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Finding the B-21's hangar location from the stars in its press image

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Re: Finding the B-21's hangar location from the stars in its press image

#191

Post by mschuster91 »

whywhywouldyou wrote: post #171
gmiller123456 wrote: post #140

There's a few highly suspect details in the way the author got the 34-35 degree estimate. Maybe he was just really lucky and the errors cancelled out, but don't count on using his method to produce similar results. Polaris is about .8 degrees away from the celestial North pole, so using it alone can give a reading off by .8 degrees, and the orientation in the photo is actually nearing the worst case. The horizon does…

I'm sure you're correct, as the whole thing reads like "look how smart I am". 1. Extraneous details about satellites not being overhead at night -- as if government spy satellites operate on the same schedule with the same priorities as publicly known satellites. 2. Mentions things like them not scrubbing the EXIF data was a "mistake". How could it be a mistake if this was public information? 3. Says at the end "(thi…

> 1. Extraneous details about satellites not being overhead at night -- as if government spy satellites operate on the same schedule with the same priorities as publicly known satellites.

You can bet that the US, China and Russia know about at least the orbital data of all satellites that the other nations put up.

> 2. Mentions things like them not scrubbing the EXIF data was a "mistake". How could it be a mistake if this was public information?

Because even what otherwise should be public domain under US copyright rules can still be censored for national security reasons - precisely to avoid OSINT research like this. What some random Twitter hobby astronomy researcher can do in their free time with basic tools, Russian and Chinese secret services can do as well.

Another fine example just how important attention to detail is with maintaining operational security.

Re: Finding the B-21's hangar location from the stars in its press image

#192

Post by mschuster91 »

dylan604 wrote: post #113
mk_stjames wrote: post #24

I feel like the entire thread should have led off with "This is in fact a publicly known hangar in Palmdale and this was known as public information as soon as the unveiling event occurred, and thus this is just an exercise to show how locating the spot could have been possible from just this photo as a technical demonstration." Because I guarantee there are going to be a hundred clickbait articles by various 'news'…

People have been doing photo analysis for a long long time, and have gotten quite good at doing geolocation based on details in the background that the average viewer ignores. Spy agencies are especially good at it. There's many a spy movie that offers glimpses into this, but The Good Shepard comes to mind. Even as a joking kind of thing, the opposite has been done. There's a famous exchange between Neil DeGrasse Tys…

> It's a game to some people. It's a challenge.

And for some, it crosses all lines of ethics and morals, like the stalker that deduced the location of a pop idol by looking at the reflection of a building in her eyes [1]. That's utterly crazy.

[1] https://sea.mashable.com/article/6776/a-stalker-found-a-japa...

Re: Finding the B-21's hangar location from the stars in its press image

#195

Post by rob74 »

mschuster91 wrote: post #191
whywhywouldyou wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure you're correct, as the whole thing reads like "look how smart I am". 1. Extraneous details about satellites not being overhead at night -- as if government spy satellites operate on the same schedule with the same priorities as publicly known satellites. 2. Mentions things like them not scrubbing the EXIF data was a "mistake". How could it be a mistake if this was public information? 3. Says at the end "(thi…

> 1. Extraneous details about satellites not being overhead at night -- as if government spy satellites operate on the same schedule with the same priorities as publicly known satellites. You can bet that the US, China and Russia know about at least the orbital data of all satellites that the other nations put up. > 2. Mentions things like them not scrubbing the EXIF data was a "mistake". How could it be a mistake if…

> You can bet that the US, China and Russia know about at least the orbital data of all satellites that the other nations put up.

Of course, but I think they would refrain from publishing that information? Unless they want to make sure that "they know that we know"...

Re: Finding the B-21's hangar location from the stars in its press image

#196

Post by tapland »

relaxing wrote: post #156
microsoftdoes wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. So do you think the author had inside information on the location?

The author notes in the writeup that an educated guess could be made with public details about who the manufacturer was.

Edward’s is a classic and would be a top hit to re-visit on maps with any kind of buildings visible for a quick confirmation.

Re: Finding the B-21's hangar location from the stars in its press image

#197

Post by samstave »

whywhywouldyou wrote: post #171
gmiller123456 wrote: post #140

There's a few highly suspect details in the way the author got the 34-35 degree estimate. Maybe he was just really lucky and the errors cancelled out, but don't count on using his method to produce similar results. Polaris is about .8 degrees away from the celestial North pole, so using it alone can give a reading off by .8 degrees, and the orientation in the photo is actually nearing the worst case. The horizon does…

I'm sure you're correct, as the whole thing reads like "look how smart I am". 1. Extraneous details about satellites not being overhead at night -- as if government spy satellites operate on the same schedule with the same priorities as publicly known satellites. 2. Mentions things like them not scrubbing the EXIF data was a "mistake". How could it be a mistake if this was public information? 3. Says at the end "(thi…

1. What orbit sphere level do spy sats sit at?

(I worked with many sat engs from Loral and another quiet facility called Lokheed (Also you shouls look into BALL ((the actual Mason Jar company - and see how many spy sats they make)))

-

Anyway, I think that DEFCON needs to break this shit open....

Read all the lines, then read all the ones in-betweeen....

Serious.

Re: Finding the B-21's hangar location from the stars in its press image

#198

Post by samstave »

mschuster91 wrote: post #191
whywhywouldyou wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure you're correct, as the whole thing reads like "look how smart I am". 1. Extraneous details about satellites not being overhead at night -- as if government spy satellites operate on the same schedule with the same priorities as publicly known satellites. 2. Mentions things like them not scrubbing the EXIF data was a "mistake". How could it be a mistake if this was public information? 3. Says at the end "(thi…

> 1. Extraneous details about satellites not being overhead at night -- as if government spy satellites operate on the same schedule with the same priorities as publicly known satellites. You can bet that the US, China and Russia know about at least the orbital data of all satellites that the other nations put up. > 2. Mentions things like them not scrubbing the EXIF data was a "mistake". How could it be a mistake if…

We will never learn of satellite war.... we will never hear about attack sat drones that take out other sats but it happens regularly... think of the plane that was in orbit as 3 years, which was the Jimmy Carter of space (I hope you know that ref) ((if you dont, then you dont know shit))

Re: Finding the B-21's hangar location from the stars in its press image

#199

Post by jwally »

This is the EXACT reason the government is never dispels alien sightings with "oh, that was us, not aliens! lol".

If you say tic-tac was lens-flare, the Chinese govt will figure out how to obsolete the F22 targeting system in a week :-)

Hyperbole for sure but amazing how much info you can get from seemingly innocent data leaks.

Loose lips sink ships...

Re: Finding the B-21's hangar location from the stars in its press image

#200

Post by Guthur »

gateorade wrote: post #176
Guthur wrote: post #142

This is quite the boondoggle, not a lot of change out of billion dollars per aircraft, remember that as you work yourself to death. "Stealth" has such a limited life span of utility. Even in the 90s Serbian air defence managed to acquire and shoot down "stealth" aircraft. It required humint but that's part of a real theatre of war.

This is objectively false though. We could take a deep dive into the relevance of the Serbian shoot down but it’s kind of irrelevant. The fact of the matter is, stealth technology means that an aircraft needs to be significantly closer to a radar for it to be detected compared to a normal aircraft. That also means it has to be closer still for a threat radar to develop a weapons quality track. Theres not really any k…

So in the next 10-20 years we wont have any significant advances in detection technology or methodologies?

Even if, for arguments sake, the aircraft is at the moment leaps and bounds ahead of the nearest peer competitor military there is going to be limit to how effective a new coat of paint will be for the B-21 in 10 years time.

To get your monies worth from this thing you'd want a lot greater effective service life than that and without stealth the B-21 would have dramatically diminished it's dollar to effectiveness ratio.

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