This was a private launch of commercial satellites (Iridium) whereas GPS is run by the military. In the past, missions with classified satellites do not feature any publicly available footage or telemetry at all.

I guess that's impossible to rule out that this is a sophisticated plan to hide even the existence of the classified microsats, while providing detailed footage and telemetry up until the moment they are deployed, but it's far-fetched.

> The US govt likes to sneak secret things into comm satellites. For example gps satellites also contain hardware to detect nuclear detonations and track missile launches.

Umm what? GPS satellites are not commercial satellites, they're owned and run by the USAF... every aspect of their design is protected by TS and TS/SCI clearance. The master GPS satellite control station is a USAF base in Colorado. They can put as many extra DoD supporting features on them as they want without "sneaking" anything.

Well, I would expect those mostly in military / govt satellites (even those with more benign overt goals such as the GPS constellation). Sounds a bit less likely that they would sneak military hardware (specially weapons) on comercial satellites owned by a private corporation (i.e. Iridium Communications) and likely not designed to function in an adversarial environment. I mean, it is a VA based company, so it is possible, but would not be my first bet. Lacking ground tracking when the satellites are deployed almost a half-orbit away from the launch site seems perfectly plausible to me.