Have you tried taking a cell phone photo of a moving object far in the distance and with less than ideal lighting? You won’t get a good result if you can even capture it.

Photographing something like this would probably require a DSLR type camera with a great zoom/telephoto lens. I would expect they have that equipment on military ships, but I don’t think the ubiquity of cell phone cameras has significantly changed the ability to photograph this kind of phenomenon.