Originally Posted by
onetrack
The only embarrassment here is that a 250 tonne aircraft can disappear off the face of the Earth, despite vast amounts of incredibly-potent surveillance and tracking technology, in the form of radar, satellites, submarines, and ships - by a sizeable number of nations.
This is likely to happen more often. Systems that are being developed now
rely (depend) on the aircraft being able to automatically tell the ground systems whey are it is either by SATCOM link or by VHF link. If those aircraft systems fail or are turned off then the aircraft in the 'brave new space based world' will become invisible. Everyone seems to expect someone else to pick up the tab of surveillance systems to follow what are called 'non-cooperating' targets. But primary surveillance costs money especially the long range primary surveillance and it doesn't work out of line of sight of land - nobody wants to pay for it.