How do you hide an aircraft carrier?

It seems that modern mariners seem very frightened by other boats coming close. Way back when I was a very lowly cadet the training squadron (we were training enough officers back then to need three frigates to get half of them to sea,) we did rule of the road practical training in the strait of Gibraltar. A while later when I had completed submarine training class and we were running south past Arran and I was on one of my first unsupervised OOW on the bridge. It was night and I reported to the captain there were fishing boats from green 40 to red 90 I will feel my way past them. He mumbled OK and told me to get on with it. Today every one would be panicking. I might add there were still over 50 boats in the Clyde herring fleet then
 
Anyone with eyesight so bad that they can't spot an aircraft carrier without electronic aids should probably not be trying to wire up bombs.

I can't see an aircraft carrier at the moment without electronic aids and I'm wearing my glasses. In fairness I'm not trying to wire up a bomb either. I think you've rather missed the point - having the carrier proudly broadcasting it's position on marinetraffic.com would mean that any potential attacker would know where he or she needed to be to get to a location where they could see the thing.
 
To be honest since the USS Cole attack I think the military have every right to be twitchy about security.

Still I and chums always smile re the Type 45 ' Stealth ' destroyer; there's a complete T45 mast with Sampson radar as a test rig on Butser hill just inland of Portsmouth - it shows up better than any nav daymark we've ever seen :)
 
To be honest since the USS Cole attack I think the military have every right to be twitchy about security.

Still I and chums always smile re the Type 45 ' Stealth ' destroyer; there's a complete T45 mast with Sampson radar as a test rig on Butser hill just inland of Portsmouth - it shows up better than any nav daymark we've ever seen :)

Andy, I think you mean Portsdown Hill as the only thing on Butser Hill is a bloody great comms mast which is 12 miles + inland.
 
A merchant ship can turn her AIS off if she feels threatened.

What is being hidden in plain sight is a major shipbuilding fiasco.

When I saw her leaving the Forth, on AIS (Vessel Finder), it showed up as "Warship, function unknown", which seemed to describe the ship remarkably well. :D
 
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I can't see an aircraft carrier at the moment without electronic aids and I'm wearing my glasses. In fairness I'm not trying to wire up a bomb either. I think you've rather missed the point - having the carrier proudly broadcasting it's position on marinetraffic.com would mean that any potential attacker would know where he or she needed to be to get to a location where they could see the thing.

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When the US carriers are in the Solent you just look for the AIS signal of the tanker moored alongside which is transmitting all the time! :rolleyes:
 
She seemed to turn on her AIS on exit from Rosyth, kept it on at anchor and only turned it off again after she had dropped the pilot and was somewhere north of Dunbar.
 
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