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THE US has nearly doubled its number of spy plane assignments to China since 2009, a Chinese research organisation has revealed. The Chinese think tank said the US has also incremented its naval ship presence in China by more than 60 percent since 2009, according to Newsweek. The US Air Force, Navy and Army currently execute three to five reconnaissance flights a day. The South China Sea Strategic Situation Probing Initiative (SCSPI) has found that the total of reconnaissance flights has reached more than 1,500 a year. The think tank was founded in April 2019 and analyses air and maritime...

It seems the movements in Syrian skies are telling a story of an impending confrontation between the United States and Russia. Yes, the planes keeping watch over Syria belong to Russia, but Putin is Assad’s keeper. It is almost as if Assad is the child, and Putin is the father. Make no mistake about it, this looming war will be fought between the US and Russia. At this time, Iran is making decisions for Syria, as Assad is holed up in a Russian bunker. While Iran is filling Assad’s shoes, Russia is filling his skies. Russian jets have been routinely...

Leading Republicans appealed to President Obama this week to reject Russia’s request to fly surveillance planes with high-powered digital cameras during overflights, warning that the new technology would enable the Kremlin to collect intelligence more effectively. Russia’s failure to comply with some provisions of the Open Skies Treaty, which allows member countries to conduct unarmed aerial observation flights over one another, should preclude Vladimir Putin from using planes with high-tech sensors for the overflights, Reps. Ed Royce (Calif.), Mac Thornberry (Texas), and Devin Nunes (Calif.), all of whom are committee chairs, wrote in a letter to the president. “Given the...

The U.S. changed plans and is giving the Jordanian military upgraded AF-802s to use in its fight against terrorism. (US Defense Department/ War Is Boring) They may look like your average crop dusters, but four U.S. planes being sent to Jordan are outfitted with state-of-the-art surveillance gear and laser weapons that will allow the Middle Eastern ally to patrol its lawless eastern border with Iraq, where the ISIS threat looms large. The spy planes, retrofitted 36-foot AT-802 two-seaters, were initially destined for Yemen, where the U.S. had been trying to help the president hold off an Iranian-backed siege. But...

WASHINGTON—The Justice Department is scooping up data from thousands of cellphones through fake communications towers deployed on airplanes, a high-tech hunt for criminal suspects that is snagging a large number of innocent Americans, according to people familiar with the operations. The U.S. Marshals Service program, which became fully functional around 2007, operates Cessna aircraft from at least five metropolitan-area airports, with a flying range covering most of the U.S. population, according to people familiar with the program. Planes are equipped with devices—some known as “dirtboxes” to law-enforcement officials because of the initials of the Boeing Co. unit that produces them—which...

Russian Spy Planes in U.S. Skies By Eli Lake 12 hours ago The Daily Beast The Joint Chiefs of Staff of the U.S. military and American intelligence agencies have quietly pushed the White House in recent weeks to deny a new Russian surveillance plane the right to fly over U.S. territory. This week, the White House finally began consideration of the decision whether to certify the new Russian aircraft under the so-called “Open Skies Treaty.” And now the question becomes: Will the spies and generals get their way? As the United States and Russia face off publicly over Ukraine, behind...

Traitors of Record: The Record of the New York TimesBy Fedora “. . .the most untrustworthy paper in the United States. . .” --President Dwight Eisenhower, referring to the New York TimesIntroductionLast week Senator John Cornyn criticized the New York Times for endangering national security with a James Risen story on NSA surveillance timed to coincide with a vote on the Patriot Act and, incidentally, with the release of a book by Risen. A review of the record illustrates that endangering national security through irresponsible leaks is nothing new for the New York Times. Some particularly outrageous examples are worth...

PALMDALE - In a U-2 flight emergency, Louis Setter's first clue that something was wrong was a sound "something like a small bomb going off." That sound signaled a "flame-out." That would be somewhere above 50,000 feet when the J-57 engine flamed out. In its early days of the Cold War 1950s, the U-2 recorded hundreds of flame-outs - an engine quitting in an oxygen-deprived atmosphere. The flame-out was something like a pilot light going out in your home heating system, but this was the engine quitting more than 10 miles high. "It would take any tiny excuse to quit...

Islamabad, July 12: In an apparent balancing act following concerns expressed by Pakistan over the recently signed 10-year defence pact between India and US, Washington has offered to sell its Hawkeye-2000 surveillance planes to Islamabad. The American offer to sell the planes was made during a briefing held for top Pakistani defence officials on board US aircraft carrier Nimitz, currently anchored 171 km off Karachi coast yesterday, a Pakistan TV network reported. Two Hawkeye aircraft were also flown to Pakistan navy station PNS Mehran in Karachi yesterday to display them for Pakistani defence officials. A special demonstration of the planes...

SEOUL, South Korea (AP)-North Korea on Saturday said the U.S. military increased espionage flights over its territory and deployed weaponry in South Korea this year, allegedly to prepare for a nuclear war against the communist state.

The United States is preparing a huge high-tech surveillance operation against Osama bin Laden, in case he breaks cover in the face of an imminent manhunt involving thousands of Pakistani and American troops. US commanders and intelligence chiefs are lining up an array of spy satellites, U2 spy planes, Predator drones, and ground-scattered listening devices and sensors to detect vehicle movements, Bush administration officials told CNN television. The United States has block-booked satellite capacity to handle the mass of data expected from the surveillance effort concentrated on the mountainous border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan. After a two-year manhunt without...

Israel approves $1.1 billion Phalcon sale to India The Israeli security cabinet approved on Sunday the sale of three advanced Phalcon spy planes to India. The transaction is valued at $1.1 billion, Israel Radio reported. According to local media, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon finalized the details of the purchase agreement during a visit to India in September. Sharon’s four-day stay was the first ever visit by an Israeli premier to the country since both states established diplomatic relations in 1992. India and Israel were close to sealing the deal last year, as part of a defense accord between...

<p>A new spy plane that can hover for hours and give commanders a prime TV view of the battlefield has proved crucial in this week's rapid coalition rout of the Iraqi Republican Guard.</p> <p>As part of the United States' ultramodern air war, the Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicle is being launched from a Persian Gulf nation and placed over the war zone south of Baghdad.</p>

Republican Guard move south of Baghdad to block US SOUTH OF BAGHDAD, Iraq, April 3 (Reuters) - Units of Iraq's Republican Guard were moving south from Baghdad on Thursday to try to block a U.S. advance and to reinforce positions around the capital's airport, U.S. military sources said on Thursday. U.S. spy planes had spotted the Iraqi reinforcements moving south from the capital during the night, the sources told Reuters correspondent Luke Baker. He said that U.S. forces, about 19 miles (30 km) from the southern outskirts of the city, were firing rockets north at the Iraqi positions.

Phoenix, Britain's £300m first unmanned spy plane, is likely to be abandoned after its failure in Kosovo, the only operation in which it has been deployed. "Phoenix is one of the most controversial MoD programmes of recent years. It was 10 years in development, six years late and now looks as though it will be in service for only seven years," David Laws, Liberal Democrat deputy defence spokesman, who has asked parliamentary questions on the unmanned aerial vehicle (uav), said yesterday. Twelve of the drones were lost over Kosovo, at a cost of £200,000 each, either through technical faults or...