True or Urban Myth?

Fratton Fred

There is a lovely "True" story I recall, about a police speed trap in Cumbria.

Beware: Speed Trap Ahead
Two British traffic patrol officers from North Berwick, Northumberland, UK, were involved in an unusual incident, while checking for speeding motorists on the A1 Great North Road .

One of the officers used a hand-held radar device to check the speed of a vehicle approaching over the crest of a hill, and was surprised when the speed was recorded at over 300mph. The machine then stopped working and the officers were not able to reset it. The radar had in fact latched on to a NATO Tornado fighter jet over the North Sea, which was engaged in a low-flying exercise over the Border district.

Back at police headquarters the chief constable fired off a complaint to the RAF [Royal Air Force] Liaison Office. Back came the reply in true laconic RAF style.

'Thank you for your message, which allows us to complete the file on this incident. You may be interested to know that the tactical computer in the Tornado had automatically locked on to your 'hostile radar equipment' and sent a jamming signal back to it. Furthermore, the Sidewinder Air-to-ground missiles aboard the fully-armed aircraft had also locked on to the target. Fortunately the Dutch pilot flying the Tornado responded to the missile status alert intelligently and was able to override the automatic protection system before the missile was launched'.

I love this story and I desperately want it to be true, but it sounds too exagerated. Can anyone shed any light on this, is it true or an urban myth?

neilled

The Sidewinder is an air to air missile......................

Doctor DooM

There's another thread on this and i recall there being about 10 things wrong with the story... sorry.

Mulan

I've nothing to add to this but it has triggered off a story I heard the other day.

This guy I know from work told me that he drinks with about 4 or 5 mates and sometime this real "know All" bloke joins their company. This guy constantly talks about how big his car is and about all the gadgets in it, the new TV, the new Ipod etc etc . we all know a guy like that dont we!!. Well that converstation went to grass cutting and the rest of the lads were complaing that the grass is growing at some rate and keeping up with it was a bit of a dose. The other guy then says that he's no problem with that as he has a ride on and it take no time.
With that, fed up with the bulls**t, one of the lads asks him did he hear about the new ride on mower with SAT NAV. He swollowed it all. they told him that you type in the dimensions of the garden and the sat nav tells ya when to turn, brilliant!!!
Well they left him with that anyway.
2 weeks later they were back in the pub and had all forgotten about it when he brought it up with one of the lads and said
He went to the local garden centre and asked about it and fair play to the guy working there he told him that the're not in Ireland yet.!!!
They all nearly pissed themselves laughing.

What a yarn!!!

Latchy

Dont know if that story is true OP and cant shed any light on it but if it's not true then it should be ...........i love it

Manic Moran

neilled wrote: »

The Sidewinder is an air to air missile......................

Unless you change the seeker head, in which case you get a air-to-ground Anti-Radiation Missile.



However, to my knowledge, the only users of the Sidewinder ARM (Shortened, cleverly, to "Sidearm" were the US Navy and Marine Corps. The latter of which has Harriers.

Still, story is pretty much still bunk.

NTM

Manic Moran

Mulan wrote: »

Well that converstation went to grass cutting and the rest of the lads were complaing that the grass is growing at some rate and keeping up with it was a bit of a dose. The other guy then says that he's no problem with that as he has a ride on and it take no time.
With that, fed up with the bulls**t, one of the lads asks him did he hear about the new ride on mower with SAT NAV. He swollowed it all. they told him that you type in the dimensions of the garden and the sat nav tells ya when to turn, brilliant!!!
Well they left him with that anyway.
2 weeks later they were back in the pub and had all forgotten about it when he brought it up with one of the lads and said
He went to the local garden centre and asked about it and fair play to the guy working there he told him that the're not in Ireland yet.!!!
They all nearly pissed themselves laughing.

The automated lawnmower by Ambrogio retails for about $3,000. Electrolux, Husqvarna and Belrobotics also make them, and iRobot, who make the Scooba and Roomba mopping bot and vacuuming bot are also designing one. They're not ride-ons, but depending on how specific he was in his description "Mower that mows the lawn on its own", the garden centre guy would have been quite serious.

See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IaiWf3Nglb4 for examples.

NTM

Mulan

I'm sure thats true about those products but can you see the funny side of a guy sitting on a ride on with a sat nav on it waiting for it to tell him to turn or he'll hit his garden wall!!!

Jay_08

Taken from a source that disproves this (even though we all know its fake now. Link at bottom)

The story is almost certainly false for a number of highly technical reasons. First off, police radar is relatively weak — it doesn't need to be strong, and you wouldn't want to fry passing motorists or the police officers who use it daily. These units don't have much range; a few miles or so is sufficient since the police officer needs to be in line-of-sight with the vehicle he’d like to track. Next, a number of different radar types (pulse, continuous-scan, doppler, and so on) are used for different purposes. Doppler radar is used for tracking the speed of an object, whether it's a moving automobile or a particularly threatening thunderstorm. Pulse units are used for aerial and naval navigation as well as military applications; in the latter case their ON/OFF nature makes it slightly more difficult for an enemy to identify their source.

Additionally, there are different types of scan profiles in use, such as circular, unidirectional, bi-directional, helical, raster, palmer, conical, and track-while-scan. Police radar units are directional ones that send pulses in a relatively narrow cone in the direction the officer points the device. (This type of radar is used to prevent the operators from being exposed to the devices' high-frequency radiation over long periods of time.) Therefore, it's pretty unlikely that an officer pointing a hand-held unit at an incoming car would also manage to illuminate a flying aircraft — an intervening hill, a large building, or even heavy plant growth would block any stray signal. Surface-to-air missile (SAM) radars behave differently than handheld police units. Also, each type or model of radar gives off very specific characteristics, and the onboard systems in military planes can differentiate among these types of threats (e.g., a SAM-2 vs. a ZSU vs. an F-16). To quote from Info-Strategies’ web site, "Every radar produces a radio frequency (RF) signal with specific characteristics that differentiate it from all other signals and define its capabilities and limitations." Excepting a case of incredible coincidence, the police radar wouldn't be on the "threat" list.

Also, SAM radar units are also relatively short range systems (30-50km), since the usual practice is to employ longer-range tracking stations to keep watch on incoming aircraft, then alert the SAM unit in the aircraft’s flight path of the impending arrival of the hostile plane. Building on the above, we also need to remember that radar is in common use all over the world, and Europe sports some densely-packed airspace. All aircraft are tracked by large, fixed stations in order to prevent mid-air collisions and other accidents. Thus, the Tornado in question was most likely being "painted" by multiple radar stations at various airports around the UK, and possibly also from the continent. A puny police traffic-enforcement radar signal wouldn’t even be noticed in all the noise. Next, and very important to our understanding of this legend, the systems on military aircraft will not automatically arm and fire offensive ordnance. This is the case to specifically prevent incidents such as the one described in this story. There's no way that the Tornado's systems would auto-arm a missile, much less try to fire it without a human "go" signal.

At any rate, a human operator in a non-wartime situation would need explicit permission to fire at an enemy position; if the pilot in our story was alerted of a possible "threat" radar signal by an onboard system, he or she could simply confirm the source by checking the direction from which the signal was emanating. As the police unit was outside any military firing range it would be obvious from the start that the signal was not a threat or was merely a spurious contact. Lastly, there are glaring factual errors in the story itself. The "Sidewinder" is a heat-seeking air-to-air missile (AAM) designed for short-range strikes against attacking aircraft. In other variants of the story, an "ASRAAM" (also a heat-seeking AAM) is mentioned. Neither would ever be used against a ground-based target; instead an ALARM (Air-Launched Anti-Radar Missile), AGM-65A "Maverick," or AS.30(L) air-to-surface missile (ASM) would be fired. Also, the act of "jamming" radar does not involve disabling the unit itself, but rather forces it to produce inaccurate or widely fluctuating results (or no results at all) in order to confuse the operator and any incoming missiles are attempting to "lock" onto the target. This urban legend seems to be a classic "warning against technology" tale, cautioning us against the development of systems that could somehow escape human control and cause havoc.

Compare this tale with Cruise Control, in which a misunderstanding of the operation of an automotive device leads to a serious accident. Also think of the Y2K craze, or even to recent stories of the purported existence of an automated "Armageddon" system called "Dead Hand" in Russia (which was supposedly about to fire all Soviet missiles on 1/1/2000 after the computers failed). All are about our fear of modern technology and how a possible lack of human control in a given situation spells disaster.

http://www.snopes.com/horrors/techno/radar.asp

Manic Moran

I should email Snopes the info on the Sidewinder ARM...

NTM

Local-womanizer

I heard a story,again in England, a cop had set up on a road at night,heard a car coming but could'ent see it,got a reading of like 170 or something.Same thing happened again on the same road to the same police man a number of times until one night he had backup on up the road.Well they heard the car coming,managed to stop it and it was a RAF in a rented porsche driving with the lights off and with NVGs on!

Havent a clue if is true or not but guessing if it was true he wasent in the RAF much longer!

motherfunker

On the subject of military urban myths, has anyone heard about the Irish ranger getting swallowed by an anaconda during jungle training? Is this true?