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Thanks, according to the description of the LTV(A)-4 (or 5) and the picture of a similar version, that appears to be it!
Faltion fucked around with this message at 03:33 on Sep 27, 2013 |
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Sep 27, 2013 03:30
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I don't know, the LTV(A)-4 had a short large caliber gun. The vehicle in the picture has a long barreled, small caliber gun, so I would guess it is a LVT(A)-1, or maybe a modification.
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Sep 27, 2013 03:37
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Alaan posted:Probably a close cousin of the Lancer's rotating bomb rack except it poops them out the back. Cause WHY NOT. Little late, but the A-5 Vigilante had a bomb bay designed like this.
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Sep 27, 2013 03:58
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ArchangeI posted:I don't know, the LTV(A)-4 had a short large caliber gun. The vehicle in the picture has a long barreled, small caliber gun, so I would guess it is a LVT(A)-1, or maybe a modification. I just saw that the (A)-1 also had dual 30mm machined guns on the rear so you're probably right.
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Sep 27, 2013 04:02
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StandardVC10 posted:Little late, but the A-5 Vigilante had a bomb bay designed like this. That is a beautiful plane. I'm surprised I never heard of it before.
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Sep 27, 2013 04:03
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NerdyMcNerdNerd posted:That is a beautiful plane. I'm surprised I never heard of it before. Agreed, it's wonderfully clean. I think the reason it never got that much attention was a short span of service- it turns out that it was kind of poo poo as a bomber and the Polaris submarines were coming online. Also it sounds like it wasn't that popular while in service, either as a recon aircraft or a bomber, because it was massive for a carrier-launched plane and broke down quite a bit.
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Sep 27, 2013 04:10
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I couldn't believe it at first when I saw the picture of it on a carrier deck.
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Sep 27, 2013 04:11
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I find the A-5 funny in how only the tiniest little token part of the wing tip flips up for more carrier space. Also it looks pretty gangly on its gear, like the A-4.
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Sep 27, 2013 04:19
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priznat posted:Also it looks pretty gangly on its gear, like the A-4. but the Scooter is goddamn beautiful once it gets airborne... 
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Sep 27, 2013 04:33
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Faltion posted:Maybe someone here can help me out. I'm trying to identify this tank: Looks like a Marine Corps LVT-4 from WW2. Edit: http://www.wwiivehicles.com/usa/amphibious/lvt-a4.asp or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landing_Vehicle_Tracked Outside Dawg fucked around with this message at 05:02 on Sep 27, 2013 |
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Sep 27, 2013 04:53
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So I was watching this fascinating documentary on the Argentinian Air Force's capabilities during the Falkland War. Out of creeper curiosity, I looked up the Argentine pilot on Facebook. Found him.
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Sep 27, 2013 04:58
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Psion posted:I believe you mean these How did this beautiful beast lose to the F-22 again?
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Sep 27, 2013 05:07
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No auto-erotic asphyxiation function.
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Sep 27, 2013 05:36
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Dr.Oblivious posted:How did this beautiful beast lose to the F-22 again? It was less maneuverable and wasn't able to launch missiles by the time the selection was made. If it had been selected I'm sure people would be criticizing it's inability to fly in the rain at this very moment. Warbadger fucked around with this message at 05:48 on Sep 27, 2013 |
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Sep 27, 2013 05:43
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From what I remember all of the actual air force people posting here described the F-22 as shooting pixie dust out of its engines and basically being equivalent to playing on god mode in air to air combat.
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Sep 27, 2013 05:49
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Warbadger posted:It was less maneuverable and wasn't able to launch missiles by the time the selection was made. If it had been selected I'm sure people would be criticizing it's inability to fly in the rain at this very moment. Since it wasn't going to be built by the people who have the luck of people who ran over Gypsy kids on the way to the company picnic at the Indian Burial grounds I have a bit more hope for it.
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Sep 27, 2013 05:50
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One of the reasons was superior project management! 
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Sep 27, 2013 05:55
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Mortabis posted:From what I remember all of the actual air force people posting here described the F-22 as shooting pixie dust out of its engines and basically being equivalent to playing on god mode in air to air combat. Whether or not the YF-23 was superior to the F-22 in whatever criteria you care to name, the F-22 people had way better PR. I have never actually heard good, solid, verified YF-22/YF-23 decision criteria, only bits and pieces. I have a feeling politics beyond technical specs played a significant role in the decision. Just call me Nostradamus on that one. Unrelatedly, USAF, how's that new tanker contract going?  Vindolanda posted:Doesn't that basically do what the A-10's gun does (to armour) but from higher and with more adaptability in airframes? I thought it had a cooler name, but no, wdarkk is right: Sensor Fuzed Weapon. That's some lame PR, as a contrast to the above. Yes and no, by the way, to this specific part. Can a Skeet absolutely ruin armor, yes. Is the GAU-8 useful against other targets you really can't effectively drop an explosive hockey puck on, also yes. someone posted a video of Skeets in action in this thread. I think it was iyaayas. Psion fucked around with this message at 06:03 on Sep 27, 2013 |
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Sep 27, 2013 05:55
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Alaan posted:One of the reasons was superior project management! Everyone has terrible project management, that's how the money is made.
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Sep 27, 2013 05:58
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The government must have the worst contract writers of all time. If any major business had suppliers anywhere near as bad as the defense industry they'd get slapped so hard with breach of contract their heads would spin. And we can't even just say gently caress you we're going elsewhere because we have basically a whopping two companies capable of making a modern fighter if we don't want to completely kill off domestic aerospace/defense.
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Sep 27, 2013 06:04
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You do realize that the contractors write the contracts right?
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Sep 27, 2013 06:06
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Psion posted:Whether or not the YF-23 was superior to the F-22 in whatever criteria you care to name, the F-22 people had way better PR. I have never actually heard good, solid, verified YF-22/YF-23 decision criteria, only bits and pieces. I have a feeling politics beyond technical specs played a significant role in the decision. Just call me Nostradamus on that one. What I'm hearing here is the main beneficiaries from the F-22 contract were steak houses, coke dealers and strippers.
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Sep 27, 2013 06:06
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Psion posted:I thought it had a cooler name, Assault Breaker 
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Sep 27, 2013 06:20
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let's just make a few more A-1 Skyraiders, put rear-facing GAU-8s in them, fit them with drone hardware, and call it a day
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Sep 27, 2013 11:48
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Vindolanda posted:What's the name of that bomb that throws out anti-tank skeet? Doesn't that basically do what the A-10's gun does (to armour) but from higher and with more adaptability in airframes? atomicthumbs posted:let's just make a few more A-1 Skyraiders, put rear-facing GAU-8s in them, fit them with drone hardware, and call it a day evil_bunnY fucked around with this message at 12:21 on Sep 27, 2013 |
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Sep 27, 2013 12:19
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evil_bunnY posted:There's a bunch of reasons ground personnel love the A-10 and I can tell you already that if it carried sensor-fused AT weapons, they wouldn't be part of them. If effective warfare depended on "what ground personnel like to work with" then all munitions would be helium filled marshmallow and be able to install themselves.
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Sep 27, 2013 12:22
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Faltion posted:Maybe someone here can help me out. I'm trying to identify this tank:
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Sep 27, 2013 12:25
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Alaan posted:The government must have the worst contract writers of all time. If any major business had suppliers anywhere near as bad as the defense industry they'd get slapped so hard with breach of contract their heads would spin. And we can't even just say gently caress you we're going elsewhere because we have basically a whopping two companies capable of making a modern fighter if we don't want to completely kill off domestic aerospace/defense. It's not a one-sided problem. Look at the Presidential Helicopter, it was a clusterfuck of a program that got canceled after sucking a lot of money into a black hole. But one of the reasons it was such a clusterfuck is that the government changed the program requirements *800 times*.
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Sep 27, 2013 14:16
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Phanatic posted:That's because the air force pilots insist on trying to land the things instead of letting an automated system do it. You can't tell a pilot that a computer can do his job better than he does. The gently caress is this? Preds and Reapers crash all the time, in all phases of flight. Actually, none of the crashes that took place when I was at the CAOC were during landing.
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Sep 27, 2013 16:02
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Mortabis posted:From what I remember all of the actual air force people posting here described the F-22 as shooting pixie dust out of its engines and basically being equivalent to playing on god mode in air to air combat. This is pretty much how it turns out. I've done a few Red Flags and other exercises with Raptors against whatever, and every time I come away shaking my head that we only bought 187. Alaan posted:The government must have the worst contract writers of all time. Here's a stupid but current anecdote: The 552 ACW (AWACS wing at Tinker AFB) has a contractor that mows the lawns around the wing's complex on base. Sequestration suspended payments to the contractor so they obviously stopped mowing the grass. But the wing is also prevented from having airmen mow the lawn, because under the terms of the contract they'd have to pay the contractor anyway. So now a "mystery group" mows every few weeks when the grass gets about 2' high. Here's a stupid but less current anecdote. The E-3 has had a constant presence in the Middle East for several years, for obvious reasons. Because the ancient computer can't interface with anything (being designed in the early 1960s), the crew carried multiple laptops with various programs and information. A searchable ATO, rolling maps, the chat program that's used throughout the theater, etc. I think we had a total of five. Well, one of the jets developed an electrical problem...generators were kicking off-line, there were lots of power spikes (the lights flash, sometimes the computer reboots or hangs, and in a bad one, the main radar can be damaged), it was a bad situation. Well, maintenance replaced basically everything in the system but it was still having problems. And keep in mind, it was the ONLY ONE having problems. Probably 15 jets had rotated through in the past few months while we were using the laptops. Well, Boeing stepped in and blamed the power draw from the laptops for overloading the system. And for some goddamned reason, Boeing has the authority to make the Air Force do what it says on combat missions, even if it significantly degrades the mission performance. We had to ditch most of the laptops.
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Sep 27, 2013 16:12
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Godholio posted:The gently caress is this? Preds and Reapers crash all the time, in all phases of flight. Actually, none of the crashes that took place when I was at the CAOC were during landing. Until relatively recently, USAF drone operators had to be pilots. They had to remain current, so they still had to occasionally go fly real aircraft so they could sit down at a console and operate a drone. Since they had pilots, actual officers drawing flight pay, the USAF didn't have an autoland capability on the Predator or the Reaper. And between '94 and '09, of 195 Predators procured, 65 of them were Class A. Of those 65, 36 were due to pilot error, and of those 36, half were during landing. Godholio posted:And for some goddamned reason, Boeing has the authority to make the Air Force do what it says on combat missions, even if it significantly degrades the mission performance. We had to ditch most of the laptops. That's insane. I'd say "What about extra batteries?" But you probably stay aloft long enough for that to require an inconvenient amount of them. Phanatic fucked around with this message at 17:12 on Sep 27, 2013 |
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Sep 27, 2013 17:10
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Regarding autoland, there is a very good reason we don't have that on our aircraft...but I dunno if it's open source so I won't be saying much beyond that. I'll just say that if we could install it without some significant operational downsides that go along with it, we absolutely would (and probably will, if/when those issues are ironed out) because it's not like we're just sitting here going "man, I really enjoy eating preventable Class A mishaps just so the guys with wings can feel all big and pilot-y." And Preds crash quite a bit more than Reapers do...the Pred is a glorified RC plane with a snowmobile engine, the Reaper is a legitimate light attack aircraft where the pilot just happens to be 5,000 miles away. Treating the two as the same isn't really accurate, there is quite a bit of difference between the two platforms (which is why the AF is in the process of phasing out the Pred.) Also don't believe everything you read on wikipedia We have more than 57 
iyaayas01 fucked around with this message at 18:18 on Sep 27, 2013 |
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Sep 27, 2013 18:13
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Plinkey posted:You do realize that the contractors write the contracts right? I write a lot of scopes and write a lot of language that's included in these contracts, and it's not actually all that hard to write contracts that put all the risk onto the contractor and make the contractor fully responsible for all the ramifications of any cost overruns and time slippages, and required to pay damages for incidental costs incurred to the government due to these slippages, etc. The problem is getting contractors willing to bid on those types of projects. When they do, the contractor bids end up insanely loving high because they need to account for all that risk right up-front, and usually excessively so. As much as we bitch about contractors loving over the government, it's usually cheaper in the long run for the government to "self-insure" and accept a lot of the risk. Hell, we have entire organizations (DARPA) dedicated to long-shot programs where they know full well 95% of the projects will fail miserably. But we still sponsor them because of the potential payoff of the successes. grover fucked around with this message at 18:32 on Sep 27, 2013 |
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Sep 27, 2013 18:21
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iyaayas01 posted:Regarding autoland, there is a very good reason we don't have that on our aircraft...but I dunno if it's open source so I won't be saying much beyond that. I'll just say that if we could install it without some significant operational downsides that go along with it, we absolutely would (and probably will, if/when those issues are ironed out) because it's not like we're just sitting here going "man, I really enjoy eating preventable Class A mishaps just so the guys with wings can feel all big and pilot-y." And Preds crash quite a bit more than Reapers do...the Pred is a glorified RC plane with a snowmobile engine, the Reaper is a legitimate light attack aircraft where the pilot just happens to be 5,000 miles away. Treating the two as the same isn't really accurate, there is quite a bit of difference between the two platforms (which is why the AF is in the process of phasing out the Pred.) Maybe the introduction of RA-47s will change some of those policies, I dunno.
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Sep 27, 2013 18:26
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Dumb question, have AC-130s been shot down?
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Sep 27, 2013 18:55
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One was shot down in Panama.
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Sep 27, 2013 18:56
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NerdyMcNerdNerd posted:That is a beautiful plane. I'm surprised I never heard of it before. The Vigilante got a few things going for it: A) Like, the grand-daddy of the F-14 ~Swing Wings~ B) It sat around like a fat gently caress while McCain's carrier was getting torched C) Its second name is the Turbokat  (Yes, that is a 3-engined prototype)  Sadly no one ever strapped AtA missiles to the thing (?), but the Retaliator was supposed to go with 6 Phoenixes. Pimpmust fucked around with this message at 19:05 on Sep 27, 2013 |
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Sep 27, 2013 19:01
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Mortabis posted:One was shot down in Panama. Another one in Desert Storm.
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Sep 27, 2013 19:05
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ArchangeI posted:Another one in Desert Storm. Yeah, it ate a MANPAD didn't it? IIRC the crew decided to stay on-station longer / well aware of the danger to support some ground units engaged nearby. 
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Sep 27, 2013 19:10
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movax posted:Yeah, it ate a MANPAD didn't it? IIRC the crew decided to stay on-station longer / well aware of the danger to support some ground units engaged nearby. Spirit 03 at the Battle of Khafji...stayed on station past sunrise to support some Marines in the town, took a hit from a SA-7, all 14 guys on board were KIA. Also there wasn't one shot down during Panama...there was one that went down in the ocean near Somalia due to a mechanical mishap back in '94, but the only other ones lost in combat were six that were shot down in Southeast Asia, mostly while truck hunting along the Trail. One SA-2, one SA-7, and the remainder were AAA.
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Sep 27, 2013 19:27
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