It’s definitely BS. Transponders aside, the US has radar and near real-time satellite imagery of every square inch of American territory. There is a zero percent chance they don’t know where this plane is.
(And even if it did, radar is not magic. If the plane is at the bottom of a murky lake, then no amount of radar or satellite imagery is going to find it.)
The purpose of the radar would not be to see the plane at the bottom of a lake, but to provide a flight path after the ejection. If they had radar coverage, they should be able to see either where it ejected with an unstable flight path that put it within a fairly small circle of the ejection or on a stable flight path that gives them a more or less straight line to search along.
Just one example of how this kind of stuff plays out in the real world.
What's really scary about ATC vectoring the fighters in is a bad actor could just as easily use that open comms to evade the fighter aircraft. Although they're obviously faster and more maneuverable it gets back to the first scenario I mentioned - the fighters can't find a target when they're not actively trying to evade them.
It would be pretty easy and straightforward for a bad actor to get a few hours of lessons, take up a Cessna loaded with improvised explosives of some type, and do a lot of damage. A lot of smaller air strips/fields don't even have a tower so they could get up there before anyone really has a clue.
I'm (as a German) a drone pilot myself and looking to start ultralight next year, and the topic of TFRs/NOTAMs annoys me to no end even when just flying a drone. Tons of junk, hard to parse and keep track of, and hell I get that the primary glass of aircraft is supposed to be certified, but why on earth aren't there smartphone/tablet apps that keep up with TFRs and alert a pilot? Most of GA is low altitude anyway so in reach of cellphone towers.
[1] https://fixingnotams.org/the-problem-why-are-pilots-deeply-c...
Like many unusual situations there are usually at least two things that need to happen to cause the scenario I described:
1) Ignorance to TFRs/NOTAMS (Notice to Airman for those unfamiliar).
2) Loss of communication with the correct air traffic control.
When air traffic control notices these people violate airspace they always try to reach them via radio. In the event they're reachable it's "we have a phone number for you". When they go silent it's send up some fighters AND "here's a phone number for you".
> Most of GA is low altitude anyway so in reach of cellphone towers.
This is frowned upon. When airlines ask you to turn off your cell phones it is for two real reasons:
1) Pay attention to the safety briefing (no one does anyway, and no one turns their cell phones off).
2) The request of cell carriers. From what I understand cellular devices at altitude with significantly better line of sight are somewhat problematic to the towers as devices are able to attempt connection/association to many more than they usually would. Apparently combined with the faster speed the carriers don't appreciate this. Of course they deal with it with all kinds of means in terms of directional antennas, etc but like I said I've heard it's an issue.
I point out #2 because there's likely little industry support for the approach you describe. Additionally, you add an additional safety issue because users (pilots) will learn to depend on them and the variability of cell connectivity at altitude, weather, speed, geography, etc is uncertain. Aviation doesn't like that.
> 1) Ignorance to TFRs/NOTAMS (Notice to Airman for those unfamiliar).
> 2) Loss of communication with the correct air traffic control.
Yeah, #1 is easy enough to happen because NOTAM (and, while we're ranting, METAR as well, or the fact that aviation still uses feet and knots despite everyone but the US and UK being on metric) is fundamentally broken, a relic of very old times that has never been updated (similar to the clusterfuck that is flight/staff planning and booking) because no one wants to invest money into upgrading all the legacy crap. So all it takes for a serious incident is a simple human error: forgetting to change a comms frequency, overlooking a NOTAM in all the spam, or accidentally using metric units.
> I point out #2 because there's likely little industry support for the approach you describe. Additionally, you add an additional safety issue because users (pilots) will learn to depend on them and the variability of cell connectivity at altitude, weather, speed, geography, etc is uncertain. Aviation doesn't like that.
I wasn't talking about commercial air flights, I was referring to the Cessna and other small-scale GA. They're barely faster than a high-speed train (an 172 manages 300 km/h, a German ICE 350 km/h, and I can use LTE in the latter), so for wide parts of any GA flight a pilot should have LTE access on their phone.
Anyway: yes, people will learn to depend on their phones/tablets to alert them if they enter a TFR zone or that they have to change their radio frequency. But ffs... the status quo leads to so many issues every year [1], because pilots have zero assistance if they're in an older plane with a classic, no-glass setup, or in a plane with a glass cockpit but no assistance. Adding a fallback option is the safer way, it avoids incidents.
And the truly safe way would be to upgrade all the legacy crap, or at least augment it in a backward-compatible way: a digital carrier in radios that can carry cryptographically signed messages for radios that signal new frequency and squawk codes, for example, that the pilot simply has to confirm and be done.
[1] https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/8751/how-often-...
There is also FltPlanGo which is free, but it is less full featured than foreflight.
This reminds me of Barry Seal taking advantage of his slower aircraft with a million dollar door to avoid the faster jets with short legs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODIZKyevVxQ
of course, the majority of that movie turned the creative license knob to an 11
Thing is, in these scenarios they're the only armed aircraft around and their targets never have radar or any instrumentation/defense/even detection for it. So they could (and likely do) blast and paint all day and they still can't find bug smashers in dense urban environments like you most often see with TFRs.
I can understand the fighter radar is probably designed assuming assistance from AWACS but it still seems really strange to me.
have you been watching prime-time crime fighting drama TV shows?
the implementation of that system is probably 8x as bad as it sounds, and it sounds too complex to implement in less than two decades.
real-time (or "near" real-time, whatever that means) imagery of every square inch of the continental US? No.
Only the weather satellites in geostationary orbits provide near real-time imagery, and they lack the resolution to spot something the size of an aircraft. High resolution images come from spy satellites in highly inclined low orbits which provide only intermittent coverage of any particular location. And they can't see through clouds.
I believe for “routine” training they’ll keep a radar reflector in them. Very little need to have stealth when bouncing around the US.
Caveat, I was in the Air Force and I'm not too familiar with NATOPS which is what I believe the Marines would be operating under to determine SOP. I was not a pilot, but I was in operations and received the same briefings. My training was also from when we first got real stealth fighters and SOP has probably evolved a lot in the last decade.
What's most interesting about this story to me is... What sort of mishap would lead to an ejection with autopilot left functioning? That all seems very peculiar. Weird way to join the Caterpillar Club.
https://www.commondraft.org/Caterpillar-Club-certificate.png
No, I was a little tyke at the time. (The story: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33348425)
Worst case scenario someone slaved it to a netowrk and stole it since the f35bs have VTOL.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luneburg_lens#Radar_reflector
(caption: "Luneburg reflectors (the marked protrusion) on an F-35")
edit: Also here (with quotes from a US Air Force Avionics Technician):
https://theaviationgeekclub.com/these-devices-make-stealth-a... ("How Luneburg lens radar reflectors are used to make stealth aircraft visible on radar screens")
Your receiver is "passive" - it doesn't emit a signal - so the attacking enemy has to find it visually. If the enemy bomb all the TV antennas then you need to emit your own signal to generate the reflection.
ATC radar regularly loses small planes on 'primary' radar (primary radar being pure radar), and has to rely on the transponder. There are many areas where you simply don't have primary coverage, especially close to the ground. I've flown through military controlled airspace where they lose radar contact with me in a Cessna less than 10 miles from the base.
If near real-time, you mean a couple of times per day. There aren't enough LEO observation satellites to provide complete coverage.