N94AR over Colorado; USAF academy related?

N94AR
photo of plane in Colorado
photo of plane at Plant 42 with pod
official website

Not much you can say about the flight other than the loops were probably under GPS control given the repeatability.

The planes from Twinotter are used for many projects, so if you have a photo of one configuration, it may not be flying with the same configuration at a different time.

What is the relevance of this?

OpViper7
What is the relevance of this?

Well the fact that this aircraft and others like it are test beds for black projects, and other classified research, I say its pretty relavent. Take a look at the links. This aircraft was photo'd at plant 42, with a weird ass pod in the front. Nows it flying circles over the academy for some reason. Now we get to speculate what its been doing, and what it was doing over Colorado springs.

reply to post by boomer135

So the question is about an aircraft that is circling over Colorado Springs, Colorado, and if it is a military aircraft this is strange why? Lets think, there is Fort Carson that sits to the south of Colorado Springs. There is the Cheyenne Mountain Air Force Base, aka NORAD, sits to the west in Cheyenne Mountain. There is the Air Force Academy that trains pilots and officers for the USAF in the North part of Colorado Springs, Colorado. There is Peterson AFB, that sits out East of Colorado Springs, and shares the airport with the local city. Then there is Shriver AFB that is out east of that. So there is 1 US Army base, and 4 Air Force Bases that are out in that area. And if it is doing the loop, there is 2 possibilities, one is that it is on a training flight for the pilots, or and this is also possible, it is being used in conjunction with the local fire departments as a fire spotter, to prevent another out break of wild fires in that part of the state. I don't think that this anything out of the ordinary.

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I didn't consider Cheyenne Mountain. It is actually about 5 and a half miles north of it, but it could still be related. A lot of time planes orbit out of earshot. Of course, that is only if snooping on unsophisticated targets, i.e. FBI snooping on criminals.

N94AR is a civilian aircraft that does military and government contracts. It doesn't have any single particular mission, well except to get more contracts. So a pod on the front one day, a camera hanging out the side another day, etc.

Pods, bumps, and other add-ons are developed on test beds. For example, if you are going to make a pod for some UAV (announced or secret), might as well just attach it to a some conventional aircraft where the engineers and techs can play with it while it is in the air.

BTW, take note of the odd hours they flew this.

I doubt this is a fire spotter aircraft, unless they are developing a new sensor. Like I said, the Twin Otters appear to have no static mission. They just equip them as needed. Either this one or its twin spent time in Afghanistan, and probably not looking for fires.

I found one UAV notam:
!DEN 08/383 ZDV AIRSPACE UNMANNED ACFT 1.5 NMR BRK282012 3000 AGL/BLW

BRK is 38.9445067/-104.6334656

The center of the circle is about 240 deg true and 11nm. The magnetic correction is 13E. Doesn't look like a match. Note that UAVs when flying in airspace not approved for such use need a chase plane. But I don't think they would use the Twin Otter for a chase.

The idea is to identify movement patterns by photographing on a regular basis when downloaded into an elaborate program so unusual activity can be determined.It requires a LOOOONG time to get the mapping down, but if they ever get facial recognition it will happen far faster.

Flightaware has a similar orbiting flight on 8/21, though shorter in length, and another one scheduled for 8/22 (technically stupid oh clock tonight) starting at 1:10 mountain, basically an hour from the time I'm doing this post.

N94AR

gariac
Flightaware has a similar orbiting flight on 8/21, though shorter in length, and another one scheduled for 8/22 (technically stupid oh clock tonight) starting at 1:10 mountain, basically an hour from the time I'm doing this post.

N94AR

Actually its flown the exact same thing on the 16th, 20th, 21st, and here in about five minutes. Kind of strange...N94AR

Here's some stuff I dug up just cruising wiki...

As mentioned above, Schriever AFB is located in the area. Well Schriever is the home of the Air Force Space Command's 50th Space Wing. But more importantly, it is home to a squadron that's main base is at Nellis AFB. Welcome to the 527th Space Aggressor Squadron, part of the 57th Adversary Tactics Group!

527th SAS

Now we all know of the 64th and 65th aggressor squadrons that fly "enemy" F-15s and F-16s during red flag exercises. But I had no idea that there was another aggressor squadron that did the same thing, except it uses space based technology. Excerpt from wiki:

Its mission is to train US, joint and allied military forces for combat with space-capable adversaries preparing USAF, Joint and Allied Forces for combat through realistic threat replication, training, and feedback through specialized and certified space-capable aggressors. It operates adversary space systems, develops new tactics, techniques and procedures to counter threats, and improves the US military space posture.

The squadron attempts to replicate enemy threats to space-based and space-enabled systems during tests and training exercises. By using Global Positioning System and satellite communications jamming techniques, it provides Air Force, joint and coalition military personnel with an understanding of how to recognize, mitigate, counter and defeat these threats.

The 527 SAS serves to know, teach and replicate a wide array of terrestrial and space threats to the U.S. military's space enablers. The squadron trains the modern warfighter to operate in an environment where critical systems like GPS and SATCOM are interfered with or denied—preparing them for the current and future fights, and guaranteeing U.S. battlefield dominance well into the 21st century.

So in another thread, we talked about how the grounded squadrons were flying again. This happens to coinside with this special aircraft doing circles over Colorado springs four times so far. I'm wondering if they are using this aircraft to jam the GPS and other satellites to see what would happen during testing with a UAV. Gariac did find a UAV notam nearby, and the 50th Space Wing controls the US GPS system. So I think its either acting like an aggressor to a manned aircraft jamming its GPS or its testing with a UAV to see what happens if the GPS is gone from the UAV.

Any bets???

I could believe some anti-jamming test. Of course, there are a lot of scenarios I could believe. But usually there is a jamming NOTAM.

Regarding Nellis, you can talk to the gps jammer squad at the Nellis open house. They just plop down band limited noise on the civilian and military gps. This can be done with one Marconi RF generator. They also have some Russian made GPS jammers. They to directional jamming and omnidirectional jamming, all mobile of course.

I have been GPS jammed on the range once. By some odd coincidence, I was with reporter. We were headed to the drop zones east of the TTR (Cedar Pipeline ranch) and the GPS just went blank. No satellites received. What the base did is remove all the signs leading to the drop zones after somebody posted photos of the them. Oh wait, that was me. But what they do is paint rocks red where you have to turn.

Cedar Pipeline ranch
Jammers shown here

reply to post by gariac


Damn I forgot about jamming notams.