The Wire - May 15, 2025

//The Wire//2300Z May 15, 2025//
//ROUTINE//
//BLUF: COMMUNICATIONS ISSUES CONTINUE IN COMMERCIAL AVIATION. TRUMP'S MIDDLE EAST TRIP CONTINUES. SHOOTING REPORTED AT MILWAUKEE CITY HALL.//

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-International Events-

Middle East: Various diplomatic efforts continue as before. Ukrainian officials have met with Russian officials in Turkey, with little to no agreement being made so far. President Trump's visit to the Middle East continues, along with various trade agreements.

-HomeFront-

Texas: Yesterday an arrest was made in conjunction with the high-profile murder of an InfoWars employee in Austin. Authorities state that Eloy Adrian Camarillo shot and killed Jaime White as Camarillo was attempting to break into vehicles outside White's residence.

AC: At the time this murder was reported, it was possible that this was a more targeted attack due to White's link to InfoWars. However, now this appears to be more of an instance of routine violent street crime.

Wisconsin: This afternoon a shooting was reported at the Zeidler municipal building in Milwaukee, prompting a lockdown of City Hall.

AC: As of this report, no details have been released and the lockdown continues. Some sources claim that the shooter may be a disgruntled employee but as this is a developing situation nothing is confirmed yet.

Colorado: This morning the FAA issued a statement regarding a communications issue that emerged at Denver International Airport on Monday. Air traffic control personnel in the tower briefly lost radio contact with all aircraft for several minutes, due to an unspecified outage at a transmitter site.

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Analyst Comments: The aviation incident in Denver is concerning due to how serious the crisis could have been. By pure luck alone, a separate radio system was used to contact one aircraft in the air on the Guard (emergency) frequency, who was then able to relay the explanation of the situation to aircraft approaching the airport. Though there are multiple ways for airports to communicate with aircraft, not all aircraft have these communications platforms (for instance, a small Cessna probably doesn't have an ACARS system, for basic text messaging between aircraft). The fact that somebody had to get ahold of a random aircraft on Guard is very telling. 

Most of the local news reports on the issue have cited closed-source "insider information" which obviously can't be independently confirmed. However, based on this speculative information, it sounds like multiple radio outages had already occurred, and that the fifth and final method of communicating with aircraft via radio finally died. This is concerning for a multitude of reasons, but especially because the aircraft already inbound to the airport had no idea what happened. It is only via this truly last-ditch emergency radio system that airborne aircraft were able to figure out what had happened. It's one thing when an aircraft itself suffers a radio outage or some other communications issue...but it's vastly more concerning when a whole airport goes dark, and can't communicate with aircraft that are already lining up to land.

Analyst: S2A1
Research: https://publish.obsidian.md/s2underground
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