Aggressor Squadron

[0TreeLemur]

Hi all,

Maybe some current/former military aviation community can answer a question.   A friend of mine knows a retired Naval aviator who flies for a private company that serves as an "aggressor" squadron for flight training exercises.   While examining recent flights of one of their aircraft (Hawker Hunter mk.58, designed in 1958), I spied this crazy flight.  How to spend 2 hours flying circles close to Oahu?   Why would a 1958 design be used as an aggressor today?   Why so many loops?  Is that what a close-quarters dogfight looks like?   The loops seem to "round"?  Inquiring minds....

https://flightaware.com/live/flight/N327AX/history/20210414/2104Z/PHNG/PHNG

[carusoam]

I believe there is a write-up around here regarding a company that provides this aggressor service...

 

If they are using 1958 aircraft... they are simulating a bad guy that has 1958 style aircraft...

The bad guys that flew into the World Trade Center used a B767...

The last plane to run into a building in Manhattan was a Cirrus... with a flight instructor on board...

 

It would be an extra challenge to simulate everything in between...

Best regards,

-a-

 

 

[N201MKTurbo]

3 hours ago, 0TreeLemur said:

Hi all,

Maybe some current/former military aviation community can answer a question.   A friend of mine knows a retired Naval aviator who flies for a private company that serves as an "aggressor" squadron for flight training exercises.   While examining recent flights of one of their aircraft (Hawker Hunter mk.58, designed in 1958), I spied this crazy flight.  How to spend 2 hours flying circles close to Oahu?   Why would a 1958 design be used as an aggressor today?   Why so many loops?  Is that what a close-quarters dogfight looks like?   The loops seem to "round"?  Inquiring minds....

https://flightaware.com/live/flight/N327AX/history/20210414/2104Z/PHNG/PHNG

Perhaps they are testing some kind of radar or other detector or the software that runs it and they need to simulate an attacking fast jet aircraft.  

[EricJ]

9 minutes ago, N201MKTurbo said:

Perhaps they are testing some kind of radar or other detector or the software that runs it and they need to simulate an attacking fast jet aircraft.  

Or the unit under test is mounted on the aircraft and it's just a cheap platform to carry it around.

When I worked at Goodyear Aerospace we had an ancient Sabreliner that had a radar pod mounted under it and the Sabreliner would pretend it was a missile using the pod as the target imager.    It would fly some interesting flight profiles, often close to the ground, and it must have looked pretty strange to see a Sabreliner doing that stuff.  I was working on a DARPA project and we used an ancient Gulfstream I (the turboprop) to drag our radar around.   Our flights were a lot more mundane, though.

So, yeah, could be anything.   I suspect it's either a platform to carry a UUT around or a target for something else under test to look at.   That's flying right at the Marine Corps Air Station, so probably something the Marines or Navy are interested in.

 

 

[A64Pilot]

When I worked at the test activity, we had a Blackhawk outfitted with a “BAT” seeker. the Blackhawk woud fly the BAT’s profile for testing. As an AH-64 driver I wasn’t part of the test, but I believe they were developing software for the dual mode seeker.

https://fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/land/atacms-bat.htm

‘I don’t know if the BAT was ever fielded or not, but the BlackHawk guys got to do some fun flying.

[0TreeLemur]

I asked my friend this question, who asked his wife, who asked her brother, who works for that company- Answer: surface-to-air combat exercise.

That is one crazy-assed flight trace/profile.  I guess when you are going 350 knots, your turning radius is big.   Also, when you are on an island,  you don't want to get too far from land.

[N201MKTurbo]

When you own a jet warbird, any time someone wants to buy gas is a good day to fly.

[0TreeLemur]

18 minutes ago, A64Pilot said:

When I worked at the test activity, we had a Blackhawk outfitted with a “BAT” seeker. the Blackhawk woud fly the BAT’s profile for testing. As an AH-64 driver I wasn’t part of the test, but I believe they were developing software for the dual mode seeker.

https://fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/land/atacms-bat.htm

‘I don’t know if the BAT was ever fielded or not, but the BlackHawk guys got to do some fun flying.

According to the link, they built 1500 of them at $1.4M a pop.  I hope they are fielded and ready to take out $35k Toyota Hilux' trucks.

[N201MKTurbo]

About 15 years ago the military made a tiny change in their requirements for civilian aircraft at military bases. Before this change you would see civilian warbirds at most airshows and they would often hire civilian warbirds to give familiarization flights to their pilots, so they could get some experience in other types of jets. The warbird owners loved this stuff. It wasn't unusual for the military to give them 10 hours or more of fuel. It was party time!

The change was requiring insurance. Most don't have it. Insurance can cost 10% of the value of the aircraft per year.

[A64Pilot]

32 minutes ago, 0TreeLemur said:

According to the link, they built 1500 of them at $1.4M a pop.  I hope they are fielded and ready to take out $35k Toyota Hilux' trucks.

Ones we were working with would ignore a Toyota, but as that’s software I assume it could be modified, just as a software change allowed Patriot missiles to target ballistic missiles in SWA and a software change had fire finder radar tracking small arms in Bosnia. Probably could have it track cows with a software change, part of what made it “brilliant” was everything has a different acoustic signature and you can only have it track acoustic signatures that match.

Civilians control the Military spending, not the Military and they can be very creative with money, I’ve seen it. We have no idea what those things cost, I couldn’t even find out what an AH-64 cost, sure there were numbers quoted, but as you dug just a little you found out that they didn’t include a few small Government supplied items like the engines  and targeting systems

Hellfire has become a sniper weapon, and back in my day they cost the same as a Mercedes did. Often it’s not even the Military pulling the trigger.

We always fight the last war, and while maybe F-22’s and Anti Armor weapons weren’t needed for the last one, doesn’t mean that they might not be for the next.

You can’t just mothball an entire industry with the thought that you’ll pull it out in a hurry when it’s needed, just like Military plastic Surgeons are doing face lifts and other plastic surgery all of the time, no there is no Military necessity for that and some think they shouldn’t, but if you don’t allow a Surgeon to practice their craft, you won’t have any, they will leave, so the Military industrial complex has to be doing something or it won’t exist anymore

[N201MKTurbo]

16 minutes ago, A64Pilot said:

Ones we were working with would ignore a Toyota, but as that’s software I assume it could be modified, just as a software change allowed Patriot missiles to target ballistic missiles in SWA and a software change had fire finder radar tracking small arms in Bosnia. Probably could have it track cows with a software change, part of what made it “brilliant” was everything has a different acoustic signature and you can only have it track acoustic signatures that match.

Civilians control the Military spending, not the Military and they can be very creative with money, I’ve seen it. We have no idea what those things cost, I couldn’t even find out what an AH-64 cost, sure there were numbers quoted, but as you dug just a little you found out that they didn’t include a few small Government supplied items like the engines  and targeting systems

Hellfire has become a sniper weapon, and back in my day they cost the same as a Mercedes did. Often it’s not even the Military pulling the trigger.

We always fight the last war, and while maybe F-22’s and Anti Armor weapons weren’t needed for the last one, doesn’t mean that they might not be for the next.

You can’t just mothball an entire industry with the thought that you’ll pull it out in a hurry when it’s needed, just like Military plastic Surgeons are doing face lifts and other plastic surgery all of the time, no there is no Military necessity for that and some think they shouldn’t, but if you don’t allow a Surgeon to practice their craft, you won’t have any, they will leave, so the Military industrial complex has to be doing something or it won’t exist anymore

I was working on Javelin a few years ago. The rounds cost $75 AMUs and the CLU cost $125 AMUs 

[squeaky.stow]

15 hours ago, 0TreeLemur said:

Why so many loops?  Is that what a close-quarters dogfight looks like?

A long time ago, before the military started contracting out these roles, the F-5s that I was flying would occasionally be tasked with this type of thing, so I can take a semi-educated guess. The “aggressor” terminology is misleading because much of the flying that is done by these private contractors is to be a “target” for training exercises. I recall being tasked to simulate Close Air Support for the Army to train their FACs , be a cruise missile for the Air Force  to train their NORAD interceptors, a Russian bomber to train GCI controllers, and assorted threats/targets for the Navy that would involve flying out to the fleet and just doing whatever maneuvers they asked for to train their air defence people. That once included doing supersonic passed right over the ship “as low as possible”! I had to get him to confirm that one a couple of times. Some of it also involved just flying circles around the fleet, presumably to allow their gunners and radar operators to get training. You don’t need a high-tech fighter to do that, just a jet that can do 350+ knots. Old Hunters, Alpha Jets and T-Birds are a good low-cost solution.

I suspect that you may be seeing some Naval training going on. Or maybe just a test flight or air to air formation photos, but 2 hours seems rather long for that. What it definitely is not, is a dogfight. That would look very different and would never be done below 10,000 feet.

[0TreeLemur]

3 hours ago, squeaky.stow said:

A long time ago, before the military started contracting out these roles, the F-5s that I was flying would occasionally be tasked with this type of thing, so I can take a semi-educated guess. The “aggressor” terminology is misleading because much of the flying that is done by these private contractors is to be a “target” for training exercises. I recall being tasked to simulate Close Air Support for the Army to train their FACs , be a cruise missile for the Air Force  to train their NORAD interceptors, a Russian bomber to train GCI controllers, and assorted threats/targets for the Navy that would involve flying out to the fleet and just doing whatever maneuvers they asked for to train their air defence people. That once included doing supersonic passed right over the ship “as low as possible”! I had to get him to confirm that one a couple of times. Some of it also involved just flying circles around the fleet, presumably to allow their gunners and radar operators to get training. You don’t need a high-tech fighter to do that, just a jet that can do 350+ knots. Old Hunters, Alpha Jets and T-Birds are a good low-cost solution.

I suspect that you may be seeing some Naval training going on. Or maybe just a test flight or air to air formation photos, but 2 hours seems rather long for that. What it definitely is not, is a dogfight. That would look very different and would never be done below 10,000 feet.

This makes a lot of sense.  I can easily see a situation where there were one or more vessels near the center of that fuzzy circle, and they were training or calibrating targeting systems.  Thanks.