USAF Wild Weasel HELP please...

[rickshaw]

HARM seems an odd choice for anti-ship work. It hasn't got an especially large warhead - 66kg according to wikipedia. Compare that to  Martel (150kg), Sea Eagle (230kg), Harpoon (221kg), Kormoran (165/220kg) and Exocet (165kg) (never mind the monster Russian AShMs) and it seems like it wouldn't be much use for actually sinking anything.

It was designed to destroy radar aerials.  As I mentioned, HMAS HOBART was hit by USN missiles:

On the early hours of 17 June, while preventing North Vietnamese resupply of Tiger Island, Hobart was fired upon by a United States Air Force (USAF) aircraft.[3] The aircraft approached Hobart with its IFF transponder switched off, and fired three missiles during two passes.[3] The second missile failed to explode, but the first and third damaged the superstructure, radar room, exhaust funnels, Ikara missile magazine, and superstructure, killed two RAN personnel, and injured seven others.[3] The aircraft came around for a third attack run, but was scared off when Hobart fired five rounds from her main gun.[4] Despite being damaged, Hobart sailed to the nearby cruiser USS Boston, which had been hit by a missile from another USAF aircraft, and formed an anti-aircraft screen with the cruiser and her escort, USS Blandy.[4] After being relieved, Hobart sailed for Subic Bay, where the damage was inspected by RAN and USN personnel, including three admirals.[4]

An inquiry was held by the USN, which was attended by three RAN personnel as technical advisors.[5] It was revealed that a few hours earlier, USN Swift Boats PCF-12 and PCF-19 were attacked and the latter sunk by hovering enemy aircraft (commonly identified as helicopters, although one press release claimed that they were UFOs).[6][7] F-4 Phantoms of the USAF Seventh Air Force, responding several hours after the attack on the Swift Boats, instead opened fire on Boston and Hobart.[5] Several other ships in the area reported attacks from aircraft, although no others were hit, and identifications of friendly or enemy aircraft making these attacks vary.[4] Hobart underwent repairs in Subic Bay, and returned to duty on the gunline on 25 July.[8]

[Source]

Whilst the missiles only damaged the Hobart, they did force its withdrawal.  The RAF intended to use its ARM Martels in a similar way, firing a mix of ARM and TV guided Martels against ships.

[ChernayaAkula]

HARM seems an odd choice for anti-ship work. <...> it seems like it wouldn't be much use for actually sinking anything.

Not for sinking them, but for blinding them!  Once the enemy vessels' radars are down, they're much easier targets for Harpoons, Mavericks and even LGBs.
Lobbing HARMs at ships will also keep the enemy occupied and may draw attention away from other attacks. Keep the radars emitting to direct SAMs and risk catching a HARM or turn off the radars in hoping to evade the HARM, but lose the recognized air picture and SAM guidance for the moment.

[pyro-manic]

Fair enough, but why abandon Kormoran?

rickshaw: Yes, but Martel was a much heavier missile. ChernayaAkula said that the Germans have abandoned Kormoran for anti-ship work and now only use HARM, which strikes me as not massively effective in that role.

Any ideas what missiles were used against Hobart?

[Weaver]

There's an F-16XL-based F-16K Wild Weasel on the lastbut one page of the Whiffs Found on Hyperscale thread here:

http://www.whatifmodelers.com/index.php/topic,24776.15.html

[Weaver]

Fair enough, but why abandon Kormoran?

rickshaw: Yes, but Martel was a much heavier missile. ChernayaAkula said that the Germans have abandoned Kormoran for anti-ship work and now only use HARM, which strikes me as not massively effective in that role.

I suspect it might be more to do with the Luftwaffe taking over Marineflieger roles and then quietly eliminating them on the pretext of reduced threat (same excuse used for the removal of the RAF's Sea Eagles). HARM was a Luftwaffe weapon before the merger, but Kormoran was unique to the MFG.

[Taiidantomcat]

Fair enough, but why abandon Kormoran?

rickshaw: Yes, but Martel was a much heavier missile. ChernayaAkula said that the Germans have abandoned Kormoran for anti-ship work and now only use HARM, which strikes me as not massively effective in that role.

I suspect it might be more to do with the Luftwaffe taking over Marineflieger roles and then quietly eliminating them on the pretext of reduced threat

I am not familiar with this case so i can't speak on it with any knowledge but I know such things are very common when missions/services "merge" The smaller one goes away rather quickly but with little fanfare. One of the reasons the USMC is so adamant about having its own air wing for its own missions. 

[anthonyp]

^ Do you mean the underwing pod? That's an AN/ALQ-99 jamming pod for jamming radio signals. The F-4G's mods were only for analysing radar emissions and guidance of the ARM, not for jamming radars. The USAF EF-111s carried a system similar to the AN/ALQ-99, although internally.
Think Anthony went for a load-out that allows for both a soft kill (jamming) as well as a hard kill (HARM), much like USN/USMC Prowlers do.

A bit late in the conversation, but I think it's relevant.

That was exactly the point of the F-15G build I did.  It took the best of the USAF and USN's EW planes and put it into one airframe.  I incorporated the USN's EW pods since the USN and the USAF began cross training on the EA-6B once the EF-111B was retired.  The F-15G takes took the best available USN EW systems and incorporated them into a readily available USAF airframe.  I saw the other Wild Eagle proposals, and decided to go the way the above model evolved.  

In any case, I like my model, but I have thought about redoing the nose with an F-4G canoe fairing.

[rickshaw]

Fair enough, but why abandon Kormoran?

rickshaw: Yes, but Martel was a much heavier missile. ChernayaAkula said that the Germans have abandoned Kormoran for anti-ship work and now only use HARM, which strikes me as not massively effective in that role.

Any ideas what missiles were used against Hobart?

I've always understood they were Shrike anti-radiation missiles.  However, having read that account, it makes me think they might have been Zuni rockets.

As to the use of Kormoran being abandoned, I understood the numbers of Kormoran produced where quite low and no effort was made to restart production after those were expended.  According to Wikipedia, only 140 were produced.  So it just might be that they ran out of rounds, rather than anything else.  With the end of the Cold War it was decided that the mission had simply disappeared...

[ChernayaAkula]

Fair enough, but why abandon Kormoran?

I suspect it might be more to do with the Luftwaffe taking over Marineflieger roles and then quietly eliminating them on the pretext of reduced threat (same excuse used for the removal of the RAF's Sea Eagles). HARM was a Luftwaffe weapon before the merger, but Kormoran was unique to the MFG.

Yep, that's it. Combination of reduced threat, HARMs useful for destroying radars on land as well and, of course, the biggie: cost. Training the crews for anti-ship profiles is costly, missiles are costly, AG 51 is a recon outfit by trade, they deployed to Afghanistan,...

[Radish]

Nice looking F-16 WW....saw that before but don't like the colour scheme much. Thanks for showing it though.

Just bought a couple of Kinetic "Big Spine" varients, as well as a Tornado ECR.

TORNADO....I know there was that idea of the big Prowler/EF-111A-type radar housing on the fin, but was there an idea for a conformal underfuselage fuel tank too?

Love the EF-4C picture. I've got the Squadron Signal book on the WW, early pre-Gulf War edition, and the EF-4C is featured, along with a nice colour photo of an F-4D doing some of the SEAD mission in that "Triple Green" experiment, where Tan was replaced by SAC Green.

[Maverick]

Terry,

I believe the Tornado 2000 concept featured a conformal belly tank.

Regards,

Mav

[Radish]

Ooooohhhhhh....thanks....getting all excited now. got the kit....could well start cutting things up tomorrow....

[Weaver]

Terry,

I believe the Tornado 2000 concept featured a conformal belly tank.

Regards,

Mav

Didn't that use the long UK forward fuselage and radome from the F.3?

[pyro-manic]

I think the Tonka 2000 was supposed to have a faceted forward fuselage for reduced RCS. Reshaped intakes for the same reason.

[Weaver]

I think the Tonka 2000 was supposed to have a faceted forward fuselage for reduced RCS. Reshaped intakes for the same reason.

True, but I think it also had the fuselage plug behind the cockpit?