If a terrorist and accomplice are dropping home made pipe bombs out of an acrobatic plane and shooting at people on the ground in a mid sized town somewhere in the US who responds to the problem?
Police helicopters (I’m assuming) are not fast enough to catch it and the terrorists could strafe them with a automatic or semi-automatic rifle. Air Force jets are not nearly maneuverable enough to slow down and take out a small acrobatic plane.
If the plane strafes and stays away from rifle ground fire what is needed to take them out?
An A-10 Warthog would probably be slow enough to take it out, should that prove to be the only option. An air force jet could play all sorts of havoc with turbulence by continuously buzzing the plane. A few of these jets could probably effectively keep the plane unable to do much else except land.
And I don’t know why you think a fighter jet would need to slow down for this guy. Their cannons are pretty effective even at a good distance.
If another plane is bothering the acrobat, the guy isn’t dangling out of the aircraft shooting at people. Besides, it is very difficult to hit anything from a fast moving vehicle without machine gun fire. I think the likely response would be for the police to tell everyone to wait inside, and get the guy when he lands.
Considering how ‘at ready’ the US seems to be right now. I suspect that a few F-16’s would be along shortly.
This is kind of a fun little clip of two F-14s against two Mitsubishi Zeros -
You can see the speed differences and the problems they create. It’s from the movie ‘The Final Countdown’.
Yep, it’s a movie. But this is really well done and well filmed. It’s not CGI. In the end, the F-14’s just blast the Zeros (in the movie, it’s not shown in this clip). I don’t doubt that they could.
This is an entirely incorrect assumption. F16s and F18s are totally capable of flying at any speed that an acrobatic plane can fly. Have you not seen the Blue Angels do their low-speed pass in an F18 during their show?
Their maneuverabilty is somewhat lessened at those speeds, one might point about. Okay, an F22, with thrust vectoring, can remedy that problem.
However, all AIMs (Air Intercept Missles), be they radar or infrared guided, are quite capable of taking out anything with an infrared or radar signature from a distance that allow the interceptor plenty of time to locate and track the target, regardless of the interceptor’s speed.
That clip is cute and keep in mind i am commenting without finishing reading the thread …
If I was one of the zeke pilots, knowing that I was being buzzed by those assholes [in my personal viewpoint] I would start shooting as soon as I saw them approaching on my 6, so that the lead would intersect them as they whizzed past me, going up their assholes. Lead from behind is nasty. You can shoot down a freaking attack chopper with a muzzle loader if you hit it just right. Just because it is lower tech vs high tech does not mean the high tech is invulnerable. Hell, I dont know the movie, there might have been a few more zekes coming up from behind, so the logical thing might be to drive my plane into the jet to take it out since they only seem to have 2 jets in the air, giving the next flight of zekes a shot at killing the carrier. I am a suicide pilot, after all.
There aren’t any more Zekes. Just those two. You will also notice that the Tomcat pilots never fly directly ahead of the Japanese planes. If the Zekes started firing, hoping for a luck rear shot, it would be noticed and they would have splashed them immediately.
In the movie, they take down one with cannon and the other with an AIM-9.
Actually, the more I think about it, the more I’m sure that: a)this would never happen, so b) no one would respond, and c) the local news helicopter would be sufficient.
The guy is flying around in an open cockpit plane and is shooting at people with small arms and throwing small, unguided bombs at them. The terrorist is basically using World War I tactics and technology.
Your terrorist is in an unarmored plane. He’s flying low enough that he can aim his pipe bombs and can shoot at people on the ground. He is therefore vulnerable to small arms fire from the ground. The police might take him out. He probably won’t be the easiest target to take out, but if enough police on the ground shoot at him one of them will probably eventually get lucky and get him.
Your terrorist’s acrobatic plane can outrun a police helicopter in a straight line, but your terrorist isn’t flying in a straight line. He’s zooming all around and diving and shooting at people. This gives police helicopters a chance to move in close to him and possibly get a shot on him. Police don’t use helicopter gunships (as far as I am aware) so you’re probably talking about a swat guy taking a shot at him with a rifle. There’s a fair chance that the police could get the guy. You do have the police firing with small arms and the terrorist firing with small arms, so there is a chance that the terrorist could take out the police helicopter as well.
I have a hunch that the air force is going to get to the terrorist before the police will, though. Pre 9-11 things might have been different, but these days they can scramble an F-16 pretty quickly. The F-16 will be coming from farther away, but it will probably be up in the air and on target before the police helicopter will. I don’t know why you think a modern jet can’t shoot down a plane just because it is acrobatic. The F-16 isn’t limited to World War II style dogfighting tactics. He doesn’t have to slow down and get behind the guy. The F-16 can fire a missile at it from several miles away. The F-16 can also come in at high speed with its cannon blazing. He doesn’t have to be behind the acrobatic plane and he doesn’t have to be moving slow. The F-16 can make a pass with his cannon, turn around, come back and make another pass with his cannon, etc. The F-16 has fancy computers and radar aiming its weapons. The terrorist is going to be taking pot shots at a fast moving jet fighter with a hand held weapon. The chances of him even scoring a hit are pretty darn slim, and the F-16 (unlike the acrobatic plane) is designed to be shot a few times and still fly. Your terrorist has almost no chance at all of hurting the F-16 and the F-16 can very easily take down the terrorist. Mr. Terrorist doesn’t stand a chance.
I’m not sure you even attempt to take the guy down over a populated area. Too much risk of collateral damage. He’s got to land sometime. Get him then. Until then, civilians take cover.
If you do want to take him down, as others have noted, it’s doable.
In WWII the P-40 Kittyhawk/Warhawk and the A6M Zero had about the same cruising- and top speeds (260/360 mph vs. 286/356 mph), but the Zero was much more maneuverable. The P-40 was heavier and better armored. (Bob Stevens cartoon: ‘Sure, your Mustang can out-climb my T-Bolt. But I’ll be you I can out-fall you!’) The successful strategy was not to try to ‘mix it up’ with a Zero. Instead, dive through them and use your superior speed (from the dive) to escape and get far enough away to come around and dive on them again. A similar strategy should work with a fast jet vs. a slow aerobat – especially with the long-range canon and sophisticated targeting systems.
The easiest way to take a small plane down is with a fast pass with a fighter jet. There have been cases where Ultralights have been ripped apart from a near miss.
In 2003, there was a similar case in Germany. A disturbed guy plane-jacked a motorglider and flew over Frankfurt. Phantom Jets were scrambled but didn’t do anything, since that would have increased any risk (an impact of the plane itself would have made even less damage than the one in the IRS building recently).
The guy apparently did it to “remember” Judith Resnik who was on the Challenger Shuttle. Her brother talked him down over the radio.
Well…probably yeah. I really don’t think you want an F-16 ripping down Wall Street at that altitude and firing missiles or 20mm cannon. A high speed pass in that environment would be insane. Anything that misses is going to kill civilians, making the situation worse. IF there is reason to believe the guy is packing a nuke or something, maybe the equation changes.
Missed the edit window, but also consider that flying between buildings in NYC is probably going to take all of the pilot’s concentration. Leaning over the side to shoot guns or drop bombs probably means the guy is going to crash sooner rather than later. If the guy is just a balls-to-the-wall terrorist and wanting to inflict maximum damage, he’d probably chose a crop duster loaded with a chemical or biological weapon suitable for dispersal via spraying.
Actually… that’s a really good idea. Crop duster full of chemicals. Just zoom down a busy street on a windy day and you could probably get really good dispersion.
You wouldn’t get as many quick kills as just crashing into a building but I don’t even know how the government would go about cleaning up dangerous chemical aerosols that get sprayed through a city.
