DARPA's Little Secrets That Changed The World
Curious Droid
Methinks the American defense industry has been going wild for two long. I dunno but I suspect much of that $35 trillion debt we are carrying was incurred to pay for all the wars we've been involved in since WW2.
The Boeing E3 Sentry is an AWACS (Airborne Warning And Control System) aircraft developed from the Boeing 707 back in the 1970's. The last one was built in 1991, so the newest one is 30 years old. We think of the 707 as an airliner, but the first customer was the USAF (United States Air Force ) who bought the KC-135 aerial refueling tanker. So the first and last customers for the 707 were the military.
Not to be confused with the E6 which is also based on the Boeing 707, nor should it be confused with the E4, which is based on the Boeing 747. Neither the E4 or the E6 carry the big radar dish on top. They are both more of a command and control kind of thing.
P.S. I added a new label, Aircraft Military Special, to cover military applications of what are essentially civilian airliners. There were getting to be too many and too hard to find.
The Beriev A-50 is the Russian AWACS (Airborne Warning And Control System). The Soviets built 40 of them since 1984. We say 'Russian' and 'Soviet' but that was just who was claiming to be in charge. Beriev, the company that built them, is based in Taganrog, a city on the north shore of the Sea of Azov, which is like a sub-sea of the Black Sea.
Those engines don't look big enough to push this ungainly monster into the sky.
I didn't know there was an EMP simulator, though I should have known. I mean, if nuclear war is a possibility, you want to be prepared, right?
The EMP simulator is at the Kirtland AFB (Air Force Base), Albuquerque, New Mexico. Kirtland AFB uses the same runways as the Albuquerque civilian airport.
Wikipedia's digital copy of the painting is available in several different sizes, most of which are suitable for display on a digital display. I don't know what you would do with the largest size, unless you were trying to reproduce the original. It measures 57,813 × 48,438 pixels and requires 274 megabytes of storage space. The original painting is more than 12 feet square, so the resolution works out to about 325 pixels per inch, which is probably good enough to produce a reasonable facsimile.
The Boeing E-6 Mercury is an airborne command post and communications relay based on the Boeing 707. The E-6B provides command and control of U.S. nuclear forces should ground-based control become inoperable. - paraphrased from Wikipedia
Based on a 707? This thing must be ancient.
Land based nuclear weapons systems can be contacted by radio, but contacting submarines can be problematic. The way it is normally done is through a specialized VLF transmitters. There is one in Australia and one in my backyard.
But how is the E-6B going to contact the boomers? Hoo boy, are you ready for this? They go to an altitude of 20,000 feet, unreel a five mile long antennae out of the rear of the airplane, and then fly in tight circles at the slowest speed they can manage. For hours on end. The antennae works best when it is near vertical. Flying in tight circles allows the antennae to droop until it is pretty much vertical.
This History Channel videohas a simplistic animation of this operation at the three minute mark.
This business with the antennae reminds me of a movie I saw a while back about some missionaries trying to make contact with some natives living in the Amazon rain forest. They would fly over the jungle at a low altitude and when they spot a village they would take a plastic bucket, load it with goodies, and then lower it on a rope. The pilot would fly the airplane in a circle and it worked out that the bucket would hang in one spot in the air and the natives could come and take whatever they wanted out of the bucket and put things into it, if they felt so inclined. I don't know how long the rope was but I imagine it must have been several hundred feet long at least. I mean, how tight a circle can a Piper Cub turn?
P.S. I belatedly realized I didn't say anything about the escort aircraft, but now, even though I did some searching I still cannot identify them. They might be MiG-35's or Sukhoi Su-30's.
Rossiya Special Flight Squadron is a fleet of aircraft for government officials. The blister along the top centerline of the fuselage is presumably for communications antennae. The TU-214 is comparable to the Boeing 757. The IL-96 is more the size of a Boeing 777.
In these days of outrageous paint schemes, this one stands out for being plane. It is an MRTT (Multi Role Tanker Transport). It can refuel other aircraft, or (supposedly) be refueled itself. Tenerife is just off the west coast of Africa. It is the largest of the Canary Islands.
They were rescued after they were spotted by the crew of a US Navy P-8 Poseidon. The Poseidon started showing up at US air bases in 2012. It is the replacement for the aging P-3 Orion.
There are no airstrips on any of the islands of the atoll where our castaways were stranded. They either got there by crossing 60 miles of ocean in a boat, or they flew in on a seaplane.
The atoll is 8 miles long. The island where they were stranded is the one on the middle left.
The red markers indicate our target atoll. The yellow ones are the nearest airstrips. The green is a lagoon where a seaplane could land. The orange marker is the nearest real, jet capable airport. It's 170 miles away.
