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Hundreds of thousands watching spyplanes and tankers near Ukraine

Geoffrey Thomas

By Geoffrey Thomas Tue Mar 8, 2022

Hundreds of thousands are watching spy planes and tankers near Ukraine. The US and UK spy planes are taking off from bases in the UK and flying racetrack flight paths along the Ukraine and Moldovian borders monitoring Russian ground acitivity. The US spy plane is an E-8C Joint STARS while the UK aircraft is an RC-135W Rivet Joint. READ: Ocean Infinity commits to a new search for MH370 in 2023. Modified by Northrop Grumman from a Boeing 707 the E-8C Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System (Joint STARS) is ground surveillance, battle management, and command and control aircarft. Here is its flight details. An RC-135W Rivet Joint is an airborne SIGNIT (signals) platform and its sensor suite allows the mission crew to detect, identify and geolocate signals throughout the electromagnetic spectrum. It has been flying along the Ukraine and Moldovian borders. Here is its flight detail. More than 18,000 people are watching a US KC-135 tanker on Flightradar24, while another 12,000 are monitoring a KC-10 tanker, while @CivMilAir on Twitter has 125K followers. Here are the flight paths for both. ABOUT AirlineRatings.com Airlineratings.com was developed to provide everyone in the world a one-stop shop for everything related to airlines, formed by a team of aviation editors, who have forensically researched nearly every airline in the world. Our rating system is rated from one to seven stars on safety – with seven being the highest ranking. Within each airline you will find the country of origin, airline code, booking URL, and seat map information. The rating system takes into account a number of different factors related to audits from aviation’s governing bodies, lead associations, as well as the airlines, own safety data. Every airline has a safety rating breakdown so you can see exactly how they rate. Over 230 of the airlines on the site that carry 99 percent of the world’s passengers have a product rating. Given that low cost, regional and full-service carriers are so different we have constructed a different rating system for each which can be found within each airline.  

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