Midair Collision Avoidance Briefing

Major Eric Wahl traveled from Joint Base Lewis McChord and patiently waited for a spirited business meeting to conclude. He then provided a briefing of C17 activities and other military assets.

He said much of the C17 training is conducted at Moses Lake, WA where they have an assault length runway and local drop zones. He identified and described the instrument routes (IR) and visual VR routes in the area which are conducted at low altitudes and high airspeeds.

He also described the military traffic around and south of McChord. He emphasized that contacting the ATC Tower is a much better op-on rather than trying to skirt the airspace.

Asked about ADS-B on military aircraft, he said they are told to keep it off, and many military planes do not have it at all. Some use EFBs like ForeFlight on an iPad to see traffic. Found on Flights above the Pacific Northwest (FATPNW) is a response to the same question:

The vast majority of military aircraft do not have ADS-B out or in components installed, and likely will not get it in the near future, due to being waived from the requirements by the FAA.

Unlike most GA aircraft, there are not commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) options that give a plug and play functionality like the Garmin units or uAvionix Tailbeacon, etc. Even comparing to commercial aviation and integrating updates with their various FMS, military aviation is incredibly slow at acquisition, development, and testing of everything. What would take a year or two for GA or a few years for commercial products to debut, military aircraft are more on a decade or greater timeline. Not to men-on, many military aircraft are joint efforts of 2-3 companies to manufacture the airframe, while 1-3+ other contractors do the avionics or software, and there’s bound to be compatibility issues and other problems found in testing since each company has their own standards they follow. It can be a mess, especially when you’re dealing with a fleet of aircraft that are hodgepodges of different joint efforts.

Over the next several years, the most likely scenario will be an ADS-B Out capability for all military aircraft “eventually”, and even then it’ll be limited for OPSEC reasons. If you’re seeing military aircraft on the online ADS-B websites, it’s probably intentional for reasons (i.e. they want their presence known). But flying around the PNW, I would not expect to see much military ADS-B traffic other than some helos, or larger aircraft like tankers, C-17’s or others that are more similar to a commercial aircraft like a 737 or A320, as they are likely easier to have a COTS op-on to comply with the mandate. Most tacair (Growlers and other fighters) will not have it.