This thread needs to be pinned so its not lost amongst all the news threads.

I just need to fix up the logos for a bunch of newspapers.
Rather then one newspaper, I'm going to go with a few of the majors, all in the one news thread. Try and do a bit of variety.

Russian are dumb enough to hand over their Su-50 to Korean!?

It's a pretty smart move, provided Seoul respects the arms contract and keeps the Americans away from it. But that also means Seoul can sell Russia down the river if Moscow does something that it really doesn't like. The capital will help fund other projects, too, including upgraded variants of the Su-50.

But I just don't see how this sale benefits Korea.

Julie and Julia, if this does not end up as a physical cat fight in Canberra with Penny Wong jumping in the middle you have wasted an oppertunity.

Penny Wong making an appearance in a string bikini.

I was at WOMAD working when they did that solidarity with West Papua thing.
Happened the weekend that just went past.

Uh, no, spy satellites cannot simply take photographs of aircraft leaving an airport and know who's inside. Who knows who was on the aircraft?

EDIT: Directed at Japan's recent news article.

If the aircraft is printed bright pink or something, they can make the assumption that it is Kim Jong-un's (It's really weird writing that, I wrote Jong-il several times at first) aircraft. Beyond that, I doubt S. Korea or any nation has the satellite resources to trace the aircraft back to N. Korea.

Got to LOL at some things..

I wonder how many people allowed to use Kim's personal airplane to fly from Pyongyang to Seoul...

How hard can it be? Even Google Maps shows you maps of Pyongyang

Google maps is not a live satellite image of the world. It's typically outdated in some areas because of lack of satellite coverage. The resolution of typical spy satellites is not nearly high enough to spot a single aircraft flying out of a country; in addition, you'd have to have a spy satellite flying over North Korea at the exact same time he'd leave North Korea to even spot a blur with a spy satellite. They're no good for anything except photographing large installations and enormous fleets.

Ah... seriously, I know what google maps is, I was being sarcastic.

I don't know about China, but a modern U.S. spy satellite can, given clear skies and a good viewing angle, probably read a license plate from space.

No, you can't. From space, you can keep a satellite in sun-synchronous orbit to take photographs of relatively stationary things, like big buildings or fields. Things moving on them would be blurry. An aircraft taking off and flying away from the point you are photographing? Forget it, you'd be better off using AWACS or some ground-based/naval-based radar. I don't know what you're imagining, but spy satellites are not magical.

EDIT: And no, you're not going to get live-feed from a spy satellite.

Before this gets any sillier, let's compromise. Whether or not a spy satellite could identify the plane is marginally-important. Japan could have gotten wind of Jong-un's visit any number of ways, much like Jong-il's much publicized "secret" visits to China.

The method, and corresponding news post, should be altered to attribute the intelligence to some other method. But let's not make a mountain out of a molehill, guys.

And you need to have a very good luck to have your satellite accidentally photographed Kim's personal plane taking off when you don't have earlier intelligence about the planned meeting.

It's more plausible to have someone near the airport spot Kim's personal plane landing in South Korea.

I'm not arguing that Japan would not have found out at some point, though. By all means, Japan can discover the secret meeting, since I'm sure Japan has a strong intelligence agency that would certainly know about or at least know of a meeting of such high importance. It's just that I don't like impossible things.

I'm aware. I'm saying that the argument over means is, in the grand scheme of things, pretty inconsequential to the matter at hand and, if the method is changed, all is resolved.

I suppose I can change the "method", but I am not going to, I mean just because someone dig out a 1997 article and said I can't do something in 2012?

Like Dax said, there are number of other ways, I can't and I'm not gonna put everyone of them in my news article.

P.S. Just for the record, I have my own source, and my one come with references.

Indonesia attacking Australia on its human rights is an interesting move as Indonesia is a major supporter off the breaches, specifically on asylum seekers which bring a tidy profit to certain corrupt officials.

"Alright class its for our next topic we will be doing Aboriginal rights."
"FFS sir we have been doing this C*** since kindy."
-The Australian youth celebrating Aboriginal culture.

Yes, and like Dax said, that method should be changed to something less controversial in order to prevent petty arguments over inconsequential things.

Please.

...seriously?

What if he just keeps on bullying me...

Where in that source does it specify that Japan's spy satellites can determine the identify of someone onboard an aircraft?

If the aircraft was painted bright pink and had been flown officially as Kim Jong-un's personal aircraft many times, sure, it would be possible. But since there is no mention that Kim Jong-un has any markers on his aircraft, it is impossible for you to determine the identity of who is onboard the aircraft through satellite reconnaissance. If we simply ignore the impossibility of this, that sets a rather dangerous precedence.

Also, satellite reconnaissance has not changed that much since 1997. The methods are still the same (Radar and Cameras) the resolution (Israeli spy satellites can supposedly get resolutions below .5 meters. But they still wouldn't tell you if an aircraft belonged to Kim Jong-un.

Also, said article from 1997 is still valid, as the result of resolutions does not change from 1997 to 2012.