(José Niño, Headline USA) A senior U.S Air Force officer sparked widespread debate after publicly criticizing civilian hobbyists on social media for tracking and publishing American military aircraft movements at levels that would qualify as classified intelligence, according to a tweet posted by WS News.
U.S. Central Command officer Claire Randolph called out "Twitter feeds of randos" for publishing information on American aircraft movements using OSINT that would usually be considered secret or top secret information.
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Major Claire Randolph, Chief of Weapons and Tactics for US Air Forces Central Command, made the remarks during a panel discussion titled “Midnight Hammer: Lessons Learned” hosted by the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies in Arlington, Virginia in late January.
“I mean, you’ve got Twitter feeds of randos that are just studying where our airplanes go and publishing it… consolidating it. Like, if US analysts did some of that, we would consider it secret or maybe even top secret. But that stuff is just allowed on the open internet. So operational security… is really, really difficult to conceal,” Randolph said.
According to Air and Space Forces magazine, the panel served as a formal debrief of Operation Midnight Hammer, a major military strike conducted on June 22, 2025 in which B-2 Spirit stealth bombers used Massive Ordnance Penetrator weapons to destroy three deeply buried nuclear facilities in Iran. The operation involved hundreds of aircraft conducting transnational movements across vast distances while Space Force electromagnetic warfare assets jammed Iranian defenses.
Randolph identified operational security as an unexpected challenge that caught planners off guard. Moving hundreds of aircraft across multiple countries for a massive coordinated strike is inherently difficult to conceal, particularly when civilian observers watch in real time.
José Niño is the deputy editor of Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/JoseAlNino
