Originally Posted by
Bill Macgillivray
Lonewolf 50,
Cannot disagree with your comments. However, many years ago when the Vincennes incident occured I was employed by a country in the ME and, about that time, was flying a a maritime patrol sortie in the Gulf.
Part of the deal was to maintain a listening watch on 243.0. After about 30 minutes of hearing a constant (and somewhat threatening) challenge to civilian aircraft by an USN vessel, I queried with him if he realised that he was positioned below the intersection of two long established airways and that civilian aircraft (by and large) did not possess UHF. Long pause - answer in the negative - and some while later the challenge was being repeated about 60 nms further south !!
No-one rules the world, let us be sensible!
Bill
I am aware of how easily the fish heads get lost in the 3d environment we pilots take for granted.
I ran into something similar during a FLEETEX a few years after the Vincennes incident, other side of the world, where the op area chosen for the major exercise was near an intersection of "high altitude com air traffice lanes," if you don't mind me calling it that. A few of the people in the AAW world understood the issue, but some others did not. It all resulted in semi-inane goings on ... fish heads will be fish heads. (We call them
black shoes in the USN, but I believe a few of our NATO partners refer to the same sea going sorts as
fish heads, so I used the NATO slang).
The problem goes away if you have a CAP dedicated to clearing (this airspace volume) but when you don't ... or when the Admiral is paranoid about looking bad if the local Bear/Badger visitor gets too close with out an escort ... shennanigans aplenty.