Our Military Pilots Are Special

On September 19th, The Aviationist posted a story about an American fighter pilot who decided Iranian pilots were getting too close to an unmanned American drone.

The article reports:

“He [the Raptor pilot] flew under their aircraft [the F-4s] to check out their weapons load without them knowing that he was there, and then pulled up on their left wing and then called them and said ‘you really ought to go home’”

If the episode went exactly as Welsh (Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh) described it, it was something more similar to Maverick’s close encouter with Russian Mig-28s in Top Gun movie than a standard interception.

It would be interesting to know how the Raptor managed to remain stealth (did they use their radar? were they vectored by an AWACS? etc.) and why it was not the E-2 most probably providing Airborne Early Warning in the area to broadcast the message to persuade the F-4 to pursuit the drone before the Iranian Phantoms and the U.S. Raptors got too close in a potentially dangerous and tense situation?

Anyway the U.S. pilot achieved to scare the Iranian pilots off and save the drone. A happy ending worthy of an action movie.

You have to love our military!

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Sometimes History Happens Quietly

There was a major historic moment yesterday that you might have missed. An unmanned drone landed on an aircraft carrier. The drone, an X-47B demonstrator aircraft, landed on the aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush off the coast of Virginia yesterday.

Fox Business News carried the picture:

northrop grumman navy drone

So why is this so important? What is the cost of training a military pilot to fly a fighter plane versus the cost of training a military pilot to operate a drone? How many systems can be left out a a drone that are necessary in a manned fighter plane–ejection seat, cabin pressure system, cabin temperature system, etc.? What is involved in the rescue of a downed pilot or the negotiations for that pilot if he is taken prisoner? In a dogfight a pilot is limited by the amount of G’s he can endure as well as the amount of G’s the plane can endure. If a drone is involved in a dogfight, it is only limited by the number of G’s the plane can take.

Yesterday was a preview of the nintendo wars of the future.

 

 

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Remember The Drone Taken Control Of By Iran ?

Hal Lindsey is a Biblical Scholar who focuses on current events and how they fit into Biblical prophecy. He hosts a show on Trinity Broadcasting Network that is also available on his website. Every week he sends out an email with a brief summary of what he will be talking about on his show.

This week there was an interesting quote:

I’ll also report on the unmanned drone that the Israeli Air Force shot down over Israel last week. Coincidentally, that Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), was essentially a copy of the RQ-170. Remember the RQ-170? That’s the super-advanced, and highly secret, United States UAV that Iran was mysteriously able to commandeer and capture after it flew into Iranian airspace last December.

At the time, the administration’s spinmeisters assured us that the RQ-170 was much too advanced to be of any use to Iran. In fact, one analyst said that losing the RQ-170 to Iran was a bit like “dropping a Ferrari into an oxcart culture.”

Well, apparently the bumpkins didn’t try to hitch an ox to it! Taking a cue from their friends the Russians and Chinese (who paid dearly to get a look at the technology), they reverse-engineered it and now they (or their proxy, Hezbollah) are flying it over Israel to get a closer look.

This apparent miscalculation by some of our defense and intelligence communities’ experts makes me a little nervous about some of their other evaluations. For instance, last week The Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) released a report that estimates that Iran will produce enough weapons-grade uranium to arm a nuclear weapon in the next “two to four months.” That’s 120 days!

But the report drew a “clear distinction” between Tehran’s ability to actually produce a viable warhead and its ability to make the fissile core of a warhead by producing 55 pounds of weapons-grade uranium from its large lesser-enriched stockpiles.

Isn’t that sort of like assuming that if one drops “a Ferrari into an oxcart culture,” the bumpkins will try to hitch an ox to it? The Iranians proved the administration’s experts wrong on that assumption, didn’t they! So why should we think they will not surprise us again with how quickly they can produce a working nuclear missile?

On the other hand, that may be why the United States, NATO, and members of the Gulf Cooperation Council just completed the largest naval exercise ever conducted in the Persian Gulf. They were demonstrating our mine-sweeping prowess and how quickly we can take command of the Strait of Hormuz if Iran decides to try and close it.

I will admit to being a news junkie, and nowhere did I see it reported that the drone shot down over Israel was a copy of the RQ-170 brought down and captured by Iran. This is disturbing. I guess when you are not capable of advancing your own technology, you simply steal from the people who have spent the money and done the work.

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