An American aircraft designed to ‘sniff’ radioactivity associated with nuclear material has deployed from the UK to the Eastern Mediterranean.

The aircraft arrived in the UK recently and has been operating out of RAF Mildenhall.

Previously, air sampling missions were routinely conducted over the Far East, Indian Ocean, Bay of Bengal, Mediterranean Sea, the Polar regions, and off the coasts of South America and Africa. The aircraft doesn’t usually stay in a region for too long before heading back to the United States. As said above, this is a rare deployment and the last visit of such an aircraft to the UK was August last year.

More notably, back in 2017 an aircraft was deployed to RAF Mildenhall to conduct missions over Europe after air quality stations across the continent detected traces of radioactive Iodine-131.

The aircraft has been sued previously to trace radioactivity from Russian submarines.

Historically, the WC-135W fleet played a major role in tracking radioactive debris from the Soviet Union’s Chernobyl nuclear plant disaster.

What is the WC-135W?

The WC-135 ‘Constant Phoenix’ is U.S. Air Force a special-purpose aircraft derived from the Boeing C-135 Stratolifter (as also with the RC-135 ‘Rivet Joint’ signals intelligence aircraft used by the Royal Air Force).

According to the U.S. Air Force, its mission is to collect samples from the atmosphere for the purpose of detecting and identifying nuclear explosions.

According to military.com here, the Constant Phoenix has an on-board atmospheric collection suite, which allows the mission crew to detect radioactive “clouds” in real time. The aircraft is equipped with external flow-through devices to collect particulates on filter paper and a compressor system for whole air samples collected in holding spheres.

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George Allison
George has a degree in Cyber Security from Glasgow Caledonian University and has a keen interest in naval and cyber security matters and has appeared on national radio and television to discuss current events. George is on Twitter at @geoallison
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Nigel Collins
Nigel Collins
2 years ago

“Historically, the WC-135W fleet played a major role in tracking radioactive debris from the Soviet Union’s Chernobyl nuclear plant disaster.”

As I suspected and posted in an earlier topic on the WC-135 last week, the shortest route to Kyiv.

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dan
dan
2 years ago

Germany should have an aircraft with this capability. They would be a lot closer to the fallout than America is. Keep dreaming. I know. lol

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