[hnnnnnnng]

This reminds me of the post about SAR satellites being able to peer inside buildings. Setting up a corner reflector would cause a giant bright spot to appear on the radar return. If all the ships did this, it would be much more difficult to track them.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25455852

[notahacker]

I think the key part of that post is 'it would also draw a lot of attention to you'...

Might make it harder to establish the size of crates on your ship with ultra high resolution SAR, but you certainly wouldn't be hidden .

[asdfasgasdgasdg]

Only illegitimate ships would have any reason to do this, so I don't think the tactic could be very effective. If anything, it would make the illegitimate ships even more visible. Legitimate ships already have their AIS turned on, so they are by default trackable and have no need to nor benefit from evading satellite monitoring.

[1_person]

I believe this is false.

I have seen several sailing texts explicitly recommend the use of a retroreflector to improve the radar visibility of small fiberglass vessels.

[asdfasgasdgasdg]

Sorry, I should have specified that only illegitimate ships would have a reason for doing it for the purpose of hiding from scrutiny. I do not know all the other reasons why one might do this, but it seems to me based on the content of this article that the set of retroreflector hits less the AIS signatures would yield only illegitimate ships.

[selfhoster11]

> Sorry, I should have specified that only illegitimate ships would have a reason for doing it for the purpose of hiding from scrutiny.

That smells of "if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear"

[asdfasgasdgasdg]

In the case of maritime travel, this is actually the law of the seas, as discussed in the article. Whether it's true or not that you have "nothing to hide", you are not allowed to sail "under the radar". Same as how you are mostly not allowed to fly without a transponder.

[InitialLastName]

It's more "a rule the US Navy and its agreeable subsidiaries are happy to enforce by strategic novel shipwreck generation".

[zsmi]

I have very limited experience navigating in water but I would think collision avoidance would be an excellent reason to mandate AIS.