According to a blog post posted on Global News' official Weibo:
Google Maps began to provide satellite images of all military and strategic russian facilities at maximum resolution. Russia's strategic locations, including various intercontinental ballistic missile silos, command posts, secret test sites, etc., can be viewed at a resolution of about 0.5 meters per pixel.
This news soon became the object of hot talk among the major melon-eating masses, most of the friends expressed great concern, Russia's strategic objectives have been exposed, the future will be able to directly guide ballistic missiles and cruise missile attacks with this coordinate, Russia will no longer have secrets!
How serious is a map leak with a resolution of 0.5 meters?
Google Map should be the most commonly used product, but from the year after the withdrawal from the Chinese market many friends are familiar with the basic Baidu map, but in terms of the clarity of the map provided and the richness of the map product, Google Map is still much stronger, that year I like to lie on the map to find various targets, but the resolution is not high, can only vaguely see a silhouette, then this time Google Map open 0.5 meters resolution map, how serious is it?
What exactly can I see on a 0.5-meter resolution map?
"Various intercontinental ballistic missile silos, command posts, secret test sites, etc. of Russia's strategic locations can be viewed at a resolution of about 0.5 meters per pixel."
Each pixel represents a target diameter of 0.5 meters, if a person is 1.8 meters tall, if he is lying on the ground, then it accounts for about 3.6 pixels, which is probably how big a concept it is, if your computer screen resolution is 1920 * 1080, then it means:
The horizontal direction of this screen has 1920 pixels, and it has about 1080 verticals, for a total of 2073600 pixels, and 3.6 pixels is about this. Slightly bigger because of this. It occupies four pixels, as shown in the following figure:
The above picture is taken by the author with a magnifying glass on the screen, which is the pixel bit occupied by the points at the resolution of 1920 * 1080, so you can imagine that if a car is 5 meters long, then it will occupy 10 pixels, if an airplane is 20 meters long, it will occupy 40 pixels.
For large targets, a resolution of 0.5 meters is enough to distinguish, such as aircraft, tanks and cars, buildings and roads, as well as missile silos, etc., the following is given some photos of various resolutions to see what you can see:
Bondi Beach, Sydney, Australia (30cm)
The picture above is Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia, the resolution is 30cm, that is, 0.3 meters, which is smaller than 0.5 meters, because the picture is relatively large, may not be seen by many friends, then the following local screenshot:
This is the WorldView-4 satellite on January 8, 2017, from the above image has been very clear, but the people behind the front of the house can still not see clearly, the beach will be clearer:
There must be someone on Bondi Beach, but from the pictures, it is just some black spots, and it is not clear whether it is a person or not, of course, it must be a person, but it is not easy to distinguish.
So how big is the real 0.5m resolution?
Sydney Opera House, Australia, 0.5m resolution
It looks a bit worse than the 0.3-meter resolution, but overall it's not particularly noticeable:
Sydney Opera House, Australia, 0.5m resolution local
People should not be able to see clearly, but the picture looks good;
Lenin's Mausoleum in Moscow, Russia 0.5 m resolution
Russia Moscow Lenin's Mausoleum 0.5 m resolution local
What about 1 meter resolution? It looks like it might be a little worse!
This one-meter resolution is very unsatisfactory, it is estimated that you are not very happy to see, always feel that you can enlarge a little, but unfortunately it is not big, and then enlarge to give you some mosaics to see.
Beijing No. 2 remote sensing satellite constellation photographed yunnan Kunming Dianchi International Convention and Exhibition Center _20190313
Although the various satellite maps of the flower grower have stored a lot, there are also many photos of sensitive locations, but unfortunately timid dare not put it, you just make up to see it, then knowing these resolutions, it is indeed quite clear, then Russia is dangerous?
Russia Exposed to the World: Is It Dangerous?
In fact, this is what ah, Google's operation can only be a fart in the elevator, stink a bunch of people, but the danger to life is not, because these 0.5 meters, or even 0.3 meters are commercial satellite photos!
Commercial satellite companies in various resolutions of photos
What are commercial satellite photos? Simply put, it is a photo that can be bought by spending money on the open market, and what can be bought on the open market in this world is not top secret, but only a general secret, which is limited to ordinary people, after all, everyone does not have so much spare money to buy satellite photos with a resolution of 0.5 meters in Russia.
Beijing No. 2 remote sensing satellite constellation photographed Zhuhai Grand Theater_20190122
But it can't limit the people who really want to see, such as DIA, CIA, etc., they want to take a closer look at a target location, then when the reconnaissance satellite passes over a certain ground, it is possible to take a few pictures with a resolution of 0.18 meters, 0.1 meters, and possibly even higher resolution.
In this world, countries that really want to see these secrets have this kind of burning stick, some countries may be better, some countries are worse, what does it mean? It is the men and women in the bathhouse, they have no secrets from each other, but they cannot be seen by outsiders, otherwise it is really hurtful.
So this time was released 0.5 meters resolution satellite photos, in fact, it is harmless to Russia, just like wearing shorts in the gym but being seen by a bunch of uncles and aunts six-pack abs, people only have envy, but who dares to poke the honeycomb?
To guide missiles? What are the requirements for ballistic missile and cruise missile guidance?
There are actually many kinds of missiles, but there are not many that can attack from a distance, such as the most typical ballistic missiles and cruise missiles.
What guidance do ballistic missiles need?
Ballistic missiles do not need guidance, it only needs coordinates, because theoretically, ballistic missiles can be launched regardless of, from launch to hit the target, are in a state of silence, rarely "communicate" with the outside world!
Early ballistic missiles used radio guidance, but this was soon obsolete, and inertial guidance and starlight guidance or GPS guidance are now used.
Inertial guidance uses the gyroscope of the missile itself, using the axiality of the gyroscope, stabilizing the gyroscope platform in the inertial space through the framework, the missile is constantly moving after launch, and the measurement of the relative angle between the accelerometer combination and the inertial reference frame measured by the gyroscope is converted by the computer into the position of the missile and the distance between the target, the direction, etc., and constantly corrects until it hits the target.
Inertial guidance from the early cosmos god "intercontinental ballistic missile accuracy of 10,000 kilometers of circumference error of 2.77 kilometers, to the "militia" III. intercontinental ballistic missile, the range of 13,000 kilometers, the hit accuracy has been improved to 0.185 kilometers, in the era of millions of tons of hydrogen bombs, this error is not at all different from direct hits.
There is also starlight + inertial guidance, which is to use the star position to correct the cumulative error of the gyroscope after flying out of the atmosphere, which will improve the accuracy, and in the modern era of global GPS positioning, it can also assist the GPS signal correction, and the accuracy under a variety of technologies will only be higher.
So ballistic missiles do not need to be guided all the time, it only needs the coordinates of a target, of course, the target coordinates are also obtained after satellite reconnaissance, which countries have ICBMs? And most of these countries have their own satellites, even if they don't? 0.5-meter photos are publicly available, so for ballistic missiles, whether the resolution of these strategic targets is 0.5 meters or 5 meters is actually not a big problem.
How did the cruise missile hit the target?
Cruise missiles have been flying in the atmosphere, it encounters too many uncertainties, so the error of inertia guidance is too large, the cumulative error within a range of thousands of meters may be as high as hundreds of meters or even thousands of meters, and cruise missiles are mostly conventional warheads, so the accuracy needs to be within a few meters to have lethality, so what to do?
There is no doubt that GPS guidance is obviously the lowest cost, GPS military code accuracy is said to be able to reach 0.1 meters ~ 0.3 meters, this accuracy guides the missile to attack the left large window, absolutely will not hit the right side of the large window, so this accuracy is completely enough, there is no need for a map at all?
Actually wrong! Because GPS can be interfered with in wartime, it may not be able to be used, what things will not change? The answer is terrain! So before there is no GPS positioning system, scientists have imagined terrain matching guidance, with GPS after the emergence of GPS + terrain matching, the terrain elevation data into the chip, cruise missile flight process continuously measured height and detect the surrounding terrain, to ensure that in one of the N paths flying to the target, GPS and terrain dual guidance, to ensure that there is no mistake.
Can terrain guidance be data from Google Maps? Of course! And Google's high-end maps do have elevation data, but this is not up to the requirements for the accuracy of the cruise missile to match the terrain, so this requires a lot of mapping, or accurate mapping with laser elevation, or with high-precision synthetic aperture radar mapping.
But behind all the measurements of air and space satellites, it is still necessary to manually map and compare and correct, so there will be all kinds of spies carrying GPS differential instruments to sneak in the mainland of the map, this is what you should be vigilant about, see this kind of person immediately call the police.
Therefore, google maps data is of no use at all, just like the above said that at most it can only disgust people!
Extended reading: How are hypersonic missiles guided?
Hypersonic missiles fly throughout the atmosphere, so its guidance method and cruise missiles should be consistent, and the difference between cruise missiles is that cruise missiles generally use small turbofan engines without afterburners to save fuel to reach the farthest range, but they rarely exceed the speed of sound, most of them are hypersonic flight, once found, it is easy to intercept.
Hypersonic missiles should be used to reach the target in a hypersonic Cruise Missile (HCM) or in a gliding manner (Hypersonic Glide Vehicle, HGV), which can be counted as hypersonic at least 5 times the speed of sound, that is, about 1.2 to 1.5 kilometers per second (the high altitude sound speed is relatively low), very difficult to intercept, it can also use GPS and terrain matching guidance.
Reproduced in: Science Classroom