Comment on French aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle tracked via Strava activity in OPSEC failure

kahjtheundedicated@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

• DaddleDew@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  You have to be visual range, or radar range of you have one, which is the horizon plus a bit more depending how high above sea level your are and how tall your target is.

  If you’re on a ship, unless you’re using an advanced radar that bounces signals against the ionosphere your radar horizon is surprisingly short, something around 12 nautical miles give or take. And the sea is big and Iran is quite far.

  This is one big reason why aircraft are used for surveillance at sea. They can go much higher than any ship’s radar antenna mast every could be which significantly increases their detection and identification ranges. They can also travel out to see when further.

  Right now because if this, Iran now has the intel that the French carrier is approaching without even having to send an aircraft out to look for it. If they even ever have the ability to at this point.

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  • Randomgal@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    So satellites can see my truck’s plate but an aircraft carrier and it’s escrow fleet are too… Small?

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    • astronaut_sloth@mander.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      Sort of. Satellite resources are surprisingly scarce, so a lot are focused where people are, i.e. land. Plus, for the imagery sats that are focused on the ocean, ships are also tiny in a literal ocean of blue. It’s just a spec. While the resolution could be good, have fun looking for that spec. That’s why most countries use signal collection to locate vessels at sea. (I’m over-simplifying a lot, but you get the picture)

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      • FauxLiving@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

        While the resolution could be good, have fun looking for that spec.

        Seems like an easy but tedious job. Something that a computer can do.

        Object detection algorithms are incredibly fast and can learn to tell the difference between an aircraft carrier and an ocean.

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    • UnspecificGravity@piefed.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      It depends a great deal on if you have access to a real-time satellite feed and know where to look.

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    • theneverfox@pawb.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      It’s the ocean. The majority of Earths surface where there’s usually not much going on

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    • Iconoclast@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      You still need to know where to point that spy satellite’s camera at. If you take picture that covers hundreds of square kilometers then you don’t have enough resolution to spot the ship but you can’t zoom in much either because you don’t know where to zoom.

      It’s different with buildings because you know where they are.

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  • yucandu@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    why don’t ships at sea simply disguise themselves as a rock or shrubbery?

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    • Valmond@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      Or as a duck if they need to move.

      BTW sweden have some cool ship disguises.

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      • rmuk@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

        The Swedish Navy’s ships do have some bonkers designs, like massive barcodes printed on the side. It’s so that when they get back to port they can scan the navy in.

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    • glimse@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      Good idea, you should sketch it up in paint and post it to NCD

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  • gnutrino@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    Because if this fuck up, Iran now has the intel that the French carrier is approaching without even having to send an aircraft out to look for it.

    It wasn’t exactly a secret, France publicly announced it was going to move to the eastern med

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• njordomir@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  I saw the location on one of those “war dashboards” a day or two ago. Can’t have been that secret.

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