This Mysterious Military Spy Plane Has Been Flying Circles Over Seattle For Days
August 5th, 2017Via: The Drive:
A very unique USAF surveillance aircraft has been flying highly defined circles over Seattle and its various suburbs for nine days now. Nobody at the DoD seems to know who the aircraft belongs to or what exactly it is doing flying so many missions over the Seattle area. But based on its visibly exotic configuration, and information collected by open source flight tracking websites, we can get a good idea of its capabilities and guess as to what it’s up to.
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Above all else, these types of surveillance systems are especially good at capturing and monitoring so called “patterns of life” over and around a target area. This is an especially useful tool when collecting intelligence on an enemy target or group of targets over time and can open up new possibilities when it comes to the process of finding, fixing and finishing the enemy.
Simply put, instead of recording a snapshot in time such as what a satellite can furnish, persistent airborne surveillance sensors capture massive amounts of exploitable information over hours and days. So if a picture is akin to a thousand words, this persistent type of wide area aerial surveillance is equivalent to an entire novel or even a series of novels.
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Taken together, these responses would seem to point to what many observers might have already speculated immediately, that this was a mission or training exercise in support of the secretive Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) or a civilian agency such as the Central Intelligence Agency. 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.
Wonder if the DOD is trying to figure out the components in the atmosphere over Seattle? After all, as of 6-Aug-2017 Seattle hasn’t had rain in 40 days, and had the highest temps last week since the 1890’s. Weather Wars?