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| ▲ | fxtentacle 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | You can rent access to nearly real-time custom satellite targeting for <$3k per image. That means while you're correct that not all countries can afford it, most can. | | |
| ▲ | maxerickson 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | So you task the satellite to where you know the ship is? | | |
| ▲ | exe34 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Would you prefer to lose it first? | |
| ▲ | bigyabai 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | To get a naval fix, you usually define an "area of uncertainty" around the last confirmed location of the ship. The area is usually a circle with the radius being the maximum distance the ship/group could travel at full speed. So, you don't exactly "know" where the ship is, but you can draw a hypothetical geofence around where it's likely to be, and scan that area. | | |
| ▲ | Phemist 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | So the satellite can know where the ship is, because it knows where it isn't? Then it's a simple matter of subtracting the isn't from the is, or the is from the isn't (whichever is greater)? |
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| ▲ | matkoniecz 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | What if US government bans US-based companies from selling pictures within area where carrier operates? (of all "national security" reasons these is one of more reasonable ones) | | |
| ▲ | rocqua 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Figure out where you can't buy pictures to narrow it down, if you want a more exact match, pay for pictures from that area from non US providers. | |
| ▲ | blitzar 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Planet Labs PBC, a leading provider of high resolution images taken from space, said Friday it would hold back for 96 hours images of Gulf states targeted by Iranian drone attacks. It did not say if it had acted at the request of US authorities. https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/leading-satellite-firm-hol... | |
| ▲ | marcosdumay 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Do them publish the banned coordinates in a list too? Maybe they could put the reason at each line. |
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| ▲ | SteveNuts 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I admit I'm incredibly naive on this subject, but what makes it so hard to track an object as large as an aircraft carrier when starting from a known position such as a naval port? | | |
| ▲ | estearum 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | As described above the issue would be continuous observation, not how to follow it assuming you never lose sight of it. | | |
| ▲ | OneDeuxTriSeiGo 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | You certainly can't do continuous observation but even just with commercial satellite offerings you can get pretty close. For example nowadays Planet Labs [1] offers 30-50cm resolution imaging at a rate of one image or 120sec video stream every 90 minutes over a given 500 km^2 region. There is no situation where an aircraft carrier is going to be capable of evading a commercial satellite offering with that frequency and resolution. Once you know approximately where it is or even where it was in the semi-recent past, it's fairly trivial to narrow in and build a track off the location and course. 1. https://www.planet.com/products/satellite-monitoring/ | |
| ▲ | rtkwe 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Commercial operations like Planet Labs currently cover most of the Earth multiple times a day. |
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| ▲ | malfist 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Clouds occasionally happen | | | |
| ▲ | chias 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | What would you track them with? Follow them with helicopters and/or boats? | | |
| ▲ | rtkwe 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Break out the pocket book and pay Planet Labs to do it. You could do it with much less frequent visits than this probably the search area for it every 2 hours isn't very large and image recognition systems are pretty good. The big threat is cloud cover. https://www.planet.com/pulse/12x-rapid-revisit-announcement/ | | |
| ▲ | OneDeuxTriSeiGo 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Note that that article is from 2020. Nowadays the frequency is actually down to 90 minutes/1.5hr. The resolution is up as well and they can do massive image capture (~500km^2) and video (120sec stream) from their passes. Also nowadays they provide multi-spectal capture as well which can mostly see through cloud cover even if it takes a bit more bandwidth and postprocessing. | |
| ▲ | matkoniecz 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | What if US government bans US-based companies from selling pictures within area where carrier operates? (of all "national security" reasons these is one of more reasonable ones) | | |
| ▲ | rtkwe 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | The problem then is the black out zones themselves reveal a lot as well if adversaries can find their bounds. That narrows the search area for their own observation satellites immensely even if it's too large to respond to IRL. | |
| ▲ | jyoung8607 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | If the restricted area is large, a carrier is regionally disabling for an imagery provider. If it's smaller (and therefore must move over time to follow the carrier group) as soon as the imagery provider starts refusing sales in an area, any customer can test and learn its perimeter with trial purchases, find a coarse center, and learn its course and speed. You don't care about anything else until there's actual hostilities. | |
| ▲ | OneDeuxTriSeiGo 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Well in that case congratulations. You've just made it easier. Now you don't even have to track them. You just have to look for the blacked out box, the "error we can't show you this", reused imagery from their long running historical imagery dataset, or improperly fused/healed imagery after alteration. So now you don't have to do the tracking, just find the hole. And then you can use a non-US provider to get direct imagery now that you know exactly where to look. | |
| ▲ | torginus 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | It would make tracking impossible, as no other country operates satellites. |
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| ▲ | filleduchaos 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | ...literally yes (to the latter)? Is that not exactly why modern warships have to implement things like measures to reduce their radar cross section? If you could actually just rely on "ocean too big" then there would be no need for that. | | |
| ▲ | OneDeuxTriSeiGo 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | It is in part for small crafts (frigates and corvettes) but for pretty much anything larger there's no concealing those ships. The primary reason however for minimizing radar cross section and increasing radar scatter is to harden protections against radar based weapon systems during a conflict. Even if the ship is still visible in peacetime operations, once electronic countermeasures/ECM are engaged, it gets an order of magnitude harder for guided missiles to still "see" the ship. Depending on the kit, once missiles are in the air the ship and all of their friends in their strike group/squadron is going to start jamming radar, popping decoys, and trying to dazzle the missiles effectively enough for RIM-174/SM-6, RIM-66/SM-1, and RIM-67/SM-2s to intercept it without the missiles evading. And should the missile make it to close-in range then it's just praying that the phalanx/CIWS takes care of it. And if everything fails then all that jamming and dazzling + the reduced radar cross section is going to hopefully result in the missiles being slightly off target/not a complete kill on the vessel. So they still serve a purpose. Just not for stealth. Instead serving as compounding increases to survival odds in engagement scenarios. |
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| ▲ | vntok 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | You don't even need a free account on flightradar24 to track its planes, at least two launch from it and pattern circle around it almost daily. | | |
| ▲ | matkoniecz 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | That relies on transponders which can be switched of if decision is taken to do so. | | |
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| ▲ | bell-cot 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Those are the few countries that France needs to worry about. Doesn't matter whether Estonia, Honduras, Laos, and Luxembourg can track their carrier, or not. EDIT: In confined waters (like the Mediterranean), many more countries could track the carrier if they cared to. Even back in the 1950's, the Soviets got quite adept at loading "fishing boats" with electronic equipment, then trailing behind US Navy carrier groups. | |
| ▲ | geeunits 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | was | |
| ▲ | swarnie 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Billy Boy from the Island can use commercial satellites to map mud huts for his vaccine NGO, i'm sure any nation state can find a few quid to locate a war ship. | |
| ▲ | s5300 an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | [dead] |
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