Snowdens Secret posted:

This would surely work well, as it's been a smashing success letting this happen in places such as

WEREWAIF posted:

I think the best thing for Africa would be to get rid of all debt obligations, stop enforcing borders as is, and block all weapon imports and mineral exports. Let the rentier states and corrupt elites fall, let the borders dematerialize and come back in much more rational forms. We could end up with a much more harmonious, more prosperous, and self sufficient continent.

Veins McGee posted:

I don't think its ever been attempted so I don't know what you're getting at.

On the other hand, a lot of blame is placed on borders first drawn at the Conference of Berlin and later elaborated upon by the Colonial Powers. The hatred of ethnic group x for ethnic group y is often overstated in an attempt to create an easily digested answer for Westerners. I'm not familiar with the exact administration of every former colony but colonial rulers tended to designate a group to delegate authority to sub-administer. Even in purely settler colonies(Rhodesia for example), one group tended to be seen as more 'white' than other groups. Whatever the case, ethnic rivalries tended to be manufactured by the colonial rulers in order to ease rule and misdirect unrest. You also have to consider the period during which colonies transitioned to self-rule; the Cold War, proxy wars in order to establish the supremacy of one side or the other. Conflict certainly occurred because of ethnic rivalries/hatred/whatever, but its far from the complete story.

Read up about the Rwandan genocide and you'll see what I mean. Certainly, there is a difference between Hutus and Tutsis but prior to colonial involvement the difference tended to be more flexible.

Also: "Frederick Lugard"/"Indirect Rule" and "The Hamatic Myth" would also be two topics worth reading more about.

Cyrano4747 posted:

You realize that while things might go exactly as you say, the process would be a gigantic loving civil war on a continental scale and bloodshed akin to that suffered by Europe between 1914 and 1945, right?


I don't think anyone is going to argue that the Conference of Berlin and all the other various schemes that drew up the current borders were anything but hosed up, and I'll even grant your assertion that what we consider longstanding tribal/ethnic rivalries today are probably the result of colonial policy which exacerbated them or maybe even fabricated them entirely (I'm pretty weak on African history, so I'll just defer to anyone who's read up on this subject).

That said, the legacy of the past 200 years of being hosed over and exploited every which way isn't going to just disappear over night. Those corrupt elites and hosed up governments which currently hold valuable resources aren't going to just quietly fade into the night, nor are they going to find it too difficult to get someone to sell them weapons or whatever else they need. Any time you set out to draw or re-draw national boundaries you're going to have disputes over valuable bits of land and those disputes frequently degenerate into conflict. gently caress, look at the recent history of Dafur and Sudan for a bit on that. S. Sudan was independant for all of, what, six months before they ended up in a border conflict with the north?

There is a historical precedent for that kind of re-shaping of national boundaries and movement of people to a better, more logical arrangement of a hosed situation full of arbitrary borders, and that's WW1/WW2 in Eastern Europe. Look at a map of the locations of various ethnicities and national groups in 1913 and look at the same map in 1945. Even ignoring the really crazy poo poo like the Holocaust, and even ignoring the political causes for the conflicts, the net result was one of the largest re-drawings of borders in modern history and one of the largest refugee crises the world has ever seen - to find dislocations and permanent movements of people on that scale before then you really need to dig pretty deep.

JUST looking at the deaths caused by the refugee crisis and the mass migrations, you're talking millions of dead people.

gently caress, for another example, look at the process that led to the drawing up of the borders for India and Pakistan when they broke up after independence. Millions of people died in a massive churn of people migrating in opposite directions at the same time, and this was a transition which is all in all considered noteworthy for how smoothly it went given the possibility for it degenerating into a total goat-gently caress of a civil war.

"Erase the current borders and let new ones come up organically" is pretty much the nuclear option to problems like these.

Cyrano4747 posted:

You realize that while things might go exactly as you say, the process would be a gigantic loving civil war on a continental scale and bloodshed akin to that suffered by Europe between 1914 and 1945, right

"Erase the current borders and let new ones come up organically" is pretty much the nuclear option to problems like these.

Cyrano4747 posted:

You realize that while things might go exactly as you say, the process would be a gigantic loving civil war on a continental scale and bloodshed akin to that suffered by Europe between 1914 and 1945, right?

WEREWAIF posted:

Haha, I'm sorry I didn't mean to stir anything up like this. I really just meant that we can't really hope for an africa free of needless conflict and suffering until africans get real states, real governments and everything that comes with them. A single human life can't even become sacred without a real state. So the suggestion that everyone leave Africa alone so they can sort it out is just my way of saying that doing the exact opposite of what's been going on for the last few centuries will probably produce something that's a net positive

Psion posted:

There are several retailers (some of whom operate on the internet) who will rent you ridiculously expensive camera equipment at reasonable rates! You know you want to.



Then make sure to exercise both your camera hand(s) and your shoulder because carrying around Stupid rear end Heavy Lenses gets a bit tiresome eventually.

CarterUSM posted:

I'll look 'em up. I have an old but still functional D70 with the kit lens and a 75-300mm zoom. Might have to see how dear a wide-angle/fisheye lens would be to rent. Alas I'm unemployed at the moment, so I have to be judicious with my spending.

CarterUSM posted:

I'll look 'em up. I have an old but still functional D70 with the kit lens and a 75-300mm zoom. Might have to see how dear a wide-angle/fisheye lens would be to rent. Alas I'm unemployed at the moment, so I have to be judicious with my spending.

iyaayas01 posted:

iyaayas01 posted:

Revolvyerom posted:

I'm curious to hear more about this type of airplane. If nothing else, it looks like it hauls rear end.

Suicide Watch posted:

B1A or B1B?

iyaayas01 posted:

It's a RB-45C Tornado, recce variant of the B-45, which was the USAF's first operational jet bomber. By jet aircraft standards it wasn't very fast (max speed 500 knots) but still quite an increase over the piston engined aircraft it replaced.


-A...they have it done up in a -B-esque darker paint scheme though, which is really too bad, even if it is correct for that particular airframe (this was the fourth and last -A built) because the anti-nuclear reflective white is pretty awesome:



as is the desert:

Oxford Comma posted:

Does the B1 get used anymore? It seems like it does, but only because the Air Force had to justify it. Like taking your annoying kid brother to the movies with you and your B52 friends.

CarterUSM posted:

Iyaayas01, cockblockin' like a boss.

iyaayas01 posted:

Yeah, it does...it goes over to the desert pretty regularly, especially now since it is the only bomber that does not have a nuclear mission, and with the increase in emphasis on the nuclear enterprise in the USAF over the past couple of years that has increased the nuke related workload on those platforms. With the Sniper targeting pod and the 1760 bus upgrade so it can carry JDAM/WCMD type weapons it is capable of doing CAS/NTISR (at least as capable as a bomber sized aircraft is going to be), and it arguably brings some things to the fight that B-52s don't have...whether those things are worth the increased operating cost is a question that gets asked on a semi-frequent basis (the USAF was considering retiring the whole fleet a couple of years back).

iyaayas01 posted:

Yeah, it does...it goes over to the desert pretty regularly, especially now since it is the only bomber that does not have a nuclear mission, and with the increase in emphasis on the nuclear enterprise in the USAF over the past couple of years that has increased the nuke related workload on those platforms. With the Sniper targeting pod and the 1760 bus upgrade so it can carry JDAM/WCMD type weapons it is capable of doing CAS/NTISR (at least as capable as a bomber sized aircraft is going to be), and it arguably brings some things to the fight that B-52s don't have...whether those things are worth the increased operating cost is a question that gets asked on a semi-frequent basis (the USAF was considering retiring the whole fleet a couple of years back).

Oxford Comma posted:

So what does the B1 bring to the fight that the B52 can't, and why does the B1 not have a nuclear mission?

MagnumHB posted:

For one thing, I know B-1s have done low level show-of-force deterrent passes in Afghanistan. I doubt they want to be doing the same thing with B-52s due to their lower speed/maneuverability. I would say that the B-1's targeting pod capacity is a significant advantage for CAS, but I was pleasantly surprised to see a Litening pod on a B-52 at Andrews several weeks ago, so that brings them closer together in terms of that capability. I will also add that the B-1 features prominently in a chapter of Ed Macy's book Apache where it is used to level a Taliban compound by dropping 10 bombs in a single pass prior to the area being cleaned up by the Apaches.

CarterUSM posted:

But does the B-1 have the capability of deploying SEALs into Syria from rotary bomb racks? THAT is the real operational question here!

Oxford Comma posted:

I always kinda expect your posts to degenerate into a string of undecipherable acronyms.

So what does the B1 bring to the fight that the B52 can't, and why does the B1 not have a nuclear mission?

thesurlyspringKAA posted:

The Bone, which is the only big bomber we use in OEF, has to take off outside of Afghanistan from an oppressive dictatorship, fly over whatever third world nations that agree with our presence (so we DO still have to rely on those shitholes), refuel multiple times from costly, inefficient, ANCIENT refueling assets (they burn like 30 thousand pounds an hour or something retarded like that) and end up looking around for a couple hours at over 20kft until they burn the rest of our tax money and fly off, or end up finding something and dropping the same GBU-38 that any other jet in theater carries. There is nothing it does that cant be done cheaper and saner by other poo poo.

Sure I get the whole WOO LOUD NOISE BRING THE RAIN aspect, but you have to admit that just about everything else makes more sense. The AC 130 brings more accurate fire, quicker, quieter, and lower (so you don't have to clear as much airspace), the Hogs are loving CAS experts-period-, unlike the Bone pilots who are generally trained to put cruise missiles on point targets in some nonsensical future war with China, not look for some sneaky goat herder setting an IED. MQ-9s loiter silently forever and deliver low CDE weapons with pinpoint accuracy, perfect for the down-time when there aren't a lot of TICs popping off. Also, there are dozens of other fighter assets in country that base IN COUNTRY, burn less gas, break down less often, and carry the same weapons that the bone does.

iyaayas01 posted:

Sort of. Currently the B-2s and B-52s carry nukes (gravity bombs in the case of the B-2s, ALCMs in the case of the B-52s). B-1s do not; we removed the capability in the mid '90s, because keeping bombers nuclear capable is expensive. Not only do you have all the additional more stringent inspection/maintenance requirements on the aircraft itself, you have the infrastructure to support the nuclear mission, which is rather significant: separate WSA for the storage and maintenance of the weapons as well as additional Security Forces dudes, and the additional inspection/maintenance requirements on everything that comes into contact with the weapons...vehicles, maintenance equipment, personnel...nukes are a royal pain in the rear end.

As for what is involved in converting from conventional to nuclear, B-52s and B-2s do this all the time since the fuzing and other assorted equipment is still onboard the aircraft. The problem is twofold: if you stand down from a nuclear capability (like we did with the B-1) you have to reinstall the required equipment, which isn't cheap or easy. Additionally, you have to rebuild/spin up the required infrastructure (basically what I mentioned above) at the base if it doesn't already have it.

Oxford Comma posted:

So what does the B1 bring to the fight that the B52 can't, and why does the B1 not have a nuclear mission?

iyaayas01 posted:

It's worth mentioning that while the B-1s were denuclearized based on a unilateral decision by the U.S., this denuclearization was counted as part of the "reduction" in U.S. strategic nuclear forces as part of the New START Treaty, which required the U.S. to send a B-1 to Russia for a one-time verification inspection to verify the modifications.

Oxford Comma posted:

Is that capability or about that aircraft or the weapons on it?

Cyrano4747 posted:

The problem is that you are ascribing absolutely zero agency to the Africans themselves. While the outside world has terribly hosed over that continent in ways too numerous to count, it's not like "leaving them alone" would result in anything positive at this point. They aren't going to sit there passively and just ignore the rest of the world while they sort out their own poo poo. For better or worse they are tied into the global system - economically, militarily, culturally, and politically - and you can't just magic away those influences. It's not even a matter of getting everyone else to stop loving with them. Presuming that this was even possible, it's incredibly naive to think that the Africans themselves won't reach out to the rest of the world to secure poo poo they need or want, be it Nike shoes or Kalashnikov rifles.

iyaayas01 posted:

Regarding the split flaps, they were basically only a thing in the '20s and '30s...first invented in 1920, they were mostly used in aircraft designed in the '30s. A lot of early WWII fighters (P-40s, Me 109s, early Spitfires) had them.

movax posted:

^^ So, B-1s (or bombers in general I guess) are too valuable to base in-theatre, or is it more than its easier to ship bomb stores/have hundreds of thousands of pounds of bombs at the large, established bases? I suppose it would be pretty embarrassing for a determined farmerprostitute to wander in and cripple/wreck a B-1 crew with a pack animal loaded with explosivebroken bottle.

movax posted:

^^ So, B-1s (or bombers in general I guess) are too valuable to base in-theatre, or is it more than its easier to ship bomb stores/have hundreds of thousands of pounds of bombs at the large, established bases? I suppose it would be pretty embarrassing for a determined farmer to wander in and cripple/wreck a B-1 with a pack animal loaded with explosive.

I understand why B-2s get based where they are, but what about B-1s/B-52s?

MagnumHB posted:

Bases like Kandahar and Bagram are already extremely busy and crowded. I would think that there simply isn't enough room for a bunch of large bombers to be stationed there on an ongoing basis. Plus, the additional logistical load would probably be prohibitive, as you suggest.

wikipedia posted:

Of the 100 B-1Bs built, 93 remained in 2000 after losses in accidents. In June 2001, the Pentagon sought to place a third of its then fleet of 93 into reserve; this proposal resulted in several Air National Guard officers and members of Congress lobbying against the proposal, including the drafting of an amendment to prevent such cuts.[65] The 2001 proposal was intended to allow money to be diverted to further upgrades to the remaining B-1Bs, such as computer modernization.[65] In 2003, accompanied by the removal of B-1Bs from the two bomb wings in the Air National Guard, the USAF decided to retire 33 aircraft to concentrate its budget on maintaining availability of remaining B-1Bs.[116] In 2004 a new appropriation bill called for some of the retired aircraft to return to service,[117] and the USAF returned seven mothballed bombers to service to increase the fleet to 67 aircraft.[118]

quote:

In a new study of strategy in an age of austerity, three CSBA authors, led by Andrew Krepinevich, state that the B-1 bomber imposed disproportionate costs on the Soviet military, forcing it to invest in air defenses "at the expense of offensive capabilities, thereby pushing the superpower competition in a highly favorable direction." Very Sun Tzu-ish!

They also argue that given the basic resiliency of the United States, "a strategy that plays for time or envisions the capability to contest a long-term competition appears to be relevant today."

Another good line: "Strategy is about taking risks and deciding what will not be done as well as what will." This was the essence of the decisions Marshall and Eisenhower contemplated in World War II: What was essential (keeping the Soviets in the war, for example) vs. merely important (lots of other things).

Cyrano4747 posted:

I don't know how true this is (I'm sure Iyaayas can weigh in on this) but I was told by a military historian I'm familiar with that the really big bombers in modern arsenals - B1s, B2, B52s, etc - have such a loving huge logistical tail attached to them that it's straight up cheaper to just have them fly 20 hour missions out of Missouri or wherever and refuel a bunch in the air than it would be to rebase to, say, Italy.

Of course over a long enough time span that kind of rebasing can pay off, but it's expensive enough that you need to be damned sure that you're going to want them in that area for a good, long time.