๐ฌ๐ง Additional #RAF aircraft are constantly flying back and forth to #RAFAkrotiri in #Cyprus ๐จ๐พ, but it's hard to differentiate any surge for #Afghanistan ๐ฆ๐ซ from regular operations.
I desperately don't want to go over this paragraph by paragraph debunking it; the effort is high, payoff is low.
Because QAnon influencer and #disinfo-spreading rube #MonkeyWerx suckered @boydscott into publishing this, I guess I have publish something so others don't get taken.
๐บ๐ธ The American-registered 1979 Cessna 310-R N314HB is owned by Marc Inc, a surveying company that takes multispectral aerial photography, and can be seen quite frequently seen doing just that, all over CONUS. Their operations over Sioux Falls on 2021-08-11 are not unusual at all
๐บ๐ธ United States Air Force C-17A Globemaster III 95-0102 took off from Joint Base Charleston (or somewhere in that area) at ~21:30 Z using Mode-S, which is unusual; they use Mode-S when they don't want to be as noticeable, like over Iraq. #AE07E5#RCH233
Because they were using Mode-S, their location had to be geolocated using multilateration (MLAT) and only a few coordinates were seen from the ADSBexchange network.
๐จ๐ฆ #RCAF CC-130J Hercules 130604 #C2B549 has been operating in the Middle East supporting various missions for months, like #OpIMPACT, and today I noticed they seemed to change their interpretation of their SOP while overflying #Iraq ๐ฎ๐ถ.
๐จ๐ฆ #RCAF CC-130J Hercules 130604 did not change their transponder from ADS-B to Mode-S when transiting Iraqi airspace, which is the norm for all RCAF flights over #Iraq, including their own previous flights, presumably for OPSEC reasons. #C2B549
๐ฎ๐ถ Let's look at the "layer cake" over #Iraq
( Someone who actually works in ATC will laugh at me, but I don't want to work for ATC ๐ )
Above 35,000ft we have at least 7 airliners, all broadcasting ADS-B, as commercial air traffic does.
We also have one #USAF E-11A BACN 11-9355 #AE4DE1 c/s #BLKWF13 at 36,000ft broadcasting Mode-S; a military plane, in the middle of the civ air traffic.
- No RC-135s in the air over the Black Sea that I know of.
- There could be a U-2 (because there could always be a U-2, they show up seldomly when they're taking off / landing / in transit)
๐บ๐ธ #USNavy Arleigh Burke-class destroyer USS Ross (MMSI:338822000|CS:NGWB), doing 13kn, is being tailed by another vessel labelled "U153" with an MMSI of 45678458 (invalid) #USSRoss#DDG71#6thFleet โ
It would be swell if @JohnMooneyST
influenced his editors to correct the headline at least. No #RuAF ๐ท๐บ aircraft were in Irish airspace at any time. That's misinformation at best, #disinformation at worst; they were in international airspace the whole time thetimes.co.uk/article/concerโฆ
Journalists are regularly fed bad info by their trusted sources who want to mislead them and spin the story, so I can hardly blame @JohnMooneyST who did his due diligence. The Flight Information Region #FIR is the correct term, the international airspace controlled by Irish ATC.
Sovereign Irish airspace extends 12 Nautical Miles out to sea, the flight information region #FIR extends hundreds of miles out to sea. #NORAD is much more diligent in explaining that difference, as they do in the linked PDF below, from a few years back.