Air Defence System

As both Russia and the Ukraine has found recently, you are unlikely to knock out everything when the airspace is saturated with relatively cheap drones along with the munitions that do the serious damage.

It will be something like the full air coverage against attack in the USA in the 1960s but still the UK nuked America (twice).

Well no, they will normally explode in the air, or not explode at all.

As a 'controlled explosion' destroys a bomb by disassembling it before it can go bang.

Of course until El Donaldo canme to power, no one actually *wanted* to attack the USA.

Oh well..

Thank you for that, I hadn't seen it before :-)

Those were the days our technology led the world. I remember being on holiday in Malta when a flight of 4 Vulcans (from memory painted white) flew over the Golden Sands hotel, awesome!

Build a system to knock everything out of the sky and the sneaky bastards will just cyber attack space x and knock out all the satellites. With Trump now giving all US contracts to Musk for their security he creates an easy target. :)

It is a monumental clusterfuck.

Well, technical and social evolution will sort out what works better from what doesn't work at all.

UKs massive laser weapons look promising

HaHaHaHa! Nice one!

There used to be several countries which would have liked to attack the US. It's just that the field have become overcrowded of late.

I can remember being right undeneath a Vulcan which was "hedgehopping" in the west of Scotland. It even had to bank to avoid hitting a Decca Navigator mast. It was noisy!

There is a Vulcan at the Newark Air Museum. I visited there around 9 years ago and was fortunate enough to take the cockpit tour (carried out by the squadron commander who landed it there many years earlier). It was an amazing experience but I'm not sure if those tours are done any more. If they are, and you're in the area, it's worth seeing.

They are advertising a tour of a vulcan cockpit (for a fee) at Southend on Sea airport on 15th June 2025 / 17 August 2025 / 28 September 2025 /

Did one, as member of the CCF, at RAF Gaydon in the late 1950s.

I recall a flying display at Finningley in the 60s, featuring a scramble of 3 Vulcans, and that sound really shook your body.

The Lightning doing a low pass and rapid climb was another highlight. I have been inside the Vulcan at Newark, and certainly wouldn't fancy 16 hours travelling backwards in those cramped conditions.

This is a great story, even if you know the ending:

Beautiful, thank you :-)

We went to watch the Last Flight as it passed near us in East Anglia, and due to a local storm, it diverted from about a mile away to directly overhead. Perfect! There used to be a Vulcan at Barksfield Air Force Base in Louisiana, it might still be there. But it was not being well looked after, just sitting out in the hot Louisiana sun.

The last flight of one stopped at Southend airport (28th June 2015) - I went out in the car to try and get to a good vantage point - but it was gridlock. In the end I went home, only to catch a glimpse of its approach and realise it was going to fry overhead. So I was able to stop at the side of the road and get a short video of it directly above.

The irony was that it flew straight up our road and over our house, so I would have got a better view just by waiting in the garden!

A basic HE weapon would like explode in the air. Anything more complex that requires complicated triggering (e.g. a nuke) would be probably be destroyed before it can detonate properly.

(if you are trying to tackle ICBMs, then the best time to hit them is in the ascent "boost" phase before they get into orbit. They are slowest, and most vulnerable as a single target at this stage.

Once they are in orbit they typically split into multiple re-entry vehicles, each of which can contain multiple warheads (or dummies). Some are also steerable on the descent - so much harder to intercept at that point. (although there are systems that can do it for at least some)

I remember one of those at a North Weald air show in the early 60s. It was flying below 500 feet and then did a vertical climb with its afterburners at full power. You didn't so much hear it as feel it! There was a similar experience when I was at Alconbury in the mid-70s. I was walking along the road just where the airstrip ended, and happened to glance down the strip to see an F-16 coming towards me. I knew what was going to happen so I covered my ears with my hands and after a few seconds the F-16 appeared less than 100 feet overhead and did an almost vertical climb. I was shaken from head to foot with the immense power of that jet!

Yes, I was surprised how little space there was in the cockpit. I doubt anyone over 12 stone could have been able to manoeuvre themselves between the seats (which from memory were only about 8" apart!). The pilot (Squadron Leader - later Wing Commander - Colin McDougall) giving me the tour said he'd actually travelled as an additional member of the crew on one flight and basically had to sit at the top of the entrance hatch for a few hours as that was the only space available! There was little enough room for 5, let alone 6 bodies in the cockpit. He'd flown the Vulcan into Newark - its last flight - and it was more than a little hairy as there was snow and ice around. There was some question as to whether or not the airstrip was long enough to take the Vulcan if braking might be an issue.

What I found most memorable was something I hadn't thought about - the special window blinds to protect the crew from the nuclear flash of the bomb they'd dropped. I was also told that Lancaster pilots would have found much of the Vulcan familiar! One other thing was that I hadn't realised just how big a Vulcan was. Look at the aerial photo at

By the way, the cockpit tour cost me all of £1!!!

Spitfire/Hurricane, Mosquito, Lancaster, and Vulcan. Britain has always had the most memorable military planes.

When I was living in Alconbury, I thought I'd have a good chance of getting to the Lakenheath air show early, as it was less than an hour's drive away. I hadn't reckoned with the traffic arrangements - those coming from far away had a direct route into the airfield. Those coming from more nearby were led all the way round, with the traffic barely moving. After two hours I gave up and drove back to Alconbury, very peeved. After getting home I was stretching my legs after sitting in the car for so long when I heard a very loud and unfamiliar noise from an aircraft of some sort. Looking up, I saw the aircraft I was hoping to see at Lakenheath practising its flight - the SR-71 Blackbird! I was able to watch it for around 10 minutes, just flying around. It was a remarkable sight which more than made up for the bad start to the day.

This massively skewed cost-exchange ratio prompted observers to propose that an arms race was inevitable."

Or at least, to see who could stack dollar bills into a taller pile.

It means, basically, that you need 20x the assets of your enemy.

Paul