Ron Smith wrote:
I had pretty much ignored this thread but........Werner isn't too far off for what is not only possible but probable. Can the systems be made to pinpoint subs? Probably not in our lifetime. Can the systems be made to reliably track part of a sub's course and predict the general area for more refined sensors to search? Yes. I built birds, lots of birds, some you've heard of like Hubbel, GRO, UARS, TOPEX, EUVE, FUSE, COBE, IRAS, Hotbirds 1-5, LEICA-Wind, Gallileo, ISS....many you will never know the names of.
The technologies used to start this process of development in satellite sensors began in the 1970's. One of the above named birds laid the groundwork for oceanographic surface measurement and the measurement of surface anomalies. I have a very vague grasp of how the sensors do their thing but that was not my area of expertise. Anything more I cannot tell you as you do not need to know.
What is above can be gleaned from Aviation Sneak and Space Technology.
Their lofty but undeserved reputation aside, aviation Sneak and Space technologies has repeatedly made fools of itself by publishing sensational articles from the early 1950s to now, covering a range of military technologu related topics, that are now known to be spectacularly wrong, and were distressingly easy to rebut at the time of their publication by anyone with even the most rudimentary aerospace engineering training.
The most recent example that comes to mind involve a alleged American space launch vehicle based on B-70 technology. It can be shown that had the writter of the article believed in what he wrote (by no means an certainty), then he must either have flunked, or completely forgot about, his highschool physics.