FWIW, the Air Guard here in Burlington, VT flies F-35s. Some of the Guard units it seems are pretty much the same as “regular” AF units when it comes to deployments and stuff. I have no idea how it all works, but I do know the F-35s are some of the loudest things I have ever heard. The poor bastards living right next to the airport, or in the flightpath directly, do not have it good.
F-35 designers: “fuck aerodynamics, powerrrrr!!”
I was on a pizza kick for a while on YouTube, and the video came up, and I was just curious enough to watch. But it was well done and then I just happened to remember it today.
I think I may be watching too many cooking things on YouTube…
Sort of the old F-4 Phantom II approach. That thing had the aerodynamics of a brick.
I remember reading about the vin rouge tank installed in every French WWII submarine.
aeneas
2020
But at least the F-4 wasn’t also trying to be stealthy.
Heh, it was the antithesis of “stealth.” It was more like “Yo, mofo, I’m HERE! Come at me!” As a kid I loved that plane, thought it looked wicked cool. Come to think of it, it still looks cool:
Saying the F4 is the "Come at me Bro!" fighter is entirely accurate :)
Wild Weasel says, “Hi! Nice SAM you got there, would be a pity if something happened to it”.
Almost any fighter who turns on his radar is yelling “co a at me, if you think you 'ard enough!”
Turning on your radar is like turning on a flashlight at night when you are doing group knifefights in a dark field.
Now weaseling (or DEAD, destruction of enemy air defence) that is something else. It must be done in pairs at least, preferably fours. One baits the thing into firing, but must do so in such a way he doesn’t get his ass fragged. His buddy then smacks the thing down with a cluster bomb.
Missile evasion is never easy. You must see the thing in time, and have enough energy on the jet to maneuver such that it can’t hit you (quick schurem, do a barrel roll!). In a viper (F-16), that is no problemo, it’s a motherfucking rocket ship. But to do it in a phantom, or worse, a thud…
Just lob a missile at it from a safe distance, modern risk averse air force suggests. Well no, Achmed ain’t dumb. He sees a dot seperate from the bigger dot and accelerate. He recognises the pattern, turns off the emitter and runs to his trench. Counts the Agm-88 flight time down, gets on up out of the ditch, turns on the radar and proceeds to fuck with the incoming bombers. This is called SEAD, or suppression of enemy air defence. It’s futile as fuck vs an enemy who’s studied youtube for a couple hours.
Weaseling is incredibly fun times vs AI sams, but vs a wily, smart human operator? That takes huge brass ones.
It’s a game of counter the counter, too. Modern ARMs (anti-radiation missiles) can lock in the location of the emitter and continue on internal guidance (or GPS) even after the emitter shuts off. Radar emitters are often located far from the actual consoles/people operating them, much less the actual launchers. Modern SEAD I think involves an integrated approach where radar homing is just one of the things involved. C3I links, for example, are part of the targeting packages now, as killing the ability to communicate targeting data takes out more capability than blowing up a few radars or launchers I imagine. And so more and more air defenses are distributed networks using redundant connections. Etc.
Fun times!
Yup, modern versions of the AGM-88 do indeed keep a stored target location, but they lack the precision and/or power to have a pk(probability of kill) that exceeds the pilot’s shoe size. Dan Hampton wrote in his book on weaseling that the only way to be sure was a brace of CBU on the spot indicated by the HTS pod, or where you saw the smoke trail originate.
As you said, the real gains are to be made in blasting apart the C3I infrastructure of the IADS. This was done to great effect in operation desert storm. The F-117 dropping it’s single LGB down the bunker that coordinated all the radars, guns and missiles did more for the safety of blue air than every HARM fired during the conflict.
Nowadays of course the game has gained another layer or two with the addition of cyber and information warfare. Fun times indeed!
It’s a good thing we’re all at peace for the foreseeable future. I love theorising about all this shit, but if it were up to me, every warplane would end up in the museum.
Amen. I have always been fascinated by this stuff, but as I’ve grown older I’ve become far more attuned to the need to avoid ever actually using it. Sadly, there are times when the alternatives are even worse, so there you have it.
Aye and I reckon the very fact that the things are there has kept a lot of horrible shit from happening.
BAEs ALARM missile had a sneaky loiter capability; if the radar switched off, ALARM could deploy a parachute and lurk up there until it came back on again. (Not forever, obviously). I don’t know how effective the concept was in practice but I always thought it was a cool idea.
I imagine as well that good intel is vital. Today, nearly every place is suffused with electromagnetic radiation across a wide spectrum of frequencies, and military equipment often has the ability to shift frequencies in some cases. Knowing exactly what emission is the fire control radar for a SAM and what is some I dunno science experiment or whatever gets rather important. Doing so in an environment full of signals, some of which are intentionally trying to clog up your ability to detect and classify stuff and some of which are just part of the cluttered background noise, on a tight time schedule, with little to no room for error seems to be a daunting process.
No wonder people talk about removing humans from the loop, though I suppose sometimes intuition might succeed where machine logic does not. But the money in the long run would be on computers figuring out stuff lickety split.
None
2030
One of the four directives:
Joint fires: “You have to aggregate to mass fires, but it doesn’t have to be a physical aggregation,” Hyten said. “It could be a virtual aggregation for multiple domains; acting at the same time under a single command structure allows the fires to come in on anybody. It allows you to disaggregate to survive.” Hyten said the joint fires concept “is aspirational. It is unbelievably difficult to do.” And the military will have to figure out what part will be affordable and practical, he said.
I just can’t help but imagine an RTS-like interface to direct future wars while reading that. I’m glad South Korea is on our side.
Remember that awful fire last year on the Bonhomme Richard? The one that was the worst non-combat conflagration in the Navy’s history? Turns out they’ve now charged a sailor with deliberately setting the blaze.
We have met the enemy, and he is us.
I wonder how the Navy feels about sailors deliberately setting fires aboard ships.
To be fair, it was a very large spider.
The Navy lost a 688 boat because a yard worker was upset and lit a fire on board. So it wouldn’t be the first time.
