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Pretty sure that the main selling point of the Zumwalt class was its gun system and fire support capabilities (and capacity for upgrades to things like lasers and rail guns).
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Apr 14, 2014 12:42
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Snowdens Secret posted:I've heard that around the '60s we had several classes of ASW surface ship that went all or most of their front-line careers with (at best) severely underperforming sonar systems. If you have any info on this or any other goofed (long-retired) classes with glaring deficiencies I'd like to hear them. The Navy's ASW destroyer escort program was a huge mess. It took them 16 years (1949-1966) to finally get it right. They wanted too much, they wanted ships that were fast, capable and affordable. Instead, they basically got "pick two". They stumbled through a bunch of iterations: one class had the weapons, but was too expensive. The next was cheap enough but wasn't worth poo poo. The next had good SONAR and weapons but was woefully underpowered. Even when we "got it right" we were still way behind the Soviets - their subs were better than our ASW escorts. We finally got a good, solid ship that could do what we needed it to do in the Spruance class, but those things were a huge mess in their own right. Oh, and they wanted to stuff a drone on these things. Yeah, drones were a thing in the late 1950s. It was called DASH, Drone Anti-Submarine Helicopter:  They were supposed to give a bit of reach to the "undergunned" ASW escorts and were intended to be nuclear armed. They didn't work too well. They were radio controlled and crashed a lot, it took the Navy a few years to realize that the tech to make it work just did not exist yet, and that's where LAMPS helicopters like the SH-2 and the SH-60 came into the picture. But, uh, yeah - there were a couple of decades there where our Navy was shockingly vulnerable to one thing for another. And sure, we knew we had to do something about it. That didn't stop Congress, admiral Rickover and the shipyard industry from slowing the acquisition process to a snail's pace, though.
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Apr 14, 2014 14:56
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Koesj posted:No it's not Yeah, it's definitely not an air defense ship, it doesn't have AEGIS nor is it going to carry the new AMDR. It has VLS so if it's networked (which I don't think it currently has the capability to do) I suppose it could backfill the AEGIS ships as far as being an additional shooter if it was carrying SM-whatevers, but its primary mission set is land attack so it would seem doubtful that it would have many if any Standards in its VLS cells. And if we're being honest, as Snowden already pointed out its real value is as a operational tech demonstrator-ish class. After costs ballooned to the point where it became obvious that they couldn't be built in significant numbers to be the next-gen surface combatant, the Navy decided to go with upgraded Arleigh Burkes for the bulk of their surface combatant fleet with the Flight IIA restart and the Flight IIIs (as well as the possibility of a notional Flight IV). The reason they still built a couple of Zumwalts is to serve as a tech demonstrator for all the new toys it has that the Arleigh Burkes don't...the gun, new powerplant, possibilities from the additional power generating capacity (laser, railgun), etc. Something I just learned is that the third Zumwalt class is going to be named after LBJ...so we're going to have a USS Johnson.
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Apr 14, 2014 16:51
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iyaayas01 posted:Something I just learned is that the third Zumwalt class is going to be named after LBJ...so we're going to have a USS Johnson. heh, the Navy has always had a USS Johnson ... just not officially  I really wish there was a compendium of unofficial ship nicknames out there. As an example, the USS Blueback. if someone on that boat did not call it the bareback or the blueballs or whatever, I don't even know what the gently caress is wrong with the USN, but I can't be sure. Not sure how you'd even set up thresholds/verification for this but man, it'd be so cool to just look up a ship and see what her crew actually called her. And see how in approximately 0% of the cases it was the official name. I mean the only ones that hit popular awareness are stuff like Big E, and that's far too tame and appropriate for polite company. I know there were others, Enterprise. I know.
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Apr 14, 2014 17:14
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I thought the Enterprise was called the Mobile Chernobyl.
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Apr 14, 2014 17:32
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Psion posted:
lovely Kitty was also well known right?
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Apr 14, 2014 18:31
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A while back somebody asked for a article on the 1979 Sino-Vietnamese War: King C. Chen "China's War Against Vietnam, 1979: A Military Analysis" is the best short piece I've found on the war. The war itself is so utterly Cold War. As Vietnam is busy driving into Cambodia, China decides to send a massive ground army to punish the the Vietnamese so being so haughty. Sino-Vietnamese relations had been cut off and China hoped that a punitive war would lead to a restoration of relations. For China the biggest thing that came out of the war was a realization that a "People's Army" concept of warfare was probably pretty bankrupt in an age of technology. Hell, there was an entire strain of thought in Bejing that promoted the idea that nuclear weapons were merely, as one author put it, a paper tiger. The essence of Maoist military thought was contained in the 1979 war: men, not technology, would win the day. In the aftermath of the war was when China started to reform it's military thought and began to update their forces significantly. They also started holding joint exercises with nuclear detonations. For China the war was a mixed bag. They were able to make some gains and destroy some Vietnamese border areas but the poor logistics and rugged terrain prevented them from running the Vietnamese down. Vietnam, for it's part, fought like hell and used a mix of regular and territorial units, as most of their army was in Cambodia. Vietnam also had way more combat experience and, unsurprisingly, a far better AA grid over Hanoi and the northern half of the country thanks to Uncle Sam diligence and the Soviets. They did end up flying a few F-5s left over from the ARVN pretty effectively in addition to MiGs that were more advanced, again because of Soviet assistance. Fun Fact: The Soviets had a treaty that should have led them to side with Vietnam and attack the Chinese. But the Soviets played it smart and sent some naval assets to Cam Rahn Bay and airlifted some massive amount of aid to Hanoi but otherwise kept out. The '79 war was just weird all around.
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Apr 14, 2014 18:39
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There's a very good argument for the Sino-Chinese war being the best thing that could have happened to the PLA because it pushed them into needed reforms without requiring a bad defeat in a war that they actually needed to win. I can't remember where, but I also read somewhere that the fallout from it was pretty crucial for allowing the political/economical moderates and reformers that were coming up to push out the Korea War-era generation of military people. Instead of having a bunch of old Maoist ideologues holding the reins on the PLA and insisting that they do <incredibly counterproductive thing X> during the 80s they were able to stick in a bunch of younger professionals who were concentrated on modernizing the PLA into a real army and would be content to let the politicians do their thing as long as they kept signing the checks to un-gently caress the military.
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Apr 14, 2014 19:18
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Considering Lyndon "Jumbo" Johnson's propensities for public urination, philandering and often very literal dick-swinging, naming an extra-large surface naval combatant of dubious value after him is hilariously apt. Hopefully the poor cruiser has a better service record than LBJ did. Warships often have multiple nicknames, often derogatory, sometimes in jest, sometimes not. For Enterprise I always liked the simple 'The Prize', as in telling poor nukes that got assigned to it straight out of nuke school "Congratulations! You won The Prize!" as a way of rubbing in that they just got possibly the worst nuke billet in the fleet.
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Apr 14, 2014 19:19
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Snowdens Secret posted:Considering Lyndon "Jumbo" Johnson's propensities for public urination, philandering and often very literal dick-swinging, naming an extra-large surface naval combatant of dubious value after him is hilariously apt. Hopefully the poor cruiser has a better service record than LBJ did. Why was Enterprise the worst billet? Was she especially horrific to maintain?
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Apr 14, 2014 19:25
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Probably because she was the only ship in the class, with eight reactors of a design not used anywhere else in the fleet, and she was really old too.
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Apr 14, 2014 19:45
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Weren't all of those eight reactors different designs, too, seeing as she was essentially built as a test bed for nuclear propulsion? How easily can reactor personnel move from one type to another? Is it basically one type of reactor for your entire career or can they move around?
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Apr 14, 2014 19:47
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Fearless posted:Why was Enterprise the worst billet? Was she especially horrific to maintain? One-ship class makes parts supply a nightmare, and also means any special training and skills you learn there isn't applicable to the rest of the fleet. All of the first-gen nuke power plants were absurdly over-complicated, and carrier plants by nature are absurdly over-complicated (steam supply to catapults) but the Enterprise's design was lovely in so many devious ways that many have said they thought Rickover had it hosed up on purpose to discourage the idea of a nuclear surface Navy (or any surface Navy.) The whole thing was very manpower-intensive to operate and maintain even by nuke Navy standards, and if there's two words nukes hate (more generally than "fast cruise" or "field day") it's "manpower-intensive." It was essentially an operational prototype that for budget reasons was left in service waaaaay too long. The originally heavily redundant design plus a mentality of "eh, it'll be retired soon anyway, just leave it" that sunk in decades early meant there was a ton of poo poo not working right or just plain not working long before she was decommed. Maybe someone stationed on her can provide some sanitized sea stories. E: FrozenVent posted:Weren't all of those eight reactors different designs, too, seeing as she was essentially built as a test bed for nuclear propulsion? Nuclear physics is nuclear physics, a steam plant is a steam plant, etc and people can and do move between plant designs (although most people stay within communities for other reasons, if they're staying in long enough to see multiple sea tours.) That being said pretty much every hull is unique in some (usually prototyping some specific subsystem) way. Also the Navy constantly upgrades stuff, but what gets upgraded is determined by a bunch of different factors, so it's normal for hull 1 to have original system A and updated system B, while across the pier hull 2 has updated A but still the old B. This also means you could even leave your old boat and come back years later to the same hull and not recognize major systems. AFAIK all of CVN 65's A2W reactor plants were essentially the same - Rickover wasn't that spiteful - with changes mainly based on hull position (i.e. the driveshafts for some had to pass through the others, so the aft plants were rearranged to fit.)
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Apr 14, 2014 20:16
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Snowdens Secret posted:One-ship class makes parts supply a nightmare, and also means any special training and skills you learn there isn't applicable to the rest of the fleet. All of the first-gen nuke power plants were absurdly over-complicated, and carrier plants by nature are absurdly over-complicated (steam supply to catapults) but the Enterprise's design was lovely in so many devious ways that many have said they thought Rickover had it hosed up on purpose to discourage the idea of a nuclear surface Navy (or any surface Navy.) The whole thing was very manpower-intensive to operate and maintain even by nuke Navy standards, and if there's two words nukes hate (more generally than "fast cruise" or "field day") it's "manpower-intensive." One of my roomates was a nuke on board the USS Virginia (I think) and his stories pretty much parallel what you're saying. At one point he said the hull was so thin in places that is was mostly paint and punching through it was pretty easy, if you were inclined to. They decommissioned her in 1994. It's amazing how downright old much of the arsenal is. The school I work at has developed a procedure that injects some sort of aluminum thing into areas on the B-1 that would otherwise render them grounded. They're apparently been able to restore four B-1Bs to flight status because of this and they're drat near 40 years old. I went to the little AF museum in Rapid City on Saturday with my daughter. She got to sit in the F-106 Interceptor cockpit while I called out Soviet bombers coming over the Alaskan DEWS line. She's pretty good little pilot and was pretty happy to fire "Genies" at bomber formations. I've been telling her that Easter Candy comes from bombers who deliver it to good little girls. We were under the B-52D and she kept saying that bombers give candy  . Either I am going to really mess my kid up or just sorta mess her up. She's been taking her B-52 toy to bed along with her princess dolls and stuffed animals. Then I showed her that dad is right at the Berlin Airlift "Candy Bomber" display in the museum. http://www.hill.af.mil/library/factsheets/factsheet.asp?id=5979 See, bombers really do deliver candy! (Well, C-47s anyway)
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Apr 14, 2014 21:06
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Burning Beard posted:I've been telling her that Easter Candy comes from bombers who deliver it to good little girls. We were under the B-52D and she kept saying that bombers give candy Goddamn you're doing the dad thing right. Seriously, I'm in loving note-taking awe.
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Apr 14, 2014 21:13
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The nuke cruisers (including CGN-38 Virginia) were retired early, actually, because the reactors doubled crew size, leading to outsized operation costs, and the hulls themselves weren't anything special compared to the AEGIS ships. Cruiser hulls are supposed to last thirty years, although the Ticonderogas are also seeing ships potentially retired early due to premature hull fatigue. The irony is that with the massive increase in fuel oil costs (and the reduction in manpower needs from post-Rickover automation) the idea of a practical nuke cruiser is coming back. There are tremendous operational advantages to not needing to constantly fill your fuel tanks. For various reasons the cruisers were considered by far the best nuke sea billets in the fleet, too. I've probably told this one before but re: candy there's a dark joke SSBN sailors tell, that the first missile to be launched has the atomic warheads in its MIRVs replaced with candy, because that gets all the kids to come outside
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Apr 14, 2014 21:21
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Virginia was a drat good looking ship if you ask me, but wasn't worth the pricetag. She and the California class were decommissioned as part of the peace dividend when their first major overhauls came up. The Tartar-D missile system they carried was miles behind SM-2/AEGIS and it would have cost a small fortune to equip them with AEGIS. There's definitely some merit to the argument that we should have invested in a nuclear powered AEGIS cruiser. The VLS AEGIS cruisers we have are indeed feeling the hurt of being designed on the Spruance hull, they've got structural problems. There was an alternative being thrown around in 1975-1977, though - Strike Cruiser (CSGN) (  ) : CSGN would have been a huge warship, probably weighing in at 17,000 tons. It would have had it all - tons of missiles, helicopters, growth potential, nuclear power and oh god it would have been cool. The drat thing was big enough that there was a serious proposal to turn it into a light carrier that would have looked kind of like the Soviet Kiev carriers, although it would have only carried V/STOL and helicopters. It cost about 2/3rds as much as a carrier though, so the Carter administration killed it. Rickover screamed loud enough that turning CGN-42 into an AEGIS equipped Virginia was on the Congressional table for a year, but that didn't get far. Strike Cruiser, man, that was a popular idea. Black shoe admirals ate that poo poo up. A lot of people were sick of the relatively small, austere warships we were producing and wanted something that really packed a punch. Congress loved it too. That kind of "let's build something that does it all and is drat sexy" design attitude is kind of demonstrated in the limited run DDG-1000 as well.
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Apr 14, 2014 21:43
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Red Crown posted:Virginia was a drat good looking ship if you ask me, but wasn't worth the pricetag. She and the California class were decommissioned as part of the peace dividend when their first major overhauls came up. The Tartar-D missile system they carried was miles behind SM-2/AEGIS and it would have cost a small fortune to equip them with AEGIS. Online sources at least say CGN-38 got Standards in '84, and I think all the nuke cruisers had swapped out their Talos/Terrier/Tartar with SMs long before they were retired. AEGIS would've required an entire superstructure rebuild to mount the radars, at a minimum. quote:During the 1980s the ships were was outfitted with the Tomahawk Cruise Missile System, the Standard SM2(MR) Missile System, and the AN/SPS-49 Air Search Radar. Planned Refueling Complex Overhauls were canceled in the early 1990s due to the expense of maintaining the nuclear propulsion components, and the ships were all decommissioned after a relatively brief period of service averageing somewhat less than two decades. Thus the CGN-41 was commissioned in 1980 with a life expectancy of 38 years, though it was retired in 1997 after only half that period in service. quote:Three of the ships were slated for nuclear refueling, starting in Fiscal 1994, and a study was made in 1989 to also upgrade these ships. As part of the refueling a complex overhaul was studied to have two 64-cell VLS launchers replace the Mk 26 launchers and the AEGIS SPY-1B radar complex would be installed. The cost of refueling and the changes in the weapons and electronics were prohibitive and it was decided to scrap all four vessels. tl;dr nuke plants and nuke sailors cost a fortune
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Apr 14, 2014 22:01
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Thief posted:The only thing missing from these kind of games is proper voice chat. don't ever play Aces High II
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Apr 14, 2014 22:35
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Cyrano4747 posted:Goddamn you're doing the dad thing right. Seriously, I'm in loving note-taking awe. American Privilege: Being able to tell your children that B-52s drop candy without worry that they'll pick up UXO from bluster bombs.
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Apr 14, 2014 23:12
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mlmp08 posted:Generally speaking, there is a list of names for the various types of mission. So maybe there are 25 tanker callsigns, 50 CAP callsigns, 50 CAS callsigns, etc. As missions go out each day, the next callsign in line is used for that flight. A name is not reusable until the previous use of that name has landed and ended mission. In this way you might have a "Knight" flight every day, but have it be a different set of aircraft and pilots each time. Using actual callsigns such that you can identify which pilot it is and what kind of plane that pilot flies is bad OPSEC. Davin Valkri posted:So Ace Combat lied to me?! mlmp08 posted:That's the detail I'm not sure I'm correct on. We often use the pool of names based on mission in training out of simplicity, but I can't recall if that's done operationally or not. I'm still catching up, so this may have been addressed, but you've got it right. Keep in mind, most comms in Iraq and Afghanistan weren't even coded much or encryted...most poo poo was right out in the clear. In a "real" air war, things would be more randomized and greater efforts would be made to mask mission sets. It's different for training missions in US; generally squadrons have a standard callsign they use. For example, the 1st Fighter Squadron at Tyndall AFB used "Fury" so you'd see Fury 01-04 do their flight, then a couple of hours later probably Fury 11-14. Some units have a couple of options, and the Navy is weird and changes callsigns once they "go tactical." They have one for talking to ATC and one for when they're doing the actual tactical training. Which is really loving confusing if you don't know that ahead of time. Edit: 1FS was the Fightin' Furies Godholio fucked around with this message at 00:31 on Apr 17, 2014 |
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Apr 15, 2014 03:43
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Godholio posted:I'm still catching up, so this may have been addressed, but you've got it right. Keep in mind, most comms in Iraq and Afghanistan weren't even coded much or encryted...most poo poo was right out in the clear. In a "real" air war, things would be more randomized and greater efforts would be made to mask mission sets. It's different for training missions in US; generally squadrons have a standard callsign they use. For example, the 1st Fighter Squadron at Tyndall AFB used "Fury" so you'd see Fury 01-04 do their flight, then a couple of hours later probably Fury 11-14. Some units have a couple of options, and the Navy is weird and changes callsigns once they "go tactical." They have one for talking to ATC and one for when they're doing the actual tactical training. Which is really loving confusing if you don't know that ahead of time. Y'all have three guesses which Callsign the 67th Fighter Squadron (Fighting Cocks) uses.
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Apr 15, 2014 12:53
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ArchangeI posted:Y'all have three guesses which Callsign the 67th Fighter Squadron (Fighting Cocks) uses. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NEcBaxvbQE
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Apr 15, 2014 15:36
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Obscure Conflict time: Libya-Egypt, 1977. In the wake of Egypt signing a peace deal with Israel and the massive amount of US Aid that followed, everybody's favorite loser/Dictator/moneybags Qaddafi wanted to "punish" Egypt. Libya kept their Soviet affiliation, of course, so this began to develop into another small proxy of the Cold War. The Soviets had less control over Qaddafi than the US did with Egypt. So for around a year, 76-77, Libya and Egypt trade accusations back and forth over espionage, hijackings, and terror bombings. In August of 1976 Libya closes the Egyptian consulate in Benghazi and "uncovers" a supposed Egyptian spy ring. In response Egypt began to mobilize troops along the border. Then Qaddafi expelled all Egyptians from Libya quickly followed by a "March on Cairo" by thousands of Libyan civilians. Once they hit the border, they were turned back. This was followed up by repeated Libyan artillery barrages on the Egyptian border posts. On July 21, 1977 Libyan sent a small force to raid the desert town of Sallum, which succeeded. Qaddafi began sticking units along the border for further incursions. Libyan Army units amounted to maybe three brigades at most.Sadat, incensed at Qaddafi's bullshit, mobilized three full divisions and the Air Force. Egyptian forces attacked across the border on July 22 and 23, easily routing the Libyans and taking numerous border posts and towns. Sadat was preparing a full scale invasion of Libya with the intention of driving to Tripoli but the US and other Arab states persuaded him to stand down. By July 24 an armistice was declared and the whole affair, at least officially, ended. The whole thing is, frankly, hilarious. Qaddafi pokes a bear and underestimated the scale of Sadat's military response. I have no doubt that the Egyptians would have whipped him as they were swollen with American arms and funding. Supposedly Sadat had been planning a full scale invasion for a while anyway and Qaddafi simply gave him an excuse. The Air War would have been mostly MiGs with the Libyan Mirages thrown in for good measure. Both sides also have extensive Soviet supplied AA and SAMs.
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Apr 15, 2014 16:30
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The creepiest thing by far about Ghaddafi was his crush on Condi Rice. Not the worst thing about him, just the creepiest.
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Apr 15, 2014 16:35
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"Cock 1 ready for takeoff."... "THAT'S WHY THEY CALL ME, BAAAAD COMPANY!!!" That's when I couldn't hold my laughter in anymore.
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Apr 15, 2014 16:53
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Burning Beard posted:The whole thing is, frankly, hilarious. Qaddafi pokes a bear and underestimated the scale of Sadat's military response. I have no doubt that the Egyptians would have whipped him as they were swollen with American arms and funding. Supposedly Sadat had been planning a full scale invasion for a while anyway and Qaddafi simply gave him an excuse. I've heard that Qaddafi's military leadership was akin the Early-Stalin or Late-Hitler in that he was very much a micro-manager, and made illogical/impossible objectives that his forces were unable to accomplish once the Egyptians decided to "play ball". Also, what was the scope of Soviet and US "advisors" during the conflict? I imagine that each side sent people to train the Libyans/Egyptians on their new equipment and the best tactics to employ with them. Any idea how far their involvement went (if they did play an active role were they mostly tactical/strategic). Honestly, I have little to know knowledge of this conflict, and Iraq v.s. Iran or Israel v.s. Whoever seems to get the most attention in literature and documentaries.
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Apr 15, 2014 21:53
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That video is so Fighter Pilot it's practically a parody. I'm glad the 67th was able to give us all a lesson in brevity codes, though not. Here's another Fighter Pilot video...at least this one has more than one maintainer in it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ri-obaBZr9I Burning Beard posted:The whole thing is, frankly, hilarious. Qaddafi pokes a bear and underestimated the scale of Sadat's military response. You know, that kind of describes Qaddafi's military career in general. - Sends forces to backstop Idi Amin's invasion of Tanzania, said forces proceed to find themselves on the front line after the Ugandan forces' retreat turns into a rout, stand by and do nothing while Idi Amin gets overthrown. - Declares the Line of Death, accomplishes nothing other than getting some aircraft shot down by the USN. - Dabbles in terrorism, Reagan sends a bunch of F-111s to (quite literally) blow in his front door. - Escalates the Chadian-Libyan War, proceeds to get his poo poo rocked by Habré with the help of the French. - Half-assed attempted to put down a Revolution with force, got regime changed by a military alliance that almost ran out of bombs after less than a week of fighting, gets executed after being drug out of a drainage pipe.
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Apr 15, 2014 22:53
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Burning Beard posted:Obscure Conflict time: Sorry that this reference isn't related to air combat, but this thread has strayed quite a bit and a lot of you seem to have interest in general military history. The 1509 Battle of Diu was a naval battle fought with the Portuguese on one side and a coalition fleet of Venetians, Egyptians, Ottomans, Croatians, and Indians off the coast of India. In 1509. Not a truly influential battle, but amazing that naval force projection was happening that early between actors who are not currently known as major powers or located near each other or the place of combat. Is it possible to imagine any situation in the past 200 years in which Italy, Egypt, Turkey, Croatia, and India would bond together to fight Portugal? And that Portugal would be the victor? It reminds me of how a history teacher blew my mind when she pointed out that the Seven Years' War of 1756-1763 was the first "World War", because, as Wikipedia says, "It involved most of the great powers of the time and affected Europe, North America, Central America, the West African coast, India, and the Philippines." 250 years ago.
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Apr 16, 2014 00:00
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benito posted:Sorry that this reference isn't related to air combat, but this thread has strayed quite a bit and a lot of you seem to have interest in general military history. I honestly don't give a poo poo about off-topicness, but since this post has nothing to do with airpower nor the Cold War, might I suggest the Really Really Good military history thread? It's really really good!
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Apr 16, 2014 01:37
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iyaayas01 posted:- Half-assed attempted to put down a Revolution with force, got regime changed by a military alliance that almost ran out of bombs after less than a week of fighting, gets executed after being drug out of a drainage pipe. There's supposedly a really good story behind this that I heard on a documentary on one of the pay cable networks. Evidently the reason he got nabbed is that there was a false flag operation backstopped by the US and NATO to hire mercs to exfiltrate him, but even unknown to the mercs, they were on candid camera the moment they left his hiding spot, and they steered them directly into the rebels.
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Apr 16, 2014 03:34
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Some new details have come out about project AZORIAN:quote:Now, however, we have even more details, thanks to the publication of the latest volume of The Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS). Compiled by State Department historians, the FRUS series is an invaluable resource, containing declassified documents that include diplomatic cables, candid internal memos and minutes of meetings between the president and his closest advisors. For anyone who has the stamina to read through these 1,000-plus page volumes, it's a unique opportunity to experience history as it happened.
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Apr 16, 2014 03:49
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http://static.history.state.gov/frus/frus1969-76v35/pdf/frus1969-76v35.pdf The source document. AZORIAN is pretty fascinating. It was to naval architecture and deep sea operations what the A-12/SR-71 was for manned flight. They were inventing from scratch that which was necessary to do the impossible, but no one cares because boats are boring.
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Apr 16, 2014 04:06
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There's a pretty great documentary about AZORIAN that used to be on netflix instant but is now only available on prime instant.
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Apr 16, 2014 04:20
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For many years you could see the Hughes Mining Barge they used for that on Google Earth (Suisun Bay Reserve Fleet), and I think they kept the Sea Shadow inside it. They're both gone, now, though. The reserve fleet in general is way smaller; I go by there about once a year and there's way fewer ships than ever before. 
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Apr 16, 2014 05:09
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Capn Jobe posted:For many years you could see the Hughes Mining Barge they used for that on Google Earth (Suisun Bay Reserve Fleet), and I think they kept the Sea Shadow inside it. They're both gone, now, though. The reserve fleet in general is way smaller; I go by there about once a year and there's way fewer ships than ever before. The Sea Shadow got sold and scrapped  The HMB got refitted to be a floating dry dock so at least it's still around, kind of.
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Apr 16, 2014 12:42
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I'd like to write a letter to my congressman and state rep about the A10 being cut. Could someone who is more familiar with the plane than me possibly put together a brief discussion or at least some talking points about why it would be good to keep? I also raised assigning it to JSOC and TADing (or whatever the term is now) the maintenance crews over indefinitely in the GIP current events thread some time ago. It was well recieved and something I'd be curious to hear about what this thread thinks. This would allow you to consolidate the remaining aircraft, and use older, beat up ones for parts if necessay, result in a smaller, more specific mission set while extending the life of the aircraft by reducing use (i think?) . The A10 has been used by special forces as CAS for a long time, and I think in this role it would continue perform well. Any thoughts/help?
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Apr 16, 2014 14:08
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Waroduce posted:I'd like to write a letter to my congressman and state rep about the A10 being cut. Could someone who is more familiar with the plane than me possibly put together a brief discussion or at least some talking points about why it would be good to keep? If your bribe/whore budget is more than Lockmart's, then you might have a chance. Otherwise, let it go.
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Apr 16, 2014 14:27
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Waroduce posted:I'd like to write a letter to my congressman and state rep about the A10 being cut. Could someone who is more familiar with the plane than me possibly put together a brief discussion or at least some talking points about why it would be good to keep? USAF doesn't have any money. We don't want to get rid of the A-10, it's just least worst choice from a bunch of lovely choices. In order to not cut the A-10, we have two basic alternatives: shitcan the entire Bone fleet or (more likely) cut a third of our Vipers, completely gutting our tacair fleet (comedy option is shitcan the entire KC-10 fleet). Sending it to JSOC is a nonstarter; they don't have the budget (doing the entire sustainment piece for a given MDS is a lot more complicated and expensive than just changing the patch some maintainers wear...  at JSOC standing up a SPO or maintaining a depot) and the idea of giving JSOC any serious fixed wing aviation assets is almost as funny as giving it to the Army. Furthermore, even if you gave it to AFSOC (something that would make more sense than JSOC since at least AFSOC has some semblance of experience with sustainment of a fixed wing asset), you're going to run into serious budget issues because AFSOC has their hands full recapitalizing their core functions (buying more funny looking Herks and figuring out what they're going to do for internal ISR support) and oh by the way, giving it to AFSOC means it's still coming out of the USAF's pot of money...if the Army really wanted to keep the A-10, we'd be happy to take a check. They'll scream about how this is the literal end of CAS within the US military (it isn't...see mlmp08's comment on the last page about how the Army loves to request specific assets instead of a given effect) but when it comes time to put money up or shut up, they're nowhere to be found because everyone's budget is hurting and it's not that high of a priority for them. Finally, the A-10 isn't what you need for SOF specific CAS support...it's been used in that role because it's been available and the SOF forces have been taking a heavy kinetic role in the current wars, from a doctrinal perspective you want something lighter and cheaper for SOF specific CAS support, something that's capable of persistent ISR as well. RPAs are a good fit, as would be something like an MC-12 armed with a couple of Hellfires or Griffins.The bottom line is that the USAF isn't getting rid of the A-10 because we're a bunch of evil corrupt idiots who just like nothing more than screwing over the Army, it's because we are up poo poo creek money wise (for a variety of reasons, many of which are self-imposed and many others of which are internal DoD driven) and right now, from where we sit, the least bad choice is canning the A-10 fleet. The current CSAF is an A-10 driver, no one wants to see it go but the alternatives (from a fleet management perspective) are all worse. If you want to write to Congress, tell them to do something smart with the defense budget in order to prevent us from having to make hard choices with our fleet, like authorizing another round of BRAC or maybe ending some of this other budget stupidity (  if you think that will ever, ever happen...Congress will let DoD turn into nothing more than a property management and healthcare company before they even think about authorizing closing anymore bases.)
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Apr 16, 2014 17:50
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Ukrainians are getting free airshows from Russian MiGs: http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=f92_1397654344 It is terrifyingly awesome, and it misses a tree by inches.
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Apr 16, 2014 19:40
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