Yesterday we tracked the largest Turkish aircraft deployment of recent times.
The Turkish Ministry of Defence talked about an exercise but said it only after the tracks of the planes appeared on social media.
At first glance, yesterday’s exercise did not look like an exercise but an air cover mission for a cargo flight to Libya.
Let’s proceed in an orderly fashion.
Yesterday morning, 3 Boeing KC-135R (62-6567, 57-2609, 60-2306), one Boeing E-7T (13-001) flying over the eastern Mediterranean appeared on differents tracking sites (09:30 CEST). The aircraft departed from Konya AB and from Incirlik AB.
The last track we have is this one, then they turn off their transponders (10:02 CEST).
At the same time, a Lockheed C-130E (63-13188) was flying westbound.
We know that together with these aircraft a dozen of Lockheed Martin F-16s were also in flight, armed with air-to-air missiles.
The C-130 seemed to be heading towards western Libya (Tripoli or Misrata) but it turned back to Turkey before to descending to its final destination (12:20 CEST).
We know also that a receiver from Malta tracked at least one KC-135 and the E-7T which, given the receiver’s range, must have been flying off the west coast of Libya. We can assume that the F-16s were also in the same area.
Why did the C-130 go back? Was it an exercise simulating a trip to Libya, or did the operation blow up after the news was posted on the web?
We will never know this but it is interesting to note that it is the first time that we have recorded such a strong Turkish military traffic over the central Mediterranean.
It remains to be seen if it will be the last one, but the impression is that it is not.
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It has been more than a year it’s time to stop this war
We as libyan people are thaTurkish government Hafter and
His multinational militia has not stopped bombing homes in Tripoli and killing children and women in their homes
We as Libyan People. Please speak for yourself or speak for the Muslim Brotherhood. Turkey we never invade Libya
Yesterday I read about this traffic of aeroplanes and boats By Manu. It was the first time that I send an email to a blog asking what is going on and why they don’t mention something. Later there was a small article (the blog is: https://www.onalert.gr/ ) about the attacs we have every day from turkish aeroplanes over the greek islands and which we push back. It was about south Kreta. They had pushed back some aeroplane (don t remember the number-one or more) in the area under Kreta. Now that I saw your demand and try to find the article and send you the link, the article had disappeared. Tow thinks may happen. 1. the news were fake. 2. The news shouldn’t be announced
(On alert.gr has news mainly about military movements. I hope you can translate by copy paste as I do with arabic texts)
Hi there,
The same exact rout been used by Libyan Airlines plane that has just landed in Misurata coming from Istanbul.
Something is going on, in my opinion the Turkish AF did a dummy run to test the route.
I took a screen shot of the LN flight about to land in Misurata.
It has nothing to with Libya. The test run was for Turkey’s troubled-some, spoiled kid on the block. This is serious! Turkey is not joking about this. Just because you say Aegean is ours as Greeks say, it doesn’t mean that it is true. If Greece thinks that French and/or Egypt will come to save the day, they are mistaken.