E-6 Using Tactical Hex Codes

Let's now take what we learned from my last blog (about the tar1090 based sites using the mictronics airframe database) and see how to apply that knowledge to the current situation of the E-6 aircraft not showing up as usual on ADSB tracking sites.

Please keep in mind that once again, my constant droning on and on about this statement is as true as ever:

I'm too busy building and running the site to use it.

In other words, I see my role as helping folks understand subtle things about OSINT aircraft tracking that from a pure observing point of view have largely gone undiscussed in the past. And for sure no one has been able to bring in the ACARS aspect of tracking ever before.

Said another way, I try and keep up with what folks are talking about in regard to ADSB/C aircraft tracking and help them understand the data and how to tie in ACARS data to assist if possible.

@neetintel X spaces.
I happen to listen for a few minutes to neet's spaces stream and they commented on how the E-6 aircraft had become a lot harder to track.
What caught my interest was that using their past experience of flight patterns of these aircraft they were able to identify some aircraft flying E-6 type flight patterns but using totally different ICAO hex codes from usual.

You can listen to the stream here, I jump in around the 50 minute mark.

Back to the E-6 tactical hex codes.

Here is an example that starts to bring in the mictronics db use in tar1090.

A rant for another time, folks posting screenshots from mobile - so much of the data is cut off.

Ok, what do we see here?
Callsign MARRY77, I will leave that to OSINT folks to dig into.
Hex: AF564B. When we drop that into the mictronics db search page, we get zero hits. So its not a community known hex. That's the first note.
Next, that 'unknown' status makes sense then why we have 'Reg: n/a'. Since we don't have a mictronics db entry for it, the airframe reg, type etc is blank, or n/a. Not Avaliable.
In other words the ADSB community has not been able to tie this hex to a specific registration and thus type of aircraft.

But hold up, why is the DB flags: set to military?
Because some of the tactical blocks of USAF hex codes are known to be reserved for USAF use and so any hex _in_ that block can be at last flagged as military. tar1090 does this (since the mictronics db is blank for this hex).
If you dig around in the tar1090 code, you might find these blocks listed (see footnote). Note, these blocks are not the same as the one I recall and mentioned in the X space with neetintel.

Another example:

This (better quality mobile) screenshot is much the same as our last one.
Unknown hex in the mictronics db, but known to be military.
Because its not in the db, the reg and type are n/a

BTW, this screenshot is from @sipjack1776 aka 1776Girl

I reached out to a few followers via DM asking if they knew the USAF tactical hex block and did not get any firm answers. If you know it, please drop a comment with them.
Because I drew a blank on that, I was not able to put a filter for them on my site.
I did however put the E6 registration code filter into play.
You can see it on the E6/E4 page on my site.

Just to keep the buggy nature of my site intact, I made an error and did catch some ACARS, but I have dropped a message showing where I fixed the bug.

The filter has not caught any 'wrong hex, correct registration' ACARS messages in the week or so that it's been running.
To me, this is not unexpected. In other words, all ACARS messages from E-6 aircraft have been using their known ICAO hex. In other words, only the ADSB transponders have been using the tactical hex codes. In other words, these aircraft are still tough to track via the usual planes-on-a-map sites.

Bottom line, neetintel ended up here: