I should state I don’t know for a fact that the airliner had a missile detection system on it. But the airliner was able to somehow tell the authorities that they had been hit by a laser several times and where the laser had come from, so I just presumed they had some type of IR detection equipment.
The *only* airline, AFAIK, that has that kind of equipment on their planes is El Al. Being that they first installed that system in 2004, and that El Al services Dulles, Baltimore and JFK... PFC Moron *may* have been the first one to actually put that to the test in the field lmfao
Fun story: my middle school science teacher went to a science conference. They showed off some of the panels from a space ship and showed they could put a blow torch on it and it would still be cool to human touch. My science teacher asked about it. The FBI informed him that it was a controlled material (it can be used in better missiles as well), and to kindly stop inquiring about it. Naturally, my teacher complied.
Ooooh. I've seen a video about that once, about the Space Shuttle head shielding. A scientist did heat one of the tiles up until it was red hot and then took it into his hands to show how little heat conductivity it had. Imagine being the first one touching that. "Knowing" it aint hot to the touch despite it being red hot must be weird.
My college teacher told a similar story, he attended a mathematic conference and one of the National Armory engineer asked a mathematician about a mathematical problem the mathematician immediately recognized what it is and told the guy he can't answer the question and he knew the guy is trying to solve a fluid mechanics problem to create better missile.
You can make aerogel in school lab. It won't be as good insulator as sneaky secret (overpriced) stuff, but it will be enough to amaze children. Just be careful with blowtorch.
i joined the Army as a 19D in 2006 and heard about this incident in the ITAS class. They said he was released from service and sent home because he technically committed a felony. kind of neat you were there for a story i heard.
Dang! I’m surprised they were still telling that story in 06, but I suppose it wasn’t that long afterwords. And it’s a good way to tell recruits not to fuck around with the military laser
@@Zach_Hazard I have stories from my own time in where people definitely got sent to Leavenworth over. People really just do whatever without thinking about the consequences.
The reason the FDA has jurisdiction over lasers is because they are used in the medical field. Fun fact the regulation of nitrogen is under the jurisdiction of the Department of Energy.
@@jero37 Why? Lasers consume electricity, not produce it. And Nitrogen accounts for ~78% of the troposphere so it's not exactly an environmental hazard, but it is used for electricity production.
@@eldesconocidosenork5981nitrogen is under the "Dept. Of Energy" because the DoE only does one thing... regulate nuclear materials. Nitrogen is a critical component for some nuclear items, like CAT scanners, so they control that. The Dept. Of the Interior is responsible for all other electrical services.
You can't ship anything over 5mW into the US and a bunch of other countries. However, if one is already in the USA, there is no upper limit to how powerful your laser can be. So, in theory, you can get a 25,000 watt laser. Good luck powering it. For the understanding of how powerful that would be, most laser welders typically have a sub 2,500 watt laser. A 5,000-watt laser can cut through nearly a centimeter of steel. Zach. No. You don't need one.
21CFR1040.10(b)(13)(2024) Demonstration laser product means any laser product manufactured, designed, intended, or promoted for purposes of demonstration, entertainment, advertising display, or artistic composition. The term "demonstration laser product" does not apply to laser products which are not manufactured, designed, intended, or promoted for such purposes, even though they may be used for those purposes or are intended to demonstrate other applications. As long as the laser product doesn't fall into that definition then it can have an output power greater than 5mW, not counting any further regulations placed on such products.
@@the_senate8050 I was gonna say, try telling that to Styropyro and his alarming collection of grey market laser diodes with the serial numbers filed off.
@@Zach_Hazard You would be far too useful for them to let you go, with your encyclopedic knowledge of stuff that goes "bang". That's the issue with the military; you should never trust a job that you can't quit.
The number of people who get the dream jobs is so marginal that the percentage is hardly worth considering. However, you'd best believe those dream jobs are being placed front and center in the propaganda ads to trick young men and woman who don't know any better. Don't even get me started on the "travel the world" cliche.
About that guy who cut down power poles: I checked on a map, and the section of power line between Wollaston Lake and the nearest proper (still not asphalted) road is over 60 miles long, and appears to cross multiple bodies of water. considering you can apparently around 20 miles in a day, he could've probably reached civilization before passing out from dehydration. He probably didn't know how long the line was though, and so cutting down some poles while you still have the energy to do so seems to be the sensible choice in that case.
@@Kaarl_Mills Just watch, someone will do some kind of dumb RFID spoofing and eventually you'll hear "Man arrested for impersonating the president's nuclear briefcase."
My dad went to Aberdeen Proving Ground for his tank repair job training in I believe either 1981 or 1980 and he still has his training certificate in his desk. It is one of his only possessions from his time in the NY national guard as his ex-wife stole his money and all his stuff was in storage lockers which was auctioned. Besides that he only has a dog tag, some 1980s coins from Germany and Italy, and a couple photos one of which is him leaning on a tree in the Island of Grenada either after or during Operation Urgent Fury.
Marine vet here. During combat training (to narrow it down to just during training rofl) we had multiple stupid shit happen where people did crap they weren't supposed to. Had a couple people break out of their barracks to go to the instructor barracks and steal snacks from the vending machine we were told explicitly we were NOT allowed to use or go near. In the middle of the night. They were caught, they ran off, and the base ACTUALLY used K-9 units to hunt them down in the woods. Also during combat training, had someone use a pair of nailclippers to cut into someone else's sea-bag (in another platoon thankfully) to steal their MREs.
I am one of the very few 91fs that is cross-trained in operating, maintaining, and repairing the TOW/ITAS. Zac's brief explanation is basically correct. Because the missile is steered by an optical tracking system, you have to keep both the target and the missile in view. The missile does not have a camera or anything on its tip, so it doesn't know where you are pointing. Rather, the guidance system on the launcher sees where the missile is relative to the reticle on your screen and it sends commands to the missile in an effort to steer the missile left right up or down in order to get the missile onto the reticle. One of the bigger limitations of the tow system is that if your target is moving, and in order to keep the reticle on target, you traverse the launcher faster than the missile can turn. It is possible for the launcher to lose sight of the missile. If that happens, you do not have a guided missile anymore. (You can, and it is recommended, that you traverse back and reacquire the missile so that it doesn't just plow into a random spot) This is the number one thing that video games get wrong about the tow missile. I don't think I have ever seen a single game accurately recreate how the missile guidance system works. Little extra fun fact. Yes, the lrf on the itas will trip the missile lock system on most aircraft. The IR laser attached to your rifle for night fire will also trigger the missile lock. And on military aircraft flares and other countermeasures are sometimes an automated process. Meaning that if you're not particularly careful you can cause the Blackhawk that is over your head to dump magnesium flares on you. The magnesium flares are not fun and yes, the government absolutely takes those incidences seriously. Some doofus was shining a laser at Apache helicopters operating on Fort Carson. They turned their camera which has a nifty lens for filtering out lasers so the camera doesn't get blinded and they got his exact address off his house, and that man is now in prison. In very much the same mentality of "Do not touch America's boats" do not shine lasers at our aircraft. We do not like it.
So, the guy that disappeared from training probably went to prison. Harsh, perhaps that should be emphasized to the doofuses being trained. "DO NOT POINT THE LASER AT ANY AIRCRAFT. IT IS A FELONY AND YOU WILL GO TO POUND ME IN THE ASS PRISON FOR A VERY LONG TIME."
I hate to mention it, but funnily enough for all its wonky functioning of missiles, war thunder does actually model the missile being out of the guidance window.
@@BTechUnited I was not aware that warthunder had done that. That's pretty cool. I was about halfway through a super technical description before it occurred to me, I should probably not "warthunder forum" this comment section.
this reminds of a similar thing, a guy posted only TWO photos. The first one he was lasing a HIND, with some sort of chinese laser rangefinder doohicky. The second photo, the hind was looking RIGHT AT HIM, and visibly hauling ass, like actually rushing his ass.
Aircraft mechanic here, also know several pilots irl. I have literally never in my life heard of civilian plane having some kind of missile detection system on it, that would cause an alarm or warning sounds in the cockpit. Apparently there is this thing called Flight Guard that may have existed in 2004, but that is something that only exists on mostly military VIP transports and government planes.
Closest thing I can think of is that one program that tried to put directed infared countermeasures on the belly of airliners, but it was scrapped before long for some reason. I can't remember why
@@LynxSnowCat It's possible I guess, apparently some airlines operating near war zones can have them, but they are still very rare and usually airlines don't have dedicated planes for any single route.
The missile detection warning thing was a obviously exaggeration but the EVS systems would probably pick up on IR being shot at it and a small bit of deduction from the pilots/investigators very much would lead to the assumption its from a missile system considering they were flying right over a military installation
@@PerplexdPumpkin Would EFVS be actively tracking for IR signatures when not in use. Afaik it's only really used from below DA to 100 feet so only during late in the approach.
I have a laser story. In EOD school at Eglin AFB. At this time the F35 was still being tested and wasn't in active service but they were constantly flying around that part of Florida. So here we are in our practice pit doing our thing when one of the instructors tell us to drop what we are doing and report to the dirt field behind the main school house for a mass formation. We proceed to get screamed at by the Navy O6 because the night before one of our classmates thought it would be funny to get drunk in his back yard and shine a green laser at an F35 on final approach.
Reminds me story from UK news, where police thought it would be funny to measure speed of military jet, which turned out to be Tornado ECR. Then wrote complain saying their radar thingy broke. Got respond that they're lucky to be alive, because jet detected radar lock and fired simulated anti-radar missile at them, and if it carried live armamanet, they would be blown to pieces.
When I was a conscript back in 2011, we were training how to use Stinger missiles with training dummies. There's the tube, the optics and the electronics in them, but there is noway to fire a missile outh of these training launchers. Our instructors made it perfectly clear, that we are abso-fucking-lutely brohibited, of pointing them at anything else, than the training targets. However. One from another scuad, had the great fucking idea of targeting and locking on to a commercial airplane with his launcher. About an hour passes and there's a bunch of MP's and civilian police screaming at us "Who was the fucking idiot targeting a plane". He was to sentenced to eight years in prison and to pay a fine of 10000€. He ended up taking his own live, while in prison. It is a serious offence, don't fucking do it.
This; I view brandishing/threatening mass murder by actively-targeting a plane far more egregious, (and personally offensive,) than that [armed-services-member] who kept I kept evicting for feeding an anti-personel landmine hull into the drill presses _in my workshop,_ while at uni. (tangent depth 1) Technically he was fullly legal at every step until he decided that it had to be _my workshop_ and lied about what he was working on. And I would have allowed him to complete the deactivation proc. had he truthfully admitted what he was working on, and not gathered accomplices to 'shield' what he was doing from view by telling them it was a bunch of "food and drug containers" that he'd brought back with him. FFS, our instructors regularly ran extra-curriculars {on bomb/mine construction, detection, and disarmament} for _trusted_ students in any career path, incl non-military in the same space. And the authorities too must view it as a lower offense, given their response once the [lab officer] noticed his [hobby project], versus what you describe happening to the idiot [that] target[ed] a plane. -(edit GD it firefox; I explicitly set that shortcut to not 'submit'.)- (edit 2: then again; It was about 8 yesrs before I heard of him again... when authorities folowed up on my report because of an incident...)
I don't buy it. They wouldn't give a teenager eight years for being a dumb teenager. You would absolutely get reamed and possibly fined, but eight years....nah, they barely give that much to murderers in Finland. Especially when the device in question is an inert training system.
Quick fact: Pointing a laser at an aircraft of ANY kind (at least with normal laser pointers) is seen as a class 6 felony for the laser user. Was told this in my college astronomy class. EDIT: This is at least the case for lasers with visible beams (like green lasers meant for astronomy). I don't know about lasers of other wavelengths.
I know that story, it was in Spain where ot happened,and Spain actually told the FBI that they had the wrong guy. The FBI actually set a guy over to tell Spain that they were wrong,and was using everything they could as evidence. Like the guy not having a passport was used as evidence that he went illegally,and his sons Spanish homework was also used
@For_swite he was arrested, but not charged as they still had to get everything. But thankfully Spain did find the terrorist and the FBI let him go, begging him to not tell anyone, he did and the FBI was investigated
So about the power poles: Up in that area, the wooden poles aren't all necessary. If one gets, say, exploded by a lightning bolt, the part that's still hooked to the wire will hang in the air. So he might have had to chop down 4 in order to make the line hit the ground is what I'm saying.
I’ve been an airline pilot for 15 years, never heard of any kind of missile warning system on a civilian airliner in the US. Might’ve been a military version of a 737 or something similar which might have such a system. Or maybe El Al was on approach to Washington Dulles…
Pretty sure they don't/didn't outside a handful of companies in the middle east. Stuff's expensive and there's not really anything an airliner could *do* about a missile engagement if one was detected. People pointing lasers at the pilots has been a thing for a while though, so they probably have some kind of simple sensors.
The way I heard that story at the end was, he was stranded in the wilderness and it was multiple sets of powerlines, stuff in parallel for a backup. And so if one went down, eh, they might not come to rescue him. But if a bunch went down, they’d go see what was up and rescue him.
Funny you should mention at 8:42 the madrid train bombings... I was there at that time. Bear in mind I was barely 3 years old but I was there. Apparently, because we had left madrid by that time, my parents were very confused as to why we couldn't get a train back to madrid.
Immediately made me think of my grandfather, who was a Vietnam vet who served in D.O.D., he called and threatened to blow up the Senator's office and V.A. in the late 90's, so he got a visit from the FBI
This reminds me of a time the national guard came to our high school to show off some military toys. One of these was a humvee with a remote controlled avenger missile launcher on the back of it, with no actual missiles. We ask to see a demonstration and the technician locked on to an airliner and pulled the trigger. “Poof. It’s gone”, he said. This was before 9/11, btw. I’m sure he knows not to do something like that again.
I grew up in Aberdeen and my old man was a fed civ til he retired. It's always fun when my worlds collide, spent many a day running around APG and the old Ordinance Museum.
Many fun stories are only fun in retrospect. Zach gets mortared while on the port-o-john is hilarious because he lived to tell the story, Baloney Bob is great because I can't smell him from here.
As regards the laser power limit, I've seen enough laser videos to know that "what's legal" and "what you can buy on ebay" are two very different things
I used to go to scout camp at Camp Rodney in Maryland. It is right across the bay from Aberdeen, and almost every morning, we could hear them do testing. It was like a really distant thunder it was really cool
My friends dad had to use some sort of infrared camera to measure the transformer temperatures, and he had to sign a document, that it wont be used for military purposes 😂
In the United States (and a bunch of other countries), you have 4 classes of lasers. A class 1 laser is what you can normally buy, like pet lasers, laser sights, civilian laser range finders, and so on. The max limit on a class 1 laser is 5mw, which is also the federal limit on what can be bought and sold as a complete unit. If you try to knowingly buy or sell a laser stronger than this, it's an instant felony. Interestingly, the law only applies to buying, selling, and gifting (at least here in the U.S.). It doesn't apply to building or just owning lasers, or even buying individual components like the laser diode by itself. So it's perfectly fine to build a ridiculously overpowered laser in your home, as long as you don't sell it or give it away to someone else. And no, it doesn't even matter how strong the laser is; there's no legal limit. You can find blogs and videos online everywhere of people building all kinds of lasers too, since it's also legal to share that kind of information. Just be careful not to blind yourself, since it's ridiculously easy to do. Even just looking at the spot on the wall can burn your eyes out if the laser is strong enough.
I heard an anecdote of a Finnish coast-jaeger (basically just a conscript guarding the coast) being bored one night, deciding to range-find a ship at sea 'cause they were bored. Suddenly an Lt or similar rank comes by and yells at him to stop, 'cause he's lazing a Russian warship.
Fingerprint thing is actually pretty legit. They're supposed to be several steps of similarity and proof. However, if you're playing with partials, forget it
Makes me forever grateful to have enlisted in the Air National Guard. Originally I intended to go Army but one mention to my mother about that was immediately told to look in the ANG instead. Seriously Guard/Reserves is under looked in many aspects, hell I didn't know they existed until I was given a school presentation on it. Love my guard base and the people on it, have no regrets enlisting, lot better than Active Duty. Just if you ever decide to enlist pick a job you intend to go in the civilian sector in. Went in as a Crew Chief, don't plan to fix plans in my future so plan to cross train to either AGE or Vehicle Maintenance. Love the stories as always!
Funny part about the powerline dude is that he did NOT get in trouble for it from the power company. they understood it was a legit emergency for him and did not pursuit any form of legal action against him, as far as I recall.
I used to go to Rodney Scout Reservation in boy scouts, and its directly opposite of Aberdeen on the Chesapeake bay. I remember for the jetski certificate thing i took you weren't allowed to go to far out because we didn't wanna go into the militarys waters XD. You could hear them testing things sometimes, it was always a game of "lightning or Aberdeen"
The look that the pilot gave to the co-pilot when the controls started going ape shit must've been something straight out of a Willey coyote cartoon. Eyes bulging out, soul leaving out of the ear with a fedora and a suitcase, the whole nine yards
11:51 i think the reason he didn't want to stop at just 1 was because humans love redundancies, so chances of the power company actually sending someone to immediately investigate a single power line going down were pretty low
For the longest time I thought TOW missile meant it only shoot at things _behind_ you (which of course is nonsense, it's on a swivel mount and can be pointed at any angle). I probably was confusing them with tow sonar.
Well i could be wrong, i dont think civilan aircraft, even airliners, would have equipment onboard to detect missle lock of any type unless over a high risk area like some places in the middle east, especially in 2004. However from what ive seen when a laser shines at the cockpit of a aircraft it has a very distinct, blinding flash, which makes it so dangerous. Its also possible that the laser could have interfered with some of the airplanes equipment that uses infared. But im no expert.
Seeing as I have seen 6 confirmations of other events, mostly involving invisible IR lasers, in this comment stream... I am thinking it is one of those "Boeing installs on everything, but does not include in manual" things. If it was a normal laser, I could believe it was just seen by someone.
Oh hey, i went to summer camp at a place not far from Aberdeen proving ground! Close enough that the counselors had to teach us the difference between thunder, and stuff getting blown up nearby!
Military storys range from funny watching the new guy do something stupid. To people having to explain why there was drugs in there belongings due to someone trying to get them dishonorably discharged. Fun
There was a fun incident on a base up here where some of the other guys in my platoon were learning how to use the fancy thermal/laser sight for the H&K GMG. A helicopter was flying overhead, you can guess what all these mooks planned. If our Sgt was about 5 seconds slower to notice there would've been an exciting lesson in consequences.
Hearing you talk about the TOW instantly activated my missile tism, its been two years and I still remember the exact range and radius / klick. DEAR GOD WHY
The army loves acronyms so much they put acronyms inside acronyms. When i was in JROTC, which is an acronym, we used a computer system to manage the cadets and who was in which company and what all they had as far as equipment and awards...this system was called J.U.M.S. The full thing spelled all the way out is "Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps Unit Management System."
Zach makes the army sound really fun with his stories, I get that most of his time there sucked. Being GWOT Zach fixing guns in the 2000s sounds pretty awesome!
Hey shout out from someone they grew up hearing and deal with the explosions from APG I got so desensitized by the explosions I moved away from it and now I'm like my winds and picture frames haven't shaken in a while oh yeah I don't live there anymore
"I am completely and mentally stable. *Oh hey look a civilian airliner* "
"DO IT!"
"DO IT!"
"YOU KNOW YOU WANT TO!"
"do it..."
@@luckylooch9696 *I CAN'T TAKE IT ANYMORE !*
💀
@@crusaderanimation6967 *BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP* *CHAFF FLARE CHAFF FLARE* *BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP*
BRRRRRRRRRRRT
I should state I don’t know for a fact that the airliner had a missile detection system on it. But the airliner was able to somehow tell the authorities that they had been hit by a laser several times and where the laser had come from, so I just presumed they had some type of IR detection equipment.
A really perceptive air marshal
The *only* airline, AFAIK, that has that kind of equipment on their planes is El Al. Being that they first installed that system in 2004, and that El Al services Dulles, Baltimore and JFK... PFC Moron *may* have been the first one to actually put that to the test in the field lmfao
Clearly the pilot felt a disturbance in the force
@@DrusieLycheborne of course its Israeli
"Delta 525, we're defensive"
"Fucking WHAT?"
Fun story: my middle school science teacher went to a science conference. They showed off some of the panels from a space ship and showed they could put a blow torch on it and it would still be cool to human touch.
My science teacher asked about it. The FBI informed him that it was a controlled material (it can be used in better missiles as well), and to kindly stop inquiring about it. Naturally, my teacher complied.
Ooooh. I've seen a video about that once, about the Space Shuttle head shielding. A scientist did heat one of the tiles up until it was red hot and then took it into his hands to show how little heat conductivity it had.
Imagine being the first one touching that. "Knowing" it aint hot to the touch despite it being red hot must be weird.
My college teacher told a similar story, he attended a mathematic conference and one of the National Armory engineer asked a mathematician about a mathematical problem the mathematician immediately recognized what it is and told the guy he can't answer the question and he knew the guy is trying to solve a fluid mechanics problem to create better missile.
You can make aerogel in school lab. It won't be as good insulator as sneaky secret (overpriced) stuff, but it will be enough to amaze children. Just be careful with blowtorch.
@@vos2693idk, not burning up during reentry is worth a bit more
Oh god did the firemen tell on zach for his gun room
They found his stash of *REDACTED*
@@Eric-vs2he Zach denying it's *redacted* loudly to the point we all know what it is .
THAT WAS MY FIRST THOUGHT
what?
We know Zach doesn't have a gun room. Just laundry piles with nuzzles sticking out of them.
Fun in the military is roughly 1%, the other 99% is composed of varying degrees of bored and pissed off
And it's that diluted fun you get for three minutes because it's finally something not drop-dead boring.
You forgot to mention being shit on by leaders who "have your back".
And problems with all your hearing, bones and joints.
i joined the Army as a 19D in 2006 and heard about this incident in the ITAS class. They said he was released from service and sent home because he technically committed a felony.
kind of neat you were there for a story i heard.
Dang! I’m surprised they were still telling that story in 06, but I suppose it wasn’t that long afterwords. And it’s a good way to tell recruits not to fuck around with the military laser
@@Zach_Hazard I have stories from my own time in where people definitely got sent to Leavenworth over. People really just do whatever without thinking about the consequences.
Can you imagine how different Zach’s life would be if he was stationed at Aberdeen instead of Fort Polk
The reason the FDA has jurisdiction over lasers is because they are used in the medical field. Fun fact the regulation of nitrogen is under the jurisdiction of the Department of Energy.
You'd think lasers would be DoE and Nitrogen would be EPA.
@@jero37 Why? Lasers consume electricity, not produce it. And Nitrogen accounts for ~78% of the troposphere so it's not exactly an environmental hazard, but it is used for electricity production.
Wait so: Lasers are under Food, Nitrogen under Energy. WHAT? are there more things like that?
@@eldesconocidosenork5981nitrogen is under the "Dept. Of Energy" because the DoE only does one thing... regulate nuclear materials. Nitrogen is a critical component for some nuclear items, like CAT scanners, so they control that.
The Dept. Of the Interior is responsible for all other electrical services.
@eldesconocidosenork5981 The Secret Service is also in the business of anti-counterfeiting. It was their original job description.
If they're owned by the FDA then what are the calories for eating a laser
I would guess 2
At least 3
A laser burns calories away
Pretty sure they’re under the purview of the fda because lasers are used In medicine.. might be wrong tho
Asking the real questions right here.
You can't ship anything over 5mW into the US and a bunch of other countries.
However, if one is already in the USA, there is no upper limit to how powerful your laser can be. So, in theory, you can get a 25,000 watt laser. Good luck powering it.
For the understanding of how powerful that would be, most laser welders typically have a sub 2,500 watt laser. A 5,000-watt laser can cut through nearly a centimeter of steel.
Zach. No. You don't need one.
Unhinged Styropyro Noises
"Now witness the firepower of this fully armed and operational battlestation!" Colin Furze, probably
21CFR1040.10(b)(13)(2024)
Demonstration laser product means any laser product manufactured, designed, intended, or promoted for purposes of demonstration, entertainment, advertising display, or artistic composition. The term "demonstration laser product" does not apply to laser products which are not manufactured, designed, intended, or promoted for such purposes, even though they may be used for those purposes or are intended to demonstrate other applications.
As long as the laser product doesn't fall into that definition then it can have an output power greater than 5mW, not counting any further regulations placed on such products.
@@the_senate8050 I was gonna say, try telling that to Styropyro and his alarming collection of grey market laser diodes with the serial numbers filed off.
@@the_senate8050 I really wanna know just how many watch lists he's on at this point.
If Zach were sent to APG, an easy $20 says he’d still be in the service.
Probably.
@@Zach_Hazard You would be far too useful for them to let you go, with your encyclopedic knowledge of stuff that goes "bang". That's the issue with the military; you should never trust a job that you can't quit.
The number of people who get the dream jobs is so marginal that the percentage is hardly worth considering.
However, you'd best believe those dream jobs are being placed front and center in the propaganda ads to trick young men and woman who don't know any better.
Don't even get me started on the "travel the world" cliche.
@@Zach_Hazardwere you at the Aberdeen base or the Edgewood base?
About that guy who cut down power poles: I checked on a map, and the section of power line between Wollaston Lake and the nearest proper (still not asphalted) road is over 60 miles long, and appears to cross multiple bodies of water. considering you can apparently around 20 miles in a day, he could've probably reached civilization before passing out from dehydration. He probably didn't know how long the line was though, and so cutting down some poles while you still have the energy to do so seems to be the sensible choice in that case.
Remember kids, FAFO is a time honored government tradition too. Whatever you do, make sure you aren't the one to demonstrate this for the class.
Or worse, invent an entirely new crime
@@Kaarl_Mills Just watch, someone will do some kind of dumb RFID spoofing and eventually you'll hear "Man arrested for impersonating the president's nuclear briefcase."
My dad went to Aberdeen Proving Ground for his tank repair job training in I believe either 1981 or 1980 and he still has his training certificate in his desk. It is one of his only possessions from his time in the NY national guard as his ex-wife stole his money and all his stuff was in storage lockers which was auctioned. Besides that he only has a dog tag, some 1980s coins from Germany and Italy, and a couple photos one of which is him leaning on a tree in the Island of Grenada either after or during Operation Urgent Fury.
Woman can be so evil. The divorce system is so fucked up
God vindictive ex-spouses are the worst.
@@jero37 ex-living
Marine vet here. During combat training (to narrow it down to just during training rofl) we had multiple stupid shit happen where people did crap they weren't supposed to.
Had a couple people break out of their barracks to go to the instructor barracks and steal snacks from the vending machine we were told explicitly we were NOT allowed to use or go near. In the middle of the night. They were caught, they ran off, and the base ACTUALLY used K-9 units to hunt them down in the woods.
Also during combat training, had someone use a pair of nailclippers to cut into someone else's sea-bag (in another platoon thankfully) to steal their MREs.
They craved the forbidden crayons
Ah, you mean "acquired".
I am one of the very few 91fs that is cross-trained in operating, maintaining, and repairing the TOW/ITAS.
Zac's brief explanation is basically correct. Because the missile is steered by an optical tracking system, you have to keep both the target and the missile in view. The missile does not have a camera or anything on its tip, so it doesn't know where you are pointing. Rather, the guidance system on the launcher sees where the missile is relative to the reticle on your screen and it sends commands to the missile in an effort to steer the missile left right up or down in order to get the missile onto the reticle.
One of the bigger limitations of the tow system is that if your target is moving, and in order to keep the reticle on target, you traverse the launcher faster than the missile can turn. It is possible for the launcher to lose sight of the missile. If that happens, you do not have a guided missile anymore. (You can, and it is recommended, that you traverse back and reacquire the missile so that it doesn't just plow into a random spot) This is the number one thing that video games get wrong about the tow missile. I don't think I have ever seen a single game accurately recreate how the missile guidance system works.
Little extra fun fact. Yes, the lrf on the itas will trip the missile lock system on most aircraft. The IR laser attached to your rifle for night fire will also trigger the missile lock. And on military aircraft flares and other countermeasures are sometimes an automated process. Meaning that if you're not particularly careful you can cause the Blackhawk that is over your head to dump magnesium flares on you. The magnesium flares are not fun and yes, the government absolutely takes those incidences seriously.
Some doofus was shining a laser at Apache helicopters operating on Fort Carson. They turned their camera which has a nifty lens for filtering out lasers so the camera doesn't get blinded and they got his exact address off his house, and that man is now in prison. In very much the same mentality of "Do not touch America's boats" do not shine lasers at our aircraft. We do not like it.
So, the guy that disappeared from training probably went to prison. Harsh, perhaps that should be emphasized to the doofuses being trained. "DO NOT POINT THE LASER AT ANY AIRCRAFT. IT IS A FELONY AND YOU WILL GO TO POUND ME IN THE ASS PRISON FOR A VERY LONG TIME."
I crave the forbidden heat signature
I hate to mention it, but funnily enough for all its wonky functioning of missiles, war thunder does actually model the missile being out of the guidance window.
@@LBaker-y6t Must... not... shine lasers directly at military aircraft...
@@BTechUnited I was not aware that warthunder had done that. That's pretty cool.
I was about halfway through a super technical description before it occurred to me, I should probably not "warthunder forum" this comment section.
Aight, who else is more focused on the German-Shepherd-Sized English Bulldog twisting his head 180 degrees at Zach and Mike?
That's just Churchill, fresh off a hard day of standing around while Zach and Mike shoot stuff
this reminds of a similar thing, a guy posted only TWO photos. The first one he was lasing a HIND, with some sort of chinese laser rangefinder doohicky. The second photo, the hind was looking RIGHT AT HIM, and visibly hauling ass, like actually rushing his ass.
Wish i could see this
It was at this moment that he knew…
I read this comment and my imagination added a pair of red lens flare eyes to the HIND in the second pic.
Aircraft mechanic here, also know several pilots irl. I have literally never in my life heard of civilian plane having some kind of missile detection system on it, that would cause an alarm or warning sounds in the cockpit. Apparently there is this thing called Flight Guard that may have existed in 2004, but that is something that only exists on mostly military VIP transports and government planes.
Would those have been more common on the planes specifically flying around Aberdeen Proving Grounds, or just Maryland in general?
Closest thing I can think of is that one program that tried to put directed infared countermeasures on the belly of airliners, but it was scrapped before long for some reason. I can't remember why
@@LynxSnowCat It's possible I guess, apparently some airlines operating near war zones can have them, but they are still very rare and usually airlines don't have dedicated planes for any single route.
The missile detection warning thing was a obviously exaggeration but the EVS systems would probably pick up on IR being shot at it and a small bit of deduction from the pilots/investigators very much would lead to the assumption its from a missile system considering they were flying right over a military installation
@@PerplexdPumpkin Would EFVS be actively tracking for IR signatures when not in use. Afaik it's only really used from below DA to 100 feet so only during late in the approach.
I have a laser story. In EOD school at Eglin AFB. At this time the F35 was still being tested and wasn't in active service but they were constantly flying around that part of Florida. So here we are in our practice pit doing our thing when one of the instructors tell us to drop what we are doing and report to the dirt field behind the main school house for a mass formation. We proceed to get screamed at by the Navy O6 because the night before one of our classmates thought it would be funny to get drunk in his back yard and shine a green laser at an F35 on final approach.
Reminds me story from UK news, where police thought it would be funny to measure speed of military jet, which turned out to be Tornado ECR. Then wrote complain saying their radar thingy broke. Got respond that they're lucky to be alive, because jet detected radar lock and fired simulated anti-radar missile at them, and if it carried live armamanet, they would be blown to pieces.
1:30 obligatory Zach Hazard Roasting of Fort Polk/Johnson
When I was a conscript back in 2011, we were training how to use Stinger missiles with training dummies. There's the tube, the optics and the electronics in them, but there is noway to fire a missile outh of these training launchers.
Our instructors made it perfectly clear, that we are abso-fucking-lutely brohibited, of pointing them at anything else, than the training targets.
However.
One from another scuad, had the great fucking idea of targeting and locking on to a commercial airplane with his launcher.
About an hour passes and there's a bunch of MP's and civilian police screaming at us "Who was the fucking idiot targeting a plane".
He was to sentenced to eight years in prison and to pay a fine of 10000€.
He ended up taking his own live, while in prison.
It is a serious offence, don't fucking do it.
This;
I view brandishing/threatening mass murder by actively-targeting a plane far more egregious, (and personally offensive,) than that [armed-services-member] who kept I kept evicting for feeding an anti-personel landmine hull into the drill presses _in my workshop,_ while at uni.
(tangent depth 1) Technically he was fullly legal at every step until he decided that it had to be _my workshop_ and lied about what he was working on.
And I would have allowed him to complete the deactivation proc. had he truthfully admitted what he was working on, and not gathered accomplices to 'shield' what he was doing from view by telling them it was a bunch of "food and drug containers" that he'd brought back with him.
FFS, our instructors regularly ran extra-curriculars {on bomb/mine construction, detection, and disarmament} for _trusted_ students in any career path, incl non-military in the same space.
And the authorities too must view it as a lower offense, given their response once the [lab officer] noticed his [hobby project], versus what you describe happening to the idiot [that] target[ed] a plane.
-(edit GD it firefox; I explicitly set that shortcut to not 'submit'.)-
(edit 2: then again; It was about 8 yesrs before I heard of him again... when authorities folowed up on my report because of an incident...)
I don't buy it. They wouldn't give a teenager eight years for being a dumb teenager. You would absolutely get reamed and possibly fined, but eight years....nah, they barely give that much to murderers in Finland. Especially when the device in question is an inert training system.
@@Zestence
Where did you get Finland from?
@@toasterboipencil His avatar is a Finnish meme wearing a Finnish military uniform, also mentioned conscription and fines in euros.
@@Zestence government will absolutely do this and worse, they feed on pain and suffering.
Probably got off better than going to Fort Polk.
Good news! They won't send you to Fort Polk anymore.
They'll send you to Fort Johnson.
...
11:35 i remember this my city lost power for a while
I wouldn't call Stony Rapids a city man
@ I live in Saskatchewan
@@Mrblackfox966 and so does Stony Rapids, SK
Quick fact: Pointing a laser at an aircraft of ANY kind (at least with normal laser pointers) is seen as a class 6 felony for the laser user. Was told this in my college astronomy class.
EDIT: This is at least the case for lasers with visible beams (like green lasers meant for astronomy). I don't know about lasers of other wavelengths.
I know that story, it was in Spain where ot happened,and Spain actually told the FBI that they had the wrong guy.
The FBI actually set a guy over to tell Spain that they were wrong,and was using everything they could as evidence. Like the guy not having a passport was used as evidence that he went illegally,and his sons Spanish homework was also used
Did he actually get arrested
@For_swite he was arrested, but not charged as they still had to get everything.
But thankfully Spain did find the terrorist and the FBI let him go, begging him to not tell anyone, he did and the FBI was investigated
So about the power poles: Up in that area, the wooden poles aren't all necessary. If one gets, say, exploded by a lightning bolt, the part that's still hooked to the wire will hang in the air.
So he might have had to chop down 4 in order to make the line hit the ground is what I'm saying.
God Imagine Zach getting sent to Aberdeen instead of Fort Polk.
he'd be so much happier about his time with COMPETENT people
BTW: Suburbans are one hell of a Vehicle. I learned to drive on one of those and it was so much fun to drive.
I’ve been an airline pilot for 15 years, never heard of any kind of missile warning system on a civilian airliner in the US. Might’ve been a military version of a 737 or something similar which might have such a system. Or maybe El Al was on approach to Washington Dulles…
I was today years old when i learned it wasn't a tow missile because it towed the wire
Fun fact: If it’s used by the Army, its name is probably an acronym.
Or the name of a general.
@@Zach_Hazard G.U.N.
General Use Neutralizer
I saw the thumbnail and thought "When did Doctor Octogonapus attack a jetplane. Is this a problem now?".
Damn. Civilian planes had that kind of tech on them back in 04? I can't imagine what they have nowadays
HARM missiles in the cargo compartment, they home in on laser radiation.
My favorite crazy airplane features are the chemical Oxygen generator (aka: Oxygen Candle) for the masks and the Halon fire extinguishers.
afaik, el al is the only airline to put targeting detection systems bc they fly in the middle east routinely
Pretty sure they don't/didn't outside a handful of companies in the middle east. Stuff's expensive and there's not really anything an airliner could *do* about a missile engagement if one was detected.
People pointing lasers at the pilots has been a thing for a while though, so they probably have some kind of simple sensors.
The way I heard that story at the end was, he was stranded in the wilderness and it was multiple sets of powerlines, stuff in parallel for a backup. And so if one went down, eh, they might not come to rescue him. But if a bunch went down, they’d go see what was up and rescue him.
Well he looked it up and said the dude chopped four down
Ive seen UFO videos of people shining powerful lasers at lights in the sky and thought "oh they're not just stupid, theyre advanced stupid"
5:04 i love mikes "oh no" haha
That’s one hell of an opening 😂
Funny you should mention at 8:42 the madrid train bombings... I was there at that time. Bear in mind I was barely 3 years old but I was there. Apparently, because we had left madrid by that time, my parents were very confused as to why we couldn't get a train back to madrid.
Immediately made me think of my grandfather, who was a Vietnam vet who served in D.O.D., he called and threatened to blow up the Senator's office and V.A. in the late 90's, so he got a visit from the FBI
This reminds me of a time the national guard came to our high school to show off some military toys. One of these was a humvee with a remote controlled avenger missile launcher on the back of it, with no actual missiles. We ask to see a demonstration and the technician locked on to an airliner and pulled the trigger. “Poof. It’s gone”, he said. This was before 9/11, btw. I’m sure he knows not to do something like that again.
I grew up in Aberdeen and my old man was a fed civ til he retired. It's always fun when my worlds collide, spent many a day running around APG and the old Ordinance Museum.
Many fun stories are only fun in retrospect. Zach gets mortared while on the port-o-john is hilarious because he lived to tell the story, Baloney Bob is great because I can't smell him from here.
Who starts a conversation line that? I just sat down!
Oh my god another one? thank you so much for all the campfire stories recently its been great
As regards the laser power limit, I've seen enough laser videos to know that "what's legal" and "what you can buy on ebay" are two very different things
What the hell did I just walk into? Wait, it’s one of Zach’s stories? Proceed
Amazing title and story. I thoroughly enjoyed this video, thanks Mike and Zach!
I used to go to scout camp at Camp Rodney in Maryland. It is right across the bay from Aberdeen, and almost every morning, we could hear them do testing. It was like a really distant thunder it was really cool
The Fun stories are only fun because you weren't there to experience it first hand XD
Yo, big respect boys for changing the AI thumbnail.
My friends dad had to use some sort of infrared camera to measure the transformer temperatures, and he had to sign a document, that it wont be used for military purposes 😂
In the United States (and a bunch of other countries), you have 4 classes of lasers. A class 1 laser is what you can normally buy, like pet lasers, laser sights, civilian laser range finders, and so on. The max limit on a class 1 laser is 5mw, which is also the federal limit on what can be bought and sold as a complete unit. If you try to knowingly buy or sell a laser stronger than this, it's an instant felony. Interestingly, the law only applies to buying, selling, and gifting (at least here in the U.S.). It doesn't apply to building or just owning lasers, or even buying individual components like the laser diode by itself. So it's perfectly fine to build a ridiculously overpowered laser in your home, as long as you don't sell it or give it away to someone else. And no, it doesn't even matter how strong the laser is; there's no legal limit. You can find blogs and videos online everywhere of people building all kinds of lasers too, since it's also legal to share that kind of information. Just be careful not to blind yourself, since it's ridiculously easy to do. Even just looking at the spot on the wall can burn your eyes out if the laser is strong enough.
I heard an anecdote of a Finnish coast-jaeger (basically just a conscript guarding the coast) being bored one night, deciding to range-find a ship at sea 'cause they were bored. Suddenly an Lt or similar rank comes by and yells at him to stop, 'cause he's lazing a Russian warship.
Cutting down power lines so the repair technitians can rescue you is certainly an... interesting survival strategy.
Them talking about lasers is making me wonder about what Styropyro has in his house.
Fingerprint thing is actually pretty legit. They're supposed to be several steps of similarity and proof. However, if you're playing with partials, forget it
As a Native Saskatchewanian I'm genuinely impressed with Zachs pronunciation, he almost got it right.
The whole campfire stories playlist can be a IRL Stand up comedy show and I would pay to see it
Makes me forever grateful to have enlisted in the Air National Guard. Originally I intended to go Army but one mention to my mother about that was immediately told to look in the ANG instead. Seriously Guard/Reserves is under looked in many aspects, hell I didn't know they existed until I was given a school presentation on it. Love my guard base and the people on it, have no regrets enlisting, lot better than Active Duty. Just if you ever decide to enlist pick a job you intend to go in the civilian sector in. Went in as a Crew Chief, don't plan to fix plans in my future so plan to cross train to either AGE or Vehicle Maintenance. Love the stories as always!
im in an empty macados rn and i gotta tell you this is the most immersed ive ever been in one of these videos.
Yaay, more of unkie Zach's unhinged stories!
Funny part about the powerline dude is that he did NOT get in trouble for it from the power company. they understood it was a legit emergency for him and did not pursuit any form of legal action against him, as far as I recall.
I used to go to Rodney Scout Reservation in boy scouts, and its directly opposite of Aberdeen on the Chesapeake bay. I remember for the jetski certificate thing i took you weren't allowed to go to far out because we didn't wanna go into the militarys waters XD.
You could hear them testing things sometimes, it was always a game of "lightning or Aberdeen"
I would watch these two tell stories all night😊
Recently I've been toying with the idea of joining the Army. These keep reminding me that I should just wait.
The look that the pilot gave to the co-pilot when the controls started going ape shit must've been something straight out of a Willey coyote cartoon.
Eyes bulging out, soul leaving out of the ear with a fedora and a suitcase, the whole nine yards
11:51 i think the reason he didn't want to stop at just 1 was because humans love redundancies, so chances of the power company actually sending someone to immediately investigate a single power line going down were pretty low
Plus one might not have caused it to short either.
"so since lasers are regulated by the FDA"
*pauses video* ok Zach where you going with this?
whenever i hear *tow* missile i think *toe* missile and imagine a tube firing a large toe at a plane
For the longest time I thought TOW missile meant it only shoot at things _behind_ you (which of course is nonsense, it's on a swivel mount and can be pointed at any angle). I probably was confusing them with tow sonar.
Well i could be wrong, i dont think civilan aircraft, even airliners, would have equipment onboard to detect missle lock of any type unless over a high risk area like some places in the middle east, especially in 2004. However from what ive seen when a laser shines at the cockpit of a aircraft it has a very distinct, blinding flash, which makes it so dangerous. Its also possible that the laser could have interfered with some of the airplanes equipment that uses infared. But im no expert.
Seeing as I have seen 6 confirmations of other events, mostly involving invisible IR lasers, in this comment stream... I am thinking it is one of those "Boeing installs on everything, but does not include in manual" things.
If it was a normal laser, I could believe it was just seen by someone.
IR lasers are not visible by the naked human eye
I've got a former roommate who regularly flagged me and his boyfriend with loaded guns as a "joke" despite our protests. He also fucked up my arm. :)
Oh hey, i went to summer camp at a place not far from Aberdeen proving ground! Close enough that the counselors had to teach us the difference between thunder, and stuff getting blown up nearby!
Ironically on the point about joining the army, my friend was an MA in the navy, and is currently going through combat engineer school for the army!
Military storys range from funny watching the new guy do something stupid. To people having to explain why there was drugs in there belongings due to someone trying to get them dishonorably discharged. Fun
There was a fun incident on a base up here where some of the other guys in my platoon were learning how to use the fancy thermal/laser sight for the H&K GMG. A helicopter was flying overhead, you can guess what all these mooks planned.
If our Sgt was about 5 seconds slower to notice there would've been an exciting lesson in consequences.
I used to live in Aberdeen and got to visit the grounds whenever my grandmom had to make a stop at APGFCU and i tagged along for the ride 😂
In an alternate universe Zach Hazard is the head of Aberdeen proving grounds, testing and making the best decisions for firearms.
Hearing you talk about the TOW instantly activated my missile tism, its been two years and I still remember the exact range and radius / klick. DEAR GOD WHY
Never in my life would've I have thought I would here zach hazard talk about a proving ground named after Aberdeen the granite city.
"It was just a prank, bro!"
I'm definitely not joining the military, but I will be coming back for more of these stories lol
I saw the name of the video and my first thought was " Oh dear God what did Zach do now!"
The army loves acronyms so much they put acronyms inside acronyms. When i was in JROTC, which is an acronym, we used a computer system to manage the cadets and who was in which company and what all they had as far as equipment and awards...this system was called J.U.M.S.
The full thing spelled all the way out is "Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps Unit Management System."
10:07 I definitely learnt the hard way that joining the army sucks
I'll be honest when I saw this video I got ridiculously excited.
3:31 can it drive my kids to soccer practice?
I loved slowing piecing together the meaning of the title and thumbnail
Zach makes the army sound really fun with his stories, I get that most of his time there sucked. Being GWOT Zach fixing guns in the 2000s sounds pretty awesome!
I love these camp fire stories ❤❤❤
Which is more dangerous: a bored enlisted soldier, or a 2nd Lt with a map?
I like to think someone came into Zach's workshop "hey han you fix my TOW missile?, it's broken"
Oh the wonders of only listening to the audio of these videos and proceeding to think that Zach was repeatedly saying TOE missiles instead of TOW.
Zach sure says 'like' a lot.
Take a shot every time Zach says “Aberdeen Proving Grounds”
As someone from Saskatchewan, yeah, Wollaston Lake is pretty much the middle of nowhere
The dude that was on the TOW was looking back and forth like that one monkey gif
Hey shout out from someone they grew up hearing and deal with the explosions from APG
I got so desensitized by the explosions I moved away from it and now I'm like my winds and picture frames haven't shaken in a while oh yeah I don't live there anymore
it was the madrid train bombings that zach was speaking of and yes the FBI investagators arrested him over a complete print