E-6B Mercury HEX codes

[wickedjane]

Hey everyone


recently multiple OSINT folks spotted unusual and multiple fake HEX code switches mid flight on some E-B Mercury aircraft. It is common for tactical aircraft such as the USN P-8A Poseidon, and SIGINT acft. such as the RC-135 Rivet Joint to fake HEX codes. However it is highly unusual, aircraft with a strategic purpose, fake their HEX codes. It seems like the E-6B's are getting fitted with contingency OPS modifications, to support the B-2 Spirit stealth bombers currently deployed at Diego Garcia. The last time E-6B Mercuries were fitted with fake HEX codes was back in 2003 when Operation Iraqi Freedom started, back then E-6B's received multiple modifications.

https://x.com/TheIntelFrog/status/1904665203356164374

https://x.com/TheIntelFrog/status/1905280274696454195

 

[NEET]

The last time E-6B Mercuries were fitted with fake HEX codes was back in 2003 when Operation Iraqi Freedom started, back then E-6B's received multiple modifications.

There probably hasn't been sufficient monitoring of E6s over the past 22 years to say this with too much confidence.

E6s have occasionally flown dark in the past, but it started becoming commonplace in early January. I would read the fake hex codes as a potential 'step up' of something which began earlier this year than necessarily associated with any news of the day.

 

[WatnNY]

There probably hasn't been sufficient monitoring of E6s over the past 22 years to say this with too much confidence.

E6s have occasionally flown dark in the past, but it started becoming commonplace in early January. I would read the fake hex codes as a potential 'step up' of something which began earlier this year than necessarily associated with any news of the day.

What makes you say there hasn't been sufficient monitoring of E-6's? There's lots of people who actively monitor them and report what they see and hear. The weird hex codes for a couple of E-6's have just popped up in the past week to 10 days, as the OP stated.

 

[NEET]

What makes you say there hasn't been sufficient monitoring of E-6's? There's lots of people who actively monitor them and report what they see and hear. The weird hex codes for a couple of E-6's have just popped up in the past week to 10 days, as the OP stated.

I am sure a lot of people have monitored them but how good of a job have they done? By comparison for something I'm more familiar with, I talk to many people who claim to have monitored the HFGCS for years and some of them have insisted on information/trivia demonstrably proven wrong when it comes to EAMs. There might also be some people who have done comprehensive monitoring efforts but not necessarily published their findings or feel compelled to publish their findings.

This isn't to discredit all efforts – it's not that E6 monitoring is altogether insufficient, but insufficient so as to be able to make such definitive claims. There could well be someone who observed and documented of another instance of E6s using these dynamic fake hex codes in – well, pick a year – and had no motivating reason to publish to this forum or any other website which is scraped by search engines. Or maybe they did, but it hasn't been found. (For example, I have found a lot of information about HFGCS/EAMs/E6s/etc. on Russian language forums, but only after the fact. I wouldn't have cause to look for these things in advance, but there have been a few thing I've seen 'anglosphere' HFGCS monitors document as "firsts" that end up being readily found as already documented on Russian-language forums years ago. And so you will understand where my scepticism when it comes to claiming 'firsts' and the like will come from.)

 

[wickedjane]

I am sure a lot of people have monitored them but how good of a job have they done? By comparison for something I'm more familiar with, I talk to many people who claim to have monitored the HFGCS for years and some of them have insisted on information/trivia demonstrably proven wrong when it comes to EAMs. There might also be some people who have done comprehensive monitoring efforts but not necessarily published their findings or feel compelled to publish their findings.

This isn't to discredit all efforts – it's not that E6 monitoring is altogether insufficient, but insufficient so as to be able to make such definitive claims. There could well be someone who observed and documented of another instance of E6s using these dynamic fake hex codes in – well, pick a year – and had no motivating reason to publish to this forum or any other website which is scraped by search engines. Or maybe they did, but it hasn't been found. (For example, I have found a lot of information about HFGCS/EAMs/E6s/etc. on Russian language forums, but only after the fact. I wouldn't have cause to look for these things in advance, but there have been a few thing I've seen 'anglosphere' HFGCS monitors document as "firsts" that end up being readily found as already documented on Russian-language forums years ago. And so you will understand where my scepticism when it comes to claiming 'firsts' and the like will come from.)

I get your point, and you might be right, but deploying almost half of the B-2 Spirit stelath bombers overseas is highly unusual, this never happened before. Well there could have been 6-8 B-2 Spirit's on rotation (CONUS GPM shifts), (other's were reserved for potential STRATCOM nuclear strikes on our adversaries) participating in a broader air campaign such as Operation Allied Force, Operation Enduring Freedom, Operation Iraqi Freedom, Operation Odyssey Dawn, while the rest, 6-7, B-2's were used for the schoolhouse, the IQT/FTU-classes. Most of the stealth bombers flew CONUS missions, while only a few were allowed to remain overseas, talking about 2-3. The E-6B Mercury TACAMO/B-2 Spirit combo is nothing new to us listeners. The E-6B's got forward deployed to Stuttgart and Ramstein in Germany multiple times in combination with B-2 Spirit CONUS Global Power Missions (GPM's).

The mysterious E-6B orbits over UK on the night Osama Bin Laden was killed

The first thing I did when Lee Armstrong told me to give a try to Planefinder's new search feature was to look for some E-6Bs, which are among the most

theaviationist.com

Spirit Mission

On Sunday September 8th 2013, an E-6B, registration 164387, arrived at Stuttgart Airport in Germany, as usual being caught on the airports webcam as it arrived. Usually when an E6 arrives at Stuttg…

planesandstuff.wordpress.com

https://x.com/TheIntelFrog/status/1755314595973972478

Early last year (early February), 2 to 3, B-2's flew a nonstop CONUS GPM. An E-6B was forward deployed to Ramstein AB in Germany (see third and last link), the B-2's returned after 24+ hours to Whiteman AFB, MO, U.S.A..


Well I do not have the B-2 Spirit section of that particular mission last year, but on X (Twitter), there are some folks who were successful monitoring them, just search after Sir Listenalot, AircraftSpots, and you will find the post.

My guess would be that these new hex modifications, along with other potential modifications we are unaware of, might be aimed to make the E-6B's more independent in terms of allowing the TACAMO fleet to conduct high profile operations worldwide, at any given moment. The pace, the E-6B Mercuries got modified, suggests the modifications are related to the B-2 Spirit deployment, to Guam and Diego Garcia.


I have heard and read about russians gathering Intel about our E-6B's, but their knowledge and understanding of the E-6B Mercury TACAMO platform seems a little foggy to me.

 

[NEET]

My guess would be that these new hex modifications, along with other potential modifications we are unaware of, might be aimed to make the E-6B's more independent in terms of allowing the TACAMO fleet to conduct high profile operations worldwide, at any given moment. The pace, the E-6B Mercuries got modified, suggests the modifications are related to the B-2 Spirit deployment, to Guam and Diego Garcia.

The E6s have begun new behaviour at least as far back as January of this year. They also began to broadcast 274 messages on HFGCS 11175 kHz every few days, something which has apparently picked up in pace and they might now broadcast 3-4 such messages on a single day now.

So, suggesting the current activity necessarily relates to the B-2 deployment would suggest that the B-2 deployment is the latest of a process now ongoing onto its third month. That's not impossible, but the claim becomes significantly more complex than "well the E6s did something for the first time this week, and it's around the same time as the B-2s went to Diego Garcia", because the E6s have been doing it for a while now.

This same sort of correlation=causation logic means you so often see novices and 'long-time monitors' alike claim that an EAM broadcast necessarily relates to the news of the day. In this case, we are talking about two things under direct US military control, so it's less egregiously nonsensical, but the logic here is iffy. That "E6 over the UK the night Osama bin Laden was killed" could end up being a great example of that – SKYMASTER exercises are semi-routine events scheduled in advance, and some do involve E6 activity in Europe. Did anyone take time to rule out the possibility of a SKYMASTER exercise taking place that night? Were they even familiar with SKYMASTER exercises? (To flip this another way – an E6 was in Europe in February of 2024 as part of a SKYMASTER exercise. If there did end up being a 'real world event' on that date, how would someone be able to disprove a claim that the E6 was necessarily part of it, if they weren't familiar with SKYMASTER exercises? And now, if you stop to consider the fact that the US military is doing drills and exercises 24/7 365, there is basically no day the US military could execute a "real world event" without the possibility of exercises being conflated as part of it.)


Back to the main point, I asked around about this and was advised that there have been multiple years where E6s were flying with fake hex codes. One hex code they mentioned was 249249, which – hey! There's a post about that hex on this forum;

Different aircraft have been seen using 249249. I've had an E-6, among others, on my local ADS-B setup.

The takeaway here isn't that you're uniquely guilty of conflating correlation with causation, but to reiterate an earlier point I made; it's not that E6 monitoring is altogether insufficient, but insufficient so as to be able to make such definitive claims as the sort you made in your first post. It's essentially 'luck' that I solicited mention of that hex code and that someone posted about in on this forum. The onus shouldn't be on a curious third party to disprove extraordinary claims.

 

[wickedjane]

The E6s have begun new behaviour at least as far back as January of this year. They also began to broadcast 274 messages on HFGCS 11175 kHz every few days, something which has apparently picked up in pace and they might now broadcast 3-4 such messages on a single day now.

So, suggesting the current activity necessarily relates to the B-2 deployment would suggest that the B-2 deployment is the latest of a process now ongoing onto its third month. That's not impossible, but the claim becomes significantly more complex than "well the E6s did something for the first time this week, and it's around the same time as the B-2s went to Diego Garcia", because the E6s have been doing it for a while now.

This same sort of correlation=causation logic means you so often see novices and 'long-time monitors' alike claim that an EAM broadcast necessarily relates to the news of the day. In this case, we are talking about two things under direct US military control, so it's less egregiously nonsensical, but the logic here is iffy. That "E6 over the UK the night Osama bin Laden was killed" could end up being a great example of that – SKYMASTER exercises are semi-routine events scheduled in advance, and some do involve E6 activity in Europe. Did anyone take time to rule out the possibility of a SKYMASTER exercise taking place that night? Were they even familiar with SKYMASTER exercises? (To flip this another way – an E6 was in Europe in February of 2024 as part of a SKYMASTER exercise. If there did end up being a 'real world event' on that date, how would someone be able to disprove a claim that the E6 was necessarily part of it, if they weren't familiar with SKYMASTER exercises? And now, if you stop to consider the fact that the US military is doing drills and exercises 24/7 365, there is basically no day the US military could execute a "real world event" without the possibility of exercises being conflated as part of it.)


Back to the main point, I asked around about this and was advised that there have been multiple years where E6s were flying with fake hex codes. One hex code they mentioned was 249249, which – hey! There's a post about that hex on this forum;




The takeaway here isn't that you're uniquely guilty of conflating correlation with causation, but to reiterate an earlier point I made; it's not that E6 monitoring is altogether insufficient, but insufficient so as to be able to make such definitive claims as the sort you made in your first post. It's essentially 'luck' that I solicited mention of that hex code and that someone posted about in on this forum. The onus shouldn't be on a curious third party to disprove extraordinary claims.

I agree with you on most things, However the strategic locations of the E-6B TACAMO's seem to shift away. Stuttgart didn't have E-6B visits for years now. This suggests the TACAMO fleet is receiving the modifications continously, and is more independent than years ago. The E-6B hex code change in 2021 is interesting, however it looks like it left the TACAMO fleet untouched at that time, please correct me if I'm wrong. I really would like to know which E-6B Mercury reg. had that hex modification back in 2021, those who have any idea, let us know, you will be highly appreciated.


One thing is for sure, the E-6B is extremly valuable, for airstrikes we probably have not seen before. Remember There are not only B-2 Spirit stealth bombers around, there is pretty much the whole package in the CENTCOM AOR right now. Not talking only about bombers, there are fighters aswell. Remember we have Ohio-class submarines that are capable of carrying 154 Tomahawks(!). You have multiple Navy assets, Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, Ticonderoga-class cruisers. All of them carry Tomahawks. Secretary of Defense sent another aircraft carrier to the middle east recently. You can imagine there is a whole, "Here we are, we can kick the door at any given time" meeting in the CENTCOM AOR. In this case the recent E-6B Mercury modifications are necessary. In case we decide to go full in, everything needs to be perfectly orchestrated, E-6B's will be a critical leg between SATCOM and STRATCOM assets. They will be working like a Rolex watch, and not fail no matter what. Close coordination and timing between these assets is crucial, if you want to hit your adversary as hard as possible, therefore "knock out" as fast as possible and at the same time doing all of this with extraordinary precision.


Remember time will tell us what will happen with the E-6B hex modifications, in case the nuclear talks with our adversary, Iran, head into a positive direction, we might see the E-6B modifications getting removed, or not, who knows. We have to be a little patient at this point, I think. My guess is that the recent modifications are temporarily and related to specific operational requirements at this time.


I apologize for being a little spongy and not going much into detail, but this could be exciting, or not. Maybe a long pre-planned and late executed April fool, who knows. Let's wait and see...

 

[wickedjane]

Wait actually the first post on this thread could be right, I read an article and the article I read is promising I think:

E-6B Mercury: More than the Doomsday Plane

David C Isby profiles the US Navy’s E-6B Mercury aircraft and...

www.key.aero

In case this article is correct, I would say with high confidence, the E-6B's are ACTIVELY SUPPORTING the B-2 Spirit stealth bombers in the middle east striking Houthi targets at night.


Multiple media outlets reported the B-2's are conducting airstrikes on Houthi targets in Yemen right now:

B-2 Stealth Bombers Deployed To Diego Garcia Have Been Striking Targets In Yemen

At least six of America's prized B-2 bombers are deployed to the island outpost and are now participating in combat operations against the Houthis in Yemen.

www.twz.com

This means the E-6B TACAMO fleet was modified to support the B-2 Spirits downrange, nothing more, nothing less. I know that the things we read should not be based on 1 article, we need more articles from a variety of different sources, to be confident. But this looks very promising to me, to be honest.