101–110 of 571 posts
Think about it: suddenly, in the middle of the desert in Afghanistan/Iraq/Syria/Niger/Djibouti a bunch of people start using a fitness tracker every morning (and the clusters show up in Strava). Did some village suddenly jump on the "get fit" bandwagon? Or could it be a bunch of US Marines/SpecOps/etc people trying to keep fit.
This is the modern way to die of stupidity — use your fitness watch app to log your miles on an online app instead of locally — so reveal your operational location.
The US had one of its secret bases in Afghanistan fully mapped for anyone to see by its residents logging their on-base runs.
Now, the French aircraft carrier is pinpointed en route to a war zone.
Yes OPSEC is hard, and they should be trained to not do this, but it seems to be getting ridiculous. If I were in command of such units, I'd certainly be calling for packet inspection and a large blacklist restriction of apps like that (and the research to back it up).
Local first is not just a cute quirk of geeks, it is a serious requirement.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Even Russia and Ukraine doesn't bomb third party countries in war just for supporting the other side, that is a crazy stupid thing to do and any country behaving like that should never ever have nukes. To the extent this might be true, it seems like it would be even more true of the two countries that unprovokedly bombed a third party country to start the war in the first place.
> two countries that unprovokedly It isn't unprovoked, Iran current regime has chanted "Death to America" since its founding. USA has plenty of reasons to attack here which is why you don't see more international outcry or support for Iran. Iran are on their own.
In any case, somebody chanting a thing isn't causus belli, nor is publicly wanting someone to die.
> why you don't see more international outcry or support for Iran
What you don't see is international support for the USA or israel's war on Iran, hence why the strait of hormuz is effectively closed right now.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's pretty hard to hide it from anything . Its surface is ~17000 m² (a tennis court is ~260 m²), and is 75 m high (~ 25 floors building - probably half of it under water, but still). And that's a mid-sized carrier according to Wikipedia. It's not built for hiding at all, that's what submarines are for (and that's where our nukes are).
But the ocean is very very huge to find it still.
A carrier strike group isn't meant to be stealthy. Quite the opposite. It is the ultimate tool for power projection and making a statement. If it is moving to a new region it will do so with horns blaring.
Obviously troops shouldn't be broadcasting their location regardless, but this particular leak isn't as impactful as the news is making it out to be.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree with Ukraine, but only when it comes to the first two or so years of the war, by now most of those that didn’t respect those rules (I’m talking both sides) are either dead or missing some limbs. With that told, just recently the Russian MOD has started applying heavy penalties to its soldiers close to the frontlines who were still using Telegram and/or the Ukrainian mobile network (?!), so it looks like there…
It's also a morale issue. It's easier to get people to huddle in a cold and damp hole if they can play video games and watch anime.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Mediterranean maybe (although I'm not sure), but it's actually very hard to find a ship, even as large as an aircraft carrier, in the ocean. The empty space is just too big. Satellites have hard time taking pictures of every square mile of a sea to find any ship, yet alone the one you need.
You would only need to find it once, potentially at a port, and then you can follow it.
Not all of them.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe stupid question but how would Iran do it? They don’t have any ships in the area and also don’t have any satellites that could take pictures, right? Or does getting told by Russia count?
I bet you could do it with a big enough expense account with Planet Labs and the compute power to process the images these days. Track it forwards from the last public port of call or *INT leak like this strava data. 3.7m accuracy seems like enough to do it. It's not enough to target it directly but it would be enough to get more capable assets into the right area a la the interception of Japan's ships when they atta…
This is a common problem across militaries. It is difficult to stop soldiers from leaking their location if they have access to mobile phones and the Internet. Individual cases are usually a combination of naïveté, ignorance, and an unwillingness to be inconvenienced. It still happens in Ukraine, where immediate risk to life and limb is much more severe than this case.
Well, wouldn't you know, in Iraq there were all these square paths on the map. Yes, it was Americans jogging just inside the perimeter of small bases.
Just like with the aircraft carrier, these bases were not secret but it shows how locations can leak unexpectedly.
I seriously doubt there is a country on earth which lacks the capability to detect an aircraft carrier's presence in the Mediterranean sea. We are not talking about stealth vehicles.
I seriously doubt there is a country on earth which lacks the capability to detect an aircraft carrier's presence in the Mediterranean sea. We are not talking about stealth vehicles.