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Kassad posted:It's weird that this shows two French aircraft carriers. The Richelieu was only planned to be built... someday, then got cancelled in 2013. It also lists INS Vikrant, which was scrapped in 14.
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Apr 5, 2017 20:02
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Our next carrier will be HMS Victory recomissioned and fitted with a drone armed with an airsoft gun.
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Apr 5, 2017 20:04
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darthbob88 posted:It also lists INS Vikrant, which was scrapped in 14. And the Invincible class, all three of which have been broken up.
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Apr 5, 2017 20:05
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Ensign Expendable posted:Hahaha, I didn't know about that. When I think "let's invade an island", the KV-2 is hardly the first tank that comes to mind. Makes sense to me. The derp gun was an ideal bunker buster.
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Apr 5, 2017 20:11
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Pump it up! Do it! posted:The Swedish navy was never that great, the Danes pretty much always had the better navy and three times we built the biggest ships around to just have them blow up or keel over. Sure, but the Archipelago fleet was something like ~300 hulls at the height, plus the seagoing navy. Sweden wasn't the greatest naval power but fielded a very sizable navy. Plutonis posted:The Ottomans weren't really that much of a Naval Power, sure, they controlled the mediterranean during the time of the Barbarossa brothers but that was before they got utterly crushed in Lepanto. yeah that totally fuckin fifth rate bunch of yahoos only managed to launch 250 warships in the six months after Lepanto, what a bunch of losers am I right? Squalid posted:If you can list four comparably strong nations in the same breath can you really call a state a super power? The Ottomans certainly outclassed both Venice and Genoa. Applying arbitrary labels is a little stupid but if you consider all four to be "great powers" capable of projecting power and influencing smaller states in the Mediterranean unless interefered with by the others, it's fairly clear that the Ottomans and Spain were great powers of the first rank, and Venice and Genoa were a bit behind that.
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Apr 5, 2017 20:11
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HEY GAIL posted:leaning out the window of the conning tower and yelling I visited Rome recently and was a little bit surprised that the Italian traffic was more sedate than I expected. I mean, not actually sedate, but not as bad as I was expecting. Then I went to Naples during rush hour. 
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Apr 5, 2017 20:20
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MikeCrotch posted:Then I went to Naples during rush hour. Yup.
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Apr 5, 2017 20:23
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:The Ottomans certainly outclassed both Venice and Genoa. Applying arbitrary labels is a little stupid but if you consider all four to be "great powers" capable of projecting power and influencing smaller states in the Mediterranean unless interefered with by the others, it's fairly clear that the Ottomans and Spain were great powers of the first rank, and Venice and Genoa were a bit behind that.
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Apr 5, 2017 20:28
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I think the USA should subsidize Supercarriers for our allies just to make our navy look less ridiculous call it trickle down defense.
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Apr 5, 2017 20:34
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Jack2142 posted:I think the USA should subsidize Supercarriers for our allies just to make our navy look less ridiculous call it trickle down defense. Please don't give trump ideas
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Apr 5, 2017 20:38
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Slightly off topic but if you are in the UK and interested in the Iraq/Iran war, a megagame is gonna be run for it in London
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Apr 5, 2017 20:41
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MikeCrotch posted:I visited Rome recently and was a little bit surprised that the Italian traffic was more sedate than I expected. I mean, not actually sedate, but not as bad as I was expecting. Statistically speaking Italians are actually very conscientious drivers. Now Guinea, those are dangerous roads. 
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Apr 5, 2017 20:52
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FAUXTON posted:Lol is this because of the F-35 being a bill of goods or is there some other hilarious yet British procurement boondoggle behind this? A little from column A, a little from column B. They decided to build a couple of bigger carriers to replace their older ones, but since they were expecting to use the F-35B they didn't build CATOBAR into the design. But then they realized, "Hey, if the F-35 turns into a giant shitshow we're pretty much stuck." So they went back to BAE, the prime contractor, and said "Hey, could you design in the capability to add CATOBAR at a later date if we decide we need it?" BAE said "Sure thing!" Cut to a few years later, the F-35 is a giant shitshow, they got to the contractor and say "Yeah, let's go ahead and pull the trigger on those CATOBAR upgrades." BAE says "But that capability was never designed, was never contracted, and it would cost you less to just build two new ships." And because defense contracts are state secrets in the UK, we may never know whether this was criminal fraud on the part of the contractor or criminal incompetence on the part of the government. And of course, to afford them they years ago stopped operating Harriers from their existing carriers. And now have no carriers operating, so they're losing all their institutional memory of carrier operations. And they are on track to have 24 F-35Bs operating by 2023. The first of their carriers is due at sea in 2021. USMC aircraft will deploy on it to prevent it being a *completely* useless waste of money. Solaris 2.0 posted:It amazes me when I speak to friends of mine who are not international policy/history nerds how ignorant most Americans are in regards to our own Military. As jingoistic as our society is, there are many MANY Americans who will tell you with a straight face that we are losing our military edge, Which edge? Actually waging war degrades readiness. You can be preparing to fight a war, or actually fighting a war, but not both because actually fighting a war breaks poo poo and wears things and people out. We've been waging Operation Bomb Useless Dirt for 15 years now, and the things you do in that conflict are not what you do against a near-peer adversary, and we literally are losing capabilities that would be crucial in a real fight. Right now, the USAF is the smallest it's been since it's been the USAF, and morale completely sucks rear end. Aircraft readiness rates are about the lowest they've ever been. Same thing with the USN, operations and maintenance budgets have been cut to the bone and everything is just plain wearing out. The ships, the aircraft, and the people. More than half of the navy's planes are grounded because of maintenance restrictions. On the Army side, we have a serious shortfall of *really important things* like SHORAD and artillery, and readiness is pretty lovely there as well. Not too long ago a unit just got annihilated at NTC because they didn't even bother to disperse or camouflage their encampments, because why would you worry about that kind of thing? This, for example, is a very big deal, especially in light of the results Russia has been achieving with their artillery against Ukrainian forces: http://www.dtic.mil/get-tr-doc/pdf?AD=ADA524427 This isn't just a numbers game. Yes, an absurd amount of money gets spent, but that doesn't mean it gets spent wisely (F-35B and LCS, I'm looking in your direction). And on the flip side, it's not a problem you fix just by throwing more money at it. But waging a low-intensity conflict for over a decade against an opponent with no air assets to speak of has definitely had negative effects on our capabilities to wage high-intensity conflict without a shitload more bodies being shipped home than we're prepared to deal with. When everything you plan to do is based around having complete air supremacy in an uncontested environment, what do you do when you actually find yourself in a contested environment with a shitload of EW? If we had to fight that fight today it would suck. Phanatic fucked around with this message at 21:07 on Apr 5, 2017 |
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Apr 5, 2017 21:03
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MikeCrotch posted:Also we ordered two but then due to austerity we were going to scrap one as soon as it was built. We rolled that back though, apparently because the Tories want to invade Spain to protect Gibraltar to show what a roaring success Brexit is. Brazil is scrapping theirs and exiting carrier aviation. Read an article in a naval magazine asking the question if an aircraft carrier was the new dreadnought, IE the ship every navy has to have at least one of. The answer seems to be yes Yeah, this image is out of date. The Kitty Hawk, the Kennedy, and the Enterprise has been scrapped. Spain has scrapped everything but their newest amphibious assault ship. (Australia bought two of these from Spain, though they decided not to mess with jump jets.) France was (holy poo poo, lol) going to buy a British QE2 class carrier but thought better of it in 2013. (HEYGAL note: it was going to be called the Cardinal Richelieu.) As noted, the Kuznetsov is an assbucket of a ship which the Russians are keeping around for training reasons (and to placate the GREAT POWERS MUST COMPETE WITH AMERICA political wing in Navy policy). The Chinese (internationally anyway) are upfront that their Kuznetsov-class is a training ship. It is mobile, but the Chinese are literally just starting with this whole naval aviation thing, so not quite an operational carrier in the normal sense. zoux posted:
The French are pretty much the only other "like an American aircraft carrier operator" on this list, as they do catapults and have lots of experience in carrier ops.
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Apr 5, 2017 21:11
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Nebakenezzer posted:Read an article in a naval magazine asking the question if an aircraft carrier was the new dreadnought, IE the ship every navy has to have at least one of. The answer seems to be yes Where was it because I want to point out this is stupid and wrong. A single aircraft carrier is far more functional and useful today than a single dreadnought was in the heyday of the big gun. Provided you have aircraft to fly from it.
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Apr 5, 2017 21:16
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How many Ford classes are they building?
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Apr 5, 2017 21:18
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:Where was it because I want to point out this is stupid and wrong. A single aircraft carrier is far more functional and useful today than a single dreadnought was in the heyday of the big gun. Provided you have aircraft to fly from it. A single aircraft carrier means that 2/3rds of the time you don't have any aircraft carriers because the one you do have is either transiting or in refit. The UK was at one point planning on building their two new carriers and the instantly selling one of them to France; they'd have arguably been better off having no carriers at all rather than doing that. zoux posted:How many Ford classes are they building? Supposedly 10. But let's see how hosed-up EMALS is first.
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Apr 5, 2017 21:24
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Slim Jim Pickens posted:Statistically speaking Italians are actually very conscientious drivers. Does this list include civil war collateral damage in its fatalities count?
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Apr 5, 2017 21:26
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Phanatic posted:A single aircraft carrier means that 2/3rds of the time you don't have any aircraft carriers because the one you do have is either transiting or in refit. Everything you just said applied to dreadnoughts too.
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Apr 5, 2017 21:49
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SeanBeansShako posted:Our next carrier will be HMS Victory recomissioned and fitted with a drone armed with an airsoft gun. It'll be the actual QE2 with a flattop slapped on, HMS Argus style.
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Apr 5, 2017 22:02
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:Makes sense to me. The derp gun was an ideal bunker buster. But they would probably turn into fancy bunkers themselves after 50m after landing on the beach. Those tanks the Brits used at Dieppe didn't manage to get far on the beach before getting stuck, and that was on a pebble beach witch much lighter tanks.
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Apr 5, 2017 22:05
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Molentik posted:But they would probably turn into fancy bunkers themselves after 50m after landing on the beach. Those tanks the Brits used at Dieppe didn't manage to get far on the beach before getting stuck, and that was on a pebble beach witch much lighter tanks. It depends more on the ground pressure of the vehicle than the total weight. I don't know what the track width is like on a KV vs a british cruiser tank, but if the brits were using narrower tracks they could easily be more prone to getting stuck than a heavier vehicle with wider tracks. edit: can't find anything on KV ground pressure with fast googling, but it looks like the soviets were trying to keep their vehicles light on their feet. The M4 and the Tiger both had similar ground pressure despite the sherman weighing a lot less (ballpark 1kg/cm^2) while the T34/85's ground pressure was only about 75% of theirs. I wouldn't be entirely surprised if the KVs were chosen because they did better in lovely loose ground than the currently available German designs.
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Apr 5, 2017 22:10
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If I'm thinking British beach assault tanks I'm thinking Churchill AVREs, which are definitely not light.
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Apr 5, 2017 22:13
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Solaris 2.0 posted:It amazes me when I speak to friends of mine who are not international policy/history nerds how ignorant most Americans are in regards to our own Military. As jingoistic as our society is, there are many MANY Americans who will tell you with a straight face that we are losing our military edge, and China/Russia are one ship away from being able to dominate the USN and invade New York. Like, the USN is so far advanced/massive of anything else that I think people just cannot comprehend it. It's almost like the obsession over the"bomber gap" of the 1950s-60s but at least the Soviet's had an airforce that could theoretically match up. This is...complicated, as these things tend to be. The US Navy isn't in any danger of losing a pitched battle in blue water, of course, nor is NYC in danger of being invaded. The problem is, those aren't really the missions of the navy any longer. The navy's big concerns now, in rough order of importance: 1) project power onto land and support land forces 2) maintain security of international trade routes and military supply routes 3) support forced entry operations, if necessary 4) ballistic missile defense .... x) win a major surface contest These mission types vary a lot as you might imagine...the requirements for entry operations or power projection over land are very, very different from those required to maintain/protect global trade routes. Potential adversaries realized a while ago that there wasn't much good in taking a Wilhelm-esque to out-tonnage the American fleet and then defeat it in a pitched battle. What they realized is, 1) the US will always have to fight an away game, and thus you can force their navy to fight a long way from home, and stretch it to protect huge swaths of ocean, and 2) things other than giant surface vessels (read: submarines, missiles, aircraft) are best for this approach. It is essentially asymmetric, and it concedes a lot of initiative, but it is far more cost effective especially if you don't have any intention of trying to project power outside of your own territorial waters. So, if someone is suggesting that China is about to invade the west coast once they get their carrier, they're probably an idiot. If they're saying that the navy would be seriously stretched in the event it has to fight a peer adversary on another continent, they're absolutely right.
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Apr 5, 2017 23:09
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Cyrano4747 posted:It depends more on the ground pressure of the vehicle than the total weight. I don't know what the track width is like on a KV vs a british cruiser tank, but if the brits were using narrower tracks they could easily be more prone to getting stuck than a heavier vehicle with wider tracks. I really love that it's apparently common for tanks to have a lower ground pressure than say, a person. WoT's Chieftain has a story where they were cruising through some sort of wetland on exercises, all smiles inside the tanks. Then one of the crew had to jump out of the tank for some reason and promptly sank up to his knees or something.
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Apr 5, 2017 23:49
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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PittTheElder posted:I really love that it's apparently common for tanks to have a lower ground pressure than say, a person. WoT's Chieftain has a story where they were cruising through some sort of wetland on exercises, all smiles inside the tanks. Then one of the crew had to jump out of the tank for some reason and promptly sank up to his knees or something. Depends on the track width. Wider tracks = less ground pressure. This was an issue with the early American tanks in WW2, where they'd sink into the ground where German tanks could readily cross due to the thinner tracks. Hence the Tiger, Panther, And the Panzer series had wider tracks to let them exert less overall ground pressure. They eventually resolved the issue with the Shermans by fitting adapters to the end of the track that 'widened them' http://the.shadock.free.fr/sherman_minutia/tracks/vvss_tracks.html 
CommieGIR fucked around with this message at 00:19 on Apr 6, 2017 |
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Apr 6, 2017 00:17
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CommieGIR posted:Depends on the track width. Wider tracks = less ground pressure. This was an issue with the early American tanks in WW2, where they'd sink into the ground where German tanks could readily cross due to the thinner tracks. Hence the Tiger, Panther, And the Panzer series had wider tracks to let them exert less overall ground pressure. There were also Shermans with the spurs (I think that's the term for them?) on both sides of the track that I've seen photos of before but can't seem to find anymore. How did those work? Did they put spacers between the bogies and the hull? I can't imagine the normal suspension could handle them being offset as much as they were.
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Apr 6, 2017 00:40
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Malleum posted:There were also Shermans with the spurs (I think that's the term for them?) on both sides of the track that I've seen photos of before but can't seem to find anymore. How did those work? Did they put spacers between the bogies and the hull? I can't imagine the normal suspension could handle them being offset as much as they were. You also had the HVSS that had wider tracks all around compared to the old tracks:  I'm trying to find the Spur tracks, but can't seem to find them off the top of my head. Oh wait, did you mean the drive spur on the front that actually drives the tracks?
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Apr 6, 2017 00:46
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The Tiger apparently had to have special narrow tracks for transportation; and also apparently a large number of early war/interwar tanks were designed to be able to remove the tracks and to use roadwheels on roads.
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Apr 6, 2017 00:52
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CommieGIR posted:You also had the HVSS that had wider tracks all around compared to the old tracks: I'm an idiot and confused the name of the duckbill extenders, I meant how the hell did they get the extenders on both sides of the track like this:  without major hull overhauls. Unless they did do major hull overhauls, I don't know.
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Apr 6, 2017 00:53
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Malleum posted:I'm an idiot and confused the name of the duckbill extenders, I meant how the hell did they get the extenders on both sides of the track like this: That's the duck bills, and they actually just attatched to the track links. Weird, huh.  It looks like it would fit fine on both sides without a spacer, at least from that photo. I did, however, notice this photo, where the Duckbill grousers are only on one side due to lack of space on the inner side:  The Duckbills bolted onto the End Connectors on the track links:  Raenir Salazar posted:The Tiger apparently had to have special narrow tracks for transportation; and also apparently a large number of early war/interwar tanks were designed to be able to remove the tracks and to use roadwheels on roads. Yup! Well, they didn't use the roadwheels on the roads. It was purely to fit better on a rail car.  Versus: 
CommieGIR fucked around with this message at 01:20 on Apr 6, 2017 |
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Apr 6, 2017 00:56
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chitoryu12 posted:Does this list include civil war collateral damage in its fatalities count? I'm not aware of recent civil wars in Guinea? You'll have to take up the Congo stats with the WHO though.
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Apr 6, 2017 04:45
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bewbies posted:This is...complicated, as these things tend to be. The USN has more Super Hornets than the total operational roster of all PRC AF attack/multirole jet aircraft, and then there's the Regular Hornets on top of that. I mean yeah logistically the USN would be at the end of very long supply lines but it isn't like a shooting war would be a close match even then, and part of the benefit to things like having bases in places like Guam and (subject to sudden boneheaded change) the Philippines is that it forces a naval engagement if an adversary were to try going after logistics. Hell it's pretty obvious that part of the greater defense doctrine revolves around being so far beyond any other nation's military capacity and having all sorts of encumbrances with the rest of the world that nobody even cares to field anything remotely competitive because they know it would be noticed, they'd probably be attacking someone who'd end up getting help from the US. That shrunken world line of thought is presumably why it's such a big thing that Russian interference with elections all over the place ends up being for the benefit of people who seek to split alliances and coalitions and other inter-state cooperative entities up. It's like the post-Victorian web of European diplomacy all over again except it's Russia who are playing the paranoid expansionist Kaiser role and loving nobody cares about Serbia.
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Apr 6, 2017 04:52
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Raenir Salazar posted:The Tiger apparently had to have special narrow tracks for transportation; and also apparently a large number of early war/interwar tanks were designed to be able to remove the tracks and to use roadwheels on roads. Yes, the German heavy tanks had special transport tracks since the tank was too wide otherwise to fit onto railway cars for transport. The old tracks and mudguards were removed, the transport tracks were attached, and the tank would drive up on the platform. The regular tracks were put on the platform underneath the tank. The interwar tanks were designed to run on wheels because early track designs were very unreliable and would break after something like 100 km of travel. The Renault FT was light enough to be transported on trucks, and therefore had unprecedented strategic mobility, since it could be delivered to the battlefield easily and then still have enough life in it left to drive somewhere on its own. The Cristie scheme was one of the most popular solutions, where the tracks could be removed, and the tank would just drive around on its road wheels until it got to the battlefield, then put on its tracks. Soviet BT tanks and American Convertible Medium Tanks used this design. There were other solutions, like the Czech Kolohousenka KH-50, where instead of removing the tracks, the tank would drive up a wooden ramp and wheels would be attached to the sides, leaving the tracks in place. Eventually, the quality of metal and design of tracks made them last thousands of kilometers instead of hundreds, so there was no longer a point in a convertible drive design.
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Apr 6, 2017 04:53
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FAUXTON posted:The USN has more Super Hornets than the total operational roster of all PRC AF attack/multirole jet aircraft And a lot of those airframes can't fly right now. You can't just look at paper numbers. You have to look at the impact of using the poo poo out of these assets for a bunch of years now.
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Apr 6, 2017 05:07
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Phanatic posted:And a lot of those airframes can't fly right now. You can't just look at paper numbers. You have to look at the impact of using the poo poo out of these assets for a bunch of years now. Most of those airframes wouldn't be getting deployed immediately, certainly not ones that are backlogged for huge maintenance/parts replacement anyway. The status of whether something during peacetime is operational or commissioned or combat-ready is usually a question of whether they can be kept in that last category by the maintenance capacity at hand, and you can bet your rear end that any planned growth in the naval rolls is going to be taking that into account. But yeah, 11-1200ish planes aren't all airworthy, though they don't all need to be. They just need to be able to be made airworthy fast enough to keep the carriers stocked. Readiness standards and all that.
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Apr 6, 2017 05:33
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Would anyone have anybody have some good recommendations on books/sites where I can find a good overview of the Spanish Civil War? I'm also generally curious about other uprisings/revolutions/civil wars involving leftist groups that might be relevant to modern day.
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Apr 6, 2017 06:31
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How did Gerald Ford not only get a supercarrier named after him but the whole class? I know he was in the navy but c'mon, it's Gerald Ford. And the most recent Iran/Iraq war post mentioned Operation Ramadan which led me to wonder what Muslim military forces do during Ramadan during an active war. Is there an exception in the Quran or is there one made later? Having active combat units not really eating until sunset seems suspect. I assume it varies by country and time period too.
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Apr 6, 2017 06:38
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:Makes sense to me. The derp gun was an ideal bunker buster. It's a good tank to have on an island. It is not a good tank to land on an island. I think 4 on an LST would be pushing it. And the Nazis had nothing like an LST.  I don't think this is going to cut it for a tank that heavy.
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Apr 6, 2017 06:54
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Pontius Pilate posted:How did Gerald Ford not only get a supercarrier named after him but the whole class? I know he was in the navy but c'mon, it's Gerald Ford. There are common sense exceptions. People who would suffer negative health effects or serve a vital purpose and need to keep their strength up. Soldiers are both categories, really 
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