I’ve sledded into missiles a surprising number of times. It feels a little cathartic, if not slightly embarrassing, to admit that. When an enemy radar locks onto your fighter jet, a Radar Warning Receiver (RWR; think radar detector) makes some noise to alert you to the fact that you’re being targeted. Much like when you’re speeding and the highway police light you up with a radar gun, it’s not a good feeling—or, um, so I’m told. In a fighter though, ignoring those warning tones means that in lieu of attempting to talk your way out of a speeding ticket, you get called dead in training (frustrating), or actually killed in real life (inconvenient). Sledding into a missile means ignoring all the indications—cockpit warning tones and lights, radio calls from airborne control and/or other fighters, the hairs on the back of your neck—and continuing on your present course. Inbound missiles love non-maneuvering targets; predictable equals easy to kill. There are occasions when this happens in ignorance (broken RWR, for instance), but sometimes it just happens .
Read the full article on Hagerty.com:
https://www.hagerty.com/media/opinion/the-tesla-driving-fighter-pilot-who-sledded-into-a-missile/
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