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Terrifying Effigies posted:Post-apocalyptic literature is a guilty pleasure but in order for the plot to be something other than 'everyone dies a horrible death' they have to take a lot of liberties. Mack Maloney's "Wingman" series is so goddamn ridiculous but I'll be a monkey's uncle if I don't love his depictions of WWIII's air war. Of course, having Hawk Hunter shoot down everything with wings with his F-16 and flying 10 missions a day is ridiculous, but hey, dad-fiction.
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Mar 18, 2012 00:36
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co199 posted:Mack Maloney's "Wingman" series is so goddamn ridiculous but I'll be a monkey's uncle if I don't love his depictions of WWIII's air war. Of course, having Hawk Hunter shoot down everything with wings with his F-16 and flying 10 missions a day is ridiculous, but hey, dad-fiction. Haha what a perfect name for that whole genre. When I was a kid my dad had the complete works of Clancy, Marcinko and W.E.B. Griffith proudly displayed on his head-of-the-bed-bookshelf but even he kept the shame of WINGMAN sequestered in the garage.
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Mar 18, 2012 00:52
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poo poo yes dad fiction.  My dad used to tell me these awesome long-running bedtime stories as a kid, they'd run for months at a time. Now I know where he got some of the basic plot ideas from, but he always managed to make them new and interesting. I can only hope to live up to the same standard.
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Mar 18, 2012 01:16
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The Proc posted:Haha what a perfect name for that whole genre. When I was a kid my dad had the complete works of Clancy, Marcinko and W.E.B. Griffith proudly displayed on his head-of-the-bed-bookshelf but even he kept the shame of WINGMAN sequestered in the garage. Right now I'm working on completing Keith Douglass' "Carrier" series. I have the first 10 (of 22) books, working on 4 and 5 now, in which the story of the newly reformed Soviet Union's assault on Norway and Finland is blocked by the lone pilots of CVBG 14, the USS Thomas Jefferson. Plenty of Tomcat-on-Flanker-and-Fulcrum action, with one sweet scene where an entire squadron of S-3 Vikings are armed with Harpoons and launched against a Soviet carrier group. Yeah. gently caress it though, WINGMAN goes right on my dad fiction bookshelf. Any book where the author writes "and this was when I was still under contract to get the main character laid four times a book" is loving awesome. co199 fucked around with this message at 01:44 on Mar 18, 2012 |
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Mar 18, 2012 01:41
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Sjurygg posted:Spain was initially viewed as a pariah in Europe and the West following WW2 due to their overt support of the Axis powers, even participating with troops on the Eastern front. How they ever managed to keep calling themselves neutral is something I'll never fully understand. Since they hated commies even after the war was over, the US started thawing up to dear old Franco and from the late fifties and on, they were with the Good Guys. Even earlier than that, really. The U.S. didn't have a problem with Fascism per se, it had a problem with Fascist countries at war with its allies. In fact, many influential Americans wanted to play the home version as well. This led to things like people being declared Premature Anti-Fascists. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premature_anti-fascists#United_States
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Mar 18, 2012 03:10
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co199 posted:with one sweet scene where an entire squadron of S-3 Vikings are armed with Harpoons and launched against a Soviet carrier group. Yeah. I'll only be satisfied if they also sortied an entire VP of Orions loaded for bear with Harpoons. Basically this x 20:  (check out the self defense Sidewinders) And here's another cool picture I found looking for that one:  USN, RAAF, and RNZAF Orions along with a whole mess of RAAF Mirages IIIs. (click through for huge with both of those). If we're really getting into ludicrous territory, add in the A-10s that launch against the Kirov in Hunt for Red October...although that actually happened (sort of) over Libya last year, along with a P-3 launching a Maverick against a patrol boat. iyaayas01 fucked around with this message at 05:08 on Mar 18, 2012 |
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Mar 18, 2012 05:05
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iyaayas01 posted:I'll only be satisfied if they also sortied an entire VP of Orions loaded for bear with Harpoons. Basically this x 20: Sorry, all the P-3s got blown up when Tu-22s launched 25 AS-6s at Keflavik. Along with the 51st FIS F-15s suicide ramming the bombers to prevent them from launching. iyaayas01 posted:If we're really getting into ludicrous territory, add in the A-10s that launch against the Kirov in Hunt for Red October... That happened in a Wingman book, too - the remnants of the USAF have a North America -> Europe aerial convoy going when a Soviet carrier group appears out of nowhere. Cue A-10s going down in a blaze of glory strafing the carrier deck with 30mm while the other planes escape. I think all these dad fiction authors are actually the same dude. Speaking of WWIII, there's also the Dos Gringos song "World War 3", which starts with a USAF pilot accidentally shooting down an Iranian pilot, triggering the big one. Dos Gringos is a pair of active duty F-16 pilots, so it's pretty funny. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGKJAKx979I co199 fucked around with this message at 05:36 on Mar 18, 2012 |
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Mar 18, 2012 05:31
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On the subject of post-apocalyptic dad fiction, Warday by Whitley Strieber and James Kunetka is pretty decent. It's grim as all hell though since it's mainly a more scientific/plausibility themed fiction book, with casualty charts and radiation statistics. It also includes a seceded Texas/Mexico being the sole source of currency amid ethnic clensing of whites and a police state California. There was supposed to be a sequel but the co-authors drifted apart after the release of Nature's End, where a cult leader proposes the suicide of a third of the world's population after near total ecological collapse in 2025.
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Mar 18, 2012 08:47
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Browsing imgur.com pays off...
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Mar 18, 2012 10:04
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mllaneza posted:Browsing imgur.com pays off...
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Mar 18, 2012 12:02
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mllaneza posted:Browsing imgur.com pays off... To me one of the most fascinating things about OXCART was the story of it's production. Like the Apollo program, there was a design that had specifications requiring materials and processes that had not yet been invented! If this footage is of actual Blackbird component manufacture, look at how much work went into producing that one component. Getting titanium ore refined that met spec was itself was a logistical nightmare, the story goes we actually sourced it from the Soviets through various back channels, and early on the reject rate was very high. Then somebody had to design these presses, dies, fixtures, and machining centers and figure out how to actually cut it. Even to this day titanium is considered difficult to machine. Keep in mind all these problems were tackled and solved simultaneously, in a relatively short period of time. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=-ivCv7_bvik#t=385s
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Mar 18, 2012 13:35
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Styles Bitchley posted:To me one of the most fascinating things about OXCART was the story of it's production. Like the Apollo program, there was a design that had specifications requiring materials and processes that had not yet been invented! And computer engineering/electrical engineering were in their infancy (computer engineering more-so).
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Mar 18, 2012 18:46
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What amazes me is how quickly the SR-71 was developed and fielded compared to how long it takes now for the Air Force to adopt a much more mundane airframe. I mean, how long has the selection process for the next tanker taken?
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Mar 18, 2012 19:07
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Not quite dad fiction but here's one of those what-if-ww3-happened fake documentaries that I'd never seen before: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zO-BLggwqRU It's quite well done so far.
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Mar 18, 2012 19:24
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Sjurygg posted:
I was quite interested in the planes of that area. Every one knows about the V bombers but were there any interesting others? Ive heard a very small amount about the British nuclear program before we just paid for american bombs. Anything about either of these would be very interesting. Sjurygg posted:(there was a nasty coup attempt which the King himself played a big role in defeating) I had heard about this from my grandparents who lived through it. If im not mistaken the King went on TV and ordered the army units to back down. Which they did.
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Mar 18, 2012 21:08
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iyaayas01 posted:I'll only be satisfied if they also sortied an entire VP of Orions loaded for bear with Harpoons. Basically this x 20: Maritime patrol aircraft with Sidewinders, you say?  
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Mar 18, 2012 21:18
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Oh, ye of little faith... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4CQfaBGWSo
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Mar 18, 2012 21:51
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I hope you guys don't mind stupid questions in this thread. How come the B2 is called the B2 when before it went B17 - B29 - B52? What is the logic behind the names?
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Mar 18, 2012 23:02
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Armyman25 posted:What amazes me is how quickly the SR-71 was developed and fielded compared to how long it takes now for the Air Force to adopt a much more mundane airframe. I mean, how long has the selection process for the next tanker taken? Not just the Air Force. And KC-X is a poor example to use since there was loads of political bullshit involved as well as a couple felonies. I mean, don't get me wrong, that is a solid example of how incompetent the AF is at conducting acquisitions, but the problems were mostly political/policy, not technical. If you want an example of a program that has had mostly technical problems, look at the JSF. It's been fully supported politically since day 1, has not ever had any sort of funding cut or budget delay (unlike its much more maligned cousin, the Raptor), and has the full backing of the entire U.S. government since the start...yet it has consistently failed to meet program objectives and milestones, some just not in a timely manner, some not at all (of course, you don't hear about the ones it failed to meet at all because those objectives were conveniently modified, very quietly). fuf posted:I hope you guys don't mind stupid questions in this thread. The designation nomenclature reset in 1962 to a tri-service system. Prior to that each service had their own, which is why in WWII you had P-51 Mustangs but F6F Hellcats, and then in Korea you had the F-86 Sabre but the F9F Panther. The 1962 system is based on the system the USAF was using, which is why there doesn't appear to be any difference with the bombers, since the USAF was the only service to regularly utilize aircraft with the B- designation. The B-52 was the last bomber to enter production under the new system, and the B-1 was the first under the new system...the B-2 was the second, and the Next Generation Bomber (or whatever the gently caress they're calling it now) will theoretically be the "B-3." This is also why the F-111 entered service before the F-15 and F-16. iyaayas01 fucked around with this message at 23:15 on Mar 18, 2012 |
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Mar 18, 2012 23:06
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fuf posted:I hope you guys don't mind stupid questions in this thread. The letter is, of course, the intended mission: F-something means a fighter, B-something means a bomber, A-something means attack, X-something means an experimental aicraft, and so on. Within the mission designations, numbers are assigned sequentially. A lot of them get skipped because everything - even prototypes and experimental models - gets a number, but only a limited number of aircraft go into service. The B-2 comes after the B-52 because the DoD reset the numbering in 1962, and unified aircraft naming across the Army, Navy, and Air Force.
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Mar 18, 2012 23:20
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iyaayas01 posted:Not just the Air Force. And KC-X is a poor example to use since there was loads of political bullshit involved as well as a couple felonies. I mean, don't get me wrong, that is a solid example of how incompetent the AF is at conducting acquisitions, but the problems were mostly political/policy, not technical. If you want an example of a program that has had mostly technical problems, look at the JSF. It's been fully supported politically since day 1, has not ever had any sort of funding cut or budget delay (unlike its much more maligned cousin, the Raptor), and has the full backing of the entire U.S. government since the start...yet it has consistently failed to meet program objectives and milestones, some just not in a timely manner, some not at all (of course, you don't hear about the ones it failed to meet at all because those objectives were conveniently modified, very quietly). I wasn't trying to be "hurr, USAF" But the Air Forces' projects are always several orders of magnitude more impressive than the Army's. Also, for shear  in a Cold War context, this documentary about Chernobyl is amazing.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiCXb1Nhd1o I mean, it's some grim, post apocalyptic poo poo.
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Mar 18, 2012 23:58
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Armyman25 posted:I wasn't trying to be "hurr, USAF" But the Air Forces' projects are always several orders of magnitude more impressive than the Army's. Fast acquisitions like A-12 and P-51 had the advantage of filling a massive gaping hole in military capability, which is much easier to back than a new tanker than doesn't do anything better than the old one except 'be new'.
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Mar 19, 2012 00:39
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The JSF has technical concerns but to say it hasn't had political complications seems overgenerous. I don't see how the deliberate, additional efforts to use the program as a jobs bank, with specific bits and pieces to be built in each supporting congressman's district and each stakeholder nation building their own little doodads, could do anything but ratchet costs and delays. This emphasis on "Where is it built" over "Is it worth a drat" seems to be what bogs down federal projects more and more. I don't get the vibe that when, say, the military ordered up the SR-71s, that they particularly gave a crap about where the parts came from. I wonder if this silliness originates with the TFX project like so many other questionable defense spending ideas.
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Mar 19, 2012 01:27
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Well the SR-71 was a secret left to the old Skunk Works to create. The JSF is a reelection machine that happens to fly.
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Mar 19, 2012 15:41
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Our tolerance for failure with new weapons programs has changed significantly since the 50s and 60s. There were tons of aircraft programs that moved quickly from concept to aircraft in service even though the aircraft had crippling defects that killed people left and right. A program like the F7U Cutlass was rushed into service, even though something like 25% of them eventually crashed. The thinking was that there was a "war" on, and sacrifices had to be made.
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Mar 19, 2012 17:21
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Totally TWISTED posted:Well the SR-71 was a secret left to the old Skunk Works to create. The JSF is a reelection machine that happens to fly. The SR-71 had a very specific purpose for which it was designed. The JSF is following in the footsteps of the F-111 and is trying to do everything on a single platform.
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Mar 19, 2012 18:57
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Snowdens Secret posted:The JSF has technical concerns but to say it hasn't had political complications seems overgenerous. I don't see how the deliberate, additional efforts to use the program as a jobs bank, with specific bits and pieces to be built in each supporting congressman's district and each stakeholder nation building their own little doodads, could do anything but ratchet costs and delays. This emphasis on "Where is it built" over "Is it worth a drat" seems to be what bogs down federal projects more and more. This is not to say that supplier footprint can't be a bad thing, 787 supplier nightmares show it can be a deal breaking issue.
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Mar 19, 2012 18:58
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Warbadger posted:The SR-71 had a very specific purpose for which it was designed. The JSF is following in the footsteps of the F-111 and is trying to do everything on a single platform.
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Mar 19, 2012 19:30
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Propagandalf posted:Fast acquisitions like A-12 and P-51 had the advantage of filling a massive gaping hole in military capability, which is much easier to back than a new tanker than doesn't do anything better than the old one except 'be new'. "Be new" is a pretty nice feature when it comes to maintenance and spare parts.
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Mar 19, 2012 21:41
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Warbadger posted:The SR-71 had a very specific purpose for which it was designed. The JSF is following in the footsteps of the F-111 and is trying to do everything on a single platform. The F-35 just seems like a complete loving waste of time and money already, the idea that it will replace everything from the F-22 to the A-10 is just retarded. Everyone should just start buying Sukhois 
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Mar 19, 2012 23:12
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Groda posted:"Be new" is a pretty nice feature when it comes to maintenance and spare parts. Maintenance is a misnomer. Every time something breaks, you have to create a maintenance procedure to fix it- which you then have to run every single time twice a day into perpetuity because the Air Force is about as insane for preventable maintenance as it is for checklists. Airmen's time is free. It's deceptive to claim excess maintenance on a plane that needs 8 hours of maintenance for every hour in the air when you aren't paying your labor by the hour, and what you do pay them comes from a different money pool. Doubly so when "maintenance" is a lot of crawling around with flashlights looking for leaks and loose fittings and ticking boxes on checklists. A C-135 variant can get hundreds of hours of costly "maintenance" at no more actual cost than $20 for 4 quarts of oil. Claiming a new plane will be lower maintenance is just silly. Low Maintenance simply means not enough stuff has yet gone wrong to bloat the size of the daily/weekly/monthly/pre-/post- flight inspection criteria- which themselves become the reason justifying newer planes advertising lower maintenance. "Be new" isn't a much of a selling point when it actually means "not everything that can go wrong has gone wrong", as it has with the tanker fleet.
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Mar 19, 2012 23:47
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Propagandalf posted:Airmen's time is free. It's deceptive to claim excess maintenance on a plane that needs 8 hours of maintenance for every hour in the air when you aren't paying your labor by the hour, and what you do pay them comes from a different money pool. Doubly so when "maintenance" is a lot of crawling around with flashlights looking for leaks and loose fittings and ticking boxes on checklists. A C-135 variant can get hundreds of hours of costly "maintenance" at no more actual cost than $20 for 4 quarts of oil. There is a maximum amount of labor you can get from a single person, at which point you have no choice but to add people or accept lower readiness rates. IIRC, it works out to about 10-12 hours a day, 6 days a week, sustained. Push them harder and fatigue actual lowers productivity and introduces costly errors. grover fucked around with this message at 00:20 on Mar 20, 2012 |
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Mar 20, 2012 00:12
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Modern tech that allows vehicles / vessels to perform internal self-diagnostics, replacing manual setpoint / calibration maintenance, can significantly reduce maintenance load. The Virginia class SSNs have enough of this sort of stuff that they can cut watch stations - and bringing fewer watchstanders to sea means more mission payload. A tanker that replaces 50-year old hydraulic systems with electronic ones, one that self-checks its avionics three times a second instead of needing a six-hour PM once a week, can certainly reduce maintenance, and that means the AF can make do with fewer airmen. The labor savings don't pay for the hulls / mainframes on their own, but they're certainly not trivial.
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Mar 20, 2012 05:45
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Snowdens Secret posted:Modern tech that allows vehicles / vessels to perform internal self-diagnostics, replacing manual setpoint / calibration maintenance, can significantly reduce maintenance load. The Virginia class SSNs have enough of this sort of stuff that they can cut watch stations - and bringing fewer watchstanders to sea means more mission payload. A tanker that replaces 50-year old hydraulic systems with electronic ones, one that self-checks its avionics three times a second instead of needing a six-hour PM once a week, can certainly reduce maintenance, and that means the AF can make do with fewer airmen. The labor savings don't pay for the hulls / mainframes on their own, but they're certainly not trivial. This is true provided that the maximum number of people needed for the most labor-intensive evolution is reduced. Otherwise you still need the same number of people (aside from cases where the people can be shared amongst multiple aircraft/ships with the understanding that they now cannot simultaneously perform that evolution) and they now have more time to stand around polishing their helmets rather than performing periodic maintenance.
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Mar 20, 2012 05:58
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Snowdens Secret posted:Modern tech that allows vehicles / vessels to perform internal self-diagnostics, replacing manual setpoint / calibration maintenance, can significantly reduce maintenance load. The Virginia class SSNs have enough of this sort of stuff that they can cut watch stations - and bringing fewer watchstanders to sea means more mission payload. A tanker that replaces 50-year old hydraulic systems with electronic ones, one that self-checks its avionics three times a second instead of needing a six-hour PM once a week, can certainly reduce maintenance, and that means the AF can make do with fewer airmen. The labor savings don't pay for the hulls / mainframes on their own, but they're certainly not trivial.
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Mar 20, 2012 15:56
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co199 posted:Sorry, all the P-3s got blown up when Tu-22s launched 25 AS-6s at Keflavik. Along with the 51st FIS F-15s suicide ramming the bombers to prevent them from launching. IIRC, the Russkie carrier gets hosed by the AC-130s in the aerial convoy.
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Mar 20, 2012 17:30
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PhotoKirk posted:IIRC, the Russkie carrier gets hosed by the AC-130s in the aerial convoy. It's been awhile since I've read the books, so that might be it. Either way, it's awesome and ridiculous at the same time. Also awesome and ridiculous are the AI-controlled B-1s buried under Cheyenne Mountain (?) that are recovered and used to strike against the Russians.
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Mar 20, 2012 18:22
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A B-1B with a cylonesque sweeping red light where the cockpit is would look pretty drat cool.  
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Mar 20, 2012 18:56
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Armyman25 posted:I wasn't trying to be "hurr, USAF" But the Air Forces' projects are always several orders of magnitude more impressive than the Army's. Fair enough...that's pretty much true. When you have not one but three aircraft programs that each make the Comanche look like a drop in the bucket, that's saying something. daskrolator posted:Yawn, the political complications as it relates to supplier footprint is a non-issue. The JSF's program's supplier footprint is nothing out of the industry norm and when you look at the technical issues plaguing the program, which at its heart is why there is so much schedule slippage and cost escalation, you'll find that little have to do with suppliers. F/A-18EF has suppliers from over half of the states in the US plus a handful of international suppliers yet it was one of the most successful fighter development programs in recent history. Basically this. Also worth mentioning that when I brought up "political issues" I was more referring to political complications like the F-22 having to go through the peace dividend at the end of the Cold War as well as falling victim to OSD's "Kill the Raptor" campaign or the clusterfuck of the protest and counter-protests that hosed up the KC-X project even more than it already was. The F-35 program has suffered none of that...the JSF program was started after the Cold War (even if you go back as far as JAST, that program was started in 1993), and the selection of LockMart over Boeing was not marred by any of the protest/counter-protest bullshit that has basically now become the norm for any major acquisitions project. However, like you said, it is still having all sorts of issues, all of which are tied to technical issues...some of which are due to an insane (read: loving retarded) requirements list and some of which are due to sheer incompetence on the part of LockMart and the various subcontractors. grover posted:Stealth aircraft coatings, for example, add an enormous amount of labor cost to the maintenance of new aircraft, even as other advances reduce maintenance. Don't get me started. Even the supposedly newer better Raptor still requires crazy amounts of LO maintenance...it is an improvement over the F-117 or B-2 since the Raptor doesn't absolutely require climate controlled hangars like those two did but holy poo poo, it's definitely the single biggest maintenance driver on the F-22. And relating it back to manning, it is really personnel intensive, at least compared to a lot of other stuff on the jet. Regarding the discussion about maintenance and manning, as a mx officer I'd say both sides have valid points. It is correct that the older a plane gets the more stuff gets added to a checklist (because we know the likely things that will possibly break, as opposed to on a new aircraft where we are still discovering it), but it is a bit of an overgeneralization to say that a new aircraft will not in any way be lower maintenance. An older airframe is going to present issues that a newer aircraft will not, both at the organizational/base level and at depot. You won't open a panel on a new aircraft to shoot some wires only to have the wire bundle crumple to dust when you try to separate them (happened on an Eagle several years back to a pointy head that works for me now) and you won't have to spend a couple billion dollars to rewing a new jet at depot (like we're doing for the A-10 fleet). Speaking of old jets and rewiring, here's an article on just that. As far as how hard and for how long you can push people, the AF actually has this insanely complicated computer model for that called LCOM (Logistics Composite Model) that they use to figure out how many people of what jobs and skill levels, how much equipment, and how much spare parts/bench stock/shop stock/etc they need to support a given number of aircraft at a given location flying at a given sortie rate. It sounds like it would be incredibly inaccurate, and while it does have some issues and the usual reaction to it at the base level is something along the lines of "those dumbass fuckers came here and asked me a bunch of retarded questions about how long it takes to fix a jet, like that even matters jesus christ our manning is hosed up thanks to those retards," it is the main driver on mx manning and it actually usually does a fairly adequate job...the biggest issues with manning is the AF's personnel system and overall manning shortfalls, as well as things that LCOM doesn't necessarily take into account, like split ops. I.e., LCOM drives your authorizations, but the personnel system and the subsequent manning shortfalls (positions out of hide, additional duties, just not being manned anywhere close to 100% of your authorizations, etc) are what drives the actual numbers assigned at any given time. Anyway, if you want to read more on that subject here's a short piece from 1990 that's a little dated but gives a good overview, and here's a much more lengthy piece that provides a solid in-depth look at a lot of the issues with mx manning, both with the LCOM system and with the other factors that impact manning. To bring it back to general mx discussions, one of the issues with LCOM that the study identifies is that by definition LCOM has to utilize AF standards for things like CANN rates, TCTO completion rates, MC rates, and the like. These things are generally worse for older jets (although to be fair there tends to be a high TCTO rate for very new jets also), which means that when these things are worse it has a negative impact on work efficiency since the LCOM generated manning is probably inadequate to effectively deal with the situation in a timely manner, which means everyone gets to work longer hours, and thus we have the standard maintenance death cycle. PhotoKirk posted:IIRC, the Russkie carrier gets hosed by the AC-130s in the aerial convoy.  Holy poo poo...that's hilariously awesome on so many different levels.
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Mar 20, 2012 22:32
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rossmum posted:Except that once the bugs were ironed out, the F-111 was a drat fine strike aircraft, even if it couldn't do anything else particularly well. The F-111 project never created an aircraft as capable as it was supposed to even after decades of working the issues out of it. It was never a capable fighter aircraft and was only a passable bomber. The F-35 may very well be a fine aircraft after a decade of work to fix the issues they find when it finally starts flying and to be honest the people making GBS threads on the project from a capability standpoint (criticizing the massive cost overruns is certainly called for) are loving retarded. Regardless, both projects suffered from the same issue in that they were supposed to fill a huge number of roles while introducing new technologies and it turns out it's not easy to do that.
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Mar 20, 2012 22:39
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