Reply to thread

In the late seventies, to mid eighties Concorde was used as a real Mach 2 target for UK air defence. There's a well reported account of a Lightning interception but the full story behind these trials has yet to be told. I was told by a former member of the flight test crew that there were around twenty flights over quite a few years.  Many of the early flights were done as a genuine unexpected Mach 2 intruder, and a good number of these got zero response from UK air defence. Although an interception should have been possible the flights illustrated the shear difficulty associated with actually doing this. Several quite fundamental rethinks later a single successful interception was achieved I think in 85. What it took to do this is still unclear and probably will remain so.