On Sat, 30 Aug 2003 12:18:13 +0100, "Keith Willshaw"
wrote:


"matt weber" wrote in message
.. .
On Fri, 29 Aug 2003 06:54:35 -0400, Cub Driver
wrote:


commanders had full authority to order the Hornet to shoot it down.

Certainly they have the authority. This does not mean they'd exercise
that authority.

In the U.S., to judge by a recent incident, the intercepting a/c are
configured for slow flight. They first try to contact the offending
a/c on the designated emergency channels, including 121.5 civil.
(Pilots are required to monitor 121.5 "if able"; I'm not able, so
don't do it. Instead I look around a lot.) The next step is to fire
red flares. I'm not sure about the step after that, because to the
best of my knowledge it has happened. Most likely it involves bouncing
the lightplane around in fighter-induced turbulence. I doubt that the
F-15/16/18 would go straight to missiles hot.
It is not clear how effective a missle would be. A small aircraft
doesn't have much of a heat signature,and what there is greatly
reduced by the turbulence produced by airflow. Exhaust is at the
front.

In addition, the speeds are so low, that you don't get any leading
edge heating. In short I am not at all convinced that an IR guided
missile would be able to lock onto a prop powered 100hp aircraft. It
just isn't much of an IR or a radar target...


IR missiles have no problem in homing in on the heat signature
of a lycoming engine

These things often don't have much of a radar signature. There is the
Cessna that made it all the way to Moscow during the cold war and
landed in Red Square....

Which has nothing to do with radar signature, they show quite nicely
on ATC radars let alone military sets, the problem with the Cessna
in Moscow was more political indecision than anything technical
They show up on most ATC radars only because they have a transponder.
Note the difficulties US ATC had in locating 757's and 767's on 9/11
after the transponders were turned off, and 757 or 767 has a far far
larger radar cross section than a single engine cessna.

ATC radars generally only see either very large targets, or very
cooperative targets (transponders).