Makes you wonder. There must be a massive archive of satellite on satellite images somewhere and teams of people figuring out engineering capabilities/secrets from them.
I'd be shocked if this isn't a capability the DoD has developed to a very high level.
https://www.google.com/search?q=satellite%20mission%20extens...
> Manufacturer: Northrop Grumman Innovation Systems
Sure
https://time.com/5779315/russian-spacecraft-spy-satellite-sp...
https://cepa.org/article/its-costing-peanuts-for-the-us-to-d...
On top of that, the Pentagon gets to see how that equipment performs in the real world.
So I wouldn't go far as to say it's a no-brainer since there's always a tit-for-tat process going on behind the scenes.
Besides after more than a year of war this is an interesting but purely counterfactual analysis without much relevance for today.
Not quite, since there are taboos that even the Kremlin has been afraid to break so far. Such as poisoning diplomats, deploying weapons to space, messing with subsea cables, etc...
But theoretically they have less to lose than the U.S. because they have less diplomats, have less space assets, and so on. So one day the decision makers may be tempted to get one back.
It’s likely extremely negative value when properly integrated into future potential outcome. For example the “badwill” it will generate from relatives and decedents of all the dead.
I doubt fueling war is ever a good strategy in the long run.
Who cares what the motivation of some bigwigs in Washington is, as long as they are helping Ukraine defending their country. It is Russia that invaded and annexed territories of its neighbor and who can end this war any time by going home.