Hello,
I'm currently reading a book about the development and service of the SAAB 32 and have just finished the chapter about the "J 32B in the field." In that chapter it says that F 12 Kalmar used to practice attacks on Aeroflot Tu-104's, flying between Leningrad and Copenhagen, as substitutes for Tu-16's. This got me thinking. The Tu-16 and Tu-104 were after all the same basic aircraft, so that kind of makes sense. But as no modern airliners are developed from military aircraft, is this something that's still being done? And also, how common was this back then?
Thanks in advance





I didn't get the right answer from the internet.
References:
- http://www.wings900.com/vb/1-1-civil-av ... ctice.html
- Animated explainer video Examples

There are some military aircraft developed from civilian ones, but not the other way as far as I know. P-8 Poseidon, A330MRTT, and KC-46 Pegasus are military type airplanes with current civilian counterparts. Who knows if the Russians or others use civilian planes as target practice, I doubt we'll ever find out. Hopefully they don't, but then again I never knew the Swedes did that either.

I think it would be more accurate to say that the military occasionally uses civilian aircraft as target proxies when performing certain drills. For instance it would not be unusual for a missile site to track a civilian aircraft to validate radar tracking performance. Interceptor pilots might conduct intercept exercises on airliners, but maintain significant separation in order to avoid untoward events.

Not quite the same but two years ago I was on an NCL Norwegian cruise and we were "attacked" several times by a Norwegian Air Force P3 in the Skagerrak.

I don't think it really matters what type of aircraft you're intercepting if the goal is to practice initially detect an incoming aircraft, assigning aircraft to respond, vectoring towards a predicted location, and having the pilots acquire the target visually or on their own radar.

Of course a high altitude, straight and level target is going to be the simplest type of intercept, but basic exercises are still worthwhile.

johns624 wrote:

Not quite the same but two years ago I was on an NCL Norwegian cruise and we were "attacked" several times by a Norwegian Air Force P3 in the Skagerrak.

Very interesting. Did they do flyovers and circle as if they were doing a reconnaissance mission, or something else?

The P-3 can carry Harpoons, but a normal "attack" with those would be beyond visual range.

'Civilian' aircraft are used as target dummies all the time. A subsidiary of Airbus', GFD (Gesellschaft für Flugzieldarstellung), is in the business of aerial target simulation and operates a fleet of Learjets to do that, among other things to train the German Eurofighter pilots.

iamlucky13 wrote:

johns624 wrote:

Not quite the same but two years ago I was on an NCL Norwegian cruise and we were "attacked" several times by a Norwegian Air Force P3 in the Skagerrak.

Very interesting. Did they do flyovers and circle as if they were doing a reconnaissance mission, or something else?

The P-3 can carry Harpoons, but a normal "attack" with those would be beyond visual range.

No, it was midday and they made 3-4 runs towards the ship from abeam with their landing lights on. I was in a midship cabin on the port side and it was coming right at us at less than 1000ft altitude.

Usually if there's a P-3 in the area, it's working with surface combatants and the doctrine (when ships were equipped with Harpoons) was to do a multi-axis missile attack from the MPA (Bruisers) and surface combatants (Bulldogs) timed to arrive simultaneously. After Harpoons were removed from surface combatants, then it was just Bruisers from the P-3 and some harsh language "missile" assist from the surface ship. In a pinch we could throw a SM-2 SAM at a surface ship, but there's no subtlety using a SAM as it's limited to within the horizon and not OTH as a Harpoon is and no way to easily time the SM-2s to arrive at the same time as the MPA-launched Harpoons.

We would play cat and mouse in the Kattegat and Skagerrak - We'd split the NATO task force into two groups with each group of warships trying to hide among the civilian shipping traffic and using P-3s to locate the other group and trying to get a missile solution that would engage the other group without causing casualties to civilian shipping.

Any aircraft flying around a Aegis-capable ship already has a firing solution calculated and the Aegis C&D already knows whether the aircraft is engagable or not without having to assign it to a missile fire-control illuminator. Prior to Aegis, you didn't know if you could engage or not until you passed the track to fire control and illuminated the aircraft with fire control radar. Military aircraft with RWR equipment would know immediately when they were lit by fire control. Civilian airliners just keep flying straight and level oblivious to being lit.. Well I wouldn't say it was a common thing, but it wasn't unheard of being bored on the midwatch steaming between Hawaii and the west coast, lighting up airliners when ships had separate search and fire control radars (pre-Aegis). We could tell which ones had their weather radar on and which ones did not. Civilian aircraft weather radar operates in the I/J band threat emitter which is the same band that anti-ship missile seekers use. But the scan pattern is different so we can easily tell the difference between an airliner weather radar and an Exocet missile emitter..

The military does use contract civilian learjets carrying jamming pods. They perform as target towing, targets and provide jamming services. So the learjets would do their best to simulate an inbound anti-ship missile, and ships did their best to burn thru jamming and acquire the Learjet to engage and "kill" the Lear before it got to the ship.

I'm sure the policy is still in force, but 30 years ago, as an USAF fighter pilot, performing intercepts on civilian aircraft for training or just for fun was a good way to have a tense one on one with the squadron commander or even worse!

A buddy of mine was a Patroit crewman right after GW1. He told me they would regularly "tag" civilian airlines for practice cause they flew straight and level courses and were easy to track.

The Swiss Air Force has ~300 Air Police Missions per year. 250 are live missions (aircraft, in many cases civil airliners, are checked whether they comply with air transport laws) and 10-40 are hot missions, where the target has created a risk or it has some sort of a problem.
The hot missions usually result in super sonic booms in the flatlands, which stay no unnoticed. In online and social media the chatter starts within minutes. I several times heard the typical twin-booms, went to FlightRadar24 to see the most probable target (one time e.g. ElAl 747, one time a Greek Air Force ERJ-145). And within 30 minutes the online press had the event. In the first 9 Google results for "Supersonic boom air force" I get the following 8 links (mostly from different events):
https://www.nzz.ch/schweiz/aktuelle-the ... z-ld.12206
http://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/panorama/ve ... y/12684416
http://www.suedkurier.de/nachrichten/pa ... 65,8791697
http://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/zuerich/reg ... y/15086507
http://www.aargauerzeitung.ch/aargau/ba ... -129664410
http://www.20min.ch/schweiz/news/story/19443766
http://www.tagblatt.ch/ostschweiz/UEber ... 94,4737484
http://www.20min.ch/schweiz/ostschweiz/story/31589024

RetiredWeasel wrote:

I'm sure the policy is still in force, but 30 years ago, as an USAF fighter pilot, performing intercepts on civilian aircraft for training or just for fun was a good way to have a tense one on one with the squadron commander or even worse!

Spanish AF does it all the time. They do notify the aircraft involved and keep separation, though.

RetiredWeasel wrote:

I'm sure the policy is still in force, but 30 years ago, as an USAF fighter pilot, performing intercepts on civilian aircraft for training or just for fun was a good way to have a tense one on one with the squadron commander or even worse!

What form of intercept?

Violating separation seems like potentially serious matter, but I'm not seeing what would be wrong with practicing acquisition and tracking, for example, for 100 miles away and closing to within visual range.

I suppose practicing a lock on could be more serious, depending on the layers of safety involved in release. I assume there are similarly strict rules for that as the Army has for taking responsibility for what direction your barrel is pointed.

iamlucky13 wrote:

What form of intercept?

Violating separation seems like potentially serious matter, but I'm not seeing what would be wrong with practicing acquisition and tracking, for example, for 100 miles away and closing to within visual range.

I suppose practicing a lock on could be more serious, depending on the layers of safety involved in release. I assume there are similarly strict rules for that as the Army has for taking responsibility for what direction your barrel is pointed.

First of all, air defense fighters, air-to-air units and even air/ground units get plenty of training in intercepts and ACM using in house assetts (years ago it was T-33s, lear jets, and other fighters in the same unit). Second, trying to mix fighters into the ATC airway network would raise all kind of issues most relating to safety. Third, even if it was occasionaly done by a couple of cowboy pilots, lock-on or no lock-on wouldn't normally make any difference. Most training sorties are done with inert missiles and if you're not on a range, turning the master arm 'on' could get your wings taken-away.

Of course, NORAD directed intercepts or National Command Authority directed intercepts are a different matter.

Till some time back, wasn't it common for US naval ships in the Gulf to practice shooting skills on Iranian civilian airliners?

Not sure if it is still done.