Dark brother is watching you, and sometimes its own

Ever noticed a persistent sound of an aircraft in the sky that seems to come and go for long intervals yet is never there when you look?

It’s probably a police helicopter, or a quiet fixed wing aircraft, engaged in lawful surveillance.

Their existence would not be readily confirmed if it wasn’t for the fact that they pose a remote risk to the safety of other aircraft that mightn’t see them either.

This requires CASA to grant such operations exemptions to fly at night without lights, and publicly disclose their existence so that if there is an accident the safety regulator can claim “I told you so.”

As the result of this exemption issued last Friday the NSW Police Integrity Commission can now pursue crooked NSW cops with NSW Police helicopters and small aircraft at night without lights.

The exemption adds to the roles being played by growing constellation of dark aircraft being used for anti terrorism surveillance and other law enforcement purposes in Australian night skies.

That black hovering or slowly circling object you might see against the background glow of the night sky over the trouble prone further western suburbs of Sydney might not just be station keeping waiting for idiots to shine lasers at jets, or tracking the action around bikie gang hot spots or drug labs.

It might be now also be listening to a conversation between crooked constable X and caucus member Y in the back room above a brothel.

Dark choppers have been a feature of police operations in Australia in recent years. And have been used in training and ‘real’ covert operations by the SAS for considerably longer.

They can see people carrying unusual objects in car parks or near bridges or other infrastructure. They use thermal imaging and can have sophisticated capabilities to see clearly types of materials and integrate what is seen with detailed maps of installations, buildings and other surface features.

They can communicate with ground commands with other air and surface response units.

But as far as non-military equipment is concerned, CASA has to publish exemptions which officially tell other pilots that they may, conceivably, find themselves in the vicinity of dark aircraft.

And the safety rules require these covertly operated flights to listen to the radio frequencies used by normal traffic, and if challenged turn on their lights and identify themselves to any other aircraft, or air traffic control, on demand.

In real life however, the covert flights are in places so low and sometimes so close to hills or buildings, that normal aircraft would not come near them.

By coincidence CASA also published on the same day another exemption for the Surveillance Australia Dash 8 turbo-props, used by Customs to detect people smugglers and drug runners, to operate without lights from Lord Howe Island.

This version of the Dash 8 has much more endurance, and a more demanding field requirement, than the Qantaslink version that links that beautiful island to the mainland. So much so that it might not always be able to take off in the confines of the very short airstrip.

However CASA has issued another exemption for it to use if necessary the full extra 60 metres of the runway end safety area in calculating the required field length because it is, unusually, built to the same strength as the short runway.

It could be the difference between making a take off, or making waves in the Lord Howe lagoon, last used by scheduled passenger flying boats operating from Sydney Harbour’s Rose Bay in 1974.