Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 02 (2 page)

 
          
GUARD
—Internationally established and
recognized emergency radio frequencies. VHF
GUARD
is 121.5; UHF
GUARD
is
243.0.

 
          
HF—High
Frequency radio. Used for extreme long-distance communications (being replaced
in USAF by SATCOM).

 
          
HH-3
Jolly Green Giant
—Modified Sikorsky
CH-3 Sea King helicopter, used for deep-penetration rescue missions into
heavily defended areas.

 
          
HH-65A
Dolphin
—Aerospatiale SA-366G-1
Dauphin
II
utility helicopter, used
for medium-range personnel and cargo transport and rescue operations.

 
          
high-G YO-YO
—An air combat maneuver
where a less maneuverable but more powerful pursuer can attack a more
maneuverable opponent by executing a dive, then a hard climb and descent to
bring weapons in line for an attack instead of trying to out-maneuver the
opponent.

 
          
HOTAS—Hands
On Throttle And Stick. A carefully designed feature in many new
high-performance fighters that logically arranges all necessary switches on the
pilot’s control stick and throttle for easy activation in busy combat
situations.

 
          
HUD—Heads-Up
Display. Usually a large piece of glass mounted atop the instrument panel in a
fighter aircraft, used to reflect projected information in front of the pilot’s
line of sight. All necessary flight and weapons information is thereby
presented to the pilot without having to look down inside the cockpit.

 
          
HYPERVELOCITY MISSILE
—A simple,
low-cost missile with no explosive warhead, designed to destroy targets by
sheer force of impact. Speed of these missiles can exceed a mile a second.
Warhead is usually a dense depleted uranium material that increases force on
impact.

 
          
I.P.—Initial
Point, the beginning of a bomb run. Usually the weapons officer or bombadier
has control of the aircraft from the I.P. to the target.

 
          
ICU—Intensive
Care Unit.

 
          
IFF—Identification
Friend or Foe. A radio system that broadcasts specific bits of data “on demand”
by compatible radar-radio systems that properly “interrogate” the system. The
data are usually identification, altitude and airspeed data. Used by civilian
and military agencies.

 
          
ILS—Instrument
Landing System. Precise glide path (heading) and glideslope (altitude) radio
beam system, widely used by civilian and military aircraft to line up with a
runway for landing in bad weather. The bombing computers of military strike
aircraft can sometimes simulate an ILS when no ground-based ILS is available.

 
          
ILYUSHIN-76—NATO
reporting name MAINSTAY. Soviet version of the American E-3 Airborne Warning
And Control System (AWACS) radar plane.

 
          
Immelmann
—Air combat maneuver where an
aircraft can change or reverse direction rapidly without a wide, sweeping turn.
Usually made by executing a steep climb, rolling inverted into the desired
direction, then rolling upright.

 
          
INS—Inertial
Navigation System. Precise navigation unit that uses accelerometers (precise
electronic pendulums) to detect and quantify all aircraft motion and compute
exact position and speed.

 
          
IR—Infrared
(heat) energy.

 
          
IRSTS—Infrared
Search and Track System. Used by the Soviet Union on fighter aircraft in
conjunction with GCI search radar to collect attack information to launch
air-to-air missiles from long range without transmitting radar information that
can be detected.

 
          
JP-4—Standard
U.S.
military jet fuel.

 
          
Judy
—Code word to ground or airborne
controllers from fighter pilots that a designated target has been detected
(either by radar or visually) and that the fighter pilot is continuing the
attack alone.

 
          
KC-io
Extender
—McDonnell-Douglas DC-io
airliners modified for inflight refueling and heavy cargo transport. Able to
carry all the men and equipment of an entire deployed fighter squadron for five
thousand miles, including non-stop inflight refueling for the unit’s fighters.

 
          
KC-135—Boeing
707 airliner modified for inflight refueling and fight to medium cargo duties.

 
          
KGB
—Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti
(Committee for Internal Security). The intelligence-gathering unit and secret
police of the
Soviet
Union
.

 
          
KOLLEGIYA
—The main military council of
the Ministry of Defense of the
Soviet Union
,
responsible for military implementation of the policies of the Politburo and
the Communist Party.

 
          
Lluyka TANKS—Specialized fuel tanks carried
by non-air-refuelable aircraft that are fitted with retractable refueling
probes to give these aircraft the ability to refuel inflight.

           
M-16/M203—Standard U.S. infantry
automatic rifle. The M-203 is a lightweight forty-millimeter grenade launcher
fitted under the barrel of the M-16 rifle that can fire high-explosive rounds
out to twelve hundred feet without impeding use of the rifle itself.

 
          
MAW—Mission-Adaptive
Wings. Wings that can change the shape of their upper, leading and trailing
edge surfaces to improve performance without the use of “hanging” devices such
as flaps and slats.

 
          
MFD—Multi-Function
Display. A series of computer monitors in an aircraft that replace or augment
conventional aircraft instruments. Most MFDs can be programmed to display a
wide variety of information in text or graphic form.

 
          
MlKOYAN-GUREYVlCH
—MiG. One of the many
government aircraft design bureaus of the Soviet Union. Others are Sukhoi (Su),
Ilyushin (II), Yakovlev (Yak), Tupolev (Tu), Beriev (Be), Antonov (An), and Mil
(Mi).

 
          
MIL—Military
power throttle setting. Usually one hundred percent or more of an engine’s
rated thrust.

 
          
MODES AND CODES
—An aircraft properly
displaying coded IFF data that are being received by a ground or airborne
surveillance controller able to scan for these signals.

 
          
NRTS—Near-Room-Temperature
Superconductors. A specially designed composite material able to demonstrate
unusually high rates of electrical conductivity at normal “room” or operational
temperatures. Most materials exhibit superconducting capabilities only at
super-cold temperature levels. NRTS devices can transmit high amounts of energy
without relying on large or bulky power generators or large environmental
units.

 
          
NSC—National
Security Council. A group that advises the President of the United States on a
wide range of national security matters.

 
          
POLITBURO
—Politicheskoye Burn
(Political Bureau). The key policymaking body
of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, directing
the work of the Party between plenums (biannual meetings) of the Central
Committee. Composed of not more than fifteen persons, they are chosen by the
307 voting and 107 candidate (non-voting) members of the Central Committee.

 
          
Pulse-Doppler
—Long-range radar tracking
system that detects changes in relative motion of a target.

 
          
RAMENSKOYE
—Chief aircraft design and
test center of the Soviet Union, located in west-central Asia near Moscow.

 
          
Rapier
—British-built surface-to-air
missile air-defense system, developed by British Aerospace Dynamics.
Self-contained, mobile, low- and medium-altitude capable to a range of five
miles.

 
          
ROE—Rules
of Engagement. Set of rules established before an air-to- air engagement that
spells out exactly when and how a fighter pilot can begin and carry out an
attack.

 
          
SA-7—NATO
code name “Grail.” Soviet shoulder-launched heatseeking missile used mainly
against helicopters and slow, low-flying jets. Range eighty- to
five-thousand-foot altitude, five to six miles, speed of missile Mach one point
five.

 
          
SA-8—NATO
code name “Gecko.” Soviet short-range surface-to-air missile. Highly mobile,
all-weather capability from one hundred to twenty thousand feet, out to eight
miles range. Missile speed Mach two.

 
          
SA-10—NATO
code name “Grumble.” Strategic (fixed-base) high- performance Soviet
surface-to-air missile. All-altitude, all-weather capability. Can intercept
aircraft, cruise missiles, tactical ballistic missiles and some
intercontinental strategic missile warheads.

 
          
SA-15—Highly
mobile improved version of the SA-8 surface-to-air missile.

 
          
SAC—Strategic
Air Command. U.S. Air Force major command responsible for strategic nuclear,
refueling and reconnaissance forces (aircraft and land-based intercontinental
ballistic missiles).

 
          
SATCOM—Satellite
Communications. A radio data-link network that sends coded information to a
time-sharing relay satellite for rebroadcast to Earth stations. High-speed,
secure global communications capability.

 
          
SCISSORS
—An air combat maneuver
designed to prevent an unintentional overrun of a pursued aircraft. When an
aircraft being pursued begins to slow or make sharp maneuvers to cause a
pursuing aircraft to overshoot, the pursuer can begin several wide side-to-side
turns to avoid overtaking the pursued aircraft without decreasing power.

 
          
SMG—Submachine
Gun.

 
          
SMTD—STOL/Maneuverability
Technology Demonstrator. A program developed to explore new technologies for
advanced fighter aircraft to decrease takeoff and landing distances and
increase maneuverability by the use of canards, mission-adaptive wings, vec- tored-thrust
engines, computers and improved performance engines. The F-15 SMTD was one of
the first high-tech fighter aircraft (precursor of the Cheetah).
See
STOL.

 
          
SR-71—Extremely
high-altitude (hundred thousand feet), high-speed (Mach three) strategic reconnaissance
aircraft, the fastest air-breathing aircraft on Earth. Can photograph one
hundred thousand square miles of the Earth’s surface an hour.

 
          
STALL—A condition when a wing can no longer
produce lift. Usually occures when airflow on top of an airfoil (wing) is
disrupted or breaks free from the airfoil by slow speed, low power or high
alpha (angle-of- attack) flight conditions.

           
STOL—Short Takeoff and Landing. A
combination of high-lift wings and vectored-thrust engines to produce very
short (less than one- thousand-foot) takeoff and landing distances, three
hundred to five hundred percent shorter than normal.

 
          
SUPERCOCKPIT
—A combination of computer
graphics, multi-function displays, high-speed computers, voice-recognition and
sightpointing switch-activation systems that improve efficiency, integrate
numerous battle management information sources and decrease pilot workload in a
modern combat aircraft’s cockpit.

 
          
TACAN
—Tactical Air Navigation. A ground
or aircraft based radio used mainly by the military to provide distance and
bearing information between two aircrafts or between an aircraft and a ground
station.

 
          
TOW—Tube-launched
Optically tracked Wire-guided. An anti-tank missile launched from ground or
airborne vehicles.

 
          
TR-i—Improved
version of the U-2R high-altitude strategic reconnaissance jet. Subsonic but
capable of reaching altitudes of eighty thousand feet. Mainly used for signals
intelligence, electronic eavesdropping, and monitoring of data transmissions
during Soviet space launches and missile tests.