Air Tactics - the SAMbush

[95th Rifleman]

I can't remember the name, but there's a British missile in development which is simply fired into the vicinity of a radar site, flies up and away from the firing aircraft, then pops a parachute and hangs there waiting for a radar burst, at which point it fires a second motor and goes at the radar site.

It's called ALARM and is no longer in development, it's field certified and in active use.

[dragoon500ly]

Came across this one in an old copy of Air Force magazine, from 1968, the article mentioned a tactic that the NVA was using to nail Wild Weasel aircraft. They would set up 23mm/57mm AAA guns around terrain features that allowed the Weasels to pop-down below radar, right into a gun battery or two.

It's not so much the ring of guns that paul mentioned, but still a nasty variation...

[pmulcahy11b]

Paul, these are the RPVs/UAVs the Israelis used to trick the Syrian SA-6 batteries into turning on their targetting radars for the waiting Israeli Wild Weasels.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tadiran_Mastiff

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IAI_Scout

I recall seeing pictures of similar UAVs being launched from the fantail of one of the Iowa class battleships for use as a long rage artillery spotting platform for the ship's 16" guns. They used a crash netting type system to recover the vehicles. IIRC, such a set up was used against Iraqi shore positions in Kuwait during the '91 Gulf War.

Sometime in the future I'll work on that, but UAV updates are a while out for my site right now.

[Raellus]

Sometime in the future I'll work on that, but UAV updates are a while out for my site right now.

No hurry. You asked and I was trying to accomodate.

[Matt Wiser]

ALARM was combat proven in 1991 (ODS), 1995 (Bosnia), 1999 (Kosovo), and 2003 (OIF).