[HN Gopher] Aircraft Detection at Planetary Scale
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Aircraft Detection at Planetary Scale
Author : jjwiseman
Score : 23 points
Date : 2025-03-24 20:40 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.planet.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.planet.com)
| yimby2001 wrote:
| If you were wondering why the US stopped bothering with long
| range stealth bombers
| morkalork wrote:
| Like B21?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| When, precisely, did the US stop doing that?
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| Aren't they just waiting for the active camouflaging technology
| to catch up? Normally, we think about that as something on the
| underside of the aircraft so that it appears invisible from the
| ground... but the same principle could apply to the top side of
| the aircraft if it ever becomes viable.
| NitpickLawyer wrote:
| That would only be relevant to commercial-based optical
| spectrum providers. Gov mils have SAR (Synthetic-aperture
| radar) capabilities that would render that moot.
| mmooss wrote:
| The US Air Force has developed, tested, and is now in early
| production of the B-21, a long-range stealth bomber, one of
| their most important projects.
| TrackerFF wrote:
| B-52 is still very much active. As for stealth, B-2.
| baxtr wrote:
| _> After significant experimentation with many different model
| architectures, we determined that aircraft <25m in length or
| wingspan are too small to be reliably detected in medium
| resolution imagery, so we elected to focus on aircraft this size
| or greater._
|
| Build small aircraft.
| tuanx5 wrote:
| Framed this way, it seems obvious that drones and UAV would
| arise out of this "evolutionary pressure" on aircraft.
| tehjoker wrote:
| Of course, if you have more satellites or faster imaging speeds
| you can use higher resolution images.
| 4ndrewl wrote:
| TFA doesn't really explain how is this better/cheaper than
| existing ADSB based technologies, or where one is more
| appropriate than the other (ie which use cases it's targeting)?
| eastbound wrote:
| Authentication? ADSB isn't authenticated. Anyone can emit,
| anyone can spoof, and I probably shouldn't say that over the
| wire. The FAA said in 2012, when the conf at Defcon was made,
| that it had its own secret mitigation.
| 4ndrewl wrote:
| Agree on ADSB, but couldnt you spoof this using paint or 1:1
| scale cardboard aircraft?
| orbital-decay wrote:
| Mentioning the military might give you a hint...
| 4ndrewl wrote:
| I mean, commercial services do filter out mil adsb, but they
| are out there and available. So the use case is tracking
| movements of military aircraft?
| traverseda wrote:
| Not all military planes are going to actually have ADSB,
| obviously. Also even the unfiltered stream requires an ADSB
| receiver somewhere.
| 4ndrewl wrote:
| Yes, that's true, but I'm still struggling to understand
| the market fit for "where are the military aircraft". You
| would presume the people who need to know this
| information (ie those people for whom this is actionable
| data) already know this to a sufficient degree?
| jgilias wrote:
| They do. Until people who have this information decide to
| stop sharing it with you.
| xiii1408 wrote:
| It's not at all comparable. ADS-B is opt-in: you place an ADS-B
| out transmitter in your plane and turn it on to transmit your
| position [1]. You're perfectly free to turn your ADS-B off if
| you like. It's not even required for most of the US, so some
| planes may not have it installed (ADS-B out is only required
| within 30 nautical miles of a Class B airport [big airport],
| inside Class C airspace [medium-size airport], or in Class A
| airspace [18,000 ft above sea level]).
|
| Military aircraft don't use ADS-B out a lot of the time. Spy
| planes are obviously not going to transmit their locations. A
| civilian plane with an electrical failure might stop
| transmitting ADS-B out. Being able to identify planes via
| satellite is a whole separate capability.
|
| [1] In all the planes I've flown, ADS-B is configured to
| transmit whenever the master electrical switch is turned on,
| but it can be configured to be turned on and off at will. See
| this video on a mid-air collision involving an eccentric
| character who liked to fly with ADS-B out turned off:
| https://youtu.be/G5y3JiOEnVs?si=rs5gNMurZ9ssUloS. If I recall
| correctly, he had his ADS-B wired to his nav lights so he could
| turn it on and off at will.
| 4ndrewl wrote:
| That video is great, thanks. Though the ML solution doesn't
| seem to claim to be able to identify individual aircraft,
| just do daily counts of aircraft at specific airfields. Which
| I guess works for military aircraft, but I guess if you're a
| nation state actor you've already got this sort of
| technology/intelligence?
| closewith wrote:
| ADS-B is mandatory in many jurisdictions and for all
| commercial flights basically everywhere. Obviously like any
| transponder, you can pull the breaker, but turning it off is
| likely to beer the end of you're commercial piloting career.
| jaybna wrote:
| From my experience in general aviation, I've never met anyone
| who intentionally turned off their ADSB. It is generally
| wired into the transponder, and the bulk of air traffic
| worldwide happens where a transponder is _practically_
| required. Yes, it is technically not needed but you can 't
| get help from ATC, can't fly instruments in the clouds, and
| you can't fly high.
|
| Sure, it can happen but these are edge cases. Space-based
| ADSB solves this problem with a fraction of the effort and
| much better data. Spooks might need this for military stuff,
| but for the bulk of planes, it doesn't make sense.
| barbazoo wrote:
| > On the commercial side, understanding how many aircraft landed
| in a city on a specific day can help predict economic trends
|
| lol, as if you'd use satellite imagery for that and not just
| (freely) available data on airplane movement.
|
| > assess the impacts of world events - such as the quantity of
| aircraft present for large sporting or entertainment events
|
| wow, there were a hundred small airplanes in Las Vegas, there
| must have been an event there, who knew. Everyone knew and it's
| easily available information.
|
| The application is military. That's the only thing this is good
| for. It's the only thing their screenshots show. Why not just say
| that.
| closewith wrote:
| While I broadly agree, I think the era of general freely
| available data such as aircraft movements is about to end.
| We're entering an era of siloes.
| cle wrote:
| I agree with your conclusion, but I'm really curious to know
| your reasons & predictions here. Can you elaborate?
| cle wrote:
| Is there freely available data on commercial & private airplane
| movement in India, China, and Russia? I'd be very surprised by
| that.
| patapong wrote:
| I wonder what it would take to do this for in-flight aircraft?
| I.e. simultaneously surveying the entire sky and tracking all
| aircraft in flight? This could allow finding downed aircraft much
| more quickly. Would a megaconstellation like starlink with
| cameras suffice?
| amelius wrote:
| They should look into how this can be combined with established
| radar-based aircraft tracking techniques, e.g. Kalman filtering.
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