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Cold War revisited

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Max the Mad Russian said:
Yeah, this is my article in USNWC Review?
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Tip of the hat! I saw it when it first was published and pull it up from time to time...always a great read.

Here’s the sacrificial Badger (mentioned in article) that showed up in Ocean Safari 85. I intercepted the Badger on heels of 2 Bear D aircraft there was also a Cub ELINT aircraft operating along the coastline of Norway 26095
 
At first glance it is strangely enough that no people have tried to describe that "Soviet National Anti-Carrier Doctrine" earlier. But after some research it became clear to me that no one in Maritime Missile Aviation (those same Backfires) believed in precise targeting for their routine antiship missiles, and all they have as a real solution was that same Kh-22 missile with 200 kT nuke warhead. Every military man who should solve essentially tactical question with nuke understood, I'm pretty sure, that this won't be the case even once. So why worry?
 
View of Tu-95RTs (Bear D) from 392 ODRAP from our TARPS pod using the KS-87B forward oblique 6” camera. This was my first encounter with Bear D during Northern Wedding 82. We had just transitioned to Tomcat in early 82 and picked up the photo reconnaissance mission. Our skipper had pods semipermanently mounted to train aircrews as well as e revise the Mx and intel components. I was school trained as first aircrew as VF-101 stood up its syllabus. We ultimately had 4 aircrew school trained that the skipper then crewed with others to spread expertise so I was in midst of training my pilot as to various cameras installed when we got this opportunity to capture a Bear.26104
 
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HeyJoe said:
Tip of the hat! I saw it when it first was published and pull it up from time to time...always a great read.

Here’s the sacrificial Badger (mentioned in article) that showed up in Ocean Safari 85. I intercepted the Badger on heels of 2 Bear D aircraft there was also a Cub ELINT aircraft operating along the coastline of Norway View attachment 26095
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What I find astounding is that the PRC still flies the Badger after all these years.
 
Thanks a lot:)

HeyJoe said:
Here’s the sacrificial Badger (mentioned in article) that showed up in Ocean Safari 85
Click to expand...

Look at dorsal turret. There's a blister just before it, see? Usually a crew's overwater jet navigator's battle station, useful for celestial navigation, but with the gear to control that turret manually. The reserve method for these two guns. Mainly this turret as well as underbelly and tail ones were operated by tail gunner remotely, and there was a single forward-firing gun in pilot's control. Of total, seven 23-mm barrels. Scary, right? But when in comes to a real world deal, that basic remote control was usually dismantled, Nav had neither proper training to use his neighbour turret nor time to do so, so the only two guns operable was a tail installation. Not so far from early A3D Skywarrior.
 
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Max the Mad Russian said:
Not so far from early A3D Skywarrior.
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Thanks @Max the Mad Russian ...I've learned a few things from this thread.
  1. @HeyJoe has a shitload of awesome photos (Kinda already knew that)
  2. Max knows how to write
  3. The A-3 had, at some point in its life, a tailgun.
  4. NTA-3B was used to train A-6 BNs (before the TC-4C) and used to test the F-14D radar
 
HeyJoe said:
I was in midst of training my pilot as to various cameras installed when we got this opportunity to capture a Bear.
Click to expand...

Was that tail ginner smiling and gestureing at you? A conscript PO or sometimes seasoned CPO or even WO, they liked to amuse F-4 and F-14 boys with some hand language, knowing that's no means for the plane's commander to see them. Beside them on D-model was ELINT operator, a JO WSO (O-2 usually), often the lingvo course grad who could speak English but his main real job was to catch some broadcast wave with some Western music and tape that and then lure the local chicks with having a tapes of Pink Floyd or ABBA or, later, some glam rock. The tail of Bear D was very funny place to "serve the country" during final decade of USSR:D
 
Max the Mad Russian said:
Yeah, this is my article in USNWC Review?
Click to expand...
"Lieutenant Commander Tokarev joined the Soviet navy in 1988, graduating from the Kaliningrad naval college as a communications officer. In 1994 he transferred to the Russian coast guard. His last active-duty service was on the staff of the 4th coast guard Division, in the Baltic Sea."

This is you @Max the Mad Russian? All this time I thought you were posting from a Russian troll farm. What have you been doing since you left the Coast Guard?
 
HeyJoe said:
View attachment 26090
When we flew out to USS America in fall of 1985, the deck was not ready for us so we were instructed to hold. I looked down and saw the recently commissioned Lira AGI (NATO = Balzam) trailing America right in the sea lane outside Hampton Roads. It was our first encounter with this new class of purpose built Intelligence Gathering Ships so I knew our “Spies” would be delighted to have a color image to send up their chain back to Suitland. I later asked the flight lead about what he thought of the rare spotting and being more of a Tennis player (world ranked and All American out of USNA), he said “What’s so rare about a cruise ship, there’s lots of them coming and going?” He’s still playing tennis and coaching to this day!
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In 2012 near Korea we launched from ESSEX and were supposed to go to a range inland in Korea. But we couldn’t get a response from the Koreans so the flight lead (my CO) decided we would switch to armed reconnaissance and go find a ship to simulate attacking to fill the time. Well we found a ship, and it was one of those. We spent about half an hour doing simulated PGM and strafe runs on it and some low passes. We had no idea the nationality of the ship and assumed it was Korean since we were part of a big exercise with them. When we got back to the ship, my CO said to take the pod footage to intel to give them something to do. The rest of the exercise the Russians got a lot of attention.
 
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