Skip to main content
← Suspicious by US Intel

N1098L: The HADES Aircraft's Low Passes (Claims)

:::caution Attributed claims only The numbers in this claim contradict each other inside the investigation file itself, and a published innocent explanation exists. Nothing below is a finding that this aircraft, its crew, or its operator did anything wrong. Bill Ackman is a private citizen accused of nothing. :::

Claim snapshot

FieldValue
The claimAn Army-linked ISR jet reportedly made two abnormally low, slow passes near UVU on the day of the killing
Raised by@JG_CSTT; MonkeyWerx-style OSINT trackers; @BlakeBednarz — disputed by @TJPHager
First surfacedSeptember 2025
Rests onPublic ADS-B data, read inconsistently across accounts
Evidence ratingEMERGING

The numbers do not agree with each other

Start with the problem, because it is fatal to the strong version of this claim. The investigation file gives the same two maneuvers two incompatible ways. One telling has the first pass at 600 ft AGL at 11:47 am MDT and the second at 335 ft AGL at 12:24 pm — speeds near 118 and 129 knots. Another telling in the same file has the aircraft dropping to 203–204 ft at 116 knots, described as "stall speed," and drops the times to 9:16 am and 12:48 pm. A third describes 650 ft and "3 seconds after the incident." These are not small discrepancies. They are the same raw ADS-B feed being read three different ways by three people, which means at least two of them are wrong and none of them has shown their work.

The "stall speed" framing is also aerodynamically incorrect. A Bombardier Global 6500's stall speed at approach weights is comfortably above 116 knots — an aircraft actually at its stall speed is not making a controlled photographic pass, it is falling. Describing 116 knots as stall speed makes the maneuver sound desperate and exotic when the figure describes a routine slow-flight profile.

What is alleged

N1098L (ICAO A0299E, callsign reported as AXEL10/AXLE10) is a Bombardier Global 6500 registered to LASAI Aviation II LLC and associated in reporting with Leidos and the US Army's HADES program — High Accuracy Detection and Exploitation System. Citizen flight trackers say ADS-B data shows it making two unusually low, slow passes near Orem and Utah Lake on September 10, 2025, within roughly two miles of UVU: one hours before the shooting, one some twenty-odd minutes after. Some accounts escalate this into an allegation of drone drop-off and recovery.

The file records the supporting and contradicting threads honestly. The Defense Post and TWZ have publicly documented Army interest in trialing air-launched drones from a Global Express-type jet, which is the background that makes the theory conceivable. Bradley Hansell is described in the file as overseeing HADES, and LASAI-linked aircraft were reportedly aloft over Washington DC around January 6, 2021. Against that, researcher @TJPHager reportedly disputes that this airframe is configured to launch drones at all, and a competing explanation in the same file states plainly that scheduled drone-retrieval training was the flight's purpose. A further claim circulates that LASAI Aviation II LLC shares a New York address with Bill Ackman's Pershing Square — this is offered here strictly as an unverified question, not as an established fact, and no link between Mr. Ackman and any event at UVU has been shown.

The ordinary explanation

600 ft AGL at roughly 120 knots over open water is an ordinary sensor-calibration, pattern or training profile for a large-cabin test aircraft — it is not a stall, and it is not rare. A published drone-retrieval training explanation exists and is consistent with the recorded flight legs, which the file gives as a Biggs Army Airfield departure at approximately 07:48 MDT and a Kalispell, Montana arrival at approximately 10:38 MDT. Utah Lake sits directly beneath normal arrival and training corridors for Provo and Salt Lake, so "within two miles of UVU" describes a two-mile radius drawn around a busy campus in a busy valley — geography, not a targeting decision.

The strongest point against the sinister reading is the one investigators skip: the aircraft's association with a publicly announced Army program is an argument that its behavior was disclosed, not hidden. It flew with its transponder on, broadcasting its position to every hobbyist tracker in the country. That is not how a covert drone strike is conducted.

What would settle it

  1. The raw ADS-B track for A0299E on September 10, 2025, published in full so the altitude figures can be reconciled once.
  2. The Army's mission tasking for the flight and whether drone-retrieval training was scheduled in advance.
  3. Whether this airframe is physically configured with a launch or recovery aperture — a maintenance-record question.
  4. The actual crew manifest, given that two competing crew lists appear in the file.
  5. The FAA registration address for LASAI Aviation II LLC, which either matches Pershing Square's or does not.

Sources