MIAMI, United States. – A Boeing maritime patrol aircraft P-8A Poseidon of the United States Navy carried out prolonged surveillance flights in international airspace north of Cuba in the early hours of this Friday, according to civil air monitoring records available at Flightradar24 and ADSBexchange.
These records show the aircraft operating with the callsign BLKCAT5, identified by Flightradar24 as a P-8A Poseidon (P8) for military or government use under the control of the Miami FIR.
The trajectories visible on the maps of both platforms show closed and repeated orbits over international waters located north of Havana and the northern western coast of the Island, a profile compatible with reconnaissance and surveillance missions. In several of the records, the plane appears describing consecutive circles for a long time, without approaching Cuban sovereign airspace.
The technical data shown by ADSBexchange They identify flight BLKCAT5 as a Boeing P-8 Poseidon without public information on the airport of origin or destination, a common practice on military flights of this type.
The P-8A Poseidon, developed by the Boeing company from the fuselage of the Boeing 737, is the main maritime patrol aircraft of the US Navy. It is designed for anti-submarine warfare, surface warfare and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions, and typically operates at both medium and high altitudes, depending on the type of sensors and the assigned mission.
To date, there is no official statement from the Pentagon or the United States Navy that explains the specific objective of this operation. However, the records confirm that the flight took place entirely in international airspace, within a recurring practice of US surveillance in the Caribbean.
Two days before, another plane, in this case an RC-135V/W Rivet Joint, one of the main electronic espionage platforms of the United States Air Force, made a flight off the northern coast of Cuba, according to data from FlightRadar24 reviewed by CubaNet.
The trajectory visible on the map shows the aircraft moving parallel to the northern coast of the Island, from east to west, before turning north and returning towards Florida, without entering Cuban airspace. The route reproduced in FlightRadar24 It starts at 6:33 in the afternoon.
The aircraft is identified as a Boeing RC-135V Rivet Joint, tail number 64-14841. It flew at an approximate altitude of 31,500 feet and at a speed close to 400 knots over waters near Cuba.
It is not the first time recently that this type of aircraft operates in the vicinity of the Island. At the end of January, users of FlightRadar24 reported another flight of an RC-135 that took off from Homestead Reserve Air Base, in southern Floridaand that during part of its journey it turned off its transponder, which prevented its entire route from being followed through civil tracking systems.
The RC-135V/W Rivet Joint is a specialized signals intelligence (SIGINT) aircraft, designed to intercept and analyze communications and electronic emissions, such as radars and air defense systems.
According to an official technical sheet of the United States Air Force, this platform provides intelligence collection, analysis and dissemination capabilities in near real time, and allows its crew to detect, identify and geolocate electromagnetic signals in wide areas of operation.
