Trump and Hegseth are.

It's bad enough that the US already deliberately shoot at their allies (look at all the "friendly fire" incidents the US cause) without them sneaking about in protected airspace without identifying themselves.

If there's a military plane flying around without any identification, it's either a Russian flight up to no good or an American one up to no good.

This is what they're using, the legal theory is basically tren de aragua cartel and their drugs is an "invasion" of the USA and is "sufficiently connected" to the Venezuelan government to trigger the act's wartime powers.

Many of his ardent supporters are confused as to what we’re doing in Venezuela right now and feel it’s the opposite of what they voted for.

You certainly don’t expect this level of surprises from someone’s second term, but the unprecedented path of his political career has certainly made it much different.

Over 77 million people voted against Trump.

About 73 million were not old enough to vote.

Did you even read the comment thread before responding to GP? You're just spreading misinformation.

If our aircaft were flying transponders-on during all these exercises then suddenly went dark, it’d signal imminent attack. This keeps them guessing. Possibly we’re even playing around with having them on some of the time for some aircraft, and off at other times.

We don’t do that with AWACS and such near Russia because we’re not posturing that we may attack them any day now, and want to avoid both accidental and “accidental” encounters with Russian weapons by making them very visible. In this case, an accidental engagement by Venezuelan forces probably isn’t something US leadership would be sad about.

Is that increase in precision much larger than the plane itself? If it's not then it couldn't possibly matter in this application.

Further radar is not a static image. The radar is constantly sweeping the sky, taking multiple measurements, and in some cases using filtering to avoid noise and jitter.

> GPS Lat & Long Barometric Altitude Ground speed & track angle Rate of climb/descent

You get or synthesize every one of those with radar as well.

Maybe you should reflect on why people who have lead others in combat have decided that there should be rules to war before you declare that rules of war are a bad idea.

For navigation, the Mercator projection is useful, because a straight line on the chart is where you go with a constant bearing. Aerial navigation is waypoint/bearing/waypoint/bearing. So most aviation maps are Mercator.

"The occasion has been judged proper for asserting, as a principle in which the rights and interests of the United States are involved, that the American continents, by the free and independent condition which they have assumed and maintain, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects FOR FUTURE COLONIZATION by any European powers." (emphasis mine)

https://usinfo.org/PUBS/LivingDoc_e/monroe.htm

Doesn't sound to me like owning your mistake.

Isn't the famous quote:

'I'll never apologize for the United States of America, I don't care what the facts are'.

in the context of that after all?

I don't know about accidental, but if anyone thinks Russia is not ballsy about butchering civilians, they need a refresher on Russia's wars during the last few decades. Last few years would be enough too. It's a principle of their military affairs.

I’m not defending the morality of this classification scheme, just trying by to be accurate. It dates to the 19th century and is not with the times today, which is why I generally prefer to avoid the term myself.

It doesn't mean some kings declared that land their own (some declared everything), but they couldn't enforce it. So usually it boiled down to main argument whether something is "yours" -- collecting taxes (aka tribute). As long as someone's can enforce collecting tribute, then they deserve to have the title of "owning" it.

Btw, One of the ways historians determine whether migration was mostly peaceful is by looking at archeological gender structure -- if there's a lot of female immigrants (e.g. Slavic expansion), then they are more likely to be moving by whole families. But if there are few females -- more likely it was invasion (e.g. Huns). Not absolute signal of course, as nothing is in history.

If you're wearing "foggles" (the technical term is a "view limiting device"), you're legally required to have a safety pilot who is responsible for maintaining visual watch.

You never, ever wear those while flying solo.

> And how are you supposed to spot an airplane coming at you with a closing speed of 1000 mph (1600 kmh)?

First, this near-miss was with a refueling tanker, which only travels at normal large-jet speed and is quite large.

If it was a fighter jet, you're right, it would be very hard to see. But frankly, compared to a fighter jet, everyone else might as well be a stationary object in the sky in terms of speed and maneuverability - so you're just relying on the fighter jet not to hit you. (They also have onboard primary radar and other fancy toys - so you hope they have more situational awareness of non-participating aircraft.)

> The whole point of Air Traffic Control is to control air traffic. Sure, there's plenty of uncontrolled airspace where you do indeed have to look out for traffic, but it's uncontrolled precisely because it rarely if ever sees commercial traffic.

Most airspace below 18,000 feet is still "controlled airspace", even though you have to look out for traffic - including commercial traffic. The big jets don't like to stay down there any longer than they have to, but that doesn't mean they're not there.

Being on an IFR clearance only guarantees that you're deconflicted with other IFR traffic. There's always the risk that there's non-participating traffic, especially in visual conditions (VMC). Class A airspace and transponder-required airspace help reduce this risk, but it's never completely eliminated.

Also, more importantly: The military largely plays by their own rules, entirely outside of the FAA.

It depends also on the website you are using to track. I have an ADSB receiver that publishes to multiple tracking websites (the same data, unfiltered), and not all of them publish all the data. Flightradar24 doesn't show most of the military aircraft - I can see them on my local tracking interface but they are not shown on their website.

But speaking generally, I'll just say: If you're flying in VMC conditions (good weather), you're always required to see-and-avoid. Even if you're on an IFR clearance. Everything else is just considered an aid for situational awareness.

They also seem to be overconfident in their ability to identify, track and evade other aircraft. Example: the Helicopter pilot who crashed into a civilian jet over the Potomac earlier this year.