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LP97S posted:Didn't know that those countries regularly killed their own SAM crews in country. The USAF shot a HARM at US ada in OIF 1.
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Jul 31, 2013 12:52
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mlmp08 posted:The USAF shot a HARM at US ada in OIF 1. Not just at ADA...  http://bentcorner.com/in-harms-way/
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Jul 31, 2013 19:29
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Not airpower, but Cold War. I recently had a talk with a former submariner (on a submarine no less) and he was a sonar operator from, I dunno, probably the 50s-80s. During this time he mentioned a Russian sonar system which was close range only, but basically drat near impossible to shake once you got picked up on it. I believe it was an active system. He said it was code-named something like sleigh bells? question is: I can't find out what exact system he was talking about. What is it? I might've heard him wrong, but I'm pretty confident on the "Russian, short range, once it gets you you're screwed" parts.
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Aug 1, 2013 01:28
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I'm sure someone has done this but I don't want to tread through 180 pages, but does anyone have any good recomendations for military history books on the Cold War? Stuff like this, http://www.amazon.com/The-Dead-Hand-Untold-Dangerous/dp/0307387844/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_S_nC?ie=UTF8&colid=2KA85VB2Y77BV&coliid=I1AMU8POXKUGFQ is what I'm looking for.
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Aug 1, 2013 02:07
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Handsome Ralph posted:I'm sure someone has done this but I don't want to tread through 180 pages, but does anyone have any good recomendations for military history books on the Cold War? Stuff like this, http://www.amazon.com/The-Dead-Hand-Untold-Dangerous/dp/0307387844/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_S_nC?ie=UTF8&colid=2KA85VB2Y77BV&coliid=I1AMU8POXKUGFQ is what I'm looking for. Didn't know that one but somehow it got onto my Kindle account within 3 minutes  Both Ambrose and David Miller have books called 'The Cold War: A Military History' but I haven't read the first and the second is more of a repository of short vignettes (still informative though). In other news NUKEMAP2 is still AWESOME and I decided to check notional fallout levels in the Netherlands after a 1980s strike on a couple of theater level assets: Runway centers and HAS clusters on airfields got a 150Kt ground burst (SS-20/RDS-10 MIRV) each and the Nuke dumps in Volkel and Kleine Brogel (next to the border in Belgium) plus AFCENT in Brunssum got a nice little 1Mt one.  Yeah no that's not very good at all. The brighter areas are way worse than the legend would have you believe since it's all from overlapping effects (Nukemap doesn't do cumulation). I kinda stopped at 65 aimpoints since the things I forgot to hit or couldn't be arsed to do an inventory of (prepo'd US III Corps stocks I forgot, rail embankments, lots of NL Defense installations) were unreadable under all those rads. Would've wished the permalink feature didn't bug out!
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Aug 1, 2013 08:43
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Koesj posted:Didn't know that one but somehow it got onto my Kindle account within 3 minutes The "Ambrose" one isn't really by him, he's just a contributor to the edited volume. Honestly that's probably for the better, though.
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Aug 1, 2013 13:32
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I love reading poo poo like this. The Queen's 1983 nuclear war speech that was never given - The Age The speech prepared for the Queen of England in case the cold war heated up. "The enemy is not the soldier with his rifle nor even the airman prowling the skies above our cities and towns but the deadly power of abused technology." Pretty grim stuff.
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Aug 1, 2013 13:57
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Psion posted:Not airpower, but Cold War. I recently had a talk with a former submariner (on a submarine no less) and he was a sonar operator from, I dunno, probably the 50s-80s. During this time he mentioned a Russian sonar system which was close range only, but basically drat near impossible to shake once you got picked up on it. I believe it was an active system. He said it was code-named something like sleigh bells? I'm not sure there's any (public) way of shaking a pursuer that is willing to pound the poo poo out of you with active sonar (i.e. they don't care that you know where they are) aside from awesome sound absorbing materials, noisemakers/decoys, etc. Unless I'm missing something that's publicly available. Obviously stealth aircraft use a combination of radar-absorbent/LO materials that attenuate the radar return to the point where it can't be picked up, but a submarine is a hell of a lot bigger than a F-22. I feel like I'm missing something very obvious though seeing as this would have been a problem from day 1 of sonar's existence.
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Aug 1, 2013 14:12
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movax posted:I feel like I'm missing something very obvious though seeing as this would have been a problem from day 1 of sonar's existence. Well, it kind of was. sonar and surface radar getting the kinks worked out is a huge part of what hosed over the U-Boat fleet in WW2 so badly. That said, there are a few different ways that the ocean itself can gently caress with sonar. Water temperature does wonky poo poo to how sound bounces around and refracts in it, and getting under the thermocline was pretty much step #1 for submarines that had a destroyer above them just pinging away like mad. Depending on the quality/resolution of the sonar you can also use physical objects to hide yourself if you're in shallow enough water. Get down to where you can belly up to the ocean floor and do your best impersonation of a rock. Note that I am not a submariner and most of this is based on reading too many accounts of WW2 era boats in the Pacific and Atlantic theaters as a kid, so it's probably super out of date and inaccurate to begin with. Use/believe at your own risk, consult with your family physician before beginning any deep-sea evasion regimen, etc.
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Aug 1, 2013 14:21
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Cyrano4747 posted:Well, it kind of was. sonar and surface radar getting the kinks worked out is a huge part of what hosed over the U-Boat fleet in WW2 so badly. There were definitely some water column refraction issues off the coast of Canada during the war that affected SONAR. I don't think those were properly figured out until late 1944.
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Aug 1, 2013 14:47
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movax posted:I'm not sure there's any (public) way of shaking a pursuer that is willing to pound the poo poo out of you with active sonar (i.e. they don't care that you know where they are) aside from awesome sound absorbing materials, noisemakers/decoys, etc. Unless I'm missing something that's publicly available. Obviously stealth aircraft use a combination of radar-absorbent/LO materials that attenuate the radar return to the point where it can't be picked up, but a submarine is a hell of a lot bigger than a F-22. Yes, my impression has also always been that if you are a sub and are aquired by active sonar you are already within the engangement envelope of whatever the sonar is attached to (at least since the advent of anti-submarine homing torpedoes). The converse also being true, unless the active sonar is a sonbouy off of an aircraft, the "victim" knows where the pinging vessel is and can shoot back as soon as they can get to action stations. And a sub on deployment is probably always capable of firing on a lot shorter notice than a surface warship. I'd think the active sonar on any sub is one of the systems least used. Tested twice a year and then very much not used on deployments. Even in a shooting war active sonar wouldn't be much used. Active sonar is something you use when you suddenly hear an inbound torpedo in order to get off a shot of your own before you die. And even then you might go with a bearing shot in the direction of the incoming torpedo instead.
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Aug 1, 2013 15:22
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Caconym posted:Yes, my impression has also always been that if you are a sub and are aquired by active sonar you are already within the engangement envelope of whatever the sonar is attached to (at least since the advent of anti-submarine homing torpedoes). Turn it on, deafen some whales, then leave it alone for 6 months?
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Aug 1, 2013 17:22
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'WWIII Queen's speech' script revealed
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Aug 1, 2013 19:04
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Seriously four posts up.
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Aug 1, 2013 19:55
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From the same article ,the UK sent laser dazzlers to the Falklands but didn't end up using them Was that illegal at the time?
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Aug 1, 2013 20:27
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FATWOLF posted:From the same article ,the UK sent laser dazzlers to the Falklands but didn't end up using them Was that illegal at the time? Using lasers to "dazzle" wasn't / isn't illegal. Using laser weapons specifically designed ... to cause permanent blindness to unenhanced vision quote:Article 1 tl;dr: So long as you don't explicit say, "we're using these lasers with the specific intent to cause permanent blindness" (and are the victor) go nuts with lasers. VVVV e: There are all sorts of effective weapons that aren't used because of the 1907 Hague Conventions, which banned "arms, projectiles, or material calculated to cause unnecessary suffering." By the mid 1970s, people looking at whether lasers caused unnecessary suffering. The thinking was along the lines of, "if you get shot, you probably won't die, and can heal. If you get blinded by a laser, it's going to be permanent no matter what medical care you get." joat mon fucked around with this message at 23:00 on Aug 1, 2013 |
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Aug 1, 2013 21:30
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It seems strange that it's banned considering that any pilot they would theoretically be trying to blind they would simultaneously be throwing every lethal weapon at their disposal at.
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Aug 1, 2013 22:39
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FATWOLF posted:It seems strange that it's banned considering that any pilot they would theoretically be trying to blind they would simultaneously be throwing every lethal weapon at their disposal at. Welcome to the rules of war! Slaughter your enemy from the land/sea/sky but don't blind your enemy/use non-ball ammo/use chemical agents cause that would be wrong!
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Aug 1, 2013 22:51
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FATWOLF posted:It seems strange that it's banned considering that any pilot they would theoretically be trying to blind they would simultaneously be throwing every lethal weapon at their disposal at. I'm just speculating, but I imagine the problem envisaged if blinding lasers were allowed would be people using them over-enthusiastically, blinding prisoners on capture to make them more easily controlled for example. Without a regulation against such devices it makes it much harder to prosecute someone for what might be seen as a grey area between blindfolds and gouging or physically damaging sight.
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Aug 1, 2013 22:53
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movax posted:I'm not sure there's any (public) way of shaking a pursuer that is willing to pound the poo poo out of you with active sonar (i.e. they don't care that you know where they are) aside from awesome sound absorbing materials, noisemakers/decoys, etc. Unless I'm missing something that's publicly available. Obviously stealth aircraft use a combination of radar-absorbent/LO materials that attenuate the radar return to the point where it can't be picked up, but a submarine is a hell of a lot bigger than a F-22. Active surface sonar was tremendously effective in WWII where the limit of a sub's stealth was 'be under the water.' Since then it has been an escalating but generally one-sided game of tech development between surface and submerged vessels. There are certain realities of the acoustic environment that place the player splashing around in the very-low-pressure, bubbly, sun-warmed surface at a distinct disadvantage. WWII search patterns were also effective against boats that could neither dive very deep nor move very fast. That was a luxury surface fleets no longer have. If your adversary is a fairly slow-moving diesel on batteries, you're quite likely in the littorals, and bottom noise / civvie traffic makes acquisition and tracking of a remotely competent boat into a giant mess. If she is a nuke, she can hear your active sonar from much farther away than is necessary to maneuver to avoid, or to kill. It's been posted here before but even in the mid-Cold War against the noisiest first-gen Soviet nuke boats, American surface ships were heavily dependent on SOSUS.
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Aug 2, 2013 01:42
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Snowdens Secret posted:Active surface sonar was tremendously effective in WWII where the limit of a sub's stealth was 'be under the water.' Since then it has been an escalating but generally one-sided game of tech development between surface and submerged vessels. There are certain realities of the acoustic environment that place the player splashing around in the very-low-pressure, bubbly, sun-warmed surface at a distinct disadvantage. The advent of the helicopter and air-dropped sonobouy basically nullified the requirement to have a surface ship anywhere near the point you were pinging with active SONAR, so that's kind of moot. It also ignores the fact that by firing at a pinging frigate or destroyer the sub would immediately give away their own position to both the ship they're firing at and the task force they were supposed to be attacking. Not to mention that in addition to the active SONAR there were layers upon layers of poo poo that didn't exist in WWII, like the SONAR and torpedo equipped helicopters, ASW aircraft like the Orion with magnetic detection gear that gives no fucks about thermal layers, and attack submarines that could both listen for deep-running boats under the thermocline and kill them. Among other things this meant a submarine attempting to attack surface ships was going to get awfully dead, awfully fast if it was moving quickly and had almost as much poo poo to worry about when running deep as it did when running shallow in the path of a convoy.
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Aug 2, 2013 02:04
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Warbadger posted:The advent of the helicopter and air-dropped sonobouy basically nullified the requirement to have a surface ship anywhere near the point you were pinging with active SONAR, so that's kind of moot. It also ignores the fact that by firing at a pinging frigate or destroyer the sub would immediately give away their own position to both the ship they're firing at and the task force they were supposed to be attacking. I'll definitely agree with you that the best weapon to hunt a submarine is another submarine. But the post I responded to was about the dangers of a madly active-pinging surface ship, which are primarily to itself and nearby wildlife. The engagement conditions for ASW fixed-wing assets have never been large, and they've shrunk and shrunk to the point where, for instance, the S-3 was and P-3 is getting retired with no real replacement (the P-8 won't have MAD for US use and stresses the surface patrol role much more than ASW.) Surface and particularly air ASW intended to rely on acquiring a sub surfaced / snorkeling / at PD with masts up, visually or with radar; obviously once you get into the nuclear era the odds of catching a boat doing one of these drops noticeably. (If you're hunting a third-world boat that's practically WWII vintage this is a different story.) All of this factors into why lots of Cold War surface / air engagement scenarios boiled down to "kinda sure a sub is around here abouts - drop nuclear depth charges and ASROCs, let hydraulic pressure sort it out" long, long after, say, surface to air / air to air engagements had gained the ability to kill reasonably reliably without needing the radius of an atomic blast to get a hit. Even in the Cold War scenario where a boat shoots at your convoy / fleet and then gets blown up, if he puts a big enough hole in your carrier, loaded up gator freighter, or oiler, it may have been more than worth it strategically.
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Aug 2, 2013 03:22
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I'm sure the people on the sub would disagree, but I'm pretty sure any country would be willing to trade an attack sub for a carrier any day of the week if that's what it came down to.
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Aug 2, 2013 04:52
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Snowdens Secret, what is it exactly about MAD that is causing it to get phased out? Does it only work when the sub is above a certain depth? And are sonobuoys/dipping sonars just not that effective? Sorry if this is OPSEC.
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Aug 2, 2013 04:57
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From my extensive expertise derived from playing Dangerous Waters, MAD only works when a sub's relatively near the surface. It detects variation in the earth's magnetic field caused by a big honking chunk of metal - basically a airborne metal detector. Obviously it would have a limited range. Plus they'd degauss ships in WWII 
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Aug 2, 2013 05:01
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Alaan posted:I'm sure the people on the sub would disagree, but I'm pretty sure any country would be willing to trade an attack sub for a carrier any day of the week if that's what it came down to. The carriers aren't the things pinging with active SONAR. That's the point. If your sub is taking potshots at the escort ships who are pinging away (the frigates and destroyers), then the battle group is going to know exactly where that sub is long before it reaches the important ships those escorts are protecting. NATO had more cheap frigates to ping the poo poo out of the path of battle groups than the USSR had submarines. FrozenVent posted:From my extensive expertise derived from playing Dangerous Waters, MAD only works when a sub's relatively near the surface. The P3s used to locate shipwrecks and natural iron deposits on the sea floor. It won't detect stuff that's super deep, but the major thermoclines are also relatively shallow between 100m and 200m, after which temperature changes are much more gradual/uniform. The submarine could of course stay several hundred meters down whenever possible to avoid detection from the surface, but doing so hampers its own ability to listen for targets on the surface due to the same mechanisms that make it hard to detect. Being under the major thermal layers also means not being unable to exploit them against other submarines. Warbadger fucked around with this message at 07:10 on Aug 2, 2013 |
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Aug 2, 2013 05:27
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I was specifically referring to the last post of Snowden's Secret right above mine. Not active SONAR.
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Aug 2, 2013 05:49
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 This owns. If anyone has good painted plane stuff like this, I'd love to see it. 
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Aug 4, 2013 04:10
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Thief posted:
Sure, ok  B-24J - Witchcraft by notpsion, on Flickr
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Aug 4, 2013 05:07
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Aug 4, 2013 06:18
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What was replaced by that plastic cover just in front of the bombs? It looks too small to be a gun.
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Aug 4, 2013 18:08
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Godholio posted:What was replaced by that plastic cover just in front of the bombs? It looks too small to be a gun. That may be something like a temp. probe, antenna or some other insturment, I believe that area is occupied by the navigator so I doubt he had a gun. You can see they moved the pitot from up high to down low as well. The plane was probably modernized at one point for ease of maintenance and/or improved systems to keep it flying.
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Aug 4, 2013 19:09
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I think it was actually a gun port for a .30 Browning. Edit: nope, the gun port for the single .30 was located to the front of that. edit^2: GIS for "b-24 nose art" is hilariously non-work safe. Smiling Jack fucked around with this message at 19:15 on Aug 4, 2013 |
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Aug 4, 2013 19:12
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Here's some modern nose art:     (click for huge)  (click for huge)  (click for huge)  (click for huge)       (The anti-radiation missile that the Tornado carries is called the ALARM)    Most of that is from RAF Tornadoes during Desert Storm/Granby (couple RN Buc ones mixed in as well, and the others should be obvious)...funny story: I pulled all the Tornado ones off of the MoD's official website. The idea of the USAF having nose art on their official website is laughable, much less nose art with, *GASP*, NAKED WOMEN!!!!! But hey, at least we've got ~heritage~
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Aug 4, 2013 19:22
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The fact that this is pretty much ignored/allowed is awesome. I wish it were possible to get hired to just do stuff like this. When they highlight certain kill marks, does that generally signify something or is it a case-by-case thing?
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Aug 4, 2013 19:26
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Smiling Jack posted:I think it was actually a gun port for a .30 Browning. Maybe a port for using the sextant?
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Aug 4, 2013 19:32
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Thief posted:The fact that this is pretty much ignored/allowed is awesome. It's not ignored or allowed now. At all. Both of those USAF pictures (the Hawg and the KC-135) are from the '80s and all the RAF/RN ones are from Desert Storm/Op Granby (so 1991). By the mid '90s the USAF had pretty much banned nose art that wasn't gender neutral (so basically anything featuring a human form was banned) and now you have to get official approval before you can put any nose art on anything...and god help you if you try and do something without official approval, seeing as how this is the service that will give you paperwork for not wearing your blouse when you are working outside in a combat zone where it's 115. The Brits held on a little longer but in '07 the MoD banned any nose art featuring "scantily clad" women. Today's USAF is a living embodiment of every single military stereotype captured in Catch 22, except it is literally happening in real life.
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Aug 4, 2013 19:36
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Awesome nose art. I wonder why some of the bombs are painted black and others red though?
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Aug 4, 2013 19:46
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Milo Minderbinder, the original Air Force PMC. Edit: also the character who rapes and murders a civilian because "he's never paid for it in his life" and the MP's arrest Yossarian for being awol, ingorning the sexual assault / murder. Catch-22 was loving amazing. Speaking of black marketeers, I've been doing some reading on WW2 military scandals and crimes and holy poo poo. Smiling Jack fucked around with this message at 19:51 on Aug 4, 2013 |
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Aug 4, 2013 19:47
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/\ Yeah, given the adventures of Milo and Aarfy (the guy who's never paid for it in his life) maybe my use of the word "literally" was a bit of an exaggeration...but not by much. /\monkeytennis posted:Awesome nose art. I wonder why some of the bombs are painted black and others red though? Not sure...could be bombs dropped on a specific date or maybe they were ones that were against a HVT or had a particularly good BDA or something. Just one data point, we have a big rear end Reaper here painted on an A-Wall (concrete blast barrier) and have a bunch of tiny stenciled missiles around it to track how many we've expended since we started ops out here...anything expended on 9/11 gets painted in red instead of black. iyaayas01 fucked around with this message at 20:18 on Aug 4, 2013 |
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Aug 4, 2013 20:12
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