thread drift
Maybe this Sentinel story should have had its own thread but ...
It is worth mentioning that no Maritime Patrol aircraft ever ID'd a target on its radar or any other sensor ...
The people operating the sensors did. They did so because they had been trained to do so by others with experience in doing so.
Even the best trained hunter of kidnapped schoolchildren is probably not going to be prepared to tell (on radar) the difference between a Mistral LPD and a Korean Vehicle Carrier, or a Stergushchy frigate and an oligarch's yacht.
Fixing up the jet to acquire a 'maritime' radar contact might just be possible - making sense of it however is another game altogether.
To suggest that one of the Sentinel's strengths is "...long range radar ID of surface contacts ..." is unlikely. Please tell me they have not sold some spurious automatic ID software!
I hope this will be seen as an experiment into what is possible, but I fear it will be 'sexed-up' into being an actual capability.
When the MMA comes into service it will have with it a plan of how to train the operators. Buying the kit is just the easy part.