I wonder if this is true?

Two police traffic patrol officers from North Berwick, east of Edinburgh, Scotland were involved in an unusual incident, while checking for speeding motorists on the A1 Great North Road.
One of the officers (who were not named) used a hand-held radar device to check the speed of a vehicle over the crest of a hill. He was surprised when the speed was recorded at 326mph. The radar machine then stopped working and the officers were unable to reset it.
The radar had in fact locked onto a NATO Tornado fighter jet flying over the North Sea, which was engaged in a low-flying exercise over the Borders district.
Back at police headquarters the chief constable fired off a stiff complaint to the RAF Liaison office.
Back came the reply in true laconic RAF style.
“Thank you for your message, which allows us to close the file on this matter. You may be interested to know that the tactical computer in the Tornado had automatically locked on to your “hostile radar equipment” and sent a jamming signal back to it. Furthermore, the Sidewinder air-to-ground missiles aboard the fully armed aircraft had also locked on to the target. Fortunately the Dutch pilot flying the Tornado responded to the missile status alert intelligently and was able to override the automatic protection system before any missiles were launched.
In future, might I suggest you exercise more care when pointing your radar at RAF aircraft, especially those equipped with enough firepower to remove you and most of Scotland from the map.Kind regards.”

Re: I wonder if this is true?

I HOPE that is a joke ........

Re: I wonder if this is true?

I hope it is a joke too. However, we live in the Borders and planes do fly over very low scaring sheep, people and dogs I just never thought they were NATO planes that might be armed.

Re: I wonder if this is true?

Is it true Well first let me say that I've seen this little story posted on several forums over the past two years.

From a 'technical' point of view I sincerely hope that a NATO aircraft would be able to detect any sort of radar operating on any frequency anywhere within the Tornados range. So while it doesn't often happen I'm sure that NATO pilots carrying out trainning exercises will detect 'hostile' radar while flying trainning missions, this might be from signals deliberately generated by the ground staff, it might be from weather radars used by the meteorological office, or it could be from a Police speed trap radar.

So that part of the story is likely true.

But, do you seriously think that any NATO aircraft is flying around on trainning missions with live weaponry on board they may have all the missiles bolted to the wings, but in trainning mode there is no way these could be deployed, it is just not going to happen.

So that part of the story is NOT true.

So it follows that while some sort of e-mail message might have been sent to the Police in the Borders district there is no way that the RAF would talk about wiping out half of Scotland - That is just some commedian making up a nice response to amuse people.

Unfortunately, if one is not highly technical these sorts of jokes do engender some apprehension in people and that is not good.

But as I've been known to say many times, humans are basically not nice, some are, but many are not

Re: I wonder if this is true?

It is rather like the stories that have been going around about the EU insisting on straight bananas. People do like to think the worst of people. I am a bit cross about the number of emails I have received recently using scare tactics about certain products causing house fires and how someone is likely to be hacking into my computer because I have opened a certain email.

You are quite right not being technical can lead to apprehension and sometimes worse feelings, normally I just delete these as annoying but this particular email I thought was quite amusing and not so sinister but looking at it again may be I was wrong.

Re: I wonder if this is true?

The Harriers sometimes fly so low over my part of the world I could have a chat with the pilots were it not for the noise. A couple of VC 10`s went over yesterday-not AWACs though so that was interesting.

Re: I wonder if this is true?

http://www.snopes.com/horrors/techno/radar.asp

Re: I wonder if this is true?

The original yarn could well be true but the story's been embellished I think, . . . up north I've seen and been scared sh!tless by low fling jets while trout fishing, . . on one occasion on Loch Garry at 6am two of them were only 12 foot above the water, . . . they were Buccaneers which are no longer in service but the racket from their engines was ear splitting, . . . they actually left waves on the water they were so low.