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Why not just make it a high speed single seat submarine that can bust out of the surface of the water to intercept targets? That'd make it LO as hell!
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Jan 28, 2012 06:28
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I know it got posted earlier but the Lun-class ekranoplan - all one of them - is super friggin awesome. And it's just sorta sitting around: http://g.co/maps/up3w4 http://igor113.livejournal.com/51213.html These are from 2009 - I think they've cleaned it up a bit in the intervening years? I sure hope so.  also you all know Sokol One thinks it kicks rear end, therefore, it does: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WopbvjBMa3A
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Jan 28, 2012 06:34
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priznat posted:Why not just make it a high speed single seat submarine that can bust out of the surface of the water to intercept targets? That'd make it LO as hell! Well, it's not a submarine, but close enough!  Yes that is an F-102 on waterskis.
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Jan 28, 2012 06:56
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They used to do some cool poo poo back in the day. Now we can just simulate stuff on computer which is much less fun.
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Jan 28, 2012 07:14
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priznat posted:They used to do some cool poo poo back in the day. On the other hand, it keeps you from pursuing projects like "gutless non-area-ruled 'supersonic' seaplane interceptor that can't actually hit mach 1 in level flight." Now, we have much more expensive and complex failures, like planes that can't make it across the International Date Line, and planes that try to set themselves on fire when they dump fuel in an emergency.
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Jan 28, 2012 07:29
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Space Gopher posted:Well, it's not a submarine, but close enough! Ah, the YF2/7 Sea Dart. Designed to be an interceptor, and couldn't even break Mach 1 in anything but a dive. Interesting concept, though. I actually read about this plane, amongst others, in an old book of my Dad's entitled "US Fighters" from '75. It details every US Army/Air Force fighter since the very beginning up until the F-18, including cool experimental planes like the XP-85 Goblin and the XF-109 . One of my favorite books growing up, though it certainly shows its age at several points-for example, the last paragraph of the section on the F-111 describes it as "An outstanding piece of weaponry and the most advanced production fighter to date."
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Jan 28, 2012 07:35
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Computers wreck everything.  I'd take the loving around on rocket powered seadoos over f-35 boondoggles any day. 
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Jan 28, 2012 07:37
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Terrifying Effigies posted:For bonus kicks, here's a great big ball of seaplane craziness. I'll give the guy credit, it's better designed and easier on the eyes than any Truther site I ever saw. That said, did someone really write the words "The future of naval aviation is seaplanes and not carrier aviation." and then get it published ? They're cool as gently caress, but I can imagine seaplanes being of much use in any conceivable WW3 scenario, not after satellite recon anyway.
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Jan 28, 2012 08:17
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mllaneza posted:I'll give the guy credit, it's better designed and easier on the eyes than any Truther site I ever saw. That said, did someone really write the words "The future of naval aviation is seaplanes and not carrier aviation." and then get it published ? They're cool as gently caress, but I can imagine seaplanes being of much use in any conceivable WW3 scenario, not after satellite recon anyway. 
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Jan 28, 2012 08:50
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mllaneza posted:I'll give the guy credit, it's better designed and easier on the eyes than any Truther site I ever saw. That said, did someone really write the words "The future of naval aviation is seaplanes and not carrier aviation." and then get it published ? They're cool as gently caress, but I can imagine seaplanes being of much use in any conceivable WW3 scenario, not after satellite recon anyway. That's not his only great idea. He has other great ideas such as turning the Iowa-class battleships into battleship/aircraft carrier hybrids, making every soldier carry an SKS as a backup weapon, and replacing nearly every vehicle in the US inventory with M113s (because M1s and Bradleys are too heavy and Strykers are wheeled and evil). Crazy guy aside, apparently the guy from earlier in the thread talking about helicopters being dangerous to fixed wing aircraft wasn't lying about the exercise with fixed wing aircraft performing poorly against helicopters. I'm assuming that the exercise doesn't take a lot of factors into account, but could a helicopter actually pose a threat to a fighter jet?
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Jan 28, 2012 09:12
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razorscooter posted:Crazy guy aside, apparently the guy from earlier in the thread talking about helicopters being dangerous to fixed wing aircraft wasn't lying about the exercise with fixed wing aircraft performing poorly against helicopters. I'm assuming that the exercise doesn't take a lot of factors into account, but could a helicopter actually pose a threat to a fighter jet? Having read a bit into it, it's not so much that helos are a threat to fighters, but rather that fighters with antiquated radars stupid enough to try swooping into close range against helos trying to pick them out of brush and canyons are easy prey when the helo spins around and shoots the jet in the rear end after the jet flew by. I've been in joint live air exercises recently and have never seen a helo down a jet, yet seen a few helos downed by jets. Basically, don't give jet pilots the express mission of chasing down helos, because it opens them up to risks and makes them perform dumb maneuvers. That's unwise. However, if a jet spots a helo, the helo is done. If a helo wants to down a jet, it better hope the jet flies by stupidly. If the jets aren't specifically trying to engage the heli, the heli won't have any success scoring a kill. edit: whatever the specific rules of that exercise were, it favored helicopters. Just look at real world kills and you'll quickly see that helicopters have far, far fewer jet kills than vice versa.
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Jan 28, 2012 09:30
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Insert name here posted:Wasn't that the one where some Japanese businessman somehow gets the Japanese government to start another war with the US cause the dude's mad about WW2? I don't even remember much about the book other than it was hilarious. That was Clive Cussler's Dragon, which is pure Clive Cussler.
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Jan 28, 2012 09:57
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Hey, I think I read that one. Was it the one with the nuke stolen from the downed B-29?
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Jan 28, 2012 10:18
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I gotta agree with the crazy guy, finding a good excuse to put the Iowa's back in service would be awesome. The Navy needs to name a capital ship after whoever pulls that off. In other news, more carriers will never be museum ships (like the Hornet in Alameda, CA which is an awesome tour). http://threewiremagazine.blogspot.com/2012/01/forrestal-independence-constellation-to.html
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Jan 28, 2012 10:21
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mlmp08 posted:edit: whatever the specific rules of that exercise were, it favored helicopters. Just look at real world kills and you'll quickly see that helicopters have far, far fewer jet kills than vice versa. Alternately, F-15s have far more combat kills than C-17s but that doesn't mean the double vertical tailplane is deadlier than the T-tail.
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Jan 28, 2012 11:06
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Snowdens Secret posted:While I certainly believe you on this, I have to wonder how often historically helos have carried dedicated air-air weapons in combat (as opposed to specifically air-air exercises). And while I don't know if the exercise pitted choppers against ground attack or air superiority planes, I can't think of a single combat-deployed helo designed for air to air warfare. Marine pilots are taught never to engage a jet if they can avoid it. The odds are absolutely stacked against the guy in the comparatively slow and low helicopter and the best you can usually do is delay the inevitable while trying to break contact and escape. Speed is HUGE in air-to-air combat. Speed means your weapons fly further than the other guy, you can choose to engage or disengage at your leisure (assuming you are the faster one), and you're more likely to be able to avoid whatever they happen to be firing at you. Speed and altitude advantage mean an F-15 could lob a paveway through a helicopter from outside the effective range of a sidewinder/stinger/igla. Warbadger fucked around with this message at 14:49 on Jan 28, 2012 |
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Jan 28, 2012 14:30
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mllaneza posted:I'll give the guy credit, it's better designed and easier on the eyes than any Truther site I ever saw. That said, did someone really write the words "The future of naval aviation is seaplanes and not carrier aviation." and then get it published ? They're cool as gently caress, but I can imagine seaplanes being of much use in any conceivable WW3 scenario, not after satellite recon anyway. With the internet you can find someone to defend any crazy idea, no matter how stupid. There's probably a whole site somewhere dedicated to getting the Army to go back to bolt-action rifles and the whole "every man a marksman" philosophy. Although that's not to say the Navy isn't developing seaplanes today.
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Jan 28, 2012 15:26
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Terrifying Effigies posted:With the internet you can find someone to defend any crazy idea, no matter how stupid. There's probably a whole site somewhere dedicated to getting the Army to go back to bolt-action rifles and the whole "every man a marksman" philosophy. That's something far more awesome than a seaplane.
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Jan 28, 2012 15:35
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I'd fund that program, if nothing more than to see how Lockheed would gently caress it up.
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Jan 28, 2012 15:41
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So the guy thinking this up for Lockheed is an artist? That actually explains a lot...
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Jan 28, 2012 16:25
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Speaking of crazy anglefire pages, I was an F35 hater who wanted to go back to bolt action rifles back in the 10th grade.  In all seriousness most things on that site are much less insane and I thought his comments on camoflague are actually pretty insightful and somewhat prescient.
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Jan 28, 2012 16:35
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Snowdens Secret posted:While I certainly believe you on this, I have to wonder how often historically helos have carried dedicated air-air weapons in combat (as opposed to specifically air-air exercises). And while I don't know if the exercise pitted choppers against ground attack or air superiority planes, I can't think of a single combat-deployed helo designed for air to air warfare. Yeah, that is valid. There are a few reported but not very well confirmed cases of Iranian choppers downing Iraqi planes during the Iran-Iraq war. In the exercise, they were using air superiority fighters vs primarily Cobras and later Apaches, presumably armed with Stingers or Sidewinders. As for the scenario, I could be misinterpreting this, and I wasn't part of it and am not read in on the official AARs, so I could be wrong. However, it very much sounds like 90% of the RW mission was to find a good place to hide and bait FW pilots and wait for them to get close while the RW is all clustered amongst cover and then fire at the FW pilots as they fly by. Meanwhile, the FW guys are told they need to go engage the enemy so it won't do the exercise any good to say "Yeah, we spotted a Cobra, he went to ground in a valley of doom and despair, gently caress that guy, he's no threat to our troops down there anyway and will have to go back to base for fuel some time." Instead, they make risky attacks that wouldn't be necessary in the real world. That's part of what makes the exercise interesting, but which also means it doesn't much apply to the real world, which can also be seen by how rare it is for jets and choppers to tangle at all, and how exceedingly rare it is for the chopper to win. The most effective way to ensure the RW will win is to have it behave like an air defense turret that can quickly relocate, clustered drat near on the ground amongst cover, whether visual or radar cover and wait for a jet to fly by, then fire a shot in its rear end. Of course, this mission could be served far more cheaply by an actual air defense team like MANPADs or a turreted AD system, even an old one with no radar whatsoever which just uses thermals, guns, and heat-seekers. Also, our lookdown radars and ability to eliminate clutter from radar pictures has gotten way, way better since the 70's when this exercise started up. RWs definitely just go to ground and hide as much as possible, because it's a losing fight for them, and they have a mission that needs accomplishing. Coming back to base having not killed any of the armor or air defenses you were supposed to take out because you spent all your fuel baiting jets into making stupid attacks against you isn't necessarily going to please command. Also, RW are highly, highly effective against other RW when given the mission to just hide somewhere and shoot them as they pass. It's like those 1 on 1 scenarios where 1 shooter is supposed to clear a dark warehouse without NVGs vs. a shooter just sitting in wait in the dark. If the defending RW aircraft has any clue whatsoever as the ingressing RW's avenue of approach, they can just camp behind a berm, trees, etc. and fire missiles into the RW's rear end as it passes, and RW have even less chance to get out of range of their short-range seekers.
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Jan 28, 2012 16:42
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Despite the fact my career revolves around the development, sale, and uses of aerospace and defense products I have never read a single Tom Clancy book nor have any desire to do so. I understand the allure of them especially on the tech side and maybe I'm missing out, but doesn't really bother me.
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Jan 28, 2012 16:57
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A UH-1 is basically just an Econoline van that can fly awkwardly for a bit. They don't have radars do they? How would they even find a jet until the jet flew over their heads, unless the jet knew where it was specifically and was sent to get the helicopter? It sounds like you could have achieved the same result if you had 5 men with stingers and a machine gun in an Econoline van under a tarp somewhere waiting for a jet to fly by. Can the radars in Apaches and what not be used for BVR air combat?
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Jan 28, 2012 17:01
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Warbadger posted:Speed and altitude advantage mean an F-15 could lob a paveway through a helicopter from outside the effective range of a sidewinder/stinger/igla. This happened during the Gulf War, F-15 crew shot down a helicopter with an LGB: quote:The image on the pod was good enough to identify the helicopters as probable [Mi-24] "Hinds," five to ten miles out. Hinds can carry troops and are heavily armed with rockets and machine guns. As soon as the helicopters picked up and started moving, we were getting hits off them on the radar. The radar would stay locked on them when they were on the ground because the moving rotor blades were picked up.
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Jan 28, 2012 17:50
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kill me now posted:How is it that a company delivered a defective product and is making the purchaser foot the bill? You've apparently never bought a computer or a gun, yet appear to be posting on an internet forum for firearms enthusiasts 
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Jan 28, 2012 18:06
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Throatwarbler posted:A UH-1 is basically just an Econoline van that can fly awkwardly for a bit. They don't have radars do they? How would they even find a jet until the jet flew over their heads, unless the jet knew where it was specifically and was sent to get the helicopter? It sounds like you could have achieved the same result if you had 5 men with stingers and a machine gun in an Econoline van under a tarp somewhere waiting for a jet to fly by. The UH-1s weren't used in the tests, AFAIK. They used Cobras and Apaches and sometimes had choppers the Cobra or Apaches would escort, which may have been UH-1s. I don't know a whole lot about Apache radar systems, but it's not made for air to air combat, but for detecting and locking armored vehicles and the like. Air-to-air RW engagements are visual range heatseekers or guns.
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Jan 28, 2012 18:17
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:That was Clive Cussler's Dragon, which is pure Clive Cussler. No, Debt of Honor had that plot as well. Unfortunately.
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Jan 28, 2012 18:23
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The War In 2020 by Ralph Peters also had the Japanese (and the South Africans) as the primary antagonists. He was predicting Japan's inevitable economic rise just as Japan's Lost Decade was starting.
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Jan 28, 2012 20:02
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Forums Terrorist posted:Hey, I think I read that one. Was it the one with the nuke stolen from the downed B-29? Yes. Also the Japanese base was full of robots. And there was a Samurai version of General Zaroff. It was :cussler: as gently caress.
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Jan 28, 2012 20:34
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Haha it seems even this forum has now been exposed to Sparky's madness on combatreform.org. This guy was hounded off of Tank-Net trying to sell his silly battleship reactivation plans and trying to have people refer to the M113 APC as the Gavin in honor of an airborne general (and the fact that the US should be airdropping tracked vehicles from cargo planes). Any reference to the M113 by that name pretty much comes from him, it was a bit of a farce when some sites and even wikipedia fell for it for a while.
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Jan 28, 2012 21:03
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Smiling Jack posted:The War In 2020 by Ralph Peters also had the Japanese (and the South Africans) as the primary antagonists. Everyone was for the previous 10 years to be fair, I mean look at Blade Runner and Rising Sun, in that book they talk about Asahi become the US's number one imported beer  .
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Jan 28, 2012 21:22
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Advocating tracked IFVs instead of the wheeled Stryker doesn't sound all that insane to me? What don't you like about it?
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Jan 28, 2012 21:25
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Throatwarbler posted:Advocating tracked IFVs instead of the wheeled Stryker doesn't sound all that insane to me? What don't you like about it? Because the M113 is an antiquated POS? And the fact that it's not an IFV it's an APC. And if you blow the track on an M113 it's deadlined, while a Stryker can keep going, even with a couple of wheels blown off. There's also the fact that Mike Sparks thinks that the entire US military should be airborne. That our entire force structure should be paratroopers and M113's dropped from the sky. Armyman25 fucked around with this message at 21:30 on Jan 28, 2012 |
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Jan 28, 2012 21:28
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Aren't M113s kind of underpowered pieces of crap that are really vulnerable to anything over small arms fire? Not to mention they're death traps in the case of IEDs/mines, I remember seeing photos of them in vietnam with the driver sitting on the roof steering with long poles because of the likelyhood of being killed by a mine if he was inside. (I had a pretty sweet Tamiya model of an M113 back in the day)
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Jan 28, 2012 21:34
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But as far as I can tell he's advocating for the enlarged, modernized "MTVL" variant, not bringing original M113s out of Vietnam war stocks.
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Jan 28, 2012 21:39
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The M113's Wikipedia talk page is one big  and I'm pretty sure at least two of its contributors are puppet accounts of Sparks himself.In Cold War airpower news, the LA Times reports that the U2 may be getting a life extension.
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Jan 28, 2012 23:01
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Sperglord Actual posted:The M113's Wikipedia talk page is one big They absolutely are, because they write the exact same way he does. Both of them, of course, demand the other person attach their real name to their comments, when he's not doing it for either of his. And of course he gets extremely mad about "unverified" claims like "nobody ever calls it by this nickname, literally ever" and seems to not understand turning around and saying "THOUSANDS OF AMERICAN SERVICEMEN CALL IT BY MY MADE UP NICKNAME" is uhhh ... the same thing. Basically, your garden variety lunatic. Not even that special, sad to say.
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Jan 28, 2012 23:54
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Phanatic posted:This happened during the Gulf War, F-15 crew shot down a helicopter with an LGB: That same tail (with a different crew, obviously) is the jet that shot down the runaway Predator over Afghanistan. Sperglord Actual posted:In Cold War airpower news, the LA Times reports that the U2 may be getting a life extension. That will all depend on if NG is successful in lobbying against the Global Hawk cut...I wouldn't hold my breath for that, though.
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Jan 29, 2012 00:09
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It sounds like Block 30 RQ-4s are done, but they'll still buy some block 40s. Defensetech was running the U-2 story as well, and something about an RQ-4 crash in Pakistan (can't link, on phone.) A runaway Predator? Is there much unclass info on how drones behave when they lose comms or malfunction? I figured it was either loitering in place or trying to head home, which seems to be what the Iranians guessed out. There seems to be a lot of confusion in the civilian world about how much these things are autonomous killbots and how much they're just big RC planes.
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Jan 29, 2012 01:57
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