alt Hacker NewsI really don’t want to work for the defense industry, but I have to admit that they do have very fun problems to solve. You know there are people at NRO who are dedicated to ship tracking via satellite. I assume they can easily track ships without cloud cover, but how do they do it when it’s cloudy? Heat signatures? Synthetic Aperture Radar? Wake detection?
Replies
I'd be mildly surprised if they not using SAR for this all the time, not only during cloud cover. The Soviet Union was using radar satellites (the RORSATs) to track carriers decades ago.
> You know there are people at NRO who are dedicated to ship tracking via satellite.
I feel like there must be people at NRO whi are dedicated to sub tracking via satellite.
I wish defense paid better. The problems are infinitely more interesting than ads. And it’s not like social media is a saint anyway.
when it's cloudy, heat signatures won't help, infrared is blocked by clouds
ELINT and SAR.
For the first one, just look at wikipedia lists of government says that fly as little triangular constellations, like Yaogan 9A, 9B, 9C on this list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yaogan
Those are ELINT birds that use multilateration to spot emitters globally.
SAR can spot wakes far, far, larger than ships using the same techniques as SAR measuring ground erosion, etc.