Message posted by Q-nimbus (Member since 08/20/2020) on January 06, 2025 at 0:57:23 PST:
Spy satellites are only part of intelligence gathering. As for Area 51, I’m pretty sure Chinese spy sats will pass by every now and then, but it’s only a small parts of all the targets they monitor. They’ll mainly look for new construction going on and deduce what it’s for, in combination with other intel. They certainly won’t expect to catch a classified airframe with a spy sat, and there are better and easier means to get your hands on a document of a classified program: old fashioned spying, and hacking. And as high as some resolutions are (we know how good the resolution of US spysats is thanks to the ever cautious President Trump), it’s still to low to give you any real intel about airplane characteristics and performance. Some foreign agents might occasionally visit sensitive locations with camera’s with very long zoom lenses, and they’ll fly some drones over it perhaps. In any case, spy sats are there for the bigger picture: troop numbers and buildups, construction, to verify arms-control agreements, early warnings and target selection. Putting a spy sat above permanently above Area 51 would be a massive waste of resources.
In Reply to: Re: Most sensitive satellite photos ever declassified of Area 51 released posted by Casper on January 03, 2025 at 16:13:59 PST:
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