Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit
snowwrestler | on: France's aircraft carrier located in real time by Le Monde through fitness app
You can buy satellite imaging.

Operationally, navies with carriers assume that opponents know where they are.

Someone | parent
Commercial image providers can delay their images. See for example https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20260310-us-satellite-...: “American firm Planet Labs PBC on Tuesday said it now imposes a two-week delay for access to its satellite images of the Middle East because of the US-Israeli war against Iran.”
filleduchaos | root | parent
Do you seriously think they were referring to commercial image providers when they mentioned nation-states being able to buy images/tracking?
Someone | root | parent
Yes. https://www.satellitetoday.com/imagery-and-sensing/2025/05/1...:

“BlackSky CEO Brian O’Toole echoed “strong momentum” from international government customers, saying these governments want to move faster with commercial capabilities.

[…]

Motoyuki Arai, CEO of Japanese synthetic aperture radar (SAR) company Synspective said that he sees “huge demand” from the Japan Ministry of Defense

[…]

Speaking to commercial imagery’s role in Ukraine, Capella Space CEO Frank Backes said Ukraine showed the value of Earth Observation (EO) data from a military tactical perspective and not just an intelligence perspective — driven by speed of access.”

filleduchaos | root | parent
I phrased that badly, what I meant is two things in one and I mashed them together:

- do you think nation-states have the same commercial relationship with the ultimate sources of their satellite imagery as the general public? To me that makes about as much sense as thinking that Facebook won't reveal your private messages to specific governments because they won't reveal them to some third-party advertiser.

- do you think nation-states that are your opponents would be getting their services from commercial image providers that are loyal to you? The American companies you list are far from the only ones on the planet that provide satellite imagery as a service.