* Venezuela claims that Colombian military forces made in incursion into Venezuela
* Venezuela claims that a US aircraft violated its airspace
* Reports claim that the CIA is more active than ever in Venezuela
(And, of course, there is the latest “smoking laptop” propaganda scheme as a background context)
Stay tuned!
UPDATE:
The US admits that one of its aircraft did violate Venezuela’s airspace but claims that this was a mistake. As somebody who has spend some time professionally tracking aircraft movements, some of which were mistakes and some of which were ‘deliberate mistakes’, I see no reason not to believe the US version at this point. If the Venezuelans think otherwise, they should release the audio recordings of their radio contacts with the American pilot and a map of its actual flight route. (In most cases it is very easy to distinguish real and false mistakes).
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This is way off-topic, but do you recall the shooting down of the Korean air liner many years ago as it flew off course over a Soviet peninsula (Kamchatka?). A lot of hay was made about that in the press, but what was the truth? Did the plane go off course accidentally as the Americans and So. Koreans claimed or was it intentional, intended to discover potential weaknesses in the Soviet’s air defense network in the east? I ask because you said you have some experience in aircraft and navigation? I recall reading some time ago that there was a secret US air force program that deliberately sent bombers into the USSR over the poles to probe their defenses and reaction times–this went on until some time in the fifties when radar stations were finally built to protect their northern frontier.
Just curious to know your thought on that event and was this something similar–probing of Venezuela’s air defenses?
No, that is not off topic at all.
I can tell you that there is no possible way that KAL 007 could have strayed off course the way it did AND made the (correct) radio reports it did by some kind of accident. And yes, there was a lot of US intelligence activity that day. And yes, KAL 007 did trigger a lot of Soviet radars.
But in the case of Venezuela the situation is totally different. Venezuela does not have anything near the air defenses the Soviet Union had and as far as I can tell by looking at the island in question with Google Earth there is nothing of military value on it.
Frankly, the USAF and the USN could hold aircraft permanently on station over Caracas and there isn’t a damn thing the Venezuelans could do about it, so why bother with any intelligence overflights?
Maybe the USN wanted to “rattle the cage” a little bit but my guess is that this was just an honest to God mistake.
Should I ever come across any info to the contrary I will definitely let you all know.