Hey guys,

First time posting here. Me and a friend are having a dispute over how accurate the Global hawk is. We were watching a show that said the GH can read the title of a book at 60 feet. However he says that must be wrong, it must've been something like 6000 feet. I can not find any direct answers to the question so I came here hoping someone would know the exact details on how accurate it is. So did I hear it wrong or is my friend wrong?

Thanks,
Limb

"Those who knows doesn't tell, and those who tells doesn't know.."

I don't think (and hope) you'll get an answer to that in here, since it would be a serious OPSEC violation.
I'm pretty sure the accuracy of the Global hawk is calssified.

But according to FAS it got an image resolution of 0.3m, so it would need to be some pretty large letters on the front of that book if it's able to read the title..
http://www.fas.org/irp/program/collect/global_hawk.htm

I figure there's a lot we don't know about resolution capability of the Hawk. One thing I do know is that there would not be much interest in an intelligence gathering platform if it had to gather data within gun range.

Think of it this way, currently Quickbird is the highest resolution commercial imaging satellite which runs at a fraction over half a metre spatial resolution.
Now look at the altitude QuickBird flys at.
Now think of the spatial resolution you would have if you used the Quickbird aray at the elevations that GH flys at.
Now think that What ever commercial companies have Int sources have better.......

However all this means nothing if you don't have the ground control points to tie the imagery to it's correct place in space. I once saw some Ikonos imagery (commercial 1m resolution) that was 1km out. so it just goes to show image resolution isn’t everything

check out
http://www.digitalglobe.com/