[krisoft]

> When Soviet birds went overhead the radar dishes were pointed in a different direction and radiating on misleading frequences.

That kinda assumes that there are gaps in the coverage of surveilance. That might have been practically true, but what makes it so? Couldn’t an adversary in response to such measures park their surveilance satelites in a geostat or near-geostat orbit? Or step up the number of surveilance sats such that they barelly leave any gaps?

[skhr0680]

https://himawari8.nict.go.jp/

This is what the Earth looks like from a geostationary orbit

[krisoft]

Nice picture, but what are you saying with it?

The image you linked were made by a weather monitoring satelite. It was optimised to capture a wide are of the globe. This is clearly not the type of lens you would use to surveil military activity. It is not even the right modality to capture radar signals.

[formerly_proven]

Geostationary orbit is ~36000 km above the surface. Optical surveillance satellites work at altitudes of 200-400 km and already need Hubble-like mirror sizes to achieve the needed resolution. A geostationary satellite with a similar resolution is simply not possible to build and launch in this age. Geostationary also means that half the time you're looking at darkness.

[krisoft]

Thank you very much for the answer. (both you and all the other people)

> A geostationary satellite with a similar resolution is simply not possible to build and launch in this age.

I think I will have to read up on that specifically more. I was aware how far GEO is, but I don't understand what makes the optics impossible. (Clearly it is as you say, all the sources agree with you.) Thank you!

[Sharlin]

You aren’t going to see anything from geostat, which is over 100 times higher than typical spysat orbits.