UARS comes down near Calgary - good thing it wasn't an ICBM

[Home Guy]

If Norad or the US air force didn't have real-time tracking of the UARS as it approached the west coast last night, you've got to wonder if they have any real ability to detect a ground or submarine-launched russian or chinese ICBM in a similar manner.

After all, then had precise time and position information as to where this thing should have been.

They are claiming that it came down in the pacific ocean. Obviously they have no real ability to detect this relatively large object, with a shape that is probably ideal to detect with radar (as opposed to a streamlined missle).

[hrhofmann]

Next time you post about Portland, remember there are at least two, one on the east coast and one on the west coast.

[Harry K]

Do some study on what happens to a misshapen object when it encounters the atmosphere.

As posts go, yours is pretty close to the bottom when it comes to sanity.

Harry K

[Home Guy]

There are probably at least 5 of anything (city, town, village) with the same name in US/Canada if you magnify any map.

[Home Guy]

If you know the answer to "what happens to a misshpen object when it encounters the atmosphere" then tell us.

If you're speculating that there is something that happens when "a misshpen object when it encounters the atmosphere" then the onus is on you to do the research.

This thing would have been on the very edge of the atmosphere when it was off the coast of Washington state. Radar can detect objects 100 miles in altitude for hundreds if not a few thousand miles away.

Why didn't they have an AWAX (sp?) plane in the air at the time?

Mine is a valid question.

You're the one that's insane by dismissing it.

[JimT]

I think he was paying you a compliment. You're at the bottom, but you're sane? The rock bottom of sanity? The foundation of sanity? I think you're batty. :-)

[dpb]

There are five or more places named "Monkeys Eyebrow" in the US/Canada??? (It's surprising, but there is more than one in the US but

5 would seem high.)

[Larry Fishel]

You two are sort of talking at eachother about different issues. You're talking about being able to track it. He's talking about being able to predict where it will go and when.

When it starts encountering the atmosphere, it will start to tumble, spin and "skip" making it impossible to predict with any certainty where it will land. You shouldn't need a government study to tell you this... Wad up (loosely) a piece of paper and throw it across the room.

On the other side, do you expect UARS to announce (truthfully) how good their tracking is? Anyone who does should be replaced and possibly prosecuted...

[micky]

I could only find one, in Kentucky.

My brother-in-law is startig a tour of places named after animals and body-parts, so he really should know if there are others.

[dpb]

...

...

That's one; AZ has another (at least I've been told so, but haven't verified it).

--

[George]

You may have overlooked that "Home guy" seems to be "Harry II" as there isn't much he likes about the US.

But as you noted what gets fed to the public is a subset of actual capability. To draw the conclusion that the Air Force and NORAD had no clue based on public sources shows how far someone will go to express their hatred.

I worked for a company that was making a "useful specialty product". This was during an event in the space program where every talking head was reporting "there is no information" about a specific thing while we were reviewing recordings of the information that "didn't exist".

[micky]

This is why so many people complain about waste in the federal government. Why were people wasting their time reviewing information that didn't exist?

Just kidding. I agree that a lot of things should be kept secret, even from me.

[Home Guy]

What a load of horse shit logic you have there. Both of you.

The US has nothing to gain by projecting (to Russia and China) that the US *does not* have the capability to detect large projectiles as they approach or re-enter from orbit along the western coastline if infact the US *does* have such an ability. Under the MAD doctrine of war, you always want your enemy to know that you can detect offensive action, because that in and of itself is a deterrent for the enemy to start an offence if they falsely believe you won't detect it.

And if the US can detect objects like this, then the Russians and Chinese probably can do the same, so you're not hiding anything of any stragic value by feigning that you didn't detect this satellite as it entered the airspace over Portland.

If the US couldn't detect it, then yes you don't want to admit that deficiency and ordinary you'd never be called on it. Except when a satellite is tumbling toward you and forces you to reveal that you don't have this detection capability.

[Robert Green]

For one thing, the tracking is primarily of launches. We've got excellent technology for detecting ICBM and ground-to-air missiles when they launch and their probable target based on launch parameters. That's where the big threat lies for now. No nation I know of publicly admits to having space-based nuclear weapons but you never know. That's why we wanted to base our missile shield close enough to Russia to make them nervous. The time to catch an ICBM is right after launch, over the attacker's home country and well before the payload MIRVs (splits into many warheads on the way down). MIRV = Multiple Independently targetable Reentry Vehicle.

They aren't going to reveal the details of their tracking accuracy. Besides, tracking an aerodynamically shaped missile under powered flight is WAY different than an old satellite with lots of protruding parts "skipping" the atmosphere, having bits torn off in flight.

-- Bobby G.

[George]

Who revealed (someone with actual knowledge, not the media) it couldn't be detected? Perhaps you have some inside information?

[krw]

AWACS. Why? How would "they" know where to put it? What would "they" do with the information if they had it? ...a stupid waste of money.

LOL!

[krw]

Right. Even you.

[krw]

"Cone of Silence ONLY"

[Larry Fishel]

How does that force them to reveal anything? Even perfect tracking of the intact satellite would only give people a few minutes warning and a very broad idea of where the chunks MIGHT land (maybe within a swath a hundred by a thousand miles (WAGOMP)). There would be almost no point to making an announcement other than to give people a reason to panic for a few minutes before nothing interesting happened...

[Larry Fishel]

P.S. Personally, if they announced an expected debris area, and my house were dead center, the main thing I would do to prepare would be to put a fresh tape in the video camera and take a chair out to the middle of the yard just on the remote chance that some flaming bit of debris came close enough to be seen.

You make a decent point about MAD, but they already know we can track (more like predict) ICBMs. But we might not necessarily want them to know if we can detect something that they haven't admitted to having (but then we might, debatable).

It's also not out of the realm o possibility that NORAD didn't particularly care. At any given time, there are a few thousand passenger jets over the US (maybe 50-250 tons each). A few hundred pounds of satellite debris is really not very interesting from a defense perspective (except possibly as a test of capabilities).