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I haven't seen too much. The lowest stuff I've seen is the occasional Black Hawk in-case a President comes by, once was when Bush went to an Army-Navy game and when Biden took Amtrak from New York to DC. When I worked at UPS on the other hand, I saw a Volga-Dnepr An-124 take off and a C-17 get some replacement parts at the US Air Terminal then take off same in one night. Here's a terrible, auto-contrasted picture of the An-124 when it was loading up earlier that week taken with a 9 year old digital camera. 
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Nov 25, 2011 12:20
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Helter Skelter posted:Haha, if you think it was bad on Beacon Hill, I used to live in Mount Baker. The church about a block away from my place at the time was used as one of their navigational landmarks. As a result, whenever they were in town, we'd have them flying directly over our back deck so low you could count the rivets on Fat Albert. I grew up in Western NY and lived on a hill that was the highest hill in the area AND it had one of those big-rear end microwave relay stations on the top of the hill. We got used as a turn-around point for lots of low flying military aircraft. It was cool, if a bit noisy.
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Nov 25, 2011 12:22
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Airshows notwithstanding, most of my extremely low buzzes have come from doing IADS (Integrated Air Defense Systems) exercises. The Marines liked to scream over our sight just barely high enough to avoid communications arrays in Harriers and F-5s, then the Air Force joined in with a couple of F-16s. The Marine Super Cobra pilot managed to get past our defenses by "accidentally" loading up his Mode 4 codes (cheating) Then he did a loving airshow on top of our faces flipping every which way, standing on his tail and nose, and generally doing things I honestly didn't know you could do in such a chopper so low to the ground without crashing. Even though the jets are much louder, they weren't quite as surprising as when I was driving a car in Indiana and a crop duster passed me going all of 20ish mph faster than I was and only about 40 feet higher than the road.
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Nov 25, 2011 14:30
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I was at a lake in Kensington State Park in MI when two A-10s randomly flew over a few times. That was pretty cool.
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Nov 25, 2011 16:07
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I grew up near Frankfurt/Main in the 80s, so we had C5s flying over constantly. I never understood why they put camo on those, you could hear them several minutes before you could see them. Very distinctive sound, too. I kind of miss it now. The Wiesbaden army base was nearby, too, so we got lots and lots of Cobras, Hueys and Mohawks flying over, especially at night. Though the loudest thing I ever experienced was a Harrier taking off vertically and hovering, at some Oshkosh airshow in the late 90s. Second loudest would be a C-17 landing and immediately reversing thrust at the same airshow. That reminds me, I need to get a new scanner. I must have hundreds of Photos from several mid-to-late 90s Oshkosh airshows lying around somewhere.
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Nov 25, 2011 16:14
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grover posted:So, it's kinda like a manned predator/reaper, but with less payload and loiter time? Sorry to re-quote, but while looking at contemporary offerings in the AHRLAC's market, I came across this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_Attack/Armed_Reconnaissance Obviously someone thinks less payload and loiter time on a manned platform has some validity. An entry into the competition, yes it's a crop duster: 
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Nov 25, 2011 16:57
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ruebennase posted:I grew up near Frankfurt/Main in the 80s, so we had C5s flying over constantly. The camo was more for enemy fighters looking down on them from above. The sound wouldnt be an issue and it would be more difficult to see a low flying camo'd C5 then a grey one.
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Nov 25, 2011 17:00
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There is nothing louder than a loving IL-76 landing with reverse thrusters. Taking off or taxi, they are loud as gently caress too. I hate them so much. Them and C-130s, all those bastards do it sit on the ramp for 40 minutes with their engines running. BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR, for no reason. ASSHOLES. I see each aircraft and more every day. At least fighters are gone pretty much right away.
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Nov 25, 2011 19:27
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I was at my grandparents' farm in SE Saskatchewan in the early 90s when some Blackhawk variant flew up the highway at about 100m altitude. It was especially interesting to me because it had a refuelling boom and external fuel tanks. I have no idea why it would be flying around in SE Saskatchewan, towards Regina.
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Nov 25, 2011 20:00
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kill me now posted:The camo was more for enemy fighters looking down on them from above. The sound wouldnt be an issue and it would be more difficult to see a low flying camo'd C5 then a grey one. {looks down from one's MiG for where the C-5 sized doppler radar return is coming from} "Ah, is nothing. Just Birnam Wood moving on Dunsinane."
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Nov 25, 2011 21:02
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Frozen Horse posted:{looks down from one's MiG for where the C-5 sized doppler radar return is coming from} "Ah, is nothing. Just Birnam Wood moving on Dunsinane." If a C-5 was anywhere near a combat area with patrolling MiG's, someone in the military hosed up badly.
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Nov 25, 2011 22:42
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VikingSkull posted:If a C-5 was anywhere near a combat area with patrolling MiG's, someone in the military hosed up badly. Things usually get hosed up when the enemy is around, that's why he's called the enemy.
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Nov 25, 2011 23:36
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I lived in San Diego when Top Gun was still at Miramar. Tomcats and whatnot were overhead all the time, and if you didn't see them, you could hear them. Highway I-15 goes past the approach end of the runway, and if you watched approaching jets on your left and adjusted your speed, you could have one go right over your car. Very fun in a convertible!
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Nov 25, 2011 23:39
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Frozen Horse posted:{looks down from one's MiG for where the C-5 sized doppler radar return is coming from} "Ah, is nothing. Just Birnam Wood moving on Dunsinane." You would be suprised how much time fighters would have been expected to not be using their radars in a combat enviornment. It makes them a pretty big target in the sky if they're radiating the entire time. Datalinks and AWACS are one of the big reasons US fighters have had such a tremendous advantage in the last few air battles they've fought. The enemy aircraft arent aware they have fighters bearing down on them until its far to late.
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Nov 25, 2011 23:48
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kill me now posted:Datalinks and AWACS are one of the big reasons US fighters have had such a tremendous advantage in the last few air battles they've fought. The enemy aircraft arent aware they have fighters bearing down on them until its far to late. Yep. Link 16 is a murderous enemy to face.
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Nov 26, 2011 00:51
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mlmp08 posted:Yep. Link 16 is a murderous enemy to face.
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Nov 26, 2011 01:27
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VikingSkull posted:If a C-5 was anywhere near a combat area with patrolling MiG's, someone in the military hosed up badly. Conversely, if C-5s are never flown in areas without absolute air superiority, what prying eyes are they camouflaged from? Concerning AWACS, it seems like these are really high-value
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Nov 26, 2011 02:34
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Frozen Horse posted:Conversely, if C-5s are never flown in areas without absolute air superiority, what prying eyes are they camouflaged from? Because they would detect the inbound, shut off their radar for a moment and dive for the deck. Once the missle is gone then they would resume normal operations. For the C5 camo, its cheap insurance. If there was a land war in Europe the US would be desperately trying to resupply NATO both by sea and air. There may be a situation where they would risk bringing in C5's loaded with munitions to an airbase that could possibly have a mig or two leak through the air defenses if it meant holding the lines.
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Nov 26, 2011 02:48
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Frozen Horse posted:Conversely, if C-5s are never flown in areas without absolute air superiority, what prying eyes are they camouflaged from? Some REMF thought camo-d C-5s looked bitchin'. Thankfully, it ended up being less disastrous than black F-117s.
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Nov 26, 2011 03:13
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kill me now posted:Because they would detect the inbound, shut off their radar for a moment and dive for the deck. That's assuming someone could get close enough to an AWAC to launch a missile. I don't think they'd let those things fly around by themselves.
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Nov 26, 2011 03:23
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FrozenVent posted:That's assuming someone could get close enough to an AWAC to launch a missile. I don't think they'd let those things fly around by themselves. Iran still has a couple of AIM54s don't they?
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Nov 26, 2011 03:33
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I'd be very surprised if they were functional. Weren't the AIM-54s maintenance hogs compared to a lot of missiles and needed to be watched carefully?
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Nov 26, 2011 03:45
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kill me now posted:Because they would detect the inbound, shut off their radar for a moment and dive for the deck. Couple problems with this...first, how does the AEW asset detect the inbound? Radar homing missiles don't emit anything for a RWR setup to detect (if the AEW asset even has an RWR setup on board...USAF doesn't equip their AWACS with any, as far as I know) and by the time the seeker goes active it is probably too late for a big fat slow target like an AEW platform to evade the missile. The radars carried by these type of aircraft are powerful, but it's not like they can see a relatively small air to air missile 150 miles out. Second problem...if the asset does somehow detect the missile and evades it, that still takes it out of position for at least a good 5-10 minutes (possibly more depending on how long it takes to get back to altitude), after which the controllers on board the asset are going to have to reestablish their picture and reestablish comms with everyone in the air war. As a stand alone incident this probably isn't a huge deal, but if as an adversary you can do this at least a couple times a day you're going to disrupt the air war quite a bit, and as a bonus you'll probably manage to kill at least a couple of them. kill me now posted:For the C5 camo, its cheap insurance. If there was a land war in Europe the US would be desperately trying to resupply NATO both by sea and air. There may be a situation where they would risk bringing in C5's loaded with munitions to an airbase that could possibly have a mig or two leak through the air defenses if it meant holding the lines. Yeah, the REFORGER flow combined with the location of the POMCUS pre-po'd equipment being driven by the fact that the Germans really really really did not want to trade space for time (not that there was really a lot of space to trade since this is Western Europe we're talking about here) meant that it was entirely possible that airlift, strategic or otherwise, could be operating fairly close to the FEBA. FrozenVent posted:That's assuming someone could get close enough to an AWAC to launch a missile. I don't think they'd let those things fly around by themselves. Well, that all depends on how close you need to be to launch a missile...the Russians had a couple of solutions to that problem. slidebite posted:Iran still has a couple of AIM54s don't they? poo poo, they can barely get the Tomcats in the air, I'm pretty sure their AIM-54s are shot to hell. I've seen conflicting reports on whether or not they still have functional Phoenixes, but given that it is a big complicated maintenance intensive missile and they've been trying to jury rig domestically produced components/buy up spare parts on the black market for both it and the Tomcats since '79, I'd be surprised if they had any sort of serious combat capability with them.
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Nov 26, 2011 04:28
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Alaan posted:I'd be very surprised if they were functional. Weren't the AIM-54s maintenance hogs compared to a lot of missiles and needed to be watched carefully? A little bit of irony that a nation can barely keep a 40 year old aircraft in the sky, 35 year old AA missile operational, but yet can almost make a nuclear weapon and basic launch system. I guess North Korea has a bit more irony than that though.
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Nov 26, 2011 04:41
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iyaayas01 posted:Couple problems with this...first, how does the AEW asset detect the inbound? Radar homing missiles don't emit anything for a RWR setup to detect (if the AEW asset even has an RWR setup on board...USAF doesn't equip their AWACS with any, as far as I know) and by the time the seeker goes active it is probably too late for a big fat slow target like an AEW platform to evade the missile. The radars carried by these type of aircraft are powerful, but it's not like they can see a relatively small air to air missile 150 miles out. Second problem...if the asset does somehow detect the missile and evades it, that still takes it out of position for at least a good 5-10 minutes (possibly more depending on how long it takes to get back to altitude), after which the controllers on board the asset are going to have to reestablish their picture and reestablish comms with everyone in the air war. As a stand alone incident this probably isn't a huge deal, but if as an adversary you can do this at least a couple times a day you're going to disrupt the air war quite a bit, and as a bonus you'll probably manage to kill at least a couple of them. I don't pretend to know the capabilities of the radar on an E-3, but I wouldn't be shocked if it was able to identify a fairly large missile (which it would have to be to have the sort of range we're talking about) at 20-50 miles out. If the missile was still passive at that point the AWACS would probably be able to evade it.
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Nov 26, 2011 06:10
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Civilian marine radars can pick up seagulls on a good day, (They can fly in excess of 30 kts, apparently. Never managed to plot one myself) so I'd be surprised if an AWACS couldn't pick up a missile doing mach 2... Although I suppose it could just get lost in the action if things were really busy.
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Nov 26, 2011 06:48
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iyaayas01 posted:Couple problems with this...first, how does the AEW asset detect the inbound? Radar homing missiles don't emit anything for a RWR setup to detect (if the AEW asset even has an RWR setup on board...USAF doesn't equip their AWACS with any, as far as I know) and by the time the seeker goes active it is probably too late for a big fat slow target like an AEW platform to evade the missile. The radars carried by these type of aircraft are powerful, but it's not like they can see a relatively small air to air missile 150 miles out. Second problem...if the asset does somehow detect the missile and evades it, that still takes it out of position for at least a good 5-10 minutes (possibly more depending on how long it takes to get back to altitude), after which the controllers on board the asset are going to have to reestablish their picture and reestablish comms with everyone in the air war. As a stand alone incident this probably isn't a huge deal, but if as an adversary you can do this at least a couple times a day you're going to disrupt the air war quite a bit, and as a bonus you'll probably manage to kill at least a couple of them. If they can see the missiles coming in, that opens up some interesting possibilities of its own. Strap a simple seeker to a big rocket motor, along with a dumb-as-a-rock passive "home on the biggest radar source you see" guidance package. Don't worry about terminal guidance, a warhead, or anything. Congratulations, you now have a "make AWACS shut off their radar and dive like mad" button, and it's not too expensive to make. If they start ignoring you, launch one that does have a terminal seeker, a warhead, counter-ECM logic, and whatever else.
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Nov 26, 2011 07:07
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If it's that simple, why didn't the commies crank 'em out during the Cold War? Also why did Iran buy a carrier aircraft? Were they that worried about hordes of Soviet bombers? Interesting what if: the Shah doesn't fall and Iran remains a pro-US client state during the '80s. Does the Iran-Iraq war even happen? Gulf War 1? How does the Soviet invasion of Afganistan play out with pro-US states on two Afghan borders?
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Nov 26, 2011 07:20
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Russia had a military-industrial complex as big as ours, dead-simple guidance packages were much more expensive to build back then, and any US/USSR conflict would have been a "make every shot count" situation rather than an asymmetrical "if you can't destroy 'em, harass 'em" situation. But, decoys were a thing during the Cold War when tactically appropriate - SAC B-52s used to carry cruise missiles with radar reflectors in them to gently caress with early-warning radars, SAM sites, and so on up until the 1970s.
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Nov 26, 2011 07:30
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Smiling Jack posted:How does the Soviet invasion of Afganistan play out with pro-US states on two Afghan borders? In either case, the term 'invasion' is almost a misnomer. The Soviets invaded and caused a regime change, but the central government remained allied with the Soviets.
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Nov 26, 2011 07:57
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iyaayas01 posted:Well, that all depends on how close you need to be to launch a missile...the Russians had a couple of solutions to that problem. Saw the fire missile at AWACS post, came to post those. I had forgotten what they were called, but yeah, the Russians have thought about this for awhile. Ground-launched anti-AWACS missiles would be even more dangerous, because they wouldn't need to be designed for air-launch and could be as big as needed.
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Nov 26, 2011 08:02
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Kind of a dumb question but how does a fighter target an AWACS from 200+ miles off? Is a fighter's passive radar going to be able to usefully pinpoint the giant glowing sun of the AWACS from that far, or is it more they just fire in the general direction and let the missile figure it out once it gets close?
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Nov 26, 2011 08:08
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Smiling Jack posted:If it's that simple, why didn't the commies crank 'em out during the Cold War? Iran bought the carrier aircraft because they were worried about MiG-25 reconnaissance overflights...they tendered a proposal that was basically tailored towards getting either the F-14 or F-15 (which makes sense since those are basically the only new production advanced Western aircraft at that time in the early '70s that could've intercepted a MiG-25), and they decided the F-14/AWG-9/AIM-54 was the better choice. As for the what ifs...the Iran-Iraq war doesn't happen, but only because the Iraqis don't have the opportunity provided by the confusion and disorganization of the revolution combined with the drop in readiness in Iran's military due to the military purges and supply chain issues. A high grade cold war happens in its place, since Saddam and the Shah weren't buddies by any means. The Gulf War is a tougher call, since the issues between Iraq and Kuwait would still exist regardless of the Iran-Iraq war, but those strains were exacerbated by the fact that Iraq was broke following the war. It's a crap shoot, but I'd say it still goes down. This is pretty much what I would've said regarding Afghanistan: Veins McGee posted:Probably still do it. It's not like an a pro-US monarchy would be any more friendly to the Soviets/Communist Afghanistan than the Iranian theocracy. The math remains the same, more or less. About the only difference would be maybe some increased cross-border tensions since now Iran would still be friendly with the U.S., but while there are relations across the border between Iran and Afghanistan, it isn't nearly the relationship that occurs in the tribal regions between Afghanistan and Pakistan, so regardless I think the majority of the U.S. support for the mujahideen occurs through Pakistan. Space Gopher posted:Russia had a military-industrial complex as big as ours, dead-simple guidance packages were much more expensive to build back then, and any US/USSR conflict would have been a "make every shot count" situation rather than an asymmetrical "if you can't destroy 'em, harass 'em" situation. But, decoys were a thing during the Cold War when tactically appropriate - SAC B-52s used to carry cruise missiles with radar reflectors in them to gently caress with early-warning radars, SAM sites, and so on up until the 1970s. The quail! Air launched decoys are still a thing, by the way...the TALD saw extensive service in the opening couple of nights during the Desert Storm air campaign, and the MALD is currently being procured. There are also towed decoys. movax posted:Saw the fire missile at AWACS post, came to post those. I had forgotten what they were called, but yeah, the Russians have thought about this for awhile. Ground-launched anti-AWACS missiles would be even more dangerous, because they wouldn't need to be designed for air-launch and could be as big as needed. There are versions of the S-300 out there that allegedly have home on jam capability; if this is indeed the case it wouldn't be too hard to mock up a seeker head that would home in on the emissions from a AEW type radar. Of course, you run into range issues here since generally speaking an AEW type aircraft is going to possess a long enough range to operate far enough behind the FEBA to still be effective while remaining out of range of even long range SAM systems like the S-300 series. However, there are certain scenarios where this capability could still be useful, particularly where there are airspace restrictions that limit where the AEW aircraft can orbit, and maritime scenarios where islands are available to deploy SAM sites on, especially if you utilize them in an ambush/SAM trap fashion. Snowdens Secret posted:Kind of a dumb question but how does a fighter target an AWACS from 200+ miles off? Is a fighter's passive radar going to be able to usefully pinpoint the giant glowing sun of the AWACS from that far, or is it more they just fire in the general direction and let the missile figure it out once it gets close? There's a couple different options...if we're talking about keeping it restricted to the fighter, your best bet is going to be to have a sophisticated enough RWR system to feed general targeting information to your missile's INS to get it into the right vicinity followed by an active seeker on the missile for terminal guidance...you could also throw in a mid-course guidance datalink where you lock onto the target with your aircraft's radar, depending on the technological capabilities of the missile, your aircraft, and the tactical situation (whether or not you want to lock onto the AEW aircraft). If you throw in ground assets, you can use ground based search radars to get you into the vicinity, coupled with a Link 16 type datalink to communicate that info to the missile's INS. "Fire in the general direction and let the missile figure it out" won't really work due to the big sky little airplane theory...you've got to give the missile enough of an idea where the target is for the relatively small cone of vision that the active seeker on the missile has to lock on in the terminal phase.
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Nov 26, 2011 08:39
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Smiling Jack posted:
Maybe this  wouldn't have happened.
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Nov 26, 2011 12:29
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Yes, the rumsfeild/saddam photo that no one could escape in 2003. poo poo was everywhere.
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Nov 26, 2011 13:59
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Nah it would have. It's not like in this scenario Iraq suddenly doesn't have oil.
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Nov 26, 2011 14:35
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Smiling Jack posted:If it's that simple, why didn't the commies crank 'em out during the Cold War?  The R-33 would launch in inertial guidance mode with mid-course corrections from the launch aircraft; terminal guidance is from semi-active radar. Snowdens Secret posted:Kind of a dumb question but how does a fighter target an AWACS from 200+ miles off? Is a fighter's passive radar going to be able to usefully pinpoint the giant glowing sun of the AWACS from that far, or is it more they just fire in the general direction and let the missile figure it out once it gets close? grover fucked around with this message at 16:16 on Nov 26, 2011 |
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Nov 26, 2011 16:09
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Does anyone know the common route Tu-95 Bears took during their patrols? I'd only just learned about their insane flight range. Basically they can fly 1/3 the circumference of the Earth.
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Nov 26, 2011 20:03
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Suicide Watch posted:Does anyone know the common route Tu-95 Bears took during their patrols? I'd only just learned about their insane flight range. Basically they can fly 1/3 the circumference of the Earth. Not sure on the exact routing, but the Bear is one thing the Soviets did right. Turboprop airframe that can fly pretty much forever and is much easier to maintain than computerized jet powered aircraft. If I recall correctly, Putin got bored and started having them poke US airspace again. I think he sent -22BMs to Venezuela too.
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Nov 26, 2011 20:09
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Scratch Monkey posted:Nah it would have. It's not like in this scenario Iraq suddenly doesn't have oil. Yes, Gulf War 1 gave us so much access to Iraqi oil. As for the F-14, I thought the early models engines purely sucked- were the Iranian export models modified to remove a lot of the carrier-aviation only equipment and got upgraded engines, or were they the original models?
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Nov 26, 2011 21:26
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