What Did Google Spot in the Chinese Desert
 

Wired: What Did Google Earth Spot in the Chinese Desert? Even an Ex-CIA Analyst Isn’t Sure

Late last month, former CIA analyst Allen Thomson was clicking through a space news website when he noticed a story about a new orbital tracking site being built near the small city of Kashgar in southwestern China. Curious, he went to Google Earth to find it. He poked around for a while, with no luck. Then he came across something kind of weird.

Thomson, who served in the CIA from 1972 to 1985 and as a consultant to the National Intelligence Council until 1996, has made something of a second career finding odd stuff in public satellite imagery. He discovered these giant grids etched into the Chinese desert in 2011, and a suspected underground missile bunker in Iran in 2008. When the Israeli Air Force destroyed a mysterious facility in Syria the year before, Thomson put together an 812-page dossier on the so-called “Box on the Euphrates.” Old analyst habits die hard, it seems.

But even this old analyst is having trouble ID’ing the objects he found in the overhead images of Kashgar. “I haven’t the faintest clue what it might be — but it’s extensive, the structures are pretty big and funny-looking, and it went up in what I’d call an incredible hurry,” he emails.

So he’d like your help in solving this little mystery. What follows are 10 images of the site. If you’ve got ideas on what might be there, leave ‘em in the comments, drop me a note, or find me on Twi**er or Faceb**k. I’ll pass it on to Thomson.

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/wp-c...ry-complex.png

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/wp-c...ember-2011.png

My two bits...
Nothing sinister, a mineral extraction process of some description.

Google didn't spot anything. Apart from low level, low definition aerial photography, they obtain their satellite imagery from other sources no doubt after it has been filtered. I suggest he goes back to the data source who will no why they collected it. If it were of any significance it would have been removed. I don't think Google are in the realm of owning their own satellites yet!

Commercial satellite imagery doesn't have to be filtered at all. Images of 'an airfield in the Nevada desert somewhere near Las Vegas' were available commercially even while official US images of the same were fully redacted! And remember the hoo-hah about Google Earth images of US bases in Iraq, helping those who wanted to plan attacks? There was no way of stopping those, save asking very nicely...

It looks to me like a Chinese slammer. The areas on the right are the vegetable gardens so that the inmates do not weigh down the country's finances with demands for food. The industrial area behind generates the rest of the income neccessary for their keep.

Tesco are trying to expand abroad I hear.......

It's a manufacturing facility for sharks with frikkin' lasers on their heads...

Anybody think of writing the Chinese a letter and asking them? :p

may not be military - in that top picture the roads aren't all at right angles...............

look like they were scuffed in by contractors

also a lack of the usual double security fence beloved by security guys world wide

the area is a Special Economic Zone so it may be a new industrial park

BBC NEWS | UK | How turkey farms work

Possibly chicken farms...............


SkyTruth: April 2009

http://www.thepoultrysite.com/poultr...am-for-santrev

Looks like mining/quarry.

See shadow of - albeit huge - earthmover at 39 35 05.58n 76 03 51.82e

Buildings might be some sort of processing plant/accom, so could be gold?

There could have been a request made to not display certain imagery north of a certain point, if you look at the image the darker brown area (almost a straight line east / west, the southern area) is a new image (11/17/2011), yet the lighter northern part is from 06/22/2011, so there may be more to see, you just cant see it for whatever reason.
Either way, the imagery isn't current, so who knows . . . . .

I still like the chicken farm idea! :ok:

think it's different geology - if you go to Google earth and look at tourist snapshots around there you can see that the light area to the north is significantly higher than the area with most of the buildings - looks as if it dips northwards and there is a major scarp running east - west

What astonished me is some bloody great warehouse type constructions and no sign of a herd of trucks or loading bays or a decent connecting road - a lot looks as if it was built and the rubbish left lying around and no-one there

Google earth has a timeline feature, look for a date in a "button" near bottom left (i think?), pressing that brings up a slider allowing you to view different image sets. The northern part of latest image is most definitely a composite of differing images of same area.

This is China.

If it is 'that' much of interest, the CIA will have a Keyhole or X-37B over the area PDQ, no worrying what it is, they will be reading the papers on the desks.

Does it have a berm?

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