Oh my god.

It was bad enough watching the The Stranger's grip on sound reporting slip over the years, but now they've gone full Infowars, interviewing a planespotter as the sole source for a story on military technology, printing his pure speculation about a particular plane's mission and capabilities?

I'm cringing hard enough to make me wish I'd stretched first.

@1 Rogoway is a respected military technology journalist.

Why worry about this "eye in the sky" when the vast majority of Seattlites willingly give up their most personal information as well as their location from moment to moment just by having and using a smartphone?

@2

A respected military journalist whose only source on this is planespotters, and who is purely and simply speculating about what the plane is carrying, and what its mission might be.

Have you checked with any respected UFO journalists? Or respected DEA journalists? I bet you could at least find an alternate wild speculation to print alongside the one you ran with.

It's part of a training exercise, we figured this out yesterday on reddit. Get it together.

@4 Please read Rogoway's work, which is informed by years of reporting and research.

@2 Hmm. Googling reveals fairly consistent criticism of his work as a bit over-dramatic and hyperbolic. Good enough for the Stranger, though, right?

@6 Hirsh somehow neglected to inquire about this in his piece, but it is addressed in Rogoway's blog. Paraphrasing here, he contends that the aircraft is not utilizing the part of Boeing Field that you would expect for that sort of thing, so it must be something else.

I'm no military aviation expert myself, but I have to wonder if there could possibly be something going on at Boeing Field this week that could possibly reduce the space available for military aircraft. Has anyone noticed any other unusual military aircraft at Boeing Field this week?

Following up on my @9, now that I think about it, I did see an unusual looking group of blue and yellow aircraft headed toward Boeing Field not long ago. I wonder if they could possibly be utilizing the military ramp?

I work for a GIS software company here in Seattle. There are hundreds of uses for this kind of imagery. Every town/city/country/county/military org has tons of it. The technology is expensive, so usually city or state governments and private companies purchase it from the military/feds to use for anything from urban development to flood planning to forest research. I think this is a little bit of an over-reaction.

@7

That there is what's called "argument to authority."

The substantive criticism of your post is that it that it's reprinting pure speculation. And absent even a shred of evidence about what the plane is doing, it's no better than pure speculation from anyone else.

You should have stopped with "I myself am easily frightened by aeroplanes."

probably some guy lost his keys and is gonna find them by hook or crook as they say. heck, maybe xi jinping lost his dear friend's mother's brooch and now she's on her death bed asking for it for all we know it's all good, what goes around comes around and whatnot.

All I know is that every time I slip my battery into my Galaxy S7, that plane turns toward my location; when I pull the battery out, it turns away. Check it out with your phone too.

Calibration.

Why assume it's military? It could just as easily be some Google spook project. Southeastern Airmotive is a charter outfit based in Charlotte, not Burbank. Would the Pentagon fly a test aircraft into/out of Boeing Field/Paine/Renton?

@3 gets it. Riding Sounder, I can't believe the kind of shit people talk about. loudly. Divorce, child raising issues, legal problems, problems in the bedroom. People doing chats on iPhones in such a way the person sitting next to them can read what is going on. Forget what the government might be up to - I am sure that I will eventually overhear something I can turn into cash via blackmail. Ka- Ching!

@17: like "No, I thought you were going to bury the body."

@5 "WE figured this out already on Reddit, get YER act together"
Priceless.... I'll be sure to look it up your priceless findings in many a distinguished publication like the New England Journal of....... Reddit?

"That floor ain't going to clean itself... Get back to work"

"I'm easily spooked..."

No shit?