Thursday, October 28, 2004
Satellites and Wizbang
In 600,000 tons of Explosives Part 2, I raged
It's time to stop fighting with one arm tied behind our backs. We have satelites. We can see if trucks are ferrying materiel across the border into Syria. We had a no fly zone in the north and the south. Why the hell didn't we stop those trucks!I'm indebted to Boyd at Texas Native
don't overestimate our ability to surveil the many sites of interest throughout Iraq. There are several difficulties.The discussion at Wizbang is quite interesting. Wizbang has a theory that IAEA may have lied to the Security Council about quantities of RDX and HMX and that THIS is the big story that the MSM is missing.
1) You have a fixed amount of surveillance assets, in this case, satellites.
2) You have to prioritize your surveillance targets, because due to #1 above, you can't watch everything.
3) Photographic satellite surveillance doesn't work at night.
4) Photographic satellite surveillance doesn't work when it's cloudy.
5) Many, if not most, photographic surveillance satellites are not geostationary, so you look as you pass overhead a target area. When you don't have an asset in range, you can't see anything.
Even technical means of intelligence aren't omniscient.
