Secret US Spy Plane May Be Too Mysterious | Hacker News Reader

Secret US Spy Plane May Be Too Mysterious

wired.com

33 pointsJ3L240418 comments

The fact that you and I can talk about it (with pictures to boot!) means this isn't very secret.

Given the retirement of the SR-71, the knowledge that the F-117 went into service in 1983 and stayed unknown for almost a decade, the rumours of pulse-engines, contrails and specific aircraft like the tr-3 and Aurora, it is almost certain that the US (and likely other nations) have aircraft or spacecraft that are flying right now that the public doesn't know about.

It would be hard to gather intelligence if they didn't.

Read past headlines. The issue author raises is clearly with it's dual use. Secrecy in the title comes from that.

Satellites and UAEs have long replaced planes, no matter how fast or stealthy, for intelligence gathering. One thing this thing will do good is deliver a some payload to any place on Earth REALLY fast.

Anyway, since 2007-8 there's brand new hangar at Area 51, the biggest so far: http://dreamlandresort.com/area51/2007_new.html

Satellites will never replace aircraft until they can be "on demand". Orbits have been able to be tracked for years... changing orbits demands fuel that can't easily be replaced.

A fast aircraft with stealth is best for "cuban missle crisis" type issues. A slow one for less urgent requests for tactical concerns.

As of current public knowledge, UAVs do not have the type of speed or range that we're talking about here as being required... as far as we know...

Just wanted to amend my previous statement a bit:

One thing this thing will do good is deliver a some payload (including satellite or UAV) to any place on Earth REALLY fast.

This thing is simply not very good platform for intelligence gathering in itself. Not very easy to gather intelligence at speed of Mach 20+.

Um, the ISS is moving at around Mach 24 right now, so I'd imagine most satellites used for spying are already doing a similar speed, and they have no issues snapping pretty high resolution pics.

I don't think this would be a concern for an aircraft doing a similar (or much more practical, slower) speed.

Why should the US make this plane more transparent? What makes this author think that if the US takes the high road, that China, Russia and other countries will follow? Sure this plane could be use for weapons, but intelligence is one area of our expenditures that actually makes more sense.

It's not likely China and Russia would. But it allows the US to take the moral high ground, which you cannot at the moment. The risk would be that other countries would know of your capabilities, but it's fairly likely that they know that anyway: since there's amateurs on the ground in the US tracking it, it's a fair bet there are agencies in China doing the same, and I bet the Chinese have spies in one of the many organizations tasked to build this thing.

Sounds like an interesting alternative to the spaceshuttle program. A cargo bay big enough to fit any payload, but fully robotic, doesn't need to lug an atmosphere up into space with it. Sounds efficient.

I wounder if it would be possible to fit the cargo bay with an atmospheric module, in order to send astronauts up to work on things that only humans can still do, like manually repairing the Hubble. They don't have to actually fly it, just go along for the ride, do the mission, then ride back to Earth.

IANASE (space expert), but it really seems that robotic space exploration is the way to go these days, be it earth orbit, interplanetary, or other. Cheaper, more efficient, faster turnaround/iteration times, equally effective for most missions, and less political risk.

One thing I find highly interesting, is that the article seems to imply that only the US can track other people's space vehicles.

Washington could get away with this sort of space espionage because no other government has the technology to comprehensively track the activities of other nations’ space vehicles.

I guess the word "comprehensively" is key here. Is there really such a huge gap in other nation's capabilities? The Russians have a space program. What are the facts the author is alluding to? How big or small are other nation's space tracking capabilities? (I can just see the "Moon Hoax" nuts jumping all over this!)

The US has bases all over the world that are used to communicate with manned flights and deep space probes, and presumably these bases also have equipment for tracking everything in orbit. Russia can cover a lot of sky from within their own territory, and they've got ships that are floating tracking stations, but probably not enough to cover the entire sky all of the time. Other countries probably don't either; they most likely share the US bases and don't get the 'track everything' data.

An interesting thought: anything that is orbiting is predictable. You don't have to watch it constantly to know where it is at any given time, you just have to watch it while it passes by and calculate the orbit. So the comprehensive tracking is only necessary for tracking things which are not following consistent orbits: either they've got the ability to shift their orbit, or they're not really orbiting at all but are in powered flight. Manned flights typically shift around until they get where they are going, and I guess if they're secret they may never settle into a stable orbit. Military satellites probably do the same thing, but they'd have a limited fuel capacity to keep moving around, and a satellite is an expensive device to fly for a few days/weeks and let burn up (now that we're not using shuttles to recover them.)

If you combine your two points together, you realize that to track anything with a non-changing orbit, you just have to have to detect it once. And since everything is strictly line of sight, if you've been overflown by a satellite (spied on), then you've also had an opportunity to track the satellite and now know when the next fly-over / where will be.

What the US has the potential ability to real-time track every satellite around the entire world. In fact, we're pretty sure that that capability exists because they've also tracked everything in orbit larger than a screw.

While the X-37 has the capability to make some countries nervous, honestly space does have its own (weaker) version of MAD. I mean, if anyone does something stupid, then the rest can ruin it for everyone. I mean, do you think the US would go about laying mines in space when Russia/China probably have (will have) the capability to knock down GPS satellites? I mean, everyone knows where they are, everyone has the capability to insert into the same orbit.

The US would be beyond stupid to use the X37 for anything other than recon (spying!), or grabbing it's own satellites/payloads. Anything else would been as dumb as co-locating satellite launch sites with ICBM silos.

Also, despite the lack of public information given out by the Air Force and government, it's entirely likely that the Chinese and Russians know a lot more about the hardware and its capabilities than Wired and the public. Spy agencies exist for a reason. Even amongst 'friends'.

Anyone can track anything (*that remains in it's orbit) from the comfort of their home:

http://www.heavens-above.com http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html

The author needs to get past the fantasy that the US government is the big bad guy in a room full of innocent school children. Russia, while weakened over the past few years, is a global military power. China (and India) are starting to flex their muscles. North Korea is still ruled by a cantankerous despot. The technology advantage the US has held since WWII is waning, and with it goes the luxury of military complacency. I'd rather the skirmishes happen behind the scenes than with more large-scale conventional warfare.

The Wired article says the "X-37 periodically changes orbits". However, the linked article from the CS Monitor (http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2010/0824/Secret-Air-Force-...) only indicated one orbit change.

The wired article was all-around poorly conceived and written. The author advocates open information sharing - but it's a fucking spy plane! Does he have no idea how the spy industry works? Not like the US and USSR shared data on the SR-71 or equivalents.

This isn't a spy plane - it's a potential space minelayer.

The nice thing about the SR71 was that it wasn't that secret, you knew from the speed and altitude that it was an SR71.

But suppose your spyplane flew at the same height and speed as a B52 and was the same size as a B52 - the other guys might be a little more nervous, and more likely to react, when it flew over their territory.

This is smaller than the space shuttle so you should also be able to uniquely identify it as it passes overhead. Might not be in the same spot each time, but it is a spy (multi-purpose) plane afterall.

But you don't know what it is doing. The problem with space - and the reason we have avoided militarizing it - is that it's difficult to stay out of other people's territory.

You wouldn't allow an anonymous N. Korean/ Chinese/ Russian/ Fredonian warship to wander around US waters unchallenged but you have to allow a satellite to pass overhead - thats orbital mechanics.

Now if you start doing things with your space plane, the other side decides it's going to have to defend itself by shotting down anything that passes over it's territory, and 20 minutes later you shoot down their stuff when it passes over your head.

Pretty soon nobody has any satellites. We realized this didn't really work on the high seas several hundred years ago and came up with the idea of laws and flags.

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