2) Why aren't the military craft listening to the local flight channel? Aren't you supposed to monitor local traffic? Especially when flying without a transponder? It's not like you can't listen to multiple channels at the same time!
Also, ATC said they were making irregular turns.
Even for training they set up restricted/military areas in airspace all the time. Not doing it here, in allied (Curacao is part of the kingdom of the Netherlands) airspace is unacceptable. They could have coordinated this in the normal ways so ATC would route civilian traffic around the military operations or talk to the military controllers (who can see both types of traffic) before sending an aircraft through the shared airspace.
This isn't new, it's how military operations are done all the time.
So what's the plan? Just expect everyone to get out of their way?
With effectively no military and the Dutch government being an American lapdog, I doubt the people in charge need to care. They're already out there with orders to commit war crimes, shooting down an airliner or two that gets too close to their military aircraft wouldn't make much of a difference in the long run.
assuming Lieutenant General Evan Lamar Pettus is in charge
"""
Bachelor of Science in Aeronautical Engineering, United States Air Force Academy
Master of Business Administration (MBA), Bellevue University
Master of Science in Logistics Sciences, Air Force Institute of Technology
Master of Strategic Studies, Air War College
Euro-NATO Joint Jet Pilot Training
U.S. Air Force Weapons School graduate
Squadron Officer School
Air Command and Staff College
Combined/Joint Forces Land Component Commander Course
Combined Force Air Component Commander Course
Senior Joint Information Operations Applications Course
Combined Force Maritime Component Commander Course
Joint Flag Officer Warfighting Course
Operational and Leadership Training
Qualified as a command pilot with more than 2,700 flight hours in aircraft including the F-15E and A-10, and multiple combat deployments (Operations Northern Watch, Southern Watch, Allied Force, Enduring Freedom, Iraqi Freedom, and Inherent Resolve).
Completed F-15E Weapons Instructor Course
"""
but yeah, he probably doesn't know Curacao isn't part of Venezuela.
Trump and Hegseth are.
Be real.
(Hegseth may've accidentally texted it to a reporter, though. That'd be on brand.)
It's very clear that the upthread comment was referring to the administration - headed by a guy prone to word salad and outright lies - not the folks way, way down the chain doing the flight plans.
Are you suggesting Lieutenant General Evan Lamar Pettus did that? Or Hegseth and Trump? Because that's clearly what hte parent was referencing. So, please, explain to me how Lieutenant General Pettus deemed the entire ocean north of Venezuela as military operations on their own without the involvement of Hegseth or Trump. Or admit you are wrong.
But Maduro ain't no fool.
What people may not know is that Curacao- like many Carribbean islands- is entirely dependent on tourism. Basically they're fucked.
> shooting down an airliner or two that gets too close to their military aircraft wouldn't make much of a difference in the long run.
Would surely break its back?
Iraq and Iran had been pissant slap-fighting over oil tankers for years. The tanker war ended with the Vincennes incident.
"Ending the Tanker War" is clearly not that. It was the deployment's objective so I fear there are ghouls who would celebrate it.
It's been a problem specifically with US military aircraft for years that they just wander into other people's airspace with transponders off and expect to have it all to themselves.
We should just start shooting down anything big enough to need a transponder that is not using one. Doesn't matter who's in it, doesn't matter what it's for.
Maximum destructive, irreversible response.
Even if you think this is sometimes warranted, have you thought of the edge cases? You seem perfectly happy to be shot down yourself, sitting in your airplane with a failed transponder.
What's gotten into you to want to kill people so much?
It's bad enough that the US already deliberately shoot at their allies (look at all the "friendly fire" incidents the US cause) without them sneaking about in protected airspace without identifying themselves.
If there's a military plane flying around without any identification, it's either a Russian flight up to no good or an American one up to no good.
If anything, it seems to be you who is suffering from an affliction not unlike the one you wanted to recognize in somebody else.
It's strange to frame that as if it's some totally wild interpretation of events (though obviously it doesn't justify shooting down anything that isn't transponding)
I mean he obviously isn't, he's way too fucking dumb and demented for a good supervillain. Nobody would buy a guy looking like that as the "super villain". Sleasy mafia boss wanting to sleep with your preteen daughter in exchange for a favour, yes. Super villain? Never in his wildest dreams.
indistinguishable from what someone in the current administration would come up with
The whole "oh yes, our military is active, but we aren't at war, and yes, the president tweeted about that" spiel is just untenable and ridiculous.
That is why this administration is leaning heavily into calling the drug traffickers "narco-terrorists" and calling fentanyl their "weapon of mass destruction". They're covering their ass legally so they can invade another country without congressional approval.
This is what they're using, the legal theory is basically tren de aragua cartel and their drugs is an "invasion" of the USA and is "sufficiently connected" to the Venezuelan government to trigger the act's wartime powers.
"Police Action" came the terse reply. "We don't talk about that one."
Course by then I'd already signed on the dotted, so...
Last year I went to Grenada, which we invaded in the 80s. They love us for it and have statues of Reagan on the island. Without us, they probably would have suffered the same fate as Cuba.
Where would South Korea be without our intervention? Etc.
learning something new every day…
That Trump is even near the reigns of power is obviously an indictment of many facets of American culture and politics, but it doesn't really wash out to every individual American bearing responsibility the way you're suggesting here.
And its hard to see the nuance from the outside when all you hear are threats of economic turmoil, death, destruction and war. Every action of the american government regarding my country has been hostile so far, so forgive me for loosing my patience with the american public. All that talk about "land of the free, home of the brave", but as soon as their government threatens the "free world" americans fold over like lawnchairs. Its incredibly dissapointing.
We're all stuck with some shared ownership for what our country does even if we detest it.
Many of his ardent supporters are confused as to what we’re doing in Venezuela right now and feel it’s the opposite of what they voted for.
You certainly don’t expect this level of surprises from someone’s second term, but the unprecedented path of his political career has certainly made it much different.
In America one guy can start wars.
I mean, evidently not.
Over 77 million people voted against Trump.
About 73 million were not old enough to vote.
With the exception of people who have religious beliefs prohibiting voting, it’s saying that you don’t feel strongly enough about the differences between the two candidates to pick one. There are some people who can plead various hardships, but most people don’t have that excuse: it really did come down to thinking their life would be fine either way.
I strongly support national electoral vote reform but it’s important to remember that every election really does matter.
Why did Venezuela become what it is today? Every citizen is responsible for what their country turned into.
Ofcourse I do not expect anyone in the Venezuelan diaspora do any kind of introspection or soul-searching.
Venezuela was a beautiful South American Switzerland and it is all the fault of the evil Cubans.
I'm not saying the rest of the world is in the clear though. I think many countries are headed in a similar direction. Hopefully this is the wakeup call we all need to step up and arrest this slide into authoritarianism that's happening everywhere.
Also are they in favor to replacing this dictator with another pro-Trump one?
Current US president have a weak spot for every dictator and authoritarian leader in the world: El Salvador, Russia, Hungary, etc.
Might be not the best candidate to deal with dictators...
Usually people who end up in power are ones best at shooting others invluding shooting civil politicians.
When your options are being poor, starved to death or dissapeared during the last 25 years, you take any chance for a change
Maybe we could write on a legal pad and hold it up in the rear window as we pass them on the highway.
Are they? Where does that come from?
It's unfair given the reality and importance of the French resistance, but, that's where it comes from.
Thanks
Did you even read the comment thread before responding to GP? You're just spreading misinformation.
I read about this incident in detail even before it was posted on HN.
Maybe you should reflect on why people who have lead others in combat have decided that there should be rules to war before you declare that rules of war are a bad idea.
As far as our modern, temporary notion of “rules of war,” go, it’s because it suited the victor and gives them what they feel is an edge and an air of superiority. I don’t say this to be smug either, just look at how well the Geneva Suggestions worked out for the North Vietnamese or the Taliban. They ignored the and won.
Like it or not, the modern nation-state’s notions of Rules of War are going to quickly become a bygone relic of a simpler time, as was a formal British fighting line.
Had the US somehow magically lost WWII, the firebombing atrocities would almost certainly have had a few Air Corp generals executed by the victor.
We could just as well look at the systemic atrocities committed against the Vietnamese civilian population and yet we still lost that war.
Excepting the Gulf War, how far back to we go to find something America has won (somewhat) cleanly?
Who is this magical war-winning nation that only fights fairly?
I'm not saying one can't win without war crimes, I'm saying it simply doesn't ever seem to happen.
No.
The USA is the strongest military power in the world. They are not the underdog. If they resort to war crimes or unfairness, it's not because they are the underdogs; it's because this is what top dogs do. Let's not make excuses for them.
And why would a tanker plane come close to and even enter the hostile airspace?! may be one has to check Hegseth's Signal to get an answer for that, probably it is something like "big plane -> Scary!" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mUbmJ1-sNs.
GPS Lat & Long Barometric Altitude Ground speed & track angle Rate of climb/descent
All updated every second or so.
If our aircaft were flying transponders-on during all these exercises then suddenly went dark, it’d signal imminent attack. This keeps them guessing. Possibly we’re even playing around with having them on some of the time for some aircraft, and off at other times.
We don’t do that with AWACS and such near Russia because we’re not posturing that we may attack them any day now, and want to avoid both accidental and “accidental” encounters with Russian weapons by making them very visible. In this case, an accidental engagement by Venezuelan forces probably isn’t something US leadership would be sad about.
Is that increase in precision much larger than the plane itself? If it's not then it couldn't possibly matter in this application.
Further radar is not a static image. The radar is constantly sweeping the sky, taking multiple measurements, and in some cases using filtering to avoid noise and jitter.
> GPS Lat & Long Barometric Altitude Ground speed & track angle Rate of climb/descent
You get or synthesize every one of those with radar as well.
Military radar is a different beast, but even then you're still trying to figure out what the returns mean. ADS-B explicitly says hey there are two aircraft in a tiny space. Civilian radar is likely not precise enough to identify two aircraft that close.
Although ADS-B is self reported and "vulnerable" to bad/spoofed info.
My CFI and I once saw ADS-B data from one of the startups near Palo Alto airport in California reporting supersonic speeds... at ground level, no less.
Edit: still have it in my email, heh. It was a Kitty Hawk Cora, N306XZ, reporting 933kts at 50'.
Watching Ukraine videos there is new game in town though - relatively cheap IR cameras. Using IR, day or night, you can detect a jet plane from very large distances and just guide missile to the plane computer-game-joystick style.
You answered your own question here.
Military planes doing military things always fly with their transponder off. It would be suicide not to.
Example: https://flightaware.com/live/flight/FORTE10/history/20230821...
US AWACS has the capability to identify civilian aircraft and route military traffic well clear of civil traffic.
https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/publications/us_restrictions...
For navigation, the Mercator projection is useful, because a straight line on the chart is where you go with a constant bearing. Aerial navigation is waypoint/bearing/waypoint/bearing. So most aviation maps are Mercator.
I really wonder how long it will take to rebuild all these burned bridges.
"The occasion has been judged proper for asserting, as a principle in which the rights and interests of the United States are involved, that the American continents, by the free and independent condition which they have assumed and maintain, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects FOR FUTURE COLONIZATION by any European powers." (emphasis mine)
Mostly France and the Netherlands.
I just don't see how we're going back.
at this point, there are unfortunately no "good guys" at the state level.
Oh wait, i mixed up Saudi Arabia one of the US's closets allies with Venezuela.
They simply should stay the fuck away from that airspace then. And by that I don't mean JetBlue.
"We should cure cancer." "I should exercise." "Nations should not torture people."
I understand that this might be disruptive to people who want to drop explosives on other people, and while this disruption is a fantastic benefit, it's only a side-effect.
[1] https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-14/chapter-I/subchapter-F...
It's unnerving, and unbecoming of an egalitarian society.
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/july-3/u-s-warsh...
Mistakes aren't good, but pretending that you didn't make them adds insult to injury.
It's sort of funny that this thread turned into a USA vs Russia debate when they both play the same games. One of them is just slightly better at pretending like they're playing fair and friendly. My take-away from that is once an organized body, be it a country, corporation or religion, gets very large and holds a lot of power, they will inevitably start doing bad things.
Doesn't sound to me like owning your mistake.
Isn't the famous quote:
'I'll never apologize for the United States of America, I don't care what the facts are'.
in the context of that after all?
I don't know about accidental, but if anyone thinks Russia is not ballsy about butchering civilians, they need a refresher on Russia's wars during the last few decades. Last few years would be enough too. It's a principle of their military affairs.
Not sure if you're being subtly apologetic, so I'll elaborate my point. Russian commanders that led campaigns in Syria got nicknames like Butcher of Aleppo and General Armageddon, for not only using scorched earth tactics, indiscriminate bombing, but actually systemically bombing schools, hospitals, field clinics, bread lines. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights called it "crimes of historic proportions." Aid organizations would actually stonewall the UN, because through UN Russia would find out where the bread lines are and would bomb them. These are not accidents, or freak, isolated occurances: it's doctrine. Look at Mariupol. Or, Ukraine in general.
These are all accidents too I assume ? Idk what to expect from people who are currently blowing up random boats in international waters and who just declared fentanyl a weapon of mass destruction lmao
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_Jenkins%27_Ear
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pig_War_(1859)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Football_War
Or we just make them up. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colin_Powell%27s_presentation_...
No, the Netherlands won't consider this to be anything of the sort.
It's the first time I hear someone calls Curaçao a "nation". It's just the normal Dutch island, not even some special status territory. Yes, it's in Carribean, but why do they omit "Dutch" and call it a "Carribean nation"?
That said, I don't think it's accurate to paint Curaçao as just another normal Dutch island the same as any other. It's really a constituent country that's part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, just not a sovereign state or a nation.
It is a 19th century term that rarely applies these days, but still sees some residual usage.
Most people would consider the Netherlands a "country", but now we have a country within that country. Israel is a state, Japan is a state, but there are 50 states in the United States. "[People's] Republic of XYZ" generally refers to a sovereign state, but Russia has republics inside. You can't just call something what the locals call it and expect that your readers will get the picture. Even worse, people are often deeply divided as to what a given territory should be called.
So I will generally forgive journalists for picking a neutral-sounding, ambiguous expression in cases like this. What matters here is that the Dutch control this airspace, regardless of Curaçao's status within their kingdom.
They're still in the kingdom which means they're not completely on their own but nation is a good word.
What "right" are you talking about, is there an agency where we file a claim, and it issues us "rights"?
All people from all nations, tribes and states came from somewhere, sometimes even replacing the local population. Sometimes peacefully, like Anglo-Saxons pushed out local Britons in England, sometimes violently, like Normans invaded and conquered England.
Or like the rich and diverse American Indian history -- tribes came and went, sometimes replaced, pushed out, conquered or assimilated with previous peoples who lived there. Please define "right".
The Battle of Chester has entered the chat.
No one ever "peacefully" pushes anyone else out of their homes.
It doesn't mean some kings declared that land their own (some declared everything), but they couldn't enforce it. So usually it boiled down to main argument whether something is "yours" -- collecting taxes (aka tribute). As long as someone's can enforce collecting tribute, then they deserve to have the title of "owning" it.
Btw, One of the ways historians determine whether migration was mostly peaceful is by looking at archeological gender structure -- if there's a lot of female immigrants (e.g. Slavic expansion), then they are more likely to be moving by whole families. But if there are few females -- more likely it was invasion (e.g. Huns). Not absolute signal of course, as nothing is in history.
Also, it a common for military aircraft to not have a transponder on, especially in the vicinity of threats. Without a transponder the civilian aircraft TCAS/ACAS would not warn about traffic.
Not sure how far off the coast of Venezuela this occurred, but there are some very real SAM threats the Air Force aircraft would need to worry about.
(edited typos)
Which needs to be reported as it then can impact other air traffic to avoid further issues.
Sweet, so they've got less than half a minute to avoid a collision.
64km off the coast of Venezuela.
> Also, it a common for military aircraft to not have a transponder on
Is it actually common for military aircrafts with transponders off to mix and match with public traffic in activate flight regions? One would think if there is threats somewhere, they'd first mark the region as restricted, so no public airplanes go there in the first place, then they can fly without the transponders.
As a pilot, I can tell you it happens all the time. Even in US domestic airspace. Transponder use is optional for the military, and they will turn them off for some training missions. (Or in this case, a real mission.)
No, they don't close the airspace when this is being done.
The pilots of both aircraft (civilian and military) are supposed to be keeping a constant visual watch for traffic. The military aircraft should also be keeping an eye on primary radar.
(Transponder use is also optional for some civilian aircraft, btw.)
How's that supposed to work with Instrument Flight Rules, for which you literally train by wearing glasses which block your view outside the window [0]? And how are you supposed to spot an airplane coming at you with a closing speed of 1000 mph (1600 kmh)? It'll go from impossible-to-see to collision in a few seconds - which is why you won't see any "they didn't look outside the window enough" in the report of accidents like Gol Transportes Aéreos Flight 1907.
The whole point of Air Traffic Control is to control air traffic. Sure, there's plenty of uncontrolled airspace where you do indeed have to look out for traffic, but it's uncontrolled precisely because it rarely if ever sees commercial traffic.
[0]: https://www.sportys.com/jeppshades-ifr-training-glasses.html
The above comment is accurate, plenty of local training helicopter flights will be fully or partly dark (lights and/or transponders off), looking at my receiver's raw output stream.
It depends also on the website you are using to track. I have an ADSB receiver that publishes to multiple tracking websites (the same data, unfiltered), and not all of them publish all the data. Flightradar24 doesn't show most of the military aircraft - I can see them on my local tracking interface but they are not shown on their website.
So in your opinion, that was went wrong here, the military/pilot of the refueling plane didn't actually keep visual watch for traffic nor radar?
(TFA does say 64 km, though.)
Edit: I'm not sure about 64 km. The 64km is for the Curaçao departing flight, but Curaçao's airport is itself 80 km from Venezuela, and they headed north pretty immediately? I.e., … they would have never been < 80 km…?
If you take off from Curaçao and head like 10km west before you've actually left the island, you end up pretty much within 64km of Adicora, Venezuela. Probably what they meant I guess.
Generally, from what I can find, the FAA definition is <500ft, so no, a few miles is potentially an issue, but not what would generally be categorized as a near miss unless there is some situational wrinkle that applies here.
The FAA isn’t primarily concerned with the Air Force. They investigate and address loss of separation incidents that fall short of rheir definition of near misses, they just don’t describe them as near misses.
They also seem to be overconfident in their ability to identify, track and evade other aircraft. Example: the Helicopter pilot who crashed into a civilian jet over the Potomac earlier this year.
The US Air Force should /absolutely/ be worried about Venezuela fighting back, with SAMs or otherwise. This military action and potential war is a travesty and the whole world should condemn and ostracize the USA immediately.