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The tribe of the Burned Man knows their guns.
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May 29, 2017 21:13
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MikeCrotch posted:Welcome to mature technology. It's likely that the B-52 will end up in service for 100 years. The AK-47 has been around for 70 years. Pretty much every modern airliner owes its shape more or less to a design that's 63 years old at this point. For these kinds of technologies there simply isn't that much improvement to be made over the basic design - revolutionary designs past that point tend to run cost-prohibitive like supersonic transports and/or have big problems that offset their advantages like caseless ammunition. Industry has been pursuing some sort of crew served weapon that can do precision targeting at extended distances and then deliver some manner of high explosive over that distance. It is a tough nut to crack, the Mark 19 can throw a lot of HE, and the M2 is extremely accurate out to its maximum range, so you're kind of looking for a hybrid of the two along with guided rounds. It is very difficult to do that in a cost-effective way as you might imagine. I joke about mini missiles now and again but it doesn't seem unreasonable that they could become technologically feasible in next decade or so, assuming miniaturization continues as it has in recent years. also thanks to be hollowing out of the military a US Army infantry squad is now seven dudes, two three-man fire teams and the squad leader.
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May 29, 2017 21:19
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What the gently caress? This is an actual video Ted Cruz made? 
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May 29, 2017 21:48
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Saint Celestine posted:What the gently caress? This is an actual video Ted Cruz made? We live in the timeline where Trump won the presidency. Does anything still surprise you?
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May 29, 2017 21:50
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bewbies posted:also thanks to be hollowing out of the military a US Army infantry squad is now seven dudes, two three-man fire teams and the squad leader. Well at least that means you can stuff a whole squad in a Bradley now.
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May 29, 2017 22:35
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Saint Celestine posted:What the gently caress? This is an actual video Ted Cruz made? Back during the primaries, he was trying really, really hard to do some kind of viral video to try to be relatable and not seem like the zodiac killer. I guess that at least is a better video than when he tried to do all the Simpson voices.
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May 29, 2017 22:50
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WW2 Data Although we're still exploring the German inventory, these 7.62mm rounds aren't all German creations. Which ones were developed/produced by the Germans, and what modifications did they do to Russian guns? What kind of projectiles were at their disposal? Which rounds contain a flash reducer? All that and more at the blog!
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May 29, 2017 23:46
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bewbies posted:also thanks to be hollowing out of the military a US Army infantry squad is now seven dudes, two three-man fire teams and the squad leader. Isn't the US military still operating on a basically unlimited budget and one of the biggest in the world? Or is this "it has a ridiculous budget but it's going to the wrong places and the actually 'people with guns' bit is being left to rot"?
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May 30, 2017 00:10
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spectralent posted:Isn't the US military still operating on a basically unlimited budget and one of the biggest in the world? Or is this "it has a ridiculous budget but it's going to the wrong places and the actually 'people with guns' bit is being left to rot"? Search your feelings you know what the right answer is there.
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May 30, 2017 00:25
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Jack2142 posted:Search your feelings you know what the right answer is there. I'm just wondering why on earth they'd need to gently caress with organisation. Is small squads seen as being better for counterterror or something?
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May 30, 2017 00:52
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spectralent posted:Isn't the US military still operating on a basically unlimited budget and one of the biggest in the world? Or is this "it has a ridiculous budget but it's going to the wrong places and the actually 'people with guns' bit is being left to rot"? It's partly the "budget not going to the right places" option, but also "the budget is huge, but the mission we're giving the budget is huger". As big as the US military is, that pales in comparison with the scale of US commitments even before having to deal with the cost of Operation Bomb Useless Dirt. The fact that so much money goes into badly-managed projects like the F-35, gets wasted on projects like the F-22 or B-2 that are extremely good but axed due to cost, or outright boondoggles like the LCS are just one layer in the poo poo sandwich.
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May 30, 2017 00:54
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There's not much profit in putting troops on the ground with guns to fight wars, the ideal military, from an expenditure point of view, is one that buys lots of expensive equipment and replaces it as often as possible with more expensive equipment, and in that role, aircraft, boats, and expensive munitions are what you want. Troopers with guns just can't make anybody any money. Defence spending is tied heavily into spending money with defence companies, the actual boots on ground thing is something the military recruits and trains in-house so it is not a sector that politicians like spending money on. Also nobody gets into a willy waving competition with foot soldiers, it's always who has the most aircraft carriers or missiles or the coolest new acronym. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 01:57 on May 30, 2017 |
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May 30, 2017 01:53
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spectralent posted:Isn't the US military still operating on a basically unlimited budget and one of the biggest in the world? Or is this "it has a ridiculous budget but it's going to the wrong places and the actually 'people with guns' bit is being left to rot"? I made kind of an effortpost about this either here or in another thread fairly recently. There are three big issues at the heart of this. First, the breadth and difficulty of the missions given to the military are far too much for the current budget. Addressing this problem would take some serious leadership from the elected elements of the government (more exactly: some serious prioritizing) which I'm sure we all agree isn't in the cards anytime soon. Second, congress is essentially broken and hasn't passed an actual budget in quite a while. Instead we just do piecemeal month-to-month continuing resolutions, which makes useful stuff like "planning" and "budgeting" and "prioritizing" very difficult. If military planners were given relatively accurate predictions about the budget both in the current POM cycle (4 years out) and at least a good rough guess outside of the POM, it'd make prioritizing much easier...like, we could ramp up production of THING X at the expense of THING Y in 2017, then shut off the line for THING X in 2018 and build THING Y instead, thus making both programs cheaper. Instead, since we don't know what the budget will be later this FY (let alone in FY2018), no one is willing to curtail production of THING, lest there be no money to make THING in the future. The third issue is how badly politics have infiltrated military decision making. The best example here is bases: the DoD says publically that it could reduce its base footprint by 20% without any issue whatsoever, and more if required without serious capability reduction. Politicians however don't want FORT SHITHOLE ALABAMA or NAVAL AIRSTATION OBSCURA to close, because they're in their district and the dump of a local town relies on the base to support its liquor, prostitution, tattoo, payday loan, and tattoo removal businesses. So, there's another massive chunk of wasted money going to please congress that is essentially taken out of the operating force. You have some other issues at play as well that are really cutting deep, like health care/insurance for veterans and the like, that looks worse and worse in the out years. Fraud/waste/abuse etc is a problem of course, as is the unwieldy procurement process, but those are fairly small potatoes in comparison to what gets eaten by politics. The political stuff doesn't get nearly as much airtime though for whatever reason. OwlFancier posted:There's not much profit in putting troops on the ground with guns to fight wars, the ideal military, from an expenditure point of view, is one that buys lots of expensive equipment and replaces it as often as possible with more expensive equipment, and in that role, aircraft, boats, and expensive munitions are what you want. Troopers with guns just can't make anybody any money. It is kind of counterintuitive but the military spends a whole lot more or operations/ maintenance and personnel than it does on procurement. If current trends hold well over half the budget will be spent on personnel alone by 2024.
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May 30, 2017 02:11
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So the shrinking squad is literally just to pay for fewer men?
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May 30, 2017 02:26
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That's part of it, but only tangentially - the main reason that the army shrank squad size is to pay for other things that are emerging as higher priority (the big ones are short range air defense, rocket artillery, mechanized/motorized forces, and "cyber") than light infantry. The other is that they wanted to keep the number of BCTs the same (they weren't able to - they still had to axe two, but that was the hope). The idea there is that keeping the leadership/org structure in place is preferable to cutting units and keeping the squads at the same level (which would have had the same effect from a budget perspective), because it is easier to find a couple of privates per squad than it is to find a quality brigade sized leadership structure. This is of course in direct contrast to the SECDEF's mandate to cut lots of headquarters, but no one seemed to care for some reason.
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May 30, 2017 02:32
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bewbies posted:It is kind of counterintuitive but the military spends a whole lot more or operations/ maintenance and personnel than it does on procurement. If current trends hold well over half the budget will be spent on personnel alone by 2024. Oh aye obviously you can't actually have a standing military and installations the way the US does without paying for it, it's just that "more of the soldiers we have" doesn't seem like a thing politicians are very interested in when they could be talking about cool new technology or something they might get their name on in the future.
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May 30, 2017 03:16
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OwlFancier posted:Oh aye obviously you can't actually have a standing military and installations the way the US does without paying for it, it's just that "more of the soldiers we have" doesn't seem like a thing politicians are very interested in when they could be talking about cool new technology or something they might get their name on in the future. It has waaaaay less to do with wanting their name on Fancy New Thing X than it does making sure some company in their district gets a contract to make widgets for the USS Boondoggle.
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May 30, 2017 03:25
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Another foolish question: Why is it that in that round shot for cannon was made out of iron, but musket balls were lead? Is it just that nobody has that much lead?
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May 30, 2017 13:09
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A musket ball is made of lead because lead is a soft metal with a low melting point that is easy to form into balls, to add mass to the shot and ensure it flattens on impact to produce more damage. These are not concerns in a cannon ball, which are typically cast, already pretty drat heavy, and kill by making holes in people.
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May 30, 2017 13:18
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It should be pointed out that for a long time musket armed soldiers were expected to cast their own bullets in the field, and would be given lead and moulds (matched to their gun) to do so over campfires.
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May 30, 2017 13:28
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I'd imagine the role of reducing fortifications might have been a factor as well. Fort walls tend to be quite a bit more resilient than people, so it'd be good to have a fairly hard projectile that won't deform as much as lead would.
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May 30, 2017 13:40
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I am not sure how well lead balls would graze, either. I'm sure you'd get a couple of good bounces but they would lose energy a fair bit faster. NAPOLEONIC HOWITZER EFFORT POST: To understand the howitzer, you really need to understand the three other types of artillery in use at the time. I'll go in to a little bit of detail. The first was the field gun. I'm using this term loosely to cover all direct-fire smoothbore muzzle loading cannon with a throw weight of 12 pounds or less. Field guns were by the standards of the time portable and mounted on wheeled carriages. They were relatively easily emplaced on a battlefield and relatively easily adjusted or moved to suit the requirements of the engagement. They could fire solid roundshot or canister, a metal tin of musket balls that turned the piece in to a very large shotgun. Both types of ammunition were for direct fire only - typically roundshot was used for counterbattery fire or against infantry/cavalry at a distance (with the ball being aimed so that it would "graze" or skip much like a stone on a pond through the files of infantry). Canister was used at very close ranges against infantry and cavalry and was extremely effective. A 12 pounder gun could reach about 1500 yds with some effectiveness with roundshot, more like 250 max with canister. Rate of fire was at most about one round per minute. Traverse was accomplished by using a handspike on the tail of the gun to sling it around on its wheels, and there were small wedges or later, a screw-device to adjust elevation by a small amount. The size of the charge did not vary for most field artillery. Field guns were very useful in that you could get effective, long range fire support in to a position anywhere on the battlefield. Troops under sustained fire from a field battery would not be having a good day. The downside was that due to the direct fire nature of the gun, it left the crew and artillery piece exposed to counterbattery fire from enemy field guns, and it left very large swaths of dead ground where it could not hit the enemy - defiladed on hillsides or within folds of the ground were very common places to hide from direct artillery fire. The first problem meant that in sieges, field guns were a bit dangerous. The second meant that if you had only field guns on the battlefield, depending on terrain and concentration of force your artillery could be rendered fairly useless. The second type of artillery which I will briefly touch on was the siege gun. This is essentially a big loving field gun (probably that you took out of a fortress) on an immobile carriage. You dig it in one position and it bangs away at the enemy's fortifications until something happens. However, walls are fairly decent at withstanding direct fire for short periods of time (it's their job), and you're vulnerable to similar-sized artillery counterbattery fire, and sappers / sorties from the enemy fortress, since it's fixed in one very obvious position. They're loving useless on the battlefield because even if you do bother to set it up your enemy is just going to maneuver around it. The need for an indirect fire weapon, especially in sieges to replace the trebuchet, was pretty obvious. If you can park your siege behind a set of fascines or in a big ditch and lob projectiles at your enemy undisturbed you can keep them occupied while you sap and bang away with siege guns to force a breach in the walls. To solve this problem, people invented the mortar. It's named after an apothecary's mortar and pestle, and the earliest ones were iron bowls set in wood blocks. Fill with gunpowder, put a ball in the bowl, and then light 'er off. They were very inaccurate, and it was soon figured out that shooting a solid projectile in a big arc was not very useful. People started shooting inflammable materials and also shells, which were iron balls filled with gunpowder with a slow match fuse. Fuses were not particularly reliable, but you had a lot of chances to make good. Fuses (rope impregnated with gunpowder and other chemicals) were sold with a known burn rate of X inches per second, so the first step was to calculate your approximate parabolic flight time and then cut the fuse a bit longer. Adjust as observed. Range was adjusted by varying the amount of gunpowder in the mortar. Accuracy was poor, but you were typically firing at a fortress or city sized target, and you were set up very leisurely. Mortars were at first only used for sieges. Coehorn (one of the greatest siege and fortification experts in the seventeenth century invented a man-portable small mortar (man portable meaning that it required four men to lift it) that was commonly used in sieges. It was also occasionally used on the battlefield, but its relative inaccuracy meant that it was not particularly useful in firing at point targets. It also has a very large "dead" zone around the weapon that is a couple hundred yards across where it cannot hit targets, so once cav enters that zone your mortar is now the enemy's property. Contrast this with a field gun, which will absolutely shred cav at 100 yds. Enter the howitzer. It's essentially a cross between a field gun and a coehorn mortar. The barrel is quite a bit longer than the mortar, meaning that it can be fired with relative accuracy compared to the mortar, but the barrel is much shorter and lighter than a field gun, leading to a lower muzzle velocity. It sits on a modified field gun carriage with a short trail, so it can be fired at a high angle similar to a mortar using shells in an indirect fire mode. It can also in an emergency be lowered, charged with canister, and defend itself. The howitzer's range adjustment is based on the angle of the weapon and it usually fires from a fixed propellant cartridge like a field gun. The howitzer added an indirect fire element to battlefield artillery which had been missing previously, while retaining a high degree of mobility and the ability to defend itself. Previously, infantry could park itself in a defiladed position and not be touched by artillery. Now, you wheel up a howitzer and lob shells over their heads all day long. Sure, the dud rate might be 20%, but even being shelled by dud artillery is a relatively unpleasant experience. They were also very useful in a counterbattery setting because they could fire with relative impunity on field gun batteries. And, to disable a field gun battery, you try to kill the crews. Shells are much better at this than roundshot. The British also invented a cross between shell and canister that was very effective when fused correctly and the predecessor of the modern shrapnel shell. The gent that invented it was a Col. Shrapnel which gives us the modern name. The howitzer was a bit of a niche weapon because it was not really as good as a mortar for siege work (lacking range and caliber of shell), and it wasn't as good at most battlefield tasks as a field gun because most artillery work was limited to line-of-sight direct fire, but it occupied a very important spot in an artillery park in the Napoleonic era, especially on the battlefield. By about 1850, the two tasks were combined in the smoothbore Canon obusier de campagne de 12 livres, modèle 1853 (Field Gun Howitzer, 12lb, 1853), which could fire both shells and roundshot. Simplicity and versatility were very much improved but the indirect fire function was significantly reduced compared to a dedicated howitzer.
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May 30, 2017 16:04
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I found a good article underlying something HEYGAL is always saying: early modern was the dirtiest of times. http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/12/14/the-french-court-s-royal-ban-on-smiles
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May 30, 2017 17:37
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Perestroika posted:I'd imagine the role of reducing fortifications might have been a factor as well. Fort walls tend to be quite a bit more resilient than people, so it'd be good to have a fairly hard projectile that won't deform as much as lead would. Why didn't they make cannon balls out of depleted uranium?
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May 30, 2017 18:01
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Machine Gun chat: When I was in the Army, Military Police, about 10 years ago it was supposed to be set up like this: 4 teams of 4 to a squad. MP's used Humvees ALL THE TIME and were never expected to fight on foot. A team was made up of the driver, team leader, gunner, and random rear end in a top hat who could fill in as needed. The gunner carried a M249 but was expected to give it to the driver while the gunner used the M2, Mark-19, or M240 on the turret and the driver's m4. From there it was 4 squads to a platoon, 4 platoons to a company, and above that who the gently caress knows. MPs deploy at a company level but operate as independent platoons attached to a much larger force. In reality we were usually a team of 3, 4 teams to a squad with a medic, random rear end in a top hat, LT, or platoon sergeant riding along as the 4th sometimes. We very rarely left the Humvee and when we did didn't stray more than 100 feet. If you were the gunner you left the turret to take a piss and that's about it. Driver had an M4 and shotgun, team leader had M4 with M203, gunner had a M249, random rear end in a top hat had an M4 and an M203 if they were high enough rank. We all had grenades with more ammo, grenades, and an AT-4 in easy reach of the gunner in the Humvee. MPs are expected to operate independently with little support which is why they gave us so many weapons. It also helps always having a Humvee to carry all this poo poo. Moving around in said Humvee with all that poo poo while in your armor is a MASSIVE pain in the rear end. So yeah, we had 1 M249 for every 3 people at least with heavier machine guns mounted on our vehicles. Edit: Didn't mean to do an MP organization effort post but I figure MPs are unique enough since we do our own thing. limp_cheese fucked around with this message at 01:50 on May 31, 2017 |
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May 30, 2017 18:16
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I remember seeing an MP pitch as a cadet (branches advertise themselves to cadets), and I'd say at least half of the pitch was "If you are a woman, and you want to kill some people, go MPs, because I've personally killed people in Iraq and combat owns," given by an MP officer who was a woman. That pitch is dated now with infantry opening up to women, but it was pretty funny at the time.
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May 30, 2017 18:39
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mlmp08 posted:I remember seeing an MP pitch as a cadet (branches advertise themselves to cadets), and I'd say at least half of the pitch was "If you are a woman, and you want to kill some people, go MPs, because I've personally killed people in Iraq and combat owns," given by an MP officer who was a woman. That pitch is dated now with infantry opening up to women, but it was pretty funny at the time. This reveals a lot about Police attitudes in the USA.
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May 30, 2017 19:08
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Xerxes17 posted:This reveals a lot about Police attitudes in the USA. I heard half of the NYPD cut their teeth in training in Baghdad.
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May 30, 2017 19:18
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Actually preliminary research seems to suggest military veteran cops are somewhat less trigger happy than their non-vet counterparts, which makes sense if you think about it.
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May 30, 2017 19:23
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Thump! posted:I heard half of the NYPD cut their teeth in training in Baghdad. Good to know that all those unneeded Iraqi were put to good use in improving the lives of everyday Americans.
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May 30, 2017 19:28
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mlmp08 posted:I remember seeing an MP pitch as a cadet (branches advertise themselves to cadets), and I'd say at least half of the pitch was "If you are a woman, and you want to kill some people, go MPs, because I've personally killed people in Iraq and combat owns," given by an MP officer who was a woman. That pitch is dated now with infantry opening up to women, but it was pretty funny at the time. They pitched to me that I would be doing normal police duties on base. When I was in basic a drill sergeant told us to raise our hands if we thought we would be doing that. About 80% of us raised our hands and he started laughing at us. He told us MPs are doing most of the work in Iraq and Afghanistan and we should expect to be deployed soon after basic. He wasn't wrong though it took longer to be deployed than I thought. An MP platoon nowadays is about 33% women and fraternization was a big problem that didn't have a good solution. We were expected to know most of the UCMJ and it's not against the rules to gently caress as long as it's not homo. Serving with women did teach me they are just as capable as men. To give you an idea how independent we were we had a single platoon deploy to Afghanistan while the rest of the company went to Iraq a few months later. Before we were deployed the company HQ was in one city while all the platoons were spread out over other cities. It was rare to interact with anyone outside my platoon and we saw our captain so little we regularly forgot his name and face. While deployed we went on patrol in squads and barely saw anyone outside of our squad. They actually disbanded a platoon for running an illegal gambling ring that everyone, including the LT and platoon sergeant, was in on. We did have a few MPs from another unit we interacted with but it was 2 guys doing import/export stuff. One of the guys lived in our barracks and they did basically nothing on a daily basis. In true military fashion that guy was too lazy to go grab some smokes and food from the gas station and paid me in porn DVDs to grab some while I was there. This was in Germany where the internet was unreliable at best. It was a good deal. Edit: I also want to through a quick anecdote in to show the more things change the more they stay the same. We spent the first month in Iraq moving to various bases trying to find one that had room and a mission for a company of MPs. Apparently no one knew we were coming. We couldn't go to the range or work on our Humvees since we didn't have any money for bullets or Humvees to work on. The first month was dicking around doing gently caress all while the higher ups tried to find us a place to sleep and work. limp_cheese fucked around with this message at 20:06 on May 30, 2017 |
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May 30, 2017 19:32
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bewbies posted:Actually preliminary research seems to suggest military veteran cops are somewhat less trigger happy than their non-vet counterparts, which makes sense if you think about it. I just witnessed a facebook argument of someone pulling the "you don't know how dangerous it is out there for these poor cops" on a guy with a decade in Afghanistan.
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May 30, 2017 19:34
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bewbies posted:Actually preliminary research seems to suggest military veteran cops are somewhat less trigger happy than their non-vet counterparts, which makes sense if you think about it.
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May 30, 2017 20:42
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Xerxes17 posted:This reveals a lot about Police attitudes in the USA. Not one to defend US policing myself but not really. There's some differences in the way military police and civilian police train and operate
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May 30, 2017 21:03
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limp_cheese posted:good posts Thanks for these. I realize now I have no idea what MPs do overseas. So, when you were out on patrol, what was your mission? Were you keeping the peace, and prudence meant you were always really heavily armed when doing that?
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May 30, 2017 21:35
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Good grief, I've been watching too many Eastern Front documentaries, I'd assumed that the MPs needed the machineguns to shoot deserters. So they're not blocking detachments but they're police for soldiers and over the places the soldiers are occupying?
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May 30, 2017 21:54
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I would imagine that a fair amount of time is spent training, advising, and working with local gendarmerie.
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May 30, 2017 22:17
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Not an mp so apologies for jumping in cheese, but what I've typically seen them do in a conventional sense is route security and traffic management, which is a lot harder and important than it seems when you have an entire military force on limited road space. Some units are going to have priority of movement over others and it's going to rotate constantly as the operation goes on. Then you want to make sure people don't get lost and take wrong turns
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May 30, 2017 22:19
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Yeah, I thought that MPs guarded bases, captured rogue (drunk) grunts and breaked up POG slapfights. Also, blocking detachments: this threads swears up and down that blocking detachments in USSR didn't gun doen deserters - so what a about the mention of just that happening during the Winter War in Ivan's War?
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May 30, 2017 22:21
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My experience with MPs (well, air force security forces but similar enough) is that they drive my drunk rear end back to the dorms if I drink too much and do something stupid, and are way more polite than any civilian police have been to me despite the fact I assume all of them hate me for the aforementioned reason. Talking to them, they mostly tell me they're disappointed they are cops first because they thought that SF meant that they go outside the wire a lot. I can't really tell you much else because my job is about as far from that as you can get.
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May 30, 2017 22:39
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