The sky-high aircraft and aviation thread

Chinooks are designed to carry underslung loads.◊

The difference is that that scenario involves picking up something stationary. The hypothetical involves collecting a load in motion.

Edited by Deadbeatloser22 on Jul 31st 2018 at 5:34:41 PM

That's been done too, though. For example, in the 1960s helicopters (and fixed-wing planes, too) were used to perform midair recovery of film capsules dropped by spy satellites. So that in and of itself isn't implausible. I was mostly wondering about the "picking up a car with a giant magnet" thing. I've seen it everywhere from Grand Theft Auto V to You Only Live Twice. But is it something that's actually been done, and if so, where and when?

Film capsuls are small and dont change the center of mass all that much, there is a huge amount of diffrence between them and a car.

Snagging an object in motion isn't the problem, its the rapidly changing center of mass caused by snaging a large object in motion.

The answer is no, it hasn't been done, because it cant be done, the amount of care required with airlifting heavy objects is just too precise, even in the former case of hooking it up in minutes, the large object in question was stationary so it was acountable for.... and in the case of the film capsuls there too light to mater, you cant however combine the two.

Heavy Object = Fine

Moving Object = Fine

Heavy Moving Object = Not Fine

Edited by Imca on Jul 31st 2018 at 1:20:58 AM

(Cross-posted with the Military Thread)

MAFFS Activate: Airmen Fight to Save their Homes

Air Guard crews from the 146th Airlift Wing got called in to support firefighting efforts in what has become the largest wildfire in California history. Five 146th airmen lost their homes to the fire, which is now 100% contained.

EDIT: This story was from January. Saw a post on Airman Magazine's FB page today and got confused on the timing.

Edited by AFP on Aug 4th 2018 at 5:17:21 AM

Soviote anti-infantry gun pod from the 70s, it consists of 2 12.7 gatlings, and 1 23 or 30mm rotary canon....

Given that it is aircraft mounted, it would probably be mounted in pairs.... that is a lot of bullets heading down range.

That information isn't fully accurate, It's two GShG 7.62mm guns and one Yak-B 12.7mm gun. Typically helicopters carried two, but apparently Ka-29s carried four on occasion.

If we're talking wild Soviet weapons systems though the undisputed winner is the "Fire Hedgehog". It was a Tu-2 with this [1]◊ inside its bomb bay.

In other news, the Air Force is formally soliciting light attack aircraft. [2] Bids are due to start next month, and the aircraft are supposed to be in service within the next two years. The Super Tucano and Wolverine are the current frontrunners, but there are some other offerings that look very strong.

Edited by archonspeaks on Aug 6th 2018 at 5:53:07 AM

88 PP Sh's all with their 71 round drums loaded with incendiary 7.62x25mm.

Put out just a little under 80,000 RPM.

And it costs 400,000 dollars to fire the plane for twelve seconds.

Edited by MajorTom on Aug 6th 2018 at 6:09:44 AM

Never used in combat, because it took 100 man-hours to load, wasn't particularly reliable, and required pilots to fly around 400ft.

Which is really too bad, because I bet that thing looked freaking awesome firing.

The Tu-2 was also an excellent aircraft in general, probably one of the best the Soviets produced in that era. There were dozens of variants of it and it basically did everything. It was great for ground attack though, it had two 20mm autocannons and could carry a respectable bomb load while still being very maneuverable.

Especially in low light conditions if loaded with pure tracers. All of a sudden a low flying plane just suddenly shits out a literal wall of burning bullets.

It'd make Puff the Magic Dragon aka the AC-47 look pathetic.

I bet it ended up being just as effective to load the bomb bay with bombs instead, and less labor-intensive.

During the Gulf War, they tried something similar with the F-16. Turns out, using a 30mm gunpod on the F-16 proved to be a very difficult way to imitate the effect of dropping a cluster bomb (note that anything the Avenger will kill, so will a cluster bomb, as it turns out a 1.5 pound submunition hitting the roof armor at a few hundred knots is typically more than sufficient to defeat typical Soviet tank defenses of the period.)

Conserve ammo, load it up with rocks instead.

Tom: Well we have used concrete bombs offensively, supposedly as far back as the Gulf War. I can't find any specific examples but it is believable.

Then you get the CBU-107 Passive Attack Weapon. It is basically a modified cluster munition carrier filled with three different sizes of flechettes. They come in 2, 7, and 14 inches long in hundreds for the largest, thousands for the others.

Edited by TuefelHundenIV on Aug 8th 2018 at 4:07:42 AM

^ I know for fact that we bombed some Vietnamese (I don't remember if VC or NVA) with a toilet. From an A-1 Skyraider no less!

Edited by MajorTom on Aug 8th 2018 at 5:51:20 AM

Yep. [1]◊ It was dropped to commemorate 6 million pounds of ordnance total released over Vietnam. They fitted it with a tailkit and everything.

There is supposed footage of the drop itself but I couldn't find any particular example. I found footage of it being loaded and the plane being checked over.

Edited by TuefelHundenIV on Aug 8th 2018 at 9:04:33 AM

Well, using a concrete bomb makes sense, a rock falling from that altitude is going to hurt, lets you bring down the roof of a building without destroyign the block.

It does indeed. Not just altitude but usually a few hundred miles per hour of aircraft velocity on top of that. We saw them used in Libya to swat tanks and in Iraq to knock out ISIS captured oil wells without creating giant messes or lots of collateral. The US still has some interest in assorted kinetic weapons delivered as bombs or in missiles but they keep dropping them back into budget war and research black holes.

Soooo...that toilet bomb.

Depending of who filled with it content, would you call it a biological or chemical WMD? After, lets say, a long dinner night on Taco Bell.

There was a story I read about an airman in WWII who'd get airsick flying over the channel towards Europe, every time, due to nerves. So he'd puke in an empty milk carton (salvaged from the chow hall that morning), then chuck it overboard when they released the bombs.

There was a similar story about a minor league ballplayer who'd toss autographed baseballs instead.

Yes.

Edited by MajorTom on Aug 9th 2018 at 5:15:51 AM

I think there was video of the drop itself over on a War Is Boring article I once read, it shows no boom, no bang, no thud of it hitting the ground, just a drop from the plane and seeing it fall towards the jungle canopy below.

I'd imagine if it hit anybody, that's probably the biggest guarded secret ever in both the US and Vietnam.

This weekend Offut has the "Defenders of Freedom Air & Space Show". I will do my usual thing and go and try to grab some good footage and pics. Hopefully, I get better pics this year than I did last.

F35 Crew Chief busting some myths

Those aren't even really myths, just Mike Spark level delusions. Only two things^note its maneuverability is ass compared to what it replaces, and that the targeting software doesn't work worth a damn, which is some how still an unfixed issue despite weapons being kind of important there are even remotely grounded in reality, and both of those are the ones he wouldn't comment on (and I am going to assume he actually knew they were true and just didn't want to make his rig look bad).

Whoever thinks the thing needs special fuel, are themselfs a special kind of dumb-ass, the only thing that ever used special fuel was the SR-71, and the military loves simplifying supply lines so much that even the M1 runs off JP-8, because they didn't want to have desile in the supply line any more... less fuel = more cost savings.

I mean hell, I hate the F-35, but those posts gave me cancer.

Also.

Gotta call him out on that one, we keep getting cases of Raptor Lung, should have just went with that wasn't a problem with the F-35 specifically, just every thing that lockmart offers including the F-22 as well hence its name.

...

Didn't we even get some cases of it in F-18's a couple months ago? I feel like we did.

And I would definitely call raptor lung not working.

Edited by Imca on Aug 10th 2018 at 3:26:56 AM