A U.S. Navy P-8 Poseidon maritime patrol jet executed a rare presidential Combat Air Patrol (CAP) flight on Monday. It took place while President Donald Trump was attending the College Football Playoff National Championship (CFP) at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens. The aircraft provided “incident awareness assessment (IAA) support” for the United States Secret Service (USSS) during the presidential CAP, U.S. Northern Command (NORTHCOM) told The War Zone.
“IAA involves the use of Department of War (DoW) assets to provide situational awareness in support of domestic operations,” NORTHCOM stated. “IAA has been successfully utilized in the past for similar high-profile events, such as disaster response operations and large-scale public gatherings, where DoW assets provided critical situational awareness to support civilian authorities. A P-8 aircraft was identified as available to assist with this mission.”
Using a P-8 for presidential CAPSs “doesn’t happen very often,” a NORTHCOM spokesman added, however, he could not immediately provide greater details about the frequency.
@aircraftspots first posted about the peculiar flight, which was later highlighted by another open source plane tracker, @TheIntelFrog. The militarized 737 derivative, callsign JULIET ECHO 191, was launched from its home at Naval Air Station Jacksonville at 4:51 PM Eastern and began doing orbits at nearly 18,000 feet starting roughly 30 miles north of the stadium and extending over the Atlantic Ocean.
Around 7:14 PM, the jet then flew tighter orbits at about 3,700 feet around 1.5 miles west of the stadium before flying a wider pattern at the same altitude, a few miles south, that lasted until about 8 PM, according to ADS-B data. It then flew additional loops at altitudes ranging from 15,000 feet to 18,000 feet east, southeast and northeast of the stadium before returning to base just after 10 PM.
The lower-altitude passes coincided with Trump’s arrival in the area, but did not appear to follow the motorcade route. According to the White House, Marine 1 landed at North Perry Airport at 7:03 PM Eastern. Trump’s motorcade traveled south and arrived at the stadium at 7:08 PM.
The president and his family attended the game, which the Indiana Hoosiers won over the Miami Hurricanes by a 27-21 score. Trump left at 10:47 PM.
The P-8 can provide overwatch capabilities fitting into the requirements of an IAA. According to the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD): “IAA is similar to DOD’s definition of Intelligence Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR). However, ISR is conducted outside the United States over foreign territory or within the United States during Homeland Defense events, while IAA is conducted within the United States in support of DSCA [Defense Support of Civil Authorities] operations. The change in title is necessary to make it clear that DOD does not collect Intelligence on US persons. IAA operations focus on providing timely and usable information to all levels of command and to local, State, Civil, and Federal leaders in order to save lives, reduce human suffering and protect property.”
There are three IAA mission sets, including Broad Area Coverage (BAC), Damage Assessment (DA), and Situational Awareness (SA).
“Similar to ISR in the HD mission, IAA capabilities include Electro-Optical (EO), Infra-red (IR), Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR), Multi-spectral/Hyper-spectral (MSI/HSI), and Full Motion Video (FMV),” NORAD notes.
While the P-8 is largely known for its anti-submarine, anti-surface warfare, and sea control roles, its suite of sensors makes it very well suited for an IAA operation over land as well.
The P-8 is equipped with a very powerful Wescam MX-20HD electro-optical turret capable of capturing high definition moving video of targets on the earth’s surface. This combined with the P-8’s extensive communications system, as well as its fast response times due to its jet speed while still being able to loiter relatively low and slow, would be reason enough to use it for a mission like this. In addition, its onboard radar and electronic surveillance measures (ESM) suite could also come into play, to a lesser degree. A handful of P-8s can also carry the slab-like Advanced Airborne Sensor (AAS) that is attached to the lower forward fuselage of the aircraft. This is an incredibly capable and secretive radar capable of taking very high definition synthetic aperture radar maps and detecting moving objects down below in complex littoral areas. It likely has other functions that are not disclosed, possibly including spotting low-flying aircraft. You can read all about this system here. Other modular surveillance payloads remain undisclosed, but an advanced communications intelligence system has been spotted bolted below the aircraft’s chin. Because of its size, the P-8 can also serve as an impromptu command and control platform, taking on specialist crewmen, if need be.
For a good sense of what it is like to fly the P-8 on real-world missions, we covered that in this past feature of ours.
Suffice it to say, P-8s are extremely capable, multi-role aircraft. And that is why they are so heavily tasked around the globe.
While P-8s likely help monitor maritime movements near where the president may be staying in some circumstances, flying a presidential CAP over land is unusual for a Poseidon. DHS has many aircraft that are equipped with similar imaging capabilities and are far more efficient than the P-8. It isn’t clear if these aircraft were simply unavailable or if some of the P-8’s unique capabilities were needed for this specific mission.
There is a wide range of threats, from drones to bad actors on the ground, that exist at such a high-profile affair as the College Football National Championship. This is all magnified when the president is in attendance, with many more contingencies being needed to be set in place, including route clearing for the motorcade and general overwatch of the facility and the area surrounding it. Security concerns may have been further heightened in the wake of threats Iranian officials made against Trump for his calling for anti-government protests there to continue while still mulling military action against the regime. The regime in Tehran has a long history of making direct threats against Trump, including implying they could use drones to assassinate him.
We may see Poseidons called upon for more presidential CAPs in the future. In the past, P-3C Orion patrol planes were sometimes used for these missions, the NORTHCOM spokesman told us, but the Navy stopped flying them last year.
The CAP flight can be added to the already relatively huge and still expanding number of mission sets the P-8 can be called upon to execute at any given time.
Update 7:35 AM Eastern Jan. 21-
Aircraft spotter Nick Strader, who uses the X handle @indyspotter, shared a photo he took of the Poseidon at about 5:22 PM Monday as the aircraft was heading south toward the Miami area. The jet was flying over Withem Field in Stuart, Florida, at the time.
Contact the author: howard@thewarzone.com