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Comment by msisk6 | Hacker News Reader

I live on a farm very close to this area.

All the B-2s are based at nearby Whiteman Air Force Base. They fly over often -- one even fly over my farm today about an hour ago.

This one was probably on final approach during the summer when the winds are usually out of the south and was probably about 2,000 feet above the ground.

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Seems like you're right - there's one parked on (indeed) Whiteman Air Force Base right here https://goo.gl/maps/x8738SicBvtSPqmR6

that's awesome.. I thought Army bases are masked on maps.

There's really no point. A few high sensitivity assets are lower resolution, but any state actor that wants very high resolution shots of military facilities already has it and on a quicker update cadence than google maps allows.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think the biggest threat to domestic military facilities are foreign state actors but rather domestic terrorists, and those usually don't have access to any military-grade satellites.

It's 2021 (for another couple weeks) and everyone has access to imaging satellites with almost instant turnaround, for a negligible fee.

Consider yourself corrected.

Have you considered including a source that supports your statement?

Not OP, and no idea on pricing, but https://www.spymesat.com/new-tasking.html appears to allow you task a satellite selfie on demand

According to the pricing tab, it costs ~$20 to get a 1 km2 area with a 30-50cm resolution.

And if you ask for a shot of the “wrong” coordinates, how long until a nice person with a badge knocks on your door?

Seems like an obvious kind of honeypot?

For my family's semi-rural home I'm seeing that I can buy 0.5m (500cm) imagery from the last year for $250. No historical images with higher resolution I can buy. To task a new a photo at 40cm resolution would cost $1,800.00 from KOMPSAT-3A. (and it'd be a 10km x 10km area)

I googled it and came up with multiple answers. Instead of demanding people prove their work, take reasonable statements in good faith imo.

But do such consumer services mask military targets? Probably yes.

Not all of them. Some of them just don’t offer photos of that area, even though they offer literally every other inch of the earth in at least SOME scan, a lot of these are missing.

Do they need military-grade imagery? The Chinese or Russian militaries do because they’re trying to estimate war-time performance but I find it hard to believe that there are any domestic terrorists building sensor arrays to support SAM batteries. If they’re trying to blow one up, the resolution on a consumer drone or telescope would likely be more than enough.

Those generally avoid hardened targets like military bases.

Interesting that you mention only domestic military facilities... When I was deployed to Afghanistan ten years ago, with rockets and mortar rounds landing daily inside the perimeter of our Forward Operating Base, I was irritated to see recent and high-resolution satellite imagery on Google Maps. I can see my sleeping tent, office building(s), and parked helicopters in perfect clarity. The imagery hasn't been updated since then, so you can still see everything despite this base being abandoned years ago. https://www.google.com/maps/@33.9428134,69.0629605,492m/data...

In the initial years of Google Earth and similar services, a number of military and intelligence facilities were blurred.

This is still the case today. See for example this military base in France: https://goo.gl/maps/gRLEBcCQB9CCx8Au6

Why does _france_ need to hide their millitary bases? I mean, France?

Because they're a NATO member with a pretty large and advanced military force, in a very accessible area of Europe?

Are we talking about the same France? France, one of Europes largest military powers which actually use their military in various conflicts around the globe?

Maybe their argument is that France has nothing to fear from anyone, so why the secrecy? Of course it's nonsense no matter how you spin it. All militaries love secrecy (except maybe the ones that are just for show, but I expect even the Swiss Guard in the Vatican has its secrets).

I'm guessing their comment is from the view of the French being "cheese eating, surrender monkeys", a view not supported by France's long military history. This view was supported, for at least a few years, by a Google "I feel lucky" search for "French military victories" taking you to a Google search mockup site which suggested "Maybe you mean: French military surrenders".

Apart from the fact that the view of France as "surrender monkeys" is nonsense, it also makes no sense as an argument that their military wouldn't be interested in secrecy.

This isn’t an answer to your inflammatory question, but there are only a handful of nation states with nuclear weapons, and France is one of them.

These aren’t hand-me-down US warheads on the back of a missile truck: the flagship of the French navy is a 40,000 tonne nuclear armed, nuclear powered aircraft carrier floating above a strategic submarine fleet that can destroy the world.

They can also be seen at Hickam AFB here: https://www.google.com/maps/@21.3310109,-157.946255,241m/dat...

They're often deployed elsewhere for missions and/or training, but the home base for all of them is Whiteman AFB. There's only 20 of them.

I do wonder how many megatons of nuclear weapons are stored there, about 20 miles from my house. Maybe best not to think on that too much. :)

Yeah I panned over to the munitions bunkers (I think there is a better name I forget) and there seemed to be so few, but I guess you don't need much space for nukes...

Omg, are they sooo huge?

I just realised how big they are for the first time in my life. What a sight!

[edit] 172ft = 52m wingspan!

They have pretty big appetites, they eat a lot.

They don't really seem that big in person. And they're amazingly hard to see from any distance since they're essentially just a thin flat airfoil.

Here's a not-especially-good video I just uploaded of one flying over my farm from this summer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GyXSuFj0naQ

Beautiful place to live.

Off topic but wow your farm is beautiful

+1 to your farm's beauty. Would you be open to hosting me for a day or two there?!

I was blessed by a low flyover in Lancaster, CA back in '94 or so. It's absolutely stunning to have something that big and that quiet glide over you.

On Google Earth you can use the timeline feature to actually see when the imagery was captured (or at least uploaded?). The plane sitting near the hangers was from a capture in May 2016. Google Earth currently shows several newer captures, including one from September 2021. The current one from September 2021 is actually far more interesting in my opinion. In it, you can see a B2 sitting in a field about a quarter up the runway (38°43'27.63"N 93°32'54.86"W) with stuff scattered all around it and trucks sitting on the runway. https://i.imgur.com/lh1hkWN.png

Good timing on that capture.

https://www.military.com/daily-news/2021/09/16/b-2-rolled-of...

Ah very interesting! I saw the skid marks on the runway north of the plane and was wondering if it was an emergency landing situation considering that it was just on the side of the runway. Pretty cool to read the article and get the other half of the story.

I'm very intrigued as to what is going on here - it almost looks as if it veered off the runway. Anyone got any suggestions?

The op of this thread replied to my comment with a military.com article, and in that article there is a link to an article on thedrive, https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/42392/damaged-b-2-spir...

"According to sources, the B-2 experienced a hydraulic failure in flight and had its port main landing gear collapse during landing, sending it off the runway with its wing dug into the ground. We cannot confirm that this was the case at this time, but the satellite image above does concur with the gear collapse/wing down aspect of the incident. While it is possible the aircraft was rolled off the runway after the fact, this is unlikely, especially considering its wing-down disposition. The damage to the aircraft also remains unknown. "

Ouch, that sounds expensive! Thanks for the follow-up.

I was about to say, I grew up about 10 minutes from here and they were a common sight. Always thrilling to see.

IIRC Whiteman has an air show every year where you can get "up close" to them.

The best air show I've ever been to was at Will Rogers World Airport in OKC. I figure some of it must be the proximity to Tinker, but also other bases in the area. Back in 95 (could have been 96, but not any later, as I left the area late that year), they brought a B-2 to the show, flew it around the airport for a while, landed it, waited a while so people could get take as many pictures as they wanted, then took off and flew it home. At the same show, they brought an F-117, did the flyby, and landed it. Then taxi'd it over to a static display area so people could get close. I was able to walk underneath it and touch it. As a young airman, I was absolutely floored. And this was in 95 or 96, so we were still really impressed with how exotic these planes were.

Yes, nice comment.

I remember being part of the staff of NATO's only MIG squadron during military service. People considered a MIG within NATO a sensation, while I was simply bored. I saw them every day in droves. ;)

Poland still operates MIG-29s, as well as extremely outdated Su-22.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_Air_Force#Current_inven...

Well, when talking about NATO countries, MIGs and older aircrafts - Romania and Croatia still operate MIG-21s [1] :)

And MIG-29s are present also in the Bulgarian [2] and Slovak [3] airforce too.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikoyan-Gurevich_MiG-21#Curren...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulgarian_Air_Force#Current_in...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slovak_Air_Force#Current_inven...

The Romanian MiG-21s [0], Polish MiG-21s (when in service, before retirement) and MiG-29s along with the Bulgarian MiG-29s were upgraded to NATO standards. The primary upgrades were the radios and IFF transponder. I'm not sure if they all included

It is widely rumored that certain spare parts for NATO MiG-29s are actually made in US, from sources initially supporting the Adversary training missions of the 57th Wing Nellis AFB and US Navy Adversary training missions, including TOPGUN department. This is primarily for the MiG-29 and Su-27 fighters.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Mikoyan-Gurevich_MiG-2...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/57th_Wing

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_Aviation_Warfighting_Dev...

Apparently prior to getting their hands on a MiG-25 from a defector who took one to Japan, many in the western military and intelligence communities envisioned it to have super avionic powers (that persisted for a long time in the civilian sphere). They thought it was agile and fast. What they didn't know is that it could only sustain those speeds for short spurts (else the engines suffered from metal fatigue due to temperature) and the maneuverability they envisioned from the geometry proved to be false (it had a very wide turning radius)...

Yeah I remember being thrilled seeing them while canoeing on the Gasconade when I was a kid in the 90s. I believe that we saw one refueling behind a KC-10 in the air as well.

Whiteman AFB is about 20 miles south and a little east of the plane in this image.

Do you think you could obtain video of base's plutonium isolation module?

(sorry, couldn't resist obscure early Simpsons reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8s4AvjnPFk)

I grew up in the south of the state but I remember them flying overhead when I was a kid now and again. Always stood out like a sore thumb, left a particular contrail too as I recall.

Curious: ever hear any sonic booms?

Have you ever visited the „Clock Nook”?

This is amazing!

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