On Mon, 10 Mar 2008 19:44:11 -0000, wrote:

On Mon, 10 Mar 2008 19:28:18 +0000, Short Wave Sportfishing wrote:


And using low altitude stealthy drones is safer, and cheaper. In Iraq
and Afghanistan, drones seem to be carrying the bulk of aerial intell.

Safer? Certainly because it's not manned if that's what you mean by
"safer". Cheaper - perhaps.

Effective? Not really. Low speed, low altitude unmanned aircraft are
spottable and effective counter measures against them are effective - if
you notice they are there. In Iraq, you are dealing with a what are
essentially low-tech guerrillas - and fairly stupid if you watch some of
the war porn movies on YouTube. You aren't going to use one of those
beasties over flying a missile base in Moscow.

Yeah, but ... you are talking about the drones we know of, the Predator
and the Global Hawk. Just speculating here, but if you were tasked with
aerial spying, would you go for an Aurora type, or a *stealthy drone*, a
F-117 type, if you will. Me, I'm thinking stealthy.

You are missing an imporant point - communications. These things
don't fly themselves and they have to use digital communications which
means FM which means a whole host of complications dealing with the
nature of the communications not to mention range which is limited.
For an umnanned drone to fly deep into national territory, you will
need support aircraft and that's suspicious all by it'self.

Which reminds me of a funny story I heard a reliable source which is
supposedly true.

The Isralies have been on the cutting edge of unmanned drone
surveillance and have been developing drones that look, and sometimes
act, like large birds. They contracted out to a US SFx firm to build
the bird body around the airframe. The Isralies wanted a buzzard.

So they got a buzzard. And it was immediately spotted on it's first
surveillance flight by those who were being spied on.

Turns out the body was modeled after a Turkey Vulture which does not
exist in the Middle East. :)

"John H." wrote in message
...
On Sun, 09 Mar 2008 20:49:11 GMT, Short Wave Sportfishing
wrote:

"One day, high above Arizona, we were monitoring the radio traffic of
all the mortal airplanes below us. First, a Cessna pilot asked the air
traffic controllers to check his ground speed. 'Ninety knots,' ATC
replied. A twin Bonanza soon made the same request. 'One-twenty on the
ground,' was the reply. To our surprise, a navy F-18 came over the
radio with a ground speed check. I knew exactly what he was doing. Of
course, he had a ground speed indicator in his cockpit, but he wanted
to let all the bug-smashers in the valley know what real speed was
'Dusty 52, we show you at 525 on the ground,' ATC responded. The
situation was too ripe. I heard the click of Walter's mike button in
the rear seat. In his most innocent voice, Walter startled the
controller by asking for a ground speed check from 81,000 feet,
clearly above controlled airspace. In a cool, professional voice, the
controller replied, 'Aspen 20, I show you at 1,742 knots on the
ground.' We did not hear another transmission on that frequency all
the way to the coast."

http://maggiesfarm.anotherdotcom.com...-that-jet.html

And you can see one of those up close at the new Air and Space Museum!
--
John

I had a coworker who worked on the Sr-71. Said it was proof, that if you
applied enough power you could fly a barn door. There is one at the air
museum near Salt Lake. I have a buddy who flew U-2's. I think the major
problem was the pilots bladder.

"Short Wave Sportfishing" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 10 Mar 2008 02:13:55 GMT, Steve wrote:

On Sun, 9 Mar 2008 21:07:15 -0400, "Eisboch" wrote:


"John H." wrote in message
...


And you can see one of those up close at the new Air and Space Museum!
--
John



There is also one on display at the main entrance to the San Diego Air
and
Space museum. That one was the first one I ever saw, other than
pictures.

http://www.sandiegoairandspace.org/collections/

There's also one at the Air Force Armament Museum at Eglin Air Force
Base in Florida. I was there a couple of years ago. Interesting
place.

http://www.afarmamentmuseum.com/outside.shtml

Does Wright-Patterson still have thier museum?

I was there a long time ago - it looked pretty seedy then.

Very nice museum last time I was there which was about 1976. In 1964, was a
little place and the B-36 wing sheltered the smaller planes.