DeIcing Equipment of Military Fighters

[Seggy]

Do the Military Fighters have any Deicing Equipment? Boots, bleed air, a combo of the two? Can they also use Deicing Fluids as well?

[MikeD]

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Do the Military Fighters have any Deicing Equipment? Boots, bleed air, a combo of the two? Can they also use Deicing Fluids as well?

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All you'll generally see is pitot heat and/or bleed air for windscreens and the like.....

We can use the same deicing that any other plane uses, the only problem is once airborne, the lack of deicing/anti-icing equipment severely limits what we can do, but that's not the major part of it. Most fighters are very susceptible to icing damage, especially engines. On many of the engines, the farther-back stages of the turbine have blades that are razor-thin, and hence, very susceptible to damage from icing, or any FOD for that matter. F-16s that fly in cold WX places have "ice FOD" advisories in the ATIS regarding the potential for this phenomena.

In the A-10, I've had the jet iced up pretty good while cruising through freezing rain to get to where I needed to go, since I had to get there. Canopy heat on, pitot heat check on, look out and see a good sheet of ice on the leading edge as well as on the front the bombs and the Maverick missiles, which rendered the missiles useless for the time being, since there was no way to "see" the target to lock them up.

Conversly, on the T-38, the GE J85 engines 8th stage compressor blades are so razor-thin, that (if I remember correctly), the jet is restricted to flying in no more than forecast or observed trace icing.

Further, next to engine FOD damage due to icing, is stores damage to icing. Underwing stores that have seeker heads, such as guided missiles, etc, are very susceptible to broken seeker domes from icing or impact by ice at speeds the jets fly at. Similiarly, seeker domes on the aircraft itself are at risk from this too.

So these factors, combined with the fact that there's no real airframe deice/anti-ice capability on fighters, are the reason these type aircraft don't deal with ice conditions that much.

[mpenguin1]

I remember de-icing the P-3's & the A-3's in the Navy, we used to have these backpacks full of de-icinging fluid & a pumphandle, & spray the aircraft down, not exactly the most modern way of doing it, but, it worked....

[Jason]

Yikes....hand spraying a P-3???? It was probably summer time by the time you finished.

Jason

[PorcoRosso]

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Yikes....hand spraying a P-3???? It was probably summer time by the time you finished.

Jason

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