3 ms·
> It would have a field of view roughly the size of Houston (50x50 miles) Wait, what? Like, this is a whole bunch of extremely unreliable numbers being stacke
by wredcoll 6mo ago
> It would have a field of view roughly the size of Houston (50x50 miles)
Wait, what?
Like, this is a whole bunch of extremely unreliable numbers being stacked on top of each other to reach an unsupported conclusion, but how is a 50 square mile field of view supposed to find something in the middle of the pacific?
- joha4270 6mo agoThe satellite moves, so every orbit it captures a globe spanning strip that is 50 miles wide (here uncritically accepting the 50 miles figure). And the carrier isn't going to be in the middle of the pacific, its going to want to launch strikes, so its going to be within (say 500 miles) of Chinese military targets, which does narrow down the size of the haystack somewhat. But yes, this is a significant challenge. On the modern battlefield it is usually significantly harder to find something than to kill something after you have found it.
- nerdsniper 6mo agoYou only need to find the aircraft carrier once (say, when it docks) and then the satellite can remain pointed at it forever.
- wredcoll 6mo agoCorrect me if I'm wrong, but satellites... orbit. They don't just fly in arbitrary directions following a target. Even something like a rain storm can lose visual track of a carrier group, or even just night time, at which point you've now got an increasingly large area to search again to find the carrier which can be anywhere inside a several hundred mile circle.