🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <480ea6a7.20b6d@apollo.HP.COM> rehrauer@apollo.HP.COM (Steve Rehrauer) writes:
>In article <5430@omepd.UUCP> larry@omews10.intel.com (Larry Smith) writes:
>>There is a secret $3 million Air Force study going on to study the 
>>design for a unmanned hypersonic drone that can fly to any continent 
>>in under an hour to perform recon. or strikes.
>...
>Why do we need this albatross?  What does it buy that present or improved
>satellite recon couldn't?

Three things: fast results, unpredictability, and potentially better
resolution.

The last point is the most obvious one: the same optics will give
better results at a low altitude (small numbers of kilometres) than at
orbital altitudes (small hundreds of kilometres).  The improvement is
nothing like linear, because most of the atmosphere is down low.
Furthermore, a drone is unlikely to carry the same instruments as a
satellite.  However, the principle holds.

The other two problems with satellites follow from their predictable
orbits.  It may take considerable time and/or fuel to move a ground
track over a point of interest.  Normally, an orbit is chosen that will
cover all points of interest eventually, which means that the locals
have ample warning of when to cover up anything they don't want seen.
These difficulties can be partly overcome by putting up a large number
of birds, but that's expensive, and is not the approach that the US has
taken; they go for a very small number of very high quality satellites.

A good question, however, is, ``What does this drone buy that Open
Skies doesn't?''  Canada has recently completed the first ``open
skies'' reconnaissance flight over Czechoslovakia and Hungary, and the
Hercules aircraft used was indisputably cheaper than any hypersonic
drone.  An overflight of this country by a Warsaw Pact nation will
follow later this year.  This was a ``proof-of-concept'' flight, but
while the details of a treaty must still be worked out, it seems
certain to be signed eventually.

US historical practice has been to freely violate sovereignty of
airspace, except for those countries able to shoot its aircraft down.
Forbidden territory has effectively been the Soviet Union, and thus
its Warsaw Pact allies, only.  (Cuban Missile Crisis objectors, send
email.)  By continuing this policy in tandem with Open Skies, the US
could in future inspect all countries on short notice, without
introducing any new systems.

I don't know how the SR-71 retirement fits into all this.  I suspect
that we're not being told something.
-- 
John Hogg			hogg@csri.utoronto.ca
Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto