Warning Areas...

RogerWilco787

RogerWilco787

Well-Known Member
I was flying around the Brownsville, TX area the other day at 17,000ft direct to Brownsville, TX from Alabama and our path would put us right through a Warning Area, but just the northern tip. The controller said we were not allowed to fly through it, and routed us all the way around it, and he said we had to clear the borders by 2.5 miles exactly (may not seem like a big deal, but fuel was becoming an issue). So my question is, can ATC really deny you access to fly through a warning area, because I thought it was much like an MOA and if on an IFR flight plan separation would be provided.

Thanks
 
Unlike a MOA, Warning Areas can, and often do, have active firing in progress when they go hot. MOAs will just have aircraft activity only with no weapons expenditures. So unless you want to get shot down by something, Id heed the vectors given when a particular WA is active. They're in your best interests to do so. If you are that fuel critical, let ATC know then via a min fuel advisory or emergency fuel, whichever is appropriate.
 
What Mike said. Granted, the warning areas we work are normal quite a ways off the coast. However, we do work an area over the great lakes.

Whenever we're in an active area, we have a 5 mile antenna that we trail behind us... Invisible hazard to flight should be a good enough reason to avoid.

Not that I have never seen VFR traffic transiting through.

Sent from my DROIDX using Forum Runner
 
Kind of like a MOA, but not really.....more like restricted airspace in practice. Like all the other threads on this forum on this subject, I will use it as a plug to say that you (the non-participating aircraft) REALLY do not want to be there when it is hot, even if it saves you some gas to go through. Double that for the S. TX warning areas where you have a bunch of student mil pilots without radar flying high performance jets.
 
///AMG said:
Kind of like a MOA, but not really.....more like restricted airspace in practice. Like all the other threads on this forum on this subject, I will use it as a plug to say that you (the non-participating aircraft) REALLY do not want to be there when it is hot, even if it saves you some gas to go through. Double that for the S. TX warning areas where you have a bunch of student mil pilots without radar flying high performance jets.
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Agree, a Warning Area is essentially Restricted Airspace that happens to be over water, but you're allowed to fly into them. However when some hazardous activities go on in those areas, ATC will vector civil aircraft around them, for good reason as you well know.

Again, for the OP, if fuel is an issue, declare it to ATC. Or plan better. Never assume that Special Use Airspace will be clear. And regarding MOAs, if they are active, ATC will not send you through there with IFR separation, they'll send you around. Because they cannot guarantee IFR separation as they have no control over where the MOA participants will be and what they are doing.
 
Think of it this way.....when I'm aggressively maneuvering at high speed, ATC's radar isn't good enough to guarantee safe separation. Couple that with a 30-40k/min climb rate, and you are really taking your life (and ours) into your own hands. As a side note, I supercruised for like 10 mins straight today. That was pretty cool :)
 
RogerWilco787 said:
I was flying around the Brownsville, TX area the other day at 17,000ft direct to Brownsville, TX from Alabama and our path would put us right through a Warning Area, but just the northern tip. The controller said we were not allowed to fly through it, and routed us all the way around it, and he said we had to clear the borders by 2.5 miles exactly (may not seem like a big deal, but fuel was becoming an issue). So my question is, can ATC really deny you access to fly through a warning area, because I thought it was much like an MOA and if on an IFR flight plan separation would be provided.

Thanks
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If you are IFR, we are required to maintain 3 miles separation between you and an active warning area. Not sure why he said 2.5 -- that is for other sectors/other civilian airspace.

If you are VFR, you are technically allowed to fly through, but most controllers will terminate radar services if you refuse to accept vectors around.

We can see limited data blocks of the activities in the warning airspace, but we have no idea what they are doing, so it would be impossible to provide IFR radar separation from the targets.
 
Bernoulli Fan said:
If you are VFR, you are technically allowed to fly through, but most controllers will terminate radar services if you refuse to accept vectors around.
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As an additional note to any pilots who fly in the vicinity of USAF or USN training bases here, cancelling IFR so that you can go VFR through the training MOA's is ill-advised. When I was in pilot training at Laughlin, there were several close calls because civil VFR aircraft were blowing through the MOA's. Everyone is responsible to see and avoid, but when you have students in high-performance turboprops flying all sorts of aerobatics in and out of formation, your chances of being noticed by the "OMG this is so freakin cool!!!" student and the "Are you TRYING to hit lead?!!" instructor aren't great. If you can fly over/under/around the MOA, please do it.
 
Bernoulli Fan said:
If you are IFR, we are required to maintain 3 miles separation between you and an active warning area. Not sure why he said 2.5 -- that is for other sectors/other civilian airspace.

If you are VFR, you are technically allowed to fly through, but most controllers will terminate radar services if you refuse to accept vectors around.

We can see limited data blocks of the activities in the warning airspace, but we have no idea what they are doing, so it would be impossible to provide IFR radar separation from the targets.
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+1 to terminating if the VFR pilot insists on going through. I've never witnessed a co-worker NOT do this. It's a really, really bad idea.
 
HE probably said 2.5 Miles, because at 2.5 miles, the radar rounds up to 3 miles... at least ours does if you turn the decimal points off...

Also if you're concerned about being vectored around warning areas, I'd suggest reading your NOTAMs ;)
 
MercFE said:
What Mike said. Granted, the warning areas we work are normal quite a ways off the coast. However, we do work an area over the great lakes.

Whenever we're in an active area, we have a 5 mile antenna that we trail behind us... Invisible hazard to flight should be a good enough reason to avoid.

Not that I have never seen VFR traffic transiting through.

Sent from my DROIDX using Forum Runner
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What is the antenna for?
 
Roger Roger said:
Usually they are for talking to submarines. Low frequencies required to penetrate the water require a really long antenna.
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^ This. VLF system designed to transmit high power signals to ballistic submarines.

The antenna itself is about half the diameter of your pinky... Not much chance of a pilot being about to "see and avoid"
 
Flight school buddy of mine said they have a pair of cutters on the back to clip off the VLF antenna in the event of it not reeling back in....any truth to this? Seems like you would have to be pretty selective about where you did that :)
 
///AMG said:
Flight school buddy of mine said they have a pair of cutters on the back to clip off the VLF antenna in the event of it not reeling back in....any truth to this? Seems like you would have to be pretty selective about where you did that :)
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If Im not mistaken, it might have been done before at one time over the midwest?
 
Not a pilot... Bit more important than that, if you ask me! :D Been with TACAMO for about 11 years now.

EC-130 were the original TACAMO aircraft when we were formed back in the '60s. The E-6A's were produced in the late '80's, the last Boeing 707's to come off the line. E-6B was the modification to take over the old Air Force "Looking Glass" mission in the late '90s.

We do have CAD fired cable cutters on both wires in case of reel system failure. Cutting the wires is a last resort measure. If we cut them, we can't exactly do our communication mission any more.

Don't know of any over land "intentional" departures of the wire. I do know of one plane that they found our "drogue" missing on post flight. The "drogue" is much like a refueling basket, hence why people think we're a tanker when they see us at airshows.

I've also seen pictures of what happens when we can't get the wire to depart the aircraft. Actually had one crew have to take the plane back into Travis AFB with about 1500' of wire trailing from the back end. The cut wire had unraveled enough to become trapped in the exit tube. When the drogue hit the road going around the airfield, the wire did separate and the drogue skipped into the side of a diesel generator building. Looked like a cartoon the way the drogue entered the side of the building, nice cookie cutter hole. Inside the building, the generator was dislodged from its anchors and put on it's side.
 
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