Does anyone know if fighters run their radar routinely, or if it's only done when required (e.g. in combat, or training for combat)? I've always wondered why modern fighters ever collide with other aircraft, since they have the hardware on board to track every aircraft in the sky within 50 miles in front of them.
Most aircraft with air-to-air radar, such as fighters, have the radar on and use it from takeoff to landing. That said, there are limitations on the number of targets it can track, and, without rereading the specifics of this accident, I think the F-16 had just made a descending turn a dozen seconds or so before the midair. That's not a lot of time to pick up and analyze new traffic as it comes into the radar's sight, especially when single seat and giving more concentration to the instrument approach procedure.
Use the radar all the time. Tough to do if in a turn practicing instruments and single seat. The pilot was probably heads out looking for the aircraft. Could have switched to a visual acquisition mode, but probably task saturated at that point. Also may have been futile if he was in a turn and the Cesna was climbing.
Midairs happen all the time, at least a few a year. Usually this is in dynamic situations (BFM, etc) or joins, especially at night. Usually between fighters and seldom with civilians.
Apparently no one who knows what they'd be talking about has seen this, so I'll have to take a pass.
A ramjet is basically a tube open at both ends and moving very quickly so that air enters one end and leaves out the other. Because of the speed of the air moving through it and the shape of the tube, the air is compressed in the tube and something sprays fuel into the compressed air, which ignites and produces higher-velocity air moving out the end of the tube. It's a jet engine, although normal jets have to have elaborate turbine-compressor thingys to do the air compression.
The ionizing radiation thing is a goofy UFOs-are-space-travellers thing, where the UFO sprays ionizing radiation in front of itself, which heats and disperses the air in front of it, allowing the UFO to travel faster. Or something. It's goofy.
But still not perfectly safe. I'm not sure how much power a F-16 puts out but when I was working on space surveilance radars we were very careful not to be pointing our beam where people might be.
A roommate's girlfriend worked on PAVE PAWS. They were very careful where they steered the beam. Rumor was the one on the east coast cooked some fish when they pointed it into the ocean.
And of course the microwave oven was conceived when a guy walked in front of an operating radar and it melted the chocolate bar in his pocket. It gave him a genius idea!
The best part about this story is that if you tell people who don't know about it, they'll think you're full of shit. But it's absolutely true.
Also if guess the military would like to keep as much data about its radar secret. Running with it on all the time gives a lot of potential data points.
Not on a stock f-16 used for pilot training. There isn't much about those planes that isn't public knowledge already. It's an extraordinarily common and well-understood aircraft.
F-16s have radar but it may not be in the right mode (auto-acquisition/"dogfight" mode) during an ILS approach. According to an experienced F-16 pilot, ILS does work while the radar is searching for contacts in front of the aircraft.
Most fighter-to-fighter mid-air collisions occur during dogfighting practice, or during formation join-up. In both these situations, the radar might not show the other jet. Again the radar has to be in "dogfight" mode to have any chance of finding the other jet in close. The pilot would not be manually adjusting the radar scan position during a a visual join-up.
