Given all of the backroads throughout America, especially in the west where long stretches exist in basically empty country, how do you monitor road traffic in these areas, like small convoys and militias bypassing large troop concentrations? Can satellites realistically cover all that area?
Yeah
airplanes
Synthetic aperture radar can show fresh tire tracks on dirt.
Fair enough, but some of those back roads are paved.
They can analyze traffic even if they can't tell what the vehicles are.
That’s not the point. There are balloons tethered along the Mexican border that have SAR. They can analyze traffic movements and establish patterns.
What about smaller waterways? Yeah, people are gonna be watching the Mississippi/Missouri and other large rivers, but canoes can carry recon teams or groups with enough weaponry (mortars, RPGs, stingers, etc.) to lay ambushes or stall major convoys.
Okay but saboteurs don't have to get in a shootout with thugs by choosing to pull down electrical wires and dig up pipelines when nobody is around.
Sounds like comfy operating. I've got a 15ft Grumman (they sure do make good aluminium products) and with three people, plus gear, you can safely navigate a foot-deep river fairly well. Five such canoes could carry a 15 man squad with a mortar and MANPAD, plus camping supplies. Add in high mountains/cliffs, thick forests, and you could probably avoid a lot of observation.
This happened to me when I was in college a long time ago. Still the weirdest thing to happen to me by far.
>Driving from U of Oregon in Eugene back home to Boise for fall break
>get started late, by the time I hit central Oregon it’s dark
>for those not familiar with the area, once you get east of the Cascades, it starts to get real isolated real fricking quick
>driving on 2 lane highway through the dark when I hit something in the road
>probably some shit that fell off someone’s truck
>engine starts making weird noises and check engine light comes on
>FRICK
>start looking for place to pull off and try to find a mechanic
>pull onto this farm to market road
>drive about a mile and see a farm supply store with the lights still on
>couple locals sitting outside, drinking and smoking
>I get out and try to introduce myself, but they’re acting bizarre as frick
>start losing their shit over how nice my car is and how they never see anything like it out there
>…my car is some rusted piece of shit imported from god knows where
>next they start talking about how amazing my shoes are
>my broke ass literally bought these shoes from some tweaker in downtown Portland after my old ones gave out
>creeped out by these guys, decide to go inside
>kind looking old dude at the counter
>when he sees me walk in, he starts ranting incomprehensibly about some numbers that grow in the soil (?)
>wtf is this place
>look around the shop, pretty typical looking country store
>look in one of the seed bins
>it’s filled with fricking gummy bears
>alright frick this
>rush out of there, decide to take my chances with the car
I’ve driven down that road multiple times since, but I’ve never been able to find that weird fricking gummy bear store again. I try not to think about it.
See, even when the crazy people were white you were still able to get out of there safely. Imagine if it was joggers or beans.
Backroads really are the best way to travel. Less crowded, more scenic, interesting towns. First time I ever saw a sidehammer rifle was at a gunshop in Rifle, CO.
Stupid cityslicker
>look in one of the seed bins
>it’s filled with fricking gummy bears
are you moronic? that's literally normal candy store shit.
HOLY SHIT I know what store you’re talking about. Wasn’t that the one that used to be owned by someone else?
Rivet Joints and E3s routinely fly "training missions" all over the US. They wouldn't even need to bring satellites into it.
Explain to me how a recon force ie going to get into the American interior without resorting to technology that does not yet exist.
Obviously we're talking about a civil war situation.
Oh so magic
literally isnt going to happen
>one of the most patrolled borders on earth
Not since 2021.
You're moronic.
Red Dawn.
>Government propaganda for the Afghan war.
I just tried watching the 2012 version last night. I couldn't stop laughing once the NK paratroopers started dropping. I made it another 5 minutes and shut it off.
At least they didn't hurt China's feelings
>buy a plane ticket
>outfit civilian equipment
>???
>profit
>location data from cell towers
>traffic cameras and other sensors for road conditions are quite ubiquitous these day, even monitoring state highways in mostly rural states in addition to US highways and the interstate system (there was a scandal back in 2020 where Utah was going make a deal with a company and give them live feeds of all the traffic cameras in the state for crime prediction)
>ISR drones/planes and SIGINT satellites that detect radio traffic outside the normal baseline for an area (Hawkeye 360 is a civilian service that can do this, so the military definitely has something better)
>OSINT from social media, because this isn't the middle east and people in all those small towns still have smartphones, with cell service providers even shutting down old 2G and 3G towers now and replacing them with 4G
There's actually frick tons of data available.
I really want to see a write up covering all the new and exciting intelligence stuff like this from Ukraine once the war is over. Hell, I wouldn't be surprise if we see more companies pushing to monetize cross country traffic data going forward (if they aren't already doing so) considering all the other data they monetize including traffic data in cities.
>implying any of that stays up in an active shooting war
>implying a civil war would be between the US military and militias and not a Roman civil war scenario of US military vs. US military
>implying militias wouldn't be tied into a BCT's intelligence and fires enabling them to ambush enemy BCT maneuver elements with entire artillery battalions and get live updates on enemy troop movements via satellites and drones
wew
I wonder how all the Mormon Glowies will react. Could sabotage systems in ways unforseeable.
They'll do whatever it takes to establish Mormon Afghanistan in the Utah-Wyoming-Idaho area.
>b-but in my fantasy militias have all the powers including the power to nulify other people's powers
If militias had anywhere near the capabilities and level of support necessary to achieve half the shit people go on about on /k/, muh civil war wouldn't even get to a shooting stage.
Name a single major civil war that didn't involve major splits in a pre-war military.
>it'll totally be a major civil war with massive support that will allow the people rebelling to walk away with control of military satellites, while at the same time the people rebelling go full Butlerian techno jihad on current civilian infrastructure that people use daily
How exactly you think insurgents will have any significant level of support while destroying cell towers and traffic cameras for monitoring road conditions during storms?
>he thinks hearts and minds is a legitimate military doctrine
When you're shooting DPICM wildly into urban terrain all because a recon element "thought they saw something idk" - hearts and minds tends to not really matter anymore.
>but in my fantasy the remaining US Army will act like Russia
How many drone strike victims were civilians just minding their own business?
As long as it's not on US soil (even if against US citizens) the citizenry will be neutral at worst - but mostly supportive - and the US military obviously understands that.
Wasn't there a case of traffic cameras being used to track Russian movements in Ukraine during the initial invasion?
Stalin would be climaxing in his grave at the sight of this capability
put mines out. anywhere there's a crater and smoking remains of vehicles, good chance someone drove by there
This is the natural state of roads, Zhang, no one has to monitor them.
>GPS logging from your car/smart devices
>license plate readers
>cell towers
>surveillance aircraft
>>GPS logging from your car/smart devices
Battery out, inside Faraday cage.
plate readers
Mud.
>>cell towers
Nonissue.
aircraft
Disguise with shelf liner.
Next?
It's not happening, Wang.
I personally can't wait to potentially disembowel and crucify chinksects in the event they try something.
>LP/OP's
>route reconnaissance
>patrolling operations
>checkpoints
>surveillance teams/technology i.e. drones, cameras, movement sensors, etc
Also
>bypassing large troop concentrations
>implying passing an entire division+ in an area defense is as easy as "just drive around them"
lmao
wide open country is the perfect terrain for every weapon system the government has.
you'll need something rugged and forested like the "blue ridge mountains."
>*drops the entirety of the 10th mountain division in your area*
nothin personal
Oh yes please do. Every deer stand for 100 miles will shit out 40 years of stockpiled .270
We'll frick the ones we don't kill.
Satellites today can give you meter level accuracy or more. So it can track all cars on all roads. As the satellites pass over the earth every few hours.
You don't. There are not enough soldiers or planes on the planet to secure the road system of the United States.
>be me
>battalion commander put in charge of an AO spanning 100km^2
>send a two man sniper team to overwatch a road with sight lines stretching on for tens of miles
>sniper team sees convoy heading down the road over ten miles away from their position and will continue to see them for about 30-60 minutes
>they call for firemission being guided by predetermined TRP's
>I send out a small qrf to mop up the remains of the enemy
>roads stay secure
>rinse repeat
recon's a b***h ain't it?
You set up a camera. Maybe a seismic sensor. The traffic out west all flows through choke points unless you're taking about the great plains. Cameras are really cheap nowadays.
I’m not sure what you’re getting at here. The east has a ton more backroads, infrastructure, and old bootlegger roads to circumnavigate military operations.
Ever flown over the west? There’s extreme natural choke points created by geography followed up by extremely wide, barren areas with only one man made route through them. Drones would dominate the shit out of anywhere east of San Bernardino all the way to the rockies. That’s why most fictional US invasion media has the west coast almost completely separate from the East Coast and Midwest in terms of capitulation.
>like small convoys and militias
Why would you travel in a convoy?
if everyone knows where they're going, going in a group is just going to attract attention
just drive spaced way out in single cars and blend in with normal traffic
fricking morons
trying to form a "convoy" turns you into a military force, your military force is not going to beat a large conventional one like the US military
take tips from the goat frickers
With troops up close
>Recce troops just counting vehicles
>Ground surveillance radar
>Infiltrators/sympathizers just calling them in
Remotely
>JSTARS, other airborne radars
>Drones overhead
>Glow in the dark MASINT, concealed sensors, detecting spark plug emissions, detecting diesel fumes/engine noise/tire tracks, whatever you can think of
>Secondary methods, cell phone or radio emissions, recce finding waste or refuse piles
Even back in Vietnam they had equipment that supposedly sniffed out human body odor and detected truck spark plugs. Today there's even more numerous ways of detecting vehicles. If you can't actually secure routes then you can't be sure if they have sensors or even mines on them.
Satellites get more and more capable of watching the whole globe with each passing day, as they mine data and increase in quantity with newer lenses and electronics. The end game of NRO/NSA/Five Eyes/etc. is a literal panopticon across the globe.
Federal agent glow so bright
nice try Ivan Von Jingping