Wow, did the GE motors do that as often as the TF-30´s stalled, or was it a pretty rare occurrence?
F-14 Questions Answered - Ask Away
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The problem with the GE power plant failures, was that they were generally catastrophic, causing the loss of the aircraft, and often, the air crew.
The compressor stall was a relatively minor event, requiring you to shut down the engine, and 95% of the time you could get the thing restarted.
Once we figured out we had a problem, you were not allowed to use after burner with the GE engine. I talked about this problem before in the thread, but essentially what happened is in the redesign of the GE F110 to fit in the F14 air frame, an increase in the length of the after burner, GE failed to provide adequate AB liner cooling, resulting in frequent burn through.
The burn through was a very big deal, as a flame front of several thousand degrees, ripped through the aluminum casing, and into parts of the airframe, very quickly - causing catastrophic failures in structure or flight controls.
When those failures happened with the aircraft at high speed, the crew didn’t stand a chance. They had no opportunity to eject, because the airplane just came apart at a speed from which survival wasn’t possible.
The compressor stall was a relatively minor event, requiring you to shut down the engine, and 95% of the time you could get the thing restarted.
Once we figured out we had a problem, you were not allowed to use after burner with the GE engine. I talked about this problem before in the thread, but essentially what happened is in the redesign of the GE F110 to fit in the F14 air frame, an increase in the length of the after burner, GE failed to provide adequate AB liner cooling, resulting in frequent burn through.
The burn through was a very big deal, as a flame front of several thousand degrees, ripped through the aluminum casing, and into parts of the airframe, very quickly - causing catastrophic failures in structure or flight controls.
When those failures happened with the aircraft at high speed, the crew didn’t stand a chance. They had no opportunity to eject, because the airplane just came apart at a speed from which survival wasn’t possible.
Astro mentioned it earlier in this topic, but he noted the problem was fixed with a redesign of that liner. Must have taken a while since I had heard of the GE engines since the 80s and the last incident was in 1996.
This former Topgun commander goes over it but didn't say what the root cause was. He mentions one notorious incident and maybe another.
Here's an article:
Although the acquisition of the F110 solved many of the engine-related issues that blighted the A-model Tomcat throughout its US Navy service (the last F-14 lost to a TF30 failure crashed as late as April 1, 2003), the new General Electric powerplant had a few reliability issues of its own during the early phase of service. Indeed, there were two fatal accidents hauntingly similar to the incident on September 20, 1995 that is detailed later in this feature.
The first of these had actually occurred more than two-and-a-half years earlier, on March 15, 1993, when F-14B BuNo 163411 — the very last A+/B-model Tomcat built by Grumman — disintegrated in flight 20 miles east of Nags Head, North Carolina, d fluring a VF-101 training sortie, killing LT William E. Daisley and LCDR Fred D. Dillingham. Liner burn-through in the afterburner was the suspected cause. This fault in the F110 had been detected by General Electric three years earlier, prompting the company to instruct Grumman to perform special inspections on the afterburner ‘cans’ and the surrounding nacelles following engine runs at Calverton.
“The Tomcat remained a challenge to fly through to its retirement by the US Navy in October 2006
An identical liner burn-through severed the flight control rods of F-14D BuNo 161158 from VF-11 on February 18, 1996. The jet was flying at Mach 1.2 just a few hundred feet above the water during a competitive training unit mission from USS Carl Vinson (CVN 70) in the southern California operations area at the time of its demise. Again, the resulting conflagration engulfed the jet with such speed that neither the pilot, LT Terrence L Clark, nor the radar intercept officer (RIO), CDR Scott Lamoreaux, had time to eject. According to a story written by journalist Michael E. Ruane and published in the Philadelphia Inquirer newspaper shortly after the accident, ‘the wingman [in a second Tomcat] could not tell if the F-14 blew up first and then hit the ocean, or just exploded on impact. The jet was flying at high speed, simulating an enemy missile, when it crashed. Diving units later retrieved the aircraft’s two engines from the ocean floor, and the right engine was found to have a mysterious hole burned in its lining’.
Despite these incidents with the F110, the General Electric engine generally proved reliable in fleet service, although it was sometimes let down by ancillary systems that dated back to original designs of the late 1960s. For example, the very last US Navy Tomcat to be destroyed in an accident, F-14D BuNo 164344 of VF-31, crashed as a result of a fuel pump failure that saw its engines flame out over the sea just three miles from NAS North Island, San Diego, on March 29, 2004. Pilot LT Dan Komar and RIO LT(jg) Matt Janczak, who had been flying a routine training mission from USS John C. Stennis (CVN 74) at the time, ejected successfully.
How are the flares that are used to defeat heat seeking missiles loaded on to the aircraft? Are they like big roman candles in a tube?
Where do they exit the aircraft when fired?
Where do they exit the aircraft when fired?
Here's something showing the location of the decoy dispenser on an F-14. There don't seem to be too many videos showing the real thing in use, but rather a lot of how they were programmed into simulations. But it looks like a box next to the tailhook.
http://www.anft.net/f-14/f14-detail-chaff-flare.htm
The “buckets“ are standardized sets of 30 tubes across aircraft. The buckets are loaded with expendables, and those expendables are tailored to the particular threat. The exact nature of the infrared expendables, as well as the others, is still classified.
But, what happens is when an electric impulse goes to one of the 25 tubes in the bucket, a small electric charge activates a pyrotechnic device that launches the expendable, and in the case of the flare, ignites it.
There are some tactical considerations, on whether or not you want multiple expendables, with each button push inside the cockpit, or a single expendable, or which kind of expendable.
It depends on the threat that you’re facing.
There were two buckets in the tail of the airplane, midpoint between the engines adjacent to the Tailhook.
So, in combat (and often in training) we would takeoff with 60 expendables. In the case of the F-14, if we were doing an air reconnaissance run, we typically carried what was known as the “expanded chaff adapter” which was 120 tubes loaded onto one of the forward missile rails.
Because the reconnaissance aircraft was an easy target, due to the straight line flight path, tripling the number of expendables gave you an additional measure of protection.
The basic idea behind a flare, is to give an adversary’s infrared missile something more attractive than the heat of the engine, so that the missile would guide on the flare, and not on the engine, leading the missile away from the targeted aircraft.
As a practical matter, missile sensors have gotten fairly sophisticated - think of how good the camera is on an iPhone, for example. That has made deceiving them more difficult than it once was. The color spectrum, temperature rise, and the way that an expendable/flare appears to a potential missile, has all been improved and refined since my time flying the airplane, but those expendables all fit into the same standard “buckets”.
How are they fired? Is there a switch or button on the control stick? It would seem that they would be used in a high stress situation. Is there a type of, "arming switch" that is activated first?
Whenever I hear these things discussed, this comes to mind.
The buckets are armed when a safety pin is pulled during the launch (on the ship, it's when hooked up to the catapult, at the field, it's when you're in an arming area, right next to the runway, same place where we armed bombs, or guns, or missiles).
I think it was just one pin for both buckets. The weapon system would inhibit firing weapons if there was weight on wheels, and I'm pretty sure it was true for expendables, too. So, it would be armed, but not available, until the airplane was airborne.
Dispensing them depended on what was programmed. A control panel in the back set the "program" - how many and which kind were coming out.
There was a button on the left side of the stick, under the pilot's thumb, that would dispense a "program". The RIO had two multi position castle switches (cones, with four directions of activation) on the grab handle at the top of their displays. Both switches had the same function, but there were two, so that the RIO could look over either shoulder, and still be able to put their thumb on a switch.
I don't remember the directions, exactly, but one direction would dispense a program, and another would dispense a single round of a specific type, depending how that arming panel was set up.
There were Standard Operating Procedures for who dispensed what, and in what circumstances. If you were putting out, say, 10 rounds in a program, then you could run out of expendables quickly if both the pilot and RIO were punching their respective buttons. I think we used to say that the pilot would dispense flares for an IR missile defense, which makes sense, because the pilot knew when the airplane was out of AB (to help with the decoy - the AB plume was huge and hot - you wanted it gone before using flares).
And the RIO would put out the ECM for a radar guided missile, while the pilot was maneuvering the airplane. The timing of putting out the other stuff depended on missile range, closure, and aircraft maneuvering, so, RIO is watching over their shoulder, executing the timing, while the pilot flies.
One exception to the rule - the ECA (Expanded Chaff Adapter) - it worked using the bomb button (since it was on a weapon rail, the firing pulse came through the stores management system, not the normal expendables system), and only the pilot could drop bombs, so the pilot put out all the ECA rounds.
It's my understanding that the most current IR-guided missiles are basically infrared camera seekers and would "see" an infrared image similar to night vision. That requires electronic image processing. But they should easily be able to discriminate between the target and another hot object off to the side.
I suspect a flare won't really do much. But a dazzler might.
LAIRCM focuses its high-intensity laser energy at the infrared seeker head of incoming missiles to blind the missile and force it off its target. The system is designed to protect large aircraft from shoulder-fired, vehicle-launched, and other infrared-guided missiles when the planes are operating close to the ground, such as during takeoffs, landings, and low-level operations like aerial refueling.
A flare might work if it's fired before an IR lock is obtained, but very small chance after that.
The seekers on manpads will be less sophisticated than on a Sidewinder
Sure. But a rotating IR laser locking right onto the seeker head might just blind the camera like what it looks like when i point my camera at the sun.
To defeat a threat weapon that tracks on IR, you have to exploit how the seeker works. That’s some classified stuff, right there. So, we have expendables, and other systems on larger aircraft that don’t require expendables, and that’s all I am going to say.
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"China and Russia TERRIFIED – former TOP GUN pilot CONFIRMS advanced death rays that make American aircraft IMMUNE to all weapons!"
Astro,
I don't know if you saw the movie, "Behind Enemy Lines" with Gene Hackman and Owen Wilson. There is a scene in there where they get shot at by 2 missiles, and go about dodging them with some wild flying.
Is all of it Hollywood nonsense? Or is it somewhat real? Here is the scene. (Those missiles look to have more fuel than the plane did).
I don't know if you saw the movie, "Behind Enemy Lines" with Gene Hackman and Owen Wilson. There is a scene in there where they get shot at by 2 missiles, and go about dodging them with some wild flying.
Is all of it Hollywood nonsense? Or is it somewhat real? Here is the scene. (Those missiles look to have more fuel than the plane did).
Missiles have seconds worth of fuel, a bit more if they're bigger missiles. The missiles in that clip don't behave like real missiles and that flying won't help in escaping a missile. You have to defeat the radar guiding them really. Putting terrain between you and the radar is one way, but there's others. You won't defeat a missile that has fuel and that knows where you are. And they don't need to hit you even, just get close. That's why they have fairly big warheads
Of course that doesn’t happen. They have solid rocket motors that are depleted with a few seconds and beyond that they coast. Cruise missiles use small jet engines.
I heard a Phoenix might burn for a few minutes, but that thing is massive. Something about heading up higher than the target and then raining down on the target.
Hollywood nonsense. The first missile would have had the closest point of approach about 9 seconds in and would have hit or missed at that point. There would be no extended tail chase, nor would there be a reattack. If the SAM operator waited that long as in this video for the second missile, the F-18 would have most likely been out of range.
Most SAMs travel at approximately 3 times the aircraft speed at that altitude (extremely rough approximation). The slight overtake in the video is nonsense, just done to extend the scene.
Most SAMs travel at approximately 3 times the aircraft speed at that altitude (extremely rough approximation). The slight overtake in the video is nonsense, just done to extend the scene.
There may be some basis (albeit dated) to the idea of outmaneuvering a missile. The SA-2 and the derivative SA-3 used by N. Vietnam were huge and not very maneuverable, plus, the liquid fueled sustainer rocket motor was highly visible. Because it was designed to be used primarily against high altitude, straight line targets they could be relatively easily outmaneuvered by tactical aircraft. If you could see it, you could outmaneuver it. Been there, done that multiple times.
That said, even though there may be some historical basis, that was sixty years ago, and technology marches on. The clip is a wild fantastic exaggeration, in my opinion.
That said, even though there may be some historical basis, that was sixty years ago, and technology marches on. The clip is a wild fantastic exaggeration, in my opinion.
ls1mike
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We had a ton of questions...were you in during Top Gun,? Astro we had so many!!! How many missions? To be honest my buddy Frank and I were talking about it for days! Amazing stuff to guys on submarines.
