{"id":192536,"date":"2009-03-21T06:45:00","date_gmt":"2009-03-21T11:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/03\/21\/worldwide-war-pigs-drop-tank-irst-tests-well-for-supers\/"},"modified":"2009-03-21T06:45:00","modified_gmt":"2009-03-21T11:45:00","slug":"worldwide-war-pigs-drop-tank-irst-tests-well-for-supers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/03\/21\/worldwide-war-pigs-drop-tank-irst-tests-well-for-supers\/","title":{"rendered":"Worldwide War Pigs: Drop Tank IRST Tests Well For Supers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/img4.imageshack.us\/img4\/7342\/irst5686019.jpg\" style=\"margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;\" width=\"375\" \/>About 1 \u00be years ago, I wrote about how Boeing was looking into putting an Infra-Red Search and Track (IRST) on the F\/A-18 E\/F Super Hornet by fitting it to the front half of a center-line drop tank.<\/p>\n<p>Well, Boeing <a href=\"http:\/\/worldwidewarpigs.blogspot.com\/2009\/03\/drop-tank-irst-tests-well-for-supers.html\">has completed successful flight tests on the system<\/a>, which is supplied by Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control<sup>*<\/sup>.<\/p>\n<p>There hasn&#8217;t been an aircraft in the US inventory with an IRST for air-to-air since the F-14 Tomcat was retired, but Russian and European fighters have embraced this technology.<\/p>\n<p>The advantages of going passive are real, though I would wonder about the reliability of the system under the very turbulent and vibration laden environment beneath the Super Bug.<\/p>\n<p>My <a href=\"http:\/\/40yrs.blogspot.com\/2007\/06\/fa-18ef-to-get-new-air-combat-sensor.html\">original post on this<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>H\/t <a href=\"http:\/\/worldwidewarpigs.blogspot.com\/2009\/03\/drop-tank-irst-tests-well-for-supers.html\">Worldwide War Pigs<\/a><\/p>\n<p><sup>*<\/sup><span style=\"font-size:78%;\">Full disclosure, I worked at Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control in the late 1990s.<\/span><sup>\u2020<\/sup><br \/><sup>\u2020<\/sup><span style=\"font-size:78%;\">Yes, I have worked everywhere. Maybe I can&#8217;t hold down a job, but more likely this has been my role as &#8220;technical hit man&#8221;, where you are parachuted in to take care of a specific need.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>About 1 \u00be years ago, I wrote about how Boeing was looking into putting an Infra-Red Search and Track (IRST) on the F\/A-18 E\/F Super Hornet by fitting it to the front half of a center-line drop tank. Well, Boeing has completed successful flight tests on the system, which is supplied by Lockheed Martin Missiles &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1007,1025],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-192536","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aviation","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192536"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=192536"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192536\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=192536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=192536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=192536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}