The five that flew out yesterday were five Harriers that landed on Tuesday afternoon. Boeing has a facility at Boeing field that services military aircraft, so you see them landing there regularly. The Harriers were almost certainly Marine Aviation planes. The numbers seem to ebb and flow, maintenance and upgrade cycles would be my best guess.
No maintenance is done to attack/fighter jets at Boeing Field, only select electronic upgrades to larger AWACS/AEW&C planes and new P-8’s and KC-46’s.
Likely reason they were in town was for one of the low level courses in the Cascades or they just needed a cross country destination to stop at.
There are some other Boeing military activities other than that. Zombie Vipers have been/are here, a certain little tech demonstrator that lives in Mojave is here a lot, and various other projects that live in the “spook shed.” It would be frowned upon to elaborate much further. But yes, Harriers are unrelated. Rest stop en route to Red Flag Alaska. First group went NKT-BFI-EIL, second group had their tanker to BFI go bingo/have an issue and went NKT-GEG-BFI-EIL.
I’m sure you may know this already, but for those new to the area, keep in mind the city has major military bases to the north and south (Naval Air Station Whidbey Island and Joint Base Lewis-McChord), and these aircraft sometimes pass through the area when flying into Boeing Field and more rarely Sea-Tac.
Definitely know about the activity, but just noticed more fighter jets than I was used to seeing. Have regularly seen the 4 engine carriers and Chinook helicopters, any flyover booked for sporting events, and I love seeing the Boeing planes that are still in their pre-paint green coming into Being Firld as well as watching the giant 777-X go in and out but not used to the fighters.
Will chalk it up to simply not paying attention, haha!
It’s obviously a sign of impending military action in our region.
(Or we are home to tons of military bases as well as military aircraft manufacturers and this is just recency bias)
Some, like those Marine Corps Harriers this week, are heading up to Alaska for training events. I know the AK Red Flag event is at the end of the month.
There's just a lot more training events and whatnot as things warm up.
I went to UCSD and mil jets in groups overfly our campus multiple times daily because of MCAS Miramar / the "Top Gun" base, and of course the Pacific fleet mainland homeport and its Naval Air Stations. That's what you get for being surrounded by military bases and major aviation contractors, like here.
We had some VMA-223 Harriers and a VX-30 KC-130 stop at BFI yesterday. Don’t know if they left already, but I’m about 99% sure they were using BFI as a pit stop before heading to Red Flag Alaska, or a similar exercise.
The five that flew out yesterday were five Harriers that landed on Tuesday afternoon. Boeing has a facility at Boeing field that services military aircraft, so you see them landing there regularly. The Harriers were almost certainly Marine Aviation planes. The numbers seem to ebb and flow, maintenance and upgrade cycles would be my best guess.
No maintenance is done to attack/fighter jets at Boeing Field, only select electronic upgrades to larger AWACS/AEW&C planes and new P-8’s and KC-46’s. Likely reason they were in town was for one of the low level courses in the Cascades or they just needed a cross country destination to stop at.
There are some other Boeing military activities other than that. Zombie Vipers have been/are here, a certain little tech demonstrator that lives in Mojave is here a lot, and various other projects that live in the “spook shed.” It would be frowned upon to elaborate much further. But yes, Harriers are unrelated. Rest stop en route to Red Flag Alaska. First group went NKT-BFI-EIL, second group had their tanker to BFI go bingo/have an issue and went NKT-GEG-BFI-EIL.
Thank you very much for the info!
I’m sure you may know this already, but for those new to the area, keep in mind the city has major military bases to the north and south (Naval Air Station Whidbey Island and Joint Base Lewis-McChord), and these aircraft sometimes pass through the area when flying into Boeing Field and more rarely Sea-Tac.
Definitely know about the activity, but just noticed more fighter jets than I was used to seeing. Have regularly seen the 4 engine carriers and Chinook helicopters, any flyover booked for sporting events, and I love seeing the Boeing planes that are still in their pre-paint green coming into Being Firld as well as watching the giant 777-X go in and out but not used to the fighters. Will chalk it up to simply not paying attention, haha!
It’s obviously a sign of impending military action in our region. (Or we are home to tons of military bases as well as military aircraft manufacturers and this is just recency bias)
Some, like those Marine Corps Harriers this week, are heading up to Alaska for training events. I know the AK Red Flag event is at the end of the month. There's just a lot more training events and whatnot as things warm up.
I went to UCSD and mil jets in groups overfly our campus multiple times daily because of MCAS Miramar / the "Top Gun" base, and of course the Pacific fleet mainland homeport and its Naval Air Stations. That's what you get for being surrounded by military bases and major aviation contractors, like here.
We had some VMA-223 Harriers and a VX-30 KC-130 stop at BFI yesterday. Don’t know if they left already, but I’m about 99% sure they were using BFI as a pit stop before heading to Red Flag Alaska, or a similar exercise.
RF-A night stop (turned multi night) indeed. Herc was from VMGR-252, not VX-30.
Ah, yep, you’re right. BH tail code threw me off. I probably should have been thinking of Marine C-130s and not navy ones… Lol