Flanker posted:I need to know more I'd go with 'frottage' myself
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Jul 5, 2011 17:36
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I wonder how big of a brick Pakistan is making GBS threads?
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Jul 5, 2011 17:43
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Flikken posted:I wonder how big of a brick Pakistan is making GBS threads? Eh, ever since India and Pakistan went nuclear, the convential arms race really isn't that much to get worked up about. On the other hand, if India deployed a viable ABM system, Pakistan would freak.
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Jul 5, 2011 18:31
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While I like the wing design (what would that be called? blended wing? clipped delta? nothing really fits) of the PAK FA, I think they should have kept the wings of the Su-47 Berkut. So drat cool. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sukhoi_Su-47 Forward swept wing action 
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Jul 5, 2011 18:42
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Smiling Jack posted:Eh, ever since India and Pakistan went nuclear, the convential arms race really isn't that much to get worked up about. Think that fighter could carry a small nuclear bomb?
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Jul 5, 2011 20:32
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Are India'snukes to be considered compact? A lot of our early designs were quite cumbersome. It takes a lot of money, and r&d time to miniaturize a nuke. And even if weight isn't an issue, there are size constraints for internal stores, and ground clearance is a factor in external storage. And if your goal is to nuke your neighbor, low observability is hugely important. That said I know little about Indian nuclear capability. Anyone in the know care to comment/speculate? Or Pakistan's, for that matter
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Jul 5, 2011 22:28
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In this case their top secret project OXCART is literally an oxcart. I kid, I'm sure it's all high tech etc etc.
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Jul 5, 2011 22:43
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Flikken posted:Think that fighter could carry a small nuclear bomb? So could a Gremlin hatchback but I don't see anyone getting too worried about the pinnacle of 1970's AMC technology.
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Jul 5, 2011 23:55
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Smiling Jack posted:So could a Gremlin hatchback but I don't see anyone getting too worried about the pinnacle of 1970's AMC technology. 
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Jul 6, 2011 00:06
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priznat posted:Isn't that a Ford Pinto?
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Jul 6, 2011 01:11
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I promise it's a gremlin.
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Jul 6, 2011 01:15
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mlmp08 posted:I promise it's a gremlin. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADINMjjtHvc Clearly a gremlin. You are correct sir. Smiling Jack fucked around with this message at 01:32 on Jul 6, 2011 |
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Jul 6, 2011 01:23
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Smiling Jack posted:So could a Gremlin hatchback but I don't see anyone getting too worried about the pinnacle of 1970's AMC technology. Yes but couldn't a stealth aircraft become a first strike game changer in their MAD doctorine. Especially multiple strikes on Pakistani nuclear forces to maybe bring them off of the table and eliminate the counter strike capability before the Pakastani's even know what hit them?
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Jul 6, 2011 11:27
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Flikken posted:Yes but couldn't a stealth aircraft become a first strike game changer in their MAD doctorine. Especially multiple strikes on Pakistani nuclear forces to maybe bring them off of the table and eliminate the counter strike capability before the Pakastani's even know what hit them? Short answer: no.
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Jul 6, 2011 12:21
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LavistaSays posted:Are India'snukes to be considered compact? A lot of our early designs were quite cumbersome. It takes a lot of money, and r&d time to miniaturize a nuke. And even if weight isn't an issue, there are size constraints for internal stores, and ground clearance is a factor in external storage. And if your goal is to nuke your neighbor, low observability is hugely important. The Indians have Mig-29s, Su-30s, and Mirage 2000s, all capable of handling nuclear weapons. In addition, they have a few Tu-22s and the cruise missiles to go with them. From what I've read, the '74 test was the testbed, large device we'd expect, but the '98 test was the more modern, warhead sized version. The Pakistanis basically tailored their tests in '98 to simulate aircraft carried bomb/CM warhead weapons. Flikken posted:Yes but couldn't a stealth aircraft become a first strike game changer in their MAD doctorine. Especially multiple strikes on Pakistani nuclear forces to maybe bring them off of the table and eliminate the counter strike capability before the Pakastani's even know what hit them? Mumbai x1000, basically Seizure Meat fucked around with this message at 21:31 on Jul 8, 2011 |
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Jul 8, 2011 21:29
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Flikken posted:I am honestly curious how he went from naval aviator to USAF. Evidently, this was somewhat common in the 50's if you were coming out of Annapolis or West Point. I was just visiting my uncle last week who retired as an AF 3 star. http://www.af.mil/information/bios/bio.asp?bioID=4806 Growing up, I just knew he was in the AF like my pop. At his house, I noticed his Naval Academy diploma and asked him how he ended up in the AF. He said, "I went to the Naval Academy to fulfill my lifelong dream of being a submariner. Then they went and put me in an airplane and I was hooked." In his day, they used N3N float planes at Annapolis ( http://www.nasm.si.edu/collections/artifact.cfm?id=A19610111000 ) and he loved it. Since the AF Academy wasn't up and running for the relatively new AF, the Navy gave 25% of his class (volunteers) to transfer to the AF. He jumped at the chance.
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Jul 8, 2011 23:09
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Back in the day, graduation from a military academy gained you a commission, but not a specific service. You could graduate the USMA and get a Marine commission if you so desired, or go to the Naval Academy and join the calvary. Even back then it was quite unusual. Things may have changed today.
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Jul 9, 2011 00:57
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VikingSkull posted:The Indians have Mig-29s, Su-30s, and Mirage 2000s, all capable of handling nuclear weapons. In addition, they have a few Tu-22s and the cruise missiles to go with them. From what I've read, the '74 test was the testbed, large device we'd expect, but the '98 test was the more modern, warhead sized version. I swore there was a test in the 2000's. No??
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Jul 9, 2011 01:33
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NosmoKing posted:I swore there was a test in the 2000's. Pretty sure only North Korea has detonated one this century.
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Jul 9, 2011 02:48
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Smiling Jack posted:Back in the day, graduation from a military academy gained you a commission, but not a specific service. You could graduate the USMA and get a Marine commission if you so desired, or go to the Naval Academy and join the calvary. Even back then it was quite unusual. This is still possible today...an F-15 driver I worked with graduated from West Point. It definitely isn't very common, though. It was more common at that point in history, since the USAF was a new separate service in 1947 but didn't graduate its first class from the Academy until 1959, so there was a decade+ where officers had to come from somewhere else (as far as Academy dudes...obviously stuff like ROTC and OTS/Air Cadets was still an option).
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Jul 9, 2011 11:19
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iyaayas01 posted:This is still possible today...an F-15 driver I worked with graduated from West Point. It definitely isn't very common, though. No, I understand that someone could go from one of the service academy's into a different branch of service. But the guy in question apparently got commissioned and went on to receive and complete Naval Aviator training and THEN joined the USAF as a pilot.
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Jul 10, 2011 04:20
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cambridgeshire-14101641 Earlier we were talking about the resiliance of the Skyhawk planes. In the above news article they describe how a P-51 Mustang and a Skyhawk touched wings during a display. The Mustang didn't fare so well. The Skyhawk, despite losing a substantial portion of its wing, was able to continue back and land.
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Jul 11, 2011 09:45
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That article is about a P-51 and a Skyraider not a Skyhawk Pretty impressive that the P-51 pilot managed to get out and parachute safely at relatively low level.
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Jul 11, 2011 16:40
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kill me now posted:That article is about a P-51 and a Skyraider not a Skyhawk Weirdly I was picturing a Skyraider
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Jul 11, 2011 16:47
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This is a neat thread here, but curiously, while lots of pictures of the TU-95 and TU-22 have been posted, none have been posted of the first Soviet jet bomber, the Myasishchev M-4.      The Patriot chat earlier in the thread has got me thinking. The public perception right now might be overly optimistic about the capabilities of air forces, because there hasn't been any recent conflicts where a modern air force has faced off against an enemy well equipped with modern SAMs. What is the current "state of the art" as it were, on this subject? In other words, if a moderately wealthy regional power like Iran or Venezuela got really serious about making their airspace impregnable to attack from the air, and instead of buying up a token squadron of Mig-29s or whatever instead went the ground based route and imported the latest in Russian missile tech, properly trained their crews, etc, how far will this get them? Can they successfully put up enough lead in the air to essentially keep western air forces out, or are the super duper American stealth bombers so far ahead in terms of technology that they can still operate with impunity? Throatwarbler fucked around with this message at 02:47 on Jul 12, 2011 |
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Jul 12, 2011 02:45
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Throatwarbler posted:The Patriot chat earlier in the thread has got me thinking. The public perception right now might be overly optimistic about the capabilities of air forces, because there hasn't been any recent conflicts where a modern air force has faced off against an enemy well equipped with modern SAMs. Even if we imagine that the country trying to fend off the west had access and the budget for all modern air defense systems, even western ones, the real doom of this approach is just how numerous and advanced the west's cruise missile forces are, perhaps even moreso than their possession of stealthy bombers. Combine long range, very accurate, extremely low-flying cruise missiles which can fly predetermined routes to take advantage of the terrain, both natural and urban, with the best spy satellite technology in the world and it becomes very difficult to keep a large, exposed system like Patriot or an S-300 or S-400 site alive. Short-range air defense sites may be able to hide themselves better and move around to degrade the effectiveness of cruise missiles, but large, soft targets like Patriot which are technically mobile, but not all that quick about it are easier prey. Patriot or the Russian equivalents are your best bet against high altitude aircraft with long-range standoff weapons and against low RCS aircraft, so once those sites are destroyed, the western forces are more or less free to engage in high altitude or standoff missions to weed out air defenses as well as using a lot of jammer aircraft, something which Patriot wouldn't have much issue combating, but which many short-range systems have problems with. Now, if this hypothetical SAM-based country was on almost entirely flat land and the Patriot sites weren't obstructed by cities, then Patriot can shoot down cruise missiles, but if you're in a hilly country, it can become impractical to cover all the air avenues. Also, you'll need very skilled crews to properly execute cruise missile engagements in a timely manner, because if something is flying so low and is also so small that you don't detect it til very late, as is often the case with cruise missiles, you have very very little time to react. What would help with this is that a SAM-based country won't really be worried about shooting down their own planes which they don't really have, and so SAM operators will be free to immediatley fire on anything that looks fishy rather than the U.S. perspective that the fast-moving object you just detected diving at your site is more likely to be the USAF than the enemy.
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Jul 12, 2011 03:14
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Can cruise missiles not be shot down by radar guided guns like the CIWS mounted on ships?
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Jul 12, 2011 03:25
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Throatwarbler posted:Can cruise missiles not be shot down by radar guided guns like the CIWS mounted on ships? They could, but if you're talking about a country with enough money to have a pile of SHORAD, a pile of Patriot, and a bunch of modified CIWS defending each Patriot site, then it starts to get a bit ridiculous, because they'd likely have enough money for both a decent SAM network AND a decent Air Force. If terrain was flat and I ran a country with little or no air force, I'd opt for giving Patriot operators free reign to shoot pretty much anything and everything before trying to figure a way to defend them from cruise missiles using SHORAD systems or CIWS. What I didn't mention is Patriot's vulnerability to rotary-wing craft or low-flying UAVs, but that's because SHORAD can pretty well take care of that, and Patriot can care for itself for the most part if the ground is flat.
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Jul 12, 2011 03:33
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They can be but that's basically point blank which is far too close for comfort for most people. If you have a several missiles coming in CIWS type stuff can only do so much.
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Jul 12, 2011 03:33
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Also, what Alaan said. If CIWS is engaging the cruise missiles, they're already so close in that either Patriot didn't detect them or it missed.
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Jul 12, 2011 03:35
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mlmp08 posted:They could, but if you're talking about a country with enough money to have a pile of SHORAD, a pile of Patriot, and a bunch of modified CIWS defending each Patriot site, then it starts to get a bit ridiculous, because they'd likely have enough money for both a decent SAM network AND a decent Air Force. You mentioned that the Patriot would be able to take care of a cruise missile by itself if it was coming in high, but won't be able to cover all air avenues in hilly or complex terrain. I was thinking by the same token, the battery commander could look at the terrain and position his truck mounted CIWS units in likely avenues of approach to intercept cruise missiles (or anything else) some distance away, but I suppose the range of a 30mm cannon is probably too short to effectively cover likely approaches. The other thing is that I suppose the Americans can probably put more cruise missiles in the air at once than the total number of SAMs a small country could even stockpile and overwhelm them with sheer numbers. What got me thinking was that if I were in charge of a small country and feared western bombing, it would be an absolute monumental task to build up an air force that could hope to fight the Americans or Europeans in the air. Besides, if I made the air force too good, what's to stop them from turning their planes around and bombing the presidential palace if they suddenly decided to turn week-kneed, or the air marshal decided he wanted to be el presidente? Can't happen with SAM batteries. It seems to me that instead of dumping money into a small number of obsolete Russian planes that are all going to just either flee the country or get buried when the Americans come, anti-air defence would be a better use for the money. EDIT: Also, I'm under the impression that planes and pilots are pretty expensive to buy and maintain compared to SAMs.
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Jul 12, 2011 03:54
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Part of the problem is on the whole Russia and China are not fond of selling their top tier stuff. So you may be able to buy the stuff to handle conventional aircraft well, but you aren't getting the blinging new gear to give you the chance to intercept stealth targets.
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Jul 12, 2011 03:58
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Throatwarbler posted:What got me thinking was that if I were in charge of a small country and feared western bombing, it would be an absolute monumental task to build up an air force that could hope to fight the Americans or Europeans in the air. Besides, if I made the air force too good, what's to stop them from turning their planes around and bombing the presidential palace if they suddenly decided to turn week-kneed, or the air marshal decided he wanted to be el presidente? Can't happen with SAM batteries. It seems to me that instead of dumping money into a small number of obsolete Russian planes that are all going to just either flee the country or get buried when the Americans come, anti-air defence would be a better use for the money. If you're in charge of a small nation and fear a NATO bombing campaign, your best bet is to disperse your forces and harden your assets. Then find a way to bug the hell out of NATO independent of your total inability to stop them from bombing you. Now, if you face an invading air force from a similar-sized nation, it could well be easier and cheaper to build up a comparatively robust SAM force than it would be to have planes, pilots, and command and control capabilities that will allow you to actually interdict your neighbor effectively. I mean, if I were given a modest budget and asked to come up with a way to counter a neighbor's air force without worrying about the ability to strike back on their own land, I'd likely go SAM-heavy rather than try to build an interdiction air force.
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Jul 12, 2011 04:05
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Then again, there was that Serb who managed to shoot down a F-117 with soviet era exported equipment. There was a really good AAR written up from his point of view; what was interesting is the amount of effort the ground commander put into simply staying alive in the face of NATO SEAD missions, plus the role that HUMINT played. Four acronyms, not bad.
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Jul 12, 2011 04:06
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Yeah, props to him, but it had a lot to do with stupid USAF planning that won't be repeated. Also, the F-117 is/was not very drat stealthy.
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Jul 12, 2011 04:08
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Smiling Jack posted:Then again, there was that Serb who managed to shoot down a F-117 with soviet era exported equipment. Link to it here
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Jul 12, 2011 04:14
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So going with the rock/paper/scissors analogy. There's nothing I can use from the ground to shoot down American bombers that doesn't involve radar. As soon as I turn the radar on, the Americans will know where the radar is and send cruise missiles after it. There's nothing that can be done to counter the cruise missiles? The SAM launcher itself can't shoot/scan the sky while moving, I assume. I've thought of the mobile truck mounted CIWS. What about the Tunguska and other mobile radar guided point defence weapons?
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Jul 12, 2011 04:19
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Throatwarbler posted:So going with the rock/paper/scissors analogy. There's nothing I can use from the ground to shoot down American bombers that doesn't involve radar. As soon as I turn the radar on, the Americans will know where the radar is and send cruise missiles after it. well... there are systems that shoot quite high, don't need radar running constantly, and could relocate before cruise missiles come in. Their bigger threat is more conventional air-to-ground munitions or an ARM. In addition to those, Patriot can shoot down cruise missiles, but it's no guaranteed plan of action. Many shorad systems can shoot on the move, but they are typically just that, short-range. Take Avengers, for example, which are highly accurate and difficult to evade, but have a hilariously short range. Big systems like Patriot do not shoot or scan while on the move, period. A Patriot site can be packed up in 45 minutes and emplaced and ready to fight in an hour. Bottom line, if your goal is to not get bombed by NATO and you don't have a brilliant air force, SAM force, and other type of force such as economic or political force, to keep from being bombed, you'll get bombed. If you find you will be targeted by NATO bombs, just go ahead and find a means to accomplish your goals without stopping the bombings.
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Jul 12, 2011 04:37
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mlmp08 posted:well... there are systems that shoot quite high, don't need radar running constantly, and could relocate before cruise missiles come in. Their bigger threat is more conventional air-to-ground munitions or an ARM. In addition to those, Patriot can shoot down cruise missiles, but it's no guaranteed plan of action. How will you know where the enemy airplanes are without the radar running?
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Jul 12, 2011 04:42
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Throatwarbler posted:How will you know where the enemy airplanes are without the radar running? Mobile short-range sites can get early warning from surveillance radars as basic as your typical air traffic control radar. You can't fire with such a radar picture, but you know if something's out there. If those early warning radars are down, you can just blink, radiating off and on for very brief periods while relocating in between. You can then more or less guess when someone will be in range based on where they were the last couple times you radiated. Then you can radiate, lock on, fire, and cease radiate the instant it's possible without aborting your engagement and then relocate in a hurry. It can also be as simple as a SHORAD guy sitting around waiting til he hears or sees planes overhead or gets word that someone else got bombed. Some infra-red based systems are visual only and don't even have radars, but they are rather short range.
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Jul 12, 2011 04:47
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