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Forums Terrorist posted:I don't know what you're smoking, getting into bed with the US was the worst thing British hawks ever did. What yes, let us rely completely on an ally who is across an easily blockade ocean I dont know what world you live in where the US is "easily" blockaded from any body of water. Let alone a large one like the atlantic.
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Jan 25, 2012 17:39
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On that note...
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You're thinking the wrong end of the supply chain.
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Jan 25, 2012 17:42
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Forums Terrorist posted:I don't know what you're smoking, getting into bed with the US was the worst thing British hawks ever did. What yes, let us rely completely on an ally who is across an easily blockade ocean More like let's rely completely on the most powerful superpower on earth, because hey, just like the rest of NATO does. What would you advocate instead?
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Jan 25, 2012 17:47
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kill me now posted:I dont know what world you live in where the US is "easily" blockaded from any body of water. Let alone a large one like the atlantic. If this fell, Soviet submarines would go surging into the North Atlantic and go to town on any ship unfortunate enough to be carrying materiel to the EU. Pretty big plot point in Red Storm Rising as well, if I recall.
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Jan 25, 2012 18:31
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movax posted:If this fell, Soviet submarines would go surging into the North Atlantic and go to town on any ship unfortunate enough to be carrying materiel to the EU. Pretty big plot point in Red Storm Rising as well, if I recall. I quoted "easily" for a reason. The north Atlantic would have been a blood bath for US and Soviet subs and surface ships for the first few weeks of and all out war, but that said the Russian navy is a shadow of its former self so we arent exactly living in "that" world anymore anyway. Right now, please tell me what country could "easily" blockade the US from resupplying the UK in 2012-? Beyond that, aircraft parts can and would be sent over by air as they are not typically bulky or heavy. Munitions, tanks, fuel? Yeah they would all go by boat, but engines, avionics, etc can all be flown across the Atlantic.
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Jan 25, 2012 19:28
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Forums Terrorist posted:I don't know what you're smoking, getting into bed with the US was the worst thing British hawks ever did. What yes, let us rely completely on an ally who is across an easily blockade ocean Uh, what?
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Jan 25, 2012 19:38
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movax posted:If this fell, Soviet submarines would go surging into the North Atlantic and go to town on any ship unfortunate enough to be carrying materiel to the EU. Pretty big plot point in Red Storm Rising as well, if I recall. Yeah. . . 1) this isn't 1941. Germany isn't going to take advantage of a fleet still trying to recover from the Depression and a two-ocean war to temporarily push the issue with cheap submarines. 2) Even at the worst stage of the WW2 era ASW war in the atlantic Britain wasn't suffering that much from the "blockade." To see a truly devastating naval blockade you need to look at the one that Britain waged on Germany in WW1 or, to a much lesser extent, the one the US waged on Japan from about 44-45. 3) Tom Clancy is a hack and most of his writings are, at best, thought experiments that give someone else a LOT of bullshit advantages to make them a credible military threat to the US. Most of his books take this so far that he's into the realm of high fantasy. 4) The modern US Navy is HUUUUGE. We're talking ridiculous huge compared to anything else in the world. If we were talking strictly about naval assets we could probably go to war with every other sea-faring nation on the planet and at least stand a credible chance. The basic reality is that the only force on the planet that could even CONCEIVE of executing something as huge as a naval blockade on a country the size of England would be the US. Chumming up to us is the best possible way for the Brits to 100% guarantee that their sea lanes never, ever get dicked with.
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Jan 25, 2012 20:41
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The two most obvious clancy handwaving plot points in RSR are the amphibious invasion of Iceland by the soviets and the NATO seizing air supremacy through F19 strikes in the opening days of the war forcing parity between forces both on land and at sea. There are a ton of others but those are the big two.
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Jan 25, 2012 20:53
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Xerxes17 posted:gently caress the haters, Su-34's own, canards own, get out.  WEATHERING
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Jan 25, 2012 20:54
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movax posted:If this fell, Soviet submarines would go surging into the North Atlantic and go to town on any ship unfortunate enough to be carrying materiel to the EU. Pretty big plot point in Red Storm Rising as well, if I recall. Why would it fall? I just finished rereading RSR (or for the time in English anyway) and that idiot Clancy has Keflavik AB only manned by an F-15 squadron and some E-3s. Place would have been absolutely buzzing after Day M+7. Both USAF and ANG could easily deploy and how about there being no naval presence to stop a silly 'LCACs from a container ship'-plot?
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Jan 25, 2012 21:17
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Cyrano4747 posted:Yeah. . . Lesser extent? My understanding of it (hey, you're the historian and may be right) is that the US stopped essentially ANY items entering Japan by boat. I recently read a book about deck gun actions by US subs towards the end of the Japanese blockade and they were sinking junks, pleasure craft, fishing boats, loving ROWBOATS, if they had a suspision that the boat was carrying supplies to Japan or supporting the war effort. Let me see if my library history will let me pull up the book title. Edit: http://www.amazon.com/Surface-Destroy-Submarine-Gun-Pacific/dp/0813129966/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1327523197&sr=8-1 Surface and Destroy: The Submarine Gun War in the Pacific - by Michael Sturma NosmoKing fucked around with this message at 21:28 on Jan 25, 2012 |
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Jan 25, 2012 21:21
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NosmoKing posted:Lesser extent? My understanding of it (hey, you're the historian and may be right) is that the US stopped essentially ANY items entering Japan by boat. I recently read a book about deck gun actions by US subs towards the end of the Japanese blockade and they were sinking junks, pleasure craft, fishing boats, loving ROWBOATS, if they had a suspision that the boat was carrying supplies to Japan or supporting the war effort. Oh, no, you're 100% spot on with that. We sealed that place up loving hermetically for the last year of the war. I only said "lesser extent" because the period where Japan was under that level of blockade was so much shorter than the nearly 5 years suffered by Germany in WW1 that the suffered nowhere nearly as badly on the level of available goods, economic damage, deaths due to malnutrition and preventable illness, etc. If we had opted to just blockade them for a couple of years rather than nukeing them to end it I'm sure they would have gotten there too. Compared to either of those the idea that England was under serious blockade at any time during WW2 is laughable.
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Jan 25, 2012 21:25
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15 Minutes: General Curtis LeMay and the Countdown to Nuclear Annihilation http://www.amazon.com/15-Minutes-General-Countdown-Annihilation/dp/1250002087/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1327523369&sr=1-1 Worth the read. Tell all about Curtis building SAC from the ground up. Ground alert. 15 minutes from alarm to wheels up, etc.
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Jan 25, 2012 21:31
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Koesj posted:Why would it fall? I just finished rereading RSR (or for the time in English anyway) and that idiot Clancy has Keflavik AB only manned by an F-15 squadron and some E-3s.
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Jan 25, 2012 23:11
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RSR is Harpoon fanfiction, let's not pretend that a published fan-written AAR normally found on stardestroyer.net is a realistic interpretation of late-80s military conflict.
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Jan 26, 2012 01:04
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Psion posted:RSR is Harpoon fanfiction, let's not pretend that a published fan-written AAR normally found on stardestroyer.net is a realistic interpretation of late-80s military conflict. Does it count as a fanfic when the guy who co-wrote it created Harpoon? Also the lack of any characters from Hunt for Red October seems to preclude it as a crossover.
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Jan 26, 2012 01:17
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LP97S posted:Does it count as a fanfic when the guy who co-wrote it created Harpoon? A fair point, but I stand by my post. It seriously has a shitload of handwaves so they could play Harpoon and write the outcome. I played a lot of Harpoon 1 back in the day and it's got all the hallmarks, including the ridiculous number of contrivances to keep the action in the North Atlantic and not in the Pacific - which Harpoon didn't model, iirc. This isn't to say RSR is therefore unreadable poo poo, but at all a realistic interpretation of a shooting war in the Atlantic? Nnnnnnnope. Speaking of which, direct all hate about that container ship/LCAC poo poo to Larry Bond, because he LOVES that gimmick. Loves it. He went and upped the ante doing some plot writing for World In Conflict where the USSR hits Seattle with a whole fleet of container ships (curiously, nothing intercepts them or anything until they've landed and unloaded armor, hmm). Of course, the main difference is, WiC is actually really good.
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Jan 26, 2012 01:58
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That'd be kind of cool being on the Dallas Rd. waterfront in Victoria watching a fleet of Soviet container ships sail in, bound for Seattle, as the pilot boats go to help guide them in! Dangerous tides, y'know. edit: before anyone points out I know it is for the Haro strait between Vancouver Island and the San Juans mostly, but still, that'd be kind of funny. priznat fucked around with this message at 02:04 on Jan 26, 2012 |
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Jan 26, 2012 02:01
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There are issues with RSR, and I'm definitely not a Clancy fanboy as I think pretty much everything of his other than Hunt for Red October and RSR is basically trash (Patriot Games, Clear and Present Danger, and Cardinal of the Kremlin aren't terrible I guess), but I think y'all are being somewhat unfair, and since some of that unfairness deals with Cold War history...Smiling Jack posted:The two most obvious clancy handwaving plot points in RSR are the amphibious invasion of Iceland by the soviets and the NATO seizing air supremacy through F19 strikes in the opening days of the war forcing parity between forces both on land and at sea. I'll address the amphibious assault on Iceland below, but NATO didn't seize "air supremacy" on the first night of the war...they barely got air superiority, and quickly lost it. Remember, they had about 24-48 hours of I&W due to the whole "capturing the Spetsnaz dude who gets hit by the bus and interrogating him while he's doped up" thing, so it's not like they wouldn't have had some time to preposition aircraft (to mate up with prepo'd munitions and equipment), and begin intense ISR and analysis to start building the ATO prior to the war kicking off. Even with that, they suffered pretty heavy losses on the first night of the war (even if they managed to conduct mostly effective interdiction, which is entirely possible...look at the opening nights of Desert Storm; you can go "  Iraqi military" but in 1991 the Iraqi air defenses were some of the most formidable in the entire world (albeit with export equipment...hence the USAF suffering losses against the Soviets while still being effective...and the USAF took it apart like it wasn't no thang) and by the kickoff of the ground conflict NATO managed to maintain air superiority over their territory (most of the time...they lost a couple of AWACS at one point, which is a fairly big deal) but they only managed air parity over the FEBA (look at the losses the Warthogs and Apaches take) and could only launch selective strikes in Soviet airspace. So describing it as "air supremacy" is pretty disingenuous, and really the description in the book is pretty close to what would've happened in reality...assuming the conflict stays conventional, which is obviously some hand-waving but I don't really fault him for that since "and then we used tactical nukes and then the ICBMs were launched and then everyone died" kind of misses the point of writing the novel even if it was the most likely option.Koesj posted:Why would it fall? I just finished rereading RSR (or for the time in English anyway) and that idiot Clancy has Keflavik AB only manned by an F-15 squadron and some E-3s. The normal contingent at Keflavik during peacetime was a squadron of F-15s, a det of E-3s, a couple KC-135s, and a det of P-3s (or other NATO ASW patrol aircraft) for ASW purposes...which is exactly what is there in the book. Furthermore, the assault on Keflavik takes place on like D+1 or D+2 at the latest, not +7, which means that since there was no standing peacetime naval presence even with the I&W they had from the Spetsnaz capture thing the only way they could get a significant naval force there is to run a couple of destroyers up at flank speed, and it's not like they would have anything better to do at the time...other than defend the rest of the North Atlantic. Finally, I'll talk about Grover's points more in depth below but he's spot on both with the logistical requirements and the fact that the USAF wouldn't have had any aircraft to spare. I mean, sure, you could retask some OPLAN tasked units that were headed to Western Europe, but why would you? A conventional fight in Europe would literally take almost every last fighter (other than the ones held in reserve for a Pacific contingency) that the USAF/USAFR/ANG had. You have air defense as well as anti-surface forces on Keflavik, which brings up one last point...IIRC one of the P-3s actually attempts a Harpoon strike on the container ship but has a fault of some sort and is unable to launch the second missile (I'm almost certain that the container ship takes one Harpoon hit). In any case, yeah, the container thing is kind of stupid but y'all are making it out to be this deus ex machina and I don't think that's fair. grover posted:It takes time to deploy squadrons and their support; even if you flew the aircraft out there, you'd need a massive airlift to bring all the personnel and support equipment, and those resources are in really high demand in a WWIII scenario. Net result: Iceland would pretty much be hanging out there on its own. Okay, time for some logistics related sperging... Something as basic as a 12-ship F-16 is going to require something like 3 C-17 loads of equipment (so ~4ish C-141 loads) assuming you've got basic support equipment at the base you are going to, which probably isn't a good assumption for a relatively bare base like NAS Keflavik, so add another C-141 load or two to that, and that doesn't include another airlifter or (more likely) a CRAF widebody to fly the personnel support package. And that's just for one 12-ship. Granted, in a WWIII scenario the bulk of your personnel are going to be flying on CRAF aircraft (as part of the REFORGER flow to mate up with the POMCUS equipment and prepositioned consumables (POL and ammo mostly), but there would be enough priority cargo needing to utilize strategic airlift that diverting it to support a couple of 12-ships going to Iceland is going to be something that no one would really want to do. The U.S. military is ALWAYS short of airlift. Furthermore, as I previously mentioned basically all of TAC (other than units tasked to support a Pacific contingency) would be flowing to their deployed bases in Western Europe. Finally, NAS Keflavik really isn't that big, so assuming we're planning on increasing the amount of ASW patrol aircraft deployed there (we would) and that we need to keep tarmac space open for transient aircraft stopping over for fuel (we would...the U.S. military is also ALWAYS short of tankers, doubly so when we're trying to drag 2/3rds of TAC across the pond) your Max on Ground (MOG) for additional fighters is going to be a pretty small number. This ignores the fact that more than likely there would be relatively minimal consumables in place at the NAS to support tactical fighters (air to air missiles and some POL, but not a shitload), so deploying ground attack fighters would raise the additional burden of shipping these things in, whereas there were more bomb dumps and fuel farms in Western Europe than you could shake a stick at...and even that was only planned to last for ~2 weeks...and that was probably an overestimation by a week, because the U.S. military ALWAYS uses up more consumables than it plans for (another thing RSR gets right.) Finally, unlike Keflavik the bases in Western Europe were set up to receive large amounts of outside forces, which limits the amount of equipment and therefore of airlift the deploying forces need which in turn increases the speed that unit can deploy...it's a lot easier/quicker to deploy a unit to a base with support so all you have to do is get the iron and personnel there and maybe an additional airlifter or two to transport your AMU's mobility packages as opposed to dragging half your base with you to set up a bare base.
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Jan 26, 2012 03:26
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iyaayas01 posted:
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Jan 26, 2012 03:36
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Craptacular posted:Cyrano4747 parachute found. And like 95% of that was about defending Red Storm Rising...loving kill me. 
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Jan 26, 2012 03:45
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iyaayas01 posted:And like 95% of that was about defending Red Storm Rising...loving kill me. Just get in the nearest Raptor, let OBOGS do it for you  Seriously though - the idea that a surprise hit on Iceland would work famously? Not unrealistic, per se, even if the delivery method is comical. The entire rest of the book, though, including all the events leading up to and after? UH. It's just so contrived! So obviously contrived. I can't sit here and try to defend a tiny fraction that's plausible when everything that was written to generate that tiny bit of plausibility is so blatantly "handwaving to set up my Harpoon scenario bro." and I like Harpoon! However, the Foch's Crusaders showing up the entirety of the Nimitz's strike group is rad. Crusaders are rad. Fact.   Psion fucked around with this message at 03:57 on Jan 26, 2012 |
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Jan 26, 2012 03:53
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iyaayas01 posted:IIRC one of the P-3s actually attempts a Harpoon strike on the container ship but has a fault of some sort and is unable to launch the second missile (I'm almost certain that the container ship takes one Harpoon hit). If I'm remembering things right it takes a harpoon hit near the bridge (which mortally wounds the ships captain) and he runs the boat into the ground to keep it from sinking with the majority of the landing forces equipment and supplies. For the record I liked RSR  . It was a book written in the mid 80's about a hypothetical conflict that could have gone a bunch of different ways. It would have been less interesting if he didn't have some peripheral gimmick things going on like the Iceland invasion and the ASAT launches. He guessed right about a enough things (A10's being the scourge of the battlefield, the rate of munitions use, existance of a stealth fighter) that make up for some of the things that are questionable.
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Jan 26, 2012 04:26
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Psion posted:However, the Foch's Crusaders showing up the entirety of the Nimitz's strike group is rad. Crusaders are rad. Fact. Hell yes, Crusaders and A-7 Corsair IIs are awesome. I cannot explain why.
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Jan 26, 2012 04:51
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priznat posted:Hell yes, Crusaders and A-7 Corsair IIs are awesome. I went to the Air and Space Museum annex out at Dulles over the summer - the Udvar-Hazy center - and aside from having an enormous boner the entire time, took a couple pictures of their RF-8G. I was annoyed because most of them did not come out well, the F-8 was in an awkward to photograph place. HELLO, ONLY THE SECOND MOST IMPORTANT PLANE YOU HAVE THERE, JERKS http://www.flickr.com/photos/notpsion/sets/72157627546485223/ for 'em all, alphabetical by manufacturer/model, because I hate myself ps, this place friggin owwwwwwwns. Everyone should go.
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Jan 26, 2012 05:46
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Crusaders are awesome. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vought_XF8U-3_Crusader_III http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6V8kvI6vrA
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Jan 26, 2012 06:05
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That's a great set of photos, thanks! I went to the air and space museum in Huntsville, they have a Saturn V and an A-12, and some other cool stuff.
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Jan 26, 2012 06:06
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The only real rocket at Udvar-Hazy is a Redstone, and that was drat difficult to get a picture of. It's like 70 feet tall and the roof is about 72 feet tall in that hangar  I would've needed a much wider-angle lens than I went in with to even have a chance, but I went with my one-lens for travel policy, so.also the SR-71 looks impressive in photos but is about ten times as much in real life. It's incredible. The thing is goddamn enormous, looks sharp as all hell, and definitely deserves its position as the center of pretty much the entire museum. When that thing outshadows the Enola Gay you know it's something.
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Jan 26, 2012 06:10
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this thing doesn't even look like a crusader, it looks like a bounty hunter ready to hunt down some bandits the fuselage sidewinder pylons are the best edit: I never realized how huge the AIM54 phoenixes really were. I guess that's why they were long range versus the sidewinder/sparrow. Suicide Watch fucked around with this message at 06:44 on Jan 26, 2012 |
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Jan 26, 2012 06:37
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There's a Crusader sitting virtually abandoned in a park in my hometown. I'm not ashamed to say that as a teenager I smoked bowls with pals sitting inside of the engine casing.
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Jan 26, 2012 06:49
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Suicide Watch posted:the fuselage sidewinder pylons are the best Over wing mounted sidewinder pylons are the best. 
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Jan 26, 2012 07:46
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except they kill lift HARD and hugely alter the flight dynamics of the aircraft
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Jan 26, 2012 08:23
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English Electric Lightnings in the over-wing houuuuuuse SUCK IN THAT GUT SOLDIER priznat fucked around with this message at 10:21 on Jan 26, 2012 |
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Jan 26, 2012 10:08
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Clancy's portrayal of submarine / ASW warfare in RSR is frustrating. Most sub fiction is complete nonsense; Clancy's at least ridden a 688 before so he's more down to earth, but then some stuff is so wrong or bizarre you wonder if it's deliberate misinformation
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Jan 26, 2012 10:50
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Also here's my try at that RF-8 at Udvar-Hazy And if anyone's interested, some more pics I took at the National Air & Space Museum, both the Udvar-Hazy hangar and the main site by the Mall.
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Jan 26, 2012 14:34
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kill me now posted:If I'm remembering things right it takes a harpoon hit near the bridge (which mortally wounds the ships captain) and he runs the boat into the ground to keep it from sinking with the majority of the landing forces equipment and supplies. I think you got that wrong. IIRC, the captain takes a harpoon hit, but minimizes the damage by driving the ship into a really tight turn and takes the hit high up on the side of the ship rather than at the waterline when the ship straightens out and stops leaning into the turn. The second Harpoon won't launch because someone forgot to plug in the wiring so the weapon and the aircraft could talk to each other. The captain gets mortally wounded when a pair of F15's spot the ship and since they don't have any air to ground ordinace, the GO IN FOR GUNS and spray the bridge and superstructure with 20mm fire.
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Jan 26, 2012 15:33
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Suicide Watch posted:this thing doesn't even look like a crusader, it looks like a bounty hunter ready to hunt down some bandits Now THIS. THIS is a beautiful goddamn plane, right here. We should just make a shitload more of these wonderful loving BEASTS.
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Jan 26, 2012 16:24
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Jan 26, 2012 16:27
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mlmp08 posted:Swiss airpower is loving awesome. I went to a big museum they have on it at an old cold-war era airfield out there and, from what I could tell, their entire reason for being is "do  low level slalom runs through alpine passes" and "practice landing on highways and other Mad Max poo poo."
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Jan 26, 2012 16:46
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Some proper F8 porn if you haven't seen it http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tFX78bLM-Y
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