Throatwarbler posted:

What was the USSR supposed to use FROG-7s for, anyway

Throatwarbler posted:

What was the USSR supposed to use FROG-7s for, anyway, just randomly terrorizing civilians? They're not accurate enough to be used against military targets to any great effect and the launch vehicles seem pretty vunerable considering their short range.

I mean I think that's what the Afghan remnant forces and the Iraqis used them for, how about a real army?

iyaayas01 posted:

The more terror the Soviets could strike into the civilian populace the more they could hinder NATO operations to stop the advance.

Gen. Sir Garry Johnson posted:

I remember very vividly going to see a mobilisation division of the Volksarmee – three days after unification – which, and somebody said it round the table, was perfectly prepared, perfectly well planned. The deployment procedures were worked out, and it then went to its concentration area, and I said to its divisional chief of staff , “What were your battle plans?” He said, “I don’t know. But no doubt the chief of staff would have told the general when we reached the deployment area.” “Very good”, I said. “What did you train for?” “The advance and the attack.” So with regard to the concept of unit replacement, I understood that this division was trained for one thing only.

If you had stopped it, the inflexibility of the system would have required it to be removed and replaced at divisional level. And then, I think to myself, how would that have happened in a situation where the roads were clogged up, where FOFA was going on, where the A-10s were up in the air doing some strikes? And, even if you had got that wreck of a division out of the way and pushed another one through, how would you get through roads in West Germany clogged with refugees, farm lorries, broken down trucks, the whole lot? So my question I think is, were we play-acting at the end of this game? Was this all just sort of dreams that people had on maps? Was the reality in all this that no plan survives the first shock of war and we would have bogged down within about ten days? Seven days? Five days? If that had happened, what then would we have done about the nuclear if we hadn’t started off with it?

Scratch Monkey posted:

I think I read an article recently that said the Czechoslovakian People's Army's job in WWIII was to march into the nuclear wasteland that used to be Bavaria and occupy it for... something?

At the heart of the matter I think most Cold War strategists, most of whom had probably fought in WWII, organized large land armies as a matter of habit. Those habits were tempered by the knowledge of how useless large formations of tanks and infantry would be in the next war, but what else could they do? They had to play the game because the reality was so much more horrific.

Edit: OK it wasn't so recent a find, but here

Soviet plan for WW3 nuclear attack unearthed

quote:

Jan Hoffenaar
I was wondering if we could conclude from what has been said about
the retaliatory strike by the Warsaw Pact against the first use by NATO,
also on the tactical level, that flexible response was a non-usable strategy
in the end.

Unidentifiable Russian Speaker
Show the white flag then?

Unidentifiable Russian Speaker
Well, the escalation process wouldn’t have worked.

Unidentifiable Russian Speaker
We don’t know that.

Leopold Chalupa
You don’t know that. I could say it has worked, because we had an end
to the Cold War without a Hot War. So my friends here will agree with
me that I have to convince them that it worked, because why then has
everything changed on your side while we have remained the same? We
did not want to fight a war. We wanted to prevent a war. This was our
task and our mission, and I feel we were successful.

Jan Hoffenaar
This was a provocative question.

Robert Legvold
Listen folks, listen. Bill you’ve got a very short rejoinder…

William Odom
Concerning this question of, what do you do if you have to fire the
weapon? I understand all your political arguments about deterrence, but
I want to shoot at tactical forces. I think the Soviet approach was much
more sensible than ours. You see, this attitude I ran into in the American
system is insane. Do you want to leave the president with no choice
but to blow up half the world? No, if he has to fire, let’s have him fire at
something that will have a military effect. This is not a firecracker for the
4th of July or for celebration. You want to be serious with it. So there is a
clash of intellectual perspectives on this that’s been missed, and I realise
there is tension between Europe and the US on this, but there is also a
tension within the US as to what the Strategic Air Command would do
and what maybe we wanted to achieve operationally.

Vitalii Tsygichko
When you consider such situations, please keep in mind that, although
we planned operations with the use of nuclear weapons in case of a first
strike from the West, nobody seriously believed that such a war could
take place. It was like a confrontation, a struggle of ideas, and a kind of
intellectual competition, because everybody knew what would happen if
such actions were undertaken in reality. There were “hawks” on all sides,
but the common sense of many people helped to avoid a serious conflict
in Europe. The reason why it did not occur was not just because you
planned for retaliation, and because we were afraid of such retaliation,
but also due to an awareness of the dangerous consequences of such a
conflict. This was also a kind of a containment factor, the same as in the
nuclear strategic forces.

iyaayas01 posted:

Yup, all of the above. Three things to point out: when you are talking about large Cold War in Europe type military targets, 500-700 CEP is more than accurate enough to target a facility like an airbase or port. No, you can't expect to fire three missiles and simultaneously destroy the command post, POL tank farm, and intersection of the runways, but if you bombard a normal sized air base with those the base is going to have a bad day.

As far as being vulnerable, remember this is the Cold War going hot we are talking about here...relatively cheap FROG launchers being considered expendable wouldn't have been much more than a drop in the bucket considering the damage they could do fired in any sort of significant number.

And regarding terrorizing civilians, if the Soviets came through the Fulda Gap it's not like the German populace would've just stood still and remained calm. The more terror the Soviets could strike into the civilian populace the more they could hinder NATO operations to stop the advance.

Dead Reckoning posted:

It's also worth remembering that the Soviet Union invested heavily in mobile AAA and SAM systems that could advance with their manuver forces. Any ground attack aircraft would be operating in an extremely non-permissive environment.

Flikken posted:

Rotary wing might be able to sneak in.

Koesj posted:

To do what exactly? And there's 12.7 and 14.5 errwhere.

durtan posted:

Found this in the AI airplane thread.

A pilot's manual to the SR-71 Blackbird

AntiTank posted:

Sukhoi is biiig

babyeatingpsychopath posted:

This aircraft is such a beast. I'm getting a real kick out of reading normal procedures. "Fuel required for a missed approach and instrument go-around (typical GCA pattern) is approximately 3000 pounds. A closed pattern go-around requires approximately 1000 pounds." This thing burns more gas doing go-arounds than many GA planes weigh. Almost its entire flight profile is spent in afterburner of some flavor.

durtan posted:

A 180 degree turn takes 8 minutes to complete and will cover about 235 miles at full-speed/altitude flight profiles.

Like driving a dump truck at Mach 3.

ought ten posted:

Is that a gold plated Flanker? Saddam had nothing on that.

Alpine Mustache posted:

probably just unpainted, except for maybe the radome.

Godholio posted:

Edit: But yes, the rest of the aircraft is unpainted.

Wikipedia posted:

The Gryazev-Shipunov GSh-6-30 (Russian: Грязев-Шипунов ГШ-6-30) is a Russian 30 mm Gatling-style aircraft-mounted machine gun used by Soviet and later CIS military aircraft. The GSh-6-30 fires a 30×165 mm, 390 g (13¾ oz) projectile.

The GSh-6-30, designed in the early 1970s and entering service in 1975, has a six barrel design that is similar to the Gryazev-Shipunov GSh-6-23. It was based on the naval AO-18 used in the AK-630 system. Unlike most modern American rotary cannons, it is gas-operated rather than electric, allowing it to "spin up" to maximum rate of fire more quickly, allowing more rounds to be placed on target in a short-duration burst. Ignition is electrical, as with the smaller GSh-6-23.

On the Mikoyan MiG-27 the Gsh-6-30 had to be mounted obliquely to absorb recoil (5,500 kg). The gun was noted for its high (often uncomfortable) vibration and extreme noise. The airframe vibration led to fatigue cracks in fuel tanks, numerous radio and avionics failures, the necessity of using runways with floodlights for night flights (as the landing lights would often be destroyed), tearing or jamming of the forward landing gear doors (leading to at least three crash landings), cracking of the reflector gunsight, an accidental jettisoning of the cockpit canopy and at least one case of the instrument panel falling off in flight. The number of fragments from detonating shells was sufficient to damage aircraft firing (or flying) within 200 metres of the impact area.

The principal application for the GSh-6-30 is the MiG-27 "Flogger", which carries the weapon in a gondola under the fuselage, primarily for strafing and ground attack. It was fitted to some Su-25TM aircraft, but subsequently replaced with the GSh-30-2 twin-barreled cannon of the original Su-25. It is also used as the gun component of the CADS-N-1 Kashtan air defense weapon.

priznat posted:

Canadian Gov't seeking alternatives to troubled F-35 fighter jet, sources say

priznat posted:

Canadian Gov't seeking alternatives to troubled F-35 fighter jet, sources say

Nothing concrete yet but it's nice they're putting some feelers out there to at least make it look somewhat like a competition.

Personally I want F-15SEs but those aren't even flying yet (I think?) so I doubt it. If it isn't the F-35 dollars to donuts it'll be the SuperHornet.

eehhh who am I kidding, they're gonna still buy the F-35 anyway and we'll get soaked

iyaayas01 posted:

Boeing is going full speed ahead with the SE project. There is a demonstrator flying (the airframe is actually the first F-15E built; McD and now Boeing have used it as a testbed demonstrator type aircraft all these years). Boeing has done pretty extensive RCS tests/evaluations on it, and it's demonstrated the ability to launch an AMRAAM from the internal bay in the CFTs. Boeing is pushing pretty hard to win the ROK's F-X III program, already getting export approval for the LO and EW pieces of the project and going in with KAI to develop the conformal weapons bays.

That said I think the Super Bug is probably a more realistic alternative here, although in all honesty this is just a gambit by the Canadian government to put LockMart on notice and to try and wrangle some more gimmees out of them.

Flikken posted:

What are the chances that the US gets some Silent Eagles?

StandardVC10 posted:

Our air mattress landing strip technology is clearly superior.

Groda posted:

Frozen Horse posted:

What is going on here? Was this something dreamt up on the spot for a Harrier with stuck landing gear?