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That's not how I read it. Where did he indicate that?
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Aug 24, 2011 06:19
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I tend to prefer the "Team Yankee" cold war gone hot over the Red Storm Rising scenario. Good read if you haven't.
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Aug 24, 2011 06:21
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thesurlyspringKAA posted:That's not how I read it. Where did he indicate that? Have you read any of his previous posts on this kind of stuff in the past year or so? The dude writes like he's putting together a policy paper as part of an officer training program, or a grad student sitting his comps in mil hist. His entire schtick is explaining the way that military policies and procedures work from a textbook/procedural/policy standpoint, whether you're talking about the way ammo gets uploaded to chain guns in fighters or cold-war era NATO contingency planning. You'll know when he's indicating his own personal opinion because he usually flags them in hilariously obvious ways.
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Aug 24, 2011 06:46
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Also his post had at least as much space dedicated to something not involving COIN as COIN. The first line pretty much just says at present the main argument for the Lancer's use is as a long linger, high load support bomber. Whether that is actually a great may be an entirely different story. Reading it into as some kind of attack/putting words into your mouth seems like a reach to me. You asked for reason for long range bombers and he gave you two.
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Aug 24, 2011 07:06
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thesurlyspringKAA posted: Outworded in my own thread.Yeah, definitely didn't intend that as an attack or putting words in your mouth...I'm more than a little on edge when discussing force structure and roles/missions because of trends I've been noticing over the past couple of months. The very short version is that we seem to be heading in the direction where at best we continue with the 33%/33%/33% budget breakdown between the services (without even bothering with a serious strategic review) and at worst a continued fixation on COIN, which I think is absolutely terrible from a long term point of view regarding U.S. security. One symptom of this is the "well the F-22/F-35/B-2/SSNs/Aegis destroyers/etc haven't been used in Afghanistan so  " "argument" (and I use the term loosely). I didn't mean to tar you with that and that wasn't my intention, I was just being my usual sarcastic self. Anyway, the bit about B-1s in COIN was about 95% policy/whatever and 5% personal opinion. All the points you raise are quite valid, and you're right, I've got zip practical experience with JTACs (lots on the bomb production side of course, but that doesn't really matter here). The 5% personal opinion is from the opening days of OEF where we had Buffs doing CAS since we didn't have aircraft based in country, so our only options were bombers, carrier aircraft (which required lots of tanking) or fighters out of UAE/Qatar/whatever (which would require even more tanking). Honestly, even that was less a "this is a great idea and we should emulate it" and more a "hey, this happened so bombers aren't a complete Cold War relic." AS for the rest of it, gonna have to disagree with you a bit on the hypothetical China scenario and the use of cruise missile carriers in modern combat. First, stealth UCAVs aren't in service and won't be in service any time soon. When they do, they'll be sweet, but even then they'll lack combat persistence. At most they'll have two bombs for internal carriage...not exactly a strategic strike platform. You raise a good point about the use of the Navy, but the whole point of a A2/AD strategy is denying us access...and the point of AirSea Battle is providing options to flow around the attempted denial. I'm not saying we wouldn't use Naval assets (indeed, I think the Navy needs a bigger share of the budget than the AF as I point out below) but to rely solely on Naval long range strike (mostly cruise missiles, because the words "long range" and "Super Hornet" don't really go together) is foolish and flies in the face of what AirSea Battle is about. The AF definitely needs a cruise missile carrying strategic bomber. The Bone is not necessarily the aircraft to do this, but neither is the B-2, which is why I said above that we need to keep the Buffs around until (and possibly after) the mythical long range strike aircraft enter service. A strategic bomber isn't going to be the focal point of any AirSea Battle doctrinal discussion, but it will be one of the essential pieces. As an aside, just to preempt anyone's " we'll never fight a war with China you MIC tool" sniping, allow me to repost what I always post when that comes up:quote:Yup. As I've said time and again, China's rise is not about them going toe to toe with the U.S. in any sort of scenario, it's about them gradually increasing the area they feel is their exclusive domain, starting with the waters closest to them, such as the South China Sea. Managing (as much as it is possible for us to do) this rise/desire without causing a shooting war on the one hand or negatively impacting the rest of the countries in the region on the other is the challenge that faces the U.S. In closing, I've expressed the idea before, so I'll just put it simply: if we had a serious strategic review like we should since we are (or at least should be) facing serious budget cuts, the budget divide would be Navy, including a robust expeditionary (not a second land army) Marine Corps, first by a long shot, Air Force a close second (focusing on reconstituting our power projection assets), and Army third getting the scraps. Of course we won't, and we'll continue the 33%/33%/33% divide, and the AF will continue to be broke off its rear end because we can't get any aircraft to replace our 30+ year old ones (some of that is our own doing, but not all of it) and the Navy's fleet continues to get older, smaller, and rustier since they can't afford basic O&M upkeep, but hey, the Army will have some super sweet MRAPs for the next idiotic counterinsurgency we decide to voluntarily fight. Cyrano4747 posted:Have you read any of his previous posts on this kind of stuff in the past year or so? Pot, meet kettle. 
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Aug 24, 2011 08:12
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ming-the-mazdaless posted:Yup, it's the Swartkops AFB museum. I'm coming to South-Africa. Care to give a few pointers of what to see or do there that's gun/army related? I'm at irc #Thefiringrange @ synirc with the same nick
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Aug 24, 2011 10:06
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I hate to say it, but to drop the Triad down to a duet or whatever... Kill the B-1 Kill the B-52. Both their roles can/will be filled by UCVs in the next few years. Kill the ICBM fleet. Far too much upkeep for what they're worth. The Ohio/Polaris fleets and B-2s with Gravity bombs are more then enough of a long-range deterrent. Right then and there is a huge savings.
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Aug 24, 2011 11:33
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The sad truth is killng individual platforms or new development/production programs is not going satiate the defense downturn and neither will efficiency initiatives, acquisition, reform, or even military entitlement reform. In the end it will be the outright elimination of brigade combat teams, fighter air wing equivalents, carrier strike groups, and expeditionary strike groups. It won't be as nuanced in the FY13 budget since DoD is planning to a ~$350B over 10 years reduction compared to the FY12 budget, but if the debt trigger occurs they'll have to cut upto $1T over 10 years. $1T in cuts will roughly translate into a 20% reduction in baseline budget and it will be a huge deal.
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Aug 24, 2011 12:58
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So I'm taking my undergraduate history seminar this semester and I'm gonna need to write a 25 page research paper on the Cold War. I'm thinking nuclear deterrence. I don't suppose any of you guys have any knowledge about that and can point me to some decent sources, do you?
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Aug 24, 2011 14:57
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McNally posted:So I'm taking my undergraduate history seminar this semester and I'm gonna need to write a 25 page research paper on the Cold War. I'm thinking nuclear deterrence. I don't suppose any of you guys have any knowledge about that and can point me to some decent sources, do you? Read Strategies of Containment by John Lewis Gaddis. Covers so many cold war topics its crazy.
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Aug 24, 2011 15:00
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daskrolator posted:Read Strategies of Containment by John Lewis Gaddis. Covers so many cold war topics its crazy. This was going to be my first recommendation. Also, Arsenals of Folly by Richard Rhodes is pretty good. All of his stuff is excellent, and if you have time you should also read Dark Sun, but if you only have time for one Arsenals of Folly is going to be the one most germane to your research interests.
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Aug 24, 2011 17:00
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iyaayas01 posted:This was going to be my first recommendation. Also, Arsenals of Folly by Richard Rhodes is pretty good. All of his stuff is excellent, and if you have time you should also read Dark Sun, but if you only have time for one Arsenals of Folly is going to be the one most germane to your research interests. Yeah Arsenals of Folly was my first thought.
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Aug 24, 2011 17:05
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McNally posted:So I'm taking my undergraduate history seminar this semester and I'm gonna need to write a 25 page research paper on the Cold War. I'm thinking nuclear deterrence. I don't suppose any of you guys have any knowledge about that and can point me to some decent sources, do you? Watch the movie Dr. Strangelove; it's a very black comedy that's also a sharp critique of the American approach to the concepts of nuclear war and deterrence during the Cold War. Also read whatever books these guys are recommending to you as more academic sources, I'm not a history student so I can't make any better recommendations than they will.
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Aug 24, 2011 17:55
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I wish someone would make a thread similar to this, but about ground units and/or small-scale tactics, as opposed to global strategy.
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Aug 24, 2011 18:03
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I have a couple good primary sources already. Dad worked on Titan IIs and later flew on Looking Glass and I know a guy who pulled nuclear alert in F-4s.
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Aug 24, 2011 20:15
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Oxford Comma posted:I wish someone would make a thread similar to this, but about ground units and/or small-scale tactics, as opposed to global strategy. Speaking of small scale tactics, check out this article about israel during the 2nd intifada. It's about re-intepretating the battlespace in urban combat, namely not looking at alleys, doorways and windows as paths of maneuver but instead constraints to maneuver. Or to put it another way viewing conventional urban constraints such as walls, gates, ceilings as a means of maneuvering by blowing holes through them. http://www.scribd.com/doc/57693125/Eyal-Weizman-Lethal-Theory#open_download Also speaking of this topic, I know a while back there was a thread talking about military books, what ever happen to that thread. Personally I'd love to get an idea of what the "best" books are from a history and strategy perspective in these subjects: Electronic Warfare from 1945 to present Comparative tactics between the US and soviet armies at the platoon, company, battalion level Comparative naval strategies between US and soviet navies History of CIA and KGB through the lens of policy on a case by case basis
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Aug 24, 2011 20:27
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Why is Russia still doing this? http://defensetech.org/2011/08/24/f-16s-intercept-russian-bombers/ Is it just for shits and giggles or is this sincerely part of some continuing nuclear deterrence program between Russia and the rest of the world?
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Aug 24, 2011 20:29
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Blind Rasputin posted:Why is Russia still doing this? The Bears go up when Putin is feeling nostalgic.
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Aug 24, 2011 20:50
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Putin is going to do another photo op one of these days on one with him in the tail canon of one making a fake "kill" to prove his manliness. Just watch.
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Aug 24, 2011 21:14
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Chantilly Say posted:Watch the movie Dr. Strangelove; it's a very black comedy that's also a sharp critique of the American approach to the concepts of nuclear war and deterrence during the Cold War. No offense, but for the sake of whoever is grading your class, don't do this. Don't get me wrong - Dr. Strangelove is a great, hilarious movie and you should watch it just because of that. Even so, every semester there are a bunch of students who want to use it as the linchpin of their paper on the Cold War and I want to  . It's kind of the Cold War version of trying to base your Holocaust paper off of Schindler's List.
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Aug 24, 2011 21:15
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daskrolator posted:Speaking of small scale tactics, check out this article about israel during the 2nd intifada. It's about re-intepretating the battlespace in urban combat, namely not looking at alleys, doorways and windows as paths of maneuver but instead constraints to maneuver. Or to put it another way viewing conventional urban constraints such as walls, gates, ceilings as a means of maneuvering by blowing holes through them. "Rather than submit to the authority of conventional spatial boundaries and logic, movement became constitutive of space. The three-dimensional progression through walls, ceilings, and floors across the urban balk reinterpreted, short-circuited, and recomposed both architectural and urban syntax." I lol'ed. Somebody needs to learn that it's the meaning of your writing that counts, not how many syllables it takes you to get there. This kind of writing is why people make fun of academia.
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Aug 24, 2011 21:32
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Cyrano4747 posted:No offense, but for the sake of whoever is grading your class, don't do this. Yeah, I may be dumb but I'm not stupid. This is my research seminar, not a 100 level world history class.
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Aug 24, 2011 21:37
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Cyrano4747 posted:No offense, but for the sake of whoever is grading your class, don't do this. What about Fail-Safe?
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Aug 24, 2011 21:37
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daskrolator posted:Speaking of small scale tactics, check out this article about israel during the 2nd intifada. It's about re-intepretating the battlespace in urban combat, namely not looking at alleys, doorways and windows as paths of maneuver but instead constraints to maneuver. Or to put it another way viewing conventional urban constraints such as walls, gates, ceilings as a means of maneuvering by blowing holes through them. The Soviets used this to great effect in Stalingrad. e- it's also how I play Men of War 
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Aug 24, 2011 22:11
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Cyrano4747 posted:No offense, but for the sake of whoever is grading your class, don't do this. Hah, really? I didn't know. EDIT: To clarify, I didn't mean "go watch this movie and write your paper about it," more "go watch this movie, it's great and hilarious, also go read whatever Cyrano and other actual history students recommend, since I'm in no place to give you serious recommendations." Cold War politics isn't until next semester for me. EDIT-2: Also, wait, great as it is, how do you use that film as the lynchpin of an academic paper? 
Pirate Radar fucked around with this message at 00:56 on Aug 25, 2011 |
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Aug 24, 2011 22:23
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MA-Horus posted:I hate to say it, but to drop the Triad down to a duet or whatever... There would also be considerable cost savings if we cut down our ICBM fleet and modernized it. Technology wise, there's nothing stopping us from designing a model with more warheads per missile, that way we could cut down on the number of missiles, while actually gaining # of warheads deployed. I think the Minuteman only carries 3 MIRVs per missile, while other missiles (SS-18) could carry 10. Bump up the MIRVs carried to 10 or 12, and with 200 missiles, you could have 2000 warheads, while with 450 missiles and 3 MIRVs, you only have 1350. That way you'd still have 2 systems. Maybe I missing something, but B2 with gravity bomb, if enough poo poo has hit the fan where you're contemplating launching a nuclear strike on something, Why use a bomber when you could launch an ICBM at it? If you don't need 10 MIRVs, use a cruise missile. You clearly aren't first striking some nation with retaliatory capability with just 1 missile or 1 B2, so I don't see the point in using a bomber to do what missiles could do better, with no chance of loss, and it would reach the target faster. And if you are, and the only example that I can think of with the slightest chance of happening, is a strike against Iran, You'd need pretty much our entire fleet of B-2s, and accounting for flight time, It would be much easier and faster with ICBMs, either land based or Polaris. Saint Celestine fucked around with this message at 22:55 on Aug 24, 2011 |
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Aug 24, 2011 22:38
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Saint Celestine posted:There would also be considerable cost savings if we cut down our ICBM fleet and modernized it. Technology wise, there's nothing stopping us from designing a model with more warheads per missile, that way we could cut down on the number of missiles, while actually gaining # of warheads deployed. I think the Minuteman only carries 3 MIRVs per missile, while other missiles (SS-18) could carry 10. Bump up the MIRVs carried to 10 or 12, and with 200 missiles, you could have 2000 warheads, while with 450 missiles and 3 MIRVs, you only have 1350. Pretty sure there is something treaty-related with this. The Peacekeeper missiles carried 10, but were taken out of service in 2005. edit: also, survivability. Yeah you have fewer missiles to maintain, but some people saw that as fewer targets for the enemy to disable.
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Aug 24, 2011 22:49
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Saint Celestine posted:There would also be considerable cost savings if we cut down our ICBM fleet and modernized it. Technology wise, there's nothing stopping us from designing a model with more warheads per missile, that way we could cut down on the number of missiles, while actually gaining # of warheads deployed. I think the Minuteman only carries 3 MIRVs per missile, while other missiles (SS-18) could carry 10. Bump up the MIRVs carried to 10 or 12, and with 200 missiles, you could have 2000 warheads, while with 450 missiles and 3 MIRVs, you only have 1350. Except for our treatie that says "no more MIRV", that's a fine idea! Bring back an updated Midgetman. Small, mobile, silly accurate, and still can put a 500 kT warhead anywhere you need it.
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Aug 24, 2011 22:51
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START 2 isn't in effect and hasn't been for a few years.Boomerjinks posted:Pretty sure there is something treaty-related with this. The Peacekeeper missiles carried 10, but were taken out of service in 2005. I dunno about survivability, sure, in a first strike cold war scenario, maybe, but we still have all those silos. Spread them out, that way in some bizarre apocalypse scenario, the Soviets won't know which silos have missiles and which ones don't and will still have to account for hitting all 450 or however many silos we have. Whats more likely is the lack of any armed nuclear conflict between the US and any potential superpower or regional power, so survivability is moot, when the enemy's missiles have like a 50% failure rate and cant even hit your missiles. The main reason for not designing super-ICBMs with like 16 MIRVs is political, not technical. I was merely stating that in a world with no such restraint, that would be the best way to keep up our nuclear deterrence as well as providing cost savings. Saint Celestine fucked around with this message at 23:08 on Aug 24, 2011 |
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Aug 24, 2011 22:58
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Saint Celestine posted:There would also be considerable cost savings if we cut down our ICBM fleet and modernized it. Technology wise, there's nothing stopping us from designing a model with more warheads per missile, that way we could cut down on the number of missiles, while actually gaining # of warheads deployed. I think the Minuteman only carries 3 MIRVs per missile, while other missiles (SS-18) could carry 10. Bump up the MIRVs carried to 10 or 12, and with 200 missiles, you could have 2000 warheads, while with 450 missiles and 3 MIRVs, you only have 1350. The thing the existing land based ICBM fleet doesn't really cost that much money relative to the rest of the DoD budget, including personnel, military construction, and operations and maintenance(O&M), it's barely a billion dollars annually. Even if you were to include the next round of sustainment upgrades needed to keep them going for another decade or so it's less than 1% of the DoD budget. The SLBMs are a different beast entirely since they require more personnel, more expensive basing, and have higher O&M cost that will continue grow unless they replace them with SSBN-X. Unfortunately SSBN-X is going to cost in the high double digits based on how many they'd need to replace as well as recent trends of expected new production ships coming out of the shipyards. Bombers aren't nearly as bad but their costs are still much higher than land based ICBMs, although like others mentioned there is utility for SLBMs and Bombers in conventional mission whereas the same can't be said for ICBMs. From a budget perspective SLBMs are the biggest target on the budget chopping block and it would be interesting to see if the Navy will fight that battle with congress over maintaining their current fleet size.
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Aug 24, 2011 23:34
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Welp. I didn't realize ICBMs were that cheap to maintain. SLBMs are the most costly, but they're arguably the most secure, since you can shoot down or disable a bomber, you know where the silos are, but there's no way anyone is going to find a couple of subs in the ocean.
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Aug 25, 2011 00:28
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Saint Celestine posted:there's no way anyone is going to find a couple of subs in the ocean. Depends on what Navy is looking, but yeah you probably won't kill them all.
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Aug 25, 2011 01:04
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VikingSkull posted:Depends on what Navy is looking, but yeah you probably won't kill them all. It's kinda scary with the navy is able to do with anechoic tiling, propulsors and quiet reactors. I've heard the Seawolf (and by extension Virginias) are like holes in the water, and Ohios are even harder to find.
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Aug 25, 2011 03:33
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Does anyone know of any recent writing about fixing procurement, nationalizing arms contractors, anything like that? The america's defense meltdown ebook was good if super flawed in some places daskrolator posted:Speaking of small scale tactics, check out this article about israel during the 2nd intifada. It's about re-intepretating the battlespace in urban combat, namely not looking at alleys, doorways and windows as paths of maneuver but instead constraints to maneuver. Or to put it another way viewing conventional urban constraints such as walls, gates, ceilings as a means of maneuvering by blowing holes through them.
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Aug 25, 2011 08:16
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WEREWAIF posted:Does anyone know of any recent writing about fixing procurement, nationalizing arms contractors, anything like that?
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Aug 25, 2011 22:42
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If NATO doctrine was to drop nukes on the masses of Soviet tanks rolling thru the Fulda Gap, how did the U.S.S.R. plan to counter this? Was it to just push a whole fuckload of tanks through and accept whatever losses happened, or did they have another idea.
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Aug 25, 2011 22:45
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Oxford Comma posted:If NATO doctrine was to drop nukes on the masses of Soviet tanks rolling thru the Fulda Gap, how did the U.S.S.R. plan to counter this? Was it to just push a whole fuckload of tanks through and accept whatever losses happened, or did they have another idea. Make sure the second wave is NBC-sealed so they can drive through the blast zone.
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Aug 25, 2011 22:51
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Oxford Comma posted:If NATO doctrine was to drop nukes on the masses of Soviet tanks rolling thru the Fulda Gap, how did the U.S.S.R. plan to counter this? Was it to just push a whole fuckload of tanks through and accept whatever losses happened, or did they have another idea. Drop bigger nukes on the airbases, radar and military installations in western Europe.
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Aug 26, 2011 00:18
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Remulak posted:It's not recent but Fallow's National Defense is the classic and it isn't like anything has changed. When I read that book some time ago I thought a lot of it has changed. I keep the book at the office though so can't recall some of the more specific gripes I had about it but from the top of my head it was: Fallows doesn't take into consideration the O&M, Milpers and entitlement consequences of a professional force and its impact on force structure which in the end translate into budgets The comparison between 3rd and 4th gen fighters was apt but I don't remember him addressing the high-low mix much at all. I could have just forgot about it but then again for when the book was published the F-16 and F/A-18 lines were just beginning to ramp up into big numbers I don't remember how much he discussed McNamara's centralization of defense acquisition but I could have sworn he was really hard on Schlesinger given much of what he did was to undo the policies McNamara had enacted. Lots has changed though since the early 80s; the shift from aircraft per sortie to sorties per aircraft in fighter aviation, the formation of the JCIDs process, the shift towards precision guided munitions and other smart weapons, the arrival and departure of the Lead Systems Integrator fad, and the rise of block upgrades of legacy platforms.
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Aug 26, 2011 01:07
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Oxford Comma posted:If NATO doctrine was to drop nukes on the masses of Soviet tanks rolling thru the Fulda Gap, how did the U.S.S.R. plan to counter this? Was it to just push a whole fuckload of tanks through and accept whatever losses happened, or did they have another idea. VikingSkull posted:Drop bigger nukes on the airbases, radar and military installations in western Europe. Pretty much that. I talked about it a few pages back, but the short version is that the Soviet response would be to strike those targets with theater level nukes (think SS-20s)...this would be escalation, since now you are moving from purely battlefield nukes to striking targets in the rear, with a good chance of significant civilian casualties, raising the pressure on the US to respond with some sort of attack against the Soviet rear, strategic or otherwise, due to the pesky Article V of the North Atlantic Treaty. Also, both the U.K. and France had and have an independent deterrent, and several other NATO countries had and have the whole NATO Nuclear Sharing thing. daskrolator posted:the arrival and departure of the Lead Systems Integrator fad Yeah, look at Deepwater...that went well. daskrolator posted:and the rise of block upgrades of legacy platforms. A related issue would be spiral development of new production...which is a good case of damned if you do, damned if you don't.
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Aug 26, 2011 03:43
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