I'm usually not a punctuation Nazi but if you got rid of apostrophe in Jets it would not distract so much.
I got rid of it about 20 seconds after I first posted. You just need to refresh.
*grins*
Is this IR jammer something that's already been proven out, by protecting, say, actual military aircraft flying ground attack missions against targets defended by heat seekers? Does it have an actual track record of effective defense against missiles that home in on IR emissions?
Or is it something that's *NEW* *BRAND* *NEW*?
I've not heard of this before. Now that doesn't mean much, because I don't even pretend to have my arms around emerging, or even tested, military technology.
But I have spent the last decade working in the security field. Professionally. And I've seen enough snake oil peddled there to turn just the stomachs of just about everybody except the most hardened sociopathic liars. After 9/11, particularly. The bullshit flowed so thick and fast that it sucked in quite a few experienced people with track records longer than mine.
For example, read between the lines of the Wikipedia page on face recognition technology and what you'll see is a technology being asked to run sprints before it's out of diapers. Search more widely and you'll find outright fraud. Google search on
"Face Information Technology" site:theregister.co.uk
and you'll find this little piece in The Register, from April of 2004.
Don't even get me started about fingerprint biometrics. For that one, I don't have to interpolate anything, because I've seen that fail badly myself. We patched around the embarrassment by placing a secretary within eyeshot of the protected door, with a switch under her desk to override the system when it handed us a false negative.
So far, attacks on passenger jets with IR homing missiles have been nil, to the best of my recollection. This doesn't mean that it won't happen tomorrow.
But I've seen SO MUCH MONEY SPENT ON 110% PURE PORK by the DHS over the last six years that my bullshit alarm is going off as I write this.
You could probably bring down a jetliner with an RPG, and it wouldn't be bothered by the countermeasures package. The Bad Guys will analyze the problem and come up with a solution.
I note that over the past 30 years I've never seen a jet brought down in this country by hostile ground fire. Now, that's not saying it can't be happening right now, but I doubt that the long-term efficacy can justify the expense.
But I've seen SO MUCH MONEY SPENT ON 110% PURE PORK by the DHS over the last six years that my bullshit alarm is going off as I write this.
DHS is just another funnel from the US Treasury to rich rethug biz owners.
to send the missile veering harmlessly off course.
to quote Atrios "Bullets go up, bullets come down."
Oh, come on... you've thought it.
Every minute on my Freedom Bird until we were "feet wet".
The Concordes flying the London-Bahrein route carried AA-missile radar detectors, at least in the 80s. I don't know if they carried active jammers or other EW countermeasures.
El Al aircraft carry flare projectors to decoy IR-homing missiles.
I'll just note in passing that US combat planes might carry IR jamming gear, but they sure as hell carry flares, because it's known they work.
I'm lost. Was there a spate of commercial jet explosions caused by missiles over the rogue states of Ohio and Indiana that I missed?
Educated guess: if someone shoots down a passenger jet, it'll be exactly what you described - some psycho parked 1/4 mile past the end of the runway with a high-powered rifle or submachinegun.
Smells like pork to me ... especially given all the comments above on the known utility of (much cheaper) flares to distract heat-seekers.
One of the flights that went down in the 90s is alleged frequently to have been shot down in an act performed by people in a boat in Long Island Sound or some such. Usually this is cribbed in anti-Clinton rhetoric. All you really need is bread crumbs, though. Canadian Geese take out more commercial aircraft and even military aircraft than you might think.
Commenting by HaloScan
