I am sure that the orbital capabilities are also vastly improved from what the public has ever seen. But I think there's likely a high degree of tactical value in having something that can keep station over a certain active conflict area (as an RQ180 can, maybe flying in a racetrack pattern at altitude, with sensors aimed down).

If you've ever seen the publicly released videos and audio of an RQ9 operator in communication with ground units watching the activity of a group of men/vehicles on the ground, in live real time, something like that.

As compared to periodic revisits by LEO orbit satellites that don't maintain persistent live coverage, or the extreme distance and data acquisition problem that aiming sensors in geostationary orbit at a 10x10km target area might pose.

▲

Demiurge 2 hours ago | parent [-]

There are satellites in geostationary orbit that have realtime live feed and agile pointing capability. However, besides the SAR, RGB style observations are limited by clouds, and also you can’t switch out the sensors on a whim. Airborne platforms are always more flexible and cheaper for certain missions.

▲

walrus01 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Without leaking anything that's even remotely close to classified, WAMI (wide area multispectral imagery) sensor systems that can mount on even relatively medium sized group 3 UAV are really damn good these days. This is a pretty basic unit compared to the things that aren't publicly known:

https://www.logostech.net/products/redkite/

https://www.logostech.net/products/blackkite-i/

▲

jauntywundrkind an hour ago | parent [-]

This guy has been working on their own SAR drone for a while, just had another really nice blog post. Definitely looks like it weighs <10 lbs. He post-processes, but I doubt that's that hard to rework. https://hforsten.com/interferometric-synthetic-aperture-rada...

	▲	walrus01 40 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		It looks like a DIY implementation of some of the commercial land surveying SAR payloads that companies will sell you (for $60,000) to fly below a DJI M400 or similar size craft for tasks like monitoring open pit mines, etc. Also not realtime data return over RF data link, it's a download and post-process workflow.

▲

adastra22 an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

I think you are confused. Spy satellites do not use geostationary orbits.

	▲	walrus01 an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		It's not something I can cite with any public URL to a website that's an authoritative source, but if by 'spy' you include SIGINT satellites in that category, yes they absolutely do... Ever seen a diagram of a Boeing (Hughes) 702 series satellite bus and antenna system built for L/S-bands like frequency ranges similar to those used by Thuraya, Inmarsat and Iridium handhelds? It's widely accepted in the commercial two way satellite telecom industry that the NSA has comparable things with big unfolding umbrella-like antennas in geostationary which serve a similar purpose for signals collection.
	▲	Demiurge 30 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Why do you think I am confused? Is this a form of internet condenscension, or are you able to diagnose my mental state based a single comment? No, I don't think I'm confused.