A US Spy Plane Has Been Flying Circles Over Seattle For Days (thedrive.com)

turkeydance shares Thursday's report from The Drive: A very unique U.S. Air Force surveillance aircraft has been flying highly defined circles over Seattle and its various suburbs for nine days now... The aircraft, which goes by the callsign "SPUD21" and wears a nondescript flat gray paint job with the only visible markings being a U.S. Air Force serial on its tail, is a CASA CN-235-300 transport aircraft that has been extensively modified... It is covered in a dizzying array of blisters, protrusions, humps and bumps. These include missile approach warning detectors and large fairings on its empennage for buckets of forward-firing decoy flares, as well as both microwave -- the dome antenna behind the wing and flat antenna modification in front of the wing -- and ultra high-frequency satellite communications -- the platter-like antenna behind the dome antenna. A communications intelligence suite also appears to be installed on the aircraft, with the antenna farm on the bottom of its fuselage being a clear indication of such a capability. But what's most interesting is the aircraft's apparent visual intelligence gathering installation...

This particular CN-235, with the serial 96-6042, is one of six that researchers commonly associated with the Air Force's top secret 427th Special Operations Squadron... The 427th occupies the same space with a host of other "black" U.S. military aviation elements, most of which are affiliated to some degree with Joint Special Operations Command and the Intelligence Community... [I]f the military placed the aircraft under civilian control to some degree and with an appropriate legal justification, the U.S. military could possibly fly it in support of a domestic operation or one focused on a foreign suspect or organization operating within the United States... It's also entirely possible, if not probable, that the aircraft could be involved in a realistic training exercise rather than an actual operation... The area could have simply provided a suitable urban area to test existing or new surveillance technologies, too, though this could spark serious privacy concerns if true.
Friday an Air Force Special Operations Command public affairs officer confirmed that the plane was one of theirs, describing its activity as "just a training mission," according to Russia Today.

Comments

Sources

[sheramil]

"According to 'Russia Today'"? Really?

Re:Sources

[ckatko]

100% right. Everything from a Russian newspaper is propaganda.

Unlike our own press which is never propoganda. Also, the Iraq war never happened.

Re:Sources

[LostInTaiwan]

My thought exactly. Of all the news outlet available, we resort to citing RT for USAF activities. C'mon, we should be better than this . . . . We have plenty of domestic conspiracy theory news source, no need to rely on Putin's mouth piece.

Drone volunteers needed

[AndyKron]

Someone needs to send a drone up there and check it out.

North Korea Military Action Soon?

[jrmcferren]

This sounds exactly like the kind of equipment you would want overhead in a major combat operation. Both visual and communications intelligence along with the means to detect missiles and possibly defend itself are all capabilities you want during major combat operations.

Why have a drill over a major American City if they aren't trying to spy on Americans? Major cities have a large quantity of communications systems all over the spectrum. Police, Fire, Ambulance, Taxi, and even Amateur radio operate in the ranges of interest. They will be able to receive both local and distant broadcast stations that will change based on position and atmospheric conditions. This is simply an exercise in how to operate the equipment to find and decode various communications. Add a ground component with training signals intentionally generated by the military and this becomes more realistic.

As for privacy concerns, this is very valid and you should remember that no telecommunications network can be completely secure. It is also important to note that any communications intercepts of civilian communications will be concerned with capabilities, not content.

Re:North Korea Military Action Soon?

[Applehu Akbar]

most definitely sounds like a shake-down mission before deployment to the skies over the sea of japan to support existing naval fleet already there.

They wanted to test it over a city with the same Internet penetration as Pyongyang.

Re:North Korea Military Action Soon?

[PopeRatzo]

This sounds exactly like the kind of equipment you would want overhead in a major combat operation.

Well, only 8% of Seattle voted for Trump, so he may be looking for the 92% of Seattle voters that obviously must have committed voter fraud.

http://www.seattletimes.com/se...

Re:North Korea Military Action Soon?

[Frosty Piss]

Boeing Field is where a lot of mods for military plane are done. Operational flights do not take place from Boeing Field. Most likly what's going on is the plane is undergoing mods and they are testing these mods in the local area. See my informed post below, I work in Mission Planning at McChord.

Could very well be training/testing

[93 Escort Wagon]

Joint Base Lewis-McCord is less than 50 miles from Seattle, as the drone flies - so the city is convenient. Heck, Boeing Field is only about 4 miles away from downtown, if there are problems. Plus Seattle is remote enough from Washington DC and New York (not to mention smaller) that the country is less likely to freak out now that the surveillance drone has been outed.

Not to mention that Seattle is a liberal bastion which the current administration probably wouldn't mind messing with a bit.

Re:Could very well be training/testing

[Dutch Gun]

Not to mention Whidbey Island Naval Air Station. There's a LOT of civilian and military air traffic around here. I'm having a hard time picturing most native Seattlites being all that concerned about this. And I'd imagine the current administration has better things to do than to order military flights to mess with the Seattle populous.

I'm not sure why people are surprised by this. SIGINT is part of the the modern military's war-fighting capabilities. Yes, they're probably monitoring Seattle's communications to practice interception of and analyzing said traffic. That they'd be training their people seems like a perfectly plausible explanation to me.

What next, people freaking out that out in the desert somewhere, the military is practicing with guns, bombs, rockets, and other weapons that can kill large numbers of people? Or that the military flies simulated bombing runs over civilian targets? This is what they're paid to do - preparing for all aspects of warfare.

It's probably just looking for a parking space.

[drfishy]

nt

Training for poor visability in an urban center?

[kevmeister]

Perhaps the Air Force is taking advantage of the heavy smoke covering the area for training on techniques for imaging under such circumstances. In actual military use in a shooting war, smoke and dust from combat are likely to make optical observation more difficult. I would assume that on-board tech could enhance this, but it may require real-time tuning by the crew.

The current conditions may provide an excellent opportunity for real-world experience.

Comparison

[JBMcB]

Find an RT article highly critical of Putin.

Now, find a mainstream US news article highly critical of Trump.

Guess which one is easier?

Crap, I'll find you a dozen Fox News pieces criticizing Trump.

Re:Comparison

[globaljustin]

> MSNBC, CNN, WaPo, et al piece that's highly critical of clinton or any other feminist figurehead...

First, ALL OF THOSE HAVE BEEN CRITICAL OF HILLARY

2nd, and more importantly, Hillary Clinton is not a "feminist figurehead". To call her that shows you are ignorant about why people support Hillary and ignorant about what feminism is.

Feminism is the 'radical' idea that men and women should be treated equally.

Hillary's policy positions are to the right of Bernie Sanders, Barrack Obama, and most of the voting populace nationally. She is a left leaning centrist

Re:Comparison

[Kiuas]

Feminism is the 'radical' idea that men and women should be treated equally.

The word you're looking for is egalitarianism.

I have no problem with there being people who identify as feminist and focus on issues faced by women. And there's a large group of feminists who are indeed also egalitarian. But to say that equality between sexes (or races, or any other groups) is a solely feminist idea, or that all feminists support total equality between the sexes is demonstrably wrong. As an example: here in Finland due to our small population size, having Russia right next door and us not being in NATO, all men have a constitutional obligation to enter the armed forces for basic training lasting between 6-12 months. Those that do not want to can enter into 'civillian service' which is essentially doing work in different kinds of public services (museums, ministries etc) for a year. If they do neither and are not relieved of this obligation for a medical reason, they'll face some jail time.

Women can enter into the Finnish Defense Forces since the 1990s, but very few of them do, Now, if the only legit interpretation of feminism was 'equality between the sexes', all feminists would have have to either oppose the current mandatory military service for men altogether, or be for expanding it to cover all women as well, as is the case for example in Israel.

This is not the case however. I have read Finnish feminists who are for expanding it to cover women as well, but many of them are quite fine with the status quo. Other such examples can be found as well. There are feminists who are for mandatory quotas of women in corporate boards, some are even for those in parliaments. The egalitarian position is that sex should be irrelevant when selecting board members or voting because a person's sex is not indicative of his/her abilities or competence. Nevertheless a certain subgroup of modern feminists seem to not realize or care about this and are essentially about trying to force a '50-50" gender split for the sake of 'equality', not caring that such an approach by itself goes against the equality of sexes by making sex a selection criteria. In a simplified case if 10 positions are open and you have 15 male and 5 female applicants, such a person would say that the 5 female applicants must get the position purely to achieve equality of sexes, which in turn disqualifies some men purely because they're men.

Again: the point here is not to say all feminists are like this, or to demonize all feminists or say that it's wrong to be a feminist, it's not. The point is that the phrase 'feminism is the 'radical' idea that men and women should be treated equally' is not always indicative of all people who identify as feminists, nor is feminism a requirement for holding that belief.

Most Likely Scenario

[Frosty Piss]

Boeing Field is where a lot of mods for military plane are done. Operational flights do not take place from Boeing Field. Most likly what's going on is the plane is undergoing mods and they are testing these mods in the local area.

If this were an operational flight, more likly the plane would be down at McChord Field, where I work. We do have the 22 Special Forces here at McChord, but spy planes, usually the big 135 mods, fly in and out of here all the time. Sometimes they stay a few days, who knows what they are up to.

It's interesting that someone spotted this, but the whole "spying on Seattle" thing is a joke. That's not what's happening.

Re:Blue Angles

[R3d M3rcury]

1. Blue Angels
2. Blue Angels fly F-18s. Thunderbirds fly F-16s.