Foreign LLC continues to acquire land in California critical to energy and national defense.
FAIRFIELD, Calif. (KGO) – The United States Air Force is investigating a company that’s purchased $800 million of land near Travis Air Force Base, one of the most critical military bases in the U.S. But after eight months of investigation, government officials have been unable to identify who’s behind it nor rule out any threat to national security.
Flannery LLC was founded 4 and 1/2 years ago and was registered to a Washington DC-based law firm.
There is no information about the actual ownership of this LLC. The previous Reddit thread from 4 years ago has some interesting tidbits of information that you may be interested in reading in addition to the new article.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Sacramento/comments/c96bkb/a_mysterious_corporation_has_quietly_bought/
What’s additionally interesting is that the land that they acquired around Travis Air Force Base will be bayfront property with future sea level increases of between 3 to 5 ft. NOAA has predicted the sea level increase will blow by that with a 7.2 ft average global sea level rise by 2100.
So either we have a secretive Chinese back shell company acquiring critical infrastructure and land for spying on American military assets, or a very optimistic wealthy investor with way too much money and is getting creative in what kind of investment schemes they park their money in.
Yeah, this is sheer and utter bullshit motivated by “special interests” who want to buy the land for themselves at pennies on the dollar.
Security wise? Not to go too deep into the details, but the general rule of thumb is that: if people who aren’t cleared can see it, it is not classified. Part of that has to do with the point of classification. Most of it is just policy. If you are going to carry the alien’s head between bunkers at Area 51: either do it behind a fence or, better yet, put it in a zippered baggy first.
And same here. The amount of intel that can be gleamed by watching a military base pales in comparison to what you can get just by monitoring social media. Hell, there are outright groups who just watch planes take off (because it is cool) who provide more intel than building a house next door ever would.
This is why military bases tend to be rather large and one of the reasons they are often small cities unto themselves. Because it provides the kind of buffer that means you can put up a big ass fence so that nobody can see Snake Plisskin, Johnny L, and Henry Deacon getting on a high tech drill plane.
I used to work near the Davis-Montham Air Force Base down in Tucson. Worked with a couple of guys who were Air Force maintenance tax during the weekends and they worked with me during the weekdays. I used to drive right through the boneyard on my way to work.
Anyways, they used to black out the Air Base on a regular basis when they were landing various top secret or black project aircraft. These included drones as well as maybe stealth aircraft. So, even though this was visible from the highway they were still operating secretive aircraft into and out of that base.
My favorite aircraft that they landed that I saw while driving by one day was watching an x-47 Pegasus land. That was a surreal experience and I only figured out what aircraft it was a few months ago! I saw one of those land back in 2002.
As far as intelligence being gathered, their number of interesting drone encounters that have been published on the war zone over the last 10 years, including one instance at an airbase and the Phoenix nuclear power reactor where drones outran helicopters that were sent to investigate. Some shady stuff going on.
Edit - also, they spent about a billion dollars on the land around the Travis Air Force Base. That’s a lot of money!
For those curious like me, it was an unmanned attack plane that never saw service but looks cool.
A billion dollars on what will apparently become bayfront property in one of the most expensive places in the country in the near future. That is still a steal
And yeah, you can still see some really cool stuff even when the airport is “secure”. I live near an air force base and have a good buddy who makes sure to tell me when I should not visit her because they won’t let me on the base. And I totally have never camped out with some snacks and binoculars to try to see some fun stuff.
But, again, that is fine. With very few exceptions, the data you can gleam from seeing the drone or jet or helicopter or whatever is not all that useful. Maybe you can determine that the canopy’s glass is at a weird angle and derive something about stealth technology from that. But that is also the kind of stuff you get just from spy satellites or even literature review. The real secrets are still the internals that aren’t being messed with on the side of the road (unless things have gone horribly wrong).
And that applies to all kinds of intel. Maybe you know that Jack Ryan is a financial analyst with a specialization in middle eastern terrorism (or whatever season 1 was. All I can remember is the weird cucking scene with the drone operator). If you see him suddenly go into the office on a saturday evening… you know something is up and you can probably guess where. Same if you see him jogging between buildings on a military base with a black zippered bag full of documents. But knowing “something is up in whatever country we are shitting on this week” isn’t actually that useful and can just as easily be gleamed by knowing:
That tells you what his specialization is, that he works for the CIA or another TLA, and that he is secure enough in his job security that he is splurging. Which lets you know “the us government cares about what is going on in this region of the world”. All without building an apartment complex so that you can drink a six pack while you look through binoculars.
Just because someone who isn’t cleared can see it, doesn’t mean it’s not classified, and doesn’t mean it’s declassified. They really emphasized that after the minecraft server leak.
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Mentioned below but:
2 billion for what is rapidly going to become bayfront property in one of the most expensive places in the country? That is still a steal. It is just that the evil unknown company beat them to the punch.
They’re 10 miles from the bay, so unless this is a really long term investment, I don’t think that’s it.