[Argentina] Exercise Heads Up

[Naio90]

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EXERCISE HEADS UP Classified Information ​

Operation Background

As part of the routine training and personnel improvement program of the argentine armed forces, the national military command would determine the need to improve the operational capability of the intelligence and SIGINT/ELINT assets of the Argentine Air Force. Considering the strategic importance of information in eventual conflicts this exercise would be given all resources and priorities needed. After careful study, it would be determined that the best way to gain practical knowledge would be to test the capacities against a nearby target of significant capacity, which would be determined to be the Malvinas Islands, held by the United Kingdom. It is public knowledge that the UK mantains a RAF airbase there, obviously including air defences and radars.

Deployed Forces
1st Airborne Air Control Squadron Tu-214R Fully crewed, fueled and supply All systems and radars operative

Logistical Details

The Tu-214R would depart from its homebase in AAF Base Reconquista and head straight south to the military section of the Ushuaia Airport, there he would be supplied and the crew would rest. The operation will begin at the Ushuaia Airport, where the aircraft will depart and conduct a normal flight, mimicking flight patterns of commercial aircraft (speed, altitude etc.) and head towards the open sea until reaching crusing altitude of 37,000ft. Sectors: FF>FE>FD will be involved. Only argentine and international airspace will be used. The mission would start with the deployment of the Tupolev to Ushuaia. Top secret.

@Jamie

 

[Naio90]

Early in the winter morning, with the darkness of the late morning in the far south of the word, support personnel of the Argentine Air Force would finish doing the final preparations and supplying of the Tu-214R belonging to the 1st Airborne Air Control Squadron in the secluded military section of the airport of Ushuaia. The flight would be specifically delayed until a day with storm cells lurking north of Ushuaia, in order to be used as potential excuse in case of any curious onlooker asking why the extended arch of the flight path. This was just a precaution, as the whole mission was top secret.

The flight crew and on board technicians would be already inside the aircraft doing the pre-flight checks and booting and setting up the different state of the art ELINT/SIGINT systems for the assigned mission.

With everything set, the aircraft would be cleared for take off and depart into the still dark sky.

The route will take them east, towards the argentine EEZ in sector FD, at an increasing altitude until reaching the cruising hight of 37,000ft. They would flight east and slight north until reaching the outer limite of the airspace above the argentine EEZ. All systems and radar would be on.

Secret.

 

[Naio90]

The Tu-214R would have reached the mentioned operational altitude and would be over the open sea by now, but still within the airspace above the argentine EEZ, heading east.

After some minutes, and approching the outer limit of said EEZ, about 400km from the Malvinas Islands, it would begin veering north until flying a slight northwest heading at a cruising speed of 700km/h.

Minutes before reaching this point the SIGINT/ELINT operators would have had all their systems ready and operating. They would begin to carefully scan and attempt to intercept all british communications coming out from RAF Mount Pleasent, as well as using passive radars to detect emissions from potential aerial defence systems and british radars scannig the air located in the islands.

The technical crew would be supervised by an instructor that woult take down notes and make recommendations on how to set the parameters and operate the systems.

Secret.

 

[Naio90]

The crew would begin receiving feed back from the islands, but to their surprise, and to that of the instructors, almost no signals were returning. Not because they would be aware and doing some kind of countermeassure, which would have been giving out a very specific pattern for the SIGINT/ELINT systems to read, but most possibly due to a lack of systems installed on the islands.

With a high degree of possibility, there were no active fixed-seeking anti-aircraft or radar systems installed and the only radars operating would be the civilian one employed at the civilian Port Stanley (Puerto Argentino) Airport and Mount Pleasant RAF Base.

Routine english internal radio communications would be intercepted, nothing out of the ordinary. It could be concluded that there was no important current and active military deployment in the Malvinas, beyond perhaps the usual Royal Navy ship that has permanent seat there and that is usually monitored from the argentine mainland.

The crew would receive comments from its instructors and learn some techniques on how to enhance the reception range and detect special patters on the different systems.

In the meantime, the aircraft would continue at their cruising altitude heading northwest over argentine EEZ airspace.

Secret.

 

[Naio90]

The aircraft would continue its planned trajectory at a constant speed and altitude, heading slightly northwest towards the airport of Reconquista.

The instructors and experts on board would continue interacting with the SIGINT/ELINT system operators and help them learn a more efficient way of operating and interpreting the results they had just obtained from the defenses of the Malvinas Island's british military.

They would also begin preparing the data to write an after-action report with the intelligence resutlas from the registered data.

The whole operation would continue to be secret and the learned experience would serve the crew well for future operations.

 

[Naio90]

After a continuous flight of around 5 hours, the Argentine Air Force Tu-214R would privately approach the reconquista Air Force Base and land safely.

The aircraft would be parked in its usual allocated spot, given it was its homebase. The crew in the meantime would be summoed to a debriefing session where they would report and hand out all gathered data, regarding the registered Malvinas Islands occupation forces.

After that, the ELINT/SIGINT crew would be given some hours rest and then they would have some additional theoretical classes on operating the systems.

All this would be done secretly.

Mission complete.