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| Iraq-Jordan |
| Wing-mounted technology gives jet pilots crisp view of battlefields |
| 2005-06-02 |
| From May 28th, I don't recall if this has been posted:VIRGINIA BEACH — From 20,000 feet above Baghdad, Iraq, the fighter/attack jet pilots from Oceana Naval Air Station scanned their cockpit television screens, focusing on the images of the hunkered down insurgents on the ground. It was about five in the afternoon, recalled Capt. Pat "Irish" Rainey, commander of Air Wing Three, just back from deployment aboard the aircraft carrier Harry S. Truman. "You could see where they had laid their weapons on one side of the building. And you could see how many guys were up on the roof; who was crouching down; who was sitting behind a wall. "Pretty phenomenal," said Rainey, admitting even he was impressed at being able to safely see crisp, clear subjects from nearly four miles up and 30 miles away. An infrared targeting system his planes used magnified an image in the night by 30 times. In daylight a television camera can magnify it by 60 times. "They are awesome," Cmdr. Norm Weakland said of the Advanced Targeting Forward-Looking Infrared (ATFLIR) that gives today's F/A-18 Hornets their ability to see targets on the ground three to five times better than earlier models of the system. Variants of the system go back to 1997, when the Navy approved full development. Using the wing-mounted devices to locate enemy targets while U.S. forces are nearby has saved untold American lives, said Weakland, commanding officer of the "Gunslingers" of Strike Fighter Squadron 105. It is helping Navy and Marine Corps carrier-based pilots become experts in carrying the fight from the air to a close-quarters urban environment without killing friendly troops, the returning pilots said. The only downfall is there are not enough of them in the air wing's inventory, they said. There's a loud cry, from junior officers to admirals, to buy more of the $1 million-plus systems. Seven pods had to be rotated among the 33 Hornet aircraft aboard the Truman. They are needed for Urban Close-Air Support, or Urban CAS, an emerging type of warfare not practiced with such precision before, the pilots said. It is becoming more commonplace during military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Hornets are orbiting above cluttered cities such as Baghdad, Fallujah and Mosul where friend and foe are normally hard for a pilot to distinguish as coalition troops and enemy insurgents dart through darkened alleys and atop blackened rooftops. "I remember a specific incident where I watched five of our friendly vehicles take down a house," Weakland said. "They tasked me with watching the back door, just to see if any guys are running from the house while they are starting to surround the front. "That is the type of stuff we were doing on a regular basis and it was working like a champ," he said. |
| Posted by:Steve |
| #3 âYou were not allowed to drop any weapon off your airplane unless both air crew, whether a Tomcat or an F-18, or a pair of them, were in complete agreement and both your systems agreed with what you were looking at and both of you had focused situational awareness as to who was who on the ground,â Rainey said. Take em out? Take em out! |
| Posted by: Red Dog 2005-06-02 12:31 |
| #2 Wow. The tech is awesome and the cooperation extraordinary. Nice to see the latter becoming more common, perhaps in spite of the leadership of the services, but credit where due: they're doing it. Bravo and kudos to all involved. |
| Posted by: .com 2005-06-02 11:55 |
| #1 Tom Clancy drool-fest, if ever there was! |
| Posted by: Mike 2005-06-02 11:38 |