I strongly agree with Mikkel's point that these observation posts are going to   
   be the first targets in a military engagement. It's standard procedure to take   
   out the enemy's intelligence gathering methods as fast as you possibly can.   
   Since these    
   observation posts are not spaceships moving around the star system (orbiting   
   various bodies, yes, they're not under power) all I have to do is fire kinetic   
   kill vehicles at them. They can even be cold for the vast majority of the   
   time. Poof! No more    
   sensor net!   
      
   The other thing that the whole "NO stealth" argument misses is that we have a   
   real life analog of the proposed situation right now. The Juno space craft is   
   around 60ft (10m ish) wide. Most of the time it's not under thrust. Could NASA   
   tell where Juno is    
   if the probe didn't report it's position? Usually when a craft fails, it takes   
   about a week to analyze the data from telescopes that are pointed at where the   
   craft was supposed to be to give a post mortem. Thats with knowing where the   
   craft was supposed    
   to be. Granted, yes, that's with ground based telescopes that have resolution   
   issues because of the atmo.   
      
   Are you telling me though, that if an outsider (not from earth) launched a   
   Juno space probe into our star system, we would detect it? I'd be impressed if   
   we detected it even when firing it's engines. Although we have thousands of   
   telescopes pointing in    
   all directions, we're not looking for it. Even if we received a message from   
   our outsiders saying "Hey, we're launching a probe into your star system." I   
   can't imagine NASA or ESA finding it for weeks or months.    
      
   The point is that it's not a optics issue, it's an information processing   
   issue. Yes you might be able to reduce the amount of information that you have   
   to sift through, but automated detection systems are really dumb. They give   
   false positives    
   frequently and miss things they're no supposed to. If the kind of information   
   processing being discussed is really as trivial as is assumed by the no   
   stealth group, then there would be no need to have a security guard watching   
   CCTVs. There are automated    
   systems that can monitor the feeds, but they give false positives all the   
   time. In the end, you need a human as the last filter. Suppose that we have   
   human level AI at the point these space battles are going on and yes, you may   
   have a better filter, but    
   that's about as speculative as saying we'll have FTL. We don't know what form   
   that AI will take or what it's real capabilities would be. Can it be   
   predictably fooled? Will it ignore certain events that an enemy could exploit?   
   What if I get access to the    
   AI network and hack it? Give it a nasty bug? Then the whole network of   
   satellites go down.   
      
   The other issue I have with the whole "NO stealth" argument is that it should,   
   more accurately be "Stealth is unlikely in a heavily industrialized star   
   system under peacetime situations." But it's proclaimed as an absolute. Many   
   times, authors of science    
   fiction are interested in FTL scenarios and a meeting between single crafts   
   operating alone. It doesn't matter that such a situation is purely   
   speculative, the message of "NO stealth" makes it appear like it's impossible   
   under any circumstances. I know I    
   started to think that way just from reading AR. Now that I've read through the   
   arguments in this group on the matter, I see that the argument is under very   
   specific conditions you would not be able to use stealth in a industrialized   
   system, until you've    
   destroyed the sensor net.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)