Oops! Civilian Satellite Data Inadvertently Pinpoints Military Radars

Wasn't sure where to put this, thought maybe in one of the military forums but settled on here.

Basically some guy has noticed that the ESA's Sentinel-1 satellite constellation shows the location of US and Russian radar stations. Maybe even Chinese sites also if they use the same technology. I assume the US/Russia are aware of this and maybe have there own dedicated satellites looking out for this phenomenon.

Dan writes how, using Sentinel-1 data, he made a surprising discovery: the AN/MPQ-53/65 radar at the heart of the Patriot missile system creates visible interference waves in the SAR data, making blurry Xs that mark the precise location of the radars.

Patriot isn’t the only system detectable by SAR data. The 96L6E (NATO’s unflattering nickname: “Cheese Board”) early warning and acquisition radar used by Russia’s S-300 and newer S-400 long-range surface to air missile systems also operates in the C band and should show up using Dan’s analytical method. The 96L6E is only part of the S-300/S-400 system, with the 96N2E (“Grave Stone”) steering the actual missiles

Article says the ESA data is freely available to anybody on the internet but I've not looked into how easy it is to get hold of. See below.

Popular Mechanics

a reply to: RexKramerPRT

Interesting. Access to the data is done via a "toolbox", you can download it for free on ESA´s website. It´s 564MB big though if you take the big packet.

Just waited to post so I can download highspeed

I expect ESA to do something about this, though. It´s scientific data but I guess they won´t want to hurt the USA..

These are top secret locations? Seems like every time one of these systems is deployed over a new threat, everybody's brother has a news article about it.

a reply to: roadgravel
I was fooling around in SNAP with different credentials for other reasons than the bases and it seems there are several different userlevels (not a surprise).

I think the data is safe from the average dude but gov and mil, not so sure. The toolbox in itself is not bad, you have more than a dozent different sources to select. Worldwind is also integrated.

a reply to: roadgravel

You generally don't want potential opponents to know where they are. The RC-135U plays target to try to get operators to turn on their radar to map where they are.