Been following this for a while actually and yeah, something definitely feels off. The TFRs that pop up with no NOTAM explanation beyond ". Government operations". Are the ones that get me. Like, commercial airspace doesn't just get closed for nothing.
I've been cross-referencing some of these with FlightAware and Flightradar24 and there's a clear pattern of restrictions clustering around areas that aren't Nellis or the known test ranges. That's the bit that raises my eyebrows. If it was standard military testing you'd expect it to align with the established restricted airspace - R-4808 and that whole corridor - but some of these don't.
A few questions I keep coming back to:
Are these restrictions always retroactively listed or do some genuinely disappear from the records?, Has anyone with a PPL actually been redirected mid-flight without prior warning?, Is there any correlation with the UAP report uptick that AARO has been documenting?
I'm not immediately jumping to ". Secret programme". Conclusions because honestly bureaucratic cock-ups can explain a lot of this. But the complete absence of any follow-up explanation from the FAA on some of these is harder to wave away.
Anyone tracking this systematically? Would be interested if someone's built a proper dataset rather than just individual sightings of the restrictions.
