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F-16 and single piston collide

Details very scant, anybody know? Interrupted on hospital TVs.

Live: F-16, small plane collide, crash in Berkeley County, officials say | Local News - Home

Quote:

The Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement Tuesday that the fighter jet collided with a Cessna C150 at about 11 a.m. The collision happened about 11 miles north of Charleston.

Col. Cindi King of the South Carolina Air National Guard says the F-16 involved in the crash did not belong to the Guard.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fegelein (Post 1923843)

How come the F16 dude didn't pick up the Cessna on his APG-68 or his Sniper pod?

Google "Doppler notch" and "velocity gate" for some enlightening reading.

AI radars are not magic.

Neither are IR/EO pods with toilet-paper-tube fields of view. Try randomly searching the sky with a telescope to find pop-up traffic.

These radars don't run around in auto-acquisition modes, they require search volumes to be set and monitored if you really want to find something. Unless the pilot is heads-down and purposefully operating the radar and searching, there is just no way a small-RCS, slow-moving aircraft is going to be noticed. That's ESPECIALLY true if the pilot is looking outside and staying visual with a flight lead or wingman while in VMC.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fegelein (Post 1923892)

Fair enough, but since the Shooters fly Block 50 Vipers, do you think his HTS would have gotten any hits from the Cessna's Mode3 returns?

The Cessna may have been legally operating without a transponder, I don't think they were 30 miles from Bravo. Incidents like this may accelerate ADS-B use. Does the military monitor ADS-B or TIS currently? Obviously very unlikely a C150 would have ADS-B out.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fegelein (Post 1923892)

Fair enough. But since the Shooters fly Block 50 Vipers, do you think his HTS would have gotten any hits from the Cessna's Mode3 returns?

Not what an HTS pod does. So it wouldn't help.

Quote:

Originally Posted by cardiomd (Post 1923896)

Hell, most US fighters aren't even RVSM capable, or even have TCAS. I wouldn't look for them to be sporting ADS-B for a long, long time, and even then only if the FAA forces it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fegelein (Post 1923892)

Fair enough. But since the Shooters fly Block 50 Vipers, do you think his HTS would have gotten any hits from the Cessna's Mode3 returns?

HTS is designed to receive and locate fixed radar sites, not occasional low-power moving encrypted replies for a radar system.

It would be like asking "why didn't my AM radio pick up the FM broadcast station when I drove past it?" Not compatible.

Vipers now have IFF interrogation abilty, but unless he was looking for a specific squawk, I don't think it will show.

Hollywood makes radar and "technology" all-knowing. But it takes TIME to sweep a volume of airspace. I'll take exception to Hacker's "toilet paper tube" analogy and call it a "McDonald's Straw."

If they were doing Air Combat maneuvering, you can gain or lose 10,000 feet in 20 seconds....the radar or eyeballs aren't going to see it in time.

I don't know what happened here, but my two biggest fears in pointy jets with civilians were them flying VFR through my MOA (legal, but not smart), or low-levels, where radar was cluttered, and TCAS was often blocked by transponder line of sight.

RIP to the vicims. Nickel on the grass.