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From: klb@pegasus.att.com (Kevin Blatter)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: Tomahawks
Summary: Survey Maps
Message-ID: <1991Jan19.035509.3416@cbnews.att.com>
Date: 19 Jan 91 03:55:09 GMT
References: <1991Jan18.005043.9622@cbnews.att.com>
Sender: military@cbnews.att.com (William B. Thacker)
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
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From: klb@pegasus.att.com (Kevin Blatter)
(Gary Barton) writes:
> 
> 2) Their guidance systems are reportedly visually keyed using a
> complicated mission planning system to identify the landmarks along
> the intended flight path, and evetually the target itself.  Where does
> the information used to program these flight paths come from?  I would
> expect that most satellite images would be two dimensional in nature
> and would not be terribly suitable for programming of this sort weapon
> by themselves.  However, if these images were bound to some sort of
> elevation/contour map of sufficient resolution, I would expect we
> could generate a reasonable mission preview.  Is U.S. satellite
> technology so good that we can construct a 3-d image of the mission
> plan with resolutions to a few feet, and do so fast enough to make
> these weapons useful in a changing battlefield, or am I totally off
> base as to how this system works.

I'm not a military expert by any means, but having contoured maps would be
very simple.

I have a friend, who reads this newsgroup (hi dale), that worked in Algeria
for a couple of years with a petroleum survey team.  From what he has told
me, the were able to produce excellent topographical maps of the Sahara for
oil exploration.  Undoubtedly the same thing has been done in most (all?) of
the middle-east by petroleum exploration companies.  I would think that the
CIA, NSA or whoever keeps track of such things has digitized maps of every inch
of Iraq.

Kevin L. Blatter
AT&T - Bell Labs

"I don't think anyone understands Saddam Hussein!" - Tom Brokaw