Satellite photos and social media make it hard for San Diego warships to hide during wartime

SAN DIEGO — Warships from San Diego and elsewhere have found it next to impossible in recent weeks to keep their location quiet as they headed for the Middle East and the war between the U.S. and Iran.

The March 18 departure of the San Diego-based USS Boxer Amphibious Ready Group, a three-ship task force that is en route to the Middle East with about 2,500 Marines from Camp Pendleton, was captured by live harbor-life cameras operated by San Diego WebCam, and countless people on land using cameras, iPhones and video equipment.

A video clip posted on X (formerly Twitter) shows children at the Rady Shell waving goodbye to the sailors.

Less than a week later, a boater far out at sea posted a photo of the Boxer west of Hawaii. The ship was photographed again when it pulled into Pearl Harbor. The same will occur if the Boxer stops in Guam, which is common for such vessels to do.

The public tracking of the Boxer reflects the rapid and ongoing revolution in wartime information — and disinformation — made possible by commercial maritime tracking apps, easily accessible satellite photos, artificial intelligence and social media.

In mid-February, the BBC used satellite imagery to confirm that the San Diego-based aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln was operating in the Arabian Sea, where the ship would launch attacks on Iran weeks later.

The New York Times also has been using satellite images to show the damage Iran has suffered from U.S. bomb and missile attacks.

Iran has responded, in part, by posting and re-circulating videos that purport to show the Lincoln damaged by counter-strikes. The U.S. Central Command and many defense journalists have dismissed such material as AI-generated propaganda.

The Navy’s Third Fleet, which is headquartered on Point Loma, addressed the matter in a careful tone.

“The information environment is a lot more transparent today than it used to be,” Third Fleet said in an email to the Union-Tribune.

“Between social media, open-source tracking, and commercial imagery, there’s simply more visibility into the maritime domain than in the past. It’s something we’re aware of, and it does add a layer of complexity.

“It’s also a reality we train and operate within every day. Our crews are used to working in an environment where information is more accessible, and we take that into account while maintaining the standards we need to operate safely and effectively.”

That reality makes some content providers uneasy. Planet Labs, a commercial satellite imaging company based in San Francisco, recently began restricting access to some of its war-related photos.

Sal Mercogliano, a maritime historian at Campbell University near Raleigh, North Carolina, supports that action.

“Satellite imagery can catch an entire carrier battle group at sea,” he said. “That can be relayed almost real-time. That’s scary.”

He added that the Navy faces challenges in preventing its own sailors, most of whom are iPhone-toting people in their 20s, from releasing operational images online.

“To be a commander on board an amphibious ready group and know that I’ve got to get every Marine and Sailor’s phone turned off is a chore,” he said. “If it’s not phones its Fitbits, it’s watches, iPads, its their computers. It’s a nightmare …

“In the past, you could turn a ship’s radar off. Throw a few switches and electronically you’re in a back hole. That’s not the case anymore. Your coffee maker may be giving off a signal.”

That last example isn’t absurd. In mid-March, a naval officer aboard a French aircraft carrier unwittingly revealed the ship’s location in the Mediterranean Sea when he publicly shared how far he had jogged on the deck via a fitness app.

Here in San Diego over the years, Barry Bahrami has put six live webcams around the bay with the benign purpose of sharing the city’s beauty with the world. It has inadvertently made him a digital chronicler of the huge role local warships and Marines are playing in the U.S. war with Iran.

His San Diego WebCam network captures the comings and goings of warships along with everything from fishing boats to ferries to kayakers. Viewers also can hear some of the radio chatter that occurs between boaters, warships and marine authorities.

Bahrami, who grew up on Point Loma and works as a cloud computer architect, doesn’t want the public to think of him as a callous contributor to war coverage.

“I don’t see these live cams as any sort of threat or vulnerability to the U.S. Navy,” he said. “Quite the opposite. I see them as a powerful, 4K message to our adversaries: This is why you do not mess with the United States Navy.”

Mercogliano reflected on how different things used to be.

“Back in the day before we had the internet we posted ship arrival, departures, in newspapers,” he said. “There were phone lines you could call to find out what time ships were coming in. During a period of non-war it really wasn’t an issue.”

Today it is.

Mercogliano also operates a YouTube site that explores what’s going on in global shipping, including in the Middle East. He says the CEO of a shipping company recently asked him not to mention that it has a vessel in the Persian Gulf.

“I agreed to do that,” Mercogliano said. “Anybody can find something like that if they know where to look.”

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