Dutch Sending Three F-16 Jets To Find Missing Teen (Natalee Holloway)

Yahoo News ^ | PETER PRENGAMAN

[tang-soo]

Vipers as search planes? They've got to be kidding. What a desperate bunch of numb-nuts running the show.

Vipers? THe F-16's nickname is the Falcom - at least in the USAF. The F-16 can be equipped with infra red equipment that may bring fruit.

[tang-soo]

Vipers as search planes? They've got to be kidding. What a desperate bunch of numb-nuts running the show.

Vipers? THe F-16's nickname is the Falcom - at least in the USAF. The F-16 can be equipped with infra red equipment that may bring fruit.

[Spktyr]

Doesn't matter, a shallow grave will show up at night in IR for months.

[txhurl]

You can actually locate shallow graves with IR systems,

Thanks, good possibility.

[alloysteel]

"Searching" for a missing person with supersonic-capable aircraft hardly seems to be an appropriate response, as the craft would be passing over almost too swiftly to make anything like an effective estimate of something "down there" being the missing girl.

The remains COULD possibly wash up on the beach somewhere in northeastern Brazil....

The pull of the tides is both swift and far reaching, and that much organic matter would attract a number of scavenger creatures in the sea.

[Chode]

yeah, but the body will be the same ambient temp as as the dirt around the body... and the plane will be moving kinda fast for something that small... in a helo i'd understand, but not F-16's unless it's all recorded for later computer analysis

[tang-soo]

I know what FLIR is. What is LANTIRN?

Low Altitude Navigation and Targeting Infrared for Night. I worked for General Dynamics (F-16) then Martin Marietta during the 80s when it was under development. IT's a pretty awesome system.

[Recovering Ex-hippie]

This is unreal. And getting more unreal every day.

[SIDENET]

Holland will send three F-16 warplanes rigged with search equipment to find Natalee Holloway

I couldn't read past this sentence because I was laughing too hard.

[buccaneer81]

Among the flight crews, Falcon has never been fully accepted. Viper has been the unofficial nickname for years. (I'm an Air Force brat.)

[spetznaz]

The F-16s name is indeed the Falcon, but its pilots prefer to call it the Viper. Kind of similar to how the A-10 Thunderbolt is called the Warthog, or how the B52 Stratofortress is called the B-U-F-F.

[operation clinton cleanup]

This may work if they put the 3 suspects in front of the 3 F-16's air intakes and throttle up during interrogation,

[Libloather]

This is a joke, right?

This was listed as a story on Yahoo. The HUGE unanswered question still remains - just how many F-16s are owned by the Dutch? Six? They must be having some slow 'insurgent' days there...

[dk/coro]

You are being too kind to these clods. *S*

I wish the State Department would lock down that sordid protectorate from ANY further American tourist trade ufn.

That would really bring some rain !!

[Spktyr]

That's probably what they're going to be doing, and I suspect the 16's will be cruising around at about 300mph.

IIRC, I think this is actually Holland's best airborne recon system - they're heavily invested in '16's and don't have much by way of rotary-wing assets. I don't know that they have any choppers that can mount a LANTIRN pod or that have FLIR systems of the required sensitivity.

[solitas]

*I* wanna see their infrared system system that can differentiate an ambient-temperature corpse from its ambient-temperature surroundings.

[buccaneer81]

I read about it from an earlier post. It seems pretty cool. I was aware of FLIR, but not LANTIRN.

[tang-soo]

infrared works on heat, how much body heat do they think is left in a dead body laying around for a month??? please...

Infrared is great at detecting recently disturbed ground. If she was buried somewhere in a shallow grave, it will stick out like a sore thumb.

[operation clinton cleanup]

The F-16s name is indeed the Falcon, but its pilots prefer to call it the Viper.

American pilots?? I thought Vipers flew off the battlestar Gallactica!

[Spktyr]

Also, unless you steamroller the grave afterwards (and, by the way, that also shows up on IR, just not nearly as long), the soil density is lower in a shallow grave and thus it cools off faster and heats up slower than the surrounding soil - and the difference is visible on IR.