Thread by @steffanwatkins

I've been tracking aircraft by exploiting their transponder emissions for years, and I still see new things every day. I'm only one of many of people who exploit open sources to tease out untold stories; some people moonlight, and for some it's their day job.

Everyone has their own unique interest. My desire is to show the public, and especially journalists, where the seam between publicly available information and the unknown exists. I have the impression most people don't know how much is at their fingertips in 2022.

The sort of analysis that would previously only be accessible to the intelligence community can be assembled by ordinary citizens with no military-specific training, just access to the right tools (Google Docs, Earth), and publicly available data.

I believe the press needs to play a role in conveying to the public that anyone in the world can listen in and decode Russian Navy morse code messages being sent back to Russia over HF. Anyone can put a little more effort in and triangulate where they're transmitting from.

Anyone can listen in to Russian bombers calling home while carrying out strikes on Ukraine. Radio communications that a lot of the public might assume are inaccessible or encrypted simply aren't.

Anyone can draw am 85 km circle around the targets of HIMARS fire in Russian-occupied Ukraine to determine vaguely where the rocket launches are being made from. The Russian army knows better than us, they're just incapable of doing anything about it.

Anyone with the right skills/tools can look up at the sky and identify spy satellites as they fly over. We would never be given that level of detail by official sources, yet we can safely circulate the information, because the militaries of the world track satellites themselves.

Anyone with an internet browser can track civilian and military aircraft worldwide, and if they're proficient, cobble together some really interesting reports about aircraft usage.

It's up to public affairs to learn to roll with and exploit these changes to their advantage. They should assume Canadians know when every Royal Canadian Air Force plane takes off and lands, and not fear issuing press releases about exercises in kind; get ahead of the message.

Let's use the return of #RCAF CP-140 140114 from Italy where it was doing an Op REASSURANCE rotation as an example. The mission was publicly announced in February.
pm.gc.ca/en/news/news-r…

The last rotation that had been operating out of Italy returned home to #19WingComox 2022-07-02 (Saturday), and by all indications they arrived on schedule, after stopping in Iceland.

https://twitter.com/steffanwatkins/status/1544045762908143619

Public Affairs published a "welcome back" on 2022-07-05, Tuesday afternoon; I guess I shouldn't complain it took two business days to put out a press release. 🤷‍♂️

https://twitter.com/CFOperations/status/1544409432234377218

I haven't noticed any news media publish that the rotations of CP-140 Aurora aircraft the Government of Canada committed to in February have completed their #OpREASSURANCE mission, and the last one is home. They left Italy on 2022-07-01, Canada Day.

It's not scintillating news, but it would be nice if the public understood these international deployments happen regularly and should be commended. Nobody would know why the Block IV upgrades are important if they didn't know the Block IIIs are traveling the world regularly.