Bird Watching In Libya
There is a diverse group of aircraft involved in the No-Fly zone.
The most common is probably the F-16 “Fighting Falcon” that is flown by:
Next in line is the delta-winged Mirage 2000 that is flown by:
Then there is the F/A-18 “Hornet” from:
The swing-wing Tornado of:
The rarer birds are two with delta wings and canards: the French Rafale and the RAF’s Typhoon.
Update: The US is left with a half dozen A-10 “Warthogs” [officially “Thunderbolt II”], and 5 Marine AV-8B “Harriers” in addition to support aircraft, generally C-130 and C-135 variants.
And they are watched over by the E-3 “Sentry” AWACS that is marked as:
I haven’t seen a Rafale, but every one else stops by to blow up the ranges around me.
4 comments
I’ve never lived close to an RAF station. Well not true, RAF Hornchurch (a famous Battle of Britain station) which was at the top of the street I grew up in closed when I was a baby.
My Pennsylvanian uncle (married to my mum’s sister) lived in Mildenhall so F-4s, F-111s, C5s, C141s and KC/C135s were common sights…. and the SR71 every so often and the odd Buccaneer out of RAF Honnington.
When I lived in Dover in the 80s I used to see A-10s from out of Bentwaters doing dummy attack runs on (I think) Dover Castle. It was quite a sight
My command had a headquarters at Mildenhall, but that was a ground site. I flew out of RAF Upper Heyford.
I see them flying over. You can’t watch them on their training missions because they use live munitions on ranges out in the middle of nothing, or out over the Gulf.
We get a lot of NATO aircraft coming in to use the ranges, generally to test new weapons systems.
The A-10s and the Harriers aren’t “Formula 1” exotic fighters, but if things are nasty on the ground they are very welcome visitors. The F-35 is supposed to replace both types, but it will never be as good as either.
I would see the SR-71 regularly at Kadena AB on Okinawa.
Mercifully the A-10s weren’t doing anything but buzzing. I doubt that English Heritage would have been happy if one of our great castles was blasted by the USAF!
I can’t believe the stupidity of our government in scrapping our Harriers and our aircraft carriers even if they were toy boats compared with the likes of the Nimitz.
OTOH, buzzing played a part in the degradation of the “Rock Pile”, the Acropolis in Athens. It was on the flight path of the Athenae airport and was getting a lot of pollution and vibration because of it, and people were constantly going below the authorized glide path for a better look.
The US nuclear carriers are too big for a lot of operations. They often have to make “K” turns in the Persian Gulf. Your carriers for the Harriers were more useful in today’s world when you need something quickly, but don’t really need an air wing. Our Harriers fly off of Landing Assault ships which are similar in size to HMS Ark Royal, but don’t have the fuel-saving curved launching deck.
I don’t understand decommissioning a vessel a few years after a major re-fit and a decade before its replacement will be ready, but I don’t pay the bills. I would think that more, smaller carriers would better than a couple of huge ones.