6 hours ago, IRLATC said:

The military ATC mobile group in my country has a setup like that, they can provide GCA in 24 hours anywhere in the world supported by surveillance aircrafts. I visited the "box" where the system and ATCOS are and it is pretty claustrophobic. It is the same size as a regular container with very thick walls to make it NBQ "resistant". What a job, to be inside that box while being a primary objective for the enemy...

During the Viet Nam war I was one of the PAR (Precision Approach Radar) controllers who did the initial testing of those little boxes. In truth, it didn’t feel much different being in one of the trailers. They were packed with equipment, leaving only a small isle just wide enough to walk to your seat in front of the scope. I think the big difference was that the trailers had wheels and the cubes didn’t. They were made to be air-lifted in. 

Well, things have not changed so much. I wonder why, once surveillance has been stablished in the area, PAR is not provided form remote locations. This should be possible today. May be it is a comms issue.

 

In some ways, yes. Most won’t remember the 1950’s film, Air Force, where, in one of the last scenes Jimmy Stewart is returning to base, in heavy weather, in a crippled B-47 (what beauties those were ). His decent down through the clouds to find the runway illustrated what went on back then:  A relationship of trust existed between the pilot and the final controller. The controller trusted that the pilot was able to respond accurately to within feet of positioning the aircraft on the glide path, and the pilot had to unquestioningly trust that the controller wasn’t directing him into the ground. It was a unique connection. Only the controller spoke. The pilot was essentially a human autopilot, just following instructions. You have to be a pretty good pilot to adjust your horizontal  and vertical position on an invisible glide path to within a few feet in the blind. This is some serious IFR flying. These guys spent many hours in training for this with us, under the hood, as students - usually in T37s and T38s. Now pilots get general instructions and they basically then just execute with in-cockpit instrumentation.