The collateral benefits of Trump’s wars

I see the Trump administration nearly achieved two of its goals simultaneously (imperialist belligerence, crashing planes):

The pilot of a JetBlue flight reported on Friday that he narrowly avoided colliding with a U.S. military aircraft over the Caribbean after an Air Force refueling tanker passed in front of the commercial plane without broadcasting its position, according to air traffic control radio communications.

“They don’t have their transponder turned on, it’s outrageous,” the JetBlue pilot told an air traffic controller, after identifying the type of plane he had encountered. “We almost had a midair collision up here.”

The radio transmissions detail the experience of JetBlue Flight 1112, bound for New York after leaving Curaçao, a small island in the southern Caribbean about 40 miles off the coast of Venezuela. Twenty minutes after takeoff, the aircraft suddenly leveled off midclimb, according to flight tracking data. On the radio, the JetBlue pilot said he was forced to stop the plane’s ascent to its cruising altitude to avoid a collision with the tanker.

It’s unclear whether the pilot saw the military aircraft with his own eyes or if he was alerted by a sensor on the aircraft. He told the air traffic controller in Curaçao that the tanker was only two or three miles away — less than 20 seconds flying time at its speed.

The air traffic controller said he couldn’t see the tanker on his radar screen either, but suggested the unknown military aircraft was part of a trend. “They’ve been outrageous with the unidentified aircraft within our airspace,” the controller told the pilot.

Just a day later, on Saturday night, air traffic controllers in Curaçao told at least three other pilots, including those for American Airlines and Delta Air Lines, to be aware of unidentified aircraft in their vicinity, an apparent reference to other planes flying without their transponders on. The recordings were posted on LiveATC.net, a website that publishes radio feeds from air traffic control towers around the world, and on social media by radio hobbyists.

The skies over the Caribbean have become increasingly crowded in recent weeks, as the U.S. military has sent more aircraft and equipment to the region as part of the military buildup against Venezuela. Elsewhere in the Caribbean, military aircraft are flying missions from Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, the Dominican Republic and the U.S.S. Gerald R. Ford, an aircraft carrier deployed to the region.

I’m sorry if you still don’t understand the non-interventionist mindset.