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It sounds like extremely late to the game, we are talking about 1960s tech. Very surprising for a country as large as the UK, I can only assume they used US sa
by jolj 2y ago
It sounds like extremely late to the game, we are talking about 1960s tech.
Very surprising for a country as large as the UK, I can only assume they used US satellites up until now, and started designing their own due to Trump
- 317070 2y agoAs a Brit, I reckon Brexit, and the restricted access to ESA [0], are the far more reasonable explanations here... [0] https://www.gov.uk/guidance/uk-involvement-in-the-eu-space-programme https://www.gov.uk/guidance/uk-involvement-in-the-eu-space-p...
- jolj 2y agowhich one of these programs constitute of a military reconnaissance satellite?
- 317070 2y agoNone that I'm aware off.
- jolj 2y agoso I assume Britain received its imaging intelligence from the US as part of five eyes. or else I cannot explain how a nuclear armed country has skipped over one of the main prerequisite for missile targeting for 60 years
- mr_toad 2y agoThe UK nuclear arsenal has always been a strategic deterrent. The weapons in the UK arsenal (trident missiles with MIRV warheads) are designed to destroy cities, so unless the Russians have managed to conceal the locations of their major cities, targeting shouldn’t be an issue.
- jolj 2y agoPresumably part of the nuclear doctrine is to take out your enemies nuclear launch sites before they launch Also, even large cities have places which are better to target
- mrguyorama 2y ago>Presumably part of the nuclear doctrine is to take out your enemies nuclear launch sites before they launch It is not. The UK, like most nuclear armed states, has a "No first use" doctrine, meaning its nukes exist only to retaliate, to turn cities to ash. Whoever is nuking you, to the point that you use those retaliatory nukes, might be targeting your weapons, but they are on submarines in friendly waters, so not likely to be destroyed before they can launch.
- graemep 2y agoYour link says: "The UK’s membership of the European Space Agency (ESA) is not affected by leaving the EU as ESA is not an EU organisation." I think you meant the EU Space programme, but that does not seem related to military imaging satellites.
- dwayne_dibley 2y agoAh, another excellent benefit.
- KineticLensman 2y agoThe British have had military satellites since Skynet 1A in 1969 [0], although these historically supported comms rather than ISR. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skynet_(satellite) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skynet_(satellite)
- jolj 2y agoyes which only makes sense they were used to support five eyes sigint and used US satellites for visint
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- detritus 2y agoDidn't 1960s-era spy satellites use physical rolls of film that were dropped back to Earth and caught by planes or helicopters?
- acheron 2y agoYep! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CORONA_(satellite) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CORONA_(satellite)
- wkat4242 2y agoYeah it was pretty insane, catching it mid flight. Really cool. You can't make that stuff up. Imagine tracking and catching something falling from space using only 60s tracking tech. No GPS. Wow.
- heavenlyblue 2y agoThere's no way GPS is more useful than a radio signal from the package.
- wkat4242 2y agoNo but the latter only works if you're already in proximity. With the speed these things come down you have to be already in the right vicinity to catch it. This is where GPS+track prediction could help a lot. And why I think it's so impressive.
- krisoft 2y agoI was 15 years old in 2004 when I have guessed the existence of that program :) I was reading a scientific magazine article about the planed return of the Genesis spacecraft’s samples. They were writing about how the probe will float back to Earth under a parachute and a helicopter will catch it mid—air. That plan sounded absolutely bonkers crazy to me and I would have assumed they needed a long process of trial drops to practice this stunt, but the documented evidence shown that they were quite non-chalant about it. Almost as if they have done such things previously. But since there were no public evidence of prior art I assumed some classified spy stuff was what gave them the experience needed to be confident about the skill. (This was 7 years before the declassification of the existence of the KH-9 program)
- toyg 2y agoProbably a combination of Trump and Brexit. The Tory governments made a big song and dance of investing to replace the access to European space programs that they lost, I wouldn't be surprised if this project sat in the folds of one of those efforts - even just financially. On the other hand - this was actually delivered, so maybe not a Tory thing at all... /S