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The prospect of Joe Biden being defeated by Donald Trump is a signal to every hostile foreign power that the next 50 weeks may be their last opportunity to take military action exploiting POTUS's and his national security team's weakness, Indecisiveness, and incompetence. Our degraded military preparedness, the presence of possibly tens of thousands of saboteurs and guerillas who came over our nonexistent borders, and the failure of Team Biden to adequately punish the Houthis for 160+ attacks on our troops all beckon aggression. China has made no secret of its plan to take over Taiwan, and Iran wants to...

The second stage of a Chinese rocket that launched three spy satellites has just broken up this week over Texas, according to the U.S. Naval Institute. Here’s what the Chang Zheng “Long March” rocket looked like taking off from China in June.[🔴China’s 21st launch in 2022] At UTC 02:22 June 23, 3 Yaogan(遥感/RemoteSensing)-35-02 satellites were successfully launched by #CZ2D Y64 rocket in Xichang, Sichuan. This is the 424th launch of Long March rocket family. HD: https://t.co/018SGyq48M pic.twitter.com/0kDtkg7hua— CNSA Watcher (@CNSAWatcher) June 23, 2022The four-ton rocket reentered the atmosphere on Wednesday at 17,000 miles per hour and disintegrated, but it’s only...

The German government has allocated €400 million ($465 million) to fund the construction of up to three spy satellites for the country’s foreign intelligence service, the BND. This has been reported by a consortium of newspapers and is part of a general trend within Germany of increasing surveillance and surveillance capabilities. It is expected that the system, which has been nicknamed “Georg,” could be launched into space by the early 2020s. A confidential sub-committee within the budget committee of the German parliament reportedly approved the money for the project, away from public scrutiny, this June. The newspapers cited a document...

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - The United States plans to launch a pair of satellites to keep tabs on spacecraft from other countries orbiting 22,300 miles above the planet, as well as to track space debris, the head of Air Force Space Command said. The previously classified Geosynchronous Space Situational Awareness Program (GSSAP) will supplement ground-based radars and optical telescopes in tracking thousands of pieces of debris so orbital collisions can be avoided, General William Shelton said at the Air Force Association meeting in Orlando on Friday. He called it a "neighborhood watch program" that will provide a more detailed...

The clandestine cargo carried into polar orbit Thursday aboard the first California-launched Delta 4-Heavy rocket was a crucial replacement satellite for the nation's surveillance and security network, amateur sky-watchers say.The sophisticated imaging bird follows a long line of Keyhole-type spacecraft that provide ultra-high resolution imagery for the U.S. intelligence community, according to hobbyists who track orbiting satellites with remarkable precision. Ever since the Delta 4-Heavy rocket fired away from Space Launch Complex 6 at Vandenberg Air Force Base, the amateur observers have been hunting for the new satellite to figure out its identity. The conventional wisdom before the launch said...

The wonderfully sort-of-secret X-37B is back on terra firma after a long stay in space. Very little information beyond its appearance, dimensions and the fact that the Air Force is deploying it is known about the vehicle, which looks a lot like a mini space shuttle. The vehicle can stay in orbit for at least nine months. As someone who spent five years at Space News — much of that time covering intelligence issues — I’m going to engage in some informed speculation. It could take advanced sensors into space for testing and, probably, allow sensors to operate from the...

NATO will offer Russia access to some US military satellite data in exchange for its participation in a missile shield project for continental Europe, a Moscow newspaper reported Friday. The offer will come as part of a broader deal to be extended to Russia at the NATO-Russia Council that immediately follows the 28-member Alliance's November 19-20 summit in Lisbon, Nezavisimaya Gazeta quoted a NATO source as saying. NATO officials in Brussels could not immediately confirm the report. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has accepted an invitation to attend the talks, which besides long-range missile defences will also focus on NATO's activities...

After a year of tests, a hyperspectral spy satellite is being called into service this weekend as a military reconnaissance tool, the Air Force says. The Tactical Satellite-3, or TacSat-3, uses hyperspectral imaging to identify objects of interest in the ground and supply coordinates for them. Within 10 minutes of passing overhead, laptop-sized ground terminals can mark points of interest for combat troops, as the Register reports. In its 13-month experimental flight, TacSat-3 assisted with earthquake relief efforts in Haiti and Chile, and took more than 2,100 photos with its Advanced Responsive Tactically Effective Military Imaging Spectrometer, or ARTEMIS. Everything...

Butler of Aviation Week & Space Technology reported last week that the super-secret National Reconnaissance Office will be launching new spy satellites over the next two years at the highest rate since the Reagan era. Butler quotes NRO director Bruce Carlson as stating that several "very large, very critical" spacecraft will be sent into orbit by his agency -- presumably systems that collect imagery of surface targets or eavesdrop on the radio-frequency transmissions of potential adversaries. Combined with impending launches of new military-communications and missile-warning satellites, news of the spy-satellite payloads will come as welcome news to the nation's endangered...

The proposed new charter for the nation’s spy satellite builder, the National Reconnaissance Office, is stuck in the Department of Defense’s general counsel’s office. The lawyers are apparently worried that the new charter may expand the agency’s powers into areas governed by the military services. Information on all this is extremely close hold but we have heard variations on this from two very well informed sources. One phrase in the statement of principles that guides the charter appears to be the issue: “overhead reconnaissance systems.” That is the key phrase in a document, called the statement of principles. It lays...

Top scientists and the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency are collaborating in an effort to assess the hidden complexities of environmental change.

The giant gold and silver satellite glittered against the black sky as space shuttle Atlantis closed in on it from below. Commander Hoot Gibson and pilot Guy Gardner flew the approach, while mission specialist Mike Mullane, at the other end of the flight deck, readied the shuttle’s robot arm for a capture. Downstairs in the airlock, mission specialists Jerry Ross and Bill Shepherd waited in their spacesuits for Gibson’s order to go outside and attempt a rescue. The mission of STS-27 had been to deploy the first in a series of new spy satellites that used radar to observe ground...

U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz says that the service’s forthcoming budget request, though pinched by the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, will likely include money for a new bomber and a new space surveillance system. The on-again-off-again Next-Generation Bomber (or NGB, also called Long-Range Strike), could re-emerge with the Pentagon’s fiscal 2011 spending request going to Capitol Hill in February, Schwartz said during a luncheon speech last week at the Credit Suisse/Aviation Week Aerospace & Defense Finance conference here. Defense Secretary Robert Gates put a hold on the NGB program last spring in...

Extensive infrastructure developments are evident in the following satellite imagery, obtained by the Israeli Eros-B satellite. The images are superimposed on an earlier image, available through Google Earth, taken around 2007. Images: Background image, GoogleEarth. Inserts: Imagesat International. Below: The latest image, taken 27 November, 2009 showing the construction progress at the site, with a siezable gantry tower constructed at the launch site, with an associated launch pad, and fully constructed flame bucket diverting the missile's exhaust gases from the hillside. The launch site is linked through separate tubing, to a nearby, sheltered underground facility located at the upper left...

Several high-priority and high-priced satellites crucial to U.S. national security are slated to launch over the next 15 to 18 months, according to Bruce Carlson, director of the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office (NRO). During a keynote address here at the Strategic Space Symposium, Carlson did not provide details of the upcoming missions. Most of the NRO’s satellite programs are classified. Carlson noted the launches to make the point that the NRO continues to perform its mission despite having had its struggles in recent years. But Carlson also said the NRO has suffered a steep decline in its research and development...

A new generation of electro-optical imaging satellites to be built by Lockheed Martin pending congressional approval will have an aperturesize of 2.4 meters, a senior U.S.intelligence official said. James R. Clapper, undersecretary of defense for intelligence, disclosed the aperture size — or diameter of the satellite’s primary imaging mirror — of the Next-Generation Optical satellite system Oct.19 during a keynote address here at the Geoint 2009 Symposium. Technical details and capabilities of the nation’s spy satellites typically are closely guarded secrets. Aperture size and altitude are the two factors that determine a satellite’s imaging resolution, which is the minimum size...

The nation that made it to the Moon in 12 years now struggles to build a satellite in that time and is at risk of losing its preeminence in space. Those words come from one of the top four space intelligence lawmakers on Capitol Hill, Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger, chairman of the House Select technical and tactical intelligence subcommittee, who spoke before an audience of some 1,200 intelligence practitioners and industry at the Geoint annual conference in San Antonio, Texas. Ruppersburger noted that 20 years ago the U.S. had 70 percent of the commercial satellite market which is now down to...

The NRO payload on the Delta 4-Heavy is a 5-to-6 ton eavesdropping spacecraft with a high tech deployable antenna as wide as 350 feet. The spacecraft is to enhance the capability for the U.S. to listen in on communications in hostile governments like Iran and terrorist organizations like Al Qaeda. The satellite is likely an "Advanced Mentor" design. Earlier versions were designated Orion. These spacecraft provide the kind of information the White House, State Dept. and Pentagon need to make military and national foreign policy decisions. It is also likely a "broad spectrum" satellite that can update key frequency information...

Watch as General Cartwright, Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (and apparently Jack Bauer's older brother) shows how the Aegis missile launches and successfully destroys the rogue spy satellite. [Via Gizmodo]

WASHINGTON - The U.S. military is developing contingency plans to deal with the possibility that a large spy satellite expected to fall to Earth in late February or early March could hit North America. Air Force Gen. Gene Renuart, who heads of U.S. Northern Command, told The Associated Press on Tuesday that the size of the satellite suggests that some number of pieces will not burn up as the orbiting vehicle re-enters the Earth's atmosphere and will hit the ground. "We're aware that this satellite is out there," Renuart said. "We're aware it is a fairly substantial size. And we...