Pakistan Used Google Earth For Military Targeting

NeoBeans writes "According to this article in the New York Times about the recent 'improvements' in military strikes by the Pakistani military it is revealed that they have dropped Google Earth as part of their target planning for a more precise technology. From the article, '... the air force has shifted from using Google Earth to more sophisticated images from spy planes and other surveillance aircraft, and has increased its use of laser-guided bombs. And no, you can't really find Osama Bin Laden using Google Maps either."

everyone's doing it.

[gandhi_2]

When I was in Ramadi (mid 05 to mid 06), all the local insurgent groups and out-of-town AQI used google earth for rocket and mortar attacks. Crazy, when "poor man's sat imagery" is almost as good as the rich man's. Luckily, GE images are often out of date....and insurgents fire rockets with an Insha'Allah kind-of mentality.

Pakistani citizen

[ryzvonusef]

The problem is, unlike you lucky folks with you spy satellites, we have to rely on such open techs as Google Earth. If only you guys would share the info and the tech with us.

Instead, your military insists it wants to hunt the terrorist itself in our territory, which seeing your track record, we simply cannot allow.

And the terrorist roam free as a result, blowing bombs with impunity, at least once a week.

Re:Pakistani citizen

[ryzvonusef]

Um, troll? I am being deadly serious here. Read the news please, our president recently attempted to (and failed) to get drone tech from you guys, but you wouldn't share. Come on, if you want to defeat them, then please help us, instead of ignoring us.

Its only a matter of time.

[hombrejava]

Satellites are becoming smaller and cheaper because of advances in miniature high-performance computers, solar panels, batteries, and increased launch capabilities due to standardization. CubeSats [calpoly.edu] are one example. People can put small, but high-resolution cameras into space, and if you can launch 100 pico-satellites with cameras then your going to get near real-time imagery of many places on the earth. Its only a matter of time until even the poorest third-world country gets its own fleet of spy satellites.

Re:everyone's doing it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually Gandhi's reaction to the pakistan secession crisis killed at the very least 10 million people. It is also directly responsible for the disappearance of dozens of millions more.

Gandhi is like all other liberal (socialist) "heroes" : right up there with guevara, hitler, lenin, stalin, mao, ... and other the nobel peace prize laureates and winners.

Re:In Another Five Years, If Google is Not Stopped

[Mr. Firewall]

...the headline is likely to read, "In Soviet Pakistan, Google Maps YOU!"

There, fixed that for you.

Re:everyone's doing it.

[gandhi_2]

The insurgency is a rough game. You hang one too many mortar rounds, the counterfire gets you. Apaches get you. Snipers get you. Poor safety standards, your own IED's get you. And often enough, Allah does NOT Insha [youtube.com].

And I'm Gandhi II [youtube.com].

Re:Pakistani citizen

[ryzvonusef]

1-Um, you are the ones who gave us the money to create the god-damned idiots in the first place, and they were created to bug the soviets as you well know, not the Afghanis and the Indians... and now when we are asking your help to get rid of them, you are ignoring us, come on, don't you want these guys gone or not? they attacked you because you stopped the gravy-train, and now they are attacking us because we did too.

2-We do get get aid, but we don't get "billions". Trust me, the finance minister is crying our budget is shot because we didn't even get the last-dole out of the international aid or whatever.

3-Also, its not the money problem only, we want the tech to find the the bad guys in the first place.The bottom line is, the bad guys are out there (literally in my case) and since you guys are so pressurizing us to get rid of them, then help us. The recent govt. seems to be genuinely interested in getting rid of the menace.

4-No we don't cheer in glee, because we have more attacks then them. We get even more paranoid.

Re:Pakistani citizen

[Mr. Slippery]

That might be true, but there seems to be something about the culture which seems to raise terrorists very easily compared to other cultures.

Religion and culture have little to do with it -- it's all about semantics. So long as state actions are labeled "war" rather than "terrorism", then those parts of the planet that got hosed by colonialism and the Cold War to the point of leaving behind unstable nation-states are going to produce "terrorists" rather than "soldiers".

If we were honest and labeled all aggressive transnational violence and use of weapons of mass destruction as "terrorism", then the greatest source and supporter of terrorism would be a nation that's about 76% Christian [wikipedia.org].