Yup. Oh, got my new keyboard this morning. Postman woke me up with the door buzzer. Keep hitting the capslock key rather than shift, which is a bit annoying but I will get used to it.
Rather odd keyboard layout compared to my old Microsoft one. Oops, derailed there, sorry.
The thing is, when I first heard about the PCB engines for the Harrier, this was in the Eighties, and it was all over the flight magazines like a rash. It was well looked forward to as a programme. I seem to recall the very same magazines ripping the utter shit out of the Tornado. Jack of all trades, master of none, as one of the telly adverts for the magazine that was focusing on it the most would have it.
V
^
The Tornado worked out in the end, didn't it?
Keep Rolling On
Aye, but well, no-one can deny it took a while for that to happen. Mind you, I do like it better than the Eurofighter. I refuse to call that thing by its service name, which to my mind belonged to a far better aircraft.
Bloody Fossil
Definitely. Typhoons could replace Tornadoes in just about all they do, but the only thing to replace a Harrier with is another Harrier.
A different shape every step I take A different mind every step of the line
V
Indeed, I think the plan is that Typhoon is going to eventually replace the Tornado — the trouble was that the capacity wasn't available on the Typhoon at the time of the decision, and even then some items, like the Recce pod, are still uncertain on the Typhoon.
Keep Rolling On
V
Double Post: Air Vectors: The Northrop F-89 Scorpion
Complete with a rather fun story:
Or at least it was supposed to be flying under radio control. Although the target area was over the Pacific, the Hellcat decided to head towards Los Angeles instead. Nobody wanted the unpiloted aircraft to crash into a school or whatever, so two US Air Force F-89Ds were scrambled from Oxnard Air Force Base, not far from Point Mugu, to destroy the wandering drone. The two F-89Ds carried a total of 208 FFARs in all.
The Hellcat actually passed over Los Angeles; of course, shooting it down over the city would have been lunacy and the interceptor crews could only hold their breath and wait for the drone to get clear. It finally decided to orbit over the town of Santa Paula, where the interceptor crews tried to get opportunities to take a shot at it. They were using automatic fire-control mode, but the fire-control system malfunctioned and they didn't get a single rocket off.
Then the Hellcat decided to meander for a time, eventually turning back towards Los Angeles. The Scorpion crews switched to manual fire control and loosed salvos of rockets at the drone. The rockets missed the Hellcat, falling to the ground to start a raging brush fire. The Scorpion crews tried again, with no better luck, starting two more brush fires, one of them fueled by oil rigs in the unintended target area.
Finally, as the drone headed toward Palmdale, the Scorpions fired their last rockets at it. They missed again. This time, the rockets fell into the town of Palmdale. A piece of shrapnel smashed through the living-room window of one house, passing through a wall to end up in a cupboard. Another fragment passed through a garage and home. A car's front end was shredded when a rocket fell in front of it. Astoundingly, nobody was hurt. Explosive ordnance disposal teams from Edwards Air Force Base picked up 13 dud rockets from around Palmdale. It took hundreds of firefighters two days to put out the three brush fires, after the blazes had consumed hundreds of acres.
The Hellcat finally wandered over the Mojave Desert near Palmdale, where it ran out of fuel, falling to earth in an uninhabited area but cutting three power lines doing it. By the records, the incident seems to have attracted very little public attention. No doubt the later Falcon-armed Scorpions would have been more effective against the Hellcat, but there is the slightly unsettling idea of what might have happened if Genie-armed F-89Js had been sent up against it.
edited 4th Nov '12 5:04:28 AM by Greenmantle
Keep Rolling On
So, Hellcat two, modern jet fighters nil? Those pilots must have been PISSED.
Oh fuck, those Genies referred to? I thought I had heard of them. Who in their right mind thought it would be a good idea to have unguided NUKES?
edited 4th Nov '12 6:00:48 AM by TamH70
V
rollin' on dubs
Nukes were seen as the future of warfare, they were just bigger bombs. Until the nuclear tests showed otherwise.
I've said it before: the US Army armed National Guard Nike Hercules units with nukes. These missile batteries were stationed outside major US cities. Armed with nukes to nuke the Ruskies over the US.
It's crazy now, but back then it was the battle plan.
All night at the computer, cuz people ain't that great. I keep to myself so I won't be a case on The First 48
I seem to recall that the idea was to fire them into a big honkin' formation of Soviet bombers and blow them all out of the sky at once.
V
Britain had RAF-operated sites for the PGM-17 Thor.
So, Broken Arrow is a real thing, judging by the fact that two of those Thors, with nuclear warheads attached, got destroyed and the warheads lost?
Yeah, there's a list on The Other Wiki of the various Broken Arrow incidents.
edited 4th Nov '12 7:43:19 AM by Rosvo1
Professional Writer & Amateur Scholar
Bumping in.
I can't believe something like this existed during Vietnam War. So pretty!
Yeah it does look purty, doesn't it?
On the Broken Arrow thing, I am really worried that the Americans have so MANY terms for things that go wrong with nuclear weapons and that the wikipedia page, here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_nuclear_incident_terminology
has examples of so MANY of them.
Night Clerk of the Apacalypse.
You guys think the U.S. is crazy for unguided nukes?
We found ways to launch IRBM off of airplanes. One for the B-52 and one they pallet dropped in a test.
Who watches the watchmen?
Dreams of Revenge
@Hellcat drone story:
They got very lucky there; I find it kind of amusing that a single drone just meandering around the place caused so much trouble.
@Nuclear SAMs/A-A weapons:
Balmung's right - I think the idea was to thin out Soviet bomber formations using nuclear ordinance, though I've got a feeling it was more a last resort (or to be used if said bombers were carrying nuclear weapons themselves) than something to be used willy-nilly.
Locking you up on radar since '09
Yet when the Soviets used nuclear tipped surface to air missiles, those fuckers were guided. Case in point being the SA-10 Grumble (S-300 PMU in its Russian reporting label) which in addition to its normal conventional warhead form also has the ability to have a nice wee low-yield nuclear device at its tip.
http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/russia/airdef/s-300pmu.htm for details. I would lay good odds that the ones around Moskva are nuclear tipped, btw.
ABM Treaty? What is that?
Oh okay. Still wouldn't like to be in any airframe with any of those things heading towards me. Oh, just noticed this on the Pigeon's page on wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-35_Lightning_II
"In September 2012, the Pentagon criticized, quite publicly, Lockheed Martin's performance on the F-35 program and stated that it would not bail out the program again if problems with the plane's systems, particularly the helmet-mounted display, were not resolved. The deputy F-35 program manager said that the government's relationship with the company was the "worst I've ever seen" in many years of working on complex acquisition programs."
Anyone post that before?
V
Yep. I think I posted that a while ago.
Keep Rolling On
Oh well, not to worry.
Night Clerk of the Apacalypse.
Empty WWII Airfield now a drone testing site This is in the U.K. btw.
Blame Interservice Rivalry: The RAF and the FAA wanted completely different aircraft. Requirements diverged, costs increased, and it was cut. The CVA-01 and the TSR-2 were hit by the same rivalry and the sheer lack of funds.
Keep Rolling On