Russian spy aircraft are flying over Britain – and the MoD's cool with it Vladimir Putin's air force is flying strategic reconnaissance missions over the UK. Not only is the Ministry of Defence relaxed about it, they're even hosting the Russians in Oxfordshire. What's this all about? The UK and Russia, along with 32 other countries, are signatories of the Open Skies treaty. This was originally …
"Would you know what secret-worthy stuff there might, or might not, be scattered around the countryside?"
Nothing of any importance will be viewable from an aircraft. Knowing that there's a building in the middle of a field with lots of razor wire, dogs and armed modplod tells you nothing about whats going on in there. It could be some ultra cutting edge military tech research establishment or it could be the MoDs wine cellar. Without spies on the ground you'll learn next to nothing.
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Or to look at it another way, if there was some big secret that they could learn from the air, we probably wouldn't let them fly over the UK.
Open Skies doesn't really give anyone any more information than they could have got via satellite, but as an exercise in international cooperation and trust I think it's a good thing.
Also, imagine the drinking contests that will be going on at Brize this week as the RAF attempt to uphold their country's honour against the vodka swigging Russians!
Given the age of most of the listed aircraft I'd wonder about how much cash they would save. Although they could probably increase the income of a few aircraft museums by donating the things as exhibits.
Almost makes you wonder what the Americans use for the job, and whether the Wright Flyer occasionally takes a sabbatical from the Smithsonian for some more active duty.
Pretty simple reason for using the oldest aircraft available with the lowest tech you can get away with - there's very little benefit from the other side trying to steal the tech.
If you had your brand spanking new recon beauty with all the bells and whistles, you'd have to protect it 24/7 with armed guards to stop some spy trying to sneak aboard, not to mention the long distance lenses, IR cameras, and whatever else that would be deployed at range to try and steal your secrets.
Much cheaper and easier to rely on 1950's tech which the other side stole long ago or no longer wants...
"using the oldest aircraft available with the lowest tech" & "If you had your brand spanking new recon beauty with all the bells and whistles"
It's a reciprocal agreement that, as the article points out, specifies the equipment that may be used, includes personnel of the overflown state on the flight and the viewing of the data acquired by both the overflown and the overflying states. An overflight wouldn't be allowed if those conditions weren't met, so although you may have better stuff you couldn't use it in this scheme.
You are missing the point.
They are flying to already pre-recon-ed targets. It is a plausible deniability scenario. Oh, look what we just saw here...
In reality, the info on it has been available from other sources for a while, what the treatie allows is to request a direct overflight, with representatives of the target on-board and the right to ask questions: "WTF are you doing".
For that, you do not want drones. You want manned aircraft capable of carrying your and and opponent's personnel.
Eh the "secret" nuclear bunker is privately owned museum for the public... there's absolutely nothing secret about it. Just in case someone thinks it's really a secret.
Of course overflights are pointless.... everything of interest is either in a hanger or it's underground. The only thing they can see with overflights is building sites of interest and troop/weapon movements.
"Overflights reveal changes. Although an overflight may not reveal what a change means, it identifies something that needs further analysis, most probably by less overt techniques."
Exactly. Not forgetting that this system was designed for the cold war era but also it was overflights and careful analyses of photo reconnaissance that identified the German V1 and V2 sites, the building of the Cuban missile launch areas etc.
Maybe, not so open?
" “The routes are first pre-approved by the MoD and RAF and then flown as per the flight plan. "
What are the chances of them wanting to fly somewhere that the MoD/RAF wasn't happy about? Still all beer and skittles?
I assume that the RAF's finest still intercept Russian Bears over the North Sea and escort them off the premises?
Icon 'cos there's no fixed wing one.
Antiquated film camera? Really?
The stuff Antonov-30 carries is more or less equivalent to a top-of the range Hasselblad with optics covering all vis spectrum and near IR using a corresponding film. I tried to get some of the film for it "falling back off the end of the lorry" in the 80-es and I remember my jaw dropping when reading the specs.
While it is antiqueated as in "non-real-time", it can produce adequate results. End of the day, for aerial photography what really matters is the image stabilization and resolution. The gyro stabilization used on the An-30 camera mounts and the optics + correct film produce both.
In any case, the flights are usually to targets that have already been picked by satellites, humint, etc and have the function of "whoa... what we have here, care explaining it?". The camera is just the evidence to back-up the conversation. For that, old fashioned film is 100 times better than anything digital as it is very difficult to falsify or alter without leaving a forensic trace.
Are the Russian subs really the quietest in the world? Or just the quietest diesel-electric subs?
The new Novorossiysk class had the first build launched less than years ago. The claim that it was the quietest happened before launch, so you might to put it down as mostly marketing.
Presumably the quietest submarines in the world are the ones that need to trail the "quietest submarines in the world".
I highly recommend Hunter Killers by Iain Ballantyne, an excellent overview of the Submarine Service during the Cold War, following a selected handful of individuals through the careers, spanning the 1950s to the 1990s. Hair-raising stuff - especially the covert operations off Russia's bomber boat bases.
>Submarines, properly managed, are basically undetectable
You seriously believe that no government has developed a magnetic anomaly detector capable of tracking a 15 kilotonne, 500ft long metal tube from orbit? ...perhaps all those multi-multi-billion dollar sub-tracking satellite networks (China, Russia and US) are just using really long lenses?
>That is why they have degausing pens for submarines like this one:
Things have moved on a little the last two decades :) You'll find plenty of references to the death of submarine stealth from our US cousins, increasingly in the public domain - it's the primary driver of their sizeable investment in UUV programmes. This side of the pond it's an unwelcome topic of discussion for obvious reasons.
So by the time any Trident replacement has been built, it will be no less detectable than a land-based silo and (being in the middle of an ocean, rather than, at most, a few dozen miles from a population centre) rather easier to take out without anyone actually able to prove what happened.
Yes, I can see how some vested interests on this side of the pond might want to keep that quiet.
>So by the time any Trident replacement has been built, it will be no less detectable than a land-based silo
That's already the case for China/Russia/USA. By the 2028/30s deployments - the cost/KG of LEO satellites will be almost trivial - and I'd be skeptical of anyone who could claim to predict sensor improvements in that period - further improvements in submarine stealth require breakthroughs in physics not engineering. Detection/tracking capability (peripheral to primary science/geosurvey functions not just milsat) will be available to many state and commercial actors.
Nonetheless the Successor-class means a lot good of good jobs and is by far the greatest penis compensation money can buy.
An MAD detects the effect the sub has on the Earth's mag field. If you can plot it accurately you can hide a sub in natural field disturbances, e.g. from big metal deposits in the crust.
Same with thermal detection and SONAR, both get affected by thermal layers in the water. If you can plot (or predict) that you can hide.
You can detect the sound the hull makes moving through the water, and the props. A diesel-electric can stop and turn everything off, and make like a hole in the water, a nuke needs to keep certain bits running or the reactor will go Chernobyl on you.
are allowed the same type of access over Russian airspace I don't see any problem. Anyway it is way less bellicose attitude than US planting missiles up the Russians nose in Romania, Poland and other NATO countries close to Russia's borders. As for the propaganda, I don't think the Russians have the monopoly.
As far as I know one of the main purposes of such "Leaderman" guys is to avoid foreigners making complete nobs of themselves by wiping out on unfamiliar airfields such as the Poles did at Smolensk, which was an airfield higher than the surrounding area. Naturally, they insisted on flying into the side of foggy terrain on autopilot with wrongly set altimeter ....
What I don't get about the planes is why they don't get some Boeing 737 / Airbus 320 /whatever similar off-the-shelf and kit it out with cameras.
Plane is (relatively) cheap to buy and run, as opposed to a museumspiece you (almost) have to handcraft spares for and which in addition is likely to have dubious reliability.
My brothers used to modify rail early 20th century tunnels in the UK to veer off into hillsides. the work was done at night so the spoils could be removed. Before work started and after when it was all finished at a dead end, they were told, under threat of life imprisonment, not to say a word. It was a government project so you did as you were told. Pete only told me about it the week before he died, as we looked through old photos he had taken off the site. It's a funny old world, eh?
My brothers used to modify rail early 20th century tunnels in the UK to veer off into hillsides. the work was done at night so the spoils could be removed. Before work started and after when it was all finished at a dead end, they were told, under threat of life imprisonment, not to say a word. It was a government project so you did as you were told. Pete only told me about it the week before he died, as we looked through old photos he had taken off the site. It's a funny old world, eh?
> What?
" Yer Mother You Will
Secret Tunnels
My brothers used to modify rail early 20th century tunnels in the UK to veer off into hillsides. the work was done at night so the spoils could be removed. Before work started and after when it was all finished at a dead end, they were told, under threat of life imprisonment, not to say a word. It was a government project so you did as you were told. Pete only told me about it the week before he died, as we looked through old photos he had taken off the site. It's a funny old world, eh?"
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