If you did the job it is obvious what happened in the Baltic Sea the day after the Malaysian airliner was downed in the Ukraine. The information is in the CNN story, U.S. official: Spy plane flees Russian jet, radar; ends up over Sweden, but the people reporting it do not have a clue what actually happened.

First off, this was a reconnaissance aircraft, not a ‘spy plane’. What’s the difference you ask? If you look up the aircraft [RC-135 River Joint] you will note that is prominently marked as a US Air Force aircraft and even has a US flag on the vertical stabilizer as well as the large letters OF which identify it as belonging to the 55^th Wing at Offutt AFB, Nebraska. I can assure you that the CIA does not use vehicles marked “Central Intelligence Agency, Langley, Virginia” with US government license plates. These aircraft are more noticeably marked to prevent other governments from claiming that they didn’t know they were US aircraft.

Every nation that has radar scans their airspace, for air traffic control if nothing else, so this aircraft was certainly being scanned by Sweden, Finland, Russia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland. Being scanned by ground-based radars is not a cause for concern.

The only radars that “lock on” are associated with weapons systems, not air traffic control, and a “lock on” is a cause for concern for anyone who can detect it. Detection systems may soon become an option for airliners if things continue as they have recently.

Going into Swedish airspace was a good tactical move, as it removes the legal haggling over ‘international waters’ and brings Swedish air defense radars on-line to monitor the situation and record the data.

The Russians just bought a load of trouble for their Tu-95s that do reconnaissance in the Arctic. More testosterone poisoning…

Position: 24.9N 73.2W [10PM CDT 0300 UTC].
Movement: Northwest [335°] near 17 mph [28 kph].
Maximum sustained winds: 65 mph [100 kph].
Wind Gusts: 75 mph [120 kph].
Tropical Storm Wind Radius: 160 miles [260 km].
Minimum central pressure: 1007 mb ↓.

Currently about 190 miles [ 305 km] East of Eleuthera Island.

Here’s the link for NOAA’s latest satellite images.

[For the latest information click on the storm symbol, or go to the CATEGORIES drop-down box below the CALENDAR and select “Hurricanes” for all of the posts related to storms on this site.]