14 February 2008

Pretty good landing that few have heard of

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

And a case study in why Vulnerability Reduction backfits will be vital-and if done to the proper level, more than a little costly-in any civil airframes turned into faux warbirds.

While modern airliner designs are carefully designed to withstand component failure, the close collocation of critical components, and shaved margins for weight makes them mighty glass jawed when it comes to damage.

If you have visions of the damage tolerance of B-17s, understand it does not apply to modern airliners.

The Baghdad missile hit is a classic case of a small piece of shrapnel (note the size of the hole against the rivet heads-you could hold the piece of metal that did all this in your hand) entering a wet wing not built to withstand hydrodynamic ram...which in turn precipitated a burst aft tank wall/spar...the subsequent leaking fuel (clearly seen in the video) quickly sparking a dry bay fire...that further ate into the aft spar and flight control components...

Good thing this was an A300 and not a later Airbus too. God knows whatt the flight control logic of a later model Airbus would have done with that airplane as its flight control characteristics radically modified.

Good thing it was light too.

Unless the designs are altered to mitigate against such soft kills, your next batch of HVAA's will be mighty easy to kill.

Also, thinking that DIRCM, et all will make these aircraft immune to an easy kill is a classic flight of fancy up a blind canyon.

Can such countermeasures ensure no hits on the airframe...even ones as "inconsequential" as this one?

Why bother messing with the F-22s when a small bb bomb delivered on the ramp can incapacitate the only operable MP-RTIP in theater (for instance)

sid