High altitude object shot down

[ve3id]

Originally Posted by MarcK

Here is a live track of 3 balloons. One over Japan, one over the Pacific, and one over Mississippi (at track time:
This information was available to the government, if they chose to listen...

It's also broadcast in plain text on 144.39 MHz using 1200 baud data!

Surely the latest fighters can detect RF coming from a target?

I am decoding it using a $50 SDR dongle and a raspberry pi. Maybe we need to add them to the defence budget!

[das180]

Originally Posted by ve3id

It's also broadcast in plain text on 144.39 MHz using 1200 baud data!

Surely the latest fighters can detect RF coming from a target?

I am decoding it using a $50 SDR dongle and a raspberry pi. Maybe we need to add them to the defence budget!

Balloon tracking web sites:

amateur.sondehub.org

amsat-uk.org/beginners/balloons/

[das180]

Another (whimsical) balloon destruction:

www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-64695059

[ve3id]

Originally Posted by chevvron

You're talking airborne radars in 'doppler' mode.
Ground based radars operating in pure 'primary' mode with no forms of processing or MTI can see traffic at all speeds.

So how did Mathias Rust land in Ref Square then?

[langleybaston]

Sh1t happens. Just one of the better examples.

Seriously, intitiative is not encouraged at lower levels in the command structure, and reference up for orders and down with orders takes finite time, even without vodka.

[pasta]

Originally Posted by Bueno Hombre

There seems to be no capability at all to destroy an enemy craft at an altitude , say, of 100,000 feet. Too high for rockets fired from jet fighter, and too low for anti satellite space based weapons.

Why the obsession with destroying stuff?

We can't destroy satellites without major repercussions, and even then we probably couldn't destroy a significant proportion of what's already there. We can't reliably destroy ICBMs. Other countermeasures are available; you don't have to go round destroying everything all the time...

[Ninthace]

Is there an enemy aircraft that can operate sustainably at 100,000 ft?

[chevvron]

Originally Posted by ve3id

So how did Mathias Rust land in Ref Square then?

Only if it flies high enough to be seen on radar; Rust flew very low all the way and in any case, the Soviet Union/Russia probably didn't think they needed to keep a watch on low level traffic; they would have assumed an 'invasion' of their airspace would have been at medium/high levels.

[pasta]

Originally Posted by chevvron

Only if it flies high enough to be seen on radar; Rust flew very low all the way and in any case, the Soviet Union/Russia probably didn't think they needed to keep a watch on low level traffic; they would have assumed an 'invasion' of their airspace would have been at medium/high levels.

Hadn't low-level penetration been standard NATO doctrine since the '60s? I knew about it as a schoolboy, so I'm sure the Kremlin must have had an inkling by 1987...

[chevvron]

Originally Posted by pasta

Hadn't low-level penetration been standard NATO doctrine since the '60s? I knew about it as a schoolboy, so I'm sure the Kremlin must have had an inkling by 1987...

I was told by my brother who was serving as a BE at Cosford in about '61 that the second Vulcan raid on the USA was at low level which succeeded as well as the earlier high level raid so I would think NATO have been operating low level since then; indeed the adoption of camouflage for the V bombers (instead of all white) was the result of this low level policy.
Who can speculate on whether the SU/Russia heard about it and adopted the same policy.
We all know that Rust 'hedge hopped' his way to Moscow.

[wiggy]

Originally Posted by pasta

Hadn't low-level penetration been standard NATO doctrine since the '60s? I knew about it as a schoolboy, so I'm sure the Kremlin must have had an inkling by 1987...

They might well have foreseen low-level penetration but I wonder if they had foreseen it being tried by a target doing not a lot of knots.....

[PukinDog]

Originally Posted by chevvron

Only if it flies high enough to be seen on radar; Rust flew very low all the way and in any case, the Soviet Union/Russia probably didn't think they needed to keep a watch on low level traffic; they would have assumed an 'invasion' of their airspace would have been at medium/high levels.

The Soviets saw and tracked Rust's aircraft as soon as it entered their airspace, and continued to monitor his flight. He was intercepted at least twice by MIGs and had been visually identified as a light civilian aircraft by the first one. There were various reasons he wasn't shot down, among them changes in their policies after the KAL 007 shootdown a few years before and being misidentified as a student pilot near an active training area.

Rust making it to Red Square alive was a case of holes in the cheese lining up, but one of those holes wasn't that he was invisible due to their primary radars. They were monitoring his flight from the time he entered their airspace and was deemed a civilian, non-threatening type early on.