Posted on 12/13/2019 6:26:40 PM PST by ameribbean expat
Not only were they among the last Boeing 707 derivatives ever built, but they are also packed full of EMP hardened systems and highly skilled crews that would literally hold the world as we know it in their hands during a major crisis. Although advanced and highly secure satellite communications and line-of-sight data-links are critical parts of their capability set, a far more cumbersome system is used to talk to ballistic missile submarines hiding deep below the waves. The deployment of this fascinating capability was caught today by a plane tracker that was monitoring an E-6B operating off the coast of New Jersey.
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The E-6B's primary VLF antenna is just over five miles long. It also has a shorter one that is deployed via a trapdoor arrangement in its tail. The VLF antennas are stabilized with a drogue on its trailing end. The idea is to get the antennas as close to vertical as possible for maximum transmission effectiveness. This is done by putting the aircraft into a very steep and tight banking turn at slow speed and above 20,000 feet, not far above the aircraft's stall speed. These turns are repeated, oftentimes for hours at a time, as messages are sent.
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A submarine trails its own long VLF antenna to receive the transmission. If the submarine is too deep to receive the signal, the VLF antenna can be floated to a shallower depth via a buoy while the submarine remains underway at greater depth.
This maneuver is precisely what was spotted today by one eagle-eyed aircraft tracker and open-source intelligence enthusiast, @vcdgf555. An E-6B was operating off the northeastern coast of the U.S., hundreds of miles out to sea, and executing a VLF communications deployment maneuver.
That’s serious as a heart attack stuff right there.
Thanks for serving. MAD is a thing.
You’ve been posting on FR for at least 6 years or so and obviously trying to become fluent in Vietnamese. Here’s a tip, the word for city is spelled with an h, not a k....Thanh Pho.
Everythings great when your downtown.
Thanks.
I’m using my phone, it uses an English spell-check. So it irritatingly, sometimes “corrects” perfectly good Vietnamese.
But thanks, very much.
Although I’m still a very long way, from speaking Vietnamese.
Super secret sub hunting plane leaves all its squawkers on and goes on a mission where anyone in the Twitterverse can monitor it over the internet ?
Interesting. Thanks for posting.
I wonder how the vertical is established for the antenna by flying circles?
Is the antenna near vertical up or down from the elevation of the orbit? Is the drogue like a parasail?
I read an account of the Shemya flights, spook planes of course. Quite a place and quite a bunch of fliers.
You must have gotten more TDY than you wanted.
Ditto Fascinating!
I decoded the message: “Drink more Ovaline”
Great time, lots of fun... Thanks for coming by, UGH!
Stationed at Tinker AFB, OK.
The article has confused the E6B Tacamo Boeing 707 with the E4B NAOC “Nightwatch” A/C. There are four E4B A/C Boeing 747s and these are called “Doomsday” planes.
You got it.
Blues Brothers is a metaphor for what? All out war? Just curious...
The article has confused the E6B Tacamo Boeing 707 with the E4B NAOC “Nightwatch” A/C. There are four E4B A/C Boeing 747s and these are called “Doomsday” planes.
Circular polarization is used in satellite communications, microwave frequencies,...for VLF the wavelength of approximately 10 miles makes circular polarization impractical.
“If called upon, they would directly facilitate the end of the world. But the fact that they are so capable of suddenly carrying out that mission ensures that they won’t ever actually have to.”
Why the HELL is it so hard to get anyone in the media to understand the above? I had it figured out in high school, and I suspect the same for most people here. We went through a lot of debate during the Cold War about whether to have nukes or whether to freeze their levels, or whatever. The ONLY question we should have discussed was how many MORE we needed, so as to assure that the Soviets understood that a nuclear war would not end well for them.
Thank goodness for leaders like Hussein Obama who understood that reducing the number of OUR nuclear weapons would lead to the rest of the world reducing their nuclear weapon stockpiles. Then we could spend more for reducing the devastating effects of global warming which will end the world just like nuclear weapons will, only more slowly /sarc
Strength through weakness is the Democrat Party way!
Jake Grafton
Flight of the Intruder
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