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by jolmg 292 days ago
I'm not into aviation, but if this is about planes broadcasting their position publicly, I would imagine it's beneficial not just for the traffic control towers, but also for other pilots flying around in the area that can receive those signals, in case they're ever not within range of a working tower. It works as a redundancy option, for safety.

It also works in case there's unlicensed, radio-silent flyers, which is bad, but you turn a bad situation worse if they can't get info on what other aircraft they might bump into.

The unencrypted broadcasting of their position is like a trailer beeping as they're backing up. It's an alert for others to pay attention to them and stay out of their way.