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Comment by renzo88 | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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...

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