Air Force Uses Falcons To Protect Falcons

coondoggie writes "Birds and high-performance jet aircraft don't mix. So at a base in Germany, the Air Force is fighting birds with birds — specifically trained falcons that patrol the base and help eliminate at least some of the feathered threat to the F-16 Fighting Falcons and other aircraft."

Comments

Misleading title

[UninformedCoward]

Yea...not about the Air Force using F-16s to attack poachers...

Re:Misleading title

[jellomizer]

What you never watch Flocks News?

Or just watch birds where when they invade an other birds area and they are attacked by a swarm of smaller birds.

Re:Misleading title

[Briden]

i think they are called "pilots" actually.

And have been for decades

[WatcherXP]

Wow, decades old news on the front page of slashdot

Re:And have been for decades

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, this is standard procedure in a lot of civil airports. I saw it in Jose Newbery city airport in Buenos Aires.

Re:And have been for decades

[causality]

Wow, decades old news on the front page of slashdot

I ask this as someone who knows next to nothing about jet engines and nothing at all about the precise kind of airflow they require for their intake. Having said that ... how difficult would it be to design some kind of screen or grating to protect the intake vents of an engine so that birds could not get sucked into the engine and damage it? Once such a design is perfected it could become standard equipment and the cost would probably be negligible compared to what is already paid to design and manufacture a jet engine. We routinely try things much more ridiculous than this in the name of saving lives.

Is there some kind of insurmountable aerodynamic technical difficulty that prevents us from doing this?

Re:And have been for decades

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is split between an aerodynamic issue and a much simpler physics issue.

The physics issue is that at landing the F-16 is going somewhere between 120-170 knots (aprox. 120-200 MPH), and it would take an awfull thick grate to keep birds out of the intakes at those speeds. The delta-v (difference in speed... ugg, my physics teacher would kill me for that) is so large that even a lightweight bird is going to go through anything you could describe as a screen.

The aerodynamic issue is that if you put that much blockage right in front of the engine intake you are going to create a lot of drag (going into your engine), and are going to play hell with the aeordynamic flow right at the intake meaning more air is going to bypass the intake (a really bad thing for jet engines).

Re:And have been for decades

[idontgno]

how difficult would it be to design some kind of screen or grating to protect the intake vents of an engine

Here is pretty much the canonical list of outcomes:

• Bird hits screen, both bird and screen go into the engine. Similar to status quo, except now there are solid metal or composite bits among the turbine blades.
• Bird hits screen, splats. Engine stalls because of sudden disruption in intake airflow. For an F-16, this is a problem, 'cuz it's single-engine. (In the course of my military career, I've heard the Viper jokingly referred to as the Lawn Dart for that very reason.)
• Bird never hits screen, but engine performance is continuously degraded because of the screen's affect on airflow and intake pressure. Requires serious redesign in order to compensate for a deliberate design decision based on flight-of-safety considerations. Never mind that having less available power and (perhaps) elevated stall susceptibility is a combat-safety issue (i.e., your hazard level in combat is directly related to the performance superiority of your aircraft over your adversary).
• Bird never hits screen, miraculous design work restores full combat specification performance to your warplane, bird hits canopy and knocks out the pilot; unguided plane flies into terrain.

Not everything on that applies to all aircraft, but in general I don't think there's a screen material in the world that would stop birds from engine ingestion (including chunks of bird sucked through a screen) while allowing adequate airflow in a high-performance, high-bypass jet engine. And then that still leaves fuselage, canopy, wing, and empennage birdstrikes.

Re:And have been for decades

[gnieboer]

At the speeds of a jet fighter (and even at the speeds of a slow prop transport), an average goose will penetrate the leading edge of the wing, destroy the bleed air duct (also metal) underneath, tear up the wiring, and sometimes damage the next layer of structure.

Look at the first stage fan blades in an engine next time you're boarding an aircraft (they are ones in front you can see). Those are the biggest, toughest, blades in the engine. They basically are strong enough to pull the entire aircraft forward. When a big fat bird hits one, they bend and break.

Now, the newest/biggest commercial engines have a remarkable ability to absorb birds without a problem, but the more 'finicky' engines on fighter jets are much more susceptable, and of course if you've only got one engine... that's a big deal.

So my point in describing the impact power that a bird has is to illustrate that for a 'screen' to be strong enough to stop a bird would also completely block any airflow, and those engines are HUGE vacuum cleaners, and if that airflow slows too much, something called a 'compressor stall' happens, and that's generally bad and scares the crap out of the passengers (flames shoot out of the back end of the engine, etc)

Re:And have been for decades

[couchslug]

(I'm a former F-16 A/B/C/D engine weenie/crew chief.)

Maintenance issue:

Screen must be opened and closed to inspect intake and fan stage during preflight. thruflight, and postflight inspections.
Hardware and latches would be subject to wear, screen subject to fatigue cracking, and either could dump parts downstream into the engine resulting in engine damage and loss of aircraft. That's why screens used for ground runs are inspected before and after use, and their installation and removal entered in the aircraft maintenance documentation.

Weight issue:
Every pound matters in terms of performance and fuel mileage. When you hang parts on a fighter airframe, they affect Weight and Balance calculations, place stress on their attach points, and can create host of problems anticipated or otherwise.

While the concept isn't suitable to jets, helicopters are suitable for mechanical intake Foreign Object Damage mitigation systems such as EAPS:

http://www.chinook-helicopter.com/chinook/eaps1.html

Re:And have been for decades

[couchslug]

"You have to remember the intake flow to one of these engines is traveling at or near supersonic speeds."

The shape of the F-16 intake decelerates supersonic intake air to subsonic so it won't destroy the engine.

Fighter intakes

http://www.aircraftresourcecenter.com/AWA1/101-200/walk133_F4F_phantom/images/Mvc-0049.jpg

and those on the now-defunct Concorde

http://www.concordesst.com/powerplant.html

often used variable ramps to handle the problem. The F-16 does it without moving parts, quite an accomplishment at the time.

What's next?

[Drakkenmensch]

Eagles to protect eagles? Awesome! Raptors to protect raptors? KICKASS! Warhogs to protect wart... wait.

Re:What's next?

[JeanBaptiste]

wait till you find out how they protect Nimrods.

Re:What's next?

[gstoddart]

Too true! 1 [birdstrikenews.com] 2 [youtube.com]

A-10's have been documented to come home and land while they have gaping holes in most of the control surfaces, leaking hydraulic fluid,running on one engine, and god knows what else.

It's one of the most survivable aircraft I've ever heard of, and specifically built to protect the hell out of the pilot in that nearly indestructible tub.

And, it's got the scariest tank-busting gun on the planet.

All in all, for me, the coolest aircraft ever.

Re:What's next?

[TooMuchToDo]

Warthogs? You mean a puma, right? No such thing as warthogs.

Re:What's next?

[gstoddart]

I have heard, but never actually witnessed, doesn't that tank buster gun actually cause a very noticeable drop in airspeed too?

That's my understanding.

According to Wiki:

The recoil force of the GAU-8/A is 10,000 pounds-force (45 kN), which is slightly more than the output of one of the A-10's two TF34 engines (9,065 lbf / 40.3 kN each). While this recoil force is significant, in practice cannon fire only slows the aircraft a few miles per hour.

When your gun's recoil is more than the force of one of your engines ... that's an impressive gun.

Re:What's next?

[mangu]

When your gun's recoil is more than the force of one of your engines ... that's an impressive gun.

So, why don't they mount the gun backwards? The pilot could aim through a rear facing camera.

Re:What's next?

[drinkypoo]

They halved the rate of fire of the General Electric GAU-8 (around which the A-10 is designed) in order to mitigate this problem. It turns out that you don't really need over 3,000 rounds per minute to saw tanks in half with a mix of lead and DPU.

Re:What's next?

[GooberToo]

It's one of the most survivable aircraft I've ever heard of

Check out of some the stories and images from WWII. The amount of damage many of those planes received and yet still managed to some how seems impossible. Pilots landing bailing wire and bubble gum on their last breath so they could save their crew don't seem very strained once you start digging. ...and far too many belly gunners crushed...

Re:What's next?

[GooberToo]

I credit the people more so than the equipment.

Not to diminish their contribution, but you are mis-attributing a lot. The A-10 is widely considered to be far less survivable than many WWI aircraft. In fact, most all of the survivability features you attribute to the A-10 came directly from common WWII ally aircraft attributes. One of the reasons why WWII aircraft are more survivable is they didn't use extremely fragile turbines.

Historically, WWII is the apex of aircraft survivability because of our transition to jets and then again with fly by wire and hydraulics. When a new ground attack vehicle was required (aka, the A-10), they looked back in time to re-learn what made an aircraft highly survivable. And when they looked back, they almost exclusively looked at WWII aircraft. Almost all of the survivability features in the A-10 are simply re-imaginings and modernizations of WWII ideas and technology.

I can authoritatively tell you, there has yet to be an A-10 come home in anywhere near as bad of shape as many ally bombers did. Events like this, while not daily fair, were not all that uncommon.

Re:What's next?

[timeOday]

Keep in mind, though, a fantastic number of aircraft did not make it home from WWI/WWII. In an situation involving millions of people, unlikely events (like landing a trashed plane) happen all the time. WWI aircraft might have been survivable against the puny ground threats of the time, but they had nothing like the titanium bathtub. They didn't even have parachutes! Quote: "World War I fighter pilots had a typical life expectancy of several weeks while flying in combat. Several weeks. Not much at all. In terms of flying hours, a combat pilot could count on 40 to 60 hours before being killed." Doesn't your definition of survivability include actually surviving?

Old Trick

[rotide]

Nothing new. Even at JFK they tested this nearly a decade ago: http://www.cartome.org/jfk-strike.htm JFK and other airports may still be using trained Birds of Prey to scare off feed species.

old practice

[YrWrstNtmr]

This practice is at least 30 yrs old. USAF bases in England were doing this in the mid 70's. If I could be bothered to look, there are probably references much earlier than that.

Re:old practice

[pushing-robot]

According to a NASA review of the subject, falconry for bird control at airports dates back to the 1940s.

I must say this article amused me; I mean, /. regularly gives us "news" from two or three years ago... but seventy?

Re:old practice

[timeOday]

So, what are the limitations of this approach? Why are bird strikes still a problem?

Nothing new...

[i.r.id10t]

Nothing new, airports have been doing this and similar for a long time.

obligatory...

[t35t0r]

Yo dawg, I heard you like falcons, so I got you this falcon so you can use your falcons while you use your falcons!

Re:Falcons & falcons

[Anonymous Coward]

Please Stop That Stupid Habbit Of Writing Everything In Capitals...

Maybe You Mean Hobbits? :-P

Besides. It's a title, so convention is to capitalize all except the articles (like 'the'). Have you noticed that all Slashdot headings look like that?

Montreal Airport also does that

[crazyfrenchmen]

The montreal airport also does that, nothing new here.
see :http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/03/0325_030325_falconry.html

There are better ways.

[santax]

So you have an airstrip full of sidewinder maverick armed planes and you use this... That's pretty boring, albeit cheaper.

about it

[allhereforu]

it 30 yrs old practice

Not new

[jddimarco]

In the mid-1980s, I worked for a few months beside a guy whose hobby was falconry; he told me at the time that he had been employed by the Toronto Airport to use his falcon to help reduce the number of seagulls near the airport.

Leonardo International Rotary Wing Airport

[Infonaut]

Obviously you haven't been paying attention in history class. It's well known that Leonardo de Caprio's wood-and-graphite-composite corkscrew blade helicopter-Transformers were in heavy use during the early 1700s, especially in New Brunswick, East Anglia, and Muscovy. If only they had survived the onslaught of the steam-powered Brazilian Aero-Bombardment Fleet, we'd have a better historical record of those unbelievable flying machines.

Re:Leonardo International Rotary Wing Airport

[Infonaut]

Maybe we should crowdsource production of the novel. A squadron of Slashdotters armed with a few Beowulf clusters do the trick.

Unobvious sources make for bad leads...

[plcurechax]

Wow, a story about airplanes and airports from Network World, perhaps that should of been a huge clue that it wasn't really news, novel, or particularly interesting.

And the RCAF or Canadian Air Force routinely uses them as well for their airplanes as well.

Re:Falcons & falcons

[sco08y]

You want to tell the NY Times they've been wrong for the past century?

Sure, why not?

"There is no famine or actual starvation nor is there likely to be."

--New York Times, Nov. 15, 1931, page 1

"Any report of a famine in Russia is today an exaggeration or malignant propaganda."
--New York Times, August 23, 1933

"Enemies and foreign critics can say what they please. Weaklings and despondents at home may groan under the burden, but the youth and strength of the Russian people is essentially at one with the Kremlin's program, believes it worthwhile and supports it, however hard be the sledding."

--New York Times, December 9, 1932, page 6

"You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs."

--New York Times, May 14, 1933, page 18

"There is no actual starvation or deaths from starvation but there is widespread mortality from diseases due to malnutrition."

--New York Times, March 31, 1933, page 13

Nothing to see here

[carvell]

Standard passenger airports in the UK have used birds of prey for this purpose for decades...

I'm sure the same is probably true for airports all over the world.