Seeing through the Black Light
 

TyroPicard

If you look at the email exchange at this link, all should be clear.

There are additional links to the Air Safety Week Article (in html and pdf format) at the bottom of that exchange.

Being a reply email it may read OK from the top down (but then again you may need to read it again from the bottom up). Best I can do for you in the limited time available.

Hope you see the (possibly) fatal flaw. If you're an expert in the electromagnetic spectrum, maybe you can convince us otherwise.

Before they go spend US$10bn on outfitting the US (and then even more on the World's) airline Fleet(s) with LAIRSCM, maybe they better go see it hasn't any built in pitfalls (like the V22 Osprey say).

DD

One point is that the missile is self targetting but the UV laser would have to be pointed towards the aircraft by the operator (lasers are inherently directional), making the project much harder. Lasers are also monochromatic and relatively easy to filter out of detection optics.

I'm not familiar with these UV lasers that are robust enough to be moved around - anybody got any specifics?

UV Spoofing
 

There aren't that many long-range applications for UV lasers (i.e. no target illumination or laser range finding - they are mainly IR spectrum I think). However there are both pumped and electrical high power UV lasers in existence, some of which are portable. Power equates to range so I guess they'd have the required range.

The more likely contender is the UV searchlight because they are both commonplace and powerful. Their quoted detection range (for visible detection of a small man-size target) of about 1.5kms has nothing to do with the actual projectable range of the UV blacklight beam. That obviously goes a lot further - in fact probably out the outer limit of the 3nm outer engagement range of the SA-18.

Unless the LAIRCM operates against a specific batch of discriminable target missile type's UV signatures (i.e. if it's a broadband seeker), it is likely that the LAIRCM countrmeasure could be foiled by a combo IR/UV searchlight (as per the photo above). Scatter half a dozen around the approach/departure path to illuminate a potential target and you'll have red herrings aplenty. If the target airliner was LAIRCM equipped and the terrorists used IR/UV counter-counter measures, they would likely defeat the Northrop Grumman defence shield.

Might be a case of back to the drawing board.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/3159895.stm

I particularly enjoyed this bit:

Last year the Pentagon agreed to pay $23m to fit laser protection systems to four C-17 military cargo planes - the US equivalent of the British Hercules.

P1

My favourite quote :

So which is preferable - a small flare, or a large burning aircraft ? Answers on a post stamp, please . . .

SAM terror
 

Hi Guys,
Believe me - the World changed after 9.11!
No matter what we do the terrorists will always be one step ahead...
Portable SAM are made to shoot down light/medium aircraft and disable heavy. It won't be too far ahead in the future, when somebody puts 2'n'2 together and fires a bunch of SA18s at a Jumbo on approach... Just to make sure they score a kill...
By the way US gov declined to sign a treaty not too long ago banning self destructing land mines. It only takes a few extra $$$$$$$$$ to make smart (self destructing) SAMs, so they are useless in the wrong hands...
But MONEY talks and, who cares about a few hundred pax a year, who might loose their lives in a terror attack?
For sure not GWB...

As has been stated above, most MANPADS are designed to bring down relatively small aircraft. Large, commercial aircraft are designed with multiple redundancy, and are supposed to be able survive such catastrophic events are engine rotor disk failures. So it isn't actually unreasonable to assume that a single hit on a single engine would be survivable in many cases.

Therefore the answer to the question posed by the thread title is "yes, it might indeed survive".

Obviously there are circumstances under which it would not, just as there are circumstances occassioned by other than hostile action which would be catastrophic also.

Obviously there are things both the 'bad guys' and the 'good guys' can do to skew the odds. These are not, however, really a good idea for an open discussion; I assume that the 'good guys' are already doing some of those things.

SAMs
 

I agree with the mad flt scientist. This should not be openly discussed on an open forum. But till airlines introduce this into the training syllabus there seems to be no alternative.

However just to bring out one known case of a 80 seater turbo prop aircraft which survived a Stinger hit on its port engine while on final approach.

"The aircraft while positioning on finals approach- inadvertantly strayed close to the border. The en positions were known to be armed with IR stinger missiles. The aircraft suffered a hit on the port engine which subsequently was shut down due to over temping. The pilot executed a single engine landing. Post flight inspection revealed that probably due to the greater range when the missile was fired and (possibly a receding mode) a proximity fuse had operated the defragmentation warhead of the missile causing damage to the tail pipe shroud."

Sorry, I cannot provide details of the location etc. but this is just to inform my friends that if they ever, god forbid, have this kind of thing happening to them it may be advisable to continue the approach for a landing. also be mentally prepared for something like this when in threat areas.

A similar attack on a twin engine passenger helicopter in which it crashed, however has proved that she is very vulnerable to this kind of attack. I leave it to the experts to diagnose why this is so.

Regards

Jagbag