The actual day to day of this stuff is surprisingly technical and boils down to unbelievably minute details, like what frequencies things are being transmitted in, or exactly what colors are getting picked up, or what angle the images are being taken from. It's all kind of stupid, tbh. But that's apparently how modern warfare works.
I guess I should clarify that the main reason I say it's stupid is because the US goes to incredible lengths to make sure some very specific radar can't be jammed in some very specific situation, but then we'll leave our entire power grid completely vulnerable to some 12 year old script kiddie in the Netherlands.
When you know the exact capabilities of your enemy, you can optimize your actions to target those exact capabilities. In this specific instance, it is now known exactly how complete camo netting coverage needs to be to hide from the visual spectrum of US satellites. It is now known exactly how thoroughly you need to hide things. The question of "is X possible to hide with the resources we have?" can now be answered with much more certainty than before.
This is a general principle that applies to all military technology. If you know exactly what kind of armor your enemies tanks use, and how thick it is, you can very quickly and with little effort determine if any of your older missiles are obsolete or if it's possible to design a new kind of ammo for your existing guns to penetrate it. If you know exactly how effective your enemies countermeasures are, you know what you have that can engage and not just be throwing lives away when the chance of success is basically zero. You can avoid situations like the US Navy in WW II getting hundreds of pilots killed trying to attack Japanese ships with weapons they didn't know were completely ineffective.
The exact way this principal interacts with the specific technology doesn't matter. It always ends the same, you want to know your enemies exact capabilities, and you don't want your enemies to know your exact capabilities.
Yes, but it still is a good piece of information to build on.
Military intelligence is similar to trying to learn about far away stars and planets. You extrapolate as much as you can from very limited information. You can be pretty sure of anything you directly extrapolate from things you can prove. You can assume you are probably right, but not certain of anything you extrapolate from extrapolations. And anything beyond that is proposing multiple possibilities, and trying to filter between them.
If you can find direct proof of something you suspected three or four layers of extrapolation down, it shows that all those layers above are probably correct. Which frees you up to look down certain paths more confident you are on the right track, or tells you if you are looking in the wrong places. It also gives you the confidence to bet people's lives on that piece of intelligence being correct, which is what makes it useful and not just a classified circlejerk.
The fact that the exact capabilities of said imaging was made public is very damaging to their usefulness. These things are classified for a reason.
Yeah, that's what makes it so funny
No one looked at that picture and thought: holy fuck I didn’t know America has good sat. Imagery. Lol
At worst it confirmed what everyone knew.
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The actual day to day of this stuff is surprisingly technical and boils down to unbelievably minute details, like what frequencies things are being transmitted in, or exactly what colors are getting picked up, or what angle the images are being taken from. It's all kind of stupid, tbh. But that's apparently how modern warfare works.
I guess I should clarify that the main reason I say it's stupid is because the US goes to incredible lengths to make sure some very specific radar can't be jammed in some very specific situation, but then we'll leave our entire power grid completely vulnerable to some 12 year old script kiddie in the Netherlands.
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Isn't this a perfect example? Because of the tweet, they were essentially able to confirm that the satellite wasn't a decoy or something?
When you know the exact capabilities of your enemy, you can optimize your actions to target those exact capabilities. In this specific instance, it is now known exactly how complete camo netting coverage needs to be to hide from the visual spectrum of US satellites. It is now known exactly how thoroughly you need to hide things. The question of "is X possible to hide with the resources we have?" can now be answered with much more certainty than before.
This is a general principle that applies to all military technology. If you know exactly what kind of armor your enemies tanks use, and how thick it is, you can very quickly and with little effort determine if any of your older missiles are obsolete or if it's possible to design a new kind of ammo for your existing guns to penetrate it. If you know exactly how effective your enemies countermeasures are, you know what you have that can engage and not just be throwing lives away when the chance of success is basically zero. You can avoid situations like the US Navy in WW II getting hundreds of pilots killed trying to attack Japanese ships with weapons they didn't know were completely ineffective.
The exact way this principal interacts with the specific technology doesn't matter. It always ends the same, you want to know your enemies exact capabilities, and you don't want your enemies to know your exact capabilities.
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Yes, but it still is a good piece of information to build on.
Military intelligence is similar to trying to learn about far away stars and planets. You extrapolate as much as you can from very limited information. You can be pretty sure of anything you directly extrapolate from things you can prove. You can assume you are probably right, but not certain of anything you extrapolate from extrapolations. And anything beyond that is proposing multiple possibilities, and trying to filter between them.
If you can find direct proof of something you suspected three or four layers of extrapolation down, it shows that all those layers above are probably correct. Which frees you up to look down certain paths more confident you are on the right track, or tells you if you are looking in the wrong places. It also gives you the confidence to bet people's lives on that piece of intelligence being correct, which is what makes it useful and not just a classified circlejerk.