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.
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".
They're still in the kingdom which means they're not completely on their own but nation is a good word.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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)
Is there a NOTAM for military traffic on this area?
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.
(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…?
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.)
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.
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.
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.
I really wonder how long it will take to rebuild all these burned bridges.
Mostly France and the Netherlands.
"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)
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...
I know I will get a downvote from this reply
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.
ChrisArchitect•7h ago