Mystery Transport Aircraft At Northern California AFB

I took this shot this afternoon of a plane parked on the tarmac. Its an easy ident, but I will let you guys have at it. Bonus points to anybody that can ident the field and why this plane is there.


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[edit on 2-4-2005 by pantha]

Antonov AN-124?

Vandenberg? Air Show?

Definatly an AN-125
Probably because its a very heavy lifter....mabye just needed somethng really heavy lifted?

It's Onizuka AFS. It's home of the 21 Space Ops Squadron.

Onizuka AFS is the backup control center for the Air Force Satellite Control Network.

Space Ops....does that do anything as cool as it sounds or is it another one of those really cool but really misleading military names?

Nerdling cheated! I swear he did.
He simply clicked on the properties of the picture and saw:

...abovetopsecret.com/forum/staff/fredt/Onizuka.jpg...

The aircraft was a gimmie to those of us familiar with it.

Cheater Nerdling.






seekerof

Actually, I went the long and hard route, looking up Palo Alto then looking up places near it. I figured it might have something to with the shuttles so i looked up Space ops in California.

Would've been so much easier to cheat

Damn it, why didn't I think of clicking on the properties. Oh well maybe next time.

I was just messing with you David/Nerdling.
With time constraints in zooming into and out of topic thread after topic thread [that monitoring thing happening here], I would have simply clicked on the picture first.

FredT was slick by uploading it into staff space, but made one mistake, as I indicated in last post above.






seekerof

One of these landed at our local airport about 6 months ago to deliver some new equipment to the local Mercedes plant, luckily I work about 400 yards from the runway and passed by it every day it was there...and trust me people, ITS FRICKIN HUGE...I spent a good portion of my life on Naval Air Stations (My dad was in Naval Aviation) so I have seen just about every type of military aircraft you can think of up close and personal... as to its size, the pic just doesnt do this plane justice

Originally posted by Nerdling
It's Onizuka AFS. It's home of the 21 Space Ops Squadron.

Onizuka AFS is the backup control center for the Air Force Satellite Control Network.

Nerdling gets the brass ring. Its down the road from me in MountainView/Sunnyvale California. The hangers on the Right are for the ANG unit there. Spec ops/Rescue. On the left out of view is Moffet Federal Airfield home to NASA Ames. (The F-117 and the A-12 spent time in the wind tunnels there.)

If you recall the War of the Worlds Homage, the military pics posted I tool there as well.

[edit on 4/3/05 by FredT]

Originally posted by Seekerof
FredT was slick by uploading it into staff space, but made one mistake, as I indicated in last post above.

I knew I almost posted the base then thought why make it totaly easy. However, its using the base but its not doing anything in relations to space command.

[edit on 4/3/05 by FredT]

Let me guess - it's ferrying supplies to the far east for tsunami support?

I got to tour one back in 88' at a major airshow, did you know that they can set their reverse thrusters in such a way that they can actually back up on the tarmac?

The Mystery plane took off @ 1228 on April 6th. The picture was taken from a Cessna Golden Eagle (We are on a medical transport to Paso Robles (Where Sideways was filmed) flying out of Palo Alto Its a camera phone so its tough to make out but the An-125 is lined up and we were able to watch it rotate off the runway as we flew by.



The reason the plane was at Onizuka, was for Lockheed SPace Sysytems. Its transports missiles etc when US airlife is not avalible. Yes they do build ICBM at that plant. But they do not have warheads attached.