There were two of them, flying together, and they seemed to be going fast.
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A-10 warthog.
A-10 Thunderbolt.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairchild_Republic_A-10_Thunderbolt_II
Yep. A-10. The engines pretty much clinch it.
Holy crap! Close call, then.
Thanks, guys.
I used to live in house that was under an A-10 training corridor. If you think they’re scary when they’re flying fast, you should see them flying slow.
With that plane a close call isn’t survivable. It has a gun that will just about melt down a tank.
Good think I wasn’t in my tank!
A-10 warthog, 3-inch armor and a 30 mm gatling cannon shooting depleted uranium slugs.
The pilot sits in a titanium bathtub…
@HP, they can fly much faster than people think; about 420 knots or so. Although I agree, flying slowly (150 knots), they look very scary; they seem to just float there.
The real question is, what the hell were you doing so that they dispatched the warthogs out your way?
As to what they were doing, there’s a good chance that they did a ceremonial flyby at some public event (like baseball game). They can fly slowly and loudly enough that the public gets a good look at their tax dollars in action.
These are all over Upstate NY–Fort Drum is a training area. A WartHog pilot made the news some years ago when he broke off from a training flight in the west–fully armed–and disappeared. Supposedly the plane/pilot’s remains were found in the high peaks of Colorado.
The Depleted Uranium (DU) should be the real worry–sowing Carthage and the future in atomizing alpha-emitters all over ‘fields of conflict.’ Seems to cause a slow kill of combatants and civilians and children, including the unborn. Just read about DU in Kosovo, Iraq, and where NATO partners stand on this questionable practice. See http://www.ehjournal.net/content/4/1/17, Teratogenicity of depleted uranium aerosols: A review from an epidemiological perspective, or read about the US VA muzzling research on Gulf War syndrome etc and DU. Or read or view (Maj.) Dr. Doug Rokke–former military DU head’s statements: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-VkpR-wka8
Is this the legacy of Empire? Left-overs from the nuclear cycle, as armor-piercing atomized dust?
Maybe we’d be more secure as a nation if we spent this DOD money on our transportation sector and didn’t need these things. After all, the USAF is the #1 military air force in the world. The US Navy aviation force is the #2 air force in the world. How many warthogs and aircraft carriers and their 700+ military bases do we need around the globe to have an illusion of security?
Wikipedia: A10? Neat. GAU-8/A? Holy smokes. Youtube “GAU-8/A test firing” … O.M.G.
These photos were taken a few weeks ago in the Twin Cities. The aircraft were heading in the general direction of Colorado.
yes Greg, those were A-10’s.
Not fast as other jets, but then again, better than props. Those things are scary if you are in a tank, or in a ground position that they are targeting. Those things carry not the largest, but one of the most effective cannons ever in an airframe.
Pretty, in their own way, but sort of like watching a great white come from below on a seal.
As airframes go, they are primitive, but as one of your previous comments stated, they are well armored, given what they were designed to go after.
If my memory serves me, they are not in production now, so after those airframes wear out, there won’t be any more of those.
It’s probably aliens ships disguised as Terran vessels, or not.
They are primitive if you consider them jets, but if you see them for what they are — flying cannons with aux air-ground missiles just in case — they’re state of the art
The Soviet/Russian opposite number Sukhoi Su-24 is even more “crude” if you consider the airframe, but also even more formidable, and -and this is the really important part- even more robust and well-protected by titanium armour.
During the Afghanistan war they not only survived direct hits by Stinger missiles, but direct hits by -on two occasions- modified big bloody Sidewinder missiles as well (modified for ground-to-air instead of air-to-air launches).
Yeah, I’m not even an airplane buff and my first guess was an A-10. The A-10 is a real workhorse of very good engineering. Been around since the 1970s although they didn’t see much action until the Gulf war.
Why do you need to identify these aircraft? Are you a Russian spy?
(I’m late to the party, all the good lines were taken.)
A-10: only aircraft to get bird strikes from the rear.