Comment by tialaramex | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tialaramex | Hacker News Reader

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"By Dawn's Early Light" is a movie with James Earl Jones as "Alice" the general aboard an EC-135 carrying out the "Looking Glass" mission (a 24/7 airborne command and control, now obsoleted) after a surprise attack. Jones' character decides to ram Air Force One to eliminate the hawkish Secretary of the Interior who has assumed the role of President - and thus resolve a deadlock so that the actual President (who has survived, badly wounded and unable to prove his identity to those aboard Air Force One) can countermand US forces and prevent a retaliatory strike which would inevitably cause World War III.

It's made for TV but I thought it did a surprisingly good job. I don't know whether you actually could chase and collide with the plane normally designated Air Force One in an EC-135, but certainly I'd bet on military pilots to give it their best shot if their commander explained the consequences otherwise.

Can an EC-135 escape the US’s own best air-to-air and surface-to-air missiles† being launched in a single mass-bombardment toward it with full penaids, by craft running the US’s best ECCM? Because, whatever they’re nominally flying, half the point of AF1 is aerial territory denial around the principal craft, so I’d assume they’re kitted out just for that task. Pretty hard to ram.

† Presumably, doctrine for a “Looking Glass” mission would have AF1 plan flight paths that bring them near still-executive-controlled surface missile batteries. Unsure if anything before a modern 5G craft could bring those batteries directly under its targeting control, though, rather than relying on the pilot making contact with living hands on the ground.

You probably could not, unless you set your EC-135 up way ahead of AF1 and took a crazy pursuit angle and timed the impact perfectly. The maximum speeds of the two planes are within 10mph of each other (at least, a base C-135 and a base 747. I'm sure there's some variance between those and an EC-135 and AF1 due to equipment loadouts and whatnot).

Hm, you don't need a crazy pursuit angle if you're way up ahead. Just use your time advantage to climb until you've exceeded AF1's altitude. Now, in a shallow dive, your speed will exceed AF1's.

Careful, you don't want to overspeed this old airframe. We're running a flutter risk here and loaded down with ECM gear. These struts might not hold.

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