We see a few bits and pieces released to the public of optical/infrared wavelength mirrors and hubble-like hardware from IMINT systems. One thing that's never really been shown to the public, not even 50 year old 1970s era stuff, are photos/examples of the SIGINT systems that the NSA likely has in orbit. Or good details of other things that also fall within the RF engineering domain like synthetic aperture radar satellites to monitor naval activity, construction activity like digging bunkers, etc.

If you think the public DEM/DSM datasets like the ASTER GDER v3 or SRTM GL1 V3 are pretty good, I would bet that the DoD has things far more accurate than those as digital models of the surface and built environment of the earth's surface.

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throwaway456744 14 minutes ago | parent [-]

An RF domain where there seems to be a dearth of information is passive radar. (Kraken passive radar was shutdown.) It makes sense that NRO satellites would be doing passive SAR.

	▲	walrus01 11 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		I'm not sure that it needs to be passive, a sufficiently advanced adversary nation-state (Russia, China) is assumed to have their own equivalent of this, and to be aware of the orbits of US satellites: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Space_Surveillan... Much as the US is aware of the orbits of their satellites. If you already assume that it's hard to 'hide' the existence and orbits of your satellites from an advanced observer with good telescopes and ground radar and ways of correlating the data, the fact that your ocean surveillance satellites emit radar might not be a problem. No need to be passive about it.