Missiles Are Now the Biggest Killer of Airline Passengers

Re:Missiles Are Now the Biggest Killer of Airline Passengers by Sanzig on Friday December 27, 2024 @12:30PM (#42524098)

> None of us know for sure but I think the immediate threat of the drones is negligible. If US bases are leaking signals that can be intercepted by drones overhead then these same signals could be just as easily intercepted by cars driving past the bases or nearby homes. And as far as the visible spectrum is concerned all the major players have satellites overhead anyway.

You can also do radio frequency signals intercepts from space, too. You need a big antenna on your satellite, but it's essentially a solved problem. Spaceborne SIGINT goes back to at least the early 70s.

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Re:Missiles Are Now the Biggest Killer of Airline Passengers by Xylakant on Friday December 27, 2024 @01:51PM (#42524861)

The problem with satellites however is that they cannot loiter, so the window in which they can gather data is limited and predictable. They are also essentially fixed on their track - changing orbit requires fuel. Drones (and old-fashioned spy planes) do not suffer from that limitation.

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Re:Missiles Are Now the Biggest Killer of Airline Passengers by ok_dad on Friday December 27, 2024 @04:58PM (#42526452)

Tossing a battery-powered radio in a gallon ziplock into the woods outside the chainlink for the base also works, and would have more loitering capability than a drone.

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Re:Missiles Are Now the Biggest Killer of Airline Passengers by Xylakant on Saturday December 28, 2024 @04:26PM (#42534904)

Clearly. But it would not be overhead and might suffer from shielding by buildings etc.

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Re:Missiles Are Now the Biggest Killer of Airline Passengers by ok_dad on Saturday December 28, 2024 @08:43PM (#42536668)

So throw it in a gallon ziplock inside some rope and stuff and toss into a tree. In any case, a drone has about 15-30 min of loitering time while a radio-in-a-bag has potentially weeks or even months. I know which I would choose for spying on radio transmissions.

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Re:Missiles Are Now the Biggest Killer of Airline Passengers by Agentus on Friday December 27, 2024 @08:04PM (#42527629)

There are geostationary satellites. they loiter.

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Re:Missiles Are Now the Biggest Killer of Airline Passengers by tonyarkles on Friday December 27, 2024 @09:34PM (#42528082)

What they don’t have is high accuracy pointing. If you want to listen to activity on 128MHz at a specific military base from GEO you’re going to be getting a huge amount of interference from everything else in CONUS on the same frequency. At LEO you can do much much better pointing with your antenna.

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Re:Missiles Are Now the Biggest Killer of Airline Passengers by Xylakant on Saturday December 28, 2024 @04:25PM (#42534891)

Geostationary is only possible on very specific orbits - over the equator on one height. Any other orbit cannot be geostationary.

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