Edward Current
Senior Member.
I haven't heard this conjecture before. My 3D model suggests that Gimbal was a jet going ~375 knots at ~19,000 feet, and we know it was somewhere over the Atlantic off Florida. People always ask why, if it was a jet, it wasn't identified as one.
Do we know for a fact that there was no transponder signal from the Gimbal object? Because, not surprisingly, drug-plane pilots do not abide by normal transponder procedures:
The region from Venezuela to Georgia is involved in drug trafficking by plane:
While smaller operators use ultralights and Cessnas, Gulfstream and Hawker business jets and Beechcraft Super King Airs are popular with larger operations:
Weak security is generally a problem at smaller airports:
I thought I would mention this conjecture in my upcoming video on Gimbal. Wondering what y'all think.
Do we know for a fact that there was no transponder signal from the Gimbal object? Because, not surprisingly, drug-plane pilots do not abide by normal transponder procedures:
(From https://www.gao.gov/assets/ggd-89-93.pdf)External Quote:Interdiction agencies may, for example, decide that an aircraft is suspicious if it does not respond (using a radio receiving/transmitting device known as a transponder) to a query from a device attached to the radar surveillance equipment or if the aircraft responds with an improper transmission code (these codes help identify an aircraft). Interdiction agencies may also consider an aircraft suspicious if its flight pattern is out of the ordinary or matches that typically used by smugglers (for example, night flights in the Bahamas without a flight plan)...Radar systems are also used to identify smuggling aircraft that are covertly equipped with a transponder. This method of detection, however, has become less effective, partly because smugglers have acquired electronic devices that can identify covert transponders in their aircraft.
The region from Venezuela to Georgia is involved in drug trafficking by plane:
(From https://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/...lorida-new-times-investigation-finds-10249767)External Quote:Working with the most famous Colombian trafficker, Pablo Escobar, Lehder opened air routes to the Bahamas. He even bought an island, where he held orgies while one plane after another stopped for refueling before unloading cocaine at airports in Florida and Georgia...Air corridors have shifted dramatically since the '80s. In the never-ending game of whack-a-mole that is the drug war, a lockdown of Colombian airspace beginning in the early '00s led air pirates to decamp to neighboring Venezuela, where they've thrived..."Venezuela is the source of literally hundreds of flights every year," says Bruce Bagley, a drug-trade expert at University of Miami. "It's very hard to find who's behind all of this, where they're going. They fly low," eluding radar, he says.
While smaller operators use ultralights and Cessnas, Gulfstream and Hawker business jets and Beechcraft Super King Airs are popular with larger operations:
(From https://www.forbes.com/sites/hisutt...-common-with-narco-smugglers/?sh=75d8d9896fc5)External Quote:6 of the narco-plane incidents analysed involved were Gulfstreams, mostly the older Gulfstream II type. In the 1960s these were the first large, long-range business jets on the market. They can carry 14 or more passengers for around 4,000 miles, making them ideal smuggling aircraft. The narcos have proven that they can be flown from relatively austere, clandestine airstrips.
Weak security is generally a problem at smaller airports:
(From https://www.courier-journal.com/sto...icked-cocaine-meth-sinaloa-cartel/3323172001/)External Quote:Robert Carlson, a California businessman who dreamed of becoming the cocaine king of the skies, used private jets to funnel a billion dollars' worth of cartel drugs through smaller airports across the country — exploiting a security blind spot. He did it over and over again, profiting off a rarely policed mode of transportation. And when he was finally busted in 2017 in Lexington, it wasn't because of the X-ray scanner or drug-sniffing dog. That level of security at private and secondary airports just isn't there. Instead, an informant tipped off federal agents and blew up one of the nation's largest airborne domestic smuggling rings — one in which Carlson moved drugs for three years for the Sinaloa Cartel. A closer look at Carlson's case — provided through federal court transcripts and interviews with prosecutors and agents — exposes gaping holes in security at the majority of the nation's more than 2,500 general aviation airports, where there are no Transportation Security Administration checkpoints.
I thought I would mention this conjecture in my upcoming video on Gimbal. Wondering what y'all think.