Russia's Terrifying 'Nuke Trains' Will Be Roving The Rails By 2018

[Basel]

It doesn't matter how sensitive the sensors are - unless they are told to observe a certain object, they will not know what to observe.

Now news it out that Russia is deploying this kind of trains, and US would have known that through intel, do you think they will not create mechanism to monitor those trains?? as I have said before it will be Cat & Mouse game between two counties.

 

[SvenSvensonov]

I'll tell you. Satellites, like your handheld mobile phone cameras, follow the Point-and-shoot principle. They can shoot images, but first they have to be told where to point.

Many satellites of today can even read the licence plates of a small car - but only if a human tells it where to look for the car. Even your cell phone can take a picture of the most secretive military item - say, a submarine or a nuclear storage depot - but only if you aim your cell phone on that subject.

So a satellite in space would have to be told which region of Russian surface to aim for.

@SvenSvensonov has professionally worked in closely related fields, so he should be able to explain it better.

You're largely correct, even our spy sats need to be moved into position and told to look at a general location, though they can look at a very wide swath with great efficiency and resolution. For optical and radar sats the closer you can get to pinpointing a target the better you can spy on it. Typically these types of sensors are used for fixed assets such as military bases, or for real-time target watching via cross-sensor cooperation on systems like UAVs or air/ground assets. Generally though they need to be cued to look for something.

However, these is a big exception to this rule. Electronic warfare sats don't need to be directional and are sensitive enough to find, discern and track signals across huge areas. Like electro-optical and radar sats these can be cued to track a specific signal or look in a particular region, but their ability to locate signals is far greater in area than what an EO sat can offer.

So how does this tie into our discussion about tracking rail-cars holding missiles? Looking throughout the Russian countryside, not at anything in particular, but in the general region our sats can identify signals being broadcast by the electronic systems on-board the trains, such as in their engines or console. Even nuclear weapons have electronic arming mechanism, and while they aren't usual turned on, there are other electronic systems that are on and these can be followed once discerned.

It's still not an easy process, but it's far from impossible and we once played this game with the Russians. We are even more prepared to play it again.

One such SIGINT system was the Magnum program:

Magnum (satellite) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Remember, we once tracked the Soviet Navy using SIGINT satellites like the Intruder series, we can track land-based systems too.

Naval Ocean Surveillance System - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Stopping hostile ELINT and SIGINT attempts was my job as an EMSEC Technician.

Hope this helps!

*Also, sorry for the delayed response. I didn't get a notice that you tagged me.