Flight radar tonight

[liquidsquidli]

Why are they so many military flights over Lincolnshire and north sea ?

theres many typhoons and 5 canadian air force planes

A week or 2 ago over my area there was some USAF massive aircraft going round in loops in the same route for hours, literally at like midnight, did wonder if I was going to get any sleep, it did eventually land, thankfully. At the start of its flight it had gone all the way up to the Scottish isles up North before coming down and doing all these loops at various altitudes. Haven't got a clue what that was all about! I expect to see increased air traffic in the next few weeks at least...

I’m located on the border of Scotland and England right in the middle of two tactical low flying zones. I’ve heard constant military jets all evening and only a couple appeared on flight radar - also what sound like helicopters. I also noticed a jet2 flight from Newcastle to Nottingham taking what looked like an unusual route flying all across to the west of England before going south east. Weird!

What would a drone be doing over Jordan?

I'm between RAF Marham, Lakenheath and Mildenhall so it can get a bit hectic with the RAF and the USAF rattling the roof tiles.
When we lived in Germany one of the Regiments was going on exercise and they had to move the tracked equipment down to the railway station to be moved to the ranges and the sound of those huge tracked guns moving along the streets was really quite scary, even knowing what was happening.

Big ones doing loops may be refuelling tankers, like one of the screenshots I posted upthread.

That'll be Keir Starmer's. Don't worry - its probably a freebie.

Two tankers (one USAF, one RAF) on the same “towline” (a sort of holding pattern).

There’s a 5000 foot height difference between the two so I suspect they are independently refuelling fighters as and when required…..

Reason we can’t see any fighters is probably because they don’t want to be observed…see previous comment..

I remember when the Ukrainian war began so many military planes from different countries were flying around the skies above Ukraine night after night

What would a drone be doing over Jordan?

Going somewhere they want to take a look at I suppose.

😂😂😂😂😂

No doubt sucking up intelligence by the terabyte (possibly images, almost certainly signals traffic, radar signatures……list is almost endless)

The drone is heading towards Saudi Arabia now - I wonder if it will change course and head East towards Iraq.

I'm so ill-informed 🙄

One thing's for sure, if we can see it on flight radar that USAF drone wants to be seen...

I thought the whole point of drones was that they couldn’t be seen.

Yes I've just now seen that....that looks very similar to what mine was doing!

It seems to have started its flight in the middle of the Med? Will it have taken off from a US aircraft carrier?

@JudgeJ many years ago, I was doing some training with Domino's pizza and had to go to Mildenhall air base branch, so stayed locally in some little chalet type place on a site pretty near the air base. Middle of the night and the whole place was shaking and a noise that sounded like the world was ending, so I, and loads of others, ran out to see what was going on. Turns out it was a Harrier taking off! Good grief that noise! Rude awakening for sure 🤣

Off Malta so could well be

It’s not the default because If they want to fly in civilian/largely civilian airspace (as the tanker out to the south west of the UK was earlier) they have to be electronically visible to civilian aircraft for collision avoidance reasons so they “ping” away and are usually visible to the world via the internet.

You can sometimes (as tonight) for example see Typhoons on flight radar operating in “open” airspace overland or just off the coast, where there could be civvie traffic, but often when they get into the military only airspace over, say the North Sea proper, they go dark.

Those drones can run for 30 hours.

Sometimes if a plane isn’t showing up on flight radar it will be on https://globe.adsbexchange.com. If they’re not on that either, often that means they are USAF or another force rather than RAF.

although we’re not near any air bases, we’re on the route they take from Norfolk and Lincolnshire up to the York moors where they seem to do a lot of training. So it’s fun to work out what they are when a massive roar goes overhead. Occasionally we’ll get some Red Arrows too, which is a treat. Had one this afternoon, from the flight path it looked like a run out/test flight from Waddington after their return from Canada. Even better is when the BBMF goes over, but none this year due to the tragic crash a few months ago.

We often stay near the wonderfully named RAF Donna Nook, and that’s fun when they do practice bombing runs. But you’ve got to be lucky in being there at the right time to watch them, they don’t publish timings in advance.

The drone seems to be stationary over southern Jordan

Oh! The drone has vanished! “No longer being tracked by flight radar” 😯