PPT Slide
Colonel Jack Broughton in his book, “Thud Ridge” asked why couldn’t
pilots be snatched in the air immediately after ejecting? Years later,
USAF Scott O’Grady was shot down at high altitude over Bosnia. He
dangled under his parachute for an hour and drifted for over 20 miles!
Clearly, there is plenty of time to recover a pilot under a parachute when
most attack profiles are above 15,000 feet to avoid small caliber anti-
aircraft fires and MANPADs. The ability to snatch parachutes mid-air has
been perfected to a routine to recover spy satellite film capsules reentering
the atmosphere from orbit. On August 19, 1960, a C-119 aircraft made the
world's first mid-air recovery of a capsule returning from space when it
"snagged" the parachute lowering the Discoverer XIV satellite at
6,000 feet altitude, 360 miles southwest of Honolulu, Hawaii. NASA and
Pioneer Aerospace is set to do this again to snatch sensitive solar