Comment by lucasjung | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lucasjung | Hacker News Reader

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It was the missile. However, he did know where to point it well ahead of time before firing. As the article mentions, he used visual cueing and short-range shots to minimize the time his radars were transmitting.

One thing this article didn't mention: when it came to predictability, NATO aircraft were the polar opposite of Zoltan--they often flew the same routes, at the same times, using the same radio callsigns, day in and day out. This made it very easy for him to predict where an airplane would be. In the case of the F-117, I have heard that the pilot made back-to-back passes over the same target and was shot down on the second pass.

I also heard an apocryphal story about Zoltan: After the war he was "debriefed" (not really an interrogation, since the war was over and he hadn't committed any war crimes, but not exactly a friendly chat, either) in order to learn his tactics. After a while, his interviewers realized that he believed that the NATO forces were so arrogant that they had deliberately tipped their hand to him: he couldn't understand any other plausible reason why they had been so bad at keeping secrets, especially in regards to the movements of their aircraft. When they tried to explain that they had thought they were practicing good security, he refused to believe them and accused them of lying--nobody could be THAT bad at keeping secrets!

I hadn't heard that story, but I think I'd believe it.

There are a few references around to how some of his intelligence network involved people sitting outside (military) airports in Italy and phoning in when F-117's were taking off.

There's a scene in Blackhawk Down where a similar thing happens. Aided has a kid sitting around near the airport with a cellphone who calls in when he sees all the helicopters take off. I can't find any references if this actually happened or not.

Of course, this type of situation is kind of hard to avoid. Making sure that there's no one within line of sight of the take off path of an airport is kind of hard if it's anywhere close to a populated area.

I just read a story written by Jeremy Clarkson where he visited Iraq. His transport arrived and departed in the middle of the night, lights off, so that spotters couldn't determine direction or type of aircraft. So it would seem that they are acutely aware of the issue.

Being predictable isn't easy to avoid. We put so much hardware in the sky, and quickly neutralize so many of the surface-to-air threats, that aircraft are far more likely to have a close call with another friendly aircraft than to be deliberately targeted. (Not true for rotary wing aircraft.) So they're predictable, because that's the easiest way to keep two airplanes from occupying the same piece of sky, because midair collision is the greater threat. There are other ways to deconflict traffic, since so little use is made of the real capabilities of modern electronics, but being predictable also allows military air traffic to fit into the civilian air traffic control system. It's a tradeoff, and following predictable procedures resolves it while simultaneously covering a lot of asses.

Of course, as soon as one sortie aborts for a SAM threat, a concerted effort should be put into finding the source (and redoubled if it isn't found but reports keep coming in). You can be as predictable as you like if you really do own the sky.

The NATO commanders often sent their bombers in along the same routes, and didn't make a big effort to find out if hotshots like Zoltan were down there

Important safety tip: the enemy always gets a vote.

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