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iyaayas01 posted:
You need to re-watch all of Archer and memorise it line for line. Its the only way. [edit] I didnt wanna hit reply to add another post pointlessly, digging through my history I found the following vids which I didnt see posted in my read through of this thread: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-CP-OYxRAk - "Amazing USAF KC-10 Air to Air Video" Which I think is related to this: Wolfe Air Reel In the Wolfe Air Reel, they've got a couple of shots of an F-15 (figure its the same one), if you know of what that video is it'd be great to watch if this aerial refuelling video is anything to go by. KingPave fucked around with this message at 12:23 on Dec 27, 2013 |
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Dec 27, 2013 09:54
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I've typed this up maybe twice now and then decided against it because it's mostly politics-level theory-wankery, but gently caress it I'll go ahead and drop it anyways. Why does the USMC need a fixed wing asset? The same reason France, India, and China want blue water assets of any type and the same reason it was so loving stupid of England to let their CV program die: it makes it really, REALLY loving easy to get your foot in the door anywhere on the planet for the crisis du jour so that you can have a very real say in how the eventual negotiated settlement works out. This is basically the way that colonial politics worked from the Age of Sail on and the way that sphere of interest politics continues to work. The tl;dr version is that it allows you to have some kind of at least semi-credible military force in a region, which means that the other powers that be have to at least consult you when they're figuring out what to do about some local situation that you probably have an interest in. Let's take the recent Libyan Civil War as an example. Imagine that China had some strong reason for not wanting any kind of Western intervention. They can protest, they can argue, they can denounce, but at the end of the day if NATO decides to bomb the living gently caress out of some Gaddafi loyalists there's piss all that they can really do about it. At the end of the day they're China, and China is located way over there. Now imagine that they had a single aircraft carrier that was actually capable of extended cruises and happened to be in the area. Maybe it's a really lovely carrier - single squadron of fixed wing planes two generations out of date, terrible crew quality, etc. Doesn't matter. Just by dint of being there and having the potential to get in the line of fire they get a say in what is going on. They don't have to explicitly threaten to fly CAP for Gaddafi or anything (and if they did they would be swept aside with trivial ease) but just physically being in the neighborhood makes them a variable that has to be dealt with in a much more real way than if they couldn't project even that token force. This is a big reason why the US became the international player after WW2 that we are today. Not only did we have a strongly interventionist foreign policy doctrine, but we also had a USN that was big enough to guarantee that we could at least get a seat at the table anywhere on the globe. This is also why the development of a true blue water USN in the 19th century was the birth of the US actually being considered a world power, and why we became the dominant power in our hemisphere. As far as projection of force went we were loving nothing compared to the RN, the French Navy, or even the Germans. But, we could putt a few boats around, engage in gunboat diplomacy with our neighbors to the south, and pose a credible enough tripwire that we could tell all of the European powers to stay the gently caress out of our hemisphere. It might not be enough to keep them out if they forced the issue (and French behavior re: Mexico during our Civil War underscored that uncomfortable fact), but it put us in a position of being able to negotiate with anything like similar footing. What's this have to do with the USMC? Marine Air based off of MAGTFs let us get a foot in the door in those (admittedly few) areas of the world that aren't already covered by an actual CVAG presence and we can shuttle one over to fly the flag a gently caress load faster than we can re-deploy one of the carrier groups. Without firing a shot they give us a relatively huge amount of physical backing for a global diplomatic presence. tl;dr - can't sit at the grownup's table in international politics without being able to put at least token forces in a region, and USMC air guarantees that there are no gaps in the coverage already provided for us on that front by the Navy's carrier groups.
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Dec 27, 2013 19:00
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Cyrano4747 posted:USMC air guarantees that there are no gaps in the coverage already provided for us on that front by the Navy's carrier groups. Is there an example of USMC air affecting the political balance? In any case, wouldn't it be more efficient to fill the gaps by expanding the Navy a little, instead of maintaining a separate bizarro Navy?
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Dec 27, 2013 20:20
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hepatizon posted:In any case, wouldn't it be more efficient to fill the gaps by expanding the Navy a little, instead of maintaining a separate bizarro Navy? Gator freighters are all owned and run by the Navy anyway. And of course the Marines are part of the Navy. It's just a partition to minimize the leakage of jarheads into the rest of the org tree.
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Dec 27, 2013 20:26
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Isn't each LHD only supposed to get like 15 F-35s or something ridiculously low? I can't find anything on that right now.
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Dec 27, 2013 21:13
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Cyrano4747 posted:What's this have to do with the USMC? Marine Air based off of MAGTFs let us get a foot in the door in those (admittedly few) areas of the world that aren't already covered by an actual CVAG presence and we can shuttle one over to fly the flag a gently caress load faster than we can re-deploy one of the carrier groups. Without firing a shot they give us a relatively huge amount of physical backing for a global diplomatic presence. I don't think this holds up, to be honest. The point of gunboat diplomacy isn't to bring an overwhelming invasion force to somebody's doorstep; it's to bring enough force to potentially mess with them, backed up with the implicit threat of "if you mess with this one little boat, then we've got overwhelming force to back it up." The carrier battle groups serve in the "overwhelming backup force" role, but they don't need to be right there. A guided missile cruiser or similar boat, on the other hand - hell, even a destroyer - is enough to be a floating flagpole armed with cruise missiles that can hit a royal palace or military base or whatever. Fundamentally, what you're doing is providing a strategic justification for something that doesn't need to exist from that standpoint. The US military's approach to fixed-wing aviation is deeply weird (see also: the C-27 debacle) and driven far more by tradition and bureaucratic turf-fighting than strategic necessity. It's not so broken that we can't use it to pursue various national goals - whether that's gunboat diplomacy or warfighting - but the F-35B and V/STOL capable amphibious assault ships don't exist because they're the best fit for a strategic niche. They exist because the USMC wants supersonic stealth jump jets and they'll be damned if the Navy and Air Force take that away. Godholio posted:Isn't each LHD only supposed to get like 15 F-35s or something ridiculously low? I can't find anything on that right now. According to the FAS, standard complement for a Wasp-class is all of six Harriers (except in the "sea control" role where they lose all non-ASW helicopters). I don't know exactly what the plans are for the F-35B but I can't imagine they'd put many more of them than they have Harriers right now.
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Dec 27, 2013 22:14
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Space Gopher posted:According to the FAS, standard complement for a Wasp-class is all of six Harriers (except in the "sea control" role where they lose all non-ASW helicopters). I don't know exactly what the plans are for the F-35B but I can't imagine they'd put many more of them than they have Harriers right now. And this is the kicker, to me. Six airframes is MAYBE enough to keep two in the air 24/7 during a crisis, and you could probably keep another pair on plus fifteen alert, but you're not going to be able to keep that up for any significant period of time. Even if you surge all six F-35s in response to a threat you saw coming, they aren't going to be able to protect the MAGTF from a concerted air attack, which means that again, it's tied to a CVBG anyway. If your argument is that the F-35s aren't there to fly CAP, they're there to support the Marines on the ground, then the F-35C or F-18 does that better, cheaper, for a longer period, off a CVN.
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Dec 27, 2013 23:51
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Space Gopher posted:A guided missile cruiser or similar boat, on the other hand - hell, even a destroyer - is enough to be a floating flagpole armed with cruise missiles that can hit a royal palace or military base or whatever. Due to budgeting (and a little premature hull wear) we won't have any guided missile cruisers by roughly the end of the decade. The Zumwalts (all three of them) will have significantly diminished anti-air capability compared to the Ticonderogas, and anti-air is both the defense against the greatest threat and the main tool for gunboat diplomacy, a no-fly zone being a much lighter touch than pelting someone with Tomahawks. The Arleigh Burkes I'm not sure are being built at a replacement rate and even the Block III is kind of a dead-end design with limited capability for future updates. The real ship you're thinking of for showing the flag has been the Oliver Hazard Perry frigate and the last of those are scheduled for decom in the next two or three years, with no replacement.
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Dec 27, 2013 23:56
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mlmp08 posted:The Army already has fixed-wing assets christ that thing was/is an EMC nightmare Cheap starting point though (existing certified airframe), then piled on with contractor fluff; still ended up relatively affordable
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Dec 28, 2013 00:09
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Did anyone, during the Cold War, even try and advocate giving the Marines a full on carrier, not the mini ones they have, but a regular one? I mean I know that idea most likely got laughed out. I'm just wondering if people ever thought, after all the Amphibious landings in WWII, hmm maybe the Marines should have their own CV to reduce dependence of needing the Navy to be in the same area they're in (or protect against loss during wartime)? Though I guess the entire concept of the US Fleets is so that isn't a problem in the first place.
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Dec 28, 2013 00:17
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The LHA / LHDs they have aren't mini carriers by a long shot. It's the planes that have grown in size. It makes me wonder if, in a pinch, you could operate an F-35B off a regular ship's helicopter pad, or if it's just too big.
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Dec 28, 2013 00:33
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gfanikf posted:Did anyone, during the Cold War, even try and advocate giving the Marines a full on carrier, not the mini ones they have, but a regular one? I mean I know that idea most likely got laughed out. I'm just wondering if people ever thought, after all the Amphibious landings in WWII, hmm maybe the Marines should have their own CV to reduce dependence of needing the Navy to be in the same area they're in (or protect against loss during wartime)? Though I guess the entire concept of the US Fleets is so that isn't a problem in the first place. Don't know of anyone advocating that, but if it ever happened, I hope they got laughed out of the room.
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Dec 28, 2013 00:51
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Snowdens Secret posted:It makes me wonder if, in a pinch, you could operate an F-35B off a regular ship's helicopter pad, or if it's just too big.
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Dec 28, 2013 00:55
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Snowdens Secret posted:
It is technically possible for an F-35B to take off vertically. It just isn't possible with any useful amount of fuel or payload. Plus, I bet helipads could not handle it.
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Dec 28, 2013 00:57
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Well what's the loving point then if it can't actually do what it does in Die Hard 4? <beating_dead_horse.gif>
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Dec 28, 2013 00:58
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movax posted:Well what's the loving point then if it can't actually do anything at all? FTFY
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Dec 28, 2013 01:42
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MrYenko posted:And this is the kicker, to me. Six airframes is MAYBE enough to keep two in the air 24/7 during a crisis, and you could probably keep another pair on plus fifteen alert, but you're not going to be able to keep that up for any significant period of time. Even if you surge all six F-35s in response to a threat you saw coming, they aren't going to be able to protect the MAGTF from a concerted air attack, which means that again, it's tied to a CVBG anyway. Bingo. FWIW the plan for the America-class (Wasp-class follow on) is to carry 6 F-35Bs when they have an embarked MEU. Obviously you can carry more if you get rid of helos, but then you're no longer an amphib, you're a jeep carrier, which kind of defeats the purpose of being an amphib. You can't do poo poo with 6 loving fighters. At any one given time during sustained operations at least one of them (and probably two) will be down for maintenance and you'll be turning another two, meaning you can sustain a whopping two (maybe surging to three) jets in the air. That's enough to do a CAP or provide CAS, but not do both. So your options with 6 fighters against a force with high end capabilities are protect the your ships or support the guys on the ground, you can't do both simultaneously (and really with only 6 performance limited STOVL aircraft you can't even do the one you choose to do all that well). Which is why we'll never ever deploy an ESG into harm's way against anything approaching a credible high end threat without a CSG riding shotgun. Which is why STOVL jet fighters is a superfluous capability. Snowdens Secret posted:Due to budgeting (and a little premature hull wear) we won't have any guided missile cruisers by roughly the end of the decade. The Zumwalts (all three of them) will have significantly diminished anti-air capability compared to the Ticonderogas, and anti-air is both the defense against the greatest threat and the main tool for gunboat diplomacy, a no-fly zone being a much lighter touch than pelting someone with Tomahawks. The Arleigh Burkes I'm not sure are being built at a replacement rate and even the Block III is kind of a dead-end design with limited capability for future updates. Good thing we have the Little Crappy Ship!
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Dec 28, 2013 03:13
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What can the LCS actually do? Seems to me it's little more than a floating helipad.
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Dec 28, 2013 04:12
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FYI, Flap, This is Amphibious; This is not;  You'd think a Zoomie would know that. (E) It is the presence, or absence of a well deck that determines the difference between an Amphibious Assault Ship and a "Jeep" Carrier. Outside Dawg fucked around with this message at 04:30 on Dec 28, 2013 |
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Dec 28, 2013 04:21
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I kinda wanted to join the Marines when I was younger just to drive/sail this thing. 
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Dec 28, 2013 04:26
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Oxford Comma posted:I kinda wanted to join the Marines when I was younger just to drive/sail this thing. That was my MOS (1833) in the Corps after Tendonitis and fallen arches got me put out of the Grunts. 3rd AABn, YAT-YAS.
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Dec 28, 2013 04:34
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Outside Dawg posted:That was my MOS (1833) in the Corps after Tendonitis and fallen arches got me put out of the Grunts. Really? Does it suck or was it awesome? TELL ME! Oxford Comma fucked around with this message at 04:42 on Dec 28, 2013 |
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Dec 28, 2013 04:39
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Oxford Comma posted:Really? Does it suck? TELL ME! PM sucks (bust rust), driving them off the well deck ramp is a RUSH. The one time it really sucked was when a 0311 trainee panicked and pulled the release on the top hatch (the large rectangular hatches you can see in the pic behind the crewmen) as we went off the well deck ramp, flooding and sinking the Trac. He got an Article 15, only because everyone was able to get out. I wanted to stab him in the eye with my Kabar for sinking MY Trac.
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Dec 28, 2013 04:46
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Outside Dawg posted:PM sucks (bust rust), driving them off the well deck ramp is a RUSH. The one time it really sucked was when a 0311 trainee panicked and pulled the release on the top hatch (the large rectangular hatches you can see in the pic behind the crewmen) as we went off the well deck ramp, flooding and sinking the Trac. He got an Article 15, only because everyone was able to get out. I wanted to stab him in the eye with my Kabar for sinking MY Trac. How do people get out of a sinking trac, anyways?
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Dec 28, 2013 04:52
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I'd imagine through the now open back hatch v v
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Dec 28, 2013 04:55
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^^^^^ Quickly.
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Dec 28, 2013 04:59
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Outside Dawg posted:^^^^^ Sorry I phrased that poorly. Assuming the big fuckoff hatch on the top was closed, is there a way to get out of a sinking trac? Do they ever sink? Because that thought terrifies me.
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Dec 28, 2013 05:04
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The hatches over the troop area are spring loaded, as were the crew hatches, they won't open quickly if you're under but it does allow you to get them open. That said, sinkings were pretty rare and were usually due to either an unsecured hatch or someone forgetting to put the drain plugs back in after doing pm.
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Dec 28, 2013 05:12
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Let's get one thing out of the way first: the real reason the Marines bit off on the F-35B was because they knew the odds of a separate VSTOL aircraft acquisition program were zero, and if the Harriers didn't get replaced then whole justification for the ACE would start to fall apart.mlmp08 posted:I agree that the SBC is idealized because the Marines deal with a much smaller chunk of the battle than the joint force at large. I wouldn't say that Marine SBC ignores ISR and logistics (it's explicitly spelled out as tasks in the MAGTF). It just so happens that Marine ISR and logistics capabilities don't hold a candle to joint ISR and logistics capabilities. Now, the Marines' doctrine states that this problem can be solved by adding additional forces to the MAGTF under the Marine commander, except that the Marines do not have the personnel, training, expertise or inclination to effectively utilize those forces. Every Marine may be a rifleman, but I'd guess there are no more than a handful who are familiar with intratheater airlift, operations for jet tankers, strategic recon, or air battle management. If it takes attaching an Expeditionary Air Refueling Squadron, a few RPA squadrons, and and Air Control Squadron in order to make a MAGTF effective, it's pretty much a joint operation at that point. If MAGTF are not capable of independent action against any threat more potent than Somali Pirates, then what's the point of them having VSTOL supersonic stealth fighters? So yeah, the MAGTF concept and Marine doctrine falls apart when exposed to real world scenarios. gfanikf posted:I'm just wondering if people ever thought, after all the Amphibious landings in WWII, hmm maybe the Marines should have their own CV to reduce dependence of needing the Navy to be in the same area they're in (or protect against loss during wartime)? Dead Reckoning fucked around with this message at 07:29 on Dec 28, 2013 |
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Dec 28, 2013 07:17
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Dead Reckoning posted:Let's get one thing out of the way first: the real reason the Marines bit off on the F-35B was because they knew the odds of a separate VSTOL aircraft acquisition program were zero, and if the Harriers didn't get replaced then whole justification for the ACE would start to fall apart. That makes the fact that they are getting the F-35B all the more depressing.
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Dec 28, 2013 08:42
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Dead Reckoning posted:
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Dec 28, 2013 09:15
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Dead Reckoning posted:Let's get one thing out of the way first: the real reason the Marines bit off on the F-35B was because they knew the odds of a separate VSTOL aircraft acquisition program were zero, and if the Harriers didn't get replaced then whole justification for the ACE would start to fall apart. It's even more fun when you learn that the Marines only grabbed onto amphibious ops after Japan started flexing in the 30s, because they were literally a service with no mission and were in very real danger of being disbanded (again). Also 6 airframes is insufficient for 2-ship 24/7 ops of any duration. I'll put it this way: you're in a gray area for a long-duration, single-ship airframe like AWACS. Two planes up at the same time for shorter duration? Nope. Godholio fucked around with this message at 21:01 on Dec 28, 2013 |
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Dec 28, 2013 20:58
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We have to find a politician brave enough to be the guy that says 'disband the Corps'. Maybe if he saved a fuckload of puppies while he was at it.
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Dec 28, 2013 21:17
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Godholio posted:Also 6 airframes is insufficient for 2-ship 24/7 ops of any duration. I'll put it this way: you're in a gray area for a long-duration, single-ship airframe like AWACS. Two planes up at the same time for shorter duration? Nope. You could probably get away with 6 aircraft for 2-ship fighter 24/7 ops for about 24-36 hours, after which point you will be hopelessly broken off your rear end. Actually, it might be less than 24-36 because I don't know what kind of ASD they'd be flying but given that it's STOVL we're talking about, it probably isn't much, and the lower the ASD the less turn time you have so the quicker you get completely broken. movax posted:We have to find a politician brave enough to be the guy that says 'disband the Corps'. Maybe if he saved a fuckload of puppies while he was at it.  This guy couldn't do it, we're probably screwed. "The Marine Corps is the Navy's police force and as long as I am President that is what it will remain. They have a propaganda machine that is almost equal to Stalin's." After the letter in which he wrote that was made public he had to grovel at the feet of the Corps and several of their Congressmen, that's how bad the public outcry was.
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Dec 29, 2013 01:31
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You guys will be singing a different tune once the lava men/dragons show up, as mentioned earlier. THEN WHAT.
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Dec 29, 2013 02:53
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iyaayas01 posted:You could probably get away with 6 aircraft for 2-ship fighter 24/7 ops for about 24-36 hours, after which point you will be hopelessly broken off your rear end. Actually, it might be less than 24-36 because I don't know what kind of ASD they'd be flying but given that it's STOVL we're talking about, it probably isn't much, and the lower the ASD the less turn time you have so the quicker you get completely broken.
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Dec 29, 2013 02:58
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Godholio posted:Yup. Best case, you're giving a day to a day and a half. I'm pretty sure when the NTTP is out it'll call for at least twice as many airframes to top that. A 12 ship package is pretty much the USAF standard minimum to support 2-ship 24/7 fighter ops, so twice that sounds about right.
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Dec 29, 2013 03:36
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Apparently they cancelled funding for the MEADS program today. I'm sure mlmp has something worth reading to say about that.
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Dec 29, 2013 08:27
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This will be interesting for Germany and Italy. We've known for quite a while that the US didn't plan on fielding MEADS and wasn't exactly pumped about paying the lion's share of the cost for the system, but it helped allies and the money was going to US defense contractors anyway. Now with it being left in the cold, for now, right after a successful dual-intercept of an ABT and TBM from opposite directions using the new PAC-3 MSE missile and fired one missile each from a German spec launcher and an Italian spec launcher, I guess it will be time for either Germany and Italy to pony up and pay for the system themselves or for them to lobby hard to get the US to help foot the bill one way or the other. The MSE missile uses PAC-3 tech, but uses a two stage design with a solid rocket booster and a pulse-jet in order to reach out farther and higher against either TBMs or ABTs. Given the concept for Patriot's post-deployment build (PDB) 8+ systems, I really can't see us changing our minds and using MEADS. Eventually, the integrated army missile defense system is supposed to more or less centralize control of numerous patriot systems using any sensor any shooter systems, significantly decreasing the footprint and kill chain length for Patriot. Even though IAMD is sometimes called imaginary air and missile defense, we seem pretty dead set on getting to it eventually. The Army air defense elephant in the room is our SHORAD status. UAS proliferation is exploding, and the Army spent a lot of time and money on C-RAM, now IFPC, to protect troops in Iraq/Afghanistan from mortars and rockets. As a result, there's a bit of a UAS sized hole in air defense. Sure, Patriot can kill a lot of UAS, but it's an incredibly expensive way to do it, and sector systems will always have trouble when someone can launch a small, hostile UAS from behind friendly lines. There's talk of turning the IFPC batteries into bateries with multi-mission launchers that can do rockets/artillery/mortars as well as short range ABTs and also maybe some ground attack capability. Who knows? That stuff's farther down the road.
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Dec 29, 2013 15:41
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mlmp08 posted:There's talk of turning the IFPC batteries into bateries with multi-mission launchers that can do rockets/artillery/mortars as well as short range ABTs and also maybe some ground attack capability. Who knows? That stuff's farther down the road. This is actually a ways past the "talk" phase, the IFPC increment 2 CONOPS was published last month. Right now it looks like the interceptor will be the AIM-9X.
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Dec 29, 2013 17:17
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