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FrozenVent posted:MANPADS got a heck of a whole lot better, and the people getting bombed these days don't have much by way of an integrated air defense network. Also, stealth. Also, look-down radar is a lot better now that it used to be; flying low isn't automatic stealth mode anymore. Snowdens Secret posted:I'm sure 'all-weather' was thrown in there, too.
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Nov 11, 2013 02:32
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grover posted:What needed to be changed? 
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Nov 11, 2013 03:00
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grover posted:Also, look-down radar is a lot better now that it used to be; flying low isn't automatic stealth mode anymore. The rudder needed tweaking and strengthening, IIRC. Low-level crosswinds did bad things to it E: dammit
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Nov 11, 2013 03:01
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Koesj posted:Some less successful designs that got into series production: These are good suggestions. The Tu-22 'Blinder' was was an awesome looking aircraft that was basically terrible and frequently killed its crew. The fact that it had probably the worst ergonomics of any Soviet aircraft (like pilots would regularly tie strings to awkward to get at controls throughout the cockpit) makes it a strong contender. Also, the USSR pulled the Hornet-Super Hornet trick when developing a successor: the Backfire is the Tu-22m.
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Nov 11, 2013 03:08
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Does the Tu-22M still have the rear 23mm cannon?
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Nov 11, 2013 03:16
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Propagandalf posted:The Doolittle raiders cracked the cognac today. Is that picture from a few years ago? There's five goblets face-up and I believe there's only four Raiders left, with one being too sick to travel to the ceremony this weekend.
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Nov 11, 2013 04:25
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When I was a little kid I wrote Jimmy Doolittle a letter, since I thought the Tokyo Raid was amazing. He sent me back an autographed copy of his autobiography, which was pretty great. Also it wasn't fantastically successful or famous or anything, but I always thought the F-101 Voodoo looked sexy as gently caress.
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Nov 11, 2013 04:50
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Mortabis posted:Does the Tu-22M still have the rear 23mm cannon? I'm not sure, but I do recall reading that the Russians developed flare or some other countermeasure rounds to fire out of the tail turrets, so they might still have a reason to keep them around.
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Nov 11, 2013 05:07
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Mortabis posted:What made the Starfighter's ground-attack mission different? Was it doing supersonic low level bombing as opposed to subsonic? In the days before things like GPS and terrain-following radar flying nap of the earth profiles was a pretty hazardous activity no matter what plane you were in. Couple that with the fact that the F-104 was extremely fast, had a very high stall speed, was generally really unforgiving in flight, and had extra weight added with bombs and whatnot and you had what amounted to an overloaded hot rod on a wet street at night with no windshield wipers. To that end, a huge percentage of the Luftwaffe losses in were controlled flight into terrain which doesn't really imply any particular problem with the aircraft but rather with training and general usage. But yeah someone in large part at the behest of Lockheed decided that the F-104 was just a great low level delivery system for tactical nukes which is ridiculous when you even look at the thing, let alone when you try and fly it. Also just for general information no MANPADS system could ever hope to hit a bomber flying at a high subsonic speed on a nap of the earth profile. That stuff is for helicopters and CAS platforms.
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Nov 11, 2013 05:14
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Mortabis posted:Does the Tu-22M still have the rear 23mm cannon? Yes, hell even Wikipedia says so 
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Nov 11, 2013 05:17
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bewbies posted:In the days before things like GPS and terrain-following radar flying nap of the earth profiles was a pretty hazardous activity no matter what plane you were in. Couple that with the fact that the F-104 was extremely fast, had a very high stall speed, was generally really unforgiving in flight, and had extra weight added with bombs and whatnot and you had what amounted to an overloaded hot rod on a wet street at night with no windshield wipers. To that end, a huge percentage of the Luftwaffe losses in were controlled flight into terrain which doesn't really imply any particular problem with the aircraft but rather with training and general usage. It took quite a few dead young German pilots before they figured that one out.
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Nov 11, 2013 10:19
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The Viggen had a few mysterious accidents early in its career where it seemed like the aircraft just broke apart in flight. When two accidents happened within four days of each other in October of 1975 they grounded the entire fleet and eventually traced the problem to a wing spar that was too weak for the loads involved; when it broke, the entire wing broke loose which just made the entire aircraft pretty much fall apart. They reinforced the spar and then continued flying nap-of-the-earth with it for the rest of its career; of course there were a lot of controlled flight into terrain accidents. Regarding the Soviet SIGINT trawlers, those were common in the Baltic too. Just as other western air forces, the Swedish air force made it their business to mess with them. Stories (should be taken with the usual salt, of course) include doing a supersonic curve around them with a Draken (apparently this makes the sonic boom hit from several different direction at once; supposedly very unpleasant), flying over them at extremely low altitude only to pull up with full afterburner right on top of them, and doing practice bombing runs at them. In at least one case, that last one almost caused a nasty accident: the aircraft was loaded with inert practice bombs, and the ground crew had accidentally set the onboard computers to "live mode" when they were supposed to be set to simulation only. The pilot did his practice bombing run, hit the bomb release button and sure enough, he got an unpleasant surprise as all sixteen bombs dropped. Fortunately the bomb sight was calibrated for full-weight bombs (the inert practice ones weighed substantially less) and the entire load missed the trawler and went into the sea.
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Nov 11, 2013 15:03
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FrozenVent posted:MANPADS got a heck of a whole lot better, and the people getting bombed these days don't have much by way of an integrated air defense network. Also, stealth. Also PGMs. It used to be the only way to make sure you schwacked the target was to scream in at low level and pop off a stick of dumb Mk 82s at really close range...and even then you needed a full four-ship to ensure you destroyed the target. And that's assuming a relatively small target...you talk something the size of the Paul Doumer or Dragon's Jaw bridges and you're talking multiple strikes of dozens of aircraft just to have a relatively good chance of maybe dropping a span if you got really lucky. You start talking about LGBs and you can increase the height and/or standoff from the target, with the laser targeting providing correction for the increased impreciseness of your approach. Throw in GPS-aided INS munitions like the JDAM and now you can loiter at 20,000 ft and drop bombs to a set of coordinates the JTAC is calling in with better precision than you would get from a low level approach with dumb bombs.* * There's definitely still value to be had in low level strikes for CAS, just using this as an example of what advanced PGMs like the JDAM can get you.
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Nov 11, 2013 16:04
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This might be a bit of a derail, but this is kind of the military wonk thread so gently caress it: The USS Gerald Ford, the newest carrier in the Navy and first of its class, got christened recently. From what I'm understanding it looks to basically be Nimitz 2.0 - same rough size and shape, but a fuckload more efficient in a bunch of ways and just generally better at doing its job, to the tune of a claimed 25% increase in combat sorties per day. This thread is a giant, hulking monument to the laughable nature of DoD lifespan projections, but that specific hull is slated to be in service well into the 2050s and the current plans are for that class to be the basic USN air platform into the 22nd Century.
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Nov 11, 2013 17:52
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To expand on what iyaayas and grover said, low level attack also has a lot of disadvantages. True airspeed is slower and fuel consumption is higher, limiting your range. Enemy interceptors are (relatively faster) and their weapons have a gross kinematic advantage. The high vs low attack profile decision has gone back and forth more than once based on what the current state of the art was in early warning, engagement radars, and countermeasures. In the specific case of the B-52, the advent of Air Launched Cruise Missiles ended the need for flying in low for nuclear combat toe-to-toe with the Russkies. :$costoverruns: Dead Reckoning fucked around with this message at 18:14 on Nov 11, 2013 |
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Nov 11, 2013 18:12
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Did we really have to call it the Gerald Ford?
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Nov 11, 2013 18:56
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Insane Totoro posted:Did we really have to call it the Gerald Ford? Hopefully it's not accident prone!
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Nov 11, 2013 19:02
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Propagandalf posted:The Doolittle raiders cracked the cognac today. Here's the ceremony. If you skip to about 33:00, you'll skip the introductions, speeches by the Chief of Staff and acting Secretary of the Air Force, etc, and start with the actual Doolittle Raid historian's presentation and roll call. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDKPYpkU5Cg
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Nov 11, 2013 19:08
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Dirk Diggler posted:Is that picture from a few years ago? There's five goblets face-up and I believe there's only four Raiders left, with one being too sick to travel to the ceremony this weekend. Yeah, it's older, but it was the only picture that didn't suck.
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Nov 11, 2013 20:03
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Cyrano4747 posted:This might be a bit of a derail, but this is kind of the military wonk thread so gently caress it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ozS36fM1EU Neat time lapse of the ship's construction.
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Nov 11, 2013 20:10
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Cyrano4747 posted:This might be a bit of a derail, but this is kind of the military wonk thread so gently caress it:
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Nov 11, 2013 21:05
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ought ten posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ozS36fM1EU I just finished Hornfischer's book on Guadalcanal and I'm freshly pissed off that we now name carriers after politicians, they should switch back to naming them after battles. I know that it's for currying political favor and securing funding, but if you need to curry favor in that fashion to get funding then that's another example of how loving screwed up your procurement process is. "This giant gently caress-off poo poo is objectively necessary to meet the national security objectives developed by the civilian leadership which tells the military what to do, but those 5 Congressmen won't vote to pay for it unless we kiss their guy's rear end." Like in that video: "Continuing His Legacy," the caption reads. Ford had a legacy? Of what, pardoning criminal politicians? Can we just name one after William Henry Harrison?
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Nov 11, 2013 21:14
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grover posted:Each "Nimitz Class" carrier has been significantly different in many key respects than the one before it (well, in pairs mostly); not sure why they suddenly decided to call this one the "Ford Class" but I'm pretty sure it's entirely for political purposes of trying to sell this like it's a new carrier instead of simply an evolution of the one before it. Ehhh, if all of the PR hype is to believed it does seem a bit more of a significant leap forward than the usual tweaks between major builds in the same class. 1,000 fewer crewmen, 25% more sorties per day, apparently some kind of really important reactor redesign, moving from steam to magnets for the cat launch, pushing the conning tower back on the hull to clear more flight deck room, changing up how cable arresting is done to ease up on airframe wear and tear. . . . I'm as skeptical as the next guy about any kind of DoD announcement about how much lighter, faster, awesomer the next Big Expensive Toy is, but is the Ronald Reagan 25% faster at getting sorties off than the George Washington? It does seem like a whole lot more changes at once than your typical round of updates.
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Nov 11, 2013 22:00
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It is a pretty big jump; just the new reactor design and elimination of the steam catapults significantly changes what a cutaway view of the vessel looks like, even if it's not noticeable on the outside. The exterior is always going to be defined by 'big box to hold planes in, big deck to launch /retrieve on top of that, must fit through canals' so other than shenanigans moving the elevators and tower around there's not much opportunity for significant change. The crew reduction (and various other aspects of the design) are intended to cut the tremendous cost of operating and deploying the ship; Navy crew reduction programs haven't been so great lately so it'll take time to see how well it works. E: I've seen the Ford put out as kind of a half-class, sort of like the difference between 688 and 688i. Every sub is different, but the first-flights and the i-boats had some significant differences, including reactor core. Sometimes those are referred to as distinct classes, sometimes they're not, depending on who's talking. And it's muddied by the older boats being retrofitted over time with a lot of the improvements of the later ones (and those improvements also being obsoleted and replaced fleetwide.) Things like steam -> electric cats are just way too extensive to affordably retrofit. Snowdens Secret fucked around with this message at 22:16 on Nov 11, 2013 |
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Nov 11, 2013 22:10
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Phanatic posted:I just finished Hornfischer's book on Guadalcanal and I'm freshly pissed off that we now name carriers after politicians, they should switch back to naming them after battles. I know that it's for currying political favor and securing funding, but if you need to curry favor in that fashion to get funding then that's another example of how loving screwed up your procurement process is. "This giant gently caress-off poo poo is objectively necessary to meet the national security objectives developed by the civilian leadership which tells the military what to do, but those 5 Congressmen won't vote to pay for it unless we kiss their guy's rear end." I agree wholeheartedly and think that it's doubly bullshit when the person being honored is still alive. At least Reagan was dead by the time he got his boat, but the GHW Bush? Come the gently caress on. That said, at least they're moving back towards recycling previous boats names, including one that just needs to be afloat. CVN-79 is going to be the USS JFK and CVN-80 is going to be USS Enterprise. About loving time we have another Enterprise. 
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Nov 11, 2013 22:27
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Cyrano4747 posted:I agree wholeheartedly and think that it's doubly bullshit when the person being honored is still alive. At least Reagan was dead by the time he got his boat, but the GHW Bush? Come the gently caress on. Well, the Zumwalt got a Captain James Kirk, so I figure a few years and he'll be ready for his next ship.
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Nov 11, 2013 22:30
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Warbadger posted:Well, the Zumwalt got a Captain James Kirk, so I figure a few years and he'll be ready for his next ship. I know this was a joke but you have to have been a pilot to captain a carrier.
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Nov 11, 2013 22:35
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Snowdens Secret posted:I know this was a joke but you have to have been a pilot to captain a carrier. Do sweet jumps from North Sea waves count?
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Nov 11, 2013 22:46
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Cyrano4747 posted:I agree wholeheartedly and think that it's doubly bullshit when the person being honored is still alive. At least Reagan was dead by the time he got his boat, but the GHW Bush? Come the gently caress on. Apparently every hull from CVN-80 onward will perpetuate a WW2 carrier.
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Nov 11, 2013 23:23
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We named a sub after Jimmy Carter who was an objectively worse president (hell at least it was a sub so it's out of sight) so meh on the Gerald Ford thing. Personally I think we should name carriers after states.
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Nov 11, 2013 23:29
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Mortabis posted:We named a sub after Jimmy Carter who was an objectively worse president (hell at least it was a sub so it's out of sight) so meh on the Gerald Ford thing. States would make sense, though to be fair at least the presidents in question had at least some connection to the USN.
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Nov 11, 2013 23:33
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Mortabis posted:We named a sub after Jimmy Carter who was an objectively worse president (hell at least it was a sub so it's out of sight) so meh on the Gerald Ford thing. Jimmy Carter had a sub named after him because he was in the Navy and served on subs.
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Nov 11, 2013 23:37
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mlmp08 posted:Jimmy Carter had a sub named after him because he was in the Navy and served on subs. Right, and Ford got a carrier because he served on carriers. Fearless posted:States would make sense, though to be fair at least the presidents in question had at least some connection to the USN. Well, Eisenhower and Lincoln didn't 
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Nov 11, 2013 23:39
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Snowdens Secret posted:I know this was a joke but you have to have been a pilot to captain a carrier. That's silly, carriers don't fly!!
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Nov 11, 2013 23:41
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Mortabis posted:Well, Eisenhower and Lincoln didn't I think being Supreme Allied Commander during the most massive amphibious assault in the history of the world counts as a tie to the Navy. Lincoln is just Lincoln
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Nov 11, 2013 23:46
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Mortabis posted:Right, and Ford got a carrier because he served on carriers. US needs to adopt traditional British naming conventions
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Nov 11, 2013 23:47
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mlmp08 posted:Jimmy Carter had a sub named after him because he was in the Navy and served on subs. Jimmy carter also had "rallies for calley" when he was governor. Yes, that Lt. Calley.
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Nov 12, 2013 00:01
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The Jimmy Carter is the Parche successor that can do all sorts of cool secret squirrel / undersea tapping / etc stuff right?
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Nov 12, 2013 00:14
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movax posted:The Jimmy Carter is the Parche successor that can do all sorts of cool secret squirrel / undersea tapping / etc stuff right? "secret squirrel" is an actual jargon term for something? e- that is awesome if so
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Nov 12, 2013 00:27
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Captain Foo posted:"secret squirrel" is an actual jargon term for something? Dunno man, always heard it conjunction with ~~high-speed/low-drag/super black ops/IDR-esque~~ stuff 
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Nov 12, 2013 00:28
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