Black Flights

Crowdsourcing Data to Track Military Spy Planes

Role: Coder, Designer

Type of Work: Data Visualization

Tools Used: p5.js, Photoshop, Mapbox

Black Flights is an investigative data visualization project that crowdsources data to track the flight paths of six different American military spy aircraft. The internal workings of these aircraft are all highly classified and their missions are often shrouded in secrecy. Public flight tracking is not a new concept and there are a variety of different websites available to track most aircraft. However, should the operator of an aircraft request their flight data to not be viewable on these websites, these sites must comply. As such, the six aircraft my project is focused on are rarely trackable via these sites. However, it is possible to track these planes in another way.

In order to operate in United States airspace, aircraft are required to utilize ADS-B (Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast). This system is designed to increase safety and situational awareness for anyone operating in American airspace. The system automatically broadcasts the aircraft's position at set time intervals along with a myriad of other data (altitude, speed, callsign, etc). These radio transmissions, while intended for Air Traffic Control and other aircraft, are unencrypted and easily picked up by anyone using a properly tuned SDR (Software Defined Radio).

Across the country, many aviation enthusiasts use these SDRs to track aircraft within the range of their receivers. Many of these people choose to upload their data live to sites such as adsbexchange.com, an aggregator of ADS-B data. This essentially builds a network covering the entire country, allowing for easy tracking of any aircraft transmitting ADS-B data. Since this data is openly transmitted by the aircraft, there is no legal obligation for sites like adsbexchange to filter or block certain aircraft.

Black Flights uses this ADS-B data to plot a map of the flight tracks of six highly classified aircraft. Each color represents a single aircraft. Each dot represents a single ADS-B transmission, received by a public radio operator and uploaded to adsbexchange.com at some point in the past two years. Upon close inspection, many patterns become evident and can be attributed to the role the aircraft plays in the military arsenal.

p5.js and Mapbox were used to plot and generate 600x600px sectional images of the ADS-B data points, which were then stitched in photoshop to make the final 13856x9232px image.

An 87"x58" print was displayed at the School for Poetic Computation in December 2018.

Legend:

The red flight track is that of the Boeing E-4B, one of the “Doomsday” planes. In the event of a nuclear disaster, the plane would become the center of the American government.

The blue and light blue flight tracks are that of the RC-135. These planes are reconnaissance aircraft designed to intercept many types of electromagnetic radiation. They also are capable of tracking ballistic missile launches from hundreds of miles away.

The green and yellow flight tracks are that of the E-6B. Another one of the “doomsday” planes, in the event of a nuclear disaster, these aircraft would form the command center for the United States fleet of nuclear submarines and their missiles.

Finally, the pink flight track is that of the RC-12. This aircraft is a small, propeller-driven aircraft designed to intercept any kind of radio transmission. It is also capable of tracking and locating many different kinds of radio transmissions. Its flight track mainly around the southern border of the United States was one of the most interesting patterns I found in this project.