You have to be in visual range, or radar range if you have one, which is the horizon plus a bit more depending how high above sea level your are and how tall your target is.

If you’re on a ship, unless you’re using an advanced radar that bounces signals against the ionosphere or you have a meteorological phenomena called an inversion which can curve your radar energy over the horizon a little bit, your radar horizon is surprisingly short, something around 12 nautical miles give or take. And the sea is big and Iran is quite far.

This is one big reason why aircraft are used for surveillance at sea. They can go much higher than any ship’s radar antenna mast every could be which significantly expands their radar horizon. They can also scan a huge area relatively quickly as they can travel much faster.

Because if this fuck up, Iran now has the intel that the French carrier is approaching without even having to send an aircraft out to look for it. If they even still have the ability to do so at this point.

But what if what your are looking for is AI generated articles that don’t provide any trustworthy answers or top 10 lists of products that their manufacturers paid the site to figure on the list? Google is still the best for that.