China Building Gigantic Structures In the Desert 412
A user writes "New photos have appeared in Google Maps showing unidentified titanic structures in the middle of the Chinese desert. The first one is an intricate network of what appears to be huge metallic stripes. It's located in Dunhuang, Jiuquan, Gansu, north of the Shule River, which crosses the Tibetan Plateau to the west into the Kumtag Desert. It covers an area approximately one mile long by more than 3,000 feet wide. The tracks are perfectly executed, and they seem to be designed to be seen from orbit."
designed to be seen from orbit (Score:5, Insightful)
What would they look like if they weren't designed to be seen from orbit?
Re:Google Maps (Score:5, Insightful)
The tracks are perfectly executed, and they seem to be designed to be seen from orbit.
Keep in mind most Google Maps imagery comes from airplanes and not satellites*
*No, I did not RTFA or look at the images yet.
I'm not sure aerial photography is smiled upon over Chinese military test grounds.
Re:More stuff (Score:5, Insightful)
South of there, what is this!?!
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=40.458679,93.31314%09&hl=en&ll=40.110179,93.994217&spn=0.037745,0.077162&sll=40.458018,93.392587&sspn=0.0208,0.040426&vpsrc=6&t=h&z=14 [google.com]
Looks agricultural. Maybe they're growing tea or some other crop. Probably have a good set of wells nearby or an aquaduct.
Re:Some to do with mountain cuts / water damning? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:designed to be seen from orbit (Score:4, Insightful)
Then they wouldn't look so amazingly straight from orbit. Those structures occupy some pretty treacherous hilly terrain, yet look perfectly straight from above.
Built from the perspective of some unknown ground-use, not only would they tend to work with natural contours rather than stubbornly going in straight lines over hills and chasms, they quite likely wouldn't even look straight.
Re:designed to be seen from orbit (Score:5, Insightful)
That's an assumption, even though you're [mistakenly] treating it as a fact. Whether they follow the natural contours would depend on what that use is - and that they didn't is prima facie evidence that the intended use requires straight lines. (Basic rule of photo intelligence, work forward from what you can see. Not backwards from what you assume.)
Former USAF Imagery Analyst here (Score:5, Insightful)
Hello,
I'm sure this will never be seen due to me being AC, but I've taken a look at a few of the target sites. I'll break them down with the coordinate groups helpfully provided above. tl;dr: The only ones that actually confuse me are the 'QR Codes', but I will still posit that they are pseudo-random 'road and runway' test targets designed to evaluate munition effectiveness in a given radius.
40.413766,93.583812
Bombing range for something that requires electro-optical (EO) or IR signature, or for testing something like submunition effectiveness on a given area with multiple types of targets. Presence of derelict vehicles, etc, as well as regularly spaced crush disk or pressure sensors (the small domey nubs dotted in a grid) seem to indicate this. The concrete pads could either be a testing pattern to be entered into a EO/IR sensor, or a simple visual aid for bombardiers. Think of how a tomahawk compares a downward image of its target to its onboard sensor to determine its presence over the target area. So either the boxes serve to show how effective a munition is on vehicles AND concrete, or it's a target signature of some sort.
40.472416,93.5079
As the other poster stated, runway and airfield test mockup. Bear in mind when looking at these images that most of them are going to be false-color, that is to say that the signatures are not always how they appear first-hand. The runway probably isn't made of tinfoil and those buildings are not coated in prussian blue, it's just how the sensor and coloring system depict the objects. he also correctly identified the runway-denial submunition impacts at the mock parking apron at the end of the runway.
40.108521,93.993434
Looks like a small farming village. Pretty consistent with plantings (they deploy grids of little tents over their rows of crops at times of the year) and normal farming life.
The QR codes are tough to say. There's a number of applications for unique and conspicuous patterns that are visible from air/space...
-Airborne sensor calibration (aircraft)
-Cruise missile guidance testing and development
-Bomb EO and IR sensor development and testing
-Space-based sensor geo-rectification (ie, I know to look here every day to verify my camera systems' look angle, elevation, etc) This is supported by their apparent accuracy relative to the sky rather than the earth.
The other things in TFA are also pretty consistent with bomb targets, especially the radial targets with varying sized panels. Typically these panels are arranged at varying vertical heights at varying distances from the center to analyze the blast fragmentation effects.
Theres spooky applications for the QR codes only if you look too far into them. I doubt they're any sort of antenna grid just because an antenna that large would require much more infrastructure around to power it, etc.
Re:Possible use... (Score:5, Insightful)
These structures absolutely exist...
Here's a slashdot post by myself from 2001 [slashdot.org]
The links are long since broken (and I said Russia, but it could equally of been China, I wasn't 100% sure where I was), but here are links to two of the photos that I put back online recently:
-- Pete.
Re:These areas are for military (Score:1, Insightful)
Note to self: When you get Mod Points, double-check all links before you use them.