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filleduchaos | on: France's aircraft carrier located in real time by Le Monde through fitness app
...literally yes (to the latter)? Is that not exactly why modern warships have to implement things like measures to reduce their radar cross section? If you could actually just rely on "ocean too big" then there would be no need for that.
OneDeuxTriSeiGo | parent
It is in part for small crafts (frigates and corvettes) but for pretty much anything larger there's no concealing those ships.

The primary reason however for minimizing radar cross section and increasing radar scatter is to harden protections against radar based weapon systems during a conflict.

Even if the ship is still visible in peacetime operations, once electronic countermeasures/ECM are engaged, it gets an order of magnitude harder for guided missiles to still "see" the ship.

Depending on the kit, once missiles are in the air the ship and all of their friends in their strike group/squadron is going to start jamming radar, popping decoys, and trying to dazzle the missiles effectively enough for RIM-174/SM-6, RIM-66/SM-1, and RIM-67/SM-2s to intercept it without the missiles evading. And should the missile make it to close-in range then it's just praying that the phalanx/CIWS takes care of it.

And if everything fails then all that jamming and dazzling + the reduced radar cross section is going to hopefully result in the missiles being slightly off target/not a complete kill on the vessel.

So they still serve a purpose. Just not for stealth. Instead serving as compounding increases to survival odds in engagement scenarios.

filleduchaos | root | parent
But what you're describing is stealth. "Stealth" doesn't mean "invisible". Humans wearing combat fatigues aren't literally invisible either especially when moving, they're just harder to track/get a visual lock on to aim at.

The point still stands that you cannot rely on "ocean is too big for anyone to find me" because it very much is not.