Non-US equivalents of DSP

From: Jake McGuire (jamcguir_at_yahoo.com)
Date: 06/27/04 

Date: 27 Jun 2004 11:56:47 -0700

What's the general consensus on the rest of the world's launch
monitoring capability? We know that the DSP apparently detects things
all the way down to Backfires on afterburner, but DSP is a large
enough program that it's hard to keep secret, and I haven't heard of
any equivalent from other countries.

Pegasus currently allows you to launch without a fixed site, but
within a few hundred miles (?) of an airstrip. RASCAL is supposed to
provide something similar at a smaller scale and hopefully much lower
cost. In the finest traditions of USENET engineering, it seems like
it should be straightforward to design a launch platform to fit
SpaceX's Falcon I inside an old LSD's or LPD's well deck, put various
processing equipment in the vehicle deck, sail out to the middle of
the Pacific, and launch satellites with the rest of the world being
none the wiser.

Sure, satellites can't stay hidden forever, but if you look at how
long MISTY stayed hidden - with people knowing the launch time and
azimuth and such - it looks like there's a lot of potential for
trickery here.

Unless, of course, their is a rest-of-world DSP-equivalent, in which
case the whole thing is moot.

-jake