The Salts come out of the old intelligence culture devoted to supporting all sorts of operations at sea. As a general rule, the target had been naval activity above, below or atop the sea.

Like the target entwined in sea traffic, mission, weather weird acoustics. Sometimes it was fairly routine and sometimes it was more akin to the activity on a news floor or Wall Street trading. One of the messages used to flag items about activities in progress that could cause hazards to navigation were published with names like the one above.

“NOTAM”

A notice of potential activity that could interfere with safe flight or navigation by means. An error in recognizing published threat information is a accident waiting to happen that could end in disaster. Personal and professional. So, they get attention.

We don’t pay much attention to them in retirement, but the word is still electric in its power, and we naturally took note about who had issued it and about what area. It was interesting. It was in press reporting, which is not how these are circulated, so the release and subject are both part of a messaging campaign unrelated to navigation.

The NOTAM was issued by Egypt and echoed in Britain, warning airlines to avoid Iranian and Lebanese airspace on 08 August between the hours of 0100 and 0300 UTC. That is also what they call Greenwich Mean Time, or GMT.

Moving along the time zones east and west from the observatory there, those hours would be just before dawn in Lebanon and nine in the evening on the day before here in DC.

At this moment the NOTAM goes into effect in a couple hours. We will see if it means anything in the morning messaging.

In other times and places we would be drawing conclusions and making calls to ensure the alerts were properly set. In these times, we are going to go to bed. But getting up in the morning is interesting in a time when the messaging streams make it possible to image we are all still working in an underground facility filled with people speaking rapidly and earnestly.

And this isn’t a teletype or a beeping signal. It is just the flatscreen on the wall. It is interesting to know that everyone is in it now.

Copyright 2024 Vic Socotra

www.vicsocotra.com