Jet appears to be doing Bombing drills over residential Area...

So there I was just sitting there when all of a sudden I hear the sound of a low flying fighter jet pass very close to where I am. I go outside to investigate and here he comes screaming out of the sky flying at an altitude of only a few hundred feet at a distance from me of roughly 300 yards (at his closest).. I could see the jet clear as day and easily identified it as an F-18.

He flew low and pitched straight up into the sky, did some sort of cool maneuver and flew off... I thought it ended there...

Just a few minutes ago it came back and buzzed the residential area again this time right over top of me again only a few hundred feet off the ground...

I checked online to see if our Airspace was restricted for this morning.. It was not.. as this is a very active area for small civilian aircraft his low altitude flying could have posed real danger.

My question is.. Since when does the air force do low altitude bombing drills over residential area? Especially in a small fairly remote town..

Anyway figured it was worth reporting as this has never happened here before.. Although I will not give my exact location I know for a fact the Jet came from Hill Air force Base as they are the closest... Any thoughts?

P.S. I also think it is worth noting that if there was anyone sleeping in town this morning... they aren't anymore!

So your trying to get people to look at your sighting by calling it a bombing drill? How do you know what they are doing?

reply to post by DaMod


Well it wasn't a bombing drill. They use ANG bases and drop dud bombs at firing/bombing ranges. So cut that out of the equation.

I will say, being a current aircrew member in the military, that all aircraft have a certain height restriction over inhabited areas. I believe it's 200-400 feet depending on location.

reply to post by Infi8nity


Well I don't know if it was a bombing drill... by the way he was flying that's definitely what it looked like.

reply to post by iamhobo


Oh he was low...

Very low..

I apologize if my title may have been unintentionally misleading but I've never seen anything like that happen here and I've lived here for quite a while.

I have witnessed pilots flying drills before however they were much higher and they usually had a wing man... This case it was one single jet.

reply to post by DaMod


Probably a hometown person saying hi to Mom and Dad, or a girlfriend/boyfriend.

This used to happen from time to time in my old town when a high school friend would be flying over somewhere near the area. An big unscheduled "hello!" It probably isn't a prudent thing to do, but it happens, and I don't blame them, the temptation to show off a little bit would be enormous!

In my area, as of late, the military air traffic has been flying MUCH lower than I have ever seen before.

I am not the only person to comment on it, either. Very interesting.

The Air Force doesn't fly F18s. Must have been the Navy or Marines. Is there an airshow or airshow practice going on at a nearby airport?

reply to post by Baldryck


There is an airport in the town I live however the runway is no where near what would be required for jets. It's a port for puddle jumpers....

As far as I know there is no airshow... everyone I talked to that also witnessed this are just as surprised as I am.

Also no doubt it was an F-18

no doubt that this was the aircraft I saw.



I got a real good look at it.

Originally posted by DaMod
My question is.. Since when does the air force do low altitude bombing drills over residential area?

How do you KNOW this is a low altitude bombing drill?

Are you in fear?

reply to post by DaMod


Explanation: To be an FA-18 [superhornet?] over Utah would be very strange as its 100's of km from any marine or navy base.

Could it have been a mobile electronics warfare "growler" FA-18 varient

Boeing EA-18G Growler [wiki]

In service, the EA-18's radio name during flight operations will be "Grizzly". The "Growler" nickname sounded too much like the EA-6B's "Prowler" name, so "Grizzly" will be used to avoid confusion. With the termination of the EB-52H standoff jammer, the Growler will become the sole remaining manned tactical jammer and Air Staff requirements director Maj. Gen. David Scott has indicated that the USAF will seek to provide electronic warfare officers to fly on US Navy Growlers, without providing funding to purchase additional aircraft.By May 2011, 48 Growlers had been delivered to the U.S. Navy

Personal Disclosure: I am especially interested on whether the jet you saw was carrying the ALQ-99 (lowband) jamming device on the belly hardpoint of the jet?

Originally posted by Baldryck
The Air Force doesn't fly F18s. Must have been the Navy or Marines. Is there an airshow or airshow practice going on at a nearby airport?

edit on 29-6-2012 by Baldryck because: missed the part where you said you are in Utah

There are MANY air shows this time of the year and it is not unusual to see military aircraft at low altitudes this month. If you were actually able to identify the jet it certainly wasn't engaged in anything covert.
A couple weeks ago there was a group of vintage WW2 bombers en route to some east coast airshow that flew overhead, unfortunately I was so stunned by the sight and sound I didn't think about my camera until they were gone.
It's the stuff in the sky you CAN'T see that will kill ya.

They used to perform mock attacks on a major bridge in Bridgeport AL all the time.

The Navy has NAS Fallon in Nevada, that is home of Top Gun now. It could have been a flight from there, and someone showing off for friends or family on the way over. The depot for the Hornet is at NAS North Island in California, he could have been on a solo flight heading that way, stopping at Hill for crew rest and fuel, then on the next leg.

Originally posted by Baldryck
The Air Force doesn't fly F18s. Must have been the Navy or Marines. Is there an airshow or airshow practice going on at a nearby airport?

edit on 29-6-2012 by Baldryck because: missed the part where you said you are in Utah

Exactly my thought.

reply to post by OmegaLogos


Just curious, what exactly would the lowband jamming device jam?

reply to post by KaiserSoze


Radars.

There's not a lot out about the ALQ pods, and what they jam. In fact when we got the books for the planes, they weren't even allowed to list some of the AN/ALQ pods on the cover of the books.

There are reports that the ALQ-99 causes a lot of problems with the Growler to date. The crew says that it interferes with the AESA radar, and creates more of a workload for the crew than the EA-6B.

reply to post by Zaphod58


Interesting, thanks. I can imagine that all of that equipment would have effects on the on-board electronics that would be very difficult to mitigate.

Also, F-18's do not fly that low when dropping bombs. They way you were describing the flight pattern, it sounds like someone could have just been messing around. They never get to "just fly".

reply to post by KaiserSoze


The problem now is that we're getting into electronic radar systems, and these pods are designed to interfere with electronics. The older aircraft like the EA-6B, EF-111 (retired) and the F-4G Wild Weasel (retired), all had a mechanical radar set, that the jamming pods would pose less interference with.