Military Exercises UK?

NutmegGirl

Are there UK military exercises going on today in UK?
Currently on my flight app there are about 15 aircraft flying all over England and Wales, some helicopters, one Canadian plane and one US

NutmegGirl

NutmegGirl wrote: »

Are there UK military exercises going on today in UK?
Currently on my flight app there are about 15 aircraft flying all over England and Wales, some helicopters, one Canadian plane and one US

Doubt anything specific. More than likely just less civil traffic allowing you to see normal levels of mil activity clearly.

Victor

The UK has about 900 military aircraft all types. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_active_United_Kingdom_military_aircraft

Assuming, say 2,000 pilots, who each need a minimum of 200 hours per year. That's the equivalent of about 46 aircraft in the air at all times. Admittedly, some of those hours may be flown elsewhere.

EchoIndia

NutmegGirl wrote: »

Are there UK military exercises going on today in UK?
Currently on my flight app there are about 15 aircraft flying all over England and Wales, some helicopters, one Canadian plane and one US

Sounds normal to me, or even below what is typical on a weekday. The UK has the RAF, Army Air Corps, Fleet Air Arm and other experimental ops units. Add to that the USAF operations from UK bases plus NATO-associated activity and you will see some military aircraft over the UK most of the time, even after the massive reductions in force sizes of recent decades.

kevinandrew

As others have said, military operations are quite common over the UK, it may be a case of the reduced commercial air traffic making it more noticeable.

There has however been a noticeable increase in military operations around London in recent weeks, likely in support of the government response to the pandemic. I live about three miles from RAF Northolt in west London, it's usually a hive of activity with business jets but in the past month there's been regular Chinooks, C-17 and C-130 visits when these would usually be quite rare, maybe only a few times a year on average.

Just this evening a C-17 Globemaster arrived from Serbia with cargo, presumably equipment for hospitals. Shortly after its arrival, a Chinook departed and flew east towards central London.

Foggy43

kevinandrew wrote: »

Just this evening a C-17 Globemaster arrived from Serbia with cargo, presumably equipment for hospitals. Shortly after its arrival, a Chinook departed and flew east towards central London.

Was this about 2130hrs. It is so quiet in London I could hear the Chinook for about 5 minutes as it followed the river Thames before it got to me.
Nothing like this morning at about 1010hrs. They were loud! The Red Arrows passed over doing the fly past for VE day.

Popoutman

You can see unfiltered aggregation of ADSB data here:

https://tar1090.adsbexchange.com/

FR24 filters a lot of information before moving it back to the public view. For instance search for callsigns SKID01 SKID02 and QID52 on adsbexchange, or ROXANE25.

(the SKIDs are F16s with ADSB transponders on, escorting a KC135 tanker orbiting over the Ruhr, and ROXANE is an E3 orbiting Bourges.

Good luck finding those on FR24.


Also - anyone running an ADSB feeder, please consider feeding ADSBExchange in addition to the commercial entities.

Psychlops

NutmegGirl wrote: »

Are there UK military exercises going on today in UK?
Currently on my flight app there are about 15 aircraft flying all over England and Wales, some helicopters, one Canadian plane and one US

UK Military is still ongoing, The RAF are a near daily sight over Wales as that is where they train pilots to fly fighter jets at RAF Valley, also in Wales is LFA7 "The Mach Loop" where RAF/USAF/NATO aircraft fly at high speed & low level.

Pat Dunne

I imagine there was considerable formation flying practice been held in recent weeks to commemorate VE Day.