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Shooting Blanks posted:That makes a lot of sense - I guess the situation that made me ask was the M47 Dragon, mentioned a couple pages ago. I looked it up on Wikipedia just to get an idea of its capabilities, and it's mentioned that though the system was retired in 2001 in favor of the Javelin, it's still in US stocks. Why? How common is that? For the same reason the Russians keep stocks of T-55s and the US still has some stocks of M-60s. Just in case, really. The Dragon may have some use later just to blow up buildings and positions, and the US military has plenty of warehouses available.
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Feb 1, 2015 14:51
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Shooting Blanks posted:That makes a lot of sense - I guess the situation that made me ask was the M47 Dragon, mentioned a couple pages ago. I looked it up on Wikipedia just to get an idea of its capabilities, and it's mentioned that though the system was retired in 2001 in favor of the Javelin, it's still in US stocks. Why? How common is that? Two Finger posted:Is the Raptor still being produced? Wiki seems to think it's been taken out of production in favour of the F-35, but I mean... wasn't it introduced like less than 10 years ago? Dead Reckoning fucked around with this message at 16:33 on Feb 1, 2015 |
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Feb 1, 2015 16:29
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Shooting Blanks posted:The F-35 is the catch all fighter for the next 50 years, which accounts for the three required variants: land based, carrier based, and STOVL. I have a feeling that in the end it'll be mostly just a specialty thing too. The Navy's probably gonna buy more, if fancier, Hornets (Supers aren't even old yet, Growlers are practically brand new...) and expand into UCAVs. The Air Force is probably never gonna let go of their F15s and F16s and/or in the end won't actually buy enough of them to matter. But the Marines will be VTOLing off short carriers with them because the Harriers literally fell apart from old age.
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Feb 1, 2015 16:55
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CMD598 posted:I have a feeling that in the end it'll be mostly just a specialty thing too. The Navy's probably gonna buy more, if fancier, Hornets (Supers aren't even old yet, Growlers are practically brand new...) and expand into UCAVs. The Air Force is probably never gonna let go of their F15s and F16s and/or in the end won't actually buy enough of them to matter. But the Marines will be VTOLing off short carriers with them because the Harriers literally fell apart from old age. Another amazing find is that TACAIR (sixth-generation fighter program) has determined that the F-35 is a loving shitshow, and it would be better for each service to have distinct craft. Those survey loving monkeys at RAND have strongly recommended that each branch develop their own fighter to meet their specific mission, because acquisition costs increase by >65% when you involve multiple services in the development of an aircraft. It's better to spend a little bit more on 3 different jets overall, than to spend almost as much and get a jet that can do none of the three missions capably.
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Feb 1, 2015 17:29
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187 Raptors cuz they're just so gangsta.
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Feb 1, 2015 17:29
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Does anybody have some insight into why the A-10 pissing match between congress and the AF is still going on? Congress wants to keep it around, the AF want to ditch it because they say the money needs to go somewhere else, and meanwhile the plane continues to see heavy use with no clear alternative in sight so the debate doesn't even make sense. Is it just one of those things where the generals are bluffing for more funding? Or, alternatively, is the AF angling for more cash to spend on drones?
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Feb 1, 2015 17:36
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GENDERWEIRD GREEDO posted:Is it just one of those things where the generals are bluffing for more funding? Mostly this, it seems.
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Feb 1, 2015 17:39
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CMD598 posted:The Marines will be VTOLing off short carriers with them because the Harriers literally fell into the ocean, because single-engine powered-lift is loving stupid. 
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Feb 1, 2015 18:26
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Shooting Blanks posted:Raptor has been out of production for quite awhile now, though IIRC the tooling was mothballed - not that it wouldn't cost a shitload to restart the line, it would, but it could be done if necessary. For all practical purposes though, we're highly unlikely to see more of those than we have now. The tooling was kept for the purposes of a SLEP, there's no way the line could or would be restarted (it would be prohibitively expensive and besides, you'd be restarting a production line to build a 15+ year old design). And it's true we never intended to produce them in mass-numbers...but we always intended to produce more than 187 (381 was the bare minimum). Fortunately Bob Gates, airpower genius, knew better than us and said there wasn't any reason to buy this dumb plane since it wasn't dropping bombs on goat-fuckers running around the desert with AKs, since that's obviously what you build hundred-million dollar stealth fighters for. This would also be why we kept the tooling for a SLEP, because those 187 (actually less since a significant portion of them have a hardware incompatibility that makes them incapable of being upgraded to current spec, which means they aren't combat coded) are quite literally it for air superiority in the US military for at least another several decades. When we discover wing cracks in the fleet in 20 years we're sure as hell not going to retire any of them, each one has to stay in service as long as it is physically in one piece. GENDERWEIRD GREEDO posted:Does anybody have some insight into why the A-10 pissing match between congress and the AF is still going on? Congress wants to keep it around, the AF want to ditch it because they say the money needs to go somewhere else, and meanwhile the plane continues to see heavy use with no clear alternative in sight so the debate doesn't even make sense. The money is programmed to go to the F-35. As it continues to exit the strictly test world and begins to enter the operational side of things (i.e., the FTU for the moment along with OT&E tactics development), it needs more resources...more bodies (mostly maintainers), more money for developing TOs and conducting training courses, more money for building facilities, etc. The generals aren't bluffing, the service is literally at a point where it either needs more money or something has to go. Which is why the pissing match is still going on, because Congress is basically saying "you're not getting any more money but don't cut anything, especially not the A-10" and the generals are saying "I can't do that unless you're cool with me overdrafting my account by a couple hundred million dollars." It's at the point where once it became clear that Congress wasn't going to let us retire the A-10, ACC went on the warpath in the mx community and basically said "we need several hundred bodies for the F-35. We intended this to come from A-10 sunsetting, but since that isn't happening we're getting it from raiding across the mx enterprise. Justify your manning and prepare for it to get slashed." Now I'm not going to sit here and say that the reason this is a problem in the first place isn't because of the F-35 cost overruns turning it into the plane that ate the budget, because that's basically true...but the fact of the matter still remains, there isn't enough money to go around, and the idea that we can just shitcan the entire F-35 program is ludicrous unless you want to be flying around in 50+ year old fighters that are quite literally falling apart 20 years from now. Oh, and that all assumes sequestration doesn't hit next year...if that's the case expect to see a whole bunch of platforms get sent to the boneyard in their entirety, with zilch for replacements (so far I think the list is the entire KC-10 fleet, U-2, Global Chicken Block 40, and a significant portion of the Viper fleet, plus a reduction of 10 Pred/Reaper CAPs.) All that said, I think it's a bit disingenuous to say the plane continues to see "heavy use with no clear alternative in sight"...if it was regularly conducting danger-close CAS in the fight against ISIS then that would be a legitimate point, but everything I've seen indicates it's just performing BAI type missions. Given that is something that can (and is) being conducted by a wide variety of platforms (some much more effectively than the A-10), it seems that it was deployed less for its CAS specialty and more just because it was yet another platform that could drop bombs.
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Feb 1, 2015 18:37
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I agree on the Global Chicken. I'm still a little shocked by some of the deficiencies with that AC. Given my previous statement I think they'll do everything they can to keep the U-2 going for a while longer.
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Feb 1, 2015 19:01
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Tremblay posted:I agree on the Global Chicken. I'm still a little shocked by some of the deficiencies with that AC. Given my previous statement I think they'll do everything they can to keep the U-2 going for a while longer. Do you have a link for that? Curious, since some talk about it like it's the best isr idea in recent times.
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Feb 1, 2015 19:35
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scaevola posted:Do you have a link for that? Curious, since some talk about it like it's the best isr idea in recent times. The Global Chicken is a piece of garbage. It's a cool idea but the tech just isn't there at the moment. I'll dig up some links later if no one else beats me to it.
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Feb 1, 2015 19:43
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GENDERWEIRD GREEDO posted:Does anybody have some insight into why the A-10 pissing match between congress and the AF is still going on? Congress wants to keep it around, the AF want to ditch it because they say the money needs to go somewhere else, and meanwhile the plane continues to see heavy use with no clear alternative in sight so the debate doesn't even make sense. The Air Force really does need more money for recapitalization. Between the post-Cold War procurement holiday and Gates putting the AF on notice that all their roles and missions not directly related to supporting combat in Iraq and Afghanistan were going to take a back seat, there are a whole slate of weapon systems at or past the end of their life-cycle with no replacement in development. The Navy is pretty much in the same boat (no pun intended.) The Air Force sees the A-10 as reaching the end of its useful life as a CAS platform. The aircraft has inherent deficiencies (underpowered, slow, limited all-weather capability) and was designed at time when the ZSU-23-4 and SA-7 were the main Warsaw Pact tactical SHORAD systems. Simply, an aircraft armed primarily with a gun and depending on armor for protection is no longer keeping up with the times. It's true that gun runs allow for closer attacks to friendly forces than JDAMs, but the AF has been working hard on developing high precision, low explosive radius weapons, which are closing that gap. It makes more sense: have a set of weapons you can load on to any of your strikers to give them the capability for close in CAS, rather than maintaining an entire fleet of aircraft for the purpose, especially since gun runs are going to become more and more dangerous as non-poo poo MANPADS proliferate in the wild. The main congressional opposition to retiring the A-10 is John McCain, who just happens to represent a state where a large number of A-10s are based. Tremblay posted:I agree on the Global Chicken. I'm still a little shocked by some of the deficiencies with that AC. Given my previous statement I think they'll do everything they can to keep the U-2 going for a while longer. Dead Reckoning fucked around with this message at 20:05 on Feb 1, 2015 |
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Feb 1, 2015 20:02
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scaevola posted:Do you have a link for that? Curious, since some talk about it like it's the best isr idea in recent times. Global Hawk is pretty cool. The Navy program is doing a lot (or was) to fix some of the problems with the USAF variant. Wiki has some info on the differences. I'm not sure about links and if its cool if probably can't be discussed. Dead Reckoning posted:Actually, the Global Hawk apparently got the A-10 style "you have to retire the U-2 or the RQ-4, and it can't be the RQ-4." I suspect there was some serious "re-evaluation of accounting metrics" in order to get to "no, really the cost-per-flight hour is 25% less than last year." Losing the U-2 right now would suck rear end.  Losing the A-10 right now would be completely acceptable. Assuming the F-16 fleet and Mudhens aren't completely in tatters.
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Feb 1, 2015 20:43
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so glad we let blowing up goatfuckers for 10+ years in two geopolitical backwaters take such precedence!
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Feb 1, 2015 21:37
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It appears the plan is to ensure the Global Chicken is the only game in town, so that we're forced to spend money to fix it. Seems familiar somehow...
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Feb 1, 2015 21:41
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Did anything ever come of that desperate attempt to make the Lancer relevant again by turning it into a missile truck? I know we still use them as bombers on occasion but isn't their original mission kind of bunk at this point?
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Feb 1, 2015 23:21
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Dead Reckoning posted:The main congressional opposition to retiring the A-10 is John McCain, who just happens to represent a state where a large number of A-10s are based. Also Kelly Ayotte, whose husband is an A-10 driver, and Martha McSally, who is also a former A-10 pilot and represents a district with a significant A-10 presence. But yeah, they have no personal or political interests and are only concerned with making sure ARE TROOPS have the most bestest air support aircraft around. Dead Reckoning posted:Actually, the Global Hawk apparently got the A-10 style "you have to retire the U-2 or the RQ-4, and it can't be the RQ-4." I suspect there was some serious "re-evaluation of accounting metrics" in order to get to "no, really the cost-per-flight hour is 25% less than last year." Dead Reckoning posted:It appears the plan is to ensure the Global Chicken is the only game in town, so that we're forced to spend money to fix it. Seems familiar somehow... Basically. The U-2 beats the GC in every major performance category except for range/endurance. The U-2 can fly higher (a big deal for an ISR platform that often flies right outside a country's airspace and looks in from high altitude), fly in a wider range of conditions (GC is extremely weather sensitive), carry a heavier payload, has a wider variety of payloads that it can carry simultaneously, and has higher performing payloads already integrated on it...payloads that are going to have to now be integrated on the GC, at significant cost to the taxpayer. The tl;dr with the GC's issues is that it has existed in this weird in-between space in the acquisitions process, where it's never really gotten past its original concept as a tech demonstrator. It's been pushed to the field as a result of urgent operational requirements (i.e., help kill terrorists after 9/11), but it was fielded in an incomplete configuration and a lot of the normal acquisition benchmarks have been shortchanged or ignored because it's been this bastardized program. It's not a straight up tech demonstrator, because it's been fielded, but it's also not really a "normal" operational system because it's constantly being put through developmental and operational testing at the same time as when it is being flown in combat operationally. I mean, with the Block 40 you're talking about a system that hasn't hit Milestone C (i.e., is still in Engineering Manufacturing Development) and doesn't have an approved CPD (i.e., doesn't have an official document stating what capabilities it is supposed to have), yet is being flown operationally. That's more or less breaking every acquisition rule in the book. It's basically the poster-child for why programs should be "fly-fix-buy," not "buy-fly-fix." Here's a decent article that runs down the issue. If you want more detail you should look at the DOT&E reports and/or the Selected Acquisition Reports for the RQ-4 for the last couple of fiscal years.
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Feb 1, 2015 23:25
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If there is one thing the Air Force is good at, it's making the Navy feel better about their hosed up acquisitions programs.
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Feb 2, 2015 00:22
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ManMythLegend posted:If there is one thing the Air Force is good at, it's making the Navy feel better about their hosed up acquisitions programs. ohio replacement program
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Feb 2, 2015 00:25
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ManMythLegend posted:If there is one thing the Air Force is good at, it's making the Navy feel better about their hosed up acquisitions programs. In general (all DoD), it is amazing that we're as functional as we are given how loving broken so many things are. krispykremessuck posted:ohio replacement program I have hope after the Virginias.
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Feb 2, 2015 00:25
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I had heard they were cancelling global cock when I was about to seperate, sucks that they changed their minds. They ran the comm side by grabbing a bunch of us satcom people and basically not allowing us to do any actual work on it because there weren't TO procedures for most things, we didn't know how most of the cobbled together setup worked, and we were under the more strict aircraft maintenance rules instead of comm. So we had contractors there all the time doing most of the interesting poo poo. It would be great if they shut it down, nobody in the comm side liked that loving job.
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Feb 2, 2015 00:28
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Tremblay posted:In general (all DoD), it is amazing that we're as functional as we are given how loving broken so many things are. "The reason the American Army does so well in wartime, is that war is chaos, and the American Army practices it on a daily basis."
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Feb 2, 2015 02:02
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all this unchecked bad mouthing of the warthog in here is making me ill https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxvmrmLYbls
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Feb 2, 2015 02:41
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krispykremessuck posted:ohio replacement program Yeah, from what I know about it it's not that big a dumpster fire yet. The VIRGINIA program has actually been a huge success both technically and fiscally, so ORP has a fighting chance.
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Feb 2, 2015 03:33
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SperginMcBadposter posted:I had heard they were cancelling global cock when I was about to seperate, sucks that they changed their minds. They ran the comm side by grabbing a bunch of us satcom people and basically not allowing us to do any actual work on it because there weren't TO procedures for most things, we didn't know how most of the cobbled together setup worked, and we were under the more strict aircraft maintenance rules instead of comm. So we had contractors there all the time doing most of the interesting poo poo. It would be great if they shut it down, nobody in the comm side liked that loving job. Global Chicken is the RPA program that makes Predator and Reaper look like well run acquisition programs by comparison.
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Feb 2, 2015 03:51
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Potential BFF posted:Did anything ever come of that desperate attempt to make the Lancer relevant again by turning it into a missile truck? I know we still use them as bombers on occasion but isn't their original mission kind of bunk at this point? That wasn't ever a serious attempt. It was in a goddamned book and a few people were like, "Hey should we look into this a bit more? No, nevermind." The Bone has been goddamned HUGE in Iraq and Afghanistan, so I'm not sure how it's irrelevant. As a low-level supersonic wunderbomber, yeah that's not gonna work. But as a conventional bomber with a few unique tricks, it's been very successful.
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Feb 2, 2015 04:21
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Thank you all for the thoughtful words on the A-10, I'm glad there are people out there smarter than me to explain things to me.
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Feb 2, 2015 04:48
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ManMythLegend posted:If there is one thing the Air Force is good at, it's making the Navy feel better about their hosed up acquisitions programs. Littoral Combat Ship.
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Feb 2, 2015 05:12
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ManMythLegend posted:Yeah, from what I know about it it's not that big a dumpster fire yet. The VIRGINIA program has actually been a huge success both technically and fiscally, so ORP has a fighting chance. There's a lot of reasons that ORP won't end up going as badly as some other programs, but it has plenty of room to be hosed up, and is kind of already heading that way.
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Feb 2, 2015 05:15
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krispykremessuck posted:There's a lot of reasons that ORP won't end up going as badly as some other programs, but it has plenty of room to be hosed up, and is kind of already heading that way. Did the Marines ask for a version that can launch
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Feb 2, 2015 05:27
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MrYenko posted:Did the Marines ask for a version that can launch No, this will be all Navy. e: To be clear, I think ORP will produce a good product ultimately. My thoughts on it has more to do with current assets and what minimal and slow progress on the ORP so far and lifecycle/logistical problems the current OHIO fleet is facing. krispykremessuck fucked around with this message at 05:31 on Feb 2, 2015 |
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Feb 2, 2015 05:28
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MrYenko posted:Did the Marines ask for a version that can launch a sub launched F-35B for complete stealth shoreline CAS
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Feb 2, 2015 05:45
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The tech demonstrator was a success a few years ago. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjdLAoBU0z8
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Feb 2, 2015 05:47
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Working in an Ohio must be the most boring job on the planet. Yeah, it's roomier than other submarines, but your job is to head out on tour, get to your station, and then just loiter and be really, really, really quiet all of the time. I'd either be whacked out of my mind on bootleg hooch or chewing my fingers off before week two.
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Feb 2, 2015 05:51
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Is bootleg hooch actually a thing that still happens these days? I thought it was something only old-rear end sci fi writers put in their books about spaceship captains.
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Feb 2, 2015 05:53
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My brother said they just cleaned and ran drills.
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Feb 2, 2015 05:53
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Captaining/crewing a boomer is still a prestigious job with promotion prospects in the Navy, so it still attracts talent that has an incentive to keep poo poo from getting too hosed up.
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Feb 2, 2015 05:56
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Zeroisanumber posted:Working in an Ohio must be the most boring job on the planet. Yeah, it's roomier than other submarines, but your job is to head out on tour, get to your station, and then just loiter and be really, really, really quiet all of the time. I'd either be whacked out of my mind on bootleg hooch or chewing my fingers off before week two. Being on a boomer is great for advancement. Because all you do is drill, clean, train, and study. And when you are in port for 6 months you do the same thing, cept in trainer centers. Boring? Ya most likely. It's not like fast attacks that go places unmentionable and do things unmentionable but they don't get as much stress either.
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Feb 2, 2015 05:59
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One thing I learned from reading way too many 80s clancy-esque military thrillers is that the food is apparently really good on the subs c/d?
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Feb 2, 2015 06:10
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