The camo looks like it was put over the thing after the truck was parked.
Which means anyone could see it while on the road... or street, until they covered it.
Which means it isn't all that big a secret.
Which means it was a dust/pigeon-doo cover?
Opening for the "conning tower" was to test it our before they brought it in the building?
Truck is
yellow, which is not very typical for dot-gov vehicles or something you want to avoid attention with. Looks more like a private or company vehicle.
Did you notice the plates?
What kind of trade shows or meetings were going on in the hotel?
Did they take it off the truck, or did the truck drive away with it later?
If it's a weapon, somebody may be in deep doo-doo for "printing" in the city.
"there is nowhere for the signal to go to from desales alley in NW DC"
When news cameras used to be around our building in downtown Denver, they used to bounce their signals off buildings to get their u-wave signals to their TV stations and up to satellites if there was not a direct line-of sight available. I asked about that once because one of their news trucks had their paraboloids pointed right at our building, and others had their 'toonies pointed in what looked like random directions:
For your interest and amusement, here is what our street looked like during the McVeigh trial. Lousy chemical picture-of-opportunity taken with a lousy camera by a lousy photographer, but if you look carefully down the street, you can see a yellow Hyster. One news company had two comm trucks parked across the street from each other, and to get their cables from one truck to the other, they rented two Hysters and put the cables way up and across the street between the two Hysters.
I apologize for the quality, and had to doctor the image slightly to make it more clear.
They even had hot dog vendors parked along the sidewalk to service the news crews.
Off-topic a little, but I thought you folks might be interested.
Terry, 230RN