Happened to pop on to the royal navy site.
Home | Royal Navy

They've got up a real fancy widget that allows you to see where their ships are real time on a map.
You can view by ship to see what they're doing, where they are etc. E.g The HMS York is doing 'Training'. Clicking a link for "locate HMS York on a map" It pulls up a map with a blip on it.

This is all very well and good, and its nice to see where everything is on a world view, but the other part of me thinks - holy f* are you crazy?? Surely this renders all the adverts about Per Sec and not updating on facebook etc completely redundant, if you're going to post to the world where everything is and what they're doing? Though no nuclear subs fortunately...

Not really - its essentiall an AIS feed which anyone can access. It can also be switched off easily enough if needed.

Do you honestly think that is in Real Time?

Do you think they might turn off the Ships when they don't want them to be seen.

Are you really thick or just pretending to be.

Hey, guess what, I know where the Army has a load of blokes as well, and it's on google earth!!!

Hrmm...

It would appear I've just had a bone moment :/

W..ah..?..??

Originally Posted by gladwda

.... Though no nuclear subs fortunately...

All the subs are nuclear subs. Oh, and they do publish details of where they are if you really want to know.

I'd no idea the Women's Royal Auxiliary Balloon Corps were out in Bastion.

As "Verticalgyro" so rightly says the AIS facility that is seen on publicly available sites at no cost usually have a time delay of at least one hour. The professional version, which is only available by subscription (3300 Euros per annum) to those with a vested interest in shipping, is only around a minute or so behind time unless of course the user has extra equipment such as an AIS Receiver/Decoder attached to their computer in which case the positioning is in real time.. Similarly as "Jim30" says there is the facility for the system operators to "blank" a particular area of sea if it is deemed to be sensitive. Something that was the case during the Libyan altercation - where an area of the Mediterranean Sea south of Malta was "blanked" for reasons of security.

I thought AIS transponders were only fitted to merchant vessels (and private vessels who wished to have them), not warships. I also thought that the info was real-time (less any transmission delays) for all users. Either that, or the boat I saw it on was exceptionally well equipped.

It's the RN own website. They can put whatever they like on there, it's to attract recruits so they can see how they might "Sail the Seven Seas". It doesn't make it real or "real-time".