HeyEng

One of the pilots was a Squadron Mate of mine but his name hasn’t officially been released yet. I was an FE on the DC-10 for about a year and I don’t know if the MD-11 was similar but I was never impressed with the aircraft especially the slat system. For an aircraft that was so dependent on leading edge slats there was a lack of backups to prevent them from retracting if you lost hydraulics! Pictures have surfaced of the number one engine and nacelle cowl laying off the side of the runway and I have heard from the grapevine that another engine was damaged as well.

OA-1K crash landing, luckily no injuries due in no part to the rugged airframe. https://www.twz.com/air/air-forces-crop-duster-converted-into-attack-plane-crash-lands-in-field

Here is the full story: https://abcnews.go.com/amp/US/mystery-object-hits-united-airlines-flights-windshield-36000/story?id=126705192

You are right, I thought these were limited to slow movers like the A-10 and helicopters due to the barn door aerodynamics of the rocket pod but they have been used on F-16 and F/A-18. These would definitely have been a more cost effective answer when we shot down those Chinese Spy balloons over Lake Huron, Alaska, Canada, and North Carolina.

Bothe the War Zone and the Mover and Gronky show report an A-10 sporting two drone kills on its nose. The kills were allegedly performed by APKWS II 2.75” (70mm) laser guided rockets. If true this offers a much more cost effective alternative to shooting down drones.

To be fair, the Danes said that some of these drones are aircraft and others still remain unidentified but it looks likes they have backed off labeling them as “attacks”. According to this video many of these drone incursions predate the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Now Denmark is saying the drones were just ordinary aircraft flying over the airport! I guess no one bothered to ask the tower or ATC?

Apparently Germany is now getting the mysterious drone incursion treatment as well with no clear answers from where they are originating from or how to deal with them and probably too proud to ask the Polish.

The suspicion is that these drones are Russian but my bet is on FAA drones like the ones over Lagney and Wright-Patterson!

On an unrelated topic, the Danish PM is pretty hot!

I wondered about this as well. This is most likely a Mylar balloon, but did it show up as some sort of credible threat due to the reflective surface? You would think the speed would be a giveaway since it could only “fly” as fast as the winds could push it but then again drones could fly quite slow so maybe a case of better safe than sorry.

I have been watching this development over the last few days with many European News outlets calling these drones over airports “attacks” since they are disrupting critical airspace. It’s hard to judge the size but they appear to be much larger than the typical quadcopter size of hobby drones! https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4g96gvql99o.amp

One way to put a positive spin on this incident is that there was a successful zero-zero ground ejection with little injury to the occupant who had little to no training on said seat! Does the F-15 use ACES II?