Russian Military Satellites: Development and Launches

The russian military confirmed that before may it could only monitor the ukraine with optical sats for 2 hours per each 24hr cycle. Why, if russian satellite imaging capabilities were sufficient as people were assuring here, was that the case?

Very good thread

Be real. This guy has been talking about imminent Russian victory since Feb of 2022.

When the nazi party in Kiev collapses it will be quick, and there is no likelyhood of a complete Russian defeat on the battlefield.

Ukrainian troops will not pillage Moscow this century.

When the Orcs mount their massive counter offensive and get crushed then the people funding this will ask about value for money... they have given high tech equipment and lots of ammo and other weapons and that does not take into account western operatives lost not to mention planning and C4ISTAR support.... and for what...

Satellites flashing over... especially radar based ones will give you a glimpse of the battlefield and anything you want to see in detail they have AWACS aircraft and drones to fill in the gaps...

24/7 super high quality satellite coverage didn't win in Afghanistan after 20 years and has not helped the Nazis win in this conflict either.

I think it is you overestimating the value of satellites and what they can or cannot see.

this guy isnt talking about the satellite's orbit, and is not talking about the capabilities of this radar. It can essentially scan rbe whole of Ukraine twice a day with a respectable one meter resolution, looking thru cloud cover day and night. It is a very important piece of kit. Twitter screen caps of nafo tier ideologues is silly.

TMA1 wrote:this guy isnt talking about the satellite's orbit, and is not talking about the capabilities of this radar. It can essentially scan rbe whole of Ukraine twice a day with a respectable one meter resolution, looking thru cloud cover day and night. It is a very important piece of kit.  Twitter screen caps of nafo tier ideologues is silly.

Twice a day is useless. The US just notifies the ukraine when none of those single digit recon satellites are above it, thus allowing them to transport hundreds of peices of equipment far from the frontline with 100% safety while the russians are blind.

Scorpius wrote:

limb wrote:Very good thread

They basically pour slop on Scott Ritter for not following their moronic narrative. I don't understand what this thread has to do with the Russian space program.

It says that the kondor FKA RECOVERS PREVIOSLY LOST CAPABILITY and doesnt bring anything new to russian satellite ISR, and that without chinese recon sats, russian satellite surveillance is practically worthless, with observation time being ONLY 2 HOURS OUT OF 24.

It depends on what you are talking about. You can capture lower resolution pictures over larger swathes of terrain with less satellites. There will be a variety of products from lower to higher resolution.

It is also naive to think that all the imaging satellites that Russia recently launched will not have been put into proper orbits to mainly image Ukraine. Plus it is highly unlikely that Russia would not be able to reposition older satellites. The Russians are leaders in ion propulsion for satellites for example.

lancelot wrote:It depends on what you are talking about. You can capture lower resolution pictures over larger swathes of terrain with less satellites. There will be a variety of products from lower to higher resolution.

It is also naive to think that all the imaging satellites that Russia recently launched will not have been put into proper orbits to mainly image Ukraine. Plus it is highly unlikely that Russia would not be able to reposition older satellites. The Russians are leaders in ion propulsion for satellites for example.

Is there any evidence that the persona and bars satellites even have their own propulsion?

Twice a day is useless. The US just notifies the ukraine when none of those single digit recon satellites are above it, thus allowing them to transport hundreds of peices of equipment far from the frontline with 100% safety while the russians are blind.

The vast majority of targets they will use this capability for is not something you can hide... you can drive vehicles under cover twice a day, but not 30,000 men, and the vehicles and fuel and ammo for those men might be under cover but the vehicle tracks of where they have been cannot be hidden either...

A decent expert in the field of studying satellite photos can easily work out what is going on simply by the clues available... and more than that... communications alone which is detected by other satellites will tell you where comms centres and HQs are located and their activity will tell you all sorts of things.

Special forces behind enemy lines with drones will be recording all sorts of useful information that satellites can't get, but radar imaging twice a day will allow them to monitor all sorts of things including track damage but also rates of repair, and the movement of lots of things that simply can't hide anywhere nearby twice a day.

It says that the kondor FKA RECOVERS PREVIOSLY LOST CAPABILITY and doesnt bring anything new to russian satellite ISR, and that without chinese recon sats, russian satellite surveillance is practically worthless, with observation time being ONLY 2 HOURS OUT OF 24.

Who gives a **** what it says... if it is discounting Scott Ritter as being a fool then it is not interested in the truth... whether you agree with him or not he is no fool and has a better understanding of the in the west than most speaking out on the matter.

To get geostationary coverage you have to put satellites in orbit above the equator which are rather high orbits and at a very specific angle for that latitude, and it would therefore be operating from thousands of kms further away... the quality would be relatively poor.

2 hours per day is actually Amazing coverage because most satellites pass over any point on the ground in about 6 minutes and don't come past again for another hour and a half... and might go over that area of ground for 3-4 days and then not see that piece of ground for a week.

Is there any evidence that the persona and bars satellites even have their own propulsion?

Well the alternative would be for Russia to send up one of its space shuttles to move them around... and as they don't have space shuttles I guess the answer would be obvious.

As usual, these statements come from your own ass. None of those screaming about this has access to real data on the state of the intelligence capabilities of the Russian orbital group.

Funny that genuine western sources are upset that Russia now has good satellite coverage of the conflict and all the implications that poses while Limb is complaining the new capability is not good enough.

Funny that genuine western sources are upset that Russia now has good satellite coverage of the conflict and all the implications that poses while Limb is complaining the new capability is not good enough.

Theyre complaining that russia has access to chinese sats(thankfully).

Who gives a **** what it says... if it is discounting Scott Ritter as being a fool then it is not interested in the truth... whether you agree with him or not he is no fool and has a better understanding of the

Scott ritter said that the ukraine was about to fully collapse in donbass in july 2022 and that bakhmut would be liberated by the end of 2022.

2 hours per day is actually Amazing coverage

NATO satellites observe the donbass nearly 24 hours per day with 0.1-0.4m resolution every day without cloud cover.

Scott ritter said that the ukraine was about to fully collapse in donbass in july 2022 and that bakhmut would be liberated by the end of 2022.

Wow.... he gave an opinion and he was wrong... burn him to death for not being a witch.

Part of pumping Kiev to get this war started which has been going on for the better part of a decade was that if Kiev had full HATO support they would walk all over the Russian military.... which has been the narrative from the other side and has been totally wrong too.

The lies coming from Kiev are amusing, but more importantly if Boris hadn't told Zelensky he couldn't surrender yet the conflict would already be over... if HATO was not funding and arming and equipping Kiev the conflict would have been over in a month or so if not less.

Who can predict when the Ukrainian people will decide enough is enough... how do you bet on how stupid and brain washed your opponents are... give them the benefit of the doubt and say tomorrow, but those fucking idiots could continue for years... which is terrible in the sense of more Russian soldiers and civilians getting killed, but with the bonus of more nazis dying too.

NATO satellites observe the donbass nearly 24 hours per day with 0.1-0.4m resolution every day without cloud cover.

And with such amazing coverage you would have thought they would have seen the initial conflict coming and be doing rather better in this conflict by now, but they are terrible and lashing out at civilian targets because they can't hit military targets very easily...

Theyre complaining that russia has access to chinese sats(thankfully).

And what bullshit sources do they have for that?

Washington Post... the Jamestown institute of twats? The Clinton Foundation? The Bush Foundation?

Is Obama putting out a newsletter?

His sources are some BS threads from Twitter

I don't take any of this seriously

This radio imaging satellite is pretty huge for this conflict, isnt it? Does the west have radio imaging satellites that can monitor Ukraine?

https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/afu-suffers-horror-breakdowns-as

Damn, the copium addicts here were wrong that russia placed any importance on satellite recon. Putin straight up admitted noone in the russian government predicted they might need satellite ISR, and thus were caught with their pants down.

Anyway, the point is in the roundtable, Putin made another—to me—devastating revelation. He admitted that no one in Russia foresaw any of the precipitant events and as such, no one thought to prepare Russia’s space industry and ISR capabilities. For obvious reasons this is an outrageous admission. It means that all those years since the events of 2014, when anyone with a brain knew things were heading towards a headlong clash with NATO, no one in the Russian general staff thought to bring the C4ISR capabilities up to snuff, and Russia in fact found itself caught with its pants down by NATO’s vast ISR overmatch.

Watch and judge for yourself, and if you believe my interpretation is perhaps off, then let me know in the comments. In fact, I wish it were wrong because this does not give one optimism about some of those ‘parquet generals’ running Russia’s MOD:


Look at the lady’s face when Putin says brightly, “We’re #5 in space.” Even she’s clearly unimpressed, and perhaps a tinge horrified, causing her to respond with, “Well, uh…we’re up against the #1 guys.”

But, this wretched tale does have somewhat of an optimistic ending. Not only have I repeatedly reported on an unprecedented amount of satellites being launched by Russia since last year, but there is even now rumor that Russia plans to build a whole new plant for mass-producing satellites to pump them out like never before:

А new plant for the mass production of space satellites will be built in Russia.

Since 1957, each satellite has been assembled by hand; there has never been a serial production. But now there is a need not only for scientific or military, but also for commercial launches. The request is massive, so it is necessary to automate all processes.

In total, all Russian enterprises produce 15 satellites a year, given some modernization, this number can be increased to 42, but Roscosmos says that demand is much higher. The medium-term goal is to collect one satellite per day.

Now a site is being selected, the first plant will be built either in the Moscow Region or in the Krasnoyarsk Territory.

Lets hope these mass produced satellites bridge the gap, though 1.5 years into the SMO, damage is done. So much for the VKS being visionaries in the 2010s. Hopefully russia will still remain 5th or 6th place in terms of satellite launches. China has clearly beaten russia in ISR capability exponentially.

Putin is playing games. #5 in space?

US & China would be #1 and #2, but ESA #3?  India #4?  No chance.  Euroscum can't even get their peons into orbit without sucking on Uncle Scams shlong...

Putins gov is looking to greatly increase investment into space activities, both military and civvie, and this is one of those little ploys to gain public support.  I don't buy into the idea that Russian General Staff don't place sufficient emphasis on space-based C4ISR, and given that Russia has no (current) aspirations to project military power to all 4 corners of the rock, she doesn't need a massive system like the US has built.  For the effective defense of her near-abroad I'm sure that the RGS feels that its assets up until now have been suitable. Future requirements?  Well now, that is different...

The article shows a clear lack of understanding of the space sector.

Yes, Russia was the leader in commercial space launches in the late 1990s and 2000s, before SpaceX came on the scene. So this would look like a clear case of a superior service winning. Except, the way the US achieved this, was by also banning Russia from launching any satellites with US components in them after 2014 Russian Annexation of Crimea. The rest is basically Starlink satellites. It remains to be seen if Starlink will be financially viable or not.

The fact is a Russian Soyuz launch was and still is cheaper than a launch with the much advertised SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Falcon 9 is supposedly cheaper per pound launched than Soyuz. But most satellites do not use the extra launch capacity. And most satellites fit on the Soyuz.

The US is one of the major manufacturers of commercial satellites worldwide, and Europe is a fairly distant second. This means if you wanted to buy a commercial satellite and launch it, you would substantially limit your choices by going with a Russian satellite launcher. It is for this reason, sanctions, that China seldom does commercial launches either despite in some years launching more satellites for themselves than the US does for themselves and everyone else. China has been banned from launching satellites with US technology since the Loral affair.

After the Loral affair the US put severe ITAR sanctions on China. Back then, unlike now, European and Asian US aligned countries took this as a major possible challenge to their own sovereignty and, fearing a US monopoly on space technology, actually cooperated with Russia and China to develop alternatives to US space technologies. That was when the Soyuz launch facility in Kourou was built and Europe funded Galileo as an alternative to GPS.

Anyway, the thing is, Russia's satellite network rotted away when Yeltsin was in power in the 1990s. Because of the lack of space grade electronics Soviet satellites seldom had lifetimes over 2 years. So you can guess what happened. And while Putin increased funding for satellites once he came into power most of it was concentrated into getting GLONASS satnav up and running properly again. There was investment into other satellites as well, but it was small, and given Russia's lagging capabilities in the space electronics industry, something which had been a problem even back in Soviet times, Russia ended up collaborating on satellites with Europe. Except after 2014 Annexation of Crimea the EU sanctioned Russia so they no longer could buy space grade semiconductors from the EU to put on Russian satellites.

Blaming this situation on Rogozin is a bit much, even if I do not like the guy either, since he was not head of Roscosmos when all of this happened. He was made head of Roscosmos in 2018. Still he was deputy for the defense industry so you cannot exactly say he had no influence on the situation although he was not directly to blame.

The Soviets had photographic reconnaissance satellites which dropped film rolls back to Earth. Well this has been obsolete for a long time ever since we had digital cameras. In the case of the US since like the late 1970s. And you know how good the Soviets were at semiconductors and computers in general i.e. not very.

Anyway, Russia has since spent huge efforts into making space grade semiconductors of their own. This is why there can even be plans to serial produce satellites. It is not like there were zero efforts into making improved electronics for space missions before 2014 Annexation of Crimea, but those efforts were quite timid like with the GLONASS-M satellite series.

Paradoxically because more modern Russian satellites last longer than Soviet ones, Russia needs to launch less satellites to keep a certain constellation in orbit. So just comparing historical Soviet launch rate of satellites with US one can be misleading. For example GLONASS satellites had a lifetime of 2 years and a GLONASS-M satellite has a lifetime of 7 years. Satellites last 3.5x as long so you need 3.5x less launches.

Being first in space hasn't helped Americas allies Kiev on the ground where they are clearly army number three... behind Russia and Wagner...

lancelot wrote:The article shows a clear lack of understanding of the space sector.

Yes, Russia was the leader in commercial space launches in the late 1990s and 2000s, before SpaceX came on the scene. So this would look like a clear case of a superior service winning. Except, the way the US achieved this, was by also banning Russia from launching any satellites with US components in them after 2014 Russian Annexation of Crimea. The rest is basically Starlink satellites. It remains to be seen if Starlink will be financially viable or not.

The fact is a Russian Soyuz launch was and still is cheaper than a launch with the much advertised SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Falcon 9 is supposedly cheaper per pound launched than Soyuz. But most satellites do not use the extra launch capacity. And most satellites fit on the Soyuz.

The US is one of the major manufacturers of commercial satellites worldwide, and Europe is a fairly distant second. This means if you wanted to buy a commercial satellite and launch it, you would substantially limit your choices by going with a Russian satellite launcher. It is for this reason, sanctions, that China seldom does commercial launches either despite in some years launching more satellites for themselves than the US does for themselves and everyone else. China has been banned from launching satellites with US technology since the Loral affair.

After the Loral affair the US put severe ITAR sanctions on China. Back then, unlike now, European and Asian US aligned countries took this as a major possible challenge to their own sovereignty and, fearing a US monopoly on space technology, actually cooperated with Russia and China to develop alternatives to US space technologies. That was when the Soyuz launch facility in Kourou was built and Europe funded Galileo as an alternative to GPS.

Anyway, the thing is, Russia's satellite network rotted away when Yeltsin was in power in the 1990s. Because of the lack of space grade electronics Soviet satellites seldom had lifetimes over 2 years. So you can guess what happened. And while Putin increased funding for satellites once he came into power most of it was concentrated into getting GLONASS satnav up and running properly again. There was investment into other satellites as well, but it was small, and given Russia's lagging capabilities in the space electronics industry, something which had been a problem even back in Soviet times, Russia ended up collaborating on satellites with Europe. Except after 2014 Annexation of Crimea the EU sanctioned Russia so they no longer could buy space grade semiconductors from the EU to put on Russian satellites.

Blaming this situation on Rogozin is a bit much, even if I do not like the guy either, since he was not head of Roscosmos when all of this happened. He was made head of Roscosmos in 2018. Still he was deputy for the defense industry so you cannot exactly say he had no influence on the situation although he was not directly to blame.

The Soviets had photographic reconnaissance satellites which dropped film rolls back to Earth. Well this has been obsolete for a long time ever since we had digital cameras. In the case of the US since like the late 1970s. And you know how good the Soviets were at semiconductors and computers in general i.e. not very.

Anyway, Russia has since spent huge efforts into making space grade semiconductors of their own. This is why there can even be plans to serial produce satellites. It is not like there were zero efforts into making improved electronics for space missions before 2014 Annexation of Crimea, but those efforts were quite timid like with the GLONASS-M satellite series.

Paradoxically because more modern Russian satellites last longer than Soviet ones, Russia needs to launch less satellites to keep a certain constellation in orbit. So just comparing historical Soviet launch rate of satellites with US one can be misleading. For example GLONASS satellites had a lifetime of 2 years and a GLONASS-M satellite has a lifetime of 7 years. Satellites last 3.5x as long so you need 3.5x less launches.

I agree that this can't be blamed on rogozin but thats because the VKS is separate from roscosmos. The vks clearly launched a whole bunch of satellites, but they were almost all tiny ones used to follow and potentially destroy US ISR sats, so lack of semiconductors isnt relevant much. SImple fact is that the VKS was only prepared for a nuclear war with entire nato which would allow it to directly destroy NATO sats, not a neer peer conflict like ukraine where ISR sats are needed to scan the largest country in europe with constant nato shipments of weapons.

And yet despite being totally blind according to you, the huge summer offensive that was going to end with Scones in Sevastopol before Christmas hasn't happened.

In fact so much stuff seems to have been blown up in ammo dumps and fuel dumps and weapons storage areas that the massive offensive has become a bit of a joke.

The really funny thing is that this was always going to happen.

Getting together tiny terrorist cells would be hard to deal with but an enemy forming up a huge force powerful enough to strike Russian lines and punch through would be a force big enough to spot fairly quickly and rapid application of Smerch cluster munition rockets will nip most attacks in the bud and cause enormous casualties before the Orcs have even had the chance to shift their rifle weapon selectors from safe to fire.

limb wrote:I agree that this can't be blamed on rogozin but thats because the VKS is separate from roscosmos. The vks clearly launched a whole bunch of satellites, but they were almost all tiny ones used to follow and potentially destroy US ISR sats, so lack of semiconductors isnt relevant much. SImple fact is that the VKS was only prepared for a nuclear war with entire nato which would allow it to directly destroy NATO sats, not a neer peer conflict like ukraine where ISR sats are needed to scan the largest country in europe with constant nato shipments of weapons.

There are some Earth observation satellites, and more were launched since the conflict started. The idea there is no Russian ISR is bollocks.

These are high resolution electro-optical observation satellites for example.
https://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/resurs-p.htm
https://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/persona.htm

Outside of the US, no country even has such a level of capability.

Should there be more? Of course. But such satellites are not cheap. For example a US KH-11 satellite costs over $5 billion USD.

There are also lower resolution electro-optical satellites, radar satellites, and SIGINT satellites.

IMHO Russia's main issue is that, unlike other countries, it never properly established commercial imaging satellite constellations. These are basically smaller lower resolution satellites, but because you have loads of them, you can have shorter revisit times. Picture quality is typically worse but it is good enough for a lot of intelligence purposes. Examples are the Chinese Jilin-1 series or the US SkySat satellites.

Soviet satellites were pressurized and would lose the air after only a few years.   The reason for this design choice is not clear to me since
electronics in principle do not need an atmosphere to function.   The high energy particles bombarding these satellites are not stopped by any interior
air (or any other gas) even if it is at 100 kPa.   The shielding is done by the metal skin and no existing satellite metal skin can stop MeV electrons
that result from resonance effects in the solar wind deformed magnetic field of the Earth.  High energy protons and electrons from CMEs are not
stopped either.   The volume of any satellite interior is way too small for damping by air.   The range-energy relations for electrons and protons
confirm this.  If Soviet electronics functioned in space then they were clearly space rated in ways that mattered.  

The problem for the Soviet designs must be related to effects of air inclusions.   The manufacturing of PCBs and ICs must have not been
vacuum tolerant so there would be mechanical damage from deformation at "zero" pressure.   The choice to pressurize the satellites looks
to me like a hack.   But this is somehow typical of the Soviet economy, where all that touted central planning resulted in inefficiency and
administrative laziness.  So it actually held back economic development.

Regarding the hyped digital imaging, the Soviets used film because it was superior to any digital imaging even into the 1980s. Since when
were 1970s CCDs high resolution? They couldn't even make 1 megabyte RAM chips in the 1970s.