The speculation is either 4 ground observing satellites likely going over Ukraine and/or the 4x contracted missile detection satellites from SDA:

> The Space Development Agency awarded $193.5 million to L3Harris and $149 million to SpaceX to build four satellites each to detect and track ballistic and hypersonic missiles.

> The contracts announced Oct. 5 are for the first eight satellites for a potentially much larger constellation of sensor satellites the Space Development Agency is calling Tracking Layer Tranche 0.

> Each satellite will have a “wide field of view” overhead persistent infrared (OPIR) sensor capable of detecting and tracking advanced missile threats from low Earth orbit. The satellites will also be equipped with optical crosslinks to pass data to relay satellites.

> SpaceX’s missile-tracking satellite will be based on its Starlink bus with an OPIR sensor acquired from another supplier, Tournear said. He declined to name the payload provider and SpaceX has not disclosed subcontractors for the project.

https://spacenews.com/spacex-l3harris-win-space-development-...

https://twitter.com/downix/status/1539126795093655553?s=20&t...

It seems strange to me that there’d be speculation of a launch in any way specific to Ukraine given the short lead time.

If it’s true it would be an amazing selling point for SpaceX on just how rapidly they can deploy payloads. Militaries must love the idea of agile space operations.

Given the proliferation of anti-satellite weapons, agile launch capabilities have become just a basic requirement to win any high-end conflict. Satellites aren't survivable so we have to plan around a high level of attrition, with replacements stockpiled and ready to launch within days or hours.

Agile launch capabilities, but also cheap launch capabilities. Which is another area where SpaceX (comparatively) shines.

Western Aligned Militaries also have things like Global Hawk and stack and stacks of other toys that can fill a tactical surveillance niche.

Can always put in space sensitive equipment that you wouldn’t want shot down by “simple” surface to air weaponry and their technology exposed to the adversary.

There's like a big jump in platform cost and capability (downgrade) wise when you throw a satellite up. Putting a new ISTAR package on a drone is a lot cheaper than making changes to a satellite.

> short lead time

that russia may try to militarily annex eastern ukraine was rather obvious for many years. Ukraine sits between NATO and russia. A majority of its population had been in favor of joining the former. The eastern ukraine holds large reserves of natural resources and pro-russian separatists. The later are used as a casus belli for an ethno-nationalist anschluss. Lastly it is not like the 2014 war truly ever ended: there had been 410.000 cease fire violation in 2017 alone, for example.

They are "autonomists" not "separatists", what they were asking for and agreed on the two Minsk accords was "autonomy" not "independence". There's certain intentionality in painting them as separatists.

Geniune question:

¿Is there any difference in practice between "autonomy" and "se paration" in the context of governance here?

in a year the LPR and DNR will be seperated from ukraine and a part of Russia. This annexation has been planned and prepared for a long time. I agree that such conflicts are never easy and there are many small factions with different goals and beliefs on the ground, but claiming this is about autonomy is part of their casus belli: a construct in which the russian ethno-nationalists pretend they didn't ask for much and got nothing but abuse. In actuality the leadership of the LPR and DNR removed ukrainian both as an official language and from their schools curriculum years ago and started paying pensions in rubles. They advertised their plans very clearly and loudly, calling their intermediate construct "Новороссия" - new russia. It is like calling western czech "Sudetendeutschland". Their goal is not autonomy but unification with russia. Always has been. So calling them seperatists is quite fitting. But i agree the term may only describe a minority in the region, not the general population.

And given the potential orbit. It seems like if the goal was solely Ukraine/Russia they'd be using a Molniya orbit, or something similar that would spend more time over the area in question

It seems reasonable to me if you presume the hardware is loaded and ready to go, and all that's needed is to know exactly which orbit it needs to be put into.

It makes sense to have them secret, then - and for the defense agencies to be pissed that amateurs may have found out which flight they were launched with.

It was glaringly obvious this launch had secret stuff on it.

Like a 2 year old trying to be sneaky while stealing cookies from the kitchen.

The one announced payload is rather lightweight. A Falcon 9 carrying so little weight will have plenty of reserve thrust to return to landing zone. The fact that they sent out the drone ship for this launch lets on that there was significantly more weight on board.

The second stage had a series of 3 burns announced. Basically it would raise its orbit to a certain intermediate height, sit there for a short time, and then raise itself all the way to the correct deploy height for the publicly acknowledged payload.

Unlike most SpaceX launches, there was no live video from the second stage in flight. They only do this when flying classified payloads. But this launch we suddenly got back second stage views after raising past the intermediate orbit.

All this is highly unusual so of course everyone is going to point their equipment at that orbital plane to try to find what got left there.

Trust me the defense agencies aren't pissed. They know it's impossible to hide any satellite, and that governments and amateur observers track everything. That's just the environment they have to operate in.

A very-low earth orbit satellite in a 55 degree inclination will have a few hours of passing over Ukraine every hour and a half, then a few hours of not passing over at all. They can play with the apoapsis to change the dwell time a bit, but even four satellites will have significant coverage problems. Moreso if all were launched simultaneously, as orbit raising and lowering will be expensive in terms of delta V and it will take significant time to spread them all out. Even moreso if they are based on the ion thruster Starlink bus.

This might be a good mission for the SR-71, had it still been flying. It could round trip out of Mildenhall in two hours, that's probably about half a million dollars per flight. So this launch could have conservatively bought 600 SR-71 flights, which can be timed as per demand and not when the satellites just happen to fly overhead. And the belligerents know when the satellites are flying overhead, they have far less warning with the SR-71.

NATO is already operating reconnaissance and EW flights just outside of Ukrainian airspace. The SR-71 wouldn't be survivable against the latest generation of Russian air defense systems. Even when it was still operational, the Air Force quickly stopped flying over Soviet territory because the risk of being shot down was too high. Instead they would fly at the edge of Soviet airspace and look in with powerful sensors.

Not even really the latest, the high speed flight of the SR-71 was generally detectable enough that they could coordinate a fleet of MiG-25 interceptors basically on a timer to be in the vincinity of its flight path long enough for a radar lock. The resources expended to coordinate and fly such an intercept weren't really worth it for anything more than posturing, but it worked well enough to dissuade the US from doing any actual attempts to breach their airspace

Are you suggesting sending NATO pilots over Ukraine? That seems unwise.

The good news is that the Fortes[1][2] can see well into the theater without actually flying over the battlefield, and even if something does happen to the aircraft the pilots are thousands of miles away

[1]: https://www.itamilradar.com/2022/03/02/forte-is-back/

[2]: https://www.reddit.com/r/NonCredibleDefense/comments/szw9xm/...

I see your point.

Maybe some unmanned SR-71 successor would be better, especially if it could suborbitally pass over Ukraine above the Karman line. But even that might be poking the bear.

The Space Shuttle was originally designed partially as a manned SR-71 successor. It had the capability to launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base into a polar orbit, make a single reconnaissance pass over the USSR, and then immediately land to deliver the imagery. But it was never actually used in that mode.

Yes, but the STS could not overfly any areas outside a very specific, narrow path.

And the flight did not have to be recon. Payload bay doors could be opened very shortly after ET sep.

Why not? Russia ain't gonna do shit but whine and make empty threats.

The stakes of the typical "fuck around and find out" nonsense are out of bounds here, really.

It doesn't matter how incapable Russia is at completing their inhumane mission in Ukraine, they are very much capable of launching a number of unstoppable ICBMs with enough nuclear warheads carried along the ride to make every last cockroach in the deep gutters of the most remote and forgotten town in Montana squeal in agony.

This is a silly take. They're not going to start a nuclear war, and especially for something as small as NATO pilots over Ukraine.

I swear, everyone's wits leave them when the Russians make nuclear threats. This is standard bully behavior, stop caving to it every time.

Russia isn't going to start a nuclear war for a NATO flight over Ukraine. But they will try to shoot it down, and might succeed. At that point NATO might retaliate against air defense sites, and then the conflict escalates.

Even direct fighting between NATO forces and Russia isn't likely to escalate to a nuclear exchange. It's unlikely that NATO would invade or occupy (actual, not recently annexed) Russian territory, so it poses little existential risk to Russia or her government.

The nukes will be a serious issue when the fall of Russia is imminent.