But great footage! 
What Were You Doing There Mavrick?
By David Cenciotti
Earlier this year, Pentagon Press Secretary George Little, said that an IRIAF (Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force) F-4 Phantom combat plane attempted to intercept a U.S. MQ-1 drone flying in international airspace off Iran.
As we reported back then, one of the two F-4 Phantom jets came to about 16 miles from the UAV but broke off pursuit after they were broadcast a warning message by two American planes escorting the Predator.
The episode happened in March 2013, few months after a two Sukhoi Su-25 attack planes operated by the Pasdaran (informal name of the IRGC – the Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution) attempted to shoot down an American MQ-1 flying a routine surveillance flight in international airspace some 16 miles off Iran, the interception of the unmanned aircraft failed. After this attempted interception the Pentagon decided to escort the drones involved in ISR (intelligence surveillance reconnaissance) missions with fighter jets (either F-18 Hornets with the CVW 9 embarked on the USS John C. Stennis whose Carrier Strike Group is currently in the U.S. 5th Fleet area of responsibility or F-22 Raptors like those deployed to Al Dhafra in the UAE.
New details about the episode were recently disclosed by Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh who on Sept. 17 not only confirmed that the fighter jets providing HVAAE (High Value Air Asset Escort) were F-22 stealth fighters but also said that:
“He [the Raptor pilot] flew under their aircraft [the F-4s] to check out their weapons load without them knowing that he was there, and then pulled up on their left wing and then called them and said ‘you really ought to go home’”
Anyway the U.S. pilot achieved to scare the Iranian pilots off and save the drone. A happy ending worthy of an action movie.
▶ DoubleEnder
I REALLY want one of these. The slow stall/approach speed is truly impressive.
Bigfoot Sighting
I looked at the list of things that the Doctor told me I wasn’t supposed to do 6 days after having hip surgery and bow hunting in the woods in the dark was not on the list. That being said it’s probably best if nobody tells him, OK?
The Price You Pay
There’s the price you pay, the price you thought you paid, the price you told your wife you paid and the price you eventually pay. Or it costs some people $ 200 to make a tandem skydive and it costs others the use of their right leg for 6 weeks, or a hip surgery 6 years later. Last Saturday I was at home recovering from my hip resurfacing surgery, chillin on the couch drinking coffee and enjoying a slight pain pill buzz. All was good until I got the call that one of my instructors, Smilee, had broken his leg. “What the hell were you guys doing jumping in winds like this?” I thought, and maybe said loudly. Earlier I’d looked at the forecast and it was supposed to be WINDY. Now normally I call every morning and go over the forecast with my staff and decide weather or not, get it ? we should jump that day, but seeing that I was on the mind I figured they could handle it by themselves just this once. I guess I was wrong. Apparently when Smilee landed with his tandem the air was very turbulent and his passenger ended up sitting on his leg and broke it. It’s not really serious but it will keep him on the ground for six to eight weeks. If you’re going to jump out of planes for a living you’re going to get banged up every once in a while.
Good thing his friends took care his reading needs. Smilee having a better day. 
Your Weekly Lex, For Strength
Hot Gun
By lex, on September 24th, 2007
It may be hard to imagine today, but when I was a lad an entire generation of naval aviators had grown up to fill middle and even upper leadership roles in line squadrons without ever having “seen the wolf.” The long peace between Vietnam and Desert Storm meant that nearly 20 years had gone by with little more than the occasional drive by shooting.
My first CO was a Vietnam vet, as was his XO. After that were a long succession of folks who’d never been in actual combat. It was all too possible in that environment to get a “blue bomb” mentality.
A blue bomb is a MK76 (low drag) or a BDU-48 (high drag). These were twenty-five pound practice bombs with phosphorous marker cartridges in their nose. Their ballistic profile was very similar to that of a general purpose bomb like the 500 pound MK82, but they were vastly cheaper to expend in training and there was next to no danger in doing so – the marker charge sent up a lovely little column of smoke but had no “frag envelope” to avoid.
In the days before precision guided ordnance became the norm, hitting small targets like tanks, arty tubes and trucks often meant getting down low and groveling with them. It’s great fun in training, but hard work in combat – being in gun range works both ways. But, it’s hard to hit what you can’t see, so we trained extensively in the low altitude environment.
We always trained to fight in two-ship pairs (at a minimum) for mutual support – it was good to have someone to watch your six for AAA or SAMs when you were on government time in the final attack. To make a low altitude simultaneous attack on a target required that both strikers be off target within 5 seconds of each other, or else the trailing attacker would end up flying through the frag pattern of his leader’s bombs. That could lead to dash 2 taking engine or airframe damage and potentially going for a walk in the proximity of some fairly agitated bad guys. Alternate deconfliction schemes were also devised to put greater than 30 seconds of time (and a multi-axis attack) between detonations using relatively simple spacing patterns.
Practicing these drills at low altitude was great fun, but it wasn’t until you’d tried them carrying live ordnance that the real importance of flawless execution became apparent. You simply haven’t lived until you’ve been in a 15 degree dive on final attack at 1500 feet or so above the ground in a low altitude run and realized suddenly that the timing had gotten gooned and lead’s bombs – heading towards the same target you were approaching at 500 knots – hadn’t gone off yet.
It’s very exciting.
Another example of the benefits of experience and the blue bombing mentality was driven home for me when a new change came out to our weapons computer software in the late 80′s. Someone had spent good government money to enable a “hot gun” capability during ground attack with bombs.
Now, the 20mm cannon on the FA-18 is, when selected as the primary ground attack weapon, an incredibly accurate and lethal weapon. Relatively simple ballistics and short times of flight combined with accurate air-to-ground radar ranging meant that the bullets would go exactly where the aiming dot was placed. The hot gun cross had none of that however – it was necessarily austere, since most of the processing power of the weapons computer in a dive bombing attack was dedicated towards displaying either a release point or an impact point. The hot gun cross was little more than a selectable option on the weapons display and a static cross hair drawn on the HUD.
“This software change is useless,” I told my CO one day in the ready room at sea. “You’ll never hit anything with a static gun cross, and anyway your attention will be focused on the bomb run. Why on earth did we pay good money for this software change?”
The CO, a compact, taciturn man with extensive combat experience on Yankee Station, gave one of the longest speeches I ever heard him make: “You’re not supposed to hit anything with it. You just use it to hose the target area down when you’re on the wire. Fire a long burst and rudder her around a little bit. Gives the bad guys something else to think about besides tracking you in their gunsights.”
“Oh,” I replied. Feeling – not for the last time – simultaneously better educated and a great deal more stupid.
Routine Maintenance Update
Boy, that was one ugly hip! That is a quote from the surgeon who worked on me yesterday. He went on and on about how big the bone spurs were that he had to grind down to enable him to put the new Cobalt ball and socket in me. I’ve been through two physical therapy sessions so far, not fun, and they say I’m doing better than most of their patients. Not much praise in my opinion due to the fact that most people who get hip resurfacing surgery are fifteen years or more older that me, but I’ll take it because Cory from CB Aviation called me not too long ago about doing a trip for him. Apparently Hector from Uruguay has a nice 2005 Beech Baron that needs to be ferried to the US and he wants me to do it. I guess he trusts me because Super Girl and I managed to fly his Bonanza along the same route last winter without any major mishaps. Of course as usual both Hector and Cory want me to do the trip ASAP but that is going to depend on how fast I can get my hip in good working/flying order. The Doc. says three weeks but I’m thinking I should be ready to fly in two. I never was much of a rule follower.
And So It Starts
When I started filming for Dangerous Flights I really had no idea what would happen. We could film one episode, one season or get as big as Deadliest Catch, it was all up in the air, so to speak. As of now we have two seasons in the can with a pretty good chance of a season three and now season one is going to be showing in the US on the Smithsonian Channel so things are looking up. With the show now airing in the US one of the local afternoon TV shows wanted to do a short story about me and Dangerous Flights so they came out and interviewed me and I took them for a ride in the Caravan. I think it came out well check it out by clicking the link thingy here. Twin Cities Live.
Routine Maintenance
Seven or eight years ago I had a semi rough parachute landing, hey one out of thirteen thousand isn’t too bad. Apparently I damaged my labrum..labirum..laybrum…I hurt my hip. Of course I was too stubborn to go to the hospital so my injury went UN-diagnosed. After seven years of soccer, skiing and skydiving I developed a pretty nasty bone spur and had worn all the cartilage off of my hip and the pain and loss of movement has finally gotten so bad that I need to get it fixed. At 51 I’m a little young to be having hip surgery but I’m also too young to be crippled. So tomorrow I go under the knife to fix the hitch I’ve got in my my get along. Wish me luck!
