Help with Military Fast-Plane Question

Koolau said:
T-Al, it is possible to find a landing strip and land at night without electronic devices.
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I'm assuming T-Al's scenario allows the aircraft from CA to have all its electronics intact, and useable enroute (the large-scale EM disturbance has subsided). So, that allows for INS, airborne ground-mapping radar, NVGs for landing, etc.
If the super EM disturbance is still going on, then there's a whole nuther basket of woes. Even the electronic engine controls, all the instruments, etc might be affected. If "simple" electrical devices were okay (pumps, motors, magnetos, etc), then maybe we'd need an old reciprocating engine aircraft with a carburetor and no electronic ignition (magnetos only), navigation by compass and reference to the ground and a paper map, and hope for good weather at the landing site. I don't know of any airplane like that that could make the trip from CA to DC in one hop, but if they could get fuel enroute (if there's fuel in the truck--at very worst, refill the airplane by hand with 5 gal jugs refilled by gravity from the truck.) Figure about 250 knots max.
 
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TromboneAl said:
Perhaps it is not immune:

MYTH: Gear that uses vacuum tubes is EMP proof.
FACT: Sadly, no. There was vacuum tube equipment that was damaged in the 1962 tests.

EMP Myths | The Preparedness Podcast
http://www.thepreparednesspodcast.com/emp-myths/#sthash.IX3fDUt7.dpuf
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Correct. In the 1962 high altitude EMP tests (Starfish Prime and others), vacuum tube radios connected to the power grid or external antennas suffered 'punch-through' failures of selenium rectifiers, and arcing damage to transformer insulation.

Older radios using vacuum tube rectifiers (Yaay 5U4s..) and not connected to the grid or antennas at the time of the event will not be exposed to the high induced voltage of an EMP event. The metal case on these old beasts are Faraday cages, by design. Without that shielding, the tremendous amount of electronic noise generated inside one of these radios would ruin reception in other equipment in the same space. (And yes, even within the radio, there are typically electromagnetic shields to prevent one art of the radio from affecting other parts. Brute force engineering at its finest!)

A modern solid state radio within a Faraday cage can also survive an EMP blast. Faraday cages are popular DIY projects in the prepper community.

Where EMP phenomena rally excel is at roasting infrastructure. Long wire runs develop very high voltages, which take out substations and long distance transmission lines. The induced voltages on local lines produce massive power surges.

For the ham radio operators, antenna feedpoints would arc over and most feedlines (coax cable running out to the antenna) would fail from induced high voltages exceeding the breakdown voltage of the cable insulation. Carbonized insulation would short circuit the cables. (Ask how I know. :-( )

With no power, no antennas, and in most cases no equipment, they're off the air. That's why I mentioned that it would be up to the old timers to drag their AN/ARC-8 or similar boatanchors out of the basement. It might take them a few days to re-rig antennas and get an ancient dynamotor running again.

Maybe have your bad guys hit repeated EMP blasts to keep the radios down. There's only so much feedline and equipment that the hams and preppers could have stashed...

Take a look at "Directive 51" and "Daybreak Zero" by John Barnes. (I haven't gotten to "The Last President" yet. It's in the 'to read' stack.)
 
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If you want something to happen in flight, it could loose navigation input for some reason, then recover, or get a spurious signal from the alien ship, and self correct after an appropriate time.
 
If you want something to happen in-flight use the B-1 scenario. Anything that can go wrong usually does
 
Global Hawk is certainly viable, although it won't win any awards for speed. In fact since it uses satellites for communication, the operators at Beale could monitor its success. T-Al, will your alien attack affect the satellite systems listed in the Northrop doc?


Sent from my iPhone using Early Retirement Forum
 
Koolau said:
T-Al, it is possible to find a landing strip and land at night without electronic devices. It would require at least some light in most cases (moonlight is good) ground lights are better - especially for navigation.
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If you have moonlight (a full moon would be great) and a pilot or navigator - doesn't have to be the one doing the flying, just on board perhaps solely for that reason so it could even be a civilian private pilot - who is intimately familiar with the DC area as seen from the air he/she won't need anything else.

I've flown from the Chesapeake Bay - pretty easy to find from the air - to my home airport north of DC by plain eyeball and having done it many times before. After a while you learn which roads, buildings, racetracks, malls, etc are landmarks along your route and don't need no stinkin' chart.

And I have landed by moonlight. Not hard at all.

Oh, if you need possible things that can go wrong with the old reciprocating engine airliners, here's a good read: http://www.amazon.com/FATE-HUNTER-E...1407195641&sr=1-1&keywords=fate+is+the+hunter
 
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You have to figure some nutty old guy has built a Faraday cage and stored some electronics in it.
 
I just finished reading Directive 51, by John Barnes. He presents a scenario similar to EMP (no, won't spoil it for you) that does a good job of considering the consequences of suddenly having to deal with early 1800s communcations.

For all the studies, experiments, and real-world demonstrations, EMP is not that well understood with respect to its probable consequences. I think you could rely on that to tailor the scenario to your desired outcomes. With a little knowledge of how electromagnetic waves are propagated (and attenuated), you can probably also construct favorable situations (e.g., "gee, being behind that mountain was fortunate", or "the resonant frequencies of the wire lengths in a SmartCar were short enough to minimize the damage") that are plausible.
 
For dramatic effect, half moon, broken low deck of clouds. Observer and/or pilot(s) struggle to locate airfield, fuel running low, maybe engine problems...
 
REWahoo said:
For dramatic effect, half moon, broken low deck of clouds. Observer and/or pilot(s) struggle to locate airfield, fuel running low, maybe engine problems...
Click to expand...

Yes, that's exactly what I have in mind. It's a prototype too, so glitches are frequent, might have to reboot at a critical time.
 
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And a related issue: at the time of the EMP-like event and assuming that all electronics in all airplanes are totally fried, I'm guessing that most airplanes would immediately be totally uncontrollable. That is, there's no "gliding in for an emergency landing" stuff. Yes?

The only ones that could be controlled are those in which the pilot's controls are directly connected to the control surfaces.

If so, what percentage of the planes in the air fall into that latter category?

Thank you.
 
I would go for some scientific phenomenon that hasn't been observed yet or is hard to disprove rather than a standard EMP. Maybe some manipulation of those subatomic particles that wink in and out of existence (they call that quantum foam or something?). Perhaps one day it would be possible to bypass a faraday cage and cause destruction to circuits via this process.

As proof we don't know as much as we think we know, NASA has just confirmed a space drive producing thrust that seems to violate the conservation of momentum.
 
Fermion said:
I would go for some scientific phenomenon that hasn't been observed yet or is hard to disprove rather than a standard EMP.

As proof we don't know as much as we think we know, NASA has just confirmed a space drive producing thrust that seems to violate the conservation of momentum.
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Agreed.

That EmDrive thing is pretty neat.

There are three possibilities: either the EmDrive doesn't do what its creator claims, it somehow doesn't break the law of conservation of momentum, or our fundamental understanding of classical physics is completely wrong.
​
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/new...nfirmed-by-NASA-May-Revolutionize-Spaceflight
 
TromboneAl said:
And a related issue: at the time of the EMP-like event and assuming that all electronics in all airplanes are totally fried, I'm guessing that most airplanes would immediately be totally uncontrollable. That is, there's no "gliding in for an emergency landing" stuff. Yes?

The only ones that could be controlled are those in which the pilot's controls are directly connected to the control surfaces.

If so, what percentage of the planes in the air fall into that latter category?

Thank you.
Click to expand...

Set up another sub-plot: before they take off from CA, they have to jerry-rig the wing flaps with some mechanical adjustment since some of the electronics were fried. As they get close to DC, their jerry-rig set-up fails. One person volunteers to go out to fix it, wearing a parachute in case they get blown off.

They fix it, and get blown off. As they are slowly descending w/ their parachute, an alien ship attacks the plane and destroys/abducts it. As it is doing so, the person parachuting down sees something that gives insight into the alien's vulnerability or how they derive their EMP power from the atmosphere or some other secret...only they don't make this connection from their observation until later on in the story.
 
TromboneAl said:
And a related issue: at the time of the EMP-like event and assuming that all electronics in all airplanes are totally fried, I'm guessing that most airplanes would immediately be totally uncontrollable. That is, there's no "gliding in for an emergency landing" stuff. Yes?

The only ones that could be controlled are those in which the pilot's controls are directly connected to the control surfaces.

If so, what percentage of the planes in the air fall into that latter category?

Thank you.
Click to expand...

T-Al, most "general aviation" aircraft are still controlled by cables. The exceptions are the newer (maybe last 10+ years) jets. Such aircraft and virtually all newly designed commercial aircraft have gone to fly by wire (no direct connection between the stick/rudder and the control surfaces.) FBW is essentially a computer that accepts commands from the pilots controls and converts them into control surface movements. Losing the computers which operate these systems would (likely) doom the aircraft. My understanding is that the redundancy is breathtaking (maybe 7 computers??).

The aircraft you envision in your story would almost certainly have FBW controls. To gain agility and speed, most newer military aircraft use FBW simply because the planes can not be controlled otherwise. The aircraft are inherently unstable and no pilot using conventional controls can correct fast enough to keep them flying. Imagine balancing a pencil on your index finger (point up) for 8 hours at a time. Few humans can do it for a few seconds. If you taught a computer how to do it, it could do it until the current was interrupted. As always, YMMV.
 
Given you are talking about 4 hours for the transit, assume you start out at say 1 am pacific time, then you are at 4 am est for a start and would arrive at DC at about 8 am. So the time differences help in terms of daylight. The greater issue would be assume DC is socked in with a tropical storm, then your goose is really cooked.
 
Just to show you how valuable your comments are, here's a very rough draft related to this thread:

“What’s Captain Ahab doing here?” Doug Cobb pointed to the old man with a snow-white sailor’s beard.
“He’s your copilot,” Woodford said.
“You’re kidding, right?”
“I’m kidding that he’s your copilot, but he is your passenger.”
The old man strode over and saluted both of them. “Erasmus Whitington reporting for duty.”
Cobb looked at Woodford and mouthed the name “Erasmus?”
“Call me Salty.”
Cobb shook the old man’s hand, but looked over at Woodford again and mouthed the word “Salty?” To Whitington he said, “Salty, I need to speak to Colonel Woodford for a second, could you excuse us?”
Cobb dragged/pushed the Colonel over towards the landing gear. “You’ve got to be kidding me, what the hell is going on? Is Captain Ahab really coming?”
“Captain Ahab may save the mission, Doug.”
“What is he going to do, protect us from the great white whale? And what’s in his little antique case there?” Cobb pointed.
“That’s his sextant.”
Cobb froze with his hand still pointing, and stared at Colonel Woodford.
“It’s an instrument that’s used …”
“Yeah, I know what a sextant is, I just want to know why we need one in a twenty-first-century supersonic spaceplane.”
“You might need it, and you might need Salty, because when you arrive in DC, you won’t have GPS. It’ll be dark and there won’t be any ground lights.
“What about my ground-mapping radar and night-vision goggles?”
“Yeah, those might do it, but Salty will be there just in case. He’s an experienced celestial navigator. He’s sailed around the world five times without electronics. But there’s another reason you need him.”
“He knows all the latest sea shanties?”
“No, he’s familiar with DC.”
“Let me guess. He sailed up the Potomac in the HMS Bounty.”
“No, he restored a 1931 biplane, and he flies it, day and night, again with no instruments, over the Washington area.”
Cobb looked over at Whitington. “So, what’s he doing here at Edwards, did his sextant run out of whale oil?”
“Doug, there’s no time for this. The Peregrine’s almost ready. You guys can get acquainted on the trip.”


​
 
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TromboneAl said:
Great idea about having someone along who knows the area.

So,

Full moon, clear night: No problem
No moon, clear night: Impossible?
Full moon, occluded by clouds: ??
Half moon, clear night: ??

Thanks.
Click to expand...

And just to throw in Murphy's Law whenever you want to, make it scattered clouds with a half or three-quarter moon. Unobscured moon, no problem. Obscured moon "Oh, crap!"

TromboneAl said:
Just to show you how valuable your comments are, here's a very rough draft related to this thread:

“No, he’s familiar with DC.”
“Let me guess. He sailed up the Potomac in the HMS Bounty.”
“No, he restored a 1931 biplane, and he flies it, day and night, again with no instruments, over the Washington area.”
​
Click to expand...

Perfect! Love it!

And entirely plausible.
 
OK, EMP pulse! You are going to have to modify this somehow. Cities show up at night because of the lights and the pattern. I believe that a pilot living is say CA, that is real familiar with DC, takes off arrives say six or seven hours later, and tries to identify DC at night, no lights or partial lights. Gas is going to be at a premium and so is diesel fuel. I would say that half of the generators are going to be out also. Airports are going to be closed, so most likely their lights will be off. You are in one of the densest corridors in the country. Scattered lights with the familiar patterns gone. Your pilot or pilots finding the airport, for me, would be like finding a needle in a hay stack, but hey if is a syfy story. I would arrive in the daytime. I still like the unexpected arrival of a drone.
 
TromboneAl said:
"No, he restored a 1931 biplane, and he flies it, day and night, again with no instruments, over the Washington area.”​
Click to expand...


One small glitch: The Washington DC area is almost exclusively "Class B" airspace (serving Baltimore-Washington, Reagan Intl, and Washington-Dulles), so Salty would only be in his airplane there if he was in contact with air traffic controllers and if his biplane were equipped with a transponder. There's nothing technically wrong with that, but if he's got that level of electronic kit, he may not be a "purist" and would probably also have electronic navaids.
The "Mode C veil" around DC extends in a 60 NM radius from Reagan Intl airport. Under that veil, airplanes must have transponders to operate and must be in contact with ATC. I'm sure there are exceptions, but they are few. Primitive airplanes aren't welcome near busy airspace.
Now, if Salty were a CareFlight helo pilot taking patients to and fro in the DC area, he'd be very used to navigating visually around the area. But he probably wouldn't have seen it from an altitude higher than 3000-4000 above the ground. And arriving at night with no lights in DC would be positively spooky.



​
 
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