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French aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle tracked via Strava activity in OPSEC failure (securityaffairs.com)
submitted 6 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 1 point 6 months ago (2 children)

I'm not saying that it is easy

It kind of sounds like you're saying that. Anyways, there's a reason submarines exist

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  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago (1 child)

    It is simple, it is not easy.

    'Take a picture of the entire ocean and look for ships' is simple, but executing that plan is not.

    It requires hundreds of millions of dollars of reconnaissance satellites, and an entire branch of personnel to operate and digest the information.

    This is why the US operates carrier battle groups instead of just sailing their carriers everywhere with a small escort. They can't hide, but they can pack enough offensive and defensive power into a tiny area to make most attacks infeasible.

    Anyways, there’s a reason submarines exist

    True, and even they're vulnerable when they surface (if they're moving), the v-shaped wake is also very detectable from space where satellites can detect wave heights within 3cm. It's not easy for humans to find, but with billions of dollars to spend on computers, these kinds of things are very much within the reach of sovereign nations.

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  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago

    I agree with the premise of "simple but hard". However, I still want to underscore that large areas of the ocean will at any given time be covered in clouds or fog. Sure, once you find the ship the first time, you've narrowed your search radius significantly, but a ship that can move at 30 knots can move around 1500 nautical miles (2800 km) without being seen under just 48 hours of cloud cover. That means any intel on the position of a ship carrying weapons that can easily strike at ranges of 500-1000 km is fresh produce. Just a day after you spotted that ship, it can have moved almost 1500 km, and if you lose track of it under clouds during your next satellite pass, it can suddenly be 3000 km from where you last spotted it.

    What this means is that the "hard" element here is significant. Even the "simple" element becomes complicated by stuff like night time and cloud cover. All this taken into account, there are very few countries in the world with enough surveillance satellites and processing capacity to actually keep a pin on a ship at sea over any significant period of time.

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