• Cosmoooooooo@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    It means that quatar can overfly any of the US at any time. For how long was that lease? 20-99 years? More? Yup.

    • GenosseFlosse@feddit.org
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      2 months ago

      Yeah, but this doesn’t make sense. Satellites are cheaper and even in the 90s they had a good enough resolution to read a newspaper from space. why do you want an expensive plane everyone can see in the sky with pilots that can make errors?

      • Blackmist@feddit.uk
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        2 months ago

        I think that was some cold war blustering tbh. Make the reds think you’ve got some insane impossible tech and then watch them waste time trying to replicate it.

        • Dragonstaff@leminal.space
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          2 months ago

          That describes what they did to us pretty well. Or I guess the Soviet’s were barely even involved, but our military industrial complex convinced us we needed to close a “missile gap” and we’ve spent half our GDP for the last 60 years trying to “keep up” with a military that can’t even beat one of its former satellites.

      • SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca
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        2 months ago

        When you’re spying on the citizens of your own country there’s a lot regulations and paperwork involved. You can still do it of course, but it’s a real pain in the ass.

        It’s way easier to have allied country spy on your citizens and since allies have intelligence sharing agreements you get the information without all the red tape.

        Not saying this is the intent of this agreement, it’s more likely Qatar wants to train their pilots and the US wants to reduce the number of airmen stationed in Qatar to train them there. But Qataris spying on US citizens isn’t a concern that should be dismissed out of hand.