Here’s a pretty cool vid from the Air Force Association (AFA)…celebrating the USAF’s 60th Anniversary.
Now for the back-story. I had an interesting exchange with the president of the AFA about this video, and here’s part of the trail:
From: President of AFA
Sent: Thursday, November 29, 2007 4:37 PM
To: Buck Pennington
Cc: Ted Yorkshire
Subject: RE: Note from AFA President -- You Tube, F-22s, and the Indispensable Air Force
We will check each one.
Ted, ….
Thanks.
MD
Michael M. Dunn
AFA President/CEO
From: Buck Pennington
Sent: Thursday, November 29, 2007 2:51 PM
To: President of AFA
Subject: Re: Note from AFA President -- You Tube, F-22s, and the Indispensable Air Force
I spoke too soon. I just went to retrieve the "AFA Salutes Air Force Anniversary" to post it on my blog and find embedding is still disabled.
Best Regards,
bp
On
Thanks very much, Mr. Dunn! I really appreciate that!
On
BP – you are the second one to mention that … and it is now fixed.
Mike
Michael M. Dunn
AFA President/CEO
From: Buck Pennington
Sent: Wednesday, November 28, 2007 3:08 PM
To: President of AFA
Subject: Re: Note from AFA President -- You Tube, F-22s, and the Indispensable Air Force
Great video. But if you really wanted to reach out and touch the Gen X and Gen Y folks you wouldn't have disabled the embedding feature for these vids. I'd love to host one or more of 'em on my blog but I cannot.
That's a short-sighted policy, to be very kind.
Best Regards,
bp
And all for you, Gentle Reader. Seriously, though…isn’t it nice when folks take your suggestions to heart? My hat’s off to Mr. Dunn and the AFA, in general.
Great video!
ReplyDeleteI'm impressed that you got an answer, too... thanks!
Did some digging. The northern aircraft should be instantly recognizable as a SAAB Draken, due to the cranked delta shape of the wing.
ReplyDeleteThe southern aircraft was a slightly harder nut to crack. It's a straight tailless delta, which describes all three of your guesses (as well as countless other fighters.) However, the degree of sweep can be different. The Euro-canards (Gripen, Typhoon, Rafale) have a less severe degree of sweep than a Mirage 2000, which in turn has a different degree of sweep than the Mirage III/5/50/IAI Dagger/Kfir family of aircraft. The wing sweep on that airframe looks the closest to the Mirage III/5/50/Dagger/Kfir family of aircraft. Looking a little bit closer, we can see that the aircraft has a pretty large set of canards. There are several variants in the Mirage III/5/50/Dagger/Kfir family that have canards, but only the Kfir has canards that big in relation to the rest of the airframe.
So now what the heck was a Swedish interceptor from the '50s and an Israeli multi-role fighter from the '70s doing on a Marine base? Well, the National Test Pilot School at Edwards operates a few Drakens, and the Marines used to operate the Kfir in the aggressor role for most of the '80s, but retired those aircraft in 1989. Turns out the answer is something a little more mundane, but still pretty cool:
"Since inception in 1994, ATAC has provided a growing fleet tactical aircraft and services to the US military, including outsourced airborne tactical training, threat simulation, and research & development. Utilizing some of the highest performance aircraft available, advanced threat tactics and electronic attack equipment, and the best "red air" training pilots in the world, ATAC provides realistic and cost-effective advanced training and testing to today's military forces."
http://www.atacusa.com/index.html
What do they fly? Drakens and Kfirs.
In other news, my blog is still locked. Grr.
And that's pretty good response time for a large organization like that. I'm impressed. Also nice to see they understand the importance of embedding video.
A few other things of note on the tarmac...there are what appear to be two prop powered aircraft to the northeast of the mystery aircraft. Not sure what these are, will think about it a little more later. There's also 6 F-4s further to the northeast. Possibly drones, but it would unlikely for six of them to be operating away from their home base. More likely is the Luftwaffe Det at Holloman, which, while not having any F-4s actually stationed there (as opposed to the Tornado IDS) still has some rotate through every now and again.
ReplyDeleteAlso, quick correction...ATAC is based out of Mojave, which is right next door to Edwards and basically the civilian equivalent.
Wow, Mike...that's great work! Thank you very much! There's some interesting stuff at Mojave besides ATAC... I used to love driving by there when I was in that part of the world. Of course that was in the waaay-back, before Burt Rutan set up shop there.
ReplyDeleteSorry to hear your blog is still locked. That sucks, to be mild about it.
Wow, Mike. Most impressive! Jesse hopes to check in here sometime today and connect with you about all this fascinating info.
ReplyDeleteBuck, thanks to you too.