Comments by "C S ~ \x5bDuke of Ramble\x5d" (@DUKE_of_RAMBLE) on "" video.
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@BlackCeII You're not thinking about it in the right way.
If you have all these signals that are well known, transmitting 24/7 at a constant power, you can set up an antenna to receive it. You record that for a long period of time and compare it to more advanced systems that give you known results (ie RADAR) in order to work out when there is nothing in the immediate airspace... or in other words, to establish a "Baseline".
When something comes near, now the received signal will (or can, theoretically) change as a result. By how much, is slightly irrelevant as long as it's outside of margin of error, it's the fact it does change is the important part. From there you work towards determining how much it changes for what objects are passing by. Then, all that antenna (and receiver) has to do is sit there and report signal values.
Now, place more, and more, and more of those antennas, and you begin to have a much higher fidelity. (see: "Very Large Array" of satellite astronomy, for an analog)
If it can reflect a radio wave, you can then track it (albeit with some effort), and passively.
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@dougerrohmer Yea, but that wouldn't be the point of it, or at least, as I was figuring its implied role to be...
That this would provide the passive detection that doesn't reveal its location like active systems.
So in a time of conflict, when everything except military aircraft have been (presumably) grounded, this could and would cover the large gaps across the country. Therefore , this could track/detect certain threats, or rather, provide some amount of evidence to prevent the "blind" (randomized) or "at timed intervals" power up of systems which would give away their positions. Just like the video mentioned, it was good practice to only power up the SAM/AA's RADAR twice before they'd relocate.
Admittedly, I don't even have any education on this kind of subject, so I'm just arm-chair speculating. It's quite likely this sort of thing, given our current level of technology, wouldn't be necessary or even useful. Even back in the 50s it probably wouldn't have been since our RF Pollution was comparatively almost nonexistent, so there wouldn't be enough background noise to sufficiently monitor in the first place...
Still, I wouldn't be surprised if, thanks to dopler-shift, it could be used for targeting... (I don't know if Starlink user terminals have orbital paths stored in firmware to assist, or if they solely use their dish's 50+ micro-atennas to do the satellite tracking, but that's what's partially inspiring my confidence heh)
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