Thwomp posted:It's really easy to see that in hindsight but high-level military commanders have had really difficult times adapting to major shifts in military technology throughout history. I think a lot of it is that humans as a whole have a hard time grasping exponential increases. It's hard for people to intuitively understand the difference between 1 ton, 1,000 (kiloton) and 1,000,000 (megaton) worth of explosives (or anything really). Add in a whole different animal ie radiation, on top of that and it's pretty complex compared to TNT.
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2014 18:35
|
|
). They had no idea the gas would kill the numbers it did early on because they couldn't put 2 and 2 together (one being the sheer concentration of soldiers on the front lines and the other being how seriously hosed you were in a trench as gas came pouring down on top of you).
|
|
| # ? Jun 2, 2024 06:58 |
|
|
Cyrano4747 posted:Wait, what? Can you go into any more detail on this? I'm middling at best with my military history, but it's not like WW1 was the first place modern artillery was employed by European armies. Things weren't quite what we'd call "modern" in the franco-prussian war (no hydrolic recoil mechanisms that I can think of) but we're solidly into breech-loaded howitzers and out of Napoleonic-era cannons. Prussian artillery in particular was pretty important at both Sedan and the siege of Paris. stealie72 posted:I may be getting it wrong, because it was 3.5 hours of listening, but I think Carlin's discussion of artillery is in regards to generals not really grasping what firing 40,000 rounds a day does to supply lines and how the sheer volume of artillery fire rendered standard infantry tactics useless. More or less this and my poor phrasing. They knew their new artillery pieces were powerful (case-in-point, the giant fuckoff guns the Germans used to blow Belgian fortresses to bits). But their combat/tactical doctrines couldn't deal with both sides having fuckoff guns using thousands of shells a day. They literally couldn't think of anything better than shell their position for 3 days, send a mass of troops, and see if it worked. quote:edit: Maybe Carlin's wrong but he put the first experimental usage of gas on the western front as this test that totally surprised the German high command. It was more deadly and lethal than they hoped because the Allies weren't totally unprepared for it (Hague convention and all that). And the first tests cleared huge gaps in the Allied trenches that the Germans weren't prepared to capitalize on. By the time they started seriously using gas in coordinated attacks, the Allies had masks and preparation to blunt the overall effectiveness. So you can see why they thought the gas would be more effective than it ended up being based on their early experimental releases that caught enemy soldiers unaware. This is also why you don't test your next strategy/technology on the battlefield.
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2014 19:34
|
|
|
Thwomp posted:Maybe Carlin's wrong but he put the first experimental usage of gas on the western front as this test that totally surprised the German high command. It was more deadly and lethal than they hoped because the Allies weren't totally unprepared for it (Hague convention and all that). Well, I'm pretty damned sure the first use of poison gas (as opposed to just tear gas or some other irritant) was against the Russians in Poland/E. Prussia and the first major deployment on the W. Front blew a gap in the lines that they couldn't capitalize on because their own troops wouldn't march into it, followed by a bunch of Canadians stabilizing it a lot faster than expected. Like I said, I'm weak on my milhist so fact check that, but I know I remember there being a canadian angle because I'm pretty sure MikeRock was getting all hot and bothered about it in his Canadian WW1-frenzied way at some point.
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2014 19:39
|
|
|
Yeah, the Canadians saved everyone's asses during one of the first major deployments of gas. And I want to say it was prior to widespread gasmask disbursement so they had to use these flannel strips soaked in water.
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2014 19:56
|
|
|
Thwomp posted:Yeah, the Canadians saved everyone's asses during one of the first major deployments of gas. Urine actually if I recall. Something about the ammonia neutralising the chlorine gas.
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2014 20:06
|
|
|
Mr Luxury Yacht posted:Urine actually if I recall. Something about the ammonia neutralising the chlorine gas. I've always wondered about that. If your piss has that level of urea in it that it's even quasi effective as an ersatz gas mask you are either one dehydrated motherfucker or your diet is crazy high in protein or something else.
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2014 20:13
|
|
|
We are prolific pissers 
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2014 20:15
|
|
|
Probably the dehydration, considering the trouble modern armies go through to keep troops hydrated.
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2014 20:16
|
|
|
It's quite likely that the soldiers haven't taken their clothes off in weeks and their flannel trousers have accumulated enough urea runoff to have visible crystals. Also, I see no reason to see why soldiers of the Great War would be any different from more recent counterparts in that if you command them to specifically pee on something they will take to the task with overwhelming zeal.
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2014 20:21
|
|
|
Snowdens Secret posted:It's quite likely that the soldiers haven't taken their clothes off in weeks and their flannel trousers have accumulated enough urea runoff to have visible crystals. I love that you had this thought process
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2014 21:18
|
|
|
Snowdens Secret posted:Also, I see no reason to see why soldiers of the Great War would be any different from more recent counterparts in that if you command them to specifically pee on something they will take to the task with overwhelming zeal. "Good, good. Now wear it over your face." "Aw poo poo  ""-and storm a trench full of poison gas" "It turned out better than we expected"
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2014 21:43
|
|
|
There was a documentary - or one of those heritage minute maybe - with a dramatization where an officer was just running down the line shouting "PEE ON YOUR HANKERCHIEFS!" Made me really proud of my country And now that we're sending 6 - count 'em, six! - CF-18 to Poland, you'd think we're fighting WWI all over again the way CBC's been reporting it.
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2014 21:47
|
|
|
While we're on the topic of Canadians, what differences are there between "CF" designs and "F" designs? Like, say, the CF-18 vs. the F/A-18 OG Hornet, or the CF-104 vs. the regular F-104? Is it swapping out the engines and flight computers, just making stuff cold-proof and bilingual, or is there no one schema for differences?
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2014 21:52
|
|
|
We like to paint false canopies on the underside of planes so there is that.
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2014 22:00
|
|
|
From Wikipedia: The most visible difference between a CF-18 and a U.S. F-18 is the 0.6 Mcd night identification light. This spotlight is mounted in the gun loading door on the port side of the aircraft. Some CF-18s have the light temporarily removed, but the window is always in place. Also, the underside of the CF-18 features a painted "false canopy".[8] This is intended to momentarily disorient and confuse an enemy in air-to-air combat. Subsequently, the U.S. Marine Corps Aviation and the Spanish Air Force F/A-18s also adopted this "false canopy".[9][verification needed] Many features that made the F/A-18 suitable for naval carrier operations were also retained by the Canadian Forces, such as the robust landing gear, the arrestor hook, and wing folding mechanisms, which proved useful when operating the fighters from smaller airfields such as those found in the Arctic.[citation needed] Plus the French word for fighter is Chasseur so...
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2014 22:04
|
|
|
Dark Helmut posted:I love that you had this thought process Pimpmust posted:"Good, good. I'm a shellback I can never remember which Korean War book it was (probably this one) where the author mentions how they'd avoid removing any clothing at all for entire weeks-to-months-long stints on the front line, to avoid exposure to the cold. When they rotated to the rear and stripped it all off it was so full of dirt, sweat, gunk, effluent etc that the clothes would practically stand up on their own. They'd strip at one end of the showers, get hosed off, and get issued new clothes on the other side, and the old stuff IIRC got carted off and burned.
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2014 22:06
|
|
|
Slamburger posted:Its been mentioned before in this thread, but the first nuclear reactor was created in downtown Chicago, unshielded, and uncooled. The first Swedish nuclear reactor was located 27 meters underground on the campus of the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, which isn't exactly downtown, but it's sorta close to it and it's definitely in the middle of a dense urban area. One of the subsequent early-60's production plants was built under a mountain (seeing a pattern here? cold war Sweden loved building things underground) in a Stockholm suburb. Sorta unusually it wasn't primarily an electric plant, but rather mostly intended to produce district heating for the surrounding suburbs. It had a sorta scary incident with a mis-installed valve and a subsequent water leak and power short-circuit in the late 60's and it was shut down in 1974. The site still exists today though, and the exterior of it looks pretty cool.  Control room, as it looked in the 60's.  Main entrance at the bottom of the mountain.  External buildings at the bottom of the mountain; you can see the cooling tower on top of the mountain just above the top of the trees.  Cooling tower on top of the mountain.  Under the cooling tower. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5faxjZQMHIY Fly-around of the site with a quadcopter.
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2014 22:06
|
|
|
FrozenVent posted:Plus the French word for fighter is Chasseur so... hahaha god you know this is the real reason
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2014 22:08
|
|
|
priznat posted:We like to paint false canopies on the underside of planes so there is that. This is also a thing with Sukhois, presumably for the same reasons 
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2014 22:13
|
|
|
It seems kind of questionably effective but if it only costs some paint go nuts I guess. Also lol at the thought of the CF fighters being based from arctic runways requiring arrestor gear. Yeah that'll happen.
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2014 23:34
|
|
|
"It's a nice aircraft, but can it operate from a bad 800 meter strip above the arctic circle in winter at -45 degrees Celsius?" is one of those things that has constantly been used as a reason for sticking with indigenous designs over here. ~Swedish conditions~ are the specialest snowflake. Then again the capability was actually there, it worked and it was used in practice. The Gripen can still operate from those 800m strips, even in wet or icy conditions, but there's rarely a reason to do it these days.
|
|
#
?
May 1, 2014 00:10
|
|
|
I think the CF should just unleash a swarm of twin otters if arctic operations are required, otherwise fly the CF-18s out of their Cold Lake base which is practically sub arctic tundra anyway.
|
|
#
?
May 1, 2014 00:24
|
|
|
priznat posted:I think the CF should just unleash a swarm of twin otters if arctic operations are required, otherwise fly the CF-18s out of their Cold Lake base which is practically sub arctic tundra anyway. Yeah between Goose Bay and Cold Lake you'd think we'd have the Arctic pretty covered... Can an F-18 operate out of a dirt strip? Because the infrastructure up North...
|
|
#
?
May 1, 2014 00:30
|
|
|
Davin Valkri posted:While we're on the topic of Canadians, what differences are there between "CF" designs and "F" designs? Like, say, the CF-18 vs. the F/A-18 OG Hornet, or the CF-104 vs. the regular F-104? Is it swapping out the engines and flight computers, just making stuff cold-proof and bilingual, or is there no one schema for differences? It's just another model...others have pointed out the differences from a standard F/A-18, but there's nothing particular about the "C" preceding the rest of the designation. It's just how the Canadians choose to designate their aircraft (witness the "CC-150" that is an Airbus 310-300 transport/tanker or the "CC-130" that is an otherwise normal C-130 in Canadian service).
|
|
#
?
May 1, 2014 00:31
|
|
|
FrozenVent posted:And now that we're sending 6 - count 'em, six! - CF-18 to Poland, you'd think we're fighting WWI all over again the way CBC's been reporting it. Hey, don't be a hoser, that's a really long flight on a hard seat, eh. FrozenVent posted:Can an F-18 operate out of a dirt strip? Because the infrastructure up North... Not sure about rough field capabilities, but CF-18s kept the arrestor hook for this reason. I don't think they do carrier quals on our boats (though I know the French have done touch-and-gos off of Nimitz-classes in Rafales), but the hook is there to assist in short/icy field landings on Canada's northernmost runways. BIG HEADLINE fucked around with this message at 00:42 on May 1, 2014 |
|
#
?
May 1, 2014 00:33
|
|
|
Cyrano4747 posted:I've always wondered about that. If your piss has that level of urea in it that it's even quasi effective as an ersatz gas mask you are either one dehydrated motherfucker or your diet is crazy high in protein or something else. I'd bet it was dehydration, going off an anecdote from a British naval constructor about American dreadnoughts marveling about how much fresh water the average American sailor drank. Also the fact that I lived in England for seven years and always had to ask for a glass of water in a restaurant if I wanted one. Any restaurant.
|
|
#
?
May 1, 2014 01:31
|
|
|
FrozenVent posted:Yeah between Goose Bay and Cold Lake you'd think we'd have the Arctic pretty covered... ...isn't quite as bad as you might expect. The RCAF detaches CF-18s to places like Inuvik, Rankin Inlet, Iqaluit and Yellowknife, all of which have paved runways, aircraft shelters and runway arrestor cables. Yes when you leave those four airports things get a bit dicey infrastructure-wise but they really isn't much more need for additional forward operating locations beyond those four.
|
|
#
?
May 1, 2014 02:31
|
|
|
Poison gas wasn't quite the linebreaker that it was after gasmasks became widely available, but blister agents like mustard gas could cause horrific damage to any exposed flesh and even light casualties to a unit subjected the survivors to the horror of their friends choking and gurgling on their own rotten lungs-- for green units, this would have been particularly demoralizing. Also worth noting is the value of poison gas artillery shells as a means of harassing and slowing the rate of fire of enemy artillery. If you're loading a 6 or 8 inch howitzer by hand, you're in for a hell of a workout, and having to do that through the confines of a gas hood would have been its own vision of hell. I can only imagine how much fun it would have been in wool or primitive gas gear in the summer of 1917. In the interests of full disclosure: I'm Canadian and had a relative fight at Vimy, so I share MikeRock's zeal.
|
|
#
?
May 1, 2014 03:24
|
|
|
ALL-PRO SEXMAN posted:I'd bet it was dehydration, going off an anecdote from a British naval constructor about American dreadnoughts marveling about how much fresh water the average American sailor drank. Also the fact that I lived in England for seven years and always had to ask for a glass of water in a restaurant if I wanted one. Any restaurant. Coming from the UK I was surprised when I went abroad and they just gave you water with everything
|
|
#
?
May 1, 2014 05:33
|
|
|
priznat posted:We like to paint false canopies on the underside of planes so there is that. The Americans also dallied in this, briefly;
|
|
#
?
May 1, 2014 06:35
|
|
|
F-16XLs are cool lookin but I don't think they ever went into production/deployment?
|
|
#
?
May 1, 2014 06:38
|
|
|
|
|
#
?
May 1, 2014 08:38
|
|
|
priznat posted:F-16XLs are cool lookin but I don't think they ever went into production/deployment? Only two were ever built, and they went to NASA for aeronautics research. They were a competing design for the ETF competition that the F-15E won. They've been retired and are shacked up in storage now, I think. If you go peeking around the Dryden facility on Google Maps/Earth you might see one of them - I found one of them once about 1-2 years ago. BIG HEADLINE fucked around with this message at 09:13 on May 1, 2014 |
|
#
?
May 1, 2014 08:52
|
|
|
I love those stupid underside "canopies". They're just so optimistic 
|
|
#
?
May 1, 2014 14:00
|
|
|
"Please, F-16XL dear, please stay!" "No! I've had it with these tiny potatoes! I'm going to Amerika!" "But, you are our son!  ""You can't stop me, J 35  "
|
|
#
?
May 1, 2014 14:16
|
|
|
DeesGrandpa posted:I love those stupid underside "canopies". They're just so optimistic They look kind of silly in a high res photograph, but look at a thumb nail, imagine it's moving at 400+ mph relative to you, and imagine you're sitting in some funky-rear end early Cold War era AAA mount (or another airplane, whatever). I'm not going to try to defend it as the best countermeasure since chaff, but if all it takes is a bucket of paint and an hour out of some airman's day, why the hell not?
|
|
#
?
May 1, 2014 14:29
|
|
|
Cyrano4747 posted:They look kind of silly in a high res photograph, but look at a thumb nail, imagine it's moving at 400+ mph relative to you, and imagine you're sitting in some funky-rear end early Cold War era AAA mount (or another airplane, whatever). It makes a lot of sense for ground strike aircraft potentially going up against AA or MG fire that isn't controlled by radar or other fire control systems.  When a plane rolls to make a hard turn to get out of an area, it's important for AA gunners to know which way they will break. If they misunderstand where the plane will turn, the rounds will be off target given how much you have to lead the planes.
|
|
#
?
May 1, 2014 15:34
|
|
|
Cyrano4747 posted:Well, I'm pretty damned sure the first use of poison gas (as opposed to just tear gas or some other irritant) was against the Russians in Poland/E. Prussia and the first major deployment on the W. Front blew a gap in the lines that they couldn't capitalize on because their own troops wouldn't march into it, followed by a bunch of Canadians stabilizing it a lot faster than expected. Like I said, I'm weak on my milhist so fact check that, but I know I remember there being a Canadian angle because I'm pretty sure MikeRock was getting all hot and bothered about it in his Canadian WW1-frenzied way at some point. The issue on the western front had to do with the fact that if you're using static cylinders of gas to avoid Hague Convention issues with gas shells, you want the wind to be blowing the right direction. The German high command got tired of waiting for the wind to shift and redeployed the reserves that were supposed to exploit the break in the lines. Also a line of their thinking was pretty much "Who is this Jewish wanna-be officer named Haber, and what makes him think he can dictate strategy?"
|
|
#
?
May 1, 2014 17:17
|
|
|
DeesGrandpa posted:I love those stupid underside "canopies". They're just so optimistic I'd love to see an airliner with underside "canopies", just to mess with the chemtrails crowd. I bet Richard Branson would do it.
|
|
#
?
May 1, 2014 18:37
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 2, 2024 06:58 |
|
|
So, the CCPA released a new report where they found even more costs relating to the Canadian F-35 procurement. The Cons (a few years ago now) floated the number initially of 14 billion lifetime costs. The PBO then had a look at those numbers and gave an estimate roughly double the Cons figure: 29 billion. The Cons stonewalled and stuck to their original number, even though it was clearly lacking in basic estimates Parliament asked for. Later the Auditor General found that even the Cons were using the estimate of lifetime cost of 25 billion internally - apparently the 14 billion estimate was prolefeed. In the wake of the whole Auditor General's, shall we say, dog-loving revelations about Canada buying the F-35, the Cons "suspended" the F-35 procurement, and fired the DND from the procurement job, and formed a new government committee, and in general told everybody to keep quiet about it and hoped the whole thing blows over. They also contracted KPMG (a accounting firm) to do a new cost estimate on the F-35. KPMG turned in the total lifetime cost of 45 billion. It turns out even critics and analysts have been estimating the costs of operation as being the same as the CF-18s, even though the US government GAO data an F-35 costs are...more. A Super Hornet costs $15K per hour to fly, while a F-35 in a clever bit of symmetry costs $35K per hour. (The CF-18 BTW costs some 20K per hour to operate - apparently the difference between the Hornet and Super Hornet is mostly due to the CF-18s age.) The Reldieu institute (which is kinda like this thread but rarely uses the term dog-loving) identifies new costs that have been neglected, even by critical parties. These include: - cost of installing drag chutes so F-35s can use arctic runways; - cost of getting new munitions and consumables (as the CF-18 and the F-35 apparently use different flares and guns); - cost of refitting our aerial tankers for air-to-air refueling of the F-35 (apparently the F-35 is the only fighter "under consideration" that can't use our current system). This was apparently dismissed by the DND with some handwaving about "maybe we don't need to spend this money because we could leech off of American tankers or let the private sector handle it (!)" - cost of having a dedicated computer facility (shared with Australia and Britain) for handling the aircraft's software needs. Yeah, we need a fuckin' computer science center just to keep the stupid things flying- Factoring in these costs, the lifetime procurement number reaches $56 billion. Then there are the costs that need to be considered if you are a nation planning on buying fighters from another nation and operating them for three to four decades. It turns out all these costs, while considered, are only ever assessed on a strict "best case scenario" basis. (Because if you were to buy a new car or a house, all your considerations would be along the lines of 'everything gonna come up roses, forever'.) Anyway, two things about these variables - one, they apply to a lesser extent to other American aircraft Canada could buy, though if it bought them most of the costs above vanish. Second, this is future predicting, and obviously nobody can see decades into the future. Still, the forecasting is very disturbing - 10 billion more is anything but peanuts in Canadian defense spending, and the financial factors are risks that could redouble the cost again. Under a worst-case scenario, the F-35 could have a lifetime cost of $156 billion, that's with interest rates at 10%, inflation at 10%, and a Canadian dollar at 60 cents to a American one. I'm no big brain when it comes to economics, but I do dabble a bit, and I think these numbers really are a conceivable worst case - not anything that would actually happen. For one, having really high inflation and really high interest is I think mutually exclusive; you can have one or the other, but not both. But (and this is an important thing to note) lesser permutations of these costs are not only possible, but likely. Canada(like most of the industrialized world) is in a liquidity trap right now - and the only way to get out of that, and the debt fueled economic expansion that's been going on since the early 2000s, is with higher inflation. If we have higher inflation, then that means that our dollar will suffer compared to the American one (though I guess it's possible the Americans could choose to go this route too, which might cancel it out.) Anyway, amateur econ aside, deviations from standard inflation seem likely. And already alarmingly expensive, the F-35 then has the capacity to literally bankrupt the Canadian military. How to pay for the magic fighters? No more navy? Give up having military bases outside of upper Canada? It's not like the existing forces are lavishly funded to begin with - establish a financial vortex somewhere, and suddenly really basic capacities vanish. The technological risks and attendant costs have been discussed at length around here regarding Canada getting F-35s, but it turns out these risks could be compounded with financial ones.
|
|
#
?
May 1, 2014 19:33
|
|
