All Weather Capability
-
Hi All
Happy New Year
Forgive me I am a registered nurse by profession, so I’m not familiar with the full capacities of military aircraft the F16 is described as below, flying in Korea the weather can be notoriously bad, when I use FLIR or the TGP in some bad weather conditions I find myself almost face planting the monitor to see where I am going, seems like the FLIR/TGP can’t see through thick cloud/fog/rain. Appreciate assistance regarding flying in bad weather.
An all-weather capability allows it to accurately deliver ordnance during non-visual bombing conditions.
F -16 Fighting Falcon General Dynamics posted by Jiri Wagner
http://www.military.cz/usa/air/in_service/aircraft/f16/f16_en.htmDavid
-
Hi All
Happy New Year
Forgive me I am a registered nurse by profession, so I’m not familiar with the full capacities of military aircraft the F16 is described as below, flying in Korea the weather can be notoriously bad, when I use FLIR or the TGP in some bad weather conditions I find myself almost face planting the monitor to see where I am going, seems like the FLIR/TGP can’t see through thick cloud/fog/rain. Appreciate assistance regarding flying in bad weather.
An all-weather capability allows it to accurately deliver ordnance during non-visual bombing conditions.
F -16 Fighting Falcon General Dynamics posted by Jiri Wagner
http://www.military.cz/usa/air/in_service/aircraft/f16/f16_en.htmDavid
IIR can’t really see through clouds as if they aren’t there afaik. But it can see better through clouds than anything using the visible spectrum.
-
all weather perhaps refer to the jet itself. But with clouds masking pods perhaps ordinance can be delivered using AG radar.
-
Radar bombing or The Dot Must Die. Despite the term a lot of airplanes can’t fly in true any weather. Icing, thunderstorms, etc. can make it impractical. But strictly IMC it’s absolutely possible to drop unguided bombs on target without visual reference. The Germans did it in 1943 with basically two crossing ILS beams and an automatic device.
-
Thanks for the replies, I’m guessing all weather would exclude thunderstorm, pea soup thick fog etc, I know the F18 can fly in pretty bad weather there is a clip on YouTube and the pilots landing in bad weather were talking about the deck moving in feet and I mean a huge amount.
David
-
TGP/FLIR gives night attack capabilities. But not all weather. All weather is thanks to Radar/GPS (no need to have the ground in visual to navigate) and guided munitions.
That’s what it means.But weather remains (still today) the most factor element to take in consideration in mission preparation and go/no go criteria.
-
‘All weather’ means ‘works well in most weather’ the same way ‘all terrain’ means ‘works well on most terrain’. An aircraft that’s described as being all weather will have a wider operating range than one that isn’t, but it will still have limits to what it can do.
Water absorbs IR wavelengths, so any device that uses that part of the electromagnetic spectrum will be degraded by its presence. Thermal imagers, IR missile seekers, laser rangefinders/designators, ‘nightvision’ devices(image intensifiers), and IR illuminators are all affected by clouds, rain, snow, etc. Using thermals to spot targets through clouds is going to still work better than using your eyes because your targets will be glowing, so you’ll notice them sooner. The FCR should be extremely resistant, if not nearly immune, to very bad weather, so consider using that over the TGP to conduct attacks when there’s low clouds over the target.