Why can't a fighter aircraft fly below 1000'AGL?

[thewood1]

"And aircraft with a TFR could do it at 200' day and night with a untrained pilot. (F-15E/Tornado/F-111) or later LANTIRN equipped F-16's."

In one of the threads on this over the last few years, I showed sources on the FB-111, Tornado, and the F-16. Low limit on the TFRs were over 100m. I think the FB-111 was 250m and the Tornado was 200m. Tornado pilots stated that the only way to get below 200m was to do it manually.

Edit...nevermind, it was ft. for both, not meters. But I think the F-16 was a lot higher due to depth of field issues with LANTIRN. Also note that part way through the Gulf War, the lower deck was raised due to TFR issues with desert sand cause several near crashes.

Osprey's RAF TORNADO UNITS OF GULF WAR I had a Tornado pilot state that when they went off TFR, they climbed to 500-600 ft. because of the danger of flying at 450 knots so close to the desert floor.

btw, even with TFR, they are no "untrained" pilots. Several books, including the above one, had pilots stating the amount of training it took to operate a plane on TFR at low altitude. There was no room for error or distractions. The copilots' main job was monitoring the TFR and making sure it wasn't going to kill them.

One more edit as I go back through sources: F-111 had a daytime limit of 200ft even combat conditions. It was higher at night. This was because some man-made structures like towers and power lines wouldn't be reliably detected by the TFR. At night the crew couldn't keep a watch for the man-made structures. Flying in manual mode was a hard deck of 500 ft. over water and land.

The TFR on the 111 had all kinds of if, and, or buts related to response times of the system to rapid terrain changes. In fact, in its initial deployment to Vietnam, the low deck for the TFR was much higher than 200 fts. because trees were much higher and the TFR had a hard time detecting them. The first few F-111 losses were due to trees, training, and rain. In rain, the TFR hard deck was 500 ft. due to radar penetration issues with the TFR in rain. Interestingly, later F-111s had a higher deck over water due to radar issues with the reflection off of the surface.

Source for the F-111 was Osprey's Air Vanguard 10 GENERAL DYNAMICS F111 AARDVARK and Osprey's Combat Aircraft 102 F-111 & EF-111 UNITS IN COMBAT.

[TitaniumTrout]

ORIGINAL: Dimitris

ORIGINAL: jarraya
In the old Harpoon games planes ordered to fly too low used to occasionally crash "due to pilot error".

[...] perhaps this could be a way of dealing with this?

That's an interesting suggestion.

Do it.

I think this really makes for a compelling case where proficiency directly ties in to low altitude competency. That and it would be hilarious to watch a flight trying to hug nasty terrain and fail at it.

[CapnDarwin]

What needs to be added here is the impact of speed and terrain variation on the altitude equation. If you are flying over smooth seas, you can get very low and move very fast even with eyeballs, but as the terrain becomes more cluttered and has more variation in heights, you either need to slow down or go higher. That would be a question of equipment, time of day, and weather impacting as well. Pilot skill would be a very small piece of the puzzle as physics are more in play here. No matter how good of a pilot I am, if a hill appears in front of me and I can't make the climb, there will be a "crash due to pilot error".

[thewood1]

"Pilot skill would be a very small piece of the puzzle". I don't agree at all. Knowing your aircrafts limitations and having practiced with various loads at altitude and speed are all considered incredibly important in all the above sources. Knowing the climb limitations and banking limitations under various loads at 500 ft. is a key factor in pilot training. One comment that stood out was being able to judge height and limiting distractions over water and over desert because of the lack of scale and depth in those surfaces.

[thewood1]

"I think this really makes for a compelling case where proficiency directly ties in to low altitude competency."

It already does. I think D is talking about higher risk for losses being considered.

[TitaniumTrout]

Either way, I like the idea. Risk Vs. Reward.

ORIGINAL: thewood1

"I think this really makes for a compelling case where proficiency directly ties in to low altitude competency."

It already does. I think D is talking about higher risk for losses being considered.

[Blast33]

Operation Opera of the IAF can maybe flown higher than the advertised 150' but the Surveillance radars are placed very nicely apart. If this 150'is historical than it is proof that they flew this with only their hands on a 475 Nm stretch..!
Articles state they flew between 150 and 300'AGL This makes sense.
https://theaviationist.com/2014/06/07/operation-opera-explained/

Crashing A-4's of Argentina can also come from bad maintenance:
Argentina's fleet of A-4 Skyhawk attack jets was in very poor condition. The arms embargo placed by the United States in 1976, due to the "Dirty War", had made most airframes unusable. The involvement of Israel in helping to return the A-4 to full operational status has been alleged, but has never been confirmed.[12]

Where all the crashes pilot error?
And it is also good to zoom out. As stated in the tread above:

• Two crashed into the sea on low altitude ingress before contact
• Two crashed into the ground while flying low with one into a cliff between the hills of the Sound and another into dunes at Rain Cove before contact
• Two flew so low they hit British ships, one damaged and out of the battle on return and the other disintegrated on contact

That’s six documented losses out of 22 A-4s lost

But what was the total # of combat sorties of the Argentine A-4's?
133 sorties by the A-4B and 86 by the A-4C. They flew with unreliable ejection seats due to the US embargo placed from 1977. Naval A-4 performed 12 sorties. They were highly dependent on the two available KC-130 tankers, limiting the number of aeroplanes that could attack simultaneously. That is 231 combat sorties

That makes 1 A-4 flew into something (ground, sea or frigate) every 38.5 combat sorties..

And taken thee very bad technical shape of the aircraft into account, the maintenance factor is still in the background.
Maybe this gives some perspective on those losses.

Here a quote on the RF-4 Phantom II
RF4C Phantom XI: a multisensor aircraft
capable of all-weather day and night reconnaissance in a high- or low-threat environment. RF-4C combat missions can be flown at altitudes ranging from 100 feet to 45,000 feet and at speeds exceeding 600 miles per hour.
From Gulf War Air Power Survey - Vol IV Weapons, Tactics, and Training & Space Operations

About the F-111, I looked in the Aardvark Pilot's flight operating instrucions https://books.google.nl/books?id=of0lJiN3XiEC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false and it states on page 1-94: the TFR control panel has six positions marked 200', 300', 400' ,500', 750' and 1000'.
There is also a ride control knob marked SOFT, MED and HARD. The Knob controls the magnitude of the negative "g"s
I don't have this Google book available.
I did found in my airchives a FB-111 flight manual out of 1977..but at 67 Mb this is a bit too much to attach [:)] And copy paste was not possible from this scanned pdf..
If you are able to download it somewhere, it gives a lot of info on the TFR operations.

And this one I found useful, there is variation:

[thewood1]

I think you are making my point. Proficiency is what you are talking about with the A-4s. You're asking to give an Argentina-like country a huge advantage with no risk flying at 50 meters or 50 feet. In real life, there is some common sense and risk in using low proficiency aircraft, processes, and pilots. If we just randomly lower min altitude, why have TFR? TFR becomes useless at that point. You can have an Ethiopian Mig-23 fly at 50 feet through mountains at night in a rain storm without another thought.

There are very few aircraft/pilot combinations that can fly that low. Its why TFR was invented. If I can use any aircraft to do it, the US and UK wasted a lot of money developing them.

[Blast33]

You're asking to give an Argentina-like country a huge advantage with no risk flying at 50 meters or 50 feet.

Sorry, and with all due respect, but I did not ask this or write this.
My request was different for every proficiency level.
This is what I proposed in this thread:

Fighters without TFR are now programmed as follows:

ACE Daytime 200' and I request to change this to 100'
Veteran Daytime 300' and I request to change this to 100'
Regular Daytime 400' and I request to change this to 150'
Cadet Daytime 500' and I request to change this to 250' (Remember the F-18 pilot on his first low-level flight)
Novice Daytime 500' and I request to change this to 300'

And I even said something about effects of low flying:
Yes ultra low flying is demanding, yes planes crashed much more, yes you don't fly two hours straight at super low level by hand, yes you have to train.

I only put the crashed number of A-4 aircraft in perspective of the total amount of sorties.

If we just randomly lower min altitude,
Also for this sentence, my request was not in any time to lower randomly the min altitude.

With sincere regards,

Blast33

[thewood1]

Just a point about number of sorties. You can't use that. The planes that crashed didn't fly any more sorties and not all sorties were flown at extremely low altitude.

[thewood1]

Can I ask where the 1000 ft. came from? Are you now saying you can fly as low 500' in worst case? I was going on you saying 1000' was the minimum.

You were initially asking for this...

"regular @ 150'AGL Even on the high side when a missile is coming towards you..
veteran @ 100'AGL (was normal training alt for regular pilots during the cold war)
Ace @ 50-80'AGL (remember RAF Harriers/Jaguars and A-10's)"

Thats what I was assuming you were looking for. I'd like to also point out that my house is about 45' tall. And its not the tallest structure in my town, and there isn't a lot of space. Its a pretty well spaced out suburb.
And trees tower over it all around my house and town. So your initial proposal would put an Ace pilot 5' above house and well below the trees around it. Can you tell me how an aircraft will manage that?

[Blast33]

The Argentine pilots made a choice.
They choose to fly as low as possible and deemed that risk lower than the risk of being shot down when they flew at higher altitudes.

And that is the same for NATO Cold War fighters.

That the Coalition changed tactics in the first Iraqi war has more to do with flat desert terrain and amount of loss acceptancy than admitting they where wrong.

[tylerblakebrandon]

ORIGINAL: Dimitris

ORIGINAL: jarraya
In the old Harpoon games planes ordered to fly too low used to occasionally crash "due to pilot error".

[...] perhaps this could be a way of dealing with this?

That's an interesting suggestion.

Fleet Command had similar crashes modeled and also included random Cold Cat launches off carriers to ruin your day. Off course you could turn that off.

[thewood1]

From "Phantom from the Cockpit: Flying the Legend" about the F-4 in RAF service

250 ft was the deck over flat and known terrain in combat. 500 in training. Note the "known terrain" comment. They trained in West Germany to know the terrain. They typically flew at 500 because all the Soviet SAMs at the time had minimum altitudes of 1000 ft.

Night, weather, and unknown terrain deck was 500 - 1000 ft.

It was also noted the number crashes the RAF had when flying low in everything but mid-day at low altitude. It was a very concerning trend and forced them to alter training regimens.

[Blast33]

That must been between 1968 and 1974.

The SEPECAT Jaguar was introduced into service in 1974, and led to a re-think of the Phantom's role as, at the same time, the limitations of the Lightning as an interceptor were becoming more apparent. The conversion of the RAF's FGR.2 squadrons to operate the Jaguar, combined with its use of the Blackburn Buccaneer, meant that it was possible to begin transferring Phantoms to operate purely as interceptors in the air defence role.[48]

Makes sense air defenders don't fly as low as CAS and Interdiction A/C.

I'd like to also point out that my house is about 45' tall. And its not the tallest structure in my town, and there isn't a lot of space. Its a pretty well spaced out suburb.
And trees tower over it all around my house and town. So your initial proposal would put an Ace pilot 5' above house and well below the trees around it. Can you tell me how an aircraft will manage that?

And about your house, you fly above obstacles, You fly AGL not MSL [;)]

[Blast33]

Level rocket-firing from 100 feet above ground with level break out had been part of our regular squadron training for over twelve months, and I thought that this would be a very useful means of attacking ships.

One of the certainties was that most operational Ground Attack flying in the Falklands would be at Extreme Low Level, i.e. ‘nap of the earth’ flying (see Appendix 2 - Low Flying). Because of the obvious risks involved, this type of flying had been progressively restricted over the years since I had joined my first fighter squadron in Bahrain in 1970. At that time we were allowed to fly at 100 feet above ground as a matter of course, and towards the end of my tour I was lucky to be selected for a mini Fighter Recce course during which I was authorised to fly at an eye-watering 50 feet above ground over the deserts and mountains of Oman and the Trucial States. The old hands told me, ‘50 feet flying is dead easy - you just try to fly as low as you possibly can and after a couple of sorties you’ll be down around the right height!’

I snapped up to about 100 feet above the terrain, feeling horribly exposed to every gun position on the isthmus. Ignoring the Pucaras, on the north side of the airfield I recognised some camouflaged vehicles by a hedge. This was my target. I pickled and dropped the right wing to look back towards Bob and see the fall of shot of my cluster bombs.

A typical In Flight Task would also be given on the radio by the chase pilot, e.g. ‘I want you to follow the A5 from here to Bethesda and find all the AA phone boxes’. The student would be expected to find and photograph the lot, plot them accurately on his 1:50,000 map, and then give an In Flight Radio Report of the positions to his chase pilot, all the while continuing to fly at an authorised 50 feet above ground level. Sadly, these skills were already disappearing from the front line with the introduction of ever more accurate navigation systems and the ubiquitous moving map display.

I had been firing them from about 50 feet agl with no major problems.27 For retard bomb delivery we would need to climb to at least 150 feet: this was not calculated to enhance life-expectancy in this kind of target area.

Most attacks were from a shallow dive; however, in the early 1980s 1(F) Squadron was given clearance to carry out rocket attacks from level flight at about 100 feet agl. This technique had been shown in trials to give a far better chance of hitting targets that stood up above the surrounding terrain32

The Pop-Up was from ingress height (as low as possible) to a minimum of about 100 feet. The cluster bomb pattern was ineffective if delivered from a lower height. See Appendix 3 - Ground Attack.

Quotes from the Book of Jerry Pook RAF Harrier Gournd Attack Falklands

On one of my first low-level sorties in Germany in the T4, I was flying the grease pen line on my map at 480 knots and 250 feet.
Quote from Harrier Boys Volume 2

To give themselves a chance of getting in under the 909 radar and avoiding detection they stepped their descent to low level, from 500 feet at 100 miles out to less than 100 feet from 50 miles until a final run-in to the target over the last 30 miles below 50 feet. Once they had the target in their sights, they’d manoeuvre to avoid the defences before streaking across at twenty-second intervals in order not to get fragged by the bombs dropped by the previous jet.

Only madmen, thought one of the defending Argentine soldiers, would fly so low. Later examination of the gun camera footage suggested that most of the Sea Harrier pilots were approaching their targets between 5 and 15 feet from the ground. With so little warning of attack, Argentine defences were hard-pressed to respond effectively.

At dusk, a pair of 801 Squadron SHARs intercepted a flight of three Canberra bombers skimming in 50 feet above the waves 150 miles northwest of Stanley. Low on fuel, the Sea Harrier pilots had to break off their attack more quickly than they’d have liked,

To complicate the job of the defences, Iveson was going to fly across the target at 30º off Squire’s track, before Pook then streaked across on the same heading as the Flight Leader. They ran in at 500 knots, just 50 feet above the gently undulating ground beneath them before climbing to a height of 150 feet for weapons release.

Tomba craned his neck to see two of the Sea Harriers swooping down from behind his right shoulder. Two predatory dark grey shapes silhouetted against the pale sky.

Flying barely 50 feet above the rolling ground below, Tomba and Micheloud broke left and right.

Alberto Philippi led the flight of A-4Q Skyhawks at no more than 50 feet above the iron seas. He set his radar altimeter alarm to sound at 30 feet. The harsh electronic tone became a constant companion to all three as they skirted around the south coast of Gran Malvina to Cape Belgrano, the southernmost tip of West Falkland, before crossing the mouth of the Sound on a bearing of 069°. Salt spray bathed the three pale grey jets as they flew low over the waves.

Quotes from Harrier 809 written by Rowland White
And there are a lot more in this book

That is why I wrote this sentence:
Ace @ 50-80'AGL (remember RAF Harriers/Jaguars and A-10's)"

[thewood1]

"That must been between 1968 and 1974."

It was. The whole point of the book was the intro of the Phantom.

The Harrier quotes are interesting. I have never seen those.

[thewood1]

And my point about my house is that any low level flying is going to be very dependent and based on terrain and knowledge of the terrain.

[Blast33]

ORIGINAL: thewood1

And my point about my house is that any low level flying is going to be very dependent and based on terrain and knowledge of the terrain.

Where the Falkland Islands known terrain to the Harrier pilots? I think not.

Here a qoute of a F-18 pilot doing a show-of-fore in Afghanistan:
As soon as the order was passed, our planes dropped thousands of feet in altitude in seconds. Skimming through the mountains at two hundred feet off the farm fields, we raced toward the Taliban’s location, executing a sneak pass at 500-plus knots. We swooped over Taliban terrorists like birds of prey dropping in for the kill. As per our briefed game plan, our jet and our wingman’s jet came in from different angles so the enemy wouldn’t know where we were coming from, so we could minimize our chances of being shot down.

Did they perform a training flight to observe any obstacles, no they did not. They went in where the SEALs where at that moment in time.


This discussion is now solely on you and me. And it is time to end this.
Mister thewood1 you are the only one left, arguing against it, and that is also an argument.
Wish you the best! And a good time enjoying CMO.
Blast33

[c3k]

For modern relevance:

"In a similar vein, a Ukrainian Su-24 fighter pilot told Armey about the time he was hit over Donbas by a missile fired by a man-portable air defense system (MANPADS) yet managed to land with his Su-24 on fire. Other pilots recalled flying a mere 50 to 100 feet above the ground to get close to a target while avoiding enemy surface-to-air missiles. For context, the best U.S. Air Force F-16 fighter pilots train at 100 feet above the ground, and while they probably could go lower in combat, it’s generally not worth the risk in training, Armey said."

From: https://taskandpurpose.com/news/ukraine ... ht-russia/