Even in redacted form, the imaging capabilities are quite far beyond what commercial satellites can do. Trump insisted that he was going to publicly release the image (and thus implicitly reveal the optical fidelity and orbital dynamics of what’s probably considered a top-5 intelligence gathering device in the world - and we also likely have the other four, too) simply because he is a man-child with no self control who wanted to troll on Iran for a bit. There was zero strategic gain to be had from revealing that. The effectiveness of the satellite is now substantially reduced, because now state actors know precisely how big a thing can be before it can detect them, as well as the exact angles that you’d need to deploy visual obfuscation to hide a thing.
The image was cleared for release and redacted before release, hence the black square in the top left.
You’re not getting what I’m saying.
Even in redacted form, the imaging capabilities are quite far beyond what commercial satellites can do. Trump insisted that he was going to publicly release the image (and thus implicitly reveal the optical fidelity and orbital dynamics of what’s probably considered a top-5 intelligence gathering device in the world - and we also likely have the other four, too) simply because he is a man-child with no self control who wanted to troll on Iran for a bit. There was zero strategic gain to be had from revealing that. The effectiveness of the satellite is now substantially reduced, because now state actors know precisely how big a thing can be before it can detect them, as well as the exact angles that you’d need to deploy visual obfuscation to hide a thing.