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| Science & Technology |
| The Amazing Inflatable U.S. Air Force F-16 |
| 2015-09-28 |
| The U.S. Air Force has gotten pretty lax about defending its air bases and parked warplanes from aerial bombardment. But that wasn't always the case, as RAND analyst Alan Vick explains in a new study. "In the late 1980s, the USAF developed inflatable decoy aircraft like the F-16 shown in [the photo below], but the Cold War ended before they were procured in numbers." The Air Force would have stationed the balloon F-16s around its airfields in Europe, hoping to draw Soviet attacks away from actual F-16s. Inflatable decoys have a long history. They were especially popular during World War II. The Allies even propped up an entire inflatable army in England to distract the Germans from the real Normandy landing preparations. |
| Posted by:Blossom Unains5562 |
| #5 And - the best is - they can out-fight the F-35!!!! |
| Posted by: Lone Ranger 2015-09-28 21:57 |
| #4 I heard that story. I think it was the Germans in the Netherlands and the Brits dropped the fake bomb. I'm not sure it was all inflatable but they created a fake base. How does stuff like that not find its way into movies? |
| Posted by: rjschwarz 2015-09-28 11:50 |
| #3 I've heard about this. Someone made an inflatable base - including inflatable tanks, and trucks and cars and even inflatable people. Worked really well until the enemy came along and dropped an inflatable bomb on it.... |
| Posted by: CrazyFool 2015-09-28 11:26 |
| #2 Fill it with helium and power/control it with a drone and then let the video slip out. It'd be awesome as the Russians and others tried to figure out how we made an F-16 VSTOL with our new anti-grav tech. |
| Posted by: rjschwarz 2015-09-28 10:26 |
| #1 Ah Patton, the most feared enemy Allied Commander on all fronts by the Germans during WW2. |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2015-09-28 01:05 |