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grover posted:The problems the F-35 has aren't the showstopper kind. They're more of the "this will cost more money that we thought and take more time than we hoped" type problems. IE, same as the problems at this point in the development of every aircraft procurement program, ever. The biggest difference now is just how much media it's getting. The F-35's got nothing on how rocky the R&D for the F-14 was. Most of the specific issues 60 minutes harped on is erroneous or a non-issue. The most glaring thing about the F-35 is that as a weapons platform it's fine. You could get a 747 to carry cruise missiles* and Small Diameter Bombs and it'd be a viable augmentation to the existing heavy bomber force if you're always fighting enemies that will never be able to shoot back. The F-35 is an overly complex airplane designed from the ground up to milk the tit of the defense department budget like nothing else has before it save MAYBE SDI. Lockheed-Martin is building a mediocre and flawed airplane because they're betting/hoping we'll never have to use it against an opponent who can fight back against it on equal terms. Comparing the F-35 to the F-14 is a bit unfair. Back in the 60s and 70s they couldn't do as much computer modelling, and they had two things that they HAD to build the plane to accomodate - the AN/AWG-9 and the AIM-54, and they had to make it more maneuverable than the F-4 (which, I'll grant, wouldn't be that difficult). But the F-14 had to be two things, an interceptor first and a fighter second, whereas the Phantom II was designed to be an interceptor first and foremost, and everything else 'second.' The F-35 really only has one weapon it's contractually *obligated* to be able to carry internally - the B61 Mod 12 gravity bomb, which, let's face it, will likely/hopefully never see use, because aside from the societal repercussions, I'm sure L-M would gently caress up the implementation. The F-35 being as mediocre as it is is unforgivable in this day and age, as everything wrong with it *should* have been should have been hammered out a decade ago, but hasn't been because L-M got Bush II to sign a 200b blank check a week after 9/11 and decided they could milk at least double that out of his remaining time in office during the ~time of plenty~ where no option that'd ~keep us safe and defend freedom~ was too costly. I've been hearing F-35 test pilots parrot the line that the F-35 is a 'pilot's airplane' for the better part of a decade, and no one's ever seen behind that nice-sounding comment to notice that no *combat* pilot would call his warplane a 'pilot's airplane.' A 'pilot's airplane' is a Cessna 182. As for the asterisk: 
BIG HEADLINE fucked around with this message at 11:18 on Feb 19, 2014 |
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Feb 19, 2014 02:23
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To think, we spent all that money on the SSGNs when we had this on the books all along
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Feb 19, 2014 02:25
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Snowdens Secret posted:To think, we spent all that money on the SSGNs when we had this on the books all along To be fair, the Ohio-class SSGN conversions are actually one the *better* things the Navy's spent money on in the past decade. They not only do the job of the now-thankfully-canceled 'Arsenal Ship' better, they serve as SEAL insertion vehicles and augment the Jimmy Carter. Compared to the DDG-1000, Ford-class carriers, and the again, thankfully-canceled CG(X), I'm willing to heap praise on us using what we *had* and making it work in a role we needed. Also, CALCMs are a hell of a lot more expensive than Tomahawks, and the air-launched Tomahawk never entered service. The 747 Missile Carrier would've been the most comfortable doomsday-wreaking plane ever, though. End the world then go downstairs and make up a nice dinner in the galley. BIG HEADLINE fucked around with this message at 04:35 on Feb 19, 2014 |
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Feb 19, 2014 02:35
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I know. The Ohio hulls are excellent for the sorts of missions we're giving them, and while the -GN conversion includes refueling cost, the alternative was retiring the hulls with plenty of life left, for START compliance. The real brilliance was keeping the Blue \ Gold crews, an idea which is slowly creeping into the rest if the fleet, but good luck getting a USN higher-up to admit it.
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Feb 19, 2014 02:50
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Smiling Jack posted:I knew a guy in the Berlin Brigade when the wall "fell". He said it was pretty loving surreal. Was it Darmok or Jalad?
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Feb 19, 2014 03:05
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Blistex posted:Was it Darmok or Jalad? Shaka
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Feb 19, 2014 03:21
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This is old as poo poo, but I feel some of you would really enjoy it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wEURyjB3Lc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDHQjTxDRYk Episode 2 is better made in case you get bored with ep 1.
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Feb 19, 2014 03:35
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Blue/gold crews?
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Feb 19, 2014 03:37
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IIRC USN missile submarines have two crews, and they switch out so that the boat can keep going even though the crew needs a vacation / the captain is sick / whatever. The commercial maritime sector has been doing this to some extent for years (either with whole crews doing 1:1 or with rotating replacements), but from what I've seen navies everywhere seem to operate on the one crew = one ship principle. So if the ship is underway 11 months a year, the crew only gets 30 days off, which is insane... But then so's having a ship alongside for four plus months out of every year.
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Feb 19, 2014 03:51
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Xerxes17 posted:Blue/gold crews? US Boomers have two full crews, captain and all. One crew takes the ship on its 80ish day patrol, the other remains behind, does training and preps for maintenance. When the ship comes back, both crews do maintenance and preservation, training, then the other crew takes it out, and the first stays in. Repeat. This greatly increases the hands available for test/repair work (which is a tremendous help) and lets national asset warheads spend more time on deterrent duty. They're trying a similar concept now with the smaller surface ships, but I think they're doing it hotrack-style with three crews swapping between two hulls or some other way of totally loving it all up.
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Feb 19, 2014 04:04
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Snowdens Secret posted:I know. The Ohio hulls are excellent for the sorts of missions we're giving them, and while the -GN conversion includes refueling cost, the alternative was retiring the hulls with plenty of life left, for START compliance. This being said, I have a feeling when we finally catch up to the rest of the world in regards to supersonic/hypersonic cruise missiles, there'll need to be some *speshul* non-software modification to all current VLS-equipped and SSGN platforms to launch it. "Ohhh, sorry - this missile HAS to be 1cm larger than the current VLS standard allows...guess we'll just have to retrofit *every* compatible platform in a staggered rollout to carry it. Darn it all. Blame the engineers."  I'm thinking the same thing will happen with whatever ends up replacing the Minuteman III, even though the entire concept of fixed-silo ICBMs is, and always will be, retarded. Maintaining to field them even more so. If there's one thing Russia's doing *right*, it's eating a lot of poo poo in the form of R&D failures to standardize their ICBM/SLBM force around a single missile design, while prioritizing road-mobile ICBMs and SLBMs, and planning less focus on their bomber force (I highly doubt the PAK-DA will ever go into production, and last I heard they were planning on replacing naval-duty Tu-22Ms with Su-34s). BIG HEADLINE fucked around with this message at 04:52 on Feb 19, 2014 |
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Feb 19, 2014 04:41
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BIG HEADLINE posted:This being said, I have a feeling when we finally catch up to the rest of the world in regards to supersonic/hypersonic cruise missiles, there'll need to be some *speshul* non-software modification to all current VLS-equipped and SSGN platforms to launch it. Supersonic flight requires -much- more fuel for the same range, hypersonic even more so. So it's not going to be 1cm larger, it'd be more like two or three times the size. From wiki: Tomahawk: 3,500lb with booster, 20 feet long, 20 inches wide (fits in a 533mm torp tube.) Range around 1000 miles SS-N-22 Sunburn: 10,000lb, 32 feet, 29 inches wide, 75! mile range SS-N-26 / BrahMos: 6600lb, 30 feet, about 27 inches, maybe 180 mile range (and that's probably only for air launch) SS-N-19 Shipwreck: 15,000lb, 33 feet, 30 inches, 300 miles Those Russian ones probably don't include whatever else you'd need to launch the weapon submerged, either, like the Tomahawk does. Look at how much space the Oscars have to give to missiles:  You -might- be able to retrofit something like that into an SSBN hull but there's no way a Burke Block III or an SSN hull is going to take anything like that. It should also be noted that even within the small frame the Tomahawk has a ton of room for the warhead, allowing it to pack a large conventional punch or a wide variety of submunitions. The Russian ones don't have that space or flexibility. Snowdens Secret fucked around with this message at 05:34 on Feb 19, 2014 |
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Feb 19, 2014 05:32
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Mr. Funny Pants posted:300 level poly-sci class. A woman in my class raises her hand and says, "Now, World War One, that was the one that was about Hitler, right?" This reminds me of something I overheard while visiting March Field Air Museum. A grade-school kid, correcting his peer, "It's World War One, not World War I" (pronounced Eye, like the letter or the pronoun.)
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Feb 19, 2014 05:51
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Snowdens Secret posted:It should also be noted that even within the small frame the Tomahawk has a ton of room for the warhead, allowing it to pack a large conventional punch or a wide variety of submunitions. The Russian ones don't have that space or flexibility. To say nothing of the fact that the reason the "RoW" is focusing on sub-launched hypersonic cruise missiles is because subs provide a multi-mission platform advantage over, say, maintaining a large fleet of heavy bombers capable of carrying super/hyper-sonic cruise missiles. The BrahMos also gets away with its speed and range because it only carries a 200kg warhead on the sea/land-based launch variant. Granted, if something nearly 30 feet long smacks into a ship at ~M2.5, the warhead's a bit of an afterthought. Mr. Funny Pants posted:300 level poly-sci class. A woman in my class raises her hand and says, "Now, World War One, that was the one that was about Hitler, right?" To be fair, policy wranglers/lobbyists don't know a goddamned thing they don't have a researcher look up for them and summarize, so she's on the right track for her field. BIG HEADLINE fucked around with this message at 06:00 on Feb 19, 2014 |
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Feb 19, 2014 05:56
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StandardVC10 posted:This reminds me of something I overheard while visiting March Field Air Museum. A grade-school kid, correcting his peer, "It's World War One, not World War I" (pronounced Eye, like the letter or the pronoun.) Pffft! Both wrong! It's pronounced, "The Great War". Question. . . anyone know how much life is actually left in those Ohio boats before they have to be retired? I've head that 2030 is when the first ones are expected to be retired (50 years running). If that's true, they will have served longer than the Iowa class battleships.
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Feb 19, 2014 06:39
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The activation of the Iowa class during the 1980s was an absolute god drat disaster. Not sure if that should count...
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Feb 19, 2014 06:48
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Smiling Jack posted:The activation of the Iowa class during the 1980s was an absolute god drat disaster. Not sure if that should count... If the Marines can pretend it's 1942, so can the navy! Hell, we got "Under Siege" out of the deal. Money well spent!
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Feb 19, 2014 07:04
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The Iowas weren't retired because their hulls wore out. They were retired because they were just straight too obsolete - specifically, their powerplants were too inefficient / expensive to run, and there was no mission profile / payload that justified refitting them. The guns were neat but had no modern military role and were way, way too manpower intensive. Like SJ implied, the 'we need these to back up Marine landings' ideas behind Iowa reactivation aren't too far from the ideas that required the F-35 be able to do VTOL. The Ohios don't have the problems with propulsion plant obsolescence today and the missile deterrence role is pretty gentle on the hulls. 50 years is end of core life after one refueling, and at that point they'll probably be too old and tired to justify another reactor core replacement.
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Feb 19, 2014 07:06
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Blistex posted:If the Marines can pretend it's 1942, so can the navy! Hell, we got "Under Siege" out of the deal. Money well spent! Hoooo ya 
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Feb 19, 2014 07:23
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Snowdens Secret posted:The Iowas weren't retired because their hulls wore out. They were retired because they were just straight too obsolete - specifically, their powerplants were too inefficient / expensive to run, and there was no mission profile / payload that justified refitting them. The guns were neat but had no modern military role and were way, way too manpower intensive. What they'd *originally* planned for the Iowa-class reactivation makes what they became seem logical by comparison. Martin-Marietta (which later merged/metastasized to become Lockheed-Martin) wanted to gut the ship and turn it into something resembling the Moskva. Keep in mind we had ships perfectly/ideally suited for servicing Harriers like the Iwo Jima-class at the time. The real reason(s) the Iowas were reactivated were: 1) In the early 80s it was popular to put nukes on everything that could carry them. 2) Battleships are nicer to look at when they're ported abroad than carriers and dictate a clear 'don't gently caress with us' message. This is why there are more museum battleships than there are museum carriers. 3) Jobs. 4) Nostalgia. 5) The Navy in the 80s was bloated to poo poo and they needed 'flagships' to round out new "Surface Action Groups." Early 1980s Navy strength: http://www.history.navy.mil/branches/org9-4.htm#1979 Iowa-class Helicopter Carrier (never made it past proposal):  Moskva-class Helicopter Carrier (existed): 
BIG HEADLINE fucked around with this message at 11:17 on Feb 19, 2014 |
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Feb 19, 2014 11:06
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There are Cold War implications for this question: one of my eighth grade students asked me a few weeks ago, "Is Canada part of the United States?" The same student kept complaining that she got marked off for her daily journal writings, which were supposed to be five sentences long. She brought me her journal for the day and asked if she would get full credit for it, so I told her to count the number of sentences. Her answer: "Oh, I don't use those little dot thingies." Periods. She meant periods. There's also a map in our classroom that is from about 25 years ago. It shows a united Germany, but it still has the USSR, Yugoslavia, and several other Cold War era anachronisms. I think it's really neat to find maps and globes from that time; makes me wonder if the folks who were making the map suspected the entire thing would become obsolete in another year or two.
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Feb 19, 2014 12:25
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BIG HEADLINE posted:5) The Navy in the 80s was bloated to poo poo and they needed 'flagships' to round out new "Surface Action Groups." You think the navy and Reagan were bad in the 80's with their 571 ships? Check out 1938-1944 with its 6000+ ship navy! Did Roosevelt and Truman even try and hide their wasteful defense spending? 
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Feb 19, 2014 14:18
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grover posted:The problems the F-35 has aren't the showstopper kind. They're more of the "this will cost more money that we thought and take more time than we hoped" type problems. IE, same as the problems at this point in the development of every aircraft procurement program, ever. The biggest difference now is just how much media it's getting. The F-35's got nothing on how rocky the R&D for the F-14 was. Most of the specific issues 60 minutes harped on is erroneous or a non-issue. Oh, and nobody is ever going to fly an F-35 the way they'd fly an F-22A because it's performance isn't even in the same loving league as an F-22. No one gives a gently caress about DAS besides Lockheed PR hacks because we aren't going gamble on being able to defeat modern highly maneuverable IR-seeking AAMs with the F-35.
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Feb 19, 2014 15:04
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Serious question: Grover, do you stand to make money, personally, based on the F-35? Or are you just an indubitably optimistic guy?
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Feb 19, 2014 19:57
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BIG HEADLINE posted:
Sooooo, what happens to the helos when you fire a 6-gun broadside?
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Feb 19, 2014 21:13
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Not much because they'd all be strapped down to the deck.
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Feb 19, 2014 21:34
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Count Sacula posted:Sooooo, what happens to the helos when you fire a 6-gun broadside? They're used to ferry the injured and dead crewmen to the hospital ship.
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Feb 19, 2014 23:03
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That Iowa design reminds me a ton of failed Z-plan projects for carriers of the Germans, before the second world war. In fact, it's strikingly similar to the Ise (Japanese battleship) after it was converted. The idea of battleship/cruiser and carrier hybrids was scrapped in the early 40s since, surprise surprise, the result is a ship that underperforms greatly in both roles.
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Feb 19, 2014 23:23
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Dead Reckoning posted:It blows up the idea of a low cost multi-role fighter if it's going to take another trillion dollars to activate the capabilities that were sold as improvements over the F-16. The F16 was probably one of the greatest success stories of US defense procurement since WW2 in that it produced two excellent multirole fighters for a very reasonable price in a reasonable time frame. It shouldn't be surprising that it took the machinations of a "fighter mafia" faction at odds with the establishment to get it done or that its success has not been repeated.
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Feb 19, 2014 23:25
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Dead Reckoning posted:Sorry, this is bullshit. "There are a few kinks to work out, it's just going to take time and money" is a card you can pull out if you're pushing past the edge of what is known to be possible with current technology, or it's the 1960s and you're designing swing-wing supersonic fighters with a slide rule. The F-35 was allowed to skip significant steps in the testing and prototyping process because Lockheed Martin promised that CAD and their experience building the F-22 would prevent exactly these sort of gently caress-ups. It blows up the idea of a low cost multi-role fighter if it's going to take another trillion dollars to activate the capabilities that were sold as improvements over the F-16. This is particularly relevant because there's going to be a real Come-to-Jesus about the Pentagon's spending as we wind down our current war. The most likely outcome of capabilities that require additional spending to realize is that said spending is going to be put off indefinitely, like we will end up doing with the LCS multi-mission modules and we already have with literally every other government project. mlmp08: I have nothing to do with the F-35 program, and no stake in it besides being a citizen and taxpayer.
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Feb 19, 2014 23:31
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Blistex posted:They're used to ferry the injured and dead crewmen to the hospital ship. Hahahahah 
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Feb 19, 2014 23:40
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grover posted:According to 60 minutes' hit piece last week, Flyaway costs are $115M/aircraft and falling, which is right about on-part with other contemporary aircraft. This statement needs some qualification. Contemporary as in being rolled out now? How many fighters are being rolled out now? I'm not just asking to be a dick, I really don't know exactly if there are other comparable aircraft being rolled out now. Even the typhoon, a poorly run program, costs less. If you mean Gen 5-ish aircraft that are multirole and LO being rolled out now, well.... Is there a comparison aircraft outside of areas like Russia and China, where open-source analysis is dubious at best? Also, was that optimistic cost you quoted for an F-35A, B, or C? I'm presuming, admittedly, that it was for the A model. Not all F-35s cost the same, as you well know, and if the B and C cost a truckload, that matters in evaluating the success of the program.
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Feb 20, 2014 00:00
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mlmp08 posted:This statement needs some qualification. Contemporary as in being rolled out now? How many fighters are being rolled out now? I'm not just asking to be a dick, I really don't know exactly if there are other comparable aircraft being rolled out now. Even the typhoon, a poorly run program, costs less. If you mean Gen 5-ish aircraft that are multirole and LO being rolled out now, well.... Is there a comparison aircraft outside of areas like Russia and China, where open-source analysis is dubious at best? Flyaway cost for a Tranche 3 Eurofighter is $125M (€90M) according to Wikipedia. Brazil just contracted $4.5B for 36 Gripens, at a cost of $125M each. Rafales cost between $95-124M depending on variant, according to Wikipedia. F-22A flyaway cost was somewhere around $150M.
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Feb 20, 2014 00:15
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The gripen deal seems odd. quote:Dassault wanted 8 billion for 36 units of its Rafale fighter, while Boeing was asking 7.5 billion for three-dozen F/A-18 Super Hornets , the Brazilian government said in a statement. How the gently caress would 36 Superbugs costs 7.5 billion, when their flyaway cost is around $70 million? Is that cost expressly for airframes or for other support as well? Just based on some quick googling, I'm guessing that $4.5 billion isn't just aiframes, but includes support, training, etc. edit: also I'm not totally anti-every JSF. I could even see having a handful of JSFs if the program wasn't so dumb. I just don't see why EVERY GODDAMNED JET needs to be LO and snazzy instead of having a small-ish number that can do that, while having a larger number of less capable jets for day 7+ operations. mlmp08 fucked around with this message at 00:22 on Feb 20, 2014 |
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Feb 20, 2014 00:20
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It's some big package. Don't even try to read jet fighter acquisition cost tea leaves btw, it's an inherently fruitless endeavour.
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Feb 20, 2014 00:22
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poo poo, some of those contracts include ammunition and poo poo, too, don't they? Military planes are expensive. There, it's settled 
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Feb 20, 2014 00:25
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VikingSkull posted:Military planes are expensive. There, it's settled
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Feb 20, 2014 00:30
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grover posted:That's pretty much the ground truth. Jet fighters are just motherfucking expensive! I guess that's one way to put it. I'm just saying there's virutally zero chance that the cost of those Gripens is 4.5 billion for Saab to say "here's a ship with 36 aiframes on it that you don't know how to fly, don't have weapons for, don't have repair parts for. Get hosed."
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Feb 20, 2014 00:34
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mlmp08 posted:I just don't see why EVERY GODDAMNED JET needs to be LO and snazzy instead of having a small-ish number that can do that, while having a larger number of less capable jets for day 7+ operations. Because those are aircraft that are going to have US military personnel in them and post-Vietnam there is nothing that is as much of a political hot potato as military casualties. The US population really has no stomach for casualties and even one or two that are made big, public spectacles in the wrong way can completely gently caress up the politics surrounding a deployment. Take the Battle of Mogadishu for example - there were all sorts of reasons for the ultimate US pullout, but a couple dead helicopter crewmen being drug through the streets and the headaches that resulted is pretty high on that list. Ever since GW 1 with Schwartzkopf standing next to that video footage of a smart bomb going down an air shaft and all the news footage of impotent Iraqi AAA putting on a hell of a light show while doing dick all to the stealth aircraft overhead we've sold modern American warfare to the public on the basic premie that our soldiers will have the best of everything, period, and because of that we will not only have an overwhelming superiority of force on the battlefield but reduce war to (for us) an almost bloodless exercise. We've painted ourselves into a corner where an rear end in a top hat with an RPG landing a lucky shot can be a media nightmare. Even if it's just so much bullshit it's extremely politically important that the next gen at least LOOK stealthy and high tech.
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Feb 20, 2014 01:05
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Investing in "traditional" means also sends the message the US is willing to engage on terms other than our own. 's bad for exceptionalism, see?
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