AIRPOWER/Cold War - Its literally the first two lines of their hymn

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ArchangeI: Jul 15, 2010

xthetenth posted:

Honestly the thing I'm most impressed by in that video is the incredible short field performance those vipers apparently have been refitted with. The first ones don't have much runway at all.

"Hey guys let's forward base all of our B-2s but not, like, patrol the perimeter or anything. Lol what are the Russians gonna do, ship in a quadcopter drone with a minigun or something?"

# ? Oct 9, 2014 01:50

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# ? Jun 3, 2024 16:52

Nebakenezzer: Sep 13, 2005; The Mote in God's Eye

Nostalgia4Infinity posted:

Yes -- without a shred of irony.

I'm not sure why they have that thing - even characters inside the series comment on how many times it has crashed.

e:

simplefish posted:

I just found this in another thread but I'm 369 posts behind in this one, so sorry if it's been posted before... but I saw this cold war gold and thought of you:
https://archive.org/details/PAM750-31

This is the best manual I've ever seen.

Nebakenezzer fucked around with this message at 01:58 on Oct 9, 2014

# ? Oct 9, 2014 01:55

Panzeh: Nov 27, 2006; "..The high ground"

ArchangeI posted:

"Hey guys let's forward base all of our B-2s but not, like, patrol the perimeter or anything. Lol what are the Russians gonna do, ship in a quadcopter drone with a minigun or something?"

Putting hundreds of F-16s on the runway at once sounds like the right way to do air operations.

# ? Oct 9, 2014 02:00

wdarkk: Oct 26, 2007; Friends: Protected
World: Saved
Crablettes: Eaten

Panzeh posted:

Putting hundreds of F-16s on the runway at once sounds like the right way to do air operations.

They're parked that way to protect against sabotage.

It is a Pearl Harbor joke.

# ? Oct 9, 2014 02:02

in a well actually: Jan 26, 2011; dude, you gotta end it on the rhyme

Panzeh posted:

Putting hundreds of F-16s on the runway at once sounds like the right way to do air operations.

The fuel budget has gone to F-35 production.

# ? Oct 9, 2014 02:04

in a well actually: Jan 26, 2011; dude, you gotta end it on the rhyme

simplefish posted:

I just found this in another thread but I'm 369 posts behind in this one, so sorry if it's been posted before... but I saw this cold war gold and thought of you:
https://archive.org/details/PAM750-31

Will Eisner this and did one for the M16 also:
http://www.ep.tc/problems/25/

# ? Oct 9, 2014 02:12

Godholio: Aug 28, 2002; Does a bear split in the woods near Zheleznogorsk?

Nebakenezzer posted:

I'm not sure why they have that thing - even characters inside the series comment on how many times it has crashed.

F-100, F-104 Lawn Dart, F-16 Lawn Dart II, etc.

# ? Oct 9, 2014 02:43

priznat: Jul 7, 2009; Let's get drunk and kiss each other all night.

I want to see a 747 pooping out cruise missiles.

# ? Oct 9, 2014 03:03

Craptacular: Jul 11, 2004

How about a gun that shoots aircraft?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7K91g8yG_w

# ? Oct 9, 2014 04:49

Psion: Dec 13, 2002; eVeN I KnOw wHaT CoRnEr gAs iS

priznat posted:

I want to see a 747 pooping out cruise missiles.

How about a C-5 pooping out an ICBM?

# ? Oct 9, 2014 04:51

priznat: Jul 7, 2009; Let's get drunk and kiss each other all night.

Psion posted:

How about a C-5 pooping out an ICBM?

C-5 has to shoot it out the front! :haw:

# ? Oct 9, 2014 06:04

Bacarruda: Mar 30, 2011; Mutiny!?! More like "reinterpreted orders"

Panzeh posted:

Putting hundreds of F-16s on the runway at once sounds like the right way to do air operations.

Damned right it is.

http://theaviationist.com/2012/03/06/elephant-walk/

# ? Oct 9, 2014 06:59

Godholio: Aug 28, 2002; Does a bear split in the woods near Zheleznogorsk?

priznat posted:

C-5 has to shoot it out the front!

Nah.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96A0wb1Ov9k

# ? Oct 9, 2014 07:12

Snowdens Secret: Dec 29, 2008; Someone got you a obnoxiously racist av.

Bacarruda posted:

Damned right it is.

http://theaviationist.com/2012/03/06/elephant-walk/

I can feel N4I's / iyaayas's triggering from here

# ? Oct 9, 2014 07:21

priznat: Jul 7, 2009; Let's get drunk and kiss each other all night.

Yeah I've seen that one, I just think it's cheating to drop it out the back. Mod up some sweet front launch system just because! or drop one out the back and shoot one out the front, whatevs.

# ? Oct 9, 2014 07:22

hailthefish: Oct 24, 2010

Gigantic bomb bay doors.

# ? Oct 9, 2014 07:36

BIG HEADLINE: Jun 13, 2006; "Stand back, Ottawan ruffian, or face my lumens!"

priznat posted:

Yeah I've seen that one, I just think it's cheating to drop it out the back. Mod up some sweet front launch system just because! or drop one out the back and shoot one out the front, whatevs.

Boeing agreed...at least at one point:

I wonder what kind of wake turbulence an ICBM's first stage would put out less than a mile ahead of the launching aircraft.

BIG HEADLINE fucked around with this message at 09:29 on Oct 9, 2014

# ? Oct 9, 2014 09:11

Vindolanda: Feb 13, 2012; It's just like him too, y'know?

ought ten posted:

Whoa. We're hosed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cp7mM2TP_1A

Of course those cool dude Russians take off on sport bikes without helmets. Just to rub it in.

The *schlurp* soise that the image of the Fresh Water delivery lorry pulling its load cover off puts in my mind is the worst thing. The worst. Why does it...glisten?

# ? Oct 9, 2014 11:29

Nostalgia4Infinity: Feb 27, 2007; 10,000 YEARS WASN'T ENOUGH LURKING

Snowdens Secret posted:

I can feel N4I's / iyaayas's triggering from here

I guarantee at least one of those loving pilots brought their jet back code 3.

# ? Oct 9, 2014 14:39

Doctor Grape Ape: Aug 26, 2005; Dammit Doc, I just bought this for you 3 months ago. Try and keep it around for a bit longer this time.

Godholio posted:

Nah.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96A0wb1Ov9k

Which reminds me of another one of my favorite things, the repurposed Peacekeepers turned Minotaur launch vehicles. The LADEE launch is really something special, it surprises even the cameramen. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1MY03vmkps

# ? Oct 9, 2014 16:21

Psion: Dec 13, 2002; eVeN I KnOw wHaT CoRnEr gAs iS

Bacarruda posted:

Damned right it is.

http://theaviationist.com/2012/03/06/elephant-walk/

Ah, this reminds me of the good ol' days of playing Falcon 3.0 and always, always, always sending up a full eight-plane formation. My maintainers were perfect so I never had to worry about anything :smugdog:

# ? Oct 9, 2014 16:48

TheFluff: Dec 13, 2006; FRIENDS, LISTEN TO ME
I AM A SEAGULL
OF WEALTH AND TASTE

Since people seemed to enjoy the previous JA 37 effort post (well, I can't really take full credit, it's not my words, I'm just translating) I went ahead and translated another bit. I've covered about 50% of the document now, there's still a ton of stuff about the radar and other things left.

quote:

Lennart Alfredsson (then at SRA): You're talking so much about that tactical indicator, but I guarantee that back then when you were going on about it, there wasn't a chance in hell to actually make it work. We had no working solution. Map instruments in aircraft did exist, optical ones. Ferranti had implemented one, it was based on a 35mm film running around like crazy, rotating and whatnot. Then there were those who built small extra ports in the back of cathode ray tubes and projected the map on the back of the phosphorus layer, it was white so you could see it, but it had to be pretty thin to be visible. Since we didn't have an aluminum backing we'd lose half the luminance if we did it that way. So we didn't really have any good way to do it. On top of that our project lead didn't want the thing to be too expensive.

Well, we decided we were going to try with a digital tape deck, and the ones we had could hold about 14 megabits unformatted. But it took five or six minutes to run the tape from one end to the other and that made things difficult. Sweden's a very oblong country so we had to split the tape in segments. Possibly this "Raymond Tape Unit" we had could work, it was in use in aircraft but not for this purpose. So we really didn't have any solution that would let us draw a decent electronic map. We worked for over a year with trying to find new solutions that we eventually discarded, further new solutions that we also discarded and so on. For about a year. I had a colleague called Stellan Nennerfelt, many of you knew him. One Friday we went home and suddenly we both had an idea. And we both rushed back into the office and said "I have the answer!". We had the same solution, the two of us. Exactly the same.

Simple, but not something you come up with immediately. The time for a presentation on the tactical indicator is about 20 milliseconds, and it refreshes all the time, so you have to do everything in 20 milliseconds. We callously stole two milliseconds and said that two milliseconds, that's what we got for the map. But no longer. We wanted a lot of other things on the indicator as well, after all. And then we made one long chain of segments, starting in Sundsvall. Ordinary seven-segments, sometimes you could jump a bit further and sometimes a bit shorter. Sometimes it was silent and nothing was drawn. We started in Sundsvall and just followed the chain as fast as humanly possible, along the coast, up rivers and down rivers and up to Ume�. Along the entire Finnish and Norwegian border and the entire way down the western side of the country, some islands in and out and up and down. And when we got to the place where the aircraft was, we stopped and went segment by segment and illuminated the entire map within the area the indicator showed. And when we got to the far end we sped up again.

This actually worked, this was something you could do in a small country. Hughes Aircraft Company, our partner, they couldn't do it in the US, it was too big. And when we tried with Australia when we were going to travel down there, that didn't work either. Sweden was just small enough. Those of you who were involved back then will remember that there was always a demo map over Scania (southernmost part of Sweden). That's the perfect place in Sweden to draw an electronic map of. Try it up north and see how that works out for you! There's one single building! And that building was put there on the map just to make it possible to figure out where the hell you were.

But the electronic map turned out to be cheap, actually. The entire system was 4000 four-bit words, 16000 bits total, and that covered the entire country. You can imagine how much that is. 16000 bits is about two kilobytes. Saab's travel expenses form is 65 kilobytes today, and that's before you fill it in. It wasn't easy to get this electronic map in, really, it took us over a year to find a workable solution.

Ulf Frieberg: But there's no doubt that once that step was made, all resistance was gone.

What the tactical indicator actually looked like. The aircraft is the small triangle in lower center; it's heading south by southwest over the island of �land. In the lower right corner the aircraft weight (VIKT) and angle of attack (ALFA) are shown.

Lennart Alfredsson: We had simulated the electronic map earlier in a simpler way in aircraft 35, or maybe it was in 32 Gamma (32 Gamma was a modified Lansen that was used as a flying testbed for the JA 37 radar and some other avionics). We had the resources, we could actually fly these experiments. In combat aircraft, too, unlike the yankees who got to do it in transport aircraft early on.

Hasse Olofsson (at the aircraft electronics bureau at FMV): I worked on the presentation system and related developments directly. What I think was a major factor in all of these parts was actually our experimental and testing activities in parallel with the regular development. Without those we would never have dared to push as hard as we did. You mentioned 32 Gamma and that's where most of the work was done. It was the same with the HUD in JAS 39 which was the first of its kind in the world. We've had an incredible experimental and testing environment.

Bengt Sj�berg: I thought since we were discussing the usefulness of the tactical indicator I should jump back a bit and point out a bit of icing on the cake, if you will. More specifically the fighter-to-fighter datalink that more or less came skidding in on a banana peel at some point. They were working on a project called A 20 (proposed new low-cost strike Viggen version with the capability of carrying more and heavier weapons) and couldn't afford to put a radar in every aircraft, some development work was done more or less by feeling and then the entire thing was cancelled. But one thing they did come up with, namely that if only some aircraft had a radar then you could make those transfer their radar data over a radio link to their squadron mates. They squeezed a solution out of the radio system that made it possible to send that data during idle periods. The aircraft with a targeting solution could transfer both the radar image and the targeting solution to others. From this the real fighter-to-fighter data link grew and was later integrated on the JA 37. We ended up with outstanding cooperation capabilities within a fourship, through this datalink and the tactical indicator. And that functionality JAS 39 ended up inheriting as well.

Leif �str�m: I have a few things to add to that, it might be worth commenting on from the user's perspective. The first step, the introduction of the pulse-Doppler radar, that marked the end of the days when the men of honor and silence rushed along between the treetops of pine and fir and nobody could see us with radar. We could hide pretty successfully from the 35's back then, but with the Doppler radar that came to an end. They dug us up and saw us down there too. On top of that, when the fighter datalink came, when I got a radar warning from one direction, suddenly another one appeared from a different direction and had me boxed in without me having discovered him at all. That was a very unpleasant development for a strike pilot! It was a very big step forward.

Initially, this was something we were pretty careful with. There was a lot of secrecy around the fighter datalink, it was nothing you could talk about carelessly, it was some years before we showed it to anyone. And what I was actually going to talk about was the first time we showed it to an international audience. It was at the 6th air wing and we had a visiting squadron of Jaguars from the UK. It was kind of a special visit, we met up on a Monday and gathered up as usual in the briefing room and presented ourselves to each other. We talked about what we were doing, about our aircraft, such things. Their squadron commander did the same thing for their side. They had their wartime assignments in Norway, as it turned out. That was interesting. But then he said something that was pretty surprising and very un-British. He said "well, I really gotta ask you one thing I've been wondering about. Why on earth are you, in this small country with a population about London's size, developing your own combat aircraft for silly amounts of money when you could just buy off the shelf, from us for example?" And that was pretty hard to answer then and there.

But then they got to follow us for a week. They got to ride in the 37, see its performance for themselves, performance that wasn't just marketing but actually true in real life. And they got to see some other things. At that time, we showed - for the first time, as far as I know - the fighter-to-fighter datalink. They got to see it at the 13th air wing in Norrk�ping through the UTB (the UTB was a recording and presentation system mainly used for training; it recorded almost everything that the aircraft showed to the pilot, as well as pilot input and some tactical data, and the entire mission could then could be presented - including pausing and rewinding - and analyzed on the ground in what basically amounted to a simulated cockpit) and we noticed how they grew silent. They started whispering among each other, talking and pointing, and it was obvious that this was something that had impressed them. And the week went on and the time came for them to go home. And the same squadron commander stood up again, and he was a bit embarrassed, because remembered what he had said that previous Monday. He hemmed and hawed for a little bit but then he finally got to the point and said "I remember what I said last Monday and well, now we've seen some things here".

Then he talked about the experiences I mentioned and he said "You should know that right now we're discussing if we can afford a system like this in our next aircraft, the Eurofighter, and in that case how many of the aircraft we could afford to put it in. And then we get here and see that you already have this system operational, and at a fraction of the cost we're going to spend on it. Keep building aircraft, it seems like a good idea!" He actually said it, just like that. I think that might be some kind of indication of how valuable that system was, because sometimes it's hard to see internally how far you've gotten. This was in 1985, I think, and only today are other systems like this starting to become operational. Sometimes we've been far ahead without knowing it.

Kim Bengtsson: Yeah, I just want to relate another anecdote of how the datalink was perceived. I remember the first time the test center pilots were up and flying with it and when they landed they were like, "This is goddamned awesome, now we can turn those guys down in the cave off".

Moderator: Who were the guys down in the cave?

Kim Bengtsson: The air combat controllers. But maybe I shouldn't call them that here.

Bengt Sj�berg: Well, "turning the guys down in the cave off" might be a bit of an exaggeration.

Kim Bengtsson: Well, yes, slightly, but that was the general feeling you got.

Bengt Sj�berg: These days though you want encryption and ECCM on everything, so it's not so easy to detect and identify what's flying around up there. You can out yourself by sending out a bunch of signals.

TheFluff fucked around with this message at 20:42 on Oct 9, 2014

# ? Oct 9, 2014 20:38

Pimpmust: Oct 1, 2008

It's interesting to think about "those guys down in the cave" now with the expansion of remote controlled drone warfare. Will it see a (brief*) return of ol' ground controller directed air warfare on a big scale? I guess it kinda already is, just waiting for the manned fighters to prize themselves out of existence...

I just know the Soviets would have loving loved that sort of warfare if the USSR was still around :ussr:

*Until we can have decent onboard AIs that can be trusted enough to not gently caress up on a grand scale.

# ? Oct 9, 2014 21:23

Groda: Mar 17, 2005; Hair Elf

In Sweden, everything in the military has a cave-based version.

# ? Oct 9, 2014 21:32

goatsestretchgoals: Jun 4, 2011

Pimpmust posted:

It's interesting to think about "those guys down in the cave" now with the expansion of remote controlled drone warfare.

You've gotta figure Israel is working on some sort of tunnel drone after Protective Edge.

E: Misunderstood what you were getting at, but the point stands.

# ? Oct 9, 2014 21:42

Godholio: Aug 28, 2002; Does a bear split in the woods near Zheleznogorsk?

Pimpmust posted:

It's interesting to think about "those guys down in the cave" now with the expansion of remote controlled drone warfare. Will it see a (brief*) return of ol' ground controller directed air warfare on a big scale?

A return? It never went away. Hell, earlier this week the AF awarded the contract to replace the TPS-75 because they're worn to poo poo after 20 years of Middle East deployments.

# ? Oct 9, 2014 23:13

Plinkey: Aug 4, 2004; by Fluffdaddy

Godholio posted:

A return? It never went away. Hell, earlier this week the AF awarded the contract to replace the TPS-75 because they're worn to poo poo after 20 years of Middle East deployments.

Are they buying G/ATORs?

# ? Oct 10, 2014 00:05

Seizure Meat: Jul 23, 2008; by Smythe

I for one support the Russian choppertruck because Kenworth needs the contracts

e- nvm that's like a Scania or some poo poo, do Russians make their own rigs?

Seizure Meat fucked around with this message at 00:47 on Oct 10, 2014

# ? Oct 10, 2014 00:44

bewbies: Sep 23, 2003; Fun Shoe

Plinkey posted:

Are they buying G/ATORs?

https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=289852375d4e16d9a3da859b66d3a929&tab=core&_cview=1

Its a pretty badass radar. It also has a requirement to be compatible with the new army air defense integration system so eventually it should add quite a bit to the SAM network as a surveillance platform and will probably eventually serve as a fire control radar as well.

bewbies fucked around with this message at 01:08 on Oct 10, 2014

# ? Oct 10, 2014 01:01

Hubis: May 18, 2003; Boy, I wish we had one of those doomsday machines...

Pimpmust posted:

It's interesting to think about "those guys down in the cave" now with the expansion of remote controlled drone warfare. Will it see a (brief*) return of ol' ground controller directed air warfare on a big scale? I guess it kinda already is, just waiting for the manned fighters to prize themselves out of existence...

I just know the Soviets would have loving loved that sort of warfare if the USSR was still around

*Until we can have decent onboard AIs that can be trusted enough to not gently caress up on a grand scale.

I'm ignorant of the [highly classified, I am sure] mechanisms in place to ensure continuity of communication/positive control between UAVs and controllers, but seems to me like something that would be incredibly easy to fight asymmetrically via jamming. It seems to me that UAVs would be useful for a lot of situations, but manned aircraft are going to remain necessary if you want to fight any organized opposition -- fighters more than anything.

Am I off base?

# ? Oct 10, 2014 01:29

Back Hack: Jan 17, 2010

Hubis posted:

Am I off base?

Not at all.

# ? Oct 10, 2014 01:39

MRC48B: Apr 2, 2012

Only incorrect in that it has been made public that drone video uplinks/downlinks were (are?) not encrypted in any way shape or form. Apparently US SOF raided a house in Iraq during OIF and found video files recorded from US predator feeds. Hopefully this stupidity has been fixed.

# ? Oct 10, 2014 01:48

Godholio: Aug 28, 2002; Does a bear split in the woods near Zheleznogorsk?

Yeah, we got out of Iraq.

# ? Oct 10, 2014 01:57

BIG HEADLINE: Jun 13, 2006; "Stand back, Ottawan ruffian, or face my lumens!"

There's also a school of thought that the Iranians might've "hacked" the RQ-170 that crashed/landed in Iran, but they'll always nod furiously and claim they did something that sounds impressive.

"We built a brand new fourth-generation fighter that looks exactly like an F-5! But it's NOT an F-5, because it's got *twin stabilizers*! *Totally* different!"

This is why I'm not tremendously worried about an Iranian nuke.

"Despite the efforts of the Great Satan Imperialists, we've finished our nuclear weapon!"

"That just looks like a 2000lb bomb with Cobalt-60 containers welded to the side and a lot of 'radioactive' symbols spray-painted on with stencil."

BIG HEADLINE fucked around with this message at 03:03 on Oct 10, 2014

# ? Oct 10, 2014 02:12

That Works: Jul 22, 2006; Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy

BIG HEADLINE posted:

There's also a school of thought that the Iranians might've "hacked" the RQ-170 that crashed/landed in Iran, but they'll always nod furiously and claim they did something that sounds impressive.

"We built a brand new fourth-generation fighter that looks exactly like an F-5! But it's NOT an F-5, because it's got *twin stabilizers*! *Totally* different!"

In Blue Angels livery

# ? Oct 10, 2014 02:18

Tremblay: Oct 8, 2002; More dog whistles than a Petco

MRC48B posted:

Only incorrect in that it has been made public that drone video uplinks/downlinks were (are?) not encrypted in any way shape or form. Apparently US SOF raided a house in Iraq during OIF and found video files recorded from US predator feeds. Hopefully this stupidity has been fixed.

Were. That got fixed a while ago. Sometimes for test flights in the US we'd run the video unencrypted.

# ? Oct 10, 2014 02:28

StandardVC10: Feb 6, 2007; This avatar now 50% more dark mode compliant

Godholio posted:

Yeah, we got out of Iraq.

For now.

# ? Oct 10, 2014 02:58

bewbies: Sep 23, 2003; Fun Shoe

Hubis posted:

I'm ignorant of the [highly classified, I am sure] mechanisms in place to ensure continuity of communication/positive control between UAVs and controllers, but seems to me like something that would be incredibly easy to fight asymmetrically via jamming. It seems to me that UAVs would be useful for a lot of situations, but manned aircraft are going to remain necessary if you want to fight any organized opposition -- fighters more than anything.

Am I off base?

Not at all, signals stuff is what everybody is looking at a potential way to deal with UAS. The tricky thing is it gets a lot more difficult to access/jam/manipulate a point-to-point signal (ie, a directional transmitter to a receiver with a known position) versus omnidirectional emitters (like a TV or commercial radio transmitter). It isn't impossible, but it is a comparatively difficult task especially if you're facing an opponent using newer equipment.

# ? Oct 10, 2014 03:04

Base Emitter: Apr 1, 2012; ?

Shouldn't spread spectrum radio make it a lot harder to jam or intercept signals?

# ? Oct 10, 2014 03:11

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# ? Jun 3, 2024 16:52

Pornographic Memory: Dec 17, 2008

BIG HEADLINE posted:

There's also a school of thought that the Iranians might've "hacked" the RQ-170 that crashed/landed in Iran, but they'll always nod furiously and claim they did something that sounds impressive.

"We built a brand new fourth-generation fighter that looks exactly like an F-5! But it's NOT an F-5, because it's got *twin stabilizers*! *Totally* different!"

This is why I'm not tremendously worried about an Iranian nuke.

"Despite the efforts of the Great Satan Imperialists, we've finished our nuclear weapon!"

"That just looks like a 2000lb bomb with Cobalt-60 containers welded to the side and a lot of 'radioactive' symbols spray-painted on with stencil."

Why do the Iranians always seem to have stuff written in English on their planes?

# ? Oct 10, 2014 03:20

The Something Awful Forums > Archives > Comedy Goldmine > The Goodmine > AIRPOWER/Cold War - Its literally the first two lines of their hymn

«‹›1991 »