"jkochko68" wrote in message
...
Well I recall that when the Air Force was considering a shuttle
program of their own and building a launch
complex out at Vanderberg they had a abort base up in Alaska so if
something went wrong the shuttle could land
their after only one orbit or even abort to it if it could not make
orbit for some reason. There was a requirement that
it had to have about 200 miles of cross range min. so it could make
use of different fields not directly along its glidepath.
Those larger wings may even help it bank hard on reentry back and
forth to high AOA to bleed to bleed off its speed.

The 200 mile cross range was b/c thats roughly how far away one pt. on
Earth would be after a 90 minute orbit.


Very interesting but entirely irrelevant to the subject at hand


More like 100 and the earth rotates under it so it doesnt return to the
same spot. Any given location will be visited once a day or so.
The very detailed pictures that recon birds return paradoxically
makes searching the returned pictures for the carrier group
a painstaking job. Imagine using Google StreetView to scan a
medium sized town for a single vehicle.

Satellite orbits are predictable and minimising their overflight is
a tactic that any competent naval commander understands.

Yeah but dodging multiple sats.,,, and I seriously doubt
our intel would be studying photos of the ocean. More likely they
would
look at thermal and radar blimps the computer brought to their
attention.

What radar blips ?

Radar satellites are an entirely different animal to recon birds. They
require
large power sources and typically have low orbits that decay rapidly.

The former USSR spent large amounts of cash on RORSAT's , they were nuclear
powered and rather expensive. Now there are a number of SAR satellites out
there
which are typically used for weather surveillance. In theory such birds can
be used to track ships wakes but you still need to confirm you are dealing
with
a carrier not a container ship.

U.S. Air Force and Space Command are developing a satellite constellation
known
as Space-Based Radar which will have martimime recon capability however the
first operational spacecraft will not be launched before 2015 and the plans
call for a
constellation of only nine satellites


Work is proceeding on using commercial SAR for semi-autonomous ship
detection systems.
Dedicated algorithms can yield information on ship size, shape and even
speed
based on Doppler effects extracted from displaced ship wakes in the SAR
signal.
but these systems are not yet fielded in quantity and still only give you an
indication
of ship size and speed. There are an awful lot of bulk carriers, Panamax
container ships
and tankers that will provide similar radar returns to a carrier.


Its
likely the task force would not be using the shipping lanes so they
would further stand out.


Not a wise assumption if you consider such a force a serious threat.

Keith