Cover blown on satellite work

Well, in case the Iranians hadn't figured it out for themselves, some blabbermouths have revealed a success story in spotting weapons transfers to our Iranian friends:

In the closed world of spy satellite photo analysis, it's called "crate-ology": the science of identifying a weapon or some other key component by the size and shape of its box.

The technique came into play last month when a U.S. spy satellite, looking down on an Iranian air base, captured images of military crews loading what U.S. intelligence analysts concluded were eight C-802 Noor anti-ship cruise missiles on board a transport plane, according to intelligence officials.

The episode was detailed by one U.S. intelligence official who saw a report on the incident. It was confirmed by a U.S. official from a second intelligence agency and by a diplomat with a foreign government. They did not want their names used because they were not authorized to discuss the incident.

I guess the process will now be moved indoors or under other cover because the idiots "not authorized to discuss the incident" couldn't keep their yaps shut and USA Today couldn't help itself in revealing the process.

UPDATE: The operational end of the process set out here.