January 11, 2023

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's trip to Jamaica (Christmas 2022)

The Right Honourable Justin Trudeau is a hard working international leader, and if he wants to take a week off in Jamaica with his family, he sure can - and did.

On 2022-12-26 The Right Honourable Justin Trudeau and his entourage flew from Ottawa to Jamaica on RCAF CC-144D 144620.

The flight to Jamaica kept west of Cuban airspace on the way there.


source: https://globe.adsbexchange.com/?icao=c2c1fb&lat=21.044&lon=-82.644&zoom=6.9&showTrace=2022-12-26

On 2023-01-04 RCAF CC-144D 144620 was picked up by the global network of ADSBexchange receivers at 18:38Z, flying at 38,000ft over Cuba on the way back to Ottawa from Jamaica, which is notable because they avoided Cuban airspace on the way there.

source: https://globe.adsbexchange.com/?icao=c2c1fb&lat=31.885&lon=-78.772&zoom=4.7&showTrace=2023-01-04

The Canadian Prime Minister's travel is a frequent target for Canadian right-wing media who seek to portray it as excessive and costly, but by using the smallest, most modern, and economical jet in the RCAF fleet, the flight details show quite the opposite.

January 07, 2023

Aircraft tracking lessons from Zelenskyy's trip to Washington

The USAF have a couple of tricks up their sleeve that they can, and do, use to obfuscate aircraft movements, including VIP transport. How seldom they use these tricks to hide VIP travel would surprise you, so when they do, they're identifiable and draw attention to the aircraft. The tricks used by state aircraft to avoid observation by open source methods are not limited to the USAF and can be found being used, with varying levels of success, by other air forces worldwide.

The Trip

On December 21, 2022 Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy flew to Washington on an American plane. The plane carrying him was distinctly operating outside the norm, providing the public with a fingerprint of what "abnormal" aircraft operations look like.

Disembarking


The aircraft shown by the press which Zelenskyy disembarked from is a USAF C-40 Clipper decorated in executive livery (an "Air Force One"-like paint job). The USAF have ~12 Clippers in different configurations, but we can identify them all. The US Navy have their own fleet of C-40 Clippers used frequently to move personnel domestically and internationally.

The USAF C-40 Clipper fleet

01-1940AE0945
01-2015AE115D
02-0201AE1165
02-0202AE1167
01-1941AE11F6
02-1942AE11F8
02-0203AE11FA
05-0730AE17EF
05-4613AE189A
05-0932AE189C
09-0540AE503D
(link)

The The USAF C-40 Clipper fleet also use ACARS; example courtesy of https://acars.adsbexchange.com



The Day Before

On the day before Zelenskyy was picked up and flown to the United States, his would-be plane took off from Joint Base Andrews, but didn't show up to open sources until they were over the Atlantic at ~02:14Z, entering British airspace, when they enabled ADS-B; USAF C-40B Clipper 01-0041 was flying as call sign SAM910, and laded at Ramstein Air Base in Germany.

Trick #1; don't fly using a transponder mode that's commonly visible to the public; from the time they departed JBA and arrived in UK airspace they likely flew using Mode-3A/3C; visible to ATC, but not commonly visible to the public. 👇



December 21, 2022

The next day the plane flew to Rzeszów-Jasionka Airport, in Poland, and apparently picked up Zelenskyy to fly him back to Joint Base Andrews. 👇



On the way back, after they passed through British airspace over the Atlantic Ocean, they reduced the amount of data being transmitted by their transponder to exclude their precise location data with ADS-B, and fell back to using simple Mode-S. 👇



Trick #2, stop transmitting precise location data when visibility isn't desired. Without precise ADS-B location data, the aircraft is only transmitting its altitude and identity using Mode-S, which would require multiple receivers to precisely geolocate using MLAT. 👇



You can see the same trick used by the RCAF when they fly operations over Iraq; they stop transmitting their precise location data and fall back to Mode-S reducing the precision with which they can be quickly geolocated.

Example: 2022-11-09 from 15:10Z to 18:22Z RCAF CC-130J Hercules 130604 flew over Iraq using Mode-S, not transmitting their precise location. 👇


Those are the two obfuscation techniques that I noticed were used and stood out to me. Looking for those tricks, they can be used as a behavioural fingerprint to identify the next VIP flight.

"Santa Tracker" stories perpetuate public ignorance.

Yes, bah humbug indeed. NORAD and other worldwide military organisations like having a little fun with the idea that Santa is flying though their airspace, and make cute videos depicting their planes intercepting him, his sleigh, and nine reindeer. Adorable.

However, the public can track almost all of the planes mentioned; most of the public don't know that.

Let's take NATO and allied tankers that are frequently used for refueling QRA intercepts. Portraying aircraft that use a publicly viewable transponders as involved in a Santa escort mission isn't just a bit of fun, it reinforces existing misconceptions about the visibility of military aircraft. For the RAF their Voyager tankers are almost always visible by their transponders, same with the RCAF, and the RAAF. Many, most of the public even, don't know that.

More than being a party pooper, I'd like to raise the bar; have the public discover almost all aviation is trackable in real time, and stop pretending we're living in a pre-internet age.

Just as a sample, you can click any of the hot links below and see right now if any of the following aircraft have been in the air in the past day. The list is a super-set of tankers and transport aircraft (eg RCAF 15004 and 15005 are the only tankers, the other three are just transports)

🇦🇺 RAAF Airbus KC-30A (A330-203MRTT) 

A39-001

7CF864

A39-002

7CF865

A39-003

7CF866

A39-004

7CF867

A39-005

7CF868

A39-006

7CF9C8

A39-007

7CF9C9

🇬🇧 RAF Airbus Voyager KC2 (A330-243MRTT) 

G-VYGJ

406B79

G-VYGK

406D26

G-VYGL

406D27

G-VYGM

406E9F

ZZ330

43C6F3

ZZ331

43C6F4

ZZ332

43C6F5

ZZ333

43C6F6

ZZ334

43C6F7

ZZ335

43C6F8

ZZ336

43C6F9

ZZ337

43C6FA

ZZ338

43C6FB

ZZ343

43C700

🇨🇦 RCAF CC-150 Polaris (Airbus A310)

15001

C2B355

15002

C2B35F

15003

C2B3B9

15004

C2B3C3

15005

C2B37D