A JetBlue flight from the small Caribbean nation of Curaçao halted its ascent to avoid colliding with a US air force refueling tanker on Friday, and the pilot blamed the military plane for crossing his path.
“We almost had a midair collision up here,” the JetBlue pilot said, according to a recording of his conversation with air traffic control. “They passed directly in our flight path … They don’t have their transponder turned on, it’s outrageous.”
That’s comforting that they could be that way and be running silent from ATC and other aircraft anywhere. What could go wrong?
It’s not just US aircraft. Most military aircraft have the ability to turn off their transponders. That’s kinda SOP when flying a mission.
The main difference with many US military aircraft is that they have a tiny radar cross sections, so ATC can’t “see” them, not just can’t “hear” them. That refuling plane should have shown on radar, transponder or not. That thing is literally about the size of three barns, not the nuclear physics kind, and literally can’t have much in the way of radar stealth the way the plane it was refueling probably had.
The other main difference here is that normally our joint chiefs, and secretary of defense
wardon’t have their head up their asses about OPSEC. Normally such an operation would have not come anywhere near civilian flight paths, but these assholes literally said that the troops should be “drawing fire.”Civilian aircraft can also turn off their transponders, not that it’s relevant.
ATC not having radar is not an issue, the US military most certainly had multiple radars in range. They could tell the tanker to divert way earlier. They wanted an incident.
As for normalcy, the US is part of a small group of countries that has shot down civilian airliners.
Most of the world doesn’t have decent primary radar, especially out over international waters like where this occurred. Likely just a low frequency radar that can say “yup, there’s something out there” but not “he is right there.” The world works on transponders.
Right. I actually don’t have an issue with them not having a transponder on. That was the least of the problems. But not being aware of standard traffic around an airport… come on.