Gilligan wrote:
"DSK" wrote in message
. ..
That certainly carries the ring of truth: "scrambling" a helicopter for
an air intercept.


Gilligan wrote:
There's always a helo ready to go when launch/recovery ops under way.

Sure is. Tell me though, what's the platform and what's the loadout for
air-to-air mission, ANY current U.S. military rotating-wing unit (much
less carrier cert)?

AIM-9 air to air missile on:

AH-64.

http://www.novia.net/~tomcat/AIM-9.html

AH-1Z:

http://www.bellhelicopter.textron.co.../bellAH-1Z.cfm

AH-1W Flying off of the USS Bataan with AIM-9 missiles:

http://www.naval-technology.com/projects/supcobra/


The real question: is the heat signature of the drone enough for any missile
in the Navy inventory? Probably not. No fighter jet will lock onto that slow
moving, small drone. So send a helicopter up with a 30 caliber machine gun
and knock it out of the sky.





And why would they launch more fighters when they always have a CAP
overhead?

The CAP flies a 200 mile radius, it's not overhead.



It's not just bull****, it's silly.

It is silly to try and use million dollar missiles to knock a large toy RC
plane out of the sky. The Bismarck was sunk by biplanes because the gun
directors on the Bismarck were not calibrated for such slow flying planes.
Will history repeat itself?

How's about the Phalanx
..
A "last line of defense" for ships, the Phalanx is a rapid-fire,
computer-controlled radar and 20-millimeter gun system that can
automatically track and destroy close-range enemy threats such as
low-flying cruise missiles, small boats and helicopters. Since 1979,
more than 850 Phalanx systems have been built and deployed in the
navies of 22 allied nations, Raytheon says.

Firing 3,000 to 4,500 armor-piercing rounds per minute, the Phalanx was
battle-tested by the British during the Falklands War. The advanced
Phalanx 1B version includes advanced Forward Looking Infrared (FLIR)
and beefier gun barrels.

Joe


DSK