Another urban myth for the military aviators.

[Tikka]

Hi.
Just a bit of fun, another urban myth to either confirm or dispel.

I do not know if this one is well known but here it is.

UK Police officer has radar gun and is catching speeding motorists. In the distance he hears and sees a Harrier jet coming toward him at low level. He thinks it would be fun to 'catch' it with the radar gun. The Harrier detects the radar and automatically initiates an electronic counter measure. This counter measure then proceeds to 'fry' the very expensive radar gun. It is one of those ones that i hope is true.

I actually first read of this many years ago in Guns and Ammo magazine of all places. Cooper's corner for those that remember that.

 

[Astro14]

I’ve heard several variations of this tale. Usually, it’s a Prowler, or Growler, in the desert. But I've heard F-16. F-15. Neither of which have the ability to “fry” a policeman’s radar gun.

Now I’ve heard Harrier.

I doubt any of them are true.

The “low flying aircraft” photos are often photoshopped, but at least one of them, an F-16N (Navy Adversary) at about 50 feet in the Nevada Desert on Highway 50, is absolutely real.

I know the guys that took it.

 

[Astro14]

This plaque is a memorial to the last active duty adversary squadron at Oceana. They flew the F-16N among other aircraft (A-4, F-5).

Take a good look at the top picture. That’s real.

 

[ragtoplvr]

the countermeasures work by confusing the enemy radar. Not blowing it up. Takes much less power to confuse them.

Rod

 

[Danno]

Some of the nicknames wouldn't make it pass the filters on this forum.

 

[thastinger]

Parts of the story have a base. If the RADAR gun was operating in its X-band freq. then I could see the ES suite on the plane classifying that as a potential threat as the X band covers much of the same frequency band as the CW illumination of most missile systems around the world. Not sure how long ago this story is said to have happened but there are very few planes with an EA capability.

Now, you have the problem with range and beamwidth of the RADAR gun. Power levels of hand held speed guns is typically in the milli-watt range since there is a person often physically holding it, this means the range is usually less than half a mile. If the beam on the RADAR gun is a 2 degree pencil beam, it emits from the gun as a cone, so at half a mile the beam would only have a 36ft radius or 72ft total cone size. So assuming the cop is holding the gun level, the plane would have to be at a max alt of 36 feet. I doubt there is a plane with a payload capacity large enough to haul the jewels of that pilot, plus the ES system on the plan would likely not trip on a picowatt signal strength else it would be in a constant false alarm state.

 

[MRC01]

I thought you were going to say the Harrier slowed down below the speed limit -- because he can!

 

[fsdork]

I would suspect LASER (referred to elsewhere as LIDAR) would be more likely to trigger countermeasures/alerts. I don't know what wavelengths military aircraft are looking for in this regard, but the focused nature and long operational range of LASER makes it seem plausible. As for the handheld being fried in retaliation, l am skeptical about that.

 

[supton]

This plaque is a memorial to the last active duty adversary squadron at Oceana. They flew the F-16N among other aircraft (A-4, F-5).

Take a good look at the top picture. That’s real. View attachment 39266

Apologies for the ignorance, but what is the height above ground? Also, is it any harder or easier, once you are above whatever stall speed is, at such low levels? I'm guessing it's the same level of effort, but still.

 

[MolaKule]

I have seen many variations of this story but if anyone knows the real facts, dates would help to determine the technology used. Some of the story is entirely plausible, depending on the technology at the time.

In my earlier career, and before going back to study at the university, I worked as an FCC Licensed engineer for a communications company that upgraded and repaired Police Radars (among other technologies). Most of the police radars were manufactured by RCA, Bendix, and Raytheon.

The old police radars (the ones with the old fashioned looking headlight enclosure) were X-band doppler types of course and the detection system was a simple germanium diode detector that compared the outgoing (about 30mW of power) beam's frequency with the return frequency of the millimeter wave. The detected signal was actually an audio frequency in which the higher the audio frequency, the higher the analog meter registered a higher speed.

One could set the meter for a specific maximum speed and when this speed was exceeded, the meter would 'clamp' the indicator speed to show the motorist, and a photograph was made for the court case.

The power output was low because it used a Gunn Diode as the RF source and the enclosure was a parabolic antenna which focused the beam, and which provided a higher powered output signal because of the antenna's gain. Detection was up to three miles on the higher powered HP units, but city police radar was good to about 3/4 of a mile on a good day.

Now, the weak link was the germanium (later a GaS diode) detector, which was sensitive to any static or high voltage pulse or another high powered X-band signal from a vehicle.

I used to go out in the company van to test a repaired radar and had much fun watching brakes lights on passing vehicles.

At this point in time avionic radars had high power X-band RF outputs and could conceivably "fry" the sensitive detector diodes in police radars.

A sidebar: One municipality had continued failures in its radars, so we set up a "sting" operation to photograph passing cars which seemed to damage radars. One car in particular was found to "toast" the detectors and the driver was apprehended along with his vehicle.

This guy had built a higher powered version of an X-band radar from plans found in Popular Electronics and located his antenna in a headlight mount, which simply appeared as another foglight. The FCC was notified and he faced a stiff fine from not only the FCC (for having an unlicensed RF transmitter) but also was fined by the municipality for interfering with police duties. Popular Electronics was also notified by the FCC. I don't know what happened after that.

 

[Astro14]

Apologies for the ignorance, but what is the height above ground? Also, is it any harder or easier, once you are above whatever stall speed is, at such low levels? I'm guessing it's the same level of effort, but still.

My guess on height above the ground in the photo is fifty feet.

I would guess that the speed is between 250 and 500 knots.

Way above stall.

At that speed, flying at the height shown is relatively easy. We fly in formation at those speeds and are only a few feet apart.

However, even a half degree of pitch change can put you into the ground in about a second. So, control of the aircraft must be very smooth, very precise and continuous.

You cannot have even a second of inattention, or you can develop a sink rate that kills you in that second.

It takes some skill to develop.

For training safety, we weren’t allowed to go below 500 feet. Later, this was changed to 200 feet with low altitude training. One of the most ignored rules in the book...

We often flew quite low. I’ve been supersonic at 100 feet (perhaps a bit lower) for important, tactical reasons. The tactic worked, by the way, and my wingman and I egressed from an overwhelmingly difficult situation in training, and flew right over the road on which that picture was taken.

Level flight, as shown, is straightforward.

When serious bank angles and G are added, even greater precision is required.

 

[y_p_w]

At that speed, flying at the height shown is relatively easy. We fly in formation at those speeds and are only a few feet apart.

However, even a half degree of pitch change can put you into the ground in about a second. So, control of the aircraft must be very smooth, very precise and continuous.

You cannot have even a second of inattention, or you can develop a sink rate that kills you in that second.

It takes some skill to develop.

I've seen the Blue Angels do a near stall high angle of attack pass at really slow speeds, but my understanding was that it's basically the fly by wire systems doing that. Or at least that's what their announcers were claiming. Anything like that work at higher speeds to keep a pilot from hitting the ground?



When I was younger I heard about the Israeli Air Force taking out the nuclear reactor site in Iraq. Supposedly done with F-16s flying low to the ground with F-15s as air cover. That was a neat trick how they did that without refueling.

 

[y_p_w]

An electromagnetic pulse could theoretically do that. Wouldn't just fry the radar gun but every other piece of nearby electronics receiving enough of the pulse.

This was fictionalized a few times in movies. In the Bond movie GoldenEye, the fictional weapon was powerful enough to blow out light bulbs and permanently damage various electronics unless they were radiation hardened (like the Eurocopter Tiger). That's basically turning all wires into generators where the magnetic pulse just creates massive currents. It's kind of obscure, but the John Woo movie Broken Arrow had a nuclear blast that created a smaller EMP that looked it created soft errors. The bad guy turned off his electronics and they worked again when he turned them back on. However, a helicopter in the air crashed, supposedly because its digital systems were scrambled. A can't think of anything that would be so precise as to target a single handheld device like a radar gun.

I've been in discussions about radiation hardened electronics. They're not necessarily foolproof. They're just supposed to be less susceptible to stuff like bit flip or less likely to absorb radiation or magnetic pulses. Semiconductors need a certain amount of material just for physical strength. Traditionally that's been silicon, where only the top layer is strictly needed for operation. But the "bulk" silicon can absorb cosmic rays, electrons, magnetic interference, etc. The radiation hardened silicon we talked about started with silicon on sapphire or silicon on insulator (silicon dioxide) where the bulk is not going to absorb those particles or rays.

 

[Cujet]

The Primus 880 Radar on our Corporate Jet has 10,000 watts of transmit power. While that seems "epic" (a little joke, it's a Primus Epic system) it's nowhere near enough to cause problems with nearby equipment.

 

[Tikka]

Hi.
This fun thread has turned into a very interesting one so thank you.

Not unusual in the UK at one time to see low flying RAF. I grew up on a farm in the pennine hills. Low flying jaguars and harriers were a common sight. They used the valleys for practicing their skills.

 

[TheLawnRanger]

Not military, but I'm reminded of the scene from Secondhand Lions where the plane flies under the overpass and is clocked by the police.

 

[Astro14]

I've seen the Blue Angels do a near stall high angle of attack pass at really slow speeds, but my understanding was that it's basically the fly by wire systems doing that. Or at least that's what their announcers were claiming. Anything like that work at higher speeds to keep a pilot from hitting the ground?



When I was younger I heard about the Israeli Air Force taking out the nuclear reactor site in Iraq. Supposedly done with F-16s flying low to the ground with F-15s as air cover. That was a neat trick how they did that without refueling.

The fly by wire enables good controllability at that AOA/airspeed combo.

But that is 100% manual flying. Even more demanding than high speed low altitude flying because of the nature of the thrust/AOA/descent rate.

They are deep into the back side of the power curve. Not an easy place to fly an airplane with precision, as the Blues do with incredible aplomb.

BREAK

I had a chance to talk with the lead of the Israeli AF strike on Osirak. It was fascinating strike and I really appreciated his insight. It was brilliantly done, though they made one critical mistake in planning. Ultimately, it didn’t hurt them.

They did refuel in Israeli airspace, but the whole thing was flown at low level by F-16s to evade radar. That’s hard to do in the desert, easier to do with terrain.

Radar is good, but it doesn’t go through rocks, or sand, so, yeah, you can hide from it if you get low enough relative to the transmitter/receiver. So, a good tactic against fixed installations. Airborne platforms, well, not so much, depending on their capability and location...

 

[Tikka]

Hi Astro.
Was the one mistake to fly over the King of Jordan's yacht? He's alleged to have given the Iraqis the heads up of a possible IAF mission but the Iraqis did not act.
I understand if you can't say.

The Israeli military really are a class act.

 

[Astro14]

The raid was brilliantly planned. The execution was excellent. It started a whole new use of the F 16 as a strike fighter, instead of a lightweight air to air platform that was envisioned.

That raid kept Iraq from developing nuclear weapons, something I was quite grateful for a decade later.

The mistake did not affect the outcome. Since it was told to me in a fighter squadron ready room, I consider it a matter of professional courtesy in not revealing it.

I will say that I took one of the Israeli officers and let him fly the F-14 simulator. He was a test pilot. About a minute into flying the simulator, I could see that he wasn’t just having fun, he was gathering aerodynamic performance data points. He was validating what they probably knew about the airplane already, and I let him know that I was on to his game by suggesting that he measure the airplane’s turn performance at a particular airspeed, which of course, showed off the airplane to the best advantage.