Personal account of USAF Cold War MiG squadron

Bill Sweetman has a great story of a recent personal account from a former USAF guy that was part of the Cold War program flying Soviet-made (or similar) MiG aircraft in Nevada.

Those days were secret, dangerous yet eye-opening.

That proved to be a very important test. "In 1987 we had the AIM-9P, which was designed to reject flares, and when we used US flares against it would ignore them and go straight for the target. We had the Soviet flares – they were dirty, and none of them looked the same – and the AIM-9P said 'I love that flare'.

"Why’d that happen? We had designed it to reject American flares. The Soviet flares had different burn time, intensity and separation. The same way, every time we tried to build a SAM simulator, when we got the real thing it wasn’t the same.

"I use the AIM-9P because it is out of the system and I can talk about it. The same thing happened to a lot of things that are still in the system and that I can’t talk about."

A-29 Super Tucano selected by USAF

The A-29 Super Tucano has been selected for the USAF light air support mission. It outpaced the competition because it already existed with proven, mission relevant configurations.

More here.

* Advanced avionics
* Exceptionally accurate non-precision and precision weapons employment
* All-glass, 4th-generation cockpit
* Certified to withstand bird strikes
* Cockpit design & technology similar to fourth-generation fighters
* Fully NVG compatible
* HOTAS: Hands On Throttle And Stick
* Main equipment redundancy
* Precise Navigation System, with integrated auto-pilot, INS/GPS and radio navigation
* V/UHF radios with crypto and Datalink
* ROVER- and Link 16-capable
o Have integrated seven different datalinks
* Digital Video Recorder for fast and precise debriefing
* Long, wide wheelbase to enable routine rough and austere field operation
* Sensor ball placed to eliminate wing masking