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Interesting - I didn't know the canopy opened forwards!
Why is the airbrake (is that what it is?) open when taking off?
__________________ Do Not Put Aftershave on Your Balls. -604CEFIRO Looks like I'm gonna have some hot sex again tonight...OOPS i got the 6 pack. that wont last me the night, I better go back and get the 24 pack! -Turbo E kinda off topic but obama is a dilf - miss_crayon Honest to fucking Christ the easiest way to get a married woman in the mood is clean the house and do the laundry.....I've been with the same girl almost 17 years, ask me how I know. - quasi
Air intake for the ducted fan to provide vertical lift.
I was 0_o until I realized it wasn't an airbrake. The STOL sequence is also interesting... I was hoping they would show the transition state better.
D'oh! It seems so obvious now...
__________________ Do Not Put Aftershave on Your Balls. -604CEFIRO Looks like I'm gonna have some hot sex again tonight...OOPS i got the 6 pack. that wont last me the night, I better go back and get the 24 pack! -Turbo E kinda off topic but obama is a dilf - miss_crayon Honest to fucking Christ the easiest way to get a married woman in the mood is clean the house and do the laundry.....I've been with the same girl almost 17 years, ask me how I know. - quasi
Speed brake opening up like that would get torn apart if opened at any respectable speed.
Good to hear belka, are you at the cold lake base or the edmonton?
On another note, my instructor told as a wicked story today:
He piloted the CF101's for a while back in the day. He was going on a flight with a navigator who hadn't been up in the air for about 4 years because of a wicked accident he had had.
The accident involved his plane flying through the top of a very intense thunderstorm which caused the airplane to break apart, the pilot ejected and landed safely but something happened to the copilot...
Now the parachutes, when you eject, are designed to open up around 14000' due to hypoxia and something to do with your terminal velocity in the air up at alitude would kill you if you opened the chute. Well, his chute opened fine but the problem was the updrafts were so severe in the thunderstorm that they essentially carried him back up to the top of the thunderstorm then he'd fall back down and then go back up, and so and so forth... He finally touched down to earth 45 minutes after ejecting (or was stuck in the cell for 45mins can't remember). Now this all sounds like fun and games, a big gigantic rollercoaster going up down 15000' at 2000'+/minute. Except there was massive hail in the storm, and the hail moves around pretty damn quick in the cells.
When he finally got back to earth (with only a 1/3 of his chute left) he was unconscious and his body was described to be as looking as though the skin had turned to mush and that someone had then taken a hammer and beaten the entire body/skin with it. He was in the hospital for 6 months and is, for obvious reasons, deathly afraid of flying near thunderstorm cells.
i still can't get over the look of that vectoring tailpipe (all i can think of is PENIS - no homo) and the ducted fan (which sits useless unless in STOL/VTOL mode - unlike the Harrier's four main thrust nozzles - but i'm repeating myself here)...
and it IS weird that the canopy opened forwards. I wonder what the reasoning was... though i suspect it might have to do with the ducted fan right behind the cockpit.
Quote:
Originally Posted by GabAlmighty
Spoiler!
Speed brake opening up like that would get torn apart if opened at any respectable speed.
Good to hear belka, are you at the cold lake base or the edmonton?
On another note, my instructor told as a wicked story today:
He piloted the CF101's for a while back in the day. He was going on a flight with a navigator who hadn't been up in the air for about 4 years because of a wicked accident he had had.
The accident involved his plane flying through the top of a very intense thunderstorm which caused the airplane to break apart, the pilot ejected and landed safely but something happened to the copilot...
Now the parachutes, when you eject, are designed to open up around 14000' due to hypoxia and something to do with your terminal velocity in the air up at alitude would kill you if you opened the chute. Well, his chute opened fine but the problem was the updrafts were so severe in the thunderstorm that they essentially carried him back up to the top of the thunderstorm then he'd fall back down and then go back up, and so and so forth... He finally touched down to earth 45 minutes after ejecting (or was stuck in the cell for 45mins can't remember). Now this all sounds like fun and games, a big gigantic rollercoaster going up down 15000' at 2000'+/minute. Except there was massive hail in the storm, and the hail moves around pretty damn quick in the cells.
When he finally got back to earth (with only a 1/3 of his chute left) he was unconscious and his body was described to be as looking as though the skin had turned to mush and that someone had then taken a hammer and beaten the entire body/skin with it. He was in the hospital for 6 months and is, for obvious reasons, deathly afraid of flying near thunderstorm cells.
__________________ Do Not Put Aftershave on Your Balls. -604CEFIRO Looks like I'm gonna have some hot sex again tonight...OOPS i got the 6 pack. that wont last me the night, I better go back and get the 24 pack! -Turbo E kinda off topic but obama is a dilf - miss_crayon Honest to fucking Christ the easiest way to get a married woman in the mood is clean the house and do the laundry.....I've been with the same girl almost 17 years, ask me how I know. - quasi
Not aircraft related but still of interest. I knew some more details would emerge about the Bin Laden raid, I just didn't think so soon. Still, take this all with a grain of salt. This is an article from the Sunday Times in the UK:
Seals tell of killing ‘Bert’ Laden
Upset by the official account, US Navy Seals commandos reveal the truth of the raid that killed Osama Bin Laden, nicknames and all.
Osama Bin Laden was killed within 90 seconds of the US Navy Seals landing in his compound and not after a protracted gun battle, according to the first account by the men who carried out the raid. The operation was so clinical that only 12 bullets were fired.
The Seals have spoken out because they were angered at the version given by politicians, which they see as portraying them as cold-blooded murderers on a “kill mission”. They were also shocked that President Barack Obama announced Bin Laden’s death on television the same evening, rendering useless much of the intelligence they had seized.
Chuck Pfarrer, a former commander of Seal Team 6, which conducted the operation, has interviewed many of those who took part for a book, Seal Target Geronimo, to be published in the US this week.
The Seals’ own accounts differ from the White House version, which gave the impression that Bin Laden was killed at the end of the operation rather than in its opening seconds. Pfarrer insists Bin Laden would have been captured had he surrendered.
“There isn’t a politician in the world who could resist trying to take credit for getting Bin Laden but it devalued the ‘intel’ and gave time for every other Al-Qaeda leader to scurry to another bolthole,” said Pfarrer. “The men who did this and their valorous act deserve better. It’s a pretty shabby way to treat these guys.”
The first hint of the mission came in January last year when the team’s commanding officer was called to a meeting at the headquarters of joint special operations command. The meeting was held in a soundproof bunker three storeys below ground with his boss, Admiral William McRaven, and a CIA officer.
They told him a walled compound in Pakistan had been under surveillance for a couple of weeks. They were certain a high-value individual was inside and needed a plan to present to the president.
It had to be someone important. “So is this Bert or Ernie?” he asked. The Seals’ nicknames for Bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri are a reference to two Muppets in Sesame Street, one tall and thin and the other short and fat. “We have a voice print,” said the CIA officer, “and we’re 60% or 70% certain it’s our guy.” McRaven added that a reconnaissance satellite had measured the target’s shadow. “Over 6ft tall.”
When McRaven added they would use Ghost Hawk helicopters, the team leader had no doubt. “These are the most classified, sophisticated stealth helicopters ever developed,” said Pfarrer. “They are kept in locked hangars and fly so quiet we call it ‘whisper mode’.”
Over the next couple of months a plan was hatched. A mock-up of the compound was built at Tall Pines, an army facility in a national forest somewhere in the eastern US.
Four reconnaissance satellites were placed in orbit over the compound, sending back video and communications intercepts. A tall figure seen walking up and down was named “the Pacer”.
Obama gave the go-ahead and Seal Team 6, known as the Jedi, was deployed to Afghanistan. The White House cancelled plans to provide air cover using jet fighters, fearing this might endanger relations with Pakistan.
Sending in the Ghost Hawks without air cover was considered too risky so the Seals had to use older Stealth Hawks. A Prowler electronic warfare aircraft from the carrier USS Carl Vinson was used to jam Pakistan’s radar and create decoy targets.
Operation Neptune’s Spear was initially planned for April 30 but bad weather delayed it until May 1, a moonless night. The commandos flew on two Stealth Hawks, codenamed Razor 1 and 2, followed by two Chinooks five minutes behind, known as “Command Bird” and the “gun platform”. On board, each Seal was clad in body armour and nightvision goggles and equipped with laser targets, radios and sawn-off M4 rifles. They were expecting up to 30 people in the main house, including Bin Laden and three of his wives, two sons, Khalid and Hamza, his courier, Abu Ahmed al- Kuwaiti, four bodyguards and a number of children. At 56 minutes past midnight the compound came into sight and the code “Palm Beach” signalled three minutes to landing.
Razor 1 hovered above the main house, a three-storey building where Bin Laden lived on the top floor. Twelve Seals abseiled the 5ft-6ft down onto the roof and then jumped to a third-floor patio, where they kicked in the windows and entered.
The first person the Seals encountered was a terrified woman, Bin Laden’s third wife, Khaira, who ran into the hall. Blinded by a searing white strobe light they shone at her, she stumbled back. A Seal grabbed her by the arm and threw her to the floor.
Bin Laden’s bedroom was along a short hall. The door opened; he popped out and then slammed the door shut. “Geronimo, Geronimo, Geronimo,” radioed one Seal, meaning “eyes on target”.
At the same time lights came on from the floor below and Bin Laden’s son Khalid came running up the stairs towards the Seals. He was shot dead.
Two Seals kicked in Bin Laden’s door. The room, they later recalled, “smelt like old clothing, like a guest bedroom in a grandmother’s house”. Inside was the Al-Qaeda leader and his youngest wife, Amal, who was screaming as he pushed her in front of him.
“No, no, don’t do this!” she shouted as her husband reached across the king-size bed for his AK-47 assault rifle. The Seals reacted instantly, firing in the same second. One round thudded into the mattress. The other, aimed at Bin Laden’s head, grazed Amal in the calf. As his hand reached for the gun, they each fired again: one shot hit his breastbone, the other his skull, killing him instantly and blowing out the back of his head.
Meanwhile Razor 2 was heading for the guesthouse, a low, shoebox-like building, where Bin Laden’s courier, Kuwaiti, and his brother lived.
As the helicopter neared, a door opened and two figures appeared, one waving an AK-47. This was Kuwaiti. In the moonless night he could see nothing and lifted his rifle, spraying bullets wildly.
He did not see the Stealth Hawk. On board someone shouted, “Bust him!”, and a sniper fired two shots. Kuwaiti was killed, as was the person behind him, who turned out to be his wife. Also on board were a CIA agent, a Pakistani- American who would act as interpreter, and a sniffer dog called Karo, wearing dog body armour and goggles.
Within two minutes the Seals from Razor 2 had cleared the guesthouse and removed the women and children.
They then ran to the main house and entered from the ground floor, checking the rooms. One of Bin Laden’s bodyguards was waiting with his AK-47. The Seals shot him twice and he toppled over.
Five minutes into the operation the command Chinook landed outside the compound, disgorging the commanding officer and more men. They blasted through the compound wall and rushed in.
The commander made his way to the third floor, where Bin Laden’s body lay on the floor face up. Photographs were taken, and the commander called on his satellite phone to headquarters with the words: “Geronimo Echo KIA” — Bin Laden enemy killed in action.
“This was the first time the White House knew he was dead and it was probably 20 minutes into the raid,” said Pfarrer.
A sample of Bin Laden’s DNA was taken and the body was bagged. They kept his rifle. It is now mounted on the wall of their team room at their headquarters in Virginia Beach, Virginia, alongside photographs of a dozen colleagues killed in action in the past 20 years.
At this point things started to go wrong. Razor 1 took off but the top secret “green unit” that controls the electronics failed. The aircraft went into a spin and crashed tail-first into the compound.
The Seals were alarmed, thinking it had been shot down, and several rushed to the wreckage. The crew climbed out, shaken but unharmed.
The commanding officer ordered them to destroy Razor 2, to remove the green unit, and to smash the avionics. They then laid explosive charges.
They loaded Bin Laden’s body onto the Chinook along with the cache of intelligence in plastic bin bags and headed toward the USS Carl Vinson. As they flew off they blew up Razor 2. The whole operation had taken 38 minutes.
The following morning White House officials announced that the helicopter had crashed as it arrived, forcing the Seals to abandon plans to enter from the roof. A photograph of the situation room showed a shocked Hillary Clinton, the secretary of state, with her hand to her mouth.
Why did they get it so wrong? What they were watching was live video but it was shot from 20,000ft by a drone circling overhead and relayed in real time to the White House and Leon Panetta, the CIA director, in Langley. The Seals were not wearing helmet cameras, and those watching in Washington had no idea what was happening inside the buildings.
“They don’t understand our terminology, so when someone said the ‘insertion helicopter’ has crashed, they assumed it meant on entry,” said Pfarrer.
What infuriated the Seals, according to Pfarrer, was the description of the raid as a kill mission. “I’ve been a Seal for 30 years and I never heard the words ‘kill mission’,” he said. “It’s a Beltway [Washington insider’s] ]fantasy word. If it was a kill mission you don’t need Seal Team 6; you need a box of hand grenades.”
That's an awesome story. I bet the JSF canopy opens forwards so that it isn't sucked backwards when the STOL fans are spinning. Or just to move the opening mechanism to make more space behind the cockpit.
what i'm curious about are these Ghost Hawks that were kept from the mission because of no air cover. Stealth Hawks were used instead. Googled "ghost hawk" and got this:
Go JOE!
also, this:
Quote:
Secret US 'Jedi' ghost-copters kept out of bin Laden raid -
Downed Stealth Hawk was actually second-rate kit
By Lewis Page •
Posted in Government, 8th November 2011 16:19 GMT
The top-secret "Stealth Hawk" helicopters aboard which elite US Navy SEAL operatives travelled into Pakistan to kill Osama bin Laden were by no means the most sophisticated aircraft available, according to a new book on the operation. Apparently, even stealthier "Ghost Hawks" - also known as "Jedi rides" - were kept out of the mission as it was feared that the secrets of their advanced technology might be revealed to other nations.
The suggestions come in the new book Seal Target Geronimo, by Hollywood scriptwriter and author Chuck Pfarrer. Before becoming a writer, Pfarrer was himself a Navy SEAL in the 1980s, and served with the Naval Special Warfare Development Group (aka DevGru, or formerly SEAL Team Six - the specially chosen "Tier One" elite-within-an-elite whose operatives made up most of the team sent against bin Laden's Abottabad compound).
Pfarrer claims that Seal Target Geronimo is based on interviews with the SEALs who carried out the Abottabad raid. It's already causing controversy as it claims that various elements of the official US story of the raid are untrue: for instance Pfarrer's account has the SEALs entering bin Laden's house having been dropped on the roof, and killing the al-Qaeda chief almost at once without any prolonged gunfight. The Pentagon and the CIA say that the choppers landed on the ground, and that the SEALs had to fight their way into the building from that level.
The tail end of the story
Such details aren't of much technology interest, but it was also widely reported at the time of the raid that one of the helicopters in which the SEALs had arrived was damaged on landing and had to be abandoned. The departing frogman-commandos blew it up as they left, in an attempt to prevent its advanced technology from falling into foreign hands, but this was only partially successful: photos of the untouched tail section were soon circulating widely, offering tantalising details of its abilities, and it was later reported that the Pakistani authorities had allowed Chinese experts to inspect the wreckage.
It appeared that the chopper had been an extensively modified H-60 Blackhawk, with many alterations aimed at reducing its radar and (probably even more so) its noise and infrared signatures.
Now we learn from the Telegraph, which has been passed an advance copy of Seal Target Geronimo as part of the publisher's publicity efforts, that the "Stealth Hawk" was selected for the mission in place of still more sophisticated "Ghost Hawk" aircraft, apparently nicknamed "Jedi rides" in the US spec-ops community, which "emit zero electromagnetic radiation and are invisible to radar".
Reportedly the Ghost Hawks were pulled after the White House declined to authorise overhead cover by US strike jets for the operation and "it was deemed too much of a risk that the Ghost technology would fall into enemy hands". This presumably indicates that planners would have wanted to destroy any downed Ghost Hawk with heavy aircraft ordnance as opposed to demolitions charges that SEALs could carry with them, so doing a more thorough job of destruction.
So what kind of kit might be on the as-yet-unseen "Ghost Hawk" choppers?
The phrase "invisible to radar" doesn't mean much when used by a non-aerospace journalist describing a screenwriter's book. It will signify that the secret super-copters - if they really exist in a distinct sense - have more and better low-observable radar tech than the downed Stealth Hawk. However, even multi-hundred-million-dollar stealth fighters aren't actually invisible to radar and the job of concealing a helicopter is hugely more difficult than hiding a jet. The Ghost Hawk might, like the Stealth Hawk, have special blades, and shields over particular radar traps such as rotor hubs. It might perhaps make use of special radar-absorbent coatings, not particularly in evidence on the Abottabad wreck. But like any other helicopter the Ghost Hawk's primary means of avoiding detection by radar will be flying extremely low, below the horizon of ground radar stations.
Not blowing hot air, well, not that much
"Zero electromagnetic radiation" could mean that Pfarrer believes the Ghost Hawk doesn't emit heat, which would be useful if true for evading detection by infrared-search-and-track (IRST) networks or the seeker heads of shoulder fired anti-aircraft missiles. However total suppression of heat signature in an aircraft which must be powered by turboshaft engines is impossible. It might be, however, that the Ghost Hawk uses specially designed exhausts - and perhaps dumps some heat into its fuel, like a stealth fighter - to cut its thermal signature significantly below that of a normal chopper.
However the "zero electromagnetic radiation" comment is at least as likely to refer to various other cunning stealth technologies developed for the latest US fighters and bombers, allowing them to communicate and use radar without giving their presence away. In order to achieve this, radars and communications aboard such aircraft as the F-22 Raptor and B-2 Spirit make use of various fiendishly cunning frequency-hopping techniques. Without this sort of tech, achieving a stealthy design isn't very useful as an enemy with electronic-warfare receivers will still be able to pick up your transmissions even if he can't see you on radar or IRST.
It is in this lesser-known field of stealth technology that the US advantage is thought to be greatest: other nations can build an aircraft with a stealthy shape - this is comparatively simple, and has much more effect than coatings, materials and infrared suppression - but nobody can make silent radars and radios like the secret boffins of the USA. Special-ops choppers need radar as well as comms, as it is used to avoid crashing into the ground when flying low-level at night or in poor visibility: this is admitted in the case of the publicly avowed MH-60K special ops Blackhawk. An undetectable ground-following radar would be an obvious piece of kit for the US spec-ops command to request.
All in all, then, the "Ghost Hawk" probably doesn't look much different to a "Stealth Hawk" and doesn't have any radically different design features. It probably isn't really accurate to describe it as a different aircraft at all, really: any more than an MH-60K is really that much different from an H-60. Indeed both the Ghost and Stealth Hawks are probably regarded officially as no more than different marks of MH-60, with the former carrying the very latest in stealthy avionics.
And all that, of course, assumes that Pfarrer's book truly is based on interviews with today's DevGru SEALs and is correct in its remarks on the helicopters. The Pentagon and CIA spokesman George Little are adamant that at least some of the book is wrong, and the SEALs on the raid have reportedly told their superiors they did not talk to Pfarrer.
Chuck Pfarrer, a former commander of Seal Team 6, which conducted the operation, has interviewed many of those who took part for a book, Seal Target Geronimo, to be published in the US this week.
Many SOCOM guys seem to be pissed at Pfarrer, his book, and this newpaper article. Here's another angle:
We have a saying in the SEAL Teams about the 90-10 rule. It goes: 90% of the guys that make it through Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL (BUD/S) training are solid Operators and go on to do great things. The other 10% are constantly bringing the community and their team down.
We are always trying to cull the 10% out of the herd. In the military these guys are commonly referred to as “strap hangers”. You make up your own mind, but after talking to friends in the SEAL community that are still on active duty (and the SOCOM Press Release) Chuck Pfarrer (author of SEAL Target Geronimo) is clearly falling into the 10% category in my opinion. His clenched fists are grabbing at the straps of the good men that participated in this operation.
It makes me sick to my stomach that this guy (FYI-anyone that co-wrote that lame Charlie Sheen screen play for Navy SEALs should be shot on sight) is lying. Why didn’t he just publish this as a work of fiction? It would have sold just as many copies. Even worse is that this news will surely drive his sales into the hundreds of thousands, if not millions of copies sold. Also, the conspiracy freaks will be sure to latch onto this literary piece of garbage and argue for its existence into oblivion.
Reported from Military.com
“This is a fabrication,” Nye countered, issuing an on-the-record denial on behalf of Navy SEAL Adm. Bill McRaven, who took command of all special operations this summer.
In his previous role, McRaven executed the raid in May as head of the military’s elite Joint Special Operations Command. Nye said McRaven was concerned the book would lead Americans to doubt the administration’s version of events. He also disputed Pfarrer’s portrayal of friction between the CIA and the military special operations forces who carried out the raid.
“We have never come forward and gone after an author and say that is a lie,” Nye said. “That tells you how far off the mark we believe this book is.”
My friends at Dev have been professional and tight-lipped about this operation. Most of the time you hear a little gouge from the inner circle, something, but this op was different. None of the guys talked about this. As Marcinko would say: “Doom on you Pfarrer”. It’s safe to say I will not be seeing you at any of the upcoming UDT/SEAL reunions unless your head is on a stake.
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