First UK Military Spy Satellite

[Ross365]

This is interesting https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1d77yq9zz2o
Till now, we've always depended on the Americans being nice to us and providing imagery, as per the Falklands.

 

[Erie Fred]

This is interesting https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1d77yq9zz2o
Till now, we've always depended on the Americans being nice to us and providing imagery, as per the Falklands.

What is it spying upon ?

 

[Ross365]

Depending on what happens in November, we might want to keep an eye on various bits of the USA .

I think it's gone in to a Polar orbit, so we could look at anything.

 

[Ross365]

I think it is more of a regular sharing of intelligence. GCHQ, I’m sure, supplies a lot of useful intel to the US.

I am sure that is very true generally, but the Falklands was complicated as some politicians in Washington wanted to preserve good relations with south America. We were very lucky that the US Defense Secretary at the time was Casper Weinberger, who was totally pro-Brit. He was subsequently given an Honorary Knighthood: "Honorary Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire in 1988, awarded in recognition for an "outstanding and invaluable" contribution to military cooperation between the UK and the US, particularly during the Falklands War of 1982" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caspar_Weinberger

It's good that we are not so totally dependent on the US now.... assuming it works when switched on!

 

[oldbikedavey]

What is it spying upon ?

Almost certainly a chip shop in Swindon.
Can't be too careful, old chap.....

 

[dobbslc]

What is it spying upon ?

Can't say, you might be the emeney next week

 

[Morrisman]

This is interesting https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1d77yq9zz2o
Till now, we've always depended on the Americans being nice to us and providing imagery, as per the Falklands.

The GPS we all use so much is American owned and built. There was a time it generally couldn’t be used by the public as the US wouldn’t reveal the exact position of satellites.
When I first worked in the oil fields we used it for all our work, to pin point locate oil surveys, and we had a system to read the GPS, then compare it to real world known locations, then we could apply the ‘offsets’ so we knew where we were to within a metre. This was done by ‘base stations’ onshore wherever we worked, recalculating the offsets continuously, cheating the system.

Eventually they gave up the big secret and everybody could use GPS accurately.

 

[pawsnizzy]

What is it spying upon ?

Everybody! It'll have been manufactured in China

 

[jmp49]

The GPS we all use so much is American owned and built. There was a time it generally couldn’t be used by the public as the US wouldn’t reveal the exact position of satellites.
When I first worked in the oil fields we used it for all our work, to pin point locate oil surveys, and we had a system to read the GPS, then compare it to real world known locations, then we could apply the ‘offsets’ so we knew where we were to within a metre. This was done by ‘base stations’ onshore wherever we worked, recalculating the offsets continuously, cheating the system.

Eventually they gave up the big secret and everybody could use GPS accurately.

Not so much of late, in gps space now in recognition at gps US control, there's Glonass (RU), Galileo(Europe), BeiDou(China) and various non radio positioning systems used (EINS, A-GPS etc) when gps is messed about with that most consumer gps systems can be switched to. So some chaos, but it will be worked around in time if your in coverage of a alternative.

 

[jmp49]

Everybody! It'll have been manufactured in China

nah, they'll just use the downlink data as they flow through the huawei kit for that

 

[cardiffrob]

Since Brexit the UK pilots have been unable to 'officially' use the European satellites previously used for GPS-based approaches to airfields. We still keep the old ILS/VOR/NDB approaches and thus would still be able to fly if someone pulled the plug on the GPS system. Technology is great,...right up until a system you've become reliant on starts to switch off.

 

[voipio]

GPS isn't just used for positioning. It's also used for the accurate timing required by modern telecommunications systems. Without it, our modern comms, and high speed internet are essentially FUBARed.

Now, where did I put my semaphore flags and Aldis lamp? Better stock up on paper and stamps, too!!

 

[Ubique]

GPS isn't just used for positioning. It's also used for the accurate timing required by modern telecommunications systems. Without it, our modern comms, and high speed internet are essentially FUBARed.

Now, where did I put my semaphore flags and Aldis lamp? Better stock up on paper and stamps, too!!

It's also used to timestamp the stock market transactions, loss of GPS globally beyond a single number of days would mean all the trading would cease until GPS was restored or atomic clocks were brought in.

 

[Erie Fred]

Quietly providing satellite data was not the real,issue as it couldn’t be seen by the Argentinians (unless leaked). The obvious issue was that of sidewinder missiles supply. Very effective and very visible to the Argentinians.

The UK very quickly went around weapons suppliers to buy up every Exocet they could, to avoid further supply to the enemy! Luckily they were in short supply and the French wouldn’t supply any more to Argentina.

Space - INVAP - Investigación Aplicada

Aerospace

www.invap.com.ar

 

[jmp49]

GPS isn't just used for positioning. It's also used for the accurate timing required by modern telecommunications systems. Without it, our modern comms, and high speed internet are essentially FUBARed.

Now, where did I put my semaphore flags and Aldis lamp? Better stock up on paper and stamps, too!!

Most of the (telco & mil) systems that have a legal duty for accurate time recording in the UK I've worked with have a timeserver that takes a on air time server from MSF rugby atomic clock which due to their magic innards is more accurate than gps. Typically there will be one or more master timeservers controlling the install and serving it out to individual hosts via NTP locally. So it would take some swamping of the RF spectrum to blot out msf rugby for the entire UK...

Dedicated Rackmount NTP Time Servers | Galleon Systems Ltd

Galleon supply a rage of ntp time server products and time synchronisation products.

www.galsys.co.uk

Time from NPL (MSF) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org