Chad Irby posted:

Maybe back in Vietnam, but I can guarantee you that a good number of
pilots had a severe lack of interest in ECM matters in the early 1980s.

I'm guessing you're talking about Phantom pilots. As one of them, I'd
say you're wrong. We got tested on it in RTU '80-'81 all the time in
USAFE '81-'84, as an RTU IP '84-'86...

I was one of the enlisted men who got to go in and "assist" the training
from time to time.

I'm guessing you were an EMS guy that dropped in to talk about 781
write-ups or unique problems you saw in the shop or on the line. You
didn't actually train aircrew how to operate the equipment in a
tactical sense, or did you?

...and yet, on a weekly basis, we had a problem with pilots who couldn't
even do a correct built-in test on an ALR-46 system.

Please correct me if I'm wrong, the only time I turned the ALR-46 on
as a "pilot" was as an IP in the backseat. Pilots generally speaking
let the WSO operate the RWR. Hell I was even a squadron ECP
(Electronic Combat Pilot) in Phantoms. In the Viper we used the
ALR-69.

And they'd write it up as bad because they did it wrong ... And we'd
test, it, it would work fine, and we wouldn't get another writeup on it
until that same guy went back on the plane.

Any chance that the guy making the write-up was a RTU student WSO?

And you wouldn't *believe* how confused they got over the use of the
ALQ-119 pods.

How 'bout this for another perspective? Rarely carry them because
it's too much trouble for maintenance (that's what we were told), and
and don't think of turning them on because they were programmed with
"war files," we don't want those pesky Warsaw Pact ESM assets
detecting our EC plan. So go to STBY...that's it unless you're at
Red/Green Flag.

Going to Spade Adam in the UK? Take a training pod, yeah it turns on
the same way, but the button pushing for countering the threat
symbology (on the ALR-46) was not what you would do in combat. Hmmm,
train in a way you won't fight...okay, color me confused.

I'll agree that the 119 could be a most confusing piece of equipment
to operate when you personally fly with one maybe 6 times a year.

Juvat