The scandal with the sailor, whose selfie on the social network gave out the position of the cruiser "Peter the Great", deserves a separate article.
Why is Internet access on board a warship dangerous? And is it really the fault of the sailors who posted the pictures of their campaign on the network?
Let's see what the Dutch journalist Hans de Vrey actually saw when he announced the discovery of the cruiser from a photo on a social network.
The scandal must begin not from a sailor, but from the question: is there cellular communication on the nuclear cruiser or available WI-FI? User GUEST, no password required.
Further, everything rests on the issue of transferring data to the mainland. Is it possible to access the Internet using the ship's satellite communications system "Coral" or, say, the small-sized satellite station R-438M? Something suggests that all these devices use coded channels, transmitting information through military repeaters such as Molniya-3 (highly elliptical orbits), Globus-1 (GSO), etc.
You cannot send an e-mail with the help of special communications, not to mention the possibility of "posting looks" on Instagram. Ha ha ha.
Civilian wi-fi and accessible Internet on a battleship are from the realm of fantasy. Judge for yourself, 12 radars are installed on the "Petra", not counting the antenna devices for communications and radio beacons of the helicopter drive system. The equipment is not acidic "phonite", so much so that the problem of RT-systems compatibility is a headache for the designers of warships.
The standard range for Wi-Fi is 2.4 GHz, which exactly corresponds to the operating frequency of the Fregat multifunctional radar (decimeter S-band, 2 … 2.5 GHz). Incidentally, its radiation power is 30 kilowatts.
As for the satellite communications … I immediately remembered the destroyer Sheffield. To eliminate interference during a conversation with London, his commander ordered to turn off the radar. This was fatal for Sheffield.
Since then, computers have changed beyond recognition, but the radio wave ranges have remained the same. Working radars create a flurry of mutual interference.
Does anyone really think that our sailors will turn off the radars of a nuclear cruiser for the sake of being able to put "likes" on social networks?
CONCLUSION: the sailors posted the photo on the network, already on the shore. While, when the mark "Mediterranean Sea, southeast of Crete" no longer corresponded to the real position of the cruiser.
Where and how this photo was posted - there is no information on this. The TARKR has been on the high seas all the last weeks. There was no information about his visits to foreign ports. The most logical assumption is that this selfie (self-shot photo) was taken during another Petra campaign, for example, in 2014.
The camera sees more than the eye
All modern smartphones register GPS data in the properties of the photo, the so-called. geotag. When a photo is uploaded to the Internet, it is not the place where the photo was uploaded (for example, Moscow), but the place where it was taken (for example, Peter) is displayed. If desired, the location function can be turned off, although will there be any practical sense?
You were at this location at the specified time. On such and such a date of the "twentieth" year. Now you are no longer there. Everything!
Aiming missiles at geotags is like shooting without aiming.
Is it possible to determine the exact position of the cruiser according to GPS data /
Glonass (at the moment of taking a selfie)? The answer is of course not. The smartphone only receives signals from satellites, but does not transmit anything in response.
Is it possible to track a cruiser at sea using the included mobile phone in the sailor's pocket? With the same success, you can, while standing on the track, listen to the breath of the driver of KamAZ.
The radiated power of a smartphone is 30 thousand times lower than that of the Fregat radar! It is not yet the most powerful of the shipborne radars.
A note on the capabilities of space reconnaissance assets.
In the ensuing discussion on "VO", a statement arose that the sailor of "Peter the Great" could not give out military secrets, because … there is no secret. Thanks to reconnaissance satellites, the Pentagon knows the exact position of the cruiser at any given time!
It is not true.
Reconnaissance satellites see very little, but, most importantly, they can only occasionally (two to three times a week) fly over a selected area of the ocean.
For some, this will be a revelation.
The earth rotates at a constant angular velocity of ~ 15 ° per hour. An artificial satellite, depending on the parameters of the orbit, makes one revolution in a time of 90 minutes. up to 24 hours. As a result, with each orbit, the satellite “lags behind” by 25 degrees or more. longitude. Having made one orbit, it turns out to be over a completely different place - with each revolution, the projection of the satellite's orbit shifts westward by thousands of kilometers.
An exception is the geostationary orbit, but it is too high (35,000 km, 100 times farther than the orbits of military reconnaissance satellites). From this height, the scout will see nothing but the blurry contours of the planet. Secondly, the GSO passes exclusively over the equator.
To be able to periodically (every few hours) check the situation in any area of the ocean, a constellation of many tens of low-orbit satellites will be required. No other country in the world has such opportunities.
The US Naval Ocean Surveillance System (NOSS) has only three operational spacecraft. Domestic "Liana" consists of a single electronic intelligence satellite "Kosmos-2502". Its predecessor, the Legend ICRC, also did not provide operational data updates due to the lack of spacecraft.
China is making some progress, having launched 14 Yaogan series naval reconnaissance satellites in the previous three years. But even this amount is not enough for constant control over a given square of the world's oceans.
What do the satellites see?
Low data refresh rates are an important but not the only problem in space exploration. As you may have guessed, it is difficult to see anything in detail from a spacecraft from a distance of 500-1000 kilometers.
No need to refer to Google maps - the high resolution images of European cities were taken from an airplane. On a cloudless summer day, when the position of the Sun is not lower than 30 degrees. over the horizon.
There are no images of the ocean at all - all that you see is solid animation (proven by the complete absence of ship tracks).
The quality of satellite images leaves much to be desired. But the main problems of the optical range remain illumination and weather. The satellite does not see anything on the evening and night sides of the planet, just as it cannot see the area of the surface hidden by clouds (a fairly frequent atmospheric phenomenon, isn't it?).
However, it is quite easy to distinguish a large ship in a space image. More precisely, not the ship itself, but its wake, stretching for many tens of kilometers behind it.
But this is only on condition that all this randomly fell into the picture from space. You can just “scan” the ocean space for the presence of any ship until the end of time. Just as it is impossible to detect and continuously, for many hours and days, accompany a sea target from space.
R-times - and the satellite aimed its cameras at a given object! This is only possible in Hollywood action films.
Weak attenuation and transparency of the atmosphere for radio waves contributes to the development of radio engineering and radar reconnaissance. On the other hand, the cost of a satellite with a radar can be hundreds of hundreds of millions of dollars. For obvious reasons, they cannot be built in the required quantity. They are not capable of working in the shadow of the Earth, and only the USSR ventured into orbit with a nuclear reactor (of course, the idea turned into a farce).
The most promising direction has become military satellites of passive electronic intelligence, but they are able to see only emitting targets. And only if they accidentally fall into their area of view.
