ISLAMABAD – Israeli Air Force F – 35 stealth accidently reveals the secretNuclear Military Site of the Country.
An Israeli F-35 stealth aircraft revealed to the world both its ownlocation and that of Israel’s primary nuclear facility on Monday when itturned on a publicly viewable transponder signal.
Deep in the Negev desert of southern Israel lies the Shimon Peres NuclearResearch Center, also called the Dimona reactor, the center of Israel’snuclear research and weapons programslink.While its location isn’t exactly top secret, it’s impossible for civiliansto get close to it; the Israel Defense Forces have even been known to shootdown their own planeslinkwhenthey don’t have permission to fly over Dimona.
However, while one Israeli Air Force F-35I “Adir” stealth fighter flyingover Dimona on Monday wasn’t at risk of being shot down, it did drop itsghostly act for about 20 minutes when it turned on a publicly viewabletransponder signal, causing it to appear on civilian radars.
According to Israel’s Ynet Newslink, theAdir was using a “squawk” signal used to communicate certain vital messageson a Mode-S/ADS-B civilian frequency. On Monday, this F-35 was broadcastingSquawk 7600, meaning “transmission error”; other commonly used Squawk codesare 7700, meaning “emergency,” and 7500, meaning “hijacking.”
The Adir, using callsign F35LTNG2 and transponder hex code 738AD2, appearedfor about 25 minutes on local radars as well as tracking sites likeFlightRadar24 and ADS-B Exchange.
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A spokesperson for the IDF told the Jerusalem Postlinktheincident happened “during a routine training flight in a training area inthe South,” noting that “a malfunction was discovered in the aircraft’stransponder” requiring it to broadcast publicly.
“In order to communicate with the other aircraft that [were] participatingin the training, the pilot activated the aircraft’s detection system sothat the other aircraft would be able to recognize it without communicatingwith the pilot,” the spokesperson said.
As Ynet noted, seeing an IAF plane on any civilian radar, let alone astealthy F-35 Adir, is “an exceptional event, as Israeli Air Force fightersnever operate unencrypted means of transmission.”
Ironically, the IDF spokesperson said the opposite, promising it was “wasnot an exceptional event” and that “the tracking system is operated at thediscretion of the pilot, Sputnik has reported.
