I have been monitoring for a few years now, and I love the service here. But I have recently come into some attention that vexes me a bit. The Rivet Joint series of aircraft use both operation and location based callsigns. This means if you know which callsigns are used for operating out of certain airbases, you can get an idea of whose missile they are waiting on. An acquaintance of mine used to fly on a 'BALL crew, and told me about the strict radio silence they would observe, since if the Russians knew they were on mission, they would scrub their test launch. I'm wondering if displaying the RC-135S callsigns could be burning their recon sorties, and if that should be taken into account?
RC-135S's haven't been tasked with monitoring any Russian missile launches since this site has been up. They do operationally monitor North Korean launches and recently were tasked out of Al Udeid with an Iranian missile launch. After that mission, the Aircraft filed a flight plan from Al Udeid AB to Kadena AB and arrived into Kadena. I'm sure any Military has far better intellegnce then that of an Unfiltered Flight Tracking site.
I tend to agree with the 'it doesn't matter' crowd. ADS-B/Mode S/C is all out in the air un-encrypted and floating around. If anything - the military flies around with the parrot on when they want to be seen. There are end to end military grade encryption for satellite based tracking when ops are going. Besides, what's to stop a bad actor from sticking a computer on a telephone pole with 3G dongle and spying on everyone. That's how the Israelis have been doing it for years.
