Earlier quoted context omitted.
Doing a vision only approach would be really cool. A lot of the interesting planes do not have their ADS-B transponder on. The two systems could actually work well together. My system ends up generating a really nice, labeled dataset. I put some initial scripts / notebooks together for building ML models that can classify the different types of aircraft. https://github.com/IQTLabs/SkyScan/tree/main/ml-model/script...
Since 2020-01-01, ADS-B is a requirement in a lot of US airspace (FAR 91.225). Turning it off is allowed for govt / intelligence / law enforcement / military only. Many countries have similar requirements. People often think an aircraft is flying with transponder off because it doesn't appear on FR24/FlightAware. In fact these companies allow blocking aircraft from their service; this is why ADS-B Exchange is better.
Recently there was a post of Google satellite cameras capturing a B-2 Stealth Bomber showing up on Google Maps [1]. Would such planes be captured by a vision system only, and would that be of concern to the government that might be trying to keep it undetected?
1: https://www.google.com/maps/place/39%C2%B001%2718.5%22N+93%C...