Insurgents in Iraq have been smart extremely smart about using the Net — from YouTube propaganda to anonymous webmail communications to uploaded training guides to t-shirts sold online. So it’s not surprising to hear that that might be using Google Earth for overhead reconnaissance, too.
Still, I have a feeling this story, from the Telegraph, is a little over-blown.
Terrorists attacking British bases in Basra are using aerial footage displayed by the Google Earth internet tool to pinpoint their attacks, say Army intelligence sources.
Documents seized during raids on the homes of insurgents last week uncovered print-outs from photographs taken from Google.
The satellite photographs show in detail the buildings inside the bases and vulnerable areas such as tented accommodation, lavatory blocks and where lightly armoured Land Rovers are parked.
Written on the back of one set of photographs taken of the Shatt al Arab Hotel, headquarters for the 1,000 men of the Staffordshire Regiment battle group, officers found the camp’s precise longitude and latitude.
“This is evidence as far as we are concerned for planning terrorist attacks,” said an intelligence officer with the Royal Green Jackets battle group. “Who would otherwise have Google Earth imagery of one of our bases?… We believe they use Google Earth to identify the most vulnerable areas such as tents.”
As the paper notes, “it is unclear how old the maps are.” But unless they’re very recent, it’s hard to believe they’d show today’s tents all that accurately.
Anyway, it is amazing the kooky stuff you can find on Google Earth. Last year, Defense Tech readers went buck-wild, discovering everything from Area 51 landing strips to target ranges to a 500-foot-wide Star of David shape, scratched out of the Nevada rock.
I don’t see why this is a huge deal. Its not like Google Earth is offering something that was never on the market before. Isn’t there an expectation that insurgents will recon their targets with whatever means they have in hand?
Libraries of comsat photos have been available for at least a decade. All Google did was increase accessibility to it by handing the software out for free.
I like to collect locations of nuclear weapons facilities around the world. You can learn a lot about a nuclear program from good overhead photos.
>I don’t see why this is a huge deal. Its not like Google Earth is offering something that was
>never on the market before. Isn’t there an expectation that insurgents will recon their
>targets with whatever means they have in hand?
It’s all about planning and preparation, plus minimum but additional information about the details of the area from the image. You might also be able to make guesses what the building is from the image which maps may not, such as mosques, hangar of an airstrip, etc. Not all insurgents are local, and some may be foreign, or at least from other areas within the country. You might be able to search for key buildings not on normal maps, blind spots to hide for ambush, structure of the surface, and height of buildings. If you are not local, you will be able to have advantage to have an image what the area looks like from above, and that even adds onto recon that follows.
Google earth doesn’t update its maps that frequently to be of real military use. It can show the basic location and layout of a base, but cannot provide reliable up-to-date IMINT about vehicle type and location, personnel, etc. Anyone using it as insinuated in the article isn’t too bright…
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