Thread by @steffanwatkins

"China promptly issued a protest on Monday after a US Navy P-8A Poseidon reconnaissance plane flew through the Taiwan Strait"

Monday, their time, is still 2023-02-27, ie today.

Did anyone already identify which #USNavy Boeing P-8A Poseidon that was this morning?

https://twitter.com/SCMPNews/status/1630203240875716608

Very likely, yes. 👇

https://twitter.com/AIYeyENGDdJkjTr/status/1630034052920254470

So far there seem to have been five different #USNavy P-8A Poseidons that have taken off from #KadenaAB, 4 of which conducted operations near China today, using the following Mode-S numbers to uniquely identify themselves.

#AE67BE
#AE67DA
#AE67DC
#AE683D
#AE686A (unrelated)

I'm trying to figure out which one crossed the Taiwan strait:

#AE67BE
departed 00:09z
returned 04:13z
a duration of ~4 hrs

#AE67DA
departed 00:20z
returned 07:25z
a duration of ~7 hrs

Discounting these for the moment because their flights are later in the day:

#AE67DC
#AE683D

My chips are on #AE67BE.

Interestingly, all the #USNavy P-8A Poseidons are using Mode-S, not transmitting precise location data with ADS-B. 🤷‍♂️

https://twitter.com/SpeckleBelly64/status/1630070037485592577?s=20

If you're looking for a replay, you can find it on @FlightRadar24, which confirms it's #AE67BE that transited the Taiwan Strait, right on the line of the FIR.

The P-8A Poseidon's Mode-S transponder is being geolocated using multilateration, so don't freak out when it veers over to the Chinese side, that didn't actually happen, it's well within the margin of error when estimating the location using #MLAT.
flightradar24.com/blog/how-we-tr…

For the thread

https://twitter.com/davidalexander5/status/1630216980962705409?t=FgkWBLPB1GEkd5nqcaXcXg&s=19

I suspect a bunch of 7th fleet officers will be very upset if I mention that as an innocent passage in international airspace they could have broadcast their precise location the entire time using ADS-B, like the RC-135s do off the coast of Russia.

https://twitter.com/steffanwatkins/status/1630260543301775360

Let's look at 24 hours of P-8A Poseidon activity worldwide, 2023-02-27 UTC.

43 believed-unique P8 aircraft were detected by the #ADSBexchange network in 24hrs:

🇬🇧 x2 (100% Mode-S)
🇳🇴 x1 (100% ADS-B)
🇦🇺 x6 (100% ADS-B)
🇺🇸 x34 (18% ADS-B, 82% Mode-S)

globe.adsbexchange.com/?icao=43c91b,4…

These are modern aircraft, if they're using Mode-S it's to obfuscate their location, but that is not against civilian ICAO rules.

NB: Nothing is stopping the US Navy from doing more than the minimum and using ADS-B, like the RC-135 fleet does when they're near Russia.