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Interesting airplane news


maddmaxx

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23 minutes ago, Parr8hed said:

I didn't even realize that this was a problem.

Not so much in this country yet.  The technology exists on military aircraft and is used often in places like Afghanistan.  There have been a few instances of civil aircraft being fired on and this just seems to be a plan for the future. Small man carried missiles (madpads) are one of the threats that keep people awake at night trying to prevent.  Fedex has taken part in tests in the past, mostly by flying systems in real world conditions to see what the lifespan of the equipment is on a daily basis and how much maintenance is involved.  It's a big step for them as the equipment is expensive and probably removes a few seats of payload and decreases fuel milage.  If it weren't for this, more aircraft would already be outfitted.  I know someone who was involved in the DARPA experiments to see if such a thing was possible back in the 90's  :nodhead:

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36 minutes ago, JerrySTL said:

I wonder why they don't want to install a more proven technology like chaff and flares. Flares are especially good at defeating heat seeking missiles. 

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IR heat seaking missiles get better every day.  Flares tend to act like barrage jammers did back in the early days of ECM jamming.  As detectors get better the protection of that sort of jammer degrades to the point that eventually the target can be seen even through all the noise.  Modern IR jamming systems indluding flares don't have enough power to hide behind anymore (size and power restrictions).  Without going into details, a laser IR jamming system does more than just create a "noise" to hide behind.  It looks at the incoming missile and determines what the IR scanning frequency is, then sends a slightly modified version of that frequency back to the missiles detector saying "I know you can see me but I'm really a bit more over there than here".

So instead of attempting to outright blind the missiles eyes it's more like fooling those eyes as to the correct location of the target.  At one time there was a video on the web of a jammer test against an actual Soviet missile system.  The missile attempted to change direction to the "new" target so violently that it's airframe collapsed and it broke up in flight to the sounds of much hooting and hollering in the test control room.  I haven't seen that video lately so you will have to take my word for it...........sorry, I just know a guy.

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44 minutes ago, maddmaxx said:

IR heat seaking missiles get better every day.  Flares tend to act like barrage jammers did back in the early days of ECM jamming.  As detectors get better the protection of that sort of jammer degrades to the point that eventually the target can be seen even through all the noise.  Modern IR jamming systems indluding flares don't have enough power to hide behind anymore (size and power restrictions).  Without going into details, a laser IR jamming system does more than just create a "noise" to hide behind.  It looks at the incoming missile and determines what the IR scanning frequency is, then sends a slightly modified version of that frequency back to the missiles detector saying "I know you can see me but I'm really a bit more over there than here".

So instead of attempting to outright blind the missiles eyes it's more like fooling those eyes as to the correct location of the target.  At one time there was a video on the web of a jammer test against an actual Soviet missile system.  The missile attempted to change direction to the "new" target so violently that it's airframe collapsed and it broke up in flight to the sounds of much hooting and hollering in the test control room.  I haven't seen that video lately so you will have to take my word for it...........sorry, I just know a guy.

I figured that IR heat seeking missiles have gotten better over the years since when I worked on the F-111s. 

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6 hours ago, maddmaxx said:

This is to protect them from Americans while delivering goods to Americans!

Too many have sunk so low in character!  Remember when they started putting sealed caps on bottles after some guy was sneaking into stores and putting poison in Tylenol bottles, when unscrewing the caps and rescrewing them was undetectable?

Now everything has a seal, otherwise Americans would be poisoning each other.

Every time a new low is reached, we eventually think of it as "normal society" and don't think there's a major problem that has to be addressed.

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3 hours ago, JerrySTL said:

I figured that IR heat seeking missiles have gotten better over the years since when I worked on the F-111s. 

When we tested against Soviet missiles provided by allies they were too easy so we began testing against late model US missiles that were significantly better.  The heat seakers have gone from simple IR detectors and a spinning slotted disc to multi color IR detectors to planar arrays all in the last 25 years.  Coupled with advanced computers and software and they can get pretty nasty.  Fortunately in Afghanistan we are still engaged by relatively old Soviet missiles and left over old US stingers.  A lot of helicopters already have sophisticated jammer systems, both IR and RF.

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18 hours ago, maddmaxx said:

When we tested against Soviet missiles provided by allies they were too easy so we began testing against late model US missiles that were significantly better.  The heat seakers have gone from simple IR detectors and a spinning slotted disc to multi color IR detectors to planar arrays all in the last 25 years.  Coupled with advanced computers and software and they can get pretty nasty.  Fortunately in Afghanistan we are still engaged by relatively old Soviet missiles and left over old US stingers.  A lot of helicopters already have sophisticated jammer systems, both IR and RF.

Do we have to kill you now?  :(  And ourselves?  And the internet?  :o

 

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