Phanatic posted:The relative speed of the F-15 and the inbound is radically different from the relative speed of every mountain, building, and cloud. It's possible for an F-15 to keep a constant distance from a static emitter, it's not possible for it to keep a constant distance from an emitter headed towards it at Mach 4. Older radar-seeker missiles aren't active transmitters, they look for radar return from either a ground-based or aircraft-based radar, which isn't doing mach 4.
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Jan 27, 2012 18:33
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The Proc posted:I still want to know what the gently caress was up with those two hillbillies that spend half the book setting up their OKC style truck bomb plot, only to be pulled over and arrested and never interact with any other part of the story at all. I've never read any other book with such a completely self-contained plot thread that led nowhere. You obviously haven't read Red Rabbit
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Jan 27, 2012 18:35
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grover posted:Do you want every car on the highway, every bird, and every blowing tree to show up on your scope? It's hard for pulse-doppler RADAR to tell the difference between a 55mph bus and an F-15 pulling a notch. It takes a poo poo-ton of processing power to figure it out, and ample processing power is a fairly recent thing. Yeah, I've heard of notching being an issue with other airborne radars, it just really isn't one for our phased arrays pulse-doppler in Patriot. Our TWS and GLIF settings can be changed on the fly based on threat, as well, so if you know there's a really slow, low threat, you can always accept more ground clutter from vehicles or biological crap in order to ensure you can find a UAV, for example.
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Jan 27, 2012 18:54
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I'd figure that most UAVs'd be too cheap to kill with Patriots, those'd be more the kind of thing you'd Stinger or hit with a Vulcan.
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Jan 27, 2012 19:04
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Smiling Jack posted:Older radar-seeker missiles aren't active transmitters, they look for radar return from either a ground-based or aircraft-based radar, which isn't doing mach 4. But the Doppler shift the missile observes is the result of the closure rate between the *missile* and the target, not the emitter antenna and the target.
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Jan 27, 2012 19:08
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Forums Terrorist posted:I'd figure that most UAVs'd be too cheap to kill with Patriots, those'd be more the kind of thing you'd Stinger or hit with a Vulcan. Yeah, that discussion definitely takes place. The thing is, we presently don't really deploy stinger/avenger units as such. They either become infantry in Afghanistan on the Marine side or they become C-RAM or sense and warn operators on the Army side. If you have the time and assets available, it's a hell of a lot cheaper to have a plane fire an Sidewinder or AMRAAM at the UAV.
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Jan 27, 2012 19:18
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Forums Terrorist posted:I'd figure that most UAVs'd be too cheap to kill with Patriots, those'd be more the kind of thing you'd Stinger or hit with a Vulcan. I'm no military guy, but I would think the "cost" of downing the UAV would be irrelevant if the UAV was going to either be in a position to fire a weapon at an asset that's worth some $$ OR (more probable) the UAV was going to provide critical data to the people operating the UAV. Troop numbers, position, equipment, etc. That sort of stuff. I'd think you'd just blow it up, regardless of cost at that point. If it's just orbiting in the desert, I guess you grab your rifle and see if you can play skeet with it.
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Jan 27, 2012 20:49
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Cool, so I guess you'd have no issue spending a million to pop a 50k four-stroke engine with wings and 100 kg of ANFO strapped to it. I don't know about you, but if I were the enemy in that situation I'd punch those numbers into a calculator and watch it make a happy face.
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Jan 27, 2012 20:59
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It's all highly situational. If you're defending against an invasion, a battery might need to use all of its own missiles on enemy strike aircraft or incoming missiles, letting some smaller stuff through. If you're the most powerful military in the world with a decade of established air & ground dominance then you can use a really expensive weapon if you feel like it just to flex, and hey force protection
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Jan 27, 2012 21:07
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In fairness I'm just mad the US didn't stick with the Standard Missile concept and develop a scalable set of short, medium and long range air defense systems that could share components to keep costs down. 
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Jan 27, 2012 21:09
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LavistaSays posted:If you're the most powerful military in the world with a decade of established air & ground dominance then you can use a really expensive weapon if you feel like it just to flex Isn't that what the US does all the time?
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Jan 27, 2012 21:10
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wdarkk posted:Isn't that what the US does all the time?
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Jan 27, 2012 21:22
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Totally TWISTED posted:The United States is like a bro at the gym. All flexin' all the time. Lots of grunting too, never puts the plates or dumbells back either. Doesn't wipe off the bench when they are done. Same guy who decide the gym shower is a perfect place to shave their junk. No wonder the world is pissed as the US.
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Jan 27, 2012 21:48
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The F-22 has cost how many billions and nobody thought to put a latch on the outside of the canopy? http://www.military.com/opinion/0,15202,97576,00.html
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Jan 28, 2012 02:10
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Forums Terrorist posted:In fairness I'm just mad the US didn't stick with the Standard Missile concept and develop a scalable set of short, medium and long range air defense systems that could share components to keep costs down. Well, SLAMRAAM (yeah, I know....) was going to use the AMRAAM but is more or less cancelled. As in, it's cancelled, but the company isn't throwing it in a fire in the hopes that they can revive it. NASAMS is used for the DC region. The Marines are doing some nifty things to make MANPADs shoot farther and more accurately than previously thought possible. If the threat is an ISR UAV, we can wait til the USAF can go down it. If the threat is weaponized UAVs with radar seekers, it's pretty key to knock them down with a quickness so you don't lose coverage of an entire airbase.
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Jan 28, 2012 02:13
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It's awesome that Lockheed's spokesman is Joe Quimby. Vote Quimby!
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Jan 28, 2012 02:18
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Armyman25 posted:The F-22 has cost how many billions and nobody thought to put a latch on the outside of the canopy? This blows my mind more than the canopy issue. Military.com posted:As if the latest canopy shenanigans weren't bad enough, on May 1, Defense News reported that there are serious structural problems with the F-22. Seems the titanium hull of the aircraft isn't meshing as well as it should. Naturally, taxpayers have to foot the bill for the mistake (improper heat-treating of the titanium) which is found on 90 aircraft. The cost of repairing those wrinkles? Another $1 billion or so. How is it that a company delivered a defective product and is making the purchaser foot the bill? I can't think of any other industry where poo poo like that would fly.
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Jan 28, 2012 02:59
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They really should have gotten the extended warranty.
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Jan 28, 2012 03:05
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priznat posted:They really should have gotten the extended warranty. That aside a nearly 50% defective product rate is usually class action lawsuit and company paid for recall territory.
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Jan 28, 2012 03:14
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That article is 6 years old and that's all been fixed.
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Jan 28, 2012 03:19
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grover posted:Psst, those articles are 5 years old and that's all been fixed. For $1 billion ... with a B 
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Jan 28, 2012 03:20
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iyaayas01 posted:
Actually, I think that was Executive Orders. I think they did that to some fighters from the combined Iraq/Iran UIR.
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Jan 28, 2012 03:20
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Armyman25 posted:The F-22 has cost how many billions and nobody thought to put a latch on the outside of the canopy? And how exactly would you propose to do that without loving with the LO signature? And don't say "install a hatch or something with the handle underneath it" because even that little bit would cause a negative impact. There are many things to rant about with the F-22, some of them justified, some of them not, but the "  can't open the canopy" was a one off issue 6 years ago and ranks pretty far down that list.kill me now posted:This blows my mind more than the canopy issue. The same mentality behind cost-plus contracts. See also, the entire F-35 program. Just remember, for every one issue with the Raptor, there are at least another 2 or 3 bigger, more severe, and more costly issues with the F-35.
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Jan 28, 2012 03:25
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grover posted:That article is 6 years old and that's all been fixed. For a billion dollars and then the same assholes are making the F-35 clusterfuck.
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Jan 28, 2012 03:27
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Forums Terrorist posted:I'd figure that most UAVs'd be too cheap to kill with Patriots, those'd be more the kind of thing you'd Stinger or hit with a Vulcan. Without citing specific numbers, bot the Pred and Reaper can operate well above the altitude limit of any MANPAD or small caliber AAA.
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Jan 28, 2012 03:41
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iyaayas01 posted:And how exactly would you propose to do that without loving with the LO signature? And don't say "install a hatch or something with the handle underneath it" because even that little bit would cause a negative impact. There are many things to rant about with the F-22, some of them justified, some of them not, but the " Did they at least put a release handle inside the cockpit?
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Jan 28, 2012 03:41
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Armyman25 posted:Did they at least put a release handle inside the cockpit? No, armyman, there are no handles. The pilot is sealed into the aircraft and they bond, become one single entity devoted to win wargames but never actually see combat.
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Jan 28, 2012 03:43
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Basically, F-22 pilots are stuck in their planes the way R2s are stuck in X-wings. If the force is not available, pilots are stuck until the next crane can be found at a Rebel base.
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Jan 28, 2012 03:47
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thesurlyspringKAA posted:No, armyman, there are no handles. The pilot is sealed into the aircraft and they bond, become one single entity devoted to win wargames but never actually see combat. So, like FireFox?
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Jan 28, 2012 03:50
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The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > The Firing Range > AIRPOWER/Cold War/F35 Hating Thread 
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Jan 28, 2012 03:51
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Have some strategic bombery, fellas. (3000x1955) Fwoosh!  (1920x1200) Did somebody say (Strike) Eagles?  (2700x1774) Aggressor Camo is pretty baller.  (2596x1728)
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Jan 28, 2012 04:17
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iyaayas01 posted:See also, the entire F-35 program. Just remember, for every one issue with the Raptor, there are at least another 2 or 3 bigger, more severe, and more costly issues with the F-35. Aren't most of the F-35 problems mainly in the carrier/B variants?
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Jan 28, 2012 04:35
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Party Plane Jones posted:Aren't most of the F-111 problems mainly in the carrier/B variants? Yeah. 
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Jan 28, 2012 04:40
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jwoven posted:Still better looking 
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Jan 28, 2012 05:27
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thesurlyspringKAA posted:Without citing specific numbers, bot the Pred and Reaper can operate well above the altitude limit of any MANPAD or small caliber AAA. Yeah, that too, though we originally were talking about low, slow UAVs with regard to TWS and GLIF.
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Jan 28, 2012 05:41
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co199 posted:Have some strategic bombery, fellas. B-1s are really cool, but they'd look so much more slick if you could somehow lop off the engines so it was smooth on the bottom but magically still have it fly...
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Jan 28, 2012 05:43
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Armyman25 posted:Did they at least put a release handle inside the cockpit? A fighter canopy isn't like a door on a car or even a hatch or whatever on a helicopter...you can't just manually unlatch it and then lift it up using muscle power or whatever, even if you had a hydraulic assist. Those fuckers are heavy. Party Plane Jones posted:Aren't most of the F-35 problems mainly in the carrier/B variants? Well, depends on how you define "problems." Almost all of the variant specific issues (arrester hook, lift fan clutch, etc) have been with the -B and -C, but the overall program has plenty of issues that cut across all three airframes (EO-DAS/helmet latency, failure to meet overall performance metrics, software bugs, etc). Granted, some of those issues that cut across all three airframes were generated due to issues specific to one airframe, but since commonality was a (false) selling point of the design as originally pitched, I really have no sympathy for them now that the linkage between designs is dragging the whole program down. Mr. Despair posted:Yeah. Never gets old. Never. From the last page... Scratch Monkey posted:Personally I'd find it pretty fascinating to know the details of the logistics required to maintain all those pre-positioned equipment. How do they store it? Does it get rotated and if so how often? What do they do with the obsolete/unusable stuff? Where it is stored depends on what the equipment is...IIRC the POMCUS equipment that was mentioned earlier (trucks, MBTs, APCs/IFVs, jeeps/humvees, support equipment, etc) was originally stored outside until they realized that storing all this equipment outside year round in Central Europe wasn't exactly the most cost effective course of action and built semi-climate controlled warehouses to store them in. POL is generally in tanks, obviously, either above or below ground. Ammo is almost always stored in what we call earth covered magazines, otherwise known as "igloos." These resemble HAS's, with the primary difference that a HAS is going to have a lot more reinforced concrete, since its primary purpose is to keep penetrating munitions out, while an ECM is going to probably have a bit more dirt over the top since its primary purpose is to keep accidental explosions contained and prevent them from sympathetically detonating adjacent magazines. Munitions are also sometimes stored in basic warehouse type buildings, which are called "above ground magazines," but this type of storage is less common as it increases the amount of safety distance required and/or reduces the amount of explosives you would be able to store in a given location compared to using an ECM. As I mentioned above the Marines still have an entire MEB sized MAGTF's worth of equipment and consumables prepo'd in 6 caves in Norway. One other critical component of the prepo system are the Maritime Prepositioning Ships. I'll talk about them a little more in depth below, but basically the MPS are a bunch of container, bulk, and Ro/Ro vessels that are concentrated in three squadrons (one in the Med, one in the Indian Ocean centered at Diego Garcia, and one for the Western Pacific centered in the Marianas) which are stocked full of all the poo poo the U.S. military would need to fight a war. They support across all four services as well as DLA...some are AF ammo ships, some are Army ammo, equipment, and POL vessels, there are Navy tankers and aviation support ships, and then there are enough Marine support vessels to enable an entire MEB sized MAGTF to meet up with them and go fight a war. All MPS vessels are equipped with cranes and many have lighters enabling them to self offload, thereby allowing them to operate from bare bones/battle damaged harbors/anchorages, and some of them have special features in support of their mission (the USAF ammo vessels have "cocoons" that allow them to keep all the containers in a climate controlled environment, an important feature when you are transporting precision guided munitions at sea for months, possibly years.) I can only speak in detail regarding rotation and obsolete stuff WRT AF ammo, but I would imagine the process is somewhat similar for other stuff. There is a constant stockpile monitoring process in place for all AF ammo assets. Every asset is on an inspection cycle...this can range from something as frequent as every 60 days for relatively volatile things like dynamite to once every 10 years for something as relatively inert as GP bomb bodies. This is for both assets at operational AF bases and assets that are pre-positioned at various depots and forward locations around the world. When an asset is found to be unserviceable, either through failing inspection criteria or when its shelf life runs out (some assets like GP bomb bodies have an indefinite shelf life, which is why there is still plenty of Vietnam War-era ammo in our stockpile), it is tagged and directed to be shipped back to depot for disposal. CONUS this is a fairly simple procedure, as it goes land, either by truck or train. However, OCONUS this is a more involved task as it requires sea transport of some sort. This can either be a regular thing where there is a scheduled resupply barge/ship that makes the trip to that location annually, biannually, whatever, or it can be an irregular thing where an MPS AF ammo ship comes and basically conducts a massive swapout of that bomb dump's stockpile, where hundreds of containers worth of munitions will be moved around, after which the MPS (the AF calls its portion of it the Afloat Prepositioned Fleet, APF) vessel will return to Sunny Point in North Carolina, unload its cargo, and then be reloaded with new munitions and put back out to sea. Here's a decent article on the APF and the depot at Sunny Point. Since I brought up the APF, and since that article mentions it, here's how AF ammo resupply works in a conflict. Starter stocks are your pre-positioned War Reserve Materiel (WRM) assets at a given location...the stuff that is sitting in igloos at *wherever* waiting for a war to start. These are generally only going to give you a couple of weeks worth of warfighting ability, maybe a month. Once the war kicks off the Global Ammunition Control Point (GACP) at Hill/Ogden is going to begin analyzing the rate of munitions usage (since the warfighting bases will be reporting their munitions expenditures in real time...in theory; in reality there will probably be some delay) and bounce that against the anticipated rate for future operations and determine if/when they need to direct APF ship(s) to restock the theater stocks. However, since these are ocean going vessels, they could be anywhere from several days to a couple weeks away from where they need to be, so in the meantime you have two additional sources: bomber flyaway packages, which are exactly what they sound like, and STAMP. Bomber flyaway are munitions at bomber bases (either CONUS permanently assigned bases or forward deployed locations like RAF Fairford for Europe, Andersen AFB on Guam for the Western Pacific, or Diego Garcia for the Middle East/South Asia) that are allocated for those bombers to use in a conflict...basically like WRM starter stocks, except since they are at a bomber base they have more flexibility given the global reach of bombers. STAMP is one part of the palletized flyaway resupply...it stands for Standard Air Munitions Package. The other part is STRAPP (they are often used together) which is Standard Tanks Racks Adapters and Pylons Package. These are munitions/TRAPs that are placed into storage in palletized configuration and are therefore ready to be shipped via air transport on short notice. While shipping TRAPs and (especially) munitions via air is extremely inefficient since you will max out the airlifter's weight limit before you bulk out the jet, STAMP is intended for limited short notice resupply of priority munitions (i.e., various types of PGMs.) Finally, you have your CONUS flex stocks, which are the Army's depots. AFAIK the last time the AF had to use CONUS flex stock was during Noble Anvil/Allied Force in 1999.
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Jan 28, 2012 05:46
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Who needs all this fancy STO/VTO capability when you can take off from the sea?       The Seamaster's up there with the Vulcan for beautiful yet impractical Cold War aircraft. Honestly a shame none of them ended up in a museum. For bonus kicks, here's a great big ball of seaplane craziness. edit: table breakage
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Jan 28, 2012 06:16
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Terrifying Effigies posted:For bonus kicks, here's a great big ball of seaplane craziness. I've seen the Martin Mars flying, they are based not too far from here for firefighting duties. They are loving humungous. My uncle got some good snaps of them filling up with water on lake Okanogan too, amazing. Those Seamasters always looked like a wacky soviet design to me, especially with the angled engines. Super cool, I had forgotten about those!
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Jan 28, 2012 06:23
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Terrifying Effigies posted:
I've been looking for this! I read this whole mess back when it was hosted on Geocities, and it would run out of bandwidth before it finished loading the pages. So glad to see it is still around, and apparently being updated. Dude suggests that what the F-35 _really_ needs, is to be a STOVL seaplane. Nothing wrong with his brains _at all_.
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Jan 28, 2012 06:26
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