1) WTF is with the ATC in both of those

2) Why aren't the military craft listening to the local flight channel? Aren't you supposed to monitor local traffic? Especially when flying without a transponder? It's not like you can't listen to multiple channels at the same time!

Just a reminder the US military also conducts training operations around large civilian airports within the USA, with their ADS-B turned off, in this instance resulting in the death of 67 people: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Potomac_River_mid-air_col...

Presumably they have flight plans, can listen to ATC, RADAR etc.

So what's the plan? Just expect everyone to get out of their way?

Do they have possibility of receiving the civilian transponders ? Even if it was off they shoudld've picked different flight height...

Curacao is a few kilometers of the Venezuelan coast, but the Americans have deemed the entire ocean north of Venezuela as military operations. The people in charge probably don't even know Curacao isn't part of Venezuela.

With effectively no military and the Dutch government being an American lapdog, I doubt the people in charge need to care. They're already out there with orders to commit war crimes, shooting down an airliner or two that gets too close to their military aircraft wouldn't make much of a difference in the long run.

Turning the transponder off only prevents civilian ATC from knowing your identification and altitude. They will still see your position as a primary target on their radar.

Trump doesn't understand the word "allied".

It's a tanker not a stealth fighter.

> It's expected for military operations to fly without transponder

It's been a problem specifically with US military aircraft for years that they just wander into other people's airspace with transponders off and expect to have it all to themselves.

We should just start shooting down anything big enough to need a transponder that is not using one. Doesn't matter who's in it, doesn't matter what it's for.

The proper action then would be to declare war, and announce that the airspace is no longer safe for civilian use.

The whole "oh yes, our military is active, but we aren't at war, and yes, the president tweeted about that" spiel is just untenable and ridiculous.

we wouldn’t be doing that, we voted for President that will end all the wars, not start new ones

We? Seems like a personal vendetta from my perspective. I in no way shape or form want to send Americans to Venezuela for the holidays to start an armed conflict.

Can’t you do it safely, with transponder on? It’s not like it will get softer or anything.

I believe the term of art de jour is “special military operation”

Is it an inside joke I missed? 'Militarily' here and another comment had 'Bigly'. Is it a Trumpism?

I’m sorry, which hostile nation?

If you initiate a military conflict with another nation, the proper thing to do is to declare war first.

On the other side it is perfectly visible on radar (and can be heard (and with jet having its own characteristic signature it can be tracked even by WWII microphone array like they did back then) and visible in binoculars from large distance in nice Caribbean weather), so it is hiding only from civilians. Security by obscurity kind of. That is especially so in the case of a slow large non-maneuvering tanker plane like here.

And why would a tanker plane come close to and even enter the hostile airspace?! may be one has to check Hegseth's Signal to get an answer for that, probably it is something like "big plane -> Scary!" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mUbmJ1-sNs.

Military planes often deliberately have them on; not every mission is secretive. You can often see NATO planes on FlightAware in the Black Sea clearly keeping an eye on the Ukraine theatre.

Example: https://flightaware.com/live/flight/FORTE10/history/20230821...

Venezuela invaded the US by not selling the US oil at US terms

We can arrest Maduro for drug trafficking and then pardon him later for being set up by Biden.

A sizable chunk of the world is currently considered hazardous for commercial aviation.[1] Ops.group maintains a quick reference map. It's bad.

[1] https://safeairspace.net/

Yeah that's not for TNCF (curacao) but venezuela (SVZM) airspace. So that's approximately zero excuse.

Happened in Dutch Caribbean controlled Airspace

unlikely, at least not during this generation. even putting aside the current admin, the US has (to put it extremely lightly) long failed to police its own and certain "allies'" behavior, which undermines the concept altogether.

at this point, there are unfortunately no "good guys" at the state level.

Someone has to prevent the execution of journalist who speak out against the regime and that has no due process and also have highest execution rate of any country. They labeled "Authoritarian state" by Amnesty International and Humans Rights Watch and "Systemic human-rights violator" by the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Oh wait, i mixed up Saudi Arabia one of the US's closets allies with Venezuela.

If a bridge gets built then destroyed, built then destroyed, built then destroyed and so on, people will stop using it. They'll also stop trusting the bridge builder.

People all over the world are already building new bridges to places like China, so even if the old ones are rebuilt, they might get substantially less use.

You run into trouble if someone manages to set all of them on fire at once.

Not really. I live next to an airport with both a civilian and military presence (and an alternate for a NATO airbase). The number of military/police flights that I can only see on MLAT is pretty worrying. I don't think BPol has ever turned their "stealth" switch off.

This near miss plus that helicopter thing, I assume: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Potomac_River_mid-air_col...

Oh yes as if the Great US of A didn't shoot down passenger jets

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/july-3/u-s-warsh...

The US is trying to one-up Russia on that by using another plane as the missile.

A nation-state is a state whose borders and (originally) citizenship are largely defined by a singular nationality. Israel and Japan, for example. Belgium and Canada are not nation states: they are split into French and Flemish, and Anglo and French nationalities, respectively.

It is a 19th century term that rarely applies these days, but still sees some residual usage.

It's hard to use them consistently because there isn't a single universally accepted definition.

Most people would consider the Netherlands a "country", but now we have a country within that country. Israel is a state, Japan is a state, but there are 50 states in the United States. "[People's] Republic of XYZ" generally refers to a sovereign state, but Russia has republics inside. You can't just call something what the locals call it and expect that your readers will get the picture. Even worse, people are often deeply divided as to what a given territory should be called.

So I will generally forgive journalists for picking a neutral-sounding, ambiguous expression in cases like this. What matters here is that the Dutch control this airspace, regardless of Curaçao's status within their kingdom.

Lots of small islands have similar status, for example The Cayman Islands, Bermuda & Puerto Rico.

I'm a state actor because I always remember my lines when I go up on stage.

What do you mean "all the way across the ocean". From where? The distance from Curaçao to the Dutch people is exactly zero.

What "right" are you talking about, is there an agency where we file a claim, and it issues us "rights"?

All people from all nations, tribes and states came from somewhere, sometimes even replacing the local population. Sometimes peacefully, like Anglo-Saxons pushed out local Britons in England, sometimes violently, like Normans invaded and conquered England.

Or like the rich and diverse American Indian history -- tribes came and went, sometimes replaced, pushed out, conquered or assimilated with previous peoples who lived there. Please define "right".

We didn't have the right, obviously, but it has happened and we need to deal with the current situation. And the Netherlands has offered them sovereignty multiple times in the last fifty years, they can leave anytime they want. But nowadays they want to stay in the kingdom, mostly because it offers them some security and stability.

The same business the US has in Guam or Puerto Rico, the UK in the Bahamas etc. It was a colony. They decided to become independent but still part of the kingdom of the Netherlands which was their choice. So the current status is such because the people of Curacao have decided they wanted it this way.

You could pick up a history textbook and find out.

If both craft took the same evasive action? Still could be a collison. A few seconds is so little to play with.

And the tanker was likely supervised from an AWACS aircraft that probably should’ve flagged this, too.

> Is it actually common for military aircrafts with transponders off to mix and match with public traffic in activate flight regions?

As a pilot, I can tell you it happens all the time. Even in US domestic airspace. Transponder use is optional for the military, and they will turn them off for some training missions. (Or in this case, a real mission.)

No, they don't close the airspace when this is being done.

The pilots of both aircraft (civilian and military) are supposed to be keeping a constant visual watch for traffic. The military aircraft should also be keeping an eye on primary radar.

(Transponder use is also optional for some civilian aircraft, btw.)

If the positioning [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUcs1LCjhcs) is at all close to accurate, that looks closer to 300km, with the entirety of Aruba between them & the closest point in Venezuela. (Or all of Curaçao, but I think that line is longer.)

(TFA does say 64 km, though.)

Edit: I'm not sure about 64 km. The 64km is for the Curaçao departing flight, but Curaçao's airport is itself 80 km from Venezuela, and they headed north pretty immediately? I.e., … they would have never been < 80 km…?

Threats are not to civilian aircraft. If conflict occurs areas would become restricted.

The Air Force is probably used to flying much closer to one another, but civilians are not. Even in a busy airspace, jet airliners are usually kept apart >1000ft vertically, and much more horizontally in the direction they're moving. These birds can fly 500ft in less than 1 second after all.

The FAA did warn about military ops in the area. Good question; not sure they issued a NOTAM.