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BIG HEADLINE posted:So in other words, he shouldn't go on any business trips that require flying, and should generally avoid driving, too. Hey, accidents happen on the DC Beltway all the time. He's the driving intellectual force behind the "Third Offset" strategy initiative, which SecDef Hagel has signed off on. In it, Hagel has officially stated that the DoD will open up to "global markets", which is a nice way of putting our bloated, incestuous defense industry on notice. For decades they've ridden the wave of "Buy American!" and it hasn't always been good for us, so this is a good development. Work is also looking hard at F-35C. One of his close associates, who until recently was one of the only active duty Naval officers to have a PhD, has written on potentially phasing out manned strike aircraft. Between the lines, this could definitely apply to the Super Hornet replacement, but Work thinks we may be able to significantly reduce the F-35C buy. But let's go back to the Cold War for a bit. This is the Third Offset, so what about the first two? The first was the New Look of the mid-1950s, which saw the doctrine of Massive Retaliation. "New Look" could best be described as the acquisition part of that doctrine. After the end of the Korean war, the administration basically told the services to make themselves relevant, leaving them to get creative (or not) on how they approached the problem. The Air Force upheld the letter and the spirit of the doctrine, with giant bombers and slick interceptors. The Navy? Ehh, not so much. A lot of the letter, not a lot of the spirit. Adhering to the letter of the New Look got you this:  The plucky A-4 Skyhawk was a lightweight strike aircraft with the ability to carry one nuclear bomb inland and probably come out. Because the aircraft wasn't expected to get all that far from ground zero, they built in a little blast-shield pod, thing. Of course, subsonic aircraft couldn't expect to drop a 150KT device from a a couple thousand feet and live to tell the tale. No, our intrepid aviators devised this clever tactic:  Colloquially known as "The Idiot Loop", it uh, is about as dumb as it looks. I'm pretty sure we legitimately expected this to work, although I don't know if we actually found anyone with the guts to try a live-fire test. These days, the services have much less autonomy in what they buy - joint projects getting shoved down throats, and all that, so I doubt we'll see the kind of creativity with Third Offset that we got with New Look. This creativity was generally a good thing, as it not only gave the Navy some viable multirole platforms, it also ultimately resulted in the Polaris SLBM/SSBN program. The capability of Boomers to offer a second-strike capability was a major contributor to Kennedy's ability to call for major force restructuring under "Flexible Response". More on that later.
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Nov 10, 2014 03:41
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Red Crown posted:Of course, subsonic aircraft couldn't expect to drop a 150KT device from a a couple thousand feet and live to tell the tale. No, our intrepid aviators devised this clever tactic: That looks even more fun than toss bombing!
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Nov 10, 2014 03:49
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Seems like the next plan would be a couple of robot arms extending from the fuselage (with white gloves on em, natch) that does an exaggerated windup pitch and lobs the nuke in the direction of the target while the plane beats feet in the opposite direction.
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Nov 10, 2014 04:02
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Isn't pulling a loop right over your target a good way to get a SAM up your rear end?
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Nov 10, 2014 04:09
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Isn't [everything in that picture] a good way to get [horribly killed]?
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Nov 10, 2014 04:10
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I think this was before they realized (through a combination of technical intelligence and dead pilots buried in sealed caskets) how good soviet SAM systems were.
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Nov 10, 2014 04:11
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I just like that a railway siding is a good target for a nuke
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Nov 10, 2014 04:18
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simplefish posted:I just like that a railway siding is a good target for a nuke After the first couple thousand you get a lot less picky.
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Nov 10, 2014 04:19
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hailthefish posted:Isn't [everything in that picture] a good way to get [horribly killed]? Pretty sure that if you were going to go fly that profile you didnt plan to come back in anything other than irradiated pieces.
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Nov 10, 2014 05:07
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wdarkk posted:After the first couple thousand you get a lot less picky. Well, when the SIOP was updated after the Cold War, it was discovered that there were multiple strategic nuclear weapons being used on out of the way targets like bridges in Siberia and so many nuclear weapons aimed at the major Russian cities that the detonation of one would have probably destroyed at least a couple of other incoming ones.
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Nov 10, 2014 05:25
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Fearless posted:Well, when the SIOP was updated after the Cold War, it was discovered that there were multiple strategic nuclear weapons being used on out of the way targets like bridges in Siberia and so many nuclear weapons aimed at the major Russian cities that the detonation of one would have probably destroyed at least a couple of other incoming ones. Wasn't a big part of the problem that the various commands didn't really integrate their plans and just assumed that they'd have the only operational nuke chuckers? So Air Force, Navy, and whoever controls the ICBMs were all getting ready to take potshots at the same targets?
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Nov 10, 2014 05:30
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It's also complicated by how hardened some of the targets were. It's one thing to just airburst something over a city center to try and gently caress up life in general for a whole poo poo-ton of people, it's something else to try and dig a hardened silo out of a field. Combine that with the fact that you're usually betting on a certain percentage being duds, a certain percentage getting vaporized by whatever the anti-missile tech of the day is, a certain percentage hitting anywhere but where you aimed them due to hosed gyroscopes or improper guidance programming, a certain percentage never being launched because they got destroyed by an incoming attack, etc. Think about that stuff for a while and it starts to make sense to shoot 20 warheads at an even moderately hardened or resilient target you absolutely, positively need to make sure gets knocked out.
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Nov 10, 2014 05:46
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There's no way that that diagram wasn't made just to make pilots not realize that the bomb was set to go off the millisecond they pickled it. "So, how are we going to ensure a CEP of almost zero meters with gravity bombs? The eggheads tell us guided bombs are still about ten years out, which means twenty years." "Oh, we've thought of something. Since it's pretty certain that if we ever get into a situation where there's a shooting war with the Reds, we're going to train the pilots to do this 'fun to practice, impossible to pull off' maneuver which entails them pulling vertical over a priority target and releasing the weapon at optimum airburst height." "But won't that make it extremely difficult to egr...you're a sick gently caress, Johnson." "They're airmen tasked with carrying nuclear weapons on low-altitude airframes that can't supersonically dash, they're already 'expendable.'" ----- Pretty sure that diagram predates laydown delivery, though. simplefish posted:I just like that a railway siding is a good target for a nuke Actually, it kinda was:  (and this doesn't include thousands of spur lines) Just like pretty much every single US interstate crossroads and major tunnel and crossing were (and probably still are) targeted by several Russian (remembered this time) MIRVs each. You'd actually be amazed at how much superfluous poo poo was in SIOP and how much 'overkill' was planned for. BIG HEADLINE fucked around with this message at 06:43 on Nov 10, 2014 |
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Nov 10, 2014 06:18
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simplefish posted:I just like that a railway siding is a good target for a nuke Actually, Cold War Soviet armored formations relied heavily on trains for mobility. Back when Hayden was D/CIA, he used to tell an anecdote about his time as an embassy attaché, when he would regularly take a train that happened to pass the marshaling yards five Soviet tank divisions, built right along the rail line. Check on what they were up to that day. If you could take out a major rail yard, that could put a crimp in Soviet reenforcement in a European war, and has the bonus of possibly vaporizing a bunch of tanks on flat cars.
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Nov 10, 2014 06:54
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Did someone say they wanted airplane pics? We can do that. Nellis AFB Airshow, 2014. Full Album: http://imgur.com/a/qRNTQ#129 Some of the cold warriors on display.                
wkarma fucked around with this message at 07:59 on Nov 10, 2014 |
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Nov 10, 2014 07:07
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I've only found a small article on this here, but it seems like the UK has decidedly given Argentina the middle finger on buying Gripens through Brazil. No UK based products, of which the 39E/F is about 30% composed of, will go to a nation that might use them in another Falklands conflict. Is that much of a loss for Saab, or would that sale be Embraer's contract at that point?
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Nov 10, 2014 08:00
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Argentina's only real viable option is the JF-17
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Nov 10, 2014 09:25
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Argentinian Flankers  (I'm guessing they could afford about 6 at this point)
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Nov 10, 2014 09:46
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Argentina's only real viable option is a reverse mortgage.
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Nov 10, 2014 09:53
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Mazz posted:I've only found a small article on this here, but it seems like the UK has decidedly given Argentina the middle finger on buying Gripens through Brazil. No UK based products, of which the 39E/F is about 30% composed of, will go to a nation that might use them in another Falklands conflict. More like "we can't have the Argentinians buying a plane that could realistically shoot down an entire ship's complement of F-35Bs."
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Nov 10, 2014 11:37
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BIG HEADLINE posted:More like "we can't have the Argentinians buying a plane that could realistically shoot down an entire ship's complement of F-35Bs." gently caress I was about to post that.
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Nov 10, 2014 13:51
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LostCosmonaut posted:Argentinian Flankers At current rate of inflation that will be 5 Flankers in 1.7 years. Better jump on it.
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Nov 10, 2014 13:53
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Mazz posted:I've only found a small article on this here, but it seems like the UK has decidedly given Argentina the middle finger on buying Gripens through Brazil. No UK based products, of which the 39E/F is about 30% composed of, will go to a nation that might use them in another Falklands conflict. I haven't seen anything in Swedish mass media indicating we would sell Gripen to Argentina, directly or indirectly. Also, that 30% of Gripen E/F belongs to UK is something that is not commonly discussed in Sweden, which is kinda hilarious considering how many Swedes that still believe we are/were a neutral country.
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Nov 10, 2014 14:20
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Cardiac posted:I haven't seen anything in Swedish mass media indicating we would sell Gripen to Argentina, directly or indirectly. http://www.svd.se/naringsliv/branscher/industri-och-fordon/brasilien-och-argentina-kan-samarbeta-om-gripen_4032153.svd It's not us doing the selling, it's the Brazilians. And "belongs to the UK" is a really weird way to put it, it's more that certain components are purchased from abroad and are subject to export licenses from other countries (the Viggen couldn't be exported because the US would not approve an export license for the civilian JT-8D engine, laff). It has nothing to do with being neutral.
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Nov 10, 2014 14:35
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TheFluff posted:http://www.svd.se/naringsliv/branscher/industri-och-fordon/brasilien-och-argentina-kan-samarbeta-om-gripen_4032153.svd Hey, look at that, apparently I have missed that BAE sold off their shares in SAAB to Investor.
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Nov 10, 2014 14:49
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Yeah it's back under Wallenberg control, just like in the good old days. Did you know Saab drove everyone else out of the aircraft business in the 30's because of an understanding between the government and the industrialists? Basically the government was like "there's only room for one aircraft manufacturer in this country, if you want to be it we'll give you all the government contracts" and suddenly Saab had bought everyone else up. Funny how that works out. Staten och kapitalet...
TheFluff fucked around with this message at 16:59 on Nov 10, 2014 |
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Nov 10, 2014 16:41
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wkarma posted:Did someone say they wanted airplane pics? We can do that. Nice! Thanks for posting those.
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Nov 10, 2014 20:33
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No matter how much people hate on this thing, it still looks like electric sex to me.
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Nov 10, 2014 21:57
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Nobody hates on the raptor, if anything they hate on gates for not getting enough of them.
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Nov 10, 2014 22:01
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I thought the F-22 hate was now tempered by the blinding hatred for the F-35. My only beef with the raptor is that I think the YF-23 was way cooler.
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Nov 10, 2014 22:02
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FrozenVent posted:Isn't pulling a loop right over your target a good way to get a SAM up your rear end? Back when this was considered cutting edge strategery, no, actually! The first IR SAMs didn't start appearing until the late 60s, so the main threat would have been early SA-1 and SA-2 radar guided SAMs. With those, going vertical would only make the aircraft more vulnerable if he was trying to out-maneuver the missile. Heck, the EMP from the detonation might even disrupt the tracking radar's lock on the aircraft. When you think of it like that, you'd be crazy not to nuke every target!
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Nov 10, 2014 22:05
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The Raptor got a lot of hate before because it cost so much (and a little from the YF-23 fans). Then they built the F-35.
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Nov 10, 2014 22:06
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Plus the Raptor is probably pretty good at it's intended job of shooting other planes down. At the very least it can take off and land on runways it was designed to operate from, unlike the F-35b and F-35c
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Nov 10, 2014 22:15
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The F-22 is supernaturally good at its job
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Nov 10, 2014 23:13
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holocaust bloopers posted:The F-22 is supernaturally good at its job I'm gonna steal this line, because yes.
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Nov 10, 2014 23:35
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evil_bunnY posted:Nobody hates on the raptor, if anything they hate on gates for not getting enough of them. The number one reason to hate on the raptor was that it finally came into being in the midst of a war where Americans were dying on a daily basis in battles where the F-22 was basically useless. When you look at mission parameters and how it operates, the F-22 pretty much owns. Godholio posted:I'm gonna steal this line, because yes. poo poo, now I'm just picturing Dean saying "I dunno, Sam, are you sure it wasn't just a freak incident?"
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Nov 10, 2014 23:35
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evil_bunnY posted:Nobody hates on the raptor, if anything they hate on gates for not getting enough of them. Ahem. I hate on the Raptor for being a convoluted MX nightmare - seriously I can't think of a single task that wasn't easier on the F-15. Mainly as the result of that loving laptop all the tech data is on. Also it looks like a fat toad sitting on the ground. I will concede that it looks purty all flying around though.
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Nov 10, 2014 23:40
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The F-22 has been my wet dream since I was a kid and first played F-22 Lightning II by NovaLogic, I won't listen to none of this sass talk about the Raptor 
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Nov 10, 2014 23:55
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The F-22 is that pretty chick that you blew off because you thought you could do better. The F-35 is the hambeast you woke up next to.
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Nov 10, 2014 23:56
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I looked through the thread and didn't see this.  Il-102. It's hard to see but it has a GSh-30-2 and 6 internal bomb bays. It lost out the CAS role to the SU-25.
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Nov 11, 2014 00:13
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