I have to give my two bits ! This is definitely an AWESOME idea and when perfected will offer a lot of really interesting possibilities in future mission designs !
How cool would it be to set up a spy satelite over a certain area that can detect certain targets and relay them to the players or other ships ?
Another cool idea would be to model a Predator or some other UAV's to deploy or have deployed over the area to send info to the platforms in the area. These things would be small and pretty hard to shoot down.