning over the
incident area at that frequency.

The "spy satellite" info may just be unintentional media confusion, or
possibly some deliberate "fuzzing up" of the source to protect
intelligent assets/techniques.


--
Reed Snellenberger
GPG KeyID: 5A978843
rsnellenberger-at-houston.rr.com
  #9  
Old May 1st 05, 10:36 PM
penultimate
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Default

There are currently at least 8 and possibly as many as a dozen
satellites "watching" Bahgdad with multiple cameras each yielding
nearly continuous coverage. Imaging capability includes visual, IR,
and radar images with computer merging of the multiple techniques. It
provides real time framed capability, not merely static images. It can
deliver this image information under clear sky conditions as well as at
night and through cloud cover. Even at night under cloud cover
resolution is perfectly adequate for detecting and tracking vehicles.
Vehicles may be identified and tracked by either headlights or their
thermal image from engine heat. The exact position of any particular
object in an image relative to ground can easily be determined and
tracked across successive frames. Rumor has it that daytime
resolution is sufficient that NSA has been forced to deem even
"inadvertant" targeting and observation of a nude beach as a career
limiting offense. Additionally, Predator aircraft may or may not be in
the air.

  #10  
Old May 2nd 05, 03:49 AM
Jim Oberg
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Posts: n/a
Default

Very imaginative, but I find not the slightest
indication in this text that you know what you
are talking about, or that anything you typed is
worthy of belief. Please provide checkable
factual assertions and citations.

"penultimate" wrote
There are currently at least 8 and possibly as many as a dozen
satellites "watching" Bahgdad with multiple cameras each yielding
nearly continuous coverage. Imaging capability includes visual, IR,
and radar images with computer merging of the multiple techniques. It
provides real time framed capability, not merely static images. It can
deliver this image information under clear sky conditions as well as at
night and through cloud cover. Even at night under cloud cover
resolution is perfectly adequate for detecting and tracking vehicles.
Vehicles may be identified and tracked by either headlights or their
thermal image from engine heat. The exact position of any particular
object in an image relative to ground can easily be determined and
tracked across successive frames. Rumor has it that daytime
resolution is sufficient that NSA has been forced to deem even
"inadvertant" targeting and observation of a nude beach as a career
limiting offense. Additionally, Predator aircraft may or may not be in
the air.



 




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