• unexposedhazard
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    2 months ago

    How can they be missing? Either they can be confirmed dead in the rubble or they were ejected and i assume the ejection seats have gps tracking.

    • saltesc@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      They’ll be missing until they’re found dead, or enough time passes where survival is not possible, factoring known survival materials and survival sources in proximity. As of now, the only statement that’s true; they are missing. Everything beyond that is likely or unlikely and you wouldn’t want your search party acting on that.

      • unexposedhazard
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        2 months ago

        I understand that but im surprised by the lack of information. I just expected better from the largest military in the world.

    • Chainweasel@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      i assume the ejection seats have gps tracking.

      I feel like having a detectable signal that an enemy would be able to use to track an ejected pilot behind enemy lines isn’t something they would design into a warplane.
      Even if the contents of the signal were encrypted, they could still track the unreadable signal to it’s source.

      • unexposedhazard
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        2 months ago

        You could just make it passive by default. Only if it gets pinged with the right cryptographic signature does it send out a response. Im sure they have smart people that can figure out shit like this.

      • InverseParallax@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        They actually have location beacons but they are meant to be hard to detect, and mostly signal satellites: https://taskaero.com/task_products/survival-locator-beacon/

        Not easy to track at all, irregular timing and frequencies and low power.

        http://www.wilkoaero.com/uploaded/product/124/catalog_e716f7235e0e04a7b28a3a4cc359d9c30.pdf

        This one is a better description, you disable the locator beacon and leave the GPS distress transmission on for covert use or if downed over hostile territory. It uses a modulation system that’s really hard to detect, because it’s modulating an encrypted satellite signal and sending it back, tracking that is hard, but they’re modulating their GPS location and other data onto the signal so if you have the key it’s obvious.

      • unexposedhazard
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        2 months ago

        I just checked another article and it says that 3.5h later the military still didnt know. Like bro what is that? Thats embarrassing. They have drones, satellites, thermal imaging. How could they not know anything?