Designing a safe way to share location of a secret ship

There is a secret ship and it is used by pirates as a recharging point. It has a nuclear reactor as a power source and other ships are using electricity. Let's assume in this world stealth technology is more advanced then detecting technology, so the only way to find this secret ship is to know its exact location.

This is a pirate ship, so the pirates must have an opportunity to find it and recharge their accumulators, but at the same time, good guys should not have this opportunity. The secret ship is slow, so if good guys getting its current location, they are sending a plane and no more secret ship.

For now, these are my ideas:

1. The location info should be sent encrypted by request.
2. Single-use keys to decrypt.
3. Keys are obtained through visiting the secret ship

Problems which I am trying to solve:

1. How is broadcasting organized? This is happening in the near future, so it is possible to have the internet(by satellites) in the ocean, but the connection will blow the cover. Maybe it is the radio, but this will blow the cover even more.
2. How to protect the secret ship from betrayal. In case the one with the key will give it to the good guys. How the secret ship can verify it is the same person this key was given to?

The limitations and freedom points:

1. The satellites are not on geostationary orbits, they are Starlink type or similar. If there is a way to alter their architecture so that they won't blow the secret ship's cover it is ok.
2. There is no magic in this world and no aliens.
3. Fossil fuels became recently very expensive, so there are not so many planes flying and everything uses electricity as a power source.

posted almost 5 years ago

Kirill‭

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