The sky-high aircraft and aviation thread

An RPG can defeat a parked aircraft whoop dee doo. I'm talking about one actually in flight.

I think the plane would have to be flying at really low altitude and really, really slowly.

WWI biplanes perhaps?

I can see maybe a low flying helicopter or something.

Maybe an Su-25 on a really close gun run if you fire it from dead on.

Maybe a hovering helicopter?

edited 21st Sep '14 1:20:37 AM by Greenmantle

I'm thinking like Hind providing close air support or something.

Javelin missiles are just too big and fat to track most aircraft really.

Use it to tag choppers landing to drop off or pick up enemy troops.

So basically Mogadishu all over again.

The Javelin has never been stated to be able to shoot the fast moving aircraft. It could hit helicopters though as long as they are not going balls out. Slow moving or hovering helicopter can be engaged by the Javelin. So a heli being directed to use guns on a target could be swatted by it or as pointed out one landing or lifting off. Helos doing fast attack passes or just booking it though are different story. In theory you could hit aircraft taking off or landing with it.

Garcon: It has zip to do with its size. It's the targeting and guiding components. Plenty of AA missiles are fairly beefy. In this case its how you lock on the missile that is the biggest hurdle followed by the fact it is designed to track ground vehicles and not aircraft.

edited 21st Sep '14 2:22:16 AM by TuefelHundenIV

Phinal Phlight of the CH-46 Phrog: http://www.dvidshub.net/video/embed/356786

edited 21st Sep '14 6:52:31 PM by TairaMai

Their lock on system does not lend itself to AA duties very well. You are also correct in that it is not agile enough or possessing the range a MANPAD does.

So it's kind of like how my 2001 Pontiac Grand Am had the capability to have a trailer hitch installed. It wasn't recommended, but it was possible. IIRC, the owner's manual said that with a hitch installed, max tow weight was 500 lbs, but the car had no connections for lights or brakes, and it would probably be easier to just put 500 lbs of stuff in the ginormous trunk.

@ Taira: Maybe for the USMC, but don't Columbia Helicopters and the US Department of State still fly the CH-46?

AFP Something like that.

Yes, for now. Until the parts run out.

So something just came by low over here and if I didn't find that thought quite absurd, I could've sworn it was two Hinds. Most odd.

Call that absurd? Heh. Beat this: I saw what I will swear blind to my end of days was a surfaced Akula (what we in the West called a Typhoon) SSBN getting towed towards either Faslane or the Holy Loch back in the nineties. It had an escort of what appeared to be some sort of destroyer or other. The thing was feckin' huge, black and as imposing as hell.

It probably was one of our bombers heading back to the barn backwards under tow but I'm not convinced.

If that ever happened, then the archives will long since have been shredded. I suspect it may have been HMS Vanguard heading for her commissioning ceremony though.

—

Israeli Air Force has decent song:

edited 22nd Sep '14 10:12:16 AM by Achaemenid

Or classified 100+ years. And probably shredded before then. But who knows what happened during The New Russia — the USAF certainly got some Su-27s from somewhere, and if you read somewhere how Britain got its hand on a T-80...

edited 22nd Sep '14 10:44:06 AM by Greenmantle

Well, its interesting how things can get lost forever - Hilary Doyle reckons that less than 10% of Germany's tank development documentation survived the end of the war. The figure for aircraft is probably similar. Which is a great shame, because who knows what interesting concepts we might have heard of. I imagine that the Soviet Union had a similar problem, though not to the same degree. Still, I bet that a good portion of Soviet military equipment and documentation simply went AWOL in those last few days - either taken home by laid-off staff as a keepsake, or burnt, or sold to the highest foreign bidder - on the other hand, a whole sub is harder than a tank.

I read somewhere that there are abandoned facilities in Russia that even the current Russian government does not know the purpose of - the last orders they received were to sabotage their logs, strip their facilities, and then quit the state's employ. Dunno if it is true though.

edited 22nd Sep '14 11:14:49 AM by Achaemenid

I'm quite sure some British documentation has disappeared, especially if the stories of Top Secret documents being incinerated to save space are correct. We'll probably never know if the RAF did fly over the Soviet Union in the early 1950s.

A Russian missile sub being squirreled away in some unlikely waterway? I could have sworn I saw that movie once.

Probably from what was once Die Luftstreitkräfte der Nationalen Volksarmee aka the Luftwaffe of post-Cold War Germany specifically what was in the East German Air Force inventory. The Germans quickly pawned off their Soviet-era gear to others such as giving us Americans new toys to blow up in exercises and training.

edited 22nd Sep '14 7:45:05 PM by MajorTom

It is also how we got our hands on an updated upgraded T-72 in the 90's.

The NVA never had any Su-27s, only MiG-29s. They were kept in unified German service and are now with Poland. The US did get 21 MiG-29s from Moldova, though.

edited 23rd Sep '14 12:20:11 AM by Greenmantle