Spy ship

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The USS Liberty in 1967.

A spy ship is a dedicated ship intended to gather intelligence, usually by means of sophisticated electronic eavesdropping gear. In a wider sense, any ship intended to clandestinely gather information could be considered a spy ship.

Spy ship's are usually controlled by a nation's government, due to the high costs and advanced equipment required. They tend to be parts of the nation's navy, though they may also be operated by secret services and masquerade as civilian ships such as trawlers, which could be reasonably expected to remain in a certain area for a long time.^[1]

Ships which are used to infiltrate spies or special forces are sometimes also called 'spy ships'.

1 History
2 Operation
3 Famous spy ships
4 References
5 See also

[edit] History

Spy ships in the modern sense have been used at least since the early Cold War, and are in use by all major powers. Their uses, in addition to listening in on communications, were to monitor nuclear tests, and to give advance warning of missile launches (especially of potential ICBMs).

Tracking vessels for space missions / control stations for satellites / spy satellites also have some of the capabilities of spy ships, and as they are controlled by their national governments, it can be considered reasonable that they are intermittently used for similar purposes.

[edit] Operation

While the USNS Vanguard was not strictly a spy ship, there is some overlap between her capabilities and that of a spy ship.

A spy ship usually stays in international waters^[2]^[3] (or at least outside of territorial waters), so as to not violate territorial borders. From there, it will use its electronic gear to monitor radio frequencies and and try to decrypt coded radio or phone communications, mostly via passive means such as radio receivers or passive sonar. Sometimes, active measures such as radar or sonar may also be used to detect the movement of aircraft, missiles, ships or other vehicles or troops.^[4]^[5] However, this risks revealing the ship's purpose.

As it is located much closer to the surveilled area than a fixed installation (given a close-by shoreline), the monitoring is usually much more efficient and in some respects better than even that of spy satellites.