Outside of the NRO, nobody even knew that that level of optical fidelity was even possible with modern technology. That shit is amongst the most classified stuff in the country. Right up there with, you know, exactly how close one of our SSNs can get to various types of Russian subs without getting detected.
Even in redacted form, the imaging capabilities are quite far beyond what commercial satellites can do. Trump insisted that he was going to publicly release the image (and thus implicitly reveal the optical fidelity and orbital dynamics of what’s probably considered a top-5 intelligence gathering device in the world - and we also likely have the other four, too) simply because he is a man-child with no self control who wanted to troll on Iran for a bit. There was zero strategic gain to be had from revealing that. The effectiveness of the satellite is now substantially reduced, because now state actors know precisely how big a thing can be before it can detect them, as well as the exact angles that you’d need to deploy visual obfuscation to hide a thing.
He also causally revealed exactly how incredibly good the visual fidelity of our geosynchronous surveillance satellites are because he wanted to brag about it on Fox.
Outside of the NRO, nobody even knew that that level of optical fidelity was even possible with modern technology. That shit is amongst the most classified stuff in the country. Right up there with, you know, exactly how close one of our SSNs can get to various types of Russian subs without getting detected.
The image was cleared for release and redacted before release, hence the black square in the top left.
You’re not getting what I’m saying.
Even in redacted form, the imaging capabilities are quite far beyond what commercial satellites can do. Trump insisted that he was going to publicly release the image (and thus implicitly reveal the optical fidelity and orbital dynamics of what’s probably considered a top-5 intelligence gathering device in the world - and we also likely have the other four, too) simply because he is a man-child with no self control who wanted to troll on Iran for a bit. There was zero strategic gain to be had from revealing that. The effectiveness of the satellite is now substantially reduced, because now state actors know precisely how big a thing can be before it can detect them, as well as the exact angles that you’d need to deploy visual obfuscation to hide a thing.