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0 pointstempest_19d ago0 comments

A carrier battle group can easily be seen and tracked by commercial satellite constellations.

At minimum they travel with 6 or 7 ships and leave a wake a mile long and they only go tens of miles an hour, it isnt a speed boat.

Here is an Indian carrier (formerly Russian) on google maps and the US ones are large https://www.google.com/maps/place/14%C2%B044'30.3%22N+74%C2%...

I think people forget how many satellites are pointed at all parts of the planet. They are used for crop reporting and weather and all sorts of shit. It isnt the 1960s where only the super powers have them and they drop rolls of film.

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Schiendelman19d ago

Satellites aren't pointed at "all parts of the planet". They're generally taking regular photos of known locations, when the right type of satellite passes over. That's where you get lucky shots like the one you noticed. Then that satellite has to orbit, and there isn't another one nearby just ready to take another photo. Then the carrier changes direction...

tempest_OP19d ago

Sure any single one but there are many companies, some with hundreds of satellites in orbit at any given time who will point it where ever if you pay them enough

Which is why you get things like this https://www.cnbc.com/2026/04/05/satellite-firm-planet-labs-t...

An aircraft carrier is not that fast, if you see it once you know roughly what radius of circle it is going to be in for a while (ignoring the fact that they are likely going somewhere for a reason its not their job is to say out of sight)

edit: aha that company literally lists it on their website https://www.planet.com/industries/maritime/

wredcoll19d ago

This is literally the point: it's easy to tell them to point a satellite at beirut and get pictures every 3 hours or whatever, it's much more difficult to tell them to point at a location in the middle of the pacific ocean... because you don't know the location in the first place.

Beirut doesn't move around a lot. Carriers do. While there are a lot of satellites pointing at the earth at any one moment, this isn't some kind of Hollywood super screen showing a real time image of the entire pacific. You just see whatever small patch the satellite happens to be pointing at.

And again, ignoring the part where america would probably start shooting down satellites.

shmeeed19d ago

>because you don't know the location in the first place

Do you seriously think China doesn't track US carrier movements?

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