This Military Early Warning Plane Spotted Refueling Over Missouri

I absolutely love the fact that when my friends spot strange-looking planes over Missouri, they immediately alert me. That's the case with this military early warning plane that was just spotted refueling over Missouri.

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Thank you to my friend John who sent me this graphic from Flight Radar 24 showing a massive plane refueling over the southeastern part of Missouri.

That plane (code named Ember44) is a massive E-3 Sentry (aka AWACS) which is an early warning and command and control center. The US Air Force site says it "provides situational awareness of friendly, neutral and hostile activity, command and control of an area of responsibility, battle management of theater forces, all-altitude and all-weather surveillance of the battle space, and early warning of enemy actions during joint, allied, and coalition operations".

Why was this AWACS plane over Missouri anyway?

It's actually not that unusual as Wikipedia mentions that Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma is one of the homes for this interesting plane. I've never seen one of these planes over Missouri refueling though, so that's a unique twist. But, I'm also no aviation expert. I just find them interesting.

You should see the inside of these planes. In the world of radar, these are the ones you call "sir".

It's been an interesting past few months for military planes crisscrossing both Missouri and Illinois. This is the latest bad boy defending us over our heads even if we're not fully aware.