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Comment by akie | Hacker News Reader

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

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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.

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.

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.

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