'Unprecedented Mass Deployment' of Warplanes Across Atlantic Fuels Fears of US War on Iran
'Unprecedented Mass Deployment' of Warplanes Across Atlantic Fuels Fears of US War on Iran
"You don't spin up this kind of skyward muscle just to flex," said one observer.
Wheeee! This looks expensive! Good thing us poor fuckers didn't vote for healthcare! Or anything else but incompetence, war, and corruption!
"Fuels fears of"
Brother that is a deployment
This has to be a bluff. That many military planes with their transponders on. I think they're just trying to send a message.
First, they are probably actually participating in this annual training exercise: https://www.europeafrica.army.mil/Defender/
They have to run transponders over the US so that commercial aircraft know their position and don't collide. Once they leave our airspace, (or in special circumstances where the airspace is cleared) they will run without. These are just basically civilian transponders they run to "be polite" - they are also filtered by most flight tracking sites. Some (such as the one pictured) allow one to look at the raw data (and likewise you can run an SDR transponder receiver yourself at home to see what aircraft are over you.)
Sometimes they will bluff the transponder value and say things like, "hey I'm a Cessna going 400 knots" but most of the time they just say who they are.
Fun fact! The transponders don't work over the oceans anyway, since there's nobody on the surface to pick them up, you're basically a ghost once you leave land, (surrounding aircraft can see each other, however) think about that during your next trans-ocean flight. They increasingly have satellite Internet these days to have some form of comms, though.
Nah, that exercise only involves a handful of KC-135s. We're seeing 30+ KC-46 Pegasus and KC-135 Stratotankers being strategically redeployed. This is something else.
We were also running transponders on tankers even when they were refueling aircraft around Ukraine (albeit in friendly airspace).
The refuelled aircraft (at least some of which were F-35s, if not all, as someone geolocated a picture during the conflict) were not running transponders, though (and in the case of the picture of the F-35, had the radar reflectors removed).
Military transport and refueling planes often fly with their transponders on, that's not unusual. Combat aircraft, not so much.
"It's Fun to Stay at the Y.M.C.A." starts playing in the background.
"You don't spin up this kind of skyward muscle just to flex," said one observer.
While I'd be inclined to lean towards us bombing Iran in the near future being increasingly likely, there was Operation Paul Bunyan back in 1976.
In response to the incident, the UNC determined that instead of trimming the branches that obscured visibility, they would cut down the tree with the aid of overwhelming force.
Ford and his advisors were concerned about making a show of strength to chasten North Korea without causing further escalation.
Operation Paul Bunyan was carried out on August 21 at 07:00, three days after the killings. A convoy of 23 American and South Korean vehicles ("Task Force Vierra," named after Lieutenant Colonel Victor S. Vierra, commander of the United States Army Support Group) drove into the JSA without any warning to the North Koreans, who had one observation post staffed at that hour. In the vehicles were two eight-man teams of military engineers (from the 2nd Engineer Battalion, 2nd Infantry Division) equipped with chainsaws to cut down the tree.[citation needed]
The teams were accompanied by two 30-man security platoons from the Joint Security Force, who were armed with pistols and axe handles. The 1st Platoon secured the northern entrance to the JSA via the Bridge of No Return, while the 2nd Platoon secured the southern edge of the area.[citation needed]
Concurrently, a team from B Company, commanded by Captain Walter Seifried, had activated the detonation systems for the charges on Freedom Bridge and had the 165mm main gun of the M728 combat engineer vehicle aimed mid-span to ensure that the bridge would fall if the order was given for its destruction. Also, B Company, supporting E Company (bridge), were building M4T6 rafts on the Imjin River in case the situation required emergency evacuation by that route.[citation needed]
In addition, a 64-man task force of the ROK Army 1st Special Forces Brigade accompanied them, armed with clubs and trained in taekwondo, supposedly without firearms. However, once they parked their trucks near the Bridge of No Return, they started throwing out the sandbags that lined the truck bottoms and handing out M16 rifles and M79 grenade launchers that had been concealed below them.[4] Several of the commandos also had M18 Claymore mines strapped to their chests with the firing mechanism in their hands, and were shouting at the North Koreans to cross the bridge.[14][15]
A US infantry company in 20 utility helicopters and seven Cobra attack helicopters circled behind them. Behind these helicopters, B-52 Stratofortresses came from Guam escorted by US F-4 Phantom IIs from Kunsan Air Base and South Korean F-5 and F-86 fighters were visible flying across the sky at high altitude. F-4Es from Osan AB and Taegu Air Base, South Korea, F-111 bombers of the 366th Tactical Fighter Wing out of Mountain Home Air Force Base, were stationed, and F-4C and F-4D Phantoms from the 18th TFW Kadena Air Base and Clark Air Base were also deployed. The aircraft carrier USS Midway task force had also been moved to a station just offshore.[7]
Near the edges of the DMZ, many more heavily armed US and South Korean infantry, artillery including the Second Battalion, 71st Air Defense Regiment armed with Improved Hawk missiles, and armor were waiting to back up the special operations team. Bases near the DMZ were prepared for demolition in the case of a military response. The defence condition (DEFCON) was elevated on order of General Stilwell, as was later recounted in Colonel De LaTeur's research paper. In addition, 12,000 additional troops were ordered to Korea, including 1,800 Marines from Okinawa.[7] During the operation, nuclear-capable strategic bombers circled over the JSA.[citation needed]
Altogether, Task Force Vierra consisted of 813 men: almost all of the men of the United States Army Support Group of which the Joint Security Force was a part, a South Korean reconnaissance company, a South Korean Special Forces company that had infiltrated the river area by the bridge the night before, and members of a reinforced composite rifle company from the 9th Infantry Regiment. In addition to this force, every UNC force in the rest of South Korea was on battle alert.[citation needed]
How was this hardly 50 years ago, but I've never heard of it at all? Very selective about modern history in schools i guess
I mean, I'm interested in military history, but I wouldn't have put it in a standard curriculum. It's not really a globally-significant event. You don't have a whole lot of time allocated for history, much less military history, and you gotta triage what you cover. We had a very small amount of time for World War II, which was much-more significant, and I don't think my classes even did the Korean War at all.
EDIT: It looks like The Operations Room did a video on YouTube on Operation Paul Bunyan. They kinda rely more on memoir stuff than would be my ideal, but they're usually at least decent. I don't think I've watched this one.
EDIT2: No memoir stuff in this one.
Another analogy can be made to Operation Praying Mantis, wherein the United States destroyed half of the Iranian Navy.
Is this a red line