They're substantially newer technology than Hubble (which is older than the 1990 launch date suggests -- it was delayed several years after the Challenger disaster).
That said, I don't think they'll give an appreciably better resolution -- given good fabrication techniques, optically a 2.4m mirror is a 2.4m mirror, and everything I've read suggests that US IMINT satellites have been (in good seeing conditions) close to diffraction-limited for a long time now.
I'm sure the capabilities of the satellites have improved a great deal, but in other directions than resolution. More communications bandwidth? Faster repointing (giving more flexibility about which targets get imaged on a given pass? Better multi-spectral imaging? I'm sure there will be some surprises when the program is eventually declassified. (And I'm optimistic it will be -- there's lots you can read now about the film-return satellites).
That said, I don't think they'll give an appreciably better resolution -- given good fabrication techniques, optically a 2.4m mirror is a 2.4m mirror, and everything I've read suggests that US IMINT satellites have been (in good seeing conditions) close to diffraction-limited for a long time now.
I'm sure the capabilities of the satellites have improved a great deal, but in other directions than resolution. More communications bandwidth? Faster repointing (giving more flexibility about which targets get imaged on a given pass? Better multi-spectral imaging? I'm sure there will be some surprises when the program is eventually declassified. (And I'm optimistic it will be -- there's lots you can read now about the film-return satellites).