28 ms·

Stealth bomber in flight on Google Maps

2244 points by edge17 5y ago

Quentak 5y ago
Screenshot for when it will have been deleted by Google https://i.imgur.com/toSC5a0.png https://i.imgur.com/toSC5a0.png .
- jacquesm 5y ago
  Super, thank you!
- okl 5y ago
  Here's another: https://www.google.com/maps/place/39%C2%B001'18.5%22N+93%C2%B035'40.5%22W/@38.7250343,-93.5601605,261m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x0:0xd87af7588b9c362e!8m2!3d39.0218056!4d-93.5945833 https://www.google.com/maps/place/39%C2%B001'18.5%22N+93%C2%...
- ssnistfajen 5y ago
  Would be disappointing for them to remove it for basically no reason, especially considering you can see a B-2 parked on the tarmac (https://www.google.com/maps/place/38%C2%B043'29.9%22N+93%C2%B033'37.0%22W/@38.7250408,-93.5604979,184m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x0:0x943968ed52c54f3f!8m2!3d38.7249797!4d-93.5602792 https://www.google.com/maps/place/38%C2%B043'29.9%22N+93%C2%...) in the nearby Whiteman AFB. The B-2 was first flown 32 years ago. Its existence is neither covert or secret, but often used to do flybys at freaking football games where thousands of recording devices are present and active. There's virtually no national security risk with these images because any imagery obtainable by Google Maps would've been obtainable by whatever adversary long ago, plus some more.
  - zelon88 5y ago
    Correct, but don't misunderestimate the power of knowledge. Let's assume that some adversary is out there keeping track of these planes, and knows that they can scan Google maps for the RGB artifact by the engines to locate them reliably and programmatically. Now Google maps becomes a repository for information that adversary may use to validate other information. Maybe this confirms the schedule for some training excersise. Maybe this particular B2 being in this location validates or invalidates other information about US troop strength abroad. I was taught to always "assume your adversary is capable of going through your trash" and try to prepare my "trash" accordingly.
    - ssnistfajen 5y ago
      The fatal premise is assuming Google Maps updates these areas frequently enough to provide useful info. The military security implications of Google Earth have existed since its launch and Google Maps by relation is no stranger to it. This is not new info and it hardly counts as "knowledge" much less with "power". Reconnaissance satellite technology isn't US-exclusive (https://www.dw.com/en/modern-spy-satellites-in-an-age-of-space-wars/a-54691887 https://www.dw.com/en/modern-spy-satellites-in-an-age-of-spa..., Ctrl+F "Spy satellites in numbers") and those who have a meaningful need to track B-2 movements most likely have their own tools that are up to date, more accurate, and not bound by laws or regulations a US domiciled company is subjected to. What we see on Google Maps is almost guaranted to be 100% "trash" from a military intelligence perspective because actual valuable information has always been obtainable without Google Maps for entities who are capable and in need.
    - HideousKojima 5y ago
      Similar to how the president brings his own toilet when doing foreign visits so enemies can't analyze his poop to see what medicines he's taking or what medical conditions he has.
      - carabiner 5y ago
        Kim Jong Un does that, but I can't find record of any other world leader doing so. That takes a special level of paranoia.
        HideousKojima 5y ago
        Can't find a source on the president doing that at the moment, but Stalin examined the poop of visiting leaders: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-35427926 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-35427926
      - adolph 5y ago
        That would be some Gattaca level paranoia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gattaca https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gattaca
  - notatoad 5y ago
    i doubt they'd remove it for security reasons - as you say, there's nothing secret about what this plane is doing here. more that they'd remove it for the same reasons they remove clouds or any other in-air objects that obscure the thing they're actually trying to take photos of. the plane isn't part of the map, so it shouldn't be on the map. even if it's not obscuring anything, they use satellite photos to generate building outlines, and this isn't a building. given how many planes there are flying all the time, and how infrequently you see them on google maps, they must make an effort to publish satellite imagery that doensn't have planes in it.
  - jcrawfordor 5y ago
    I wouldn't expect it to get deleted for any kind of security reason... but it will get replaced, and possibly faster because there's a defect. Moving object artifacts are undesirable and make the image more difficult to use especially for automation (such as Google's registration). They tend to get knocked out automatically over time as the composition algorithms try to keep a neatly consistent scene. They may even be handled as clouds depending on which methods Google uses to avoid cloud cover. This is the same force that has slowly worked most alignment and registration marks out of Google imagery (for a long time aerial imagery usually contained registration marks etched into the camera optics), although you will still find them especially in areas that are more challenging to register by machine vision (deserts, etc). Aircraft in Keyhole and Google Earth used to be extremely common before the composition methods improved and more imagery sources became available. You could just about make out the traffic pattern at some airports. You can still find them but they're much rarer today.
    - jaytaylor 5y ago
      Too bad they can't mark a tile (such as this one) to preserve forever from the backend control plane.
  - magicroot75 5y ago
    Wait until you see what's hiding in the cornfield under the B-2.
- Tempest1981 5y ago
  Is Google taking their own satellite pictures now, or are these from Maxar, or another provider?
  - iFreilicht 5y ago
    This particular image was done by Maxar, you can see it in the lower right corner.
- carabiner 5y ago
  lol why would they? The B-2 even flies with radar reflectors in civil airspace so that ATC can track it.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- pigbearpig 5y ago
  Ugh, so when Google does a normal map update, unless there just happens to be a B-2 flying in the same spot, the conspiracy nutjobs are going to think there's some Google / US government conspiracy. The truth is the fact these planes exist and that there is a base nearby is public knowledge. Any country that cares already has its satellite imagery at much higher resoltion and realtime.
  - iFreilicht 5y ago
    You can already see it happening in the first reply to this parent: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29628333 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29628333
cblconfederate 5y ago
He thought he could hide from google
janmo 5y ago
Not so stealth anymore I guess
olliej 5y ago
Potentially dumb question - how do people even find these things???
- quickthrower2 5y ago
  People use Google maps for all kinds of things. Example checking out land for real estate purchase. Or to go travelling virtually. Millions of eyes on points around the globe and you’ll find something.
k_sze 5y ago
Is there a way to view this map link without turning off incognito mode in Google Maps? It keeps bugging me.
sandos 5y ago
I was so confused over how a small GA aircraft would be abandoned in the woods just outside the town where I lived. Until I realized it was probably flying when being photographed!
darrery 5y ago
I'm wondering in which what is the purpose of the stealth bomber on that specific day.
hellmundus 5y ago
In Sīnīs, this kind of thing wouldn't see the light. We aren't supposed to see anything like this. Also that bird is beautiful, if only it weren't designed to kill.
anormalpapier 5y ago
Not so stealth eh?
- capableweb 5y ago
  I'm sure you wrote this in jest, but in case people aren't aware: The "Stealth" in "Stealth bomber" refer to hiding the plane from anti-aircraft defenses like radar, infrared, acoustics and some optical visibility, but the anti-reflective paint that is used for hiding it optically is only on the underside, not on the top.
  - bee_rider 5y ago
    I wonder if imaging from above could actually be a threat for these planes. I mean -- stick cameras on all the SpaceX satellites and you've got an awful lot of eyeballs in LEO, right? Might at least be able to tell a ground based radar where to focus their search...
    - t0mas88 5y ago
      They fly in the dark and IR imaging doesn't work very well due to coatings and trying to hide the engine heath signature.
      - andrelaszlo 5y ago
        When each signature refers to the previous one, it forms a Heath Ledger?
    - tener 5y ago
      Pretty sure you need powerful lenses to do useful things though, but who knows, maybe this is workable with some image processing of multiple satellite feeds?
      - bee_rider 5y ago
        Yeah, I'm sure somebody is already doing good work on whatever the photographic equivalent of Synthetic Aperture Radar is. They should call it Synthetic Lens Aperture Photography, so they could use SLAP as the acronym (the most important property of a research topic is of course the ability to come up with good titles). For example: SLAP BASS: a Synthetic Lens Aperture Photography, Bandwidth Augmenting Sensor Suite Does it make technical sense? I have no idea. But it sounds cool!
fred_is_fred 5y ago
I would love to know if this was found other than randomly poking around and if so how it worked specifically. "out of place shapes in the middle of fields" might find out some other neat stuff too.
- pintxo 5y ago
  Looks like their home base is nearby. So maybe not too surprising? https://www.google.com/maps?ll=38.730306,-93.547864&z=12&t=h&q=38.730306,-93.547864&hl=de https://www.google.com/maps?ll=38.730306,-93.547864&z=12&t=h...
- mikeyouse 5y ago
  It's only ~25 miles from the one base in the US that hosts an active B2 wing. There's another on the ground there in Google Maps; https://www.google.com/maps/place/38%C2%B043'29.7%22N+93%C2%B033'37.0%22W/@38.7243803,-93.5612188,725m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m14!1m7!3m6!1s0x0:0xd87af7588b9c362e!2zMznCsDAxJzE4LjUiTiA5M8KwMzUnNDAuNSJX!3b1!8m2!3d39.0218056!4d-93.5945833!3m5!1s0x0:0xb9729eada81e2c56!7e2!8m2!3d38.7249294!4d-93.5602629 https://www.google.com/maps/place/38%C2%B043'29.7%22N+93%C2%...
  - bicx 5y ago
    I don't think I realized how huge the B2 actually is.
    - Drew_ 5y ago
      Google maps measures the wingspan at ~170 ft which is about 4-5 school buses.
- throwaway946513 5y ago
  The college town near the airbase made it pretty well known that the airforce base nearby has these B-2s when I took a campus tour years ago. Granted I like aerospace engineering as a software engineer so I grew up knowing about it ahead of time, and it's only an hour and a half drive away.
jp57 5y ago
Look out, St. Louis!
MontyCarloHall 5y ago
Interesting how the three separate R/G/B images are taken independently a few ~seconds~ milliseconds apart, with a different color filter placed over the image sensor. I assume this is to maximize resolution, since no Bayer interpolation [0] is needed to demosaic the output of a traditional image sensor that integrates the color filters onto the sensor pixels themselves. As these satellites are not intended to photograph things in motion, the color channel alignment artifacts seen here are a rare, small price to pay for vastly improved resolution and absence of demosaicing artifacts. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayer_filter https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayer_filter
- c54 5y ago
  Your guess is exactly right, this type of imaging is pretty common with satellite imaging for the reasons you mentioned. Scott Manley talks about it in this video iirc https://youtu.be/Wah1DbFVFiY https://youtu.be/Wah1DbFVFiY
- HPsquared 5y ago
  Doing it this way allows not only higher resolution, but you can also use different types of filter for specialist applications. Infrared for example, or some kind of narrow band pass filters etc.
  - birdyrooster 5y ago
    Unless you aren’t military and then no infrared for you
    - wantsanagent 5y ago
      Oh? Planet offers infrared imaging to farmers.
    - can16358p 5y ago
      I literally have a 720nm lowpass infrared filter in front of me for use in photography. Infrared imaging is not "military", it's public, common, and legal.
dillondoyle 5y ago
I was googling to see what shape matched that and found this. Looks like not the first time this (probably b2?) type of plane was caught on candid camera ;0 https://www.kmbc.com/article/satellite-image-b-2-stealth-bomber-off-runway-at-whiteman-air-force-base/37614295 https://www.kmbc.com/article/satellite-image-b-2-stealth-bom...
qrohlf 5y ago
Interesting how you can see the chromatic aberration on the bomber but not the ground. I guess that this implies that the optical and/or software correction that they're doing only works within a _very_ narrow focal plane, given the relative proximity of the bomber to the ground. This is kind of surprising, because if the tolerances for avoiding chromatic aberration are that small, whatever is collecting this data would have to be constantly adjusting its optics or software based on the topography. EDIT: it's not chromatic aberration, it's pixel misalignment caused by the object being in motion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29627917 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29627917
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- sudoaza 5y ago
  I wonder how low it is, found the shadow of it close by 39.02468482732915, -93.6023120071418 https://www.google.com/maps/place/39%C2%B001'28.9%22N+93%C2%B036'08.3%22W/@39.0240473,-93.6064184,1279m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x0:0xd2feed9eacb2542!8m2!3d39.0246848!4d-93.602312 https://www.google.com/maps/place/39%C2%B001'28.9%22N+93%C2%...
  - taddeimania 5y ago
    nice catch! I think the altitude could be calculated roughly if we knew the the day of the year the photo was taken.
    - taddeimania 5y ago
      okay so i'm not sure how accurate any of this is since it's overlaying sun angles over a photo that is very likely not taken from a 90deg overhead angle to the bomber... and the scale of the image may be distorted a little... I discovered on google earth that the image was taken May 16th. I used this site http://shadowcalculator.eu/#/lat/39.02397754136213/lng/-93.6001443285912 http://shadowcalculator.eu/#/lat/39.02397754136213/lng/-93.6... to draw a fence around the bomber and defined the "structure" to be an arbitrarily tall height until the sun angle lined up. Then I lowered the height until the sun angle touched the location of the shadow and I came to an altitude of 1100ft / 335.28m (rough height of the "structure")
lbj 5y ago
Imagine the chills you'd get seeing that on GEarth if you're just looking to see a picture of your fields.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  I’d guess if you have fields in that area, seeing a B-2 over them is routine.
  - f6v 5y ago
    Now, seeing Tupolev over the fields in the area would give you chills.
    - PhantomGremlin 5y ago
      Which particular Tupolev? Apparently, until the USA recently withdrew from the Open Skies treaty, there was indeed a possibility of seeing a Tupolev in the area: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_on_Open_Skies#Aircraft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_on_Open_Skies#Aircraft
GauntletWizard 5y ago
Awesome! There was a commercial jet caught in the imagery of Downtown San Mateo for about a year, and I always loved looking at it when I was looking up an address. It's cool how much more pronounced the separate RGB is - It was pretty clear even on that commercial jet, but it's very psychedelic here.
teodorlu 5y ago
The aircraft seems to be a Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit. > The Northrop (later Northrop Grumman) B-2 Spirit, also known as the Stealth Bomber, is an American heavy strategic bomber, featuring low observable stealth technology designed for penetrating dense anti-aircraft defenses. Designed during the Cold War, it is a flying wing design with a crew of two.[1][3] The bomber is subsonic and can deploy both conventional and thermonuclear weapons, such as up to eighty 500-pound class (230 kg) Mk 82 JDAM GPS-guided bombs, or sixteen 2,400-pound (1,100 kg) B83 nuclear bombs. The B-2 is the only acknowledged aircraft that can carry large air-to-surface standoff weapons in a stealth configuration. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_Grumman_B-2_Spirit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_Grumman_B-2_Spirit
- geph2021 5y ago
  And The B-2s are apparently stationed at Whiteman Air Force Base[1]. Just due south of the image. Perhaps lining up for a landing approach? 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whiteman_Air_Force_Base https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whiteman_Air_Force_Base
- bcrosby95 5y ago
  My father-in-law helped design the pilot seat for that. Unfortunately he was unable to make the transition to computer aided design. After the defense cutbacks in the 90s, he could only find minimum wage jobs for the rest of his working life.
  - abhiminator 5y ago
    >After the defense cutbacks in the 90s, he could only find minimum wage jobs for the rest of his working life. That's unfortunate to hear. Hope he's doing well now, in his retirement life.
    - bcrosby95 5y ago
      Of course he's doing well, he has the best son-in-law ever ;) Jokes aside, he's doing fine. They got by on my mother-in-law's teacher salary and were lucky enough to get in on the California housing game in the early '80s. They mostly don't have to worry about the bills, and all their kids live within 15 minutes of them - we see them around 1-2x per week. And if they ever did run into issues, one of us could take them in. I just like to keep it in mind because I've been subject to fairly good fortunes when it comes to career. Same thing with all my relatives. But my wife's family has had more bumps along the way.
jwithington 5y ago
how do people find these things
jacquesm 5y ago
What an interesting design for a lawnmower. Joking aside, better make a screenshot because this is liable to be blurred soon.
- spaetzleesser 5y ago
  Why would this be blurred? There is nothing in the picture that's not already known in far more detail. I have some B-2 pictures with way more detail I took in Pasadena during the Rose Bowl.
anovikov 5y ago
Not surprising really because it's less than 40km from Whiteman AFB.
metaphor 5y ago
Literally 30-min drive north of Whiteman...not a coincidence.
anonu 5y ago
Considering the 1000s of planes flying over the USA at any given moment, surprising this is the first time I see a plane captured in mid-flight.
- philk10 5y ago
  More here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDyBwcdy5KA&ab_channel=GoogleEarthMovies https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDyBwcdy5KA&ab_channel=Googl...
msisk6 5y ago
I live on a farm very close to this area. All the B-2s are based at nearby Whiteman Air Force Base. They fly over often -- one even fly over my farm today about an hour ago. This one was probably on final approach during the summer when the winds are usually out of the south and was probably about 2,000 feet above the ground.
- _the_inflator 5y ago
  Yes, nice comment. I remember being part of the staff of NATO's only MIG squadron during military service. People considered a MIG within NATO a sensation, while I was simply bored. I saw them every day in droves. ;)
  - KptMarchewa 5y ago
    Poland still operates MIG-29s, as well as extremely outdated Su-22. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_Air_Force#Current_inventory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_Air_Force#Current_inven...
    - zhan_eg 5y ago
      Well, when talking about NATO countries, MIGs and older aircrafts - Romania and Croatia still operate MIG-21s [1] :) And MIG-29s are present also in the Bulgarian [2] and Slovak [3] airforce too. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikoyan-Gurevich_MiG-21#Current_operators https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikoyan-Gurevich_MiG-21#Curren... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulgarian_Air_Force#Current_inventory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulgarian_Air_Force#Current_in... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slovak_Air_Force#Current_inventory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slovak_Air_Force#Current_inven...
    - neurotech1 5y ago
      The Romanian MiG-21s [0], Polish MiG-21s (when in service, before retirement) and MiG-29s along with the Bulgarian MiG-29s were upgraded to NATO standards. The primary upgrades were the radios and IFF transponder. I'm not sure if they all included It is widely rumored that certain spare parts for NATO MiG-29s are actually made in US, from sources initially supporting the Adversary training missions of the 57th Wing Nellis AFB and US Navy Adversary training missions, including TOPGUN department. This is primarily for the MiG-29 and Su-27 fighters. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Mikoyan-Gurevich_MiG-21_variants#Upgrade_programmes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Mikoyan-Gurevich_MiG-2... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/57th_Wing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/57th_Wing [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_Aviation_Warfighting_Development_Center https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_Aviation_Warfighting_Dev...
MobileVet 5y ago
Its twin sitting on the tarmac at Whiteman https://goo.gl/maps/tvNapjiLCJMVa3fx6 https://goo.gl/maps/tvNapjiLCJMVa3fx6 Edit: grammar
t0bia_s 5y ago
There is a shadow of stealth bomber: https://goo.gl/maps/VWwtt1PbLJVkbiBS9 https://goo.gl/maps/VWwtt1PbLJVkbiBS9 I'm curious... Will google delete it too?
- Karawebnetwork 5y ago
  Plane: 39.02177585879624, -93.59455907552 Shadow: 39.024670893611805, -93.60232594974401 I wonder what this can tell us about it's speed, altitude, etc.
dougSF70 5y ago
Here is a stealth Bomber on the ground... https://maps.app.goo.gl/eJ2SU9SzE8D6JaZN9 https://maps.app.goo.gl/eJ2SU9SzE8D6JaZN9
- rgblambda 5y ago
  Shouldn't military bases be blurred out on Google Maps?
  - jcrawfordor 5y ago
    Military adversaries have plenty of sources of their own imagery, and the commercial imagery industry is large and international. It's just not a tractable problem to try to keep people from obtaining good aerial imagery of military installations, and it's become fairly rare for anyone to try. We know that various military organizations have taken active measures to prevent imaging of sensitive activity (e.g. returning vehicles to same parking positions before passes of known IMINT satellites) but it's not a very easy thing to do, especially in the US which is heavily covered by both commercial and foreign satellites in various orbits like sun-synchronous and Molniya.1 Some military installations do receive a degree of protection by means of restricted airspace which mostly prevents commercial aerial imaging, meaning that only lower spatial resolution satellite images are available. But even this isn't really that common, and there's no systematic restriction on commercial imagery operators overflying military installations if airspace permits it.
    - rgblambda 5y ago
      I put forth the question because I know that in some places (i.e. Northern Ireland), police stations and army barracks are obfuscated on Google Maps to prevent terror groups from using it to easily gather information for mortar attacks. I suppose the chances of that happening in a remote part of the United States is much smaller but that with the resources the U.S Department of Defence have, I would have thought that they would take every precaution. Edit: It appears it's no longer done in Northern Ireland.
aawalrik323 5y ago
Parked aircraft, same model, just south at Whiteman AFB. https://www.google.com/maps/@38.7249682,-93.5601479,19z/data=!3m1!1e3 https://www.google.com/maps/@38.7249682,-93.5601479,19z/data...
CarVac 5y ago
The measured wingspan (using the Google Maps distance measure tool) is around 200 feet whereas the measured wingspan of a B-2 on the ground at nearby Whiteman AFB is the nominal 172 feet, so its altitude AGL is roughly 14% of the altitude of the camera plane that took the photo.
- jeffbee 5y ago
  Good math. I don't know why everyone else is assuming this photo is from a spacecraft. Virtually all of the aerial images of America on Google Earth are taken with aircraft, not spacecraft.
  - oh_sigh 5y ago
    The attribution on google maps for the image is for a satellite imaging company.
    - jeffbee 5y ago
      Interesting, but I'm not sure that is dispositive. That company is credited for images even where they are obviously aerial. Google Maps images are an algorithmic mash-up of many sources, I imagine they credit partial or possible sources conservatively, to keep from omitting any potentially relevant rights. In many tiles they don't credit anybody, so the absences of Google's own image credit doesn't mean anything. The first party does not need to credit themselves.
- lopuhin 5y ago
  A small roll of the place at the time the photo was taken could also explain this difference.
mynameismon 5y ago
Archived before it's taken down: https://archive.ph/E8xih https://archive.ph/E8xih (don't spam click it, it is already extremely slow to load, the last thing we want to do is DDOS archive.ph)
- Gustomaximus 5y ago
  Taken down by the government? Id be surprised if the military is bothered by this. I have nothing to do with military etc but assume China/Russia have high res satellites taking photos/scans across airbases on a regular basis and have much better quality to investigate the technology than a google sat image.
Jiocus 5y ago
Artist James Bridle calls them "Rainbow planes" and has used this in his art. Rainbow Plane 002: Kiev. October 29, 2014: https://booktwo.org/notebook/rainbow-plane-002-kiev/ https://booktwo.org/notebook/rainbow-plane-002-kiev/ Rainbow Planes: https://www.flickr.com/photos/stml/sets/72157637938061015/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/stml/sets/72157637938061015/
- djmips 5y ago
  Does anyone have a theory on why some photos have a rainbow plane and a solid white place offset?
  - kqr 5y ago
    They take a separate high-res monochromatic picture. (As image compression theory tells us, if you can afford to sacrifice some colour resolution for monochromatic resolution -- do it.)
- mcdonje 5y ago
  It's interesting how some satellites take the alpha channel pic before the RGB channels, and some do it after. The lag also changes. Alpha & RGB have similar lags for some, but alpha is way off on others.
  - defaultcompany 5y ago
    What does alpha channel mean in this context? Usually it means transparency but how would you take a picture of that?
  - dagmx 5y ago
    Do you mean luminance? Alpha usually refers to the transparency channel in an RGBA image. Whereas I believe you're describing more of a YUV setup
- robocat 5y ago
  “Rather than taking a photograph, satellite sensors record electromagnetic radiation in the red, blue, green, and high-resolution panchromatic (black-and-white) bands (as well as several not visible to the human eye, as this Mapbox[2] post helpfully explains). When these bands are combined to produce a visible image, fast-moving objects – like planes in flight – don’t quite match up, producing the rainbow effect. [2] https://blog.mapbox.com/putting-landsat-8s-bands-to-work-631c4029e9d1 https://blog.mapbox.com/putting-landsat-8s-bands-to-work-631...
dougSF70 5y ago
If you look at the photo of the B-2 on the ground I think you can make our the 14 hangars where they would park them overnight (I heard street crime is pretty hot on Whitman AFB) to the right of the staging area.
- coolspot 5y ago
  They smash-and-grab thermonuclear bombs all the time over there.
saberdancer 5y ago
Now a real catch would be to get a B21 raider or some other prototype/secret airplane. There were a couple of sightings of it - usually it was so high that it's hard to be sure but it looked different enough to B2.
mensetmanusman 5y ago
The new normal of 100% satellite coverage and high resolution daily pictures means future wars will be fought under water by the underdog.
- littlestymaar 5y ago
  I guess this comment would have been really insightful in 1910. It didn't wait for the satellites to be the norm for the underdog in a global war see [1] and [2]. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/U-boat_campaign https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/U-boat_campaign [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Atlantic https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Atlantic
ricardobayes 5y ago
Is that an F-117 Nighthawk?
- HideousKojima 5y ago
  B-2 Spirit, not nearly ugly enough to be a Nighthawk.
  - foobarian 5y ago
    Yeah quite the opposite. This is easily my favorite plane design ever made.
jmacd 5y ago
To many of us these are technological marvels. Defenders of our lifestyle and enabler of our ambitions and dreams. To many people in the world these are insidious death machines that lurk unimpeded and can rain down death on entire villages. The embodiment of evil. Without peeling back the veneer of right and wrong, I think it's worth pausing to both appreciate the wonder of the machine and to consider the implications of its existence.
ericmay 5y ago
Bit of an aside but I like that the B-2 Spirit has different "Spirit of..." for each aircraft. There are Spirit of New York, Spirit of Ohio, etc. [1] Also if you're ever in Ohio and you're an aviation or engineering geek, or have kids, or are looking for something to do the USAF Museum is pretty cool! [2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_Grumman_B-2_Spirit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_Grumman_B-2_Spirit [2] https://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/ https://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/
- bell-cot 5y ago
  If you are a fairly-serious aerospace, history, or military equipment buff, then allow 2 days for the USAF Museum. It's very good, and it's huge.
- lpghatguy 5y ago
  I visited the USAF Museum earlier this year. It's breathtaking just how large the B-2 Spirit is. You can know the plane's dimensions going in and it'll still blow you away standing next to one.
- andrewxdiamond 5y ago
  They let our boyscout troop spend a night there, it was an amazing time
syngrog66 5y ago
that's me. sorry guys. my bad
thanatos519 5y ago
rmrfchik 5y ago
Now I know bombers are fed by green trails.
ashleyjoyce 5y ago
[flagged]
snshn 5y ago
It was photo bombing
mattrighetti 5y ago
How does people find thins kind of stuff willingly?
ilhamsgenius 5y ago
joering2 5y ago
Interesting in itself there is this, but we never manage to find similar gems for UFOs.
- toast0 5y ago
  UFOs tend to come at night, but aerial/satellite photography is done during the day.
benatkin 5y ago
These are the sort of posts I can do without. It's like the stuff that goes to the top of reddit. Reddit has a way to keep frontpage of your home page for a reason.
- quickthrower2 5y ago
  I saw this on Reddit before HN actually. Which is a rarity.
zeitg3ist 5y ago
Not a stealth bomber but this Google Maps picture from a few years ago presents a similar effect: https://i.imgur.com/P8XVo.jpeg https://i.imgur.com/P8XVo.jpeg (Sorry for the imgur link, I can't find a proper source)
tinyhouse 5y ago
Can someone explain? I don't see anything, just a location in MO. Update: oh cool! I see it after moving to Satellite and zooming in.
debbiedowner 5y ago
So how fast is it going according to the blur? 600mph?
soheil 5y ago
Given the distance between the different colors in the photograph and the internal refresh rate of the camera one should be able to calculate the speed that the plane was traveling at.
omnomynous 5y ago
I found where they parked it. https://www.google.com/maps/place/38%C2%B043'29.8%22N+93%C2%B033'36.9%22W/@38.724943,-93.5608082,302m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x0:0x1970d138a9a0f666!8m2!3d38.7249444!4d-93.56025 https://www.google.com/maps/place/38%C2%B043'29.8%22N+93%C2%...
jdlyga 5y ago
afternoon delight
soheil 5y ago
Now that we have an exact match of what a plane like this looks like from the point of view of a satellite, one could scan the entire Google maps for this same image.
soheil 5y ago
Interesting that Google hasn't taken this down yet or at least blur out the map tile.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
xuhu 5y ago
For a few minutes I was convinced this one had crashed on that mountain top: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Lake+Tarni%C8%9Ba/@46.7229841,23.2728155,340m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x47491c3c521fa821:0xf32ff8cb8b4aa235!8m2!3d46.7196725!4d23.2777533 https://www.google.com/maps/place/Lake+Tarni%C8%9Ba/@46.7229...
VWWHFSfQ 5y ago
This makes me wonder. Obviously everyone in the world knows that USA operates a few dozen "stealth bombers" and has for the last couple decades, or so. Has any other country developed these kinds of aircrafts? Similarly, submarines. USA operates many stealth submarines as well. Does any other country operate stealth submarines? I'm aware that USA spends about 1 tril a year on military stuff but these just seems bizarre to me.
- xvector 5y ago
  That is an interesting point. Both China and Russia have stealth fighters, but not stealth bombers, from my understanding. China's Xian H-20 was to be announced this year. Russia's Tupolev PAK-DA is scheduled for 2028. I suspect that the need for stealth bombers is rather low: - If you want to carry large bomb payloads, ICBMs do the trick. - For smaller bomb payloads, they can fit in the fighters.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
sudosysgen 5y ago
Hmm. Perhaps networked imaging satellites is a viable way to limit the use of stealth aircraft?
- dr-detroit 5y ago
Ziggy_Zaggy 5y ago
Very impressive.
jlkuester7 5y ago
One of these flew low over my house in Kansas City last year. It was scheduled to do a fly-by of a local hospital so I was out on the porch watching for it. I saw it pass several miles to the south and went back inside thinking the show was over. A few minutes later I am sitting on the toilet when the house literally starts shaking. I run outside (barely getting my pants up...) in time to see it come right over top of the house at low altitude! (Apparently it had just been circling before to line up for the approach.)
omoikane 5y ago
Looks like this was first posted to reddit by user "Hippowned": https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/rkl236/a_stealth_bomber_in_flight_caught_on_google_maps/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/rkl23... And then various news sites picked it up, such as this one: https://www.techradar.com/news/eagle-eyed-redditor-spots-a-flying-stealth-bomber-on-google-maps https://www.techradar.com/news/eagle-eyed-redditor-spots-a-f... The link to Google Maps appears to be lifted from the above, but credits to the original redditor who found it was lost.
kcb 5y ago
Was hoping it was a B-21 Raider.
senthilnayagam 5y ago
it looks neat. so much to learn in this thread about satellite imagery and calculations. it makes sense to use crowdsourcung to watch earth with real-time satellite imagery, and later augment it with machine learning to find potentially interesting objects. I would be more excited with UFO findings, or a redbull base jumper, or proverbial superman/ironman flying.
titusblair 5y ago
How in the world do people find these images LOL :) Awesome!
unobatbayar 5y ago
The design of B-2 is so beautiful.
preddy2020 5y ago
celsopitta 5y ago
This technique of using different filters on top of a monochromatic sensor is also used in astrophotography, it helps with image resolution. You want as much pixels per inch as possible so instead of placing multiple narrow band receptors in your sensor you use a single wide band receptor as your pixel and place a filter in front of the camera, for a RGB camera for example you triple the total number of sensors by doing this.
thih9 5y ago
Offtopic, it takes me 6 clicks to access google maps (click to “customize” privacy options, select “off” three times, “continue”, and “use web” when asked about downloading an app). I’m on iOS and use safari in private mode. How are others dealing with this? Do you accept the terms or do you do something different?
- metafunctor 5y ago
  My Safari doesn't, in private mode, eventually, open the link at all: after customizing the privacy options (all off), Google still tries to bounce me through googleads.g.doubleclick.net, and I have that blocked. The way I “deal with this” is that I have a work Google account which I've signed into. With that in place, the link just opens. Obviously I have clicked "I accept" on a variety of forms saying Google is allowed to track my activity as they see fit. I guess you can run a browser without ad blocking and the link will open after accepting the terms. However, I prefer to still block ads even in private mode for various reasons.
- dest 5y ago
  I blindly accept the terms in Firefox private mode, consult the content, then close the tab, which deletes all cookies AFAIK.
blauditore 5y ago
This makes me wonder if military operations also take into account satellite positions when timing operations. Theoretically, having access to a satellite live feed and good processing software, one could potentially detect stealth bombers visually, probably even at night thanks to widespread light pollution (the plane would appear as a dark spot). Or am I missing something?
twic 5y ago
Looking at Street View in that direction from the road along the north side of the property, you can see an object in flight: https://goo.gl/maps/cJUe8YqWVM6v9Fme8 https://goo.gl/maps/cJUe8YqWVM6v9Fme8 I think that's just a bird though!
IMSAI8080 5y ago
Looks like St. Louis is about to get some freedom.

2244 points by edge17 5y ago

Screenshot for when it will have been deleted by Google https://i.imgur.com/toSC5a0.png https://i.imgur.com/toSC5a0.png .

jacquesm 5y ago
Super, thank you!
okl 5y ago
Here's another: https://www.google.com/maps/place/39%C2%B001'18.5%22N+93%C2%B035'40.5%22W/@38.7250343,-93.5601605,261m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x0:0xd87af7588b9c362e!8m2!3d39.0218056!4d-93.5945833 https://www.google.com/maps/place/39%C2%B001'18.5%22N+93%C2%...
ssnistfajen 5y ago
Would be disappointing for them to remove it for basically no reason, especially considering you can see a B-2 parked on the tarmac (https://www.google.com/maps/place/38%C2%B043'29.9%22N+93%C2%B033'37.0%22W/@38.7250408,-93.5604979,184m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x0:0x943968ed52c54f3f!8m2!3d38.7249797!4d-93.5602792 https://www.google.com/maps/place/38%C2%B043'29.9%22N+93%C2%...) in the nearby Whiteman AFB. The B-2 was first flown 32 years ago. Its existence is neither covert or secret, but often used to do flybys at freaking football games where thousands of recording devices are present and active. There's virtually no national security risk with these images because any imagery obtainable by Google Maps would've been obtainable by whatever adversary long ago, plus some more.
- zelon88 5y ago
  Correct, but don't misunderestimate the power of knowledge. Let's assume that some adversary is out there keeping track of these planes, and knows that they can scan Google maps for the RGB artifact by the engines to locate them reliably and programmatically. Now Google maps becomes a repository for information that adversary may use to validate other information. Maybe this confirms the schedule for some training excersise. Maybe this particular B2 being in this location validates or invalidates other information about US troop strength abroad. I was taught to always "assume your adversary is capable of going through your trash" and try to prepare my "trash" accordingly.
  - ssnistfajen 5y ago
    The fatal premise is assuming Google Maps updates these areas frequently enough to provide useful info. The military security implications of Google Earth have existed since its launch and Google Maps by relation is no stranger to it. This is not new info and it hardly counts as "knowledge" much less with "power". Reconnaissance satellite technology isn't US-exclusive (https://www.dw.com/en/modern-spy-satellites-in-an-age-of-space-wars/a-54691887 https://www.dw.com/en/modern-spy-satellites-in-an-age-of-spa..., Ctrl+F "Spy satellites in numbers") and those who have a meaningful need to track B-2 movements most likely have their own tools that are up to date, more accurate, and not bound by laws or regulations a US domiciled company is subjected to. What we see on Google Maps is almost guaranted to be 100% "trash" from a military intelligence perspective because actual valuable information has always been obtainable without Google Maps for entities who are capable and in need.
  - HideousKojima 5y ago
    Similar to how the president brings his own toilet when doing foreign visits so enemies can't analyze his poop to see what medicines he's taking or what medical conditions he has.
    - carabiner 5y ago
      Kim Jong Un does that, but I can't find record of any other world leader doing so. That takes a special level of paranoia.
      - HideousKojima 5y ago
        Can't find a source on the president doing that at the moment, but Stalin examined the poop of visiting leaders: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-35427926 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-35427926
    - adolph 5y ago
      That would be some Gattaca level paranoia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gattaca https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gattaca
- notatoad 5y ago
  i doubt they'd remove it for security reasons - as you say, there's nothing secret about what this plane is doing here. more that they'd remove it for the same reasons they remove clouds or any other in-air objects that obscure the thing they're actually trying to take photos of. the plane isn't part of the map, so it shouldn't be on the map. even if it's not obscuring anything, they use satellite photos to generate building outlines, and this isn't a building. given how many planes there are flying all the time, and how infrequently you see them on google maps, they must make an effort to publish satellite imagery that doensn't have planes in it.
- jcrawfordor 5y ago
  I wouldn't expect it to get deleted for any kind of security reason... but it will get replaced, and possibly faster because there's a defect. Moving object artifacts are undesirable and make the image more difficult to use especially for automation (such as Google's registration). They tend to get knocked out automatically over time as the composition algorithms try to keep a neatly consistent scene. They may even be handled as clouds depending on which methods Google uses to avoid cloud cover. This is the same force that has slowly worked most alignment and registration marks out of Google imagery (for a long time aerial imagery usually contained registration marks etched into the camera optics), although you will still find them especially in areas that are more challenging to register by machine vision (deserts, etc). Aircraft in Keyhole and Google Earth used to be extremely common before the composition methods improved and more imagery sources became available. You could just about make out the traffic pattern at some airports. You can still find them but they're much rarer today.
  - jaytaylor 5y ago
    Too bad they can't mark a tile (such as this one) to preserve forever from the backend control plane.
- magicroot75 5y ago
  Wait until you see what's hiding in the cornfield under the B-2.
Tempest1981 5y ago
Is Google taking their own satellite pictures now, or are these from Maxar, or another provider?
- iFreilicht 5y ago
  This particular image was done by Maxar, you can see it in the lower right corner.
carabiner 5y ago
lol why would they? The B-2 even flies with radar reflectors in civil airspace so that ATC can track it.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
pigbearpig 5y ago
Ugh, so when Google does a normal map update, unless there just happens to be a B-2 flying in the same spot, the conspiracy nutjobs are going to think there's some Google / US government conspiracy. The truth is the fact these planes exist and that there is a base nearby is public knowledge. Any country that cares already has its satellite imagery at much higher resoltion and realtime.
- iFreilicht 5y ago
  You can already see it happening in the first reply to this parent: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29628333 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29628333

cblconfederate 5y ago

He thought he could hide from google

janmo 5y ago

Not so stealth anymore I guess

olliej 5y ago

Potentially dumb question - how do people even find these things???

quickthrower2 5y ago
People use Google maps for all kinds of things. Example checking out land for real estate purchase. Or to go travelling virtually. Millions of eyes on points around the globe and you’ll find something.

k_sze 5y ago

Is there a way to view this map link without turning off incognito mode in Google Maps? It keeps bugging me.

sandos 5y ago

I was so confused over how a small GA aircraft would be abandoned in the woods just outside the town where I lived. Until I realized it was probably flying when being photographed!

darrery 5y ago

I'm wondering in which what is the purpose of the stealth bomber on that specific day.

hellmundus 5y ago

In Sīnīs, this kind of thing wouldn't see the light. We aren't supposed to see anything like this. Also that bird is beautiful, if only it weren't designed to kill.

anormalpapier 5y ago

Not so stealth eh?

capableweb 5y ago
I'm sure you wrote this in jest, but in case people aren't aware: The "Stealth" in "Stealth bomber" refer to hiding the plane from anti-aircraft defenses like radar, infrared, acoustics and some optical visibility, but the anti-reflective paint that is used for hiding it optically is only on the underside, not on the top.
- bee_rider 5y ago
  I wonder if imaging from above could actually be a threat for these planes. I mean -- stick cameras on all the SpaceX satellites and you've got an awful lot of eyeballs in LEO, right? Might at least be able to tell a ground based radar where to focus their search...
  - t0mas88 5y ago
    They fly in the dark and IR imaging doesn't work very well due to coatings and trying to hide the engine heath signature.
    - andrelaszlo 5y ago
      When each signature refers to the previous one, it forms a Heath Ledger?
  - tener 5y ago
    Pretty sure you need powerful lenses to do useful things though, but who knows, maybe this is workable with some image processing of multiple satellite feeds?
    - bee_rider 5y ago
      Yeah, I'm sure somebody is already doing good work on whatever the photographic equivalent of Synthetic Aperture Radar is. They should call it Synthetic Lens Aperture Photography, so they could use SLAP as the acronym (the most important property of a research topic is of course the ability to come up with good titles). For example: SLAP BASS: a Synthetic Lens Aperture Photography, Bandwidth Augmenting Sensor Suite Does it make technical sense? I have no idea. But it sounds cool!

fred_is_fred 5y ago

I would love to know if this was found other than randomly poking around and if so how it worked specifically. "out of place shapes in the middle of fields" might find out some other neat stuff too.

pintxo 5y ago
Looks like their home base is nearby. So maybe not too surprising? https://www.google.com/maps?ll=38.730306,-93.547864&z=12&t=h&q=38.730306,-93.547864&hl=de https://www.google.com/maps?ll=38.730306,-93.547864&z=12&t=h...
mikeyouse 5y ago
It's only ~25 miles from the one base in the US that hosts an active B2 wing. There's another on the ground there in Google Maps; https://www.google.com/maps/place/38%C2%B043'29.7%22N+93%C2%B033'37.0%22W/@38.7243803,-93.5612188,725m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m14!1m7!3m6!1s0x0:0xd87af7588b9c362e!2zMznCsDAxJzE4LjUiTiA5M8KwMzUnNDAuNSJX!3b1!8m2!3d39.0218056!4d-93.5945833!3m5!1s0x0:0xb9729eada81e2c56!7e2!8m2!3d38.7249294!4d-93.5602629 https://www.google.com/maps/place/38%C2%B043'29.7%22N+93%C2%...
- bicx 5y ago
  I don't think I realized how huge the B2 actually is.
  - Drew_ 5y ago
    Google maps measures the wingspan at ~170 ft which is about 4-5 school buses.
throwaway946513 5y ago
The college town near the airbase made it pretty well known that the airforce base nearby has these B-2s when I took a campus tour years ago. Granted I like aerospace engineering as a software engineer so I grew up knowing about it ahead of time, and it's only an hour and a half drive away.

jp57 5y ago

Look out, St. Louis!

MontyCarloHall 5y ago

Interesting how the three separate R/G/B images are taken independently a few ~seconds~ milliseconds apart, with a different color filter placed over the image sensor. I assume this is to maximize resolution, since no Bayer interpolation [0] is needed to demosaic the output of a traditional image sensor that integrates the color filters onto the sensor pixels themselves. As these satellites are not intended to photograph things in motion, the color channel alignment artifacts seen here are a rare, small price to pay for vastly improved resolution and absence of demosaicing artifacts. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayer_filter https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayer_filter

c54 5y ago
Your guess is exactly right, this type of imaging is pretty common with satellite imaging for the reasons you mentioned. Scott Manley talks about it in this video iirc https://youtu.be/Wah1DbFVFiY https://youtu.be/Wah1DbFVFiY
HPsquared 5y ago
Doing it this way allows not only higher resolution, but you can also use different types of filter for specialist applications. Infrared for example, or some kind of narrow band pass filters etc.
- birdyrooster 5y ago
  Unless you aren’t military and then no infrared for you
  - wantsanagent 5y ago
    Oh? Planet offers infrared imaging to farmers.
  - can16358p 5y ago
    I literally have a 720nm lowpass infrared filter in front of me for use in photography. Infrared imaging is not "military", it's public, common, and legal.

dillondoyle 5y ago

I was googling to see what shape matched that and found this. Looks like not the first time this (probably b2?) type of plane was caught on candid camera ;0 https://www.kmbc.com/article/satellite-image-b-2-stealth-bomber-off-runway-at-whiteman-air-force-base/37614295 https://www.kmbc.com/article/satellite-image-b-2-stealth-bom...

qrohlf 5y ago

Interesting how you can see the chromatic aberration on the bomber but not the ground. I guess that this implies that the optical and/or software correction that they're doing only works within a _very_ narrow focal plane, given the relative proximity of the bomber to the ground. This is kind of surprising, because if the tolerances for avoiding chromatic aberration are that small, whatever is collecting this data would have to be constantly adjusting its optics or software based on the topography. EDIT: it's not chromatic aberration, it's pixel misalignment caused by the object being in motion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29627917 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29627917

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
sudoaza 5y ago
I wonder how low it is, found the shadow of it close by 39.02468482732915, -93.6023120071418 https://www.google.com/maps/place/39%C2%B001'28.9%22N+93%C2%B036'08.3%22W/@39.0240473,-93.6064184,1279m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x0:0xd2feed9eacb2542!8m2!3d39.0246848!4d-93.602312 https://www.google.com/maps/place/39%C2%B001'28.9%22N+93%C2%...
- taddeimania 5y ago
  nice catch! I think the altitude could be calculated roughly if we knew the the day of the year the photo was taken.
  - taddeimania 5y ago
    okay so i'm not sure how accurate any of this is since it's overlaying sun angles over a photo that is very likely not taken from a 90deg overhead angle to the bomber... and the scale of the image may be distorted a little... I discovered on google earth that the image was taken May 16th. I used this site http://shadowcalculator.eu/#/lat/39.02397754136213/lng/-93.6001443285912 http://shadowcalculator.eu/#/lat/39.02397754136213/lng/-93.6... to draw a fence around the bomber and defined the "structure" to be an arbitrarily tall height until the sun angle lined up. Then I lowered the height until the sun angle touched the location of the shadow and I came to an altitude of 1100ft / 335.28m (rough height of the "structure")

lbj 5y ago

Imagine the chills you'd get seeing that on GEarth if you're just looking to see a picture of your fields.

dragonwriter 5y ago
I’d guess if you have fields in that area, seeing a B-2 over them is routine.
- f6v 5y ago
  Now, seeing Tupolev over the fields in the area would give you chills.
  - PhantomGremlin 5y ago
    Which particular Tupolev? Apparently, until the USA recently withdrew from the Open Skies treaty, there was indeed a possibility of seeing a Tupolev in the area: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_on_Open_Skies#Aircraft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_on_Open_Skies#Aircraft

GauntletWizard 5y ago

Awesome! There was a commercial jet caught in the imagery of Downtown San Mateo for about a year, and I always loved looking at it when I was looking up an address. It's cool how much more pronounced the separate RGB is - It was pretty clear even on that commercial jet, but it's very psychedelic here.

teodorlu 5y ago

The aircraft seems to be a Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit. > The Northrop (later Northrop Grumman) B-2 Spirit, also known as the Stealth Bomber, is an American heavy strategic bomber, featuring low observable stealth technology designed for penetrating dense anti-aircraft defenses. Designed during the Cold War, it is a flying wing design with a crew of two.[1][3] The bomber is subsonic and can deploy both conventional and thermonuclear weapons, such as up to eighty 500-pound class (230 kg) Mk 82 JDAM GPS-guided bombs, or sixteen 2,400-pound (1,100 kg) B83 nuclear bombs. The B-2 is the only acknowledged aircraft that can carry large air-to-surface standoff weapons in a stealth configuration. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_Grumman_B-2_Spirit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_Grumman_B-2_Spirit

geph2021 5y ago
And The B-2s are apparently stationed at Whiteman Air Force Base[1]. Just due south of the image. Perhaps lining up for a landing approach? 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whiteman_Air_Force_Base https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whiteman_Air_Force_Base
bcrosby95 5y ago
My father-in-law helped design the pilot seat for that. Unfortunately he was unable to make the transition to computer aided design. After the defense cutbacks in the 90s, he could only find minimum wage jobs for the rest of his working life.
- abhiminator 5y ago
  >After the defense cutbacks in the 90s, he could only find minimum wage jobs for the rest of his working life. That's unfortunate to hear. Hope he's doing well now, in his retirement life.
  - bcrosby95 5y ago
    Of course he's doing well, he has the best son-in-law ever ;) Jokes aside, he's doing fine. They got by on my mother-in-law's teacher salary and were lucky enough to get in on the California housing game in the early '80s. They mostly don't have to worry about the bills, and all their kids live within 15 minutes of them - we see them around 1-2x per week. And if they ever did run into issues, one of us could take them in. I just like to keep it in mind because I've been subject to fairly good fortunes when it comes to career. Same thing with all my relatives. But my wife's family has had more bumps along the way.

jwithington 5y ago

how do people find these things

jacquesm 5y ago

What an interesting design for a lawnmower. Joking aside, better make a screenshot because this is liable to be blurred soon.

spaetzleesser 5y ago
Why would this be blurred? There is nothing in the picture that's not already known in far more detail. I have some B-2 pictures with way more detail I took in Pasadena during the Rose Bowl.

anovikov 5y ago

Not surprising really because it's less than 40km from Whiteman AFB.

metaphor 5y ago

Literally 30-min drive north of Whiteman...not a coincidence.

anonu 5y ago

Considering the 1000s of planes flying over the USA at any given moment, surprising this is the first time I see a plane captured in mid-flight.

philk10 5y ago
More here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDyBwcdy5KA&ab_channel=GoogleEarthMovies https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDyBwcdy5KA&ab_channel=Googl...

msisk6 5y ago

I live on a farm very close to this area. All the B-2s are based at nearby Whiteman Air Force Base. They fly over often -- one even fly over my farm today about an hour ago. This one was probably on final approach during the summer when the winds are usually out of the south and was probably about 2,000 feet above the ground.

_the_inflator 5y ago
Yes, nice comment. I remember being part of the staff of NATO's only MIG squadron during military service. People considered a MIG within NATO a sensation, while I was simply bored. I saw them every day in droves. ;)
- KptMarchewa 5y ago
  Poland still operates MIG-29s, as well as extremely outdated Su-22. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_Air_Force#Current_inventory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_Air_Force#Current_inven...
  - zhan_eg 5y ago
    Well, when talking about NATO countries, MIGs and older aircrafts - Romania and Croatia still operate MIG-21s [1] :) And MIG-29s are present also in the Bulgarian [2] and Slovak [3] airforce too. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikoyan-Gurevich_MiG-21#Current_operators https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikoyan-Gurevich_MiG-21#Curren... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulgarian_Air_Force#Current_inventory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulgarian_Air_Force#Current_in... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slovak_Air_Force#Current_inventory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slovak_Air_Force#Current_inven...
  - neurotech1 5y ago
    The Romanian MiG-21s [0], Polish MiG-21s (when in service, before retirement) and MiG-29s along with the Bulgarian MiG-29s were upgraded to NATO standards. The primary upgrades were the radios and IFF transponder. I'm not sure if they all included It is widely rumored that certain spare parts for NATO MiG-29s are actually made in US, from sources initially supporting the Adversary training missions of the 57th Wing Nellis AFB and US Navy Adversary training missions, including TOPGUN department. This is primarily for the MiG-29 and Su-27 fighters. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Mikoyan-Gurevich_MiG-21_variants#Upgrade_programmes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Mikoyan-Gurevich_MiG-2... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/57th_Wing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/57th_Wing [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_Aviation_Warfighting_Development_Center https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_Aviation_Warfighting_Dev...

MobileVet 5y ago

Its twin sitting on the tarmac at Whiteman https://goo.gl/maps/tvNapjiLCJMVa3fx6 https://goo.gl/maps/tvNapjiLCJMVa3fx6 Edit: grammar

t0bia_s 5y ago

There is a shadow of stealth bomber: https://goo.gl/maps/VWwtt1PbLJVkbiBS9 https://goo.gl/maps/VWwtt1PbLJVkbiBS9 I'm curious... Will google delete it too?

Karawebnetwork 5y ago
Plane: 39.02177585879624, -93.59455907552 Shadow: 39.024670893611805, -93.60232594974401 I wonder what this can tell us about it's speed, altitude, etc.

dougSF70 5y ago

Here is a stealth Bomber on the ground... https://maps.app.goo.gl/eJ2SU9SzE8D6JaZN9 https://maps.app.goo.gl/eJ2SU9SzE8D6JaZN9

rgblambda 5y ago
Shouldn't military bases be blurred out on Google Maps?
- jcrawfordor 5y ago
  Military adversaries have plenty of sources of their own imagery, and the commercial imagery industry is large and international. It's just not a tractable problem to try to keep people from obtaining good aerial imagery of military installations, and it's become fairly rare for anyone to try. We know that various military organizations have taken active measures to prevent imaging of sensitive activity (e.g. returning vehicles to same parking positions before passes of known IMINT satellites) but it's not a very easy thing to do, especially in the US which is heavily covered by both commercial and foreign satellites in various orbits like sun-synchronous and Molniya.1 Some military installations do receive a degree of protection by means of restricted airspace which mostly prevents commercial aerial imaging, meaning that only lower spatial resolution satellite images are available. But even this isn't really that common, and there's no systematic restriction on commercial imagery operators overflying military installations if airspace permits it.
  - rgblambda 5y ago
    I put forth the question because I know that in some places (i.e. Northern Ireland), police stations and army barracks are obfuscated on Google Maps to prevent terror groups from using it to easily gather information for mortar attacks. I suppose the chances of that happening in a remote part of the United States is much smaller but that with the resources the U.S Department of Defence have, I would have thought that they would take every precaution. Edit: It appears it's no longer done in Northern Ireland.

aawalrik323 5y ago

Parked aircraft, same model, just south at Whiteman AFB. https://www.google.com/maps/@38.7249682,-93.5601479,19z/data=!3m1!1e3 https://www.google.com/maps/@38.7249682,-93.5601479,19z/data...

CarVac 5y ago

The measured wingspan (using the Google Maps distance measure tool) is around 200 feet whereas the measured wingspan of a B-2 on the ground at nearby Whiteman AFB is the nominal 172 feet, so its altitude AGL is roughly 14% of the altitude of the camera plane that took the photo.

jeffbee 5y ago
Good math. I don't know why everyone else is assuming this photo is from a spacecraft. Virtually all of the aerial images of America on Google Earth are taken with aircraft, not spacecraft.
- oh_sigh 5y ago
  The attribution on google maps for the image is for a satellite imaging company.
  - jeffbee 5y ago
    Interesting, but I'm not sure that is dispositive. That company is credited for images even where they are obviously aerial. Google Maps images are an algorithmic mash-up of many sources, I imagine they credit partial or possible sources conservatively, to keep from omitting any potentially relevant rights. In many tiles they don't credit anybody, so the absences of Google's own image credit doesn't mean anything. The first party does not need to credit themselves.
lopuhin 5y ago
A small roll of the place at the time the photo was taken could also explain this difference.

mynameismon 5y ago

Archived before it's taken down: https://archive.ph/E8xih https://archive.ph/E8xih (don't spam click it, it is already extremely slow to load, the last thing we want to do is DDOS archive.ph)

Gustomaximus 5y ago
Taken down by the government? Id be surprised if the military is bothered by this. I have nothing to do with military etc but assume China/Russia have high res satellites taking photos/scans across airbases on a regular basis and have much better quality to investigate the technology than a google sat image.

Jiocus 5y ago

Artist James Bridle calls them "Rainbow planes" and has used this in his art. Rainbow Plane 002: Kiev. October 29, 2014: https://booktwo.org/notebook/rainbow-plane-002-kiev/ https://booktwo.org/notebook/rainbow-plane-002-kiev/ Rainbow Planes: https://www.flickr.com/photos/stml/sets/72157637938061015/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/stml/sets/72157637938061015/

djmips 5y ago
Does anyone have a theory on why some photos have a rainbow plane and a solid white place offset?
- kqr 5y ago
  They take a separate high-res monochromatic picture. (As image compression theory tells us, if you can afford to sacrifice some colour resolution for monochromatic resolution -- do it.)
mcdonje 5y ago
It's interesting how some satellites take the alpha channel pic before the RGB channels, and some do it after. The lag also changes. Alpha & RGB have similar lags for some, but alpha is way off on others.
- defaultcompany 5y ago
  What does alpha channel mean in this context? Usually it means transparency but how would you take a picture of that?
- dagmx 5y ago
  Do you mean luminance? Alpha usually refers to the transparency channel in an RGBA image. Whereas I believe you're describing more of a YUV setup
robocat 5y ago
“Rather than taking a photograph, satellite sensors record electromagnetic radiation in the red, blue, green, and high-resolution panchromatic (black-and-white) bands (as well as several not visible to the human eye, as this Mapbox[2] post helpfully explains). When these bands are combined to produce a visible image, fast-moving objects – like planes in flight – don’t quite match up, producing the rainbow effect. [2] https://blog.mapbox.com/putting-landsat-8s-bands-to-work-631c4029e9d1 https://blog.mapbox.com/putting-landsat-8s-bands-to-work-631...

dougSF70 5y ago

If you look at the photo of the B-2 on the ground I think you can make our the 14 hangars where they would park them overnight (I heard street crime is pretty hot on Whitman AFB) to the right of the staging area.

coolspot 5y ago
They smash-and-grab thermonuclear bombs all the time over there.

saberdancer 5y ago

Now a real catch would be to get a B21 raider or some other prototype/secret airplane. There were a couple of sightings of it - usually it was so high that it's hard to be sure but it looked different enough to B2.

mensetmanusman 5y ago

The new normal of 100% satellite coverage and high resolution daily pictures means future wars will be fought under water by the underdog.

littlestymaar 5y ago
I guess this comment would have been really insightful in 1910. It didn't wait for the satellites to be the norm for the underdog in a global war see [1] and [2]. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/U-boat_campaign https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/U-boat_campaign [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Atlantic https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Atlantic

ricardobayes 5y ago

Is that an F-117 Nighthawk?

HideousKojima 5y ago
B-2 Spirit, not nearly ugly enough to be a Nighthawk.
- foobarian 5y ago
  Yeah quite the opposite. This is easily my favorite plane design ever made.

jmacd 5y ago

To many of us these are technological marvels. Defenders of our lifestyle and enabler of our ambitions and dreams. To many people in the world these are insidious death machines that lurk unimpeded and can rain down death on entire villages. The embodiment of evil. Without peeling back the veneer of right and wrong, I think it's worth pausing to both appreciate the wonder of the machine and to consider the implications of its existence.

ericmay 5y ago

Bit of an aside but I like that the B-2 Spirit has different "Spirit of..." for each aircraft. There are Spirit of New York, Spirit of Ohio, etc. [1] Also if you're ever in Ohio and you're an aviation or engineering geek, or have kids, or are looking for something to do the USAF Museum is pretty cool! [2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_Grumman_B-2_Spirit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_Grumman_B-2_Spirit [2] https://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/ https://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/

bell-cot 5y ago
If you are a fairly-serious aerospace, history, or military equipment buff, then allow 2 days for the USAF Museum. It's very good, and it's huge.
lpghatguy 5y ago
I visited the USAF Museum earlier this year. It's breathtaking just how large the B-2 Spirit is. You can know the plane's dimensions going in and it'll still blow you away standing next to one.
andrewxdiamond 5y ago
They let our boyscout troop spend a night there, it was an amazing time

syngrog66 5y ago

that's me. sorry guys. my bad

thanatos519 5y ago

rmrfchik 5y ago

Now I know bombers are fed by green trails.

ashleyjoyce 5y ago

[flagged]

snshn 5y ago

It was photo bombing

mattrighetti 5y ago

How does people find thins kind of stuff willingly?

ilhamsgenius 5y ago

joering2 5y ago

Interesting in itself there is this, but we never manage to find similar gems for UFOs.

toast0 5y ago
UFOs tend to come at night, but aerial/satellite photography is done during the day.

benatkin 5y ago

These are the sort of posts I can do without. It's like the stuff that goes to the top of reddit. Reddit has a way to keep frontpage of your home page for a reason.

quickthrower2 5y ago
I saw this on Reddit before HN actually. Which is a rarity.

zeitg3ist 5y ago

Not a stealth bomber but this Google Maps picture from a few years ago presents a similar effect: https://i.imgur.com/P8XVo.jpeg https://i.imgur.com/P8XVo.jpeg (Sorry for the imgur link, I can't find a proper source)

tinyhouse 5y ago

Can someone explain? I don't see anything, just a location in MO. Update: oh cool! I see it after moving to Satellite and zooming in.

debbiedowner 5y ago

So how fast is it going according to the blur? 600mph?

soheil 5y ago

Given the distance between the different colors in the photograph and the internal refresh rate of the camera one should be able to calculate the speed that the plane was traveling at.

omnomynous 5y ago

I found where they parked it. https://www.google.com/maps/place/38%C2%B043'29.8%22N+93%C2%B033'36.9%22W/@38.724943,-93.5608082,302m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x0:0x1970d138a9a0f666!8m2!3d38.7249444!4d-93.56025 https://www.google.com/maps/place/38%C2%B043'29.8%22N+93%C2%...

jdlyga 5y ago

afternoon delight

soheil 5y ago

Now that we have an exact match of what a plane like this looks like from the point of view of a satellite, one could scan the entire Google maps for this same image.

soheil 5y ago

Interesting that Google hasn't taken this down yet or at least blur out the map tile.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

xuhu 5y ago

For a few minutes I was convinced this one had crashed on that mountain top: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Lake+Tarni%C8%9Ba/@46.7229841,23.2728155,340m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x47491c3c521fa821:0xf32ff8cb8b4aa235!8m2!3d46.7196725!4d23.2777533 https://www.google.com/maps/place/Lake+Tarni%C8%9Ba/@46.7229...

VWWHFSfQ 5y ago

This makes me wonder. Obviously everyone in the world knows that USA operates a few dozen "stealth bombers" and has for the last couple decades, or so. Has any other country developed these kinds of aircrafts? Similarly, submarines. USA operates many stealth submarines as well. Does any other country operate stealth submarines? I'm aware that USA spends about 1 tril a year on military stuff but these just seems bizarre to me.

xvector 5y ago
That is an interesting point. Both China and Russia have stealth fighters, but not stealth bombers, from my understanding. China's Xian H-20 was to be announced this year. Russia's Tupolev PAK-DA is scheduled for 2028. I suspect that the need for stealth bombers is rather low: - If you want to carry large bomb payloads, ICBMs do the trick. - For smaller bomb payloads, they can fit in the fighters.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

sudosysgen 5y ago

Hmm. Perhaps networked imaging satellites is a viable way to limit the use of stealth aircraft?

dr-detroit 5y ago

Ziggy_Zaggy 5y ago

Very impressive.

jlkuester7 5y ago

One of these flew low over my house in Kansas City last year. It was scheduled to do a fly-by of a local hospital so I was out on the porch watching for it. I saw it pass several miles to the south and went back inside thinking the show was over. A few minutes later I am sitting on the toilet when the house literally starts shaking. I run outside (barely getting my pants up...) in time to see it come right over top of the house at low altitude! (Apparently it had just been circling before to line up for the approach.)

omoikane 5y ago

Looks like this was first posted to reddit by user "Hippowned": https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/rkl236/a_stealth_bomber_in_flight_caught_on_google_maps/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/rkl23... And then various news sites picked it up, such as this one: https://www.techradar.com/news/eagle-eyed-redditor-spots-a-flying-stealth-bomber-on-google-maps https://www.techradar.com/news/eagle-eyed-redditor-spots-a-f... The link to Google Maps appears to be lifted from the above, but credits to the original redditor who found it was lost.

kcb 5y ago

Was hoping it was a B-21 Raider.

senthilnayagam 5y ago

it looks neat. so much to learn in this thread about satellite imagery and calculations. it makes sense to use crowdsourcung to watch earth with real-time satellite imagery, and later augment it with machine learning to find potentially interesting objects. I would be more excited with UFO findings, or a redbull base jumper, or proverbial superman/ironman flying.

titusblair 5y ago

How in the world do people find these images LOL :) Awesome!

unobatbayar 5y ago

The design of B-2 is so beautiful.

preddy2020 5y ago

celsopitta 5y ago

This technique of using different filters on top of a monochromatic sensor is also used in astrophotography, it helps with image resolution. You want as much pixels per inch as possible so instead of placing multiple narrow band receptors in your sensor you use a single wide band receptor as your pixel and place a filter in front of the camera, for a RGB camera for example you triple the total number of sensors by doing this.

thih9 5y ago

Offtopic, it takes me 6 clicks to access google maps (click to “customize” privacy options, select “off” three times, “continue”, and “use web” when asked about downloading an app). I’m on iOS and use safari in private mode. How are others dealing with this? Do you accept the terms or do you do something different?

metafunctor 5y ago
My Safari doesn't, in private mode, eventually, open the link at all: after customizing the privacy options (all off), Google still tries to bounce me through googleads.g.doubleclick.net, and I have that blocked. The way I “deal with this” is that I have a work Google account which I've signed into. With that in place, the link just opens. Obviously I have clicked "I accept" on a variety of forms saying Google is allowed to track my activity as they see fit. I guess you can run a browser without ad blocking and the link will open after accepting the terms. However, I prefer to still block ads even in private mode for various reasons.
dest 5y ago
I blindly accept the terms in Firefox private mode, consult the content, then close the tab, which deletes all cookies AFAIK.

blauditore 5y ago

This makes me wonder if military operations also take into account satellite positions when timing operations. Theoretically, having access to a satellite live feed and good processing software, one could potentially detect stealth bombers visually, probably even at night thanks to widespread light pollution (the plane would appear as a dark spot). Or am I missing something?

twic 5y ago

Looking at Street View in that direction from the road along the north side of the property, you can see an object in flight: https://goo.gl/maps/cJUe8YqWVM6v9Fme8 https://goo.gl/maps/cJUe8YqWVM6v9Fme8 I think that's just a bird though!

IMSAI8080 5y ago

Looks like St. Louis is about to get some freedom.