Be on the lookout

An intense morning for US assets today. At the moment (09:00 CEST) we are tracking three different missions of three assets:

• An USAF Northrop Grumman RQ-4B Global Hawk (reg. 11-2046 – c/s FORTE11) that took off from NAS Sigonella last night is flying over the eastern Black Sea, conducting a SIGINT mission in an area that is further east than the area that US drones usually monitor;
• Also from Sigonella, a USNavy Boeing P-8A Poseidon took off and is heading towards eastern Romania to conduct another surveillance mission over the Romanian coast of the Black Sea;
• Finally, an USAF Boeing RC-135U Combat Sent (reg. 64-14847 – c/s HOMER11) took off from Suda Bay AB last night and is conducting a mission over the eastern Mediterranean off the coast of Syria, where Russian military installations are located.

Additional information on the aircraft involved:

• The RQ-4B Global Hawk is a high-altitude, long-endurance unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) that is used for a variety of missions, including surveillance, reconnaissance, and intelligence gathering.
• The P-8A Poseidon is a maritime patrol aircraft that is used for anti-submarine warfare, anti-surface warfare, and intelligence gathering.
• The RC-135U Combat Sent is a signals intelligence (SIGINT) aircraft that is used to collect electronic signals from enemy targets.