Warbird Information Exchange

I was curious as to the level of realism when dropping live ordinance on a target range. Do you ever get bounced by "Enemy" fighters? Or is this not done in the interest of safety when dealing with live ordnance?

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Why would you bother other fighters dont attack USAF nowdays havent for ? 15years.......

They are more concerned with flak, sams and women...

No, the training rules are pretty tight with live ordnance on board.

The reality is, though, it doesn't really matter if the item that falls off the aircraft goes "boom" when it hits the ground or not. Most of the time we fly around with 25-pound practice bombs that ballistically fall the same as a Mk-82 500-pounder. With inert ordnance on board like that we're able to turn and burn as much as we want.

A typical attack profile would be fighting our way in to a target against bandits, then threat reacting to an electonic simulation of a SAM in the target area, then hitting the target with practice ordnance, and finishing it off by facing opponents on our way back out of the area.

thanks Randy. Are you typically aware of the possibility of bandits when planning the mission or do they ever show up when the briefing says there are none?

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Scott Rose
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In the United States 99% of the time the bandits have to be pre-briefed, so you know they're going to be there. The vast majority of the time the "blue air" is going for a specific training objective, so they'll make the bandits mimic a certain type of threat or tactic (e.g. pretend you're MiG-21s from an ex-Soviet client state and fly the whoop-de-doo tactic). There are several aspects that are decided well before taking off for a safety perspective, as in block altitudes that the blue air and the red air will be in...that way if nobody ends up seeing anyone else, at a minimum there won't be a midair.

Over in the UK they have something which is a standard set of training rules for all NATO military aircraft. If you fly around squawking a certain code in your transponder, that's broadcasting to everyone around "hey, I'm up for a fight if you are." That leads to engagements that come as a surprise...and is much more fun. You can go out and hunt other aircraft that are squawking the appropriate code, or you can just go about your business and see if somebody comes and bounces you.

Welcome to the wild side.......

Had any fun with the new Tiffie's yet....

The closest thing to that I've had was one that passed about 1000' off my wingtip while I was on departure from Lakenheath, headed north out toward the Wash area. There were about 3 pairs of Typhoons over Marham dogfighting and I apparently stooged into the middle of a fight while under Radar Information!

Randy has covered the present already. During the early 80's, it was pretty much the same. Very tight control exerted over aircraft with live ordinance.

Our A-10s were never bounced by anyone. Everything was largely a canned scenario with the same altitude control measures that Randy mentioned.

At the time (early 1980s), the A-10s were still the butt of a lot of jokes and most of the fighter guys figured we'd probably auto-shootdown ourselves by flying into the ground or something

I was already out of USAF but after the Remscheid crash in 1988 (a fully loaded A-10 crashed into the town enroute to the live-fire range), I understand things really tightened up to the point of not being able to do much of anything. The prospect of depleted uranium 30mm ammo spread across the town caused quite a political stink.