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Christ, Reagan was ready to start a constitutional crisis over the Falklands?
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May 12, 2014 01:38
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I don't know that it would be a constitutional crisis. Probably if all else failed he could have gotten Congress to sign onto it. My recollection is that this was a hypothetical scheme with no steps actually taken to implement it. It's not like Reagan was sitting with his finger on the button ready to go at a moment's notice.
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May 12, 2014 01:57
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/\ It was more than a hypothetical scheme, Weinberger and Lehman got authorization from Reagan approving the request and Second Fleet was well along in the contingency planning to where they would've been ready and authorized to execute had Hermes or Invincible gone down. /\ The entire crew being brought on as contractors bit is an exaggeration...if you read the the USNI piece that originally broke the story (based on a speech John Lehman gave in the U.K.), more than likely they would have hired retired crew on as contractors to help the Brits maintain the systems, with the RN providing the bulk of the manpower to crew the ship. So it wouldn't have been a direct constitutional crisis as active U.S. servicemembers wouldn't have been put in harms way without Congressional authorization (never mind that he arguably already had that authority anyway under the WPR as long as he notified Congress and didn't exceed the 60 day clock), but Congress probably would've gotten rather pissy that the executive had transferred an entire warship to an ally fighting a conflict without bothering to check with State, much less Congress. iyaayas01 fucked around with this message at 02:10 on May 12, 2014 |
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May 12, 2014 02:05
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No way American intervention into Argentina would've lasted 60 days anyway.
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May 12, 2014 02:41
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The entire conflict only lasted 73 days as it is.
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May 12, 2014 03:10
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I'm still amazed the UK won that war.
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May 12, 2014 03:36
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But what if the Argies managed to ram an Exocet into the Iwo Jima 
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May 12, 2014 04:27
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priznat posted:But what if the Argies managed to ram an Exocet into the Iwo Jima Picture this but with Reagan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvqJ1mTkEuY
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May 12, 2014 04:51
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Looks like the Navy's Army's Air Force is down one more Harrier. Better add another F-35 to the order! http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2014/05/10/Military-jet-crashes-in-Arizona/1451399734341/
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May 12, 2014 06:22
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Lol at the picture, can't the lazy fucks get a picture of a US plane at least? Jesus.
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May 12, 2014 06:26
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dtr3rFts8ig&t=242s This is the way every morning's launches should sound. e: My favorite part is that you can clearly hear the start cart for the second engine over the shriek of the first engine. iyaayas01 fucked around with this message at 06:59 on May 12, 2014 |
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May 12, 2014 06:57
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iyaayas01 posted:e: My favorite part is that you can clearly hear the start cart for the second engine over the shriek of the first engine. The SR-71 startcarts put out from 800 (400 in two engines) to ~950 HP over the years they were used. The last ones were Buicks if I remember right.
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May 12, 2014 07:10
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Smiling Jack posted:I'm still amazed the UK won that war. Can you imagine what would happen if they tried it again? We'd be hosed.
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May 12, 2014 07:16
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iyaayas01 posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dtr3rFts8ig&t=242s I love the guy at approximately 8:20 who just strolls on with his hands in his pockets, like some jovial, curious old neighbour who pops over to check on what the Hansons next door are working on and make some morning chitchat about top secret Mach 3+ spy planes running off of the Virgin Mary's tittymilk.
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May 12, 2014 08:54
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"Yep, sure is a fine machine you got there. All right now, you guys have fun. Say, did you get some new kerb stones while I was down in Florida?"
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May 12, 2014 08:56
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monkeytennis posted:Can you imagine what would happen if they tried it again? We'd be hosed. Not really. The Falklands are substantially better garrisoned now than they were in 1982. There's a nuclear sub hovering in the South Atlantic most of the time. And the Argentine military has bought basically zero new ships or fighter aircraft since the 1982 war. You think UK defense has atrophied? Take a look at the Argentine Navy.
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May 12, 2014 09:43
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Party Plane Jones posted:The SR-71 startcarts put out from 800 (400 in two engines) to ~950 HP over the years they were used. The last ones were Buicks if I remember right. First were Buicks, last were Chevy 454's. It was the pinnacle of hot rod tech for the time. When the SR-71 came out, the world of performance engines was different than it was now, and Buick was one of the highest power engines made. Once those wore out Chevy big blocks were the cats rear end, and could be built more powerful and cheaper. Seizure Meat fucked around with this message at 12:17 on May 12, 2014 |
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May 12, 2014 12:14
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Bacarruda posted:Not really. The Falklands are substantially better garrisoned now than they were in 1982. There's a nuclear sub hovering in the South Atlantic most of the time. And the Argentine military has bought basically zero new ships or fighter aircraft since the 1982 war. You think UK defense has atrophied? Take a look at the Argentine Navy. They have 17 ships commissioned after 1982, plus one older ship transformed and recommissioned. However, their new ships aren't in a good state: Active ARA ships posted:The submarine fleet is suffering from lack of maintenance and training. The submarines accumulated a total of only 19 hours submerged in 2012 against a minimum requirement of 190 days. The Argentine Air Force decommissioned their Mirages (III, 5, and Nesher) so they only have modernized Skyhawks and Pucaras. Pretty poor shape all around.
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May 12, 2014 12:21
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Bacarruda posted:Not really. The Falklands are substantially better garrisoned now than they were in 1982. There's a nuclear sub hovering in the South Atlantic most of the time. And the Argentine military has bought basically zero new ships or fighter aircraft since the 1982 war. You think UK defense has atrophied? Take a look at the Argentine Navy.
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May 12, 2014 13:43
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Godholio posted:It's worth mentioning that the RN has exactly one serviceable carrier and exactly zero airplanes for it. We have a full scale military airbase on the Falklands now. A force that could capture the islands in the first place could not be dislodged by a naval task force.
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May 12, 2014 13:51
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Plus TLAMs, Storm Shadow, way better ships, etc.
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May 12, 2014 15:17
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I remember reading a really bad piece of fiction about how THE ARGENTIANS WILL CONQUER AGAIN and it was basically a platform for the author to complain about liberals. Like it was seriously Falkland Islands 2: Electric Boogaloo. The plan was something like a Russian submarine secretly torpedoing most of the British fleet for under-the-table oil rights with Argentina? Plus a lot of authorial-insert anger over the Harrier FA2 being retired.
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May 12, 2014 17:51
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He does sound crazy, but I'm still not sure why you would retire an aircraft from active service before its intended replacement is up and running. It seems...weird, from a "I like planes!" perspective anyways.
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May 12, 2014 18:02
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It's the F-35's fault, actually. Or MOD's fault for listening to Lockmart about the F-35, but fundamentally, the F-35.
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May 12, 2014 18:04
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Davin Valkri posted:He does sound crazy, but I'm still not sure why you would retire an aircraft from active service before its intended replacement is up and running. It seems...weird, from a "I like planes!" perspective anyways. Plus tieing the biggest building program of your navy for the last 30 years or so to the success of a single airplane still in development. Fitting out the QEs with a skijump will never make sense to me.
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May 12, 2014 18:08
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Bacarruda posted:Not really. The Falklands are substantially better garrisoned now than they were in 1982. There's a nuclear sub hovering in the South Atlantic most of the time. And the Argentine military has bought basically zero new ships or fighter aircraft since the 1982 war. You think UK defense has atrophied? Take a look at the Argentine Navy. At the time of the Falklands war MI6 had no assets in Argentina what so ever. I would expect theres plenty of intelligence from there now so there little chance of something unexpected happening.
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May 12, 2014 18:11
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The fact that there isn't an articulatable strategic need for the UK to have a carrier at all helps a lot.
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May 12, 2014 18:11
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Cat Mattress posted:They have 17 ships commissioned after 1982, plus one older ship transformed and recommissioned. However, their new ships aren't in a good state: That's true, but most of the new ships they do have were bought in the 1980s immediately after the war and aren't, as you note, in good shape.
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May 12, 2014 18:15
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Party Plane Jones posted:The SR-71 startcarts put out from 800 (400 in two engines) to ~950 HP over the years they were used. The last ones were Buicks if I remember right. Were these like ground air/bleed air in civil aviation or was there an actual mechanical link between the engine and start cart? 
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May 12, 2014 20:38
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Doctor Grape Ape posted:Were these like ground air/bleed air in civil aviation or was there an actual mechanical link between the engine and start cart? Mechanical linkage in the form of a drive shaft though the bottom of the nacelles. Don't forget the shot of TEB to light the engines up. It's totally  .
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May 12, 2014 21:24
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The SR-71's one of those things where just handing out the technical documents to spies would have been a great way to destroy any credibility they had with the Soviets. "The Americans are building secret Mach 3 spy-planes using metals they're sourcing from the Soviet Union; they're going to use muscle cars to start them, and the thing's gonna burn special fuel... Oh it's also going to use the fuel to cool the hull, although it's gonna leak all over the place until it gets up to speed because of heat dilatation."
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May 12, 2014 21:29
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I've wondered sometimes why the Soviet Union never attempted to build a spyplane of its own like the SR-71. I mean I get totally that the SR-71 is up there with the Saturn V as one of the great aeronautical engineering feats of all time, but still, you'd expect them to try and imitate, you'd think. fake e: I asked this question in the AI thread: was the SR-71 an amazing example of pre-computer aided design?
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May 12, 2014 21:51
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They probably just didn't need one. My (probably very flawed) understanding is that they doubled down on spysats early and intensively, and had some U2-esque bird to cover any gaps.
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May 12, 2014 22:13
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The nature of the Soviet police state vs the relatively much more free and capitalist West means the Soviets were much more effective with old fashioned spies and moles while we were better with tech-based data collection. The geography / low population density of the remoter parts of USSR also lent themselves more to observation from the sky vs gossipy locals, in ways you really don't get in the West except maybe some seriously frozen parts of Canada. I'd love to know more about the USSR vs Red China espionage / counter programs, they must've been pretty ugly.
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May 12, 2014 22:34
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Cyrano4747 posted:They probably just didn't need one. My (probably very flawed) understanding is that they doubled down on spysats early and intensively, and had some U2-esque bird to cover any gaps. The Soviets used MiG-25Rs to overfly the UK on occasion: http://bit.ly/1hIbkag They were a touch later to the party in regards to making a U-2 style plane: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myasishchev_M-55 But yeah, their big break were satellites combined with frequent use of recon Bears, Badgers, and Tu-142s basically flying anywhere that still counted as international airspace. They also had the Tu-141 and Tu-123 recon drones, but they didn't get a tremendous amount of use because they're the size of, looked like, and moved as fast as, nuclear-armed cruise missiles. They were also not air-launched. Snowdens Secret posted:I'd love to know more about the USSR vs Red China espionage / counter programs, they must've been pretty ugly. I'd imagine it gave both sides a hell of a time, since the areas of the USSR bordering China have an ethnic makeup that's more Asiatic than Caucasian. Probably tilted more in favor of the Soviets, because Kazakhs (Borat aside), actually could pass for Chinese. On the reverse end, you really had to be a remarkably important and/or valuable person to the Soviets if you didn't look like the people who were in charge. BIG HEADLINE fucked around with this message at 23:52 on May 12, 2014 |
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May 12, 2014 23:37
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Snowdens Secret posted:The geography / low population density of the remoter parts of USSR also lent themselves more to observation from the sky vs gossipy locals, in ways you really don't get in the West except maybe some seriously frozen parts of Canada. We call that part "Edmonton"
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May 12, 2014 23:51
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BIG HEADLINE posted:They also had the Tu-141 and Tu-123 recon drones, but they didn't get a tremendous amount of use because they're the size of, looked like, and moved as fast as, nuclear-armed cruise missiles. They were also not air-launched.  Who came up with THAT brilliant idea?priznat posted:We call that part "Edmonton" Not even the Soviets care about Edmonton.
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May 13, 2014 00:03
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madeintaipei posted:Mechanical linkage in the form of a drive shaft though the bottom of the nacelles. Don't forget the shot of TEB to light the engines up. It's totally Somebody said TEB? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wt4BYGiFws4 FrozenVent posted:
More a result of similar functions yielding similar designs than anything else. The -123 was actually developed from a cancelled cruise missile design (and the -141 was developed from the -123).
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May 13, 2014 01:17
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Vulcan 607, which I'm 99% sure to have already posted, is a great narrative of the Brits putting the bomb on Port Stanley's runway. Also the British need a carrier because damnit my inner child that toured the HMS Victory and knew as much as the tour guide needs them to still be able to put at least one decent fleet to sea without literally riding the USN's coattails.
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May 13, 2014 01:23
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This might have been (probably was) posted before, but I just stumbled on it, and the overflight chat made it kind of topical. Brian Shul babbling about stuff for an hour "I drank an average of four gallons of Kool-Aid a day for five days"
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May 13, 2014 01:36
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