Today Crew 6 made a trip to the Air and Marine Operations Center on March Air Reserve Base. What is this place? It is a place that watches thousands of aircraft and watercraft within and without our borders. We saw a short video that went over the operation. It was informative. There is an explanation of what they do in an article I found on the web.
It starts out “A sleek Citation jet pierces the night sky traveling at a speedy 350 knots—more than 400 miles an hour—keeping a suspicious plane in sight either visually or by on-board intercept radar.”(Link is the quote above.)
As for us, after the video, we left our cell phones and cameras on the table and went to the command center. As we entered the command center, there were cubby holes for cell phones. No wireless communication was allowed in the room. That indicated the room was a secure place that was important. There were several stations with several monitors looking at different geographic areas. If you happened to be one of the dots on the screen and were doing something dumb like flying under visual flight rules in a snowstorm to hide you travel, you would be a suspect target. Then again, not acting normal makes most anyone become a suspect target.
There were lots of questions. Most of them by the adults. The boys did not ask that many questions. I am guessing that the monitor screens would have been more interesting if there was a lot of action on them at the speed of an X-box game. One if the boys said that looks like a boring job. I just thought to myself, wait until you are an adult. As for me, it looked like an exciting job that would be different every day.
