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mlmp08 posted:So if we don't let you know, are we going to be deprived of your valuable posting? What's the black one about? Outside of looking cool as gently caress?
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Apr 9, 2014 21:19
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IIRC, it's a KC 707 tanker.
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Apr 9, 2014 21:20
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mlmp08 posted:IIRC, it's a KC 707 tanker. This, it's a KC-135. It also retains the early turbojet engines in lieu of the turbofans that most now wear. But what the heck is that white one? It looks like a Gulfstream with a tumor minus a few windows. Is it basically a baby AWACS?
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Apr 9, 2014 21:42
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Doctor Grape Ape posted:This, it's a KC-135. It also retains the early turbojet engines in lieu of the turbofans that most now wear. Some variant of the E11/Sentinel, maybe?
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Apr 9, 2014 22:04
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/\ That's initially what I thought but the only Sentinel operator is the UK and all of theirs are painted grey and the E-11's various canoes and radomes don't quite match up with how that aircraft is configured. Also both of those are based on the Bombardier Global Express, although I'll be honest I can't really tell the difference between that and a Gulfstream without some extremely high-res pictures. /\ So after some extensive thinking and looking (because it was bugging the poo poo out of me), that's an Israeli AF line up. The Herks should be self explanatory (the IAF just got their first -J model delivered today, which is where I'm assuming the picture came from). The black one is a 707 configured for aerial refueling (not a KC-135...they look very similar but they are different airframes; they're both based on the 367-80 but the KC-135/"717" is narrower and shorter than the 707, they are also structurally different). The white one is a G550 the IAF has that is configured for "special missions" (i.e., ELINT/SIGINT). They also have a couple G550s that are configured for an AEW&C AWACS style mission; those has bulbous side radomes as opposed to the under fuselage canoe the "special mission" aircraft has. iyaayas01 fucked around with this message at 22:10 on Apr 9, 2014 |
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Apr 9, 2014 22:08
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Mortabis posted:Let me know when this thread is done channeling Michael Moore, thanks. White Knighting Dick Cheney. That's a new one!
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Apr 9, 2014 22:11
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iyaayas01 posted:/\ That's initially what I thought but the only Sentinel operator is the UK and all of theirs are painted grey and the E-11's various canoes and radomes don't quite match up with how that aircraft is configured. Also both of those are based on the Bombardier Global Express, although I'll be honest I can't really tell the difference between that and a Gulfstream without some extremely high-res pictures. /\ Well poo poo, that roundel is just hanging out on the front C-130 and I didn't even notice!
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Apr 9, 2014 22:12
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madeintaipei posted:Well poo poo, that roundel is just hanging out on the front C-130 and I didn't even notice! It took me looking at a higher-res picture of the IAF C-130J before I made the connection (right around the same time I clicked on the -H's paint scheme). Scratch Monkey posted:White Knighting Dick Cheney. That's a new one! I'm as far from Michael Moore as they come and Cheney is a colossal piece of poo poo. Not as big a one as Rumsfeld though. As much as I vehemently disagree with Gates's approach towards airpower specifically and the whole "next war-itis" concept generally, I find it hard to muster up even a bit of condemnation towards him...partially because I think he's incredibly smart and one of the few true strategic thinkers we've had in the defense/intel establishment over the past 20 years, but mostly because he's not Rumsfeld. iyaayas01 fucked around with this message at 22:24 on Apr 9, 2014 |
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Apr 9, 2014 22:21
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iyaayas01 posted:although I'll be honest I can't really tell the difference between that and a Gulfstream without some extremely high-res pictures. Most Gulfstreams have circular, porthole style windows, that was my only clue. I will agree that the business jet world is full of many different airplanes that all look the same, especially in pictures where you have no idea of scale. Lear 24s are the best though, and NASA agrees with me: 
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Apr 9, 2014 22:25
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iyaayas01 posted:As much as I vehemently disagree with Gates's approach towards airpower specifically and the whole "next war-itis" concept generally, I find it hard to muster up even a bit of condemnation towards him...partially because I think he's incredibly smart and one of the few true strategic thinkers we've had in the defense/intel establishment over the past 20 years, but mostly because he's not Rumsfeld. Gates seems like one of the savvier cabinet members, in either the Bush or Obama administrations. I'm interested to read his book at some point. Back to the Cold War, but similarly: I read Kissinger's memoirs when I was in high school (over a decade ago) and I know he address the '71 India-Pakistan War- the US backing Pakistan and the Soviets backing India (though I'm unclear on the extent of their support). The whole thing also had a lot to do with the Sino-Soviet split and the US trying to play the PRC against the USSR. Reading up online a bit, I see there was a US-Soviet naval confrontation. Anybody know more about the Cold War implications or know any good sources on it?
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Apr 9, 2014 22:37
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Moving on from Cheney, let's talk about one of the planes that he tried to kill repeatedly. The Osprey. While visiting the US Marine Corps Museum in Quantico, I noticed a monolith-like slab on one of the trails in the park-like area surrounding it. Which may be a park for all I know I don't quite remember.  I have to wonder how common memorials are for victims of a specific aircraft's development.
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Apr 9, 2014 22:50
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Veritek83 posted:Gates seems like one of the savvier cabinet members, in either the Bush or Obama administrations. I'm interested to read his book at some point. I'm about 2/3rds of the way through Gary Bass's The Blood Telegram, which is all about the East Pakistan genocide and the '71 war. I mentioned it a page or two ago, but it is excellent. While you are correct that the Sino-Soviet split and the subsequent "Nixon to China"/playing the PRC against the USSR impacted the situation and specifically US policy towards the issue, the bulk of what was driving US policy was Nixon and Kissinger's pathological hatred of India in general and Indira Gandhi specifically. The US not just stood by, but aided and abetted Pakistan's murder of three hundred thousand of its own citizens (and that's just direct murder, not even getting into the several hundred thousand more who died in refugee camps after fleeing the murder) just because its leaders hated India...all the while telling themselves that what they were doing was realpolitik in the name of the greater good (nevermind the part where they actively suppressed the reporting of the US Consulate in Dacca in East Pakistan on the genocide well before the idea of using Pakistan as a conduit to China presented itself). I'd highly recommend reading it if you are interested in the subject...I haven't quite gotten to the war itself yet (I'm on the eve of war right now) so I can't comment about how far in depth it goes discussing the US-Soviet naval confrontation, but as far as an good overarching discussion regarding the war (as well as the genocide/refugee situation that is what really sparked the conflict), I think you'd be hard-pressed to find a better read. That goes double if you read Kissinger's memoirs...you will have a far different opinion of Kissinger and Nixon as "master real politik statesmen" or whatever after reading Bass's book. Bass definitely has an overarching professional focus, one might argue agenda (many of his works are focused on genocide prevention/humanitarian intervention) but The Blood Telegram isn't written from an ideological point of view. It's straight history, and Nixon/Kissinger's documented words/actions do more than enough to hang themselves as bigoted sexist idiots who let their prejudices drive major policy decisions.
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Apr 9, 2014 22:54
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iyaayas01 posted:It's straight history Not that I disagree with anything else that you wrote, exactly (frankly I don't have enough of a knowledge base on those subjects to have a strong opinion one way or the other) but there's no such thing as 'straight history.'
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Apr 9, 2014 22:59
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Cyrano4747 posted:Not that I disagree with anything else that you wrote, exactly (frankly I don't have enough of a knowledge base on those subjects to have a strong opinion one way or the other) but there's no such thing as 'straight history.' You're right, of course...let me rephrase: everything Bass presents regarding why Nixon/Kissinger did what they did is supported with direct quotations from archival tapes or written memos. It is linked together in such a way that the conclusion which is drawn is that Nixon/Kissinger were primarily acting out of hatred of India and Indira Gandhi as opposed to being motivated by any larger realpolitik concerns...so that is the slant, but I would put much more stock in that being closer to a correct interpretation of events as opposed to what Nixon and/or Kissinger put in their memoirs.
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Apr 9, 2014 23:08
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Yeah, while it was years ago that I read it, even as a teenager, I didn't really buy Kissinger as an impartial historian of his own actions. I'll definitely check out the Bass book. I found this piece about the war that mentions a standoff between elements of the Soviet Pacific Fleet and both the British and US navies, but I'm more than a bit dubious about the quality of the site, as it seems to be an international student run volunteer news site.
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Apr 9, 2014 23:22
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I'm still semi-convinced that Cheney, Rumsfeld and a few others were long term Iranian sleeper agents.
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Apr 9, 2014 23:36
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Veritek83 posted:Yeah, while it was years ago that I read it, even as a teenager, I didn't really buy Kissinger as an impartial historian of his own actions. I skimmed ahead in the Bass book...I think "confrontation" or "standoff" is a pretty strong word for what actually occurred. The US sent the Enterprise into the Bay of Bengal as a show of force against the Indians (with zero intentions of actually employing anything) and there happened to be a couple of Soviet vessels in the vicinity, but no one ever got very close to anyone else's ships and it was really all just strategic messaging. I mean, if the US had gotten involved the point of directly engaging Indian forces things probably would've gotten hairy given the treaty India and the Soviets had signed a few months prior, but the historical evidence is clear, Nixon/Kissinger had zero intention of doing anything anything with the Enterprise other than scaring the Indians, and I think most everyone involved at the time (including many in the Indian government) had a pretty solid idea that was the case. Also I have no idea where that site got the idea that the RN was in any way involved. iyaayas01 fucked around with this message at 23:42 on Apr 9, 2014 |
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Apr 9, 2014 23:39
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Concordat posted:Moving on from Cheney, let's talk about one of the planes that he tried to kill repeatedly. In his defense, the original Osprey (version 1.0, if you will) was a dangerous, overly expensive piece of crap that didn't work. Once Bell/Boeing went back to the drawing board and redesigned it, Osprey v2.0 is a decent aircraft.
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Apr 10, 2014 00:17
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MRC48B posted:In his defense, the original Osprey (version 1.0, if you will) was a dangerous, overly expensive piece of crap that didn't work. Once Bell/Boeing went back to the drawing board and redesigned it, Osprey v2.0 is a decent aircraft. The real big problem was that they had a full squad of Marines on it when it was still very much a developmental aircraft(TWICE). Most of the time if a test plane/pilot fucks up it's one or maybe two people at risk and they have a good chance of ejecting.
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Apr 10, 2014 00:42
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priznat posted:"THE BUMS WILL ALWAYS LOSE, LEBOWSKI!" "My God, Dude...this guy doesn't need a pacemaker at all! He's fakin'!"
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Apr 10, 2014 00:56
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Nebakenezzer posted:"My God, Dude...this guy doesn't need a pacemaker at all! He's fakin'!" Wasn't the guy walking around with a backpack that was pumping his blood for him while waiting for one of his clones to mature enough to harvest its heart?
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Apr 10, 2014 01:16
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iyaayas01 posted:As much as I vehemently disagree with Gates's approach towards airpower specifically and the whole "next war-itis" concept generally... Could you elaborate a little more on this? afaik, Gates' big airpower decisions were axing the F-22 and the F-35 saga. What did he do badly in terms of aviation procurement, strategy, doctrine, etc.?
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Apr 10, 2014 01:32
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Bacarruda posted:Could you elaborate a little more on this? afaik, Gates' big airpower decisions were axing the F-22 and the F-35 saga. What did he do badly in terms of aviation procurement, strategy, doctrine, etc.? Need to run to dinner, so I'll expand later, but two big things: - Axing the F-22 in favor of continuing/expanding the F-35, because they were "equivalent." I'm still not 100% sure on this whether he honestly believed it and just wasn't skeptical enough when dealing with his advisors or if he was continuing his vindictive streak against the USAF. I'm hoping his memoirs (which I'm starting reading in earnest next week) go into this subject. - "Next war-itis." Yeah, RPAs are well and good for supporting ground forces in a low intensity counter-insurgency fight in some shithole country (like, say, a worthless landlocked geo-political backwater in Central Asia), but they aren't the most useful against anyone who is capable of cobbling together a couple of SAMs or a fighter or two. Unfortunately the USAF can't plan for the best case scenario where all we do is support the Army in the next COIN fight in a worthless shithole...but that's exactly what he wanted us to do. He wanted us to drop everything we were doing (which, incidentally, included a lot of stuff that was directly or indirectly supporting the Army in the aforementioned worthless shithole) in favor of buying more, more, MORE Preds. Regarding "next war-itis," this is how you wind up with several billion dollars worth of MRAPs that you have absolutely no use for.
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Apr 10, 2014 01:38
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Actual RPAs aside, huge portions on the intelligence community were retooled to support SOF/SOF-like actions in permissive environments with near total information dominance. The guys who spent 30 years studying the Russkies and know what the hell they're doing all retired in the 90s or got promoted out of their usefulness.  OMG LISTENING TO UR METADATA means gently caress all next to failing to understand SA-21s and SS-2whatever SCROTUMs. Terrorism is a national security inconvenience, not a threat.Some things F-35's ain't real useful for.
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Apr 10, 2014 01:55
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evil_bunnY posted:McNamara was plenty rich before he ever set foot in the white house. People forget he left his job as the President of the Ford Motor Company to join the White House. The dude was loaded. That being said, thank god he did because no way a bean counter like him would have pissed money away in racing, and early 60's Ford was neck and neck with Chrysler for the "most batshit crazy" auto company. Rumsfeld is evil because he's a resurrected Egyptian mummy the Brits found in 1891. iyaayas01 posted:Regarding "next war-itis," this is how you wind up with several billion dollars worth of MRAPs that you have absolutely no use for. Oh, they have a use, I was riding along next to one the other day. Shiny black with the county SWAT logo all over it. Lotta IED's here in suburban New York. Or Tusken Raiders. One of the two. Seizure Meat fucked around with this message at 02:15 on Apr 10, 2014 |
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Apr 10, 2014 02:06
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Propagandalf posted:Actual RPAs aside, huge portions on the intelligence community were retooled to support SOF/SOF-like actions in permissive environments with near total information dominance. The guys who spent 30 years studying the Russkies and know what the hell they're doing all retired in the 90s or got promoted out of their usefulness. Terrorism isn't and has never been an existential threat, yet we focus on it with an absurd amount of intensity and resources.
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Apr 10, 2014 02:17
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Bacarruda posted:Could you elaborate a little more on this? afaik, Gates' big airpower decisions were axing the F-22 and the F-35 saga. What did he do badly in terms of aviation procurement, strategy, doctrine, etc.? Axing the F-22, the F-35 saga Also, please tell me SCROTUMS is a real acronym for something ballistic missile related
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Apr 10, 2014 02:21
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iyaayas01 posted:- Axing the F-22 in favor of continuing/expanding the F-35, because they were "equivalent." I'm still not 100% sure on this whether he honestly believed it and just wasn't skeptical enough when dealing with his advisors or if he was continuing his vindictive streak against the USAF. I'm hoping his memoirs (which I'm starting reading in earnest next week) go into this subject. Hell, even reading the specs on Wikipedia shows that they are far from equivalent when it comes to performance, and that's even allowing for a hell of a margin of error due to speculation and classified info. F-22/F-35 Max Speed: 2.25/1.6 Supercruise: 1.82/NA Range: 1600/1400 Service Ceiling: 65,000/60,000 A2A Loadout: 8 Internal HP/4 Internal HP And just look at the fuckoff huge nozzle on the 35! That is in no way stealthy from any angle that isn't almost exactly forwards of the aircraft and is just asking for an IR missile to check it's Pratt & Whitney prostate. Is it possible he thought they were "equivalent" due to the predicted cost differences  allowing more of the F-35 to be fielded for the same amount of cash? What's the current "sticker price" on a F-35? Would you have to buy at least 50 before you get an extra "free" unit compared to the F-22? Or were "lasers" going to be the determining factor? *shines the "GroverSignal"*
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Apr 10, 2014 02:21
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Also, did they stop the F-22 at 187 units as some kind of super sick metaburn?
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Apr 10, 2014 02:24
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Yup! 195 built, 8 test, 187 operational. Wasn't the original order supposed to be 250? That must have upped the price-per-unit several million per craft. I blame the Navy's Army's Air Force.
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Apr 10, 2014 02:38
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Doctor Grape Ape posted:But what the heck is that white one? It looks like a Gulfstream with a tumor minus a few windows. Is it basically a baby AWACS? Looking around it appears to be a Gulfstream G-V Shavit. I was going to say G-V Eitam, but that's even more tumorous apparently. Israel Aircraft Industries has a controlling stake in Gulfstream, or something to that effect, so I guess it made a reasonable platform for these. Apart from that, I don't know anything about their capabilities.
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Apr 10, 2014 02:45
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VikingSkull posted:Also, did they stop the F-22 at 187 units as some kind of super sick metaburn? What's significant about the number 187?
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Apr 10, 2014 03:10
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TheDon01 posted:What's significant about the number 187? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SXr6aUFP8U
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Apr 10, 2014 03:16
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TheDon01 posted:What's significant about the number 187? That's how many DoD said we were getting. No, seriously, that's all it's based on. It is a completely arbitrary number based on a determination by Gates that it is how many we need; it has zero basis in any strategic consideration or force structure discussion. The "original" number (scare quotes because the technical original order was like 750, but that was before the post-Cold War drawdown) was 381...that was based on the number the USAF determined we needed to present the required amount of forces to the Combatant Commanders in a worst case scenario based on (generally worthless) high level planning docs like the National Security Strategy, National Defense Strategy, and National Military Strategy. Here's a decent article (admittedly from AFA, who are the USAF's cheerleaders...doesn't make what they wrote any less valid) that does a good job of breaking down where the 381 number comes from, looking at it from the top down. I'll refer to that article in a second when discussing force structure. When OSD said "you get 187, and I am basing that on absolutely nothing" what they left unsaid was "and oh by the way, you need to be able to present the same effects of air supremacy to the Combatant Commanders in line with the NSS/NDS/NMS into the future, I don't want to hear about threat nations with near peer capabilities, LALALALALA CAN'T HEAR YOU." Oh by the way, dirty little secret about that 187 number...that isn't the actual number of combat coded aircraft. Refer back to that article I linked above...of the 381, only 240 were supposed to be combat coded. The rest were going to be test, training, backup inventory, and attrition reserve. So of the 187 number, a significant portion less than that are actual combat coded assets. They incurred some additional risk when they worked the 187 number because they programmed less (percentage wise) AR and BAI into the overall fleet in an effort to up the combat coded numbers. Another dirty little secret: 37 of the 187 are physically incapable of being considered combat capable. The first 37 off the production line have hardware differences that make them incapable of being upgraded past the Block 20 standard; the Block 30s (capable of being upgraded to Block 35 and beyond) is the baseline combat capable standard. So 37 are only good for training and some test work. So to bring it back to the original Gates comment that started all this, I could sum up my problems with him in one phrase: lack of definitive data when making decisions. He decreed that we would get 187 Raptors when we said we needed 381; we had hard data to back up 381, he said (almost verbatim) "I don't believe your numbers and think you're lying, you're getting 187 because I said so." He decreed that we would get to 65 RPA CAPs to support ground forces. He claimed that there were massive amounts of unfilled CAP requirements from the ground forces and that the mean, uncaring USAF was leaving ARE TROOPS out there twisting in the wind and not being all in to the fight today because we wanted our super awesome but completely pointless stealth fighters for some pie in the sky war with China 20 years from now. Setting aside the fact that when Gates was making his comments about the USAF not being committed enough to the wars there were literally thousands of USAF personnel deployed with the Army doing Army jobs (for which many of the USAF personnel received little to no training for) because the Army is too loving stupid to manage their own people effectively enough to do their own work so they have to drag the other services in to provide bodies to do the Army's jobs for them, another dirty little secret: even today, when we are about to hit 65 CAPs, there are still a shitload of unfilled COCOM requirements for CAPs. Many of those unfilled requirements are (paraphrasing) an Army O-6 wanting to have a bunch of Pred porn piped into his TOC/JOC/whatever so he can have 24/7 eyes on every inch of his real estate, regardless of whether anything is actually happening. Just because a COCOM/ground force requirement is unfilled doesn't necessarily mean it's valid or that the supported unit is going to effectively use the CAP when they are given it...the USAF tried to point this out to Gates when he decreed his (completely arbitrary) 65 CAPs number, he wasn't hearing it and proceeded to make more public attacks on the USAF and its leadership. I will fully admit that this is typed out from a USAF-centric perspective, and like I said, I actually really like Gates, I just think he was out to lunch when making airpower related decisions.
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Apr 10, 2014 04:29
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187 is (with a touch of rounding) exactly 1/4 the original 750 buy. I've said it before but Gates had a lot less choice than people make out in the F-22 vs F-35 decision. Going with the -22 and abandoning the -35 would have left us with far fewer total airframes. It would have pulled the rug under the allies we hornswaggled into the project. It's not Gates's fault the JSF idea (as cooked up back in '96) was retarded, it's not Gates fault there wasn't any other suitable 5th gen projects in the wings if JSF flopped, and it's not his fault the bottom's fallen out of the DoD budget right when all the Cold War leftovers are aging out. I actually don't like Gates for non-AF stuff, but I think Gates's choice seems to have maximized airframes for the longest future timeframe, and was probably the best possible move. (Someone's going to suggest more F-16s or Superbugs but they're not going to be any more survivable in the mid-21st century skies than current drones.)
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Apr 10, 2014 04:53
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That's really interesting, thanks. Is there a way to see about how many and where those 187 are deployed around the country? I work in downtown Anchorage, AK a couple miles from Elmendorf AFB and I see F-22s flying around all the time. I understand they are an expensive waste of money that we don't really need, but drat if are they aren't the best lookin plane to watch fly around. (We don't seem to have any B-1Bs)
TheDon01 fucked around with this message at 05:20 on Apr 10, 2014 |
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Apr 10, 2014 05:18
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TheDon01 posted:That's really interesting, thanks. Is there a way to see about how many and where those 187 are deployed around the country? All that's googlable...the combat coded jets are at Elmendorf (2 squadrons), Langley (2 squadrons), Hickam (1 squadron, ANG), and Tyndall (1 squadron) (there's also four rump operational squadrons...1 ANG, at Langley, 1 AD, at Hickam, and 2 Reserve, one at Elmo and one at Tyndall). Tyndall also has the schoolhouse (1 squadron of training birds) and then there are test birds spread between Nellis and Edwards.
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Apr 10, 2014 05:30
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I saw today that the US Army maintains a few ships for transport use, namely its Theater Support Vessel program (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USAV_Spearhead_(TSV-X1)). Knowing how territorial the various services are, how does the USN tolerate this, and who provides the crews?
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Apr 10, 2014 15:07
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oM1a1ycLtRs
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Apr 10, 2014 15:19
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Fearless posted:I saw today that the US Army maintains a few ships for transport use, namely its Theater Support Vessel program (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USAV_Spearhead_(TSV-X1)). Knowing how territorial the various services are, how does the USN tolerate this, and who provides the crews? Probably the same way the air force tolerates only having 400 more total aircraft than the Army.
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Apr 10, 2014 16:37
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