Posted on 11/15/2011 5:39:01 AM PST by Dysart
Vast, unidentified, structures have been spotted by satellites in the barren Gobi desert, raising questions about what China might be building in a region it uses for its military, space and nuclear programmes.
In two images, available on Google Earth, reflective rectangles up to a mile long can be seen, a tangle of bright white intersecting lines that are clearly visible from space.
Other pictures show enormous concentric circles radiating on the ground, with three jets parked at their centre.
In one picture from 2007, a mass of orange blocks have been carefully arranged in a circle. In a more recent image, however, the blocks, each one the size of a shipping container, appear to have been scattered as far as three miles from the original site.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Target practice for long range missiles and space based weapons would be my guess.
I think that’s a good guess
The Doomsday Machine ?
Christo !
Roads to no-where funded by Obama’s stimulus.
I find it interesting that (especially the second pic) the lines are perfectly straight despite the hills and valleys of the terrain. First thought was photoshop...
Nah, China loves their burgeoning empire too much to lay waste to their would-be inheritance; now, Iran (at least the fanatical leadership) and some double secret Doomsday apparatus actually does ring true. They ARE bonkers.
I was thinking about this yesterday, here’s my hypothesis:
I think the patterns are there to provide satellite positional information in the event other means of obtaining positional coordinates are unavailable. For instance a space based skirmish of some sort, or EMP related something or other, take out GPS capabilities.
The patterns could be read from orbit by an onboard computer, and their unique shape would provide a 360 degree, optical fix that could be read, like an iPhone reads one of those oddball square bar-codes.
Which incidentally, those shapes appear similar to.
/tinfoil
Good job. For some reason right clck was disabled for me. Thanks.
Calibration target for spy satellite optics.
Consider, two of the sites (one not completed?) are bordered by an enclosing, nearly perfect rectangle. Engineering types love regularity and boundaries. (I know, I are one!)
At the resolution available on google maps, the marks appear to be cleared land, similar to that around the runways of the nearby airstrip. If you were testing a vehicle, you'd want (initially) a fairly well defined path, something that wouldn't confuse it's optical sensors/processing algorithms. You'd only want to deal with terrain. (at first)
Speaking of terrain... Note that many of the (apparently) cleared swaths follow (approximately) terrain features, while other seem to cross significant terrain.
So, maybe a training/test ground where they are trying to "teach" an autonomous navigation system to cross rough terrain while holding to a basic course line?
Of course the next question is, why? Why would the most populous Country be developing un-manned systems? It would seem they could get as many drivers as they wanted. Well, maybe supply isn't the problem, maybe the environment they are headed into is. Say, north, in the winter? If you were going to head north into Siberia after natural resources, if you were going to ensure your supply lines with minimal need to support the vehicle operators themselves... The only question is, will this be a commercial undertaking, or a military one?
Long/Lat coord.?
You can see vestiges of similar test setups at our NTS site at Yucca Flats, NV.
For a WMD -- even a FAE -- the size is not very impressive, though...
What they lack in nuanced quality they more than make up for in sheer scale.
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