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Blind Rasputin posted:What I have not been able to figure out is in a fission-fusion-fission teller-ulam type device, how do you keep the primary fission explosion contained long enough to activate the secondary stage without the nuclear explosion just ripping the entire thing apart? Like, is the primary-to-secondary coupling occurring on the order of less than milliseconds, or does one need an outer housing and x-ray reflector strong enough to actually contain the first second of a fission nuclear explosion until you achieve full fusion in the secondary stage? Nice try KJU e: preempted like a negotiated resolution to the north korean nuclear program
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Aug 10, 2017 20:35
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So, while KJU is a dork, he doesn't seem suicidal, and neither is his staff. I'm genuinely curious what's the goal they are after with this posturing? Wouldn't it be more advantageous for NK to just ignore all of it, and keep chugging along? I'm just trying to see KJUs rationale. He doesn't really strike me as a nutjob. He wants foreign aid, right?
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Aug 10, 2017 20:50
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The third generation always fucks the family business with hubris, I'm not hopeful.
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Aug 10, 2017 20:52
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If you start from the perspective of "everything we do is to protect the regime" a lot of the DPRK's actions make more sense. Case in point: they don't subscribe to nuclear strategy like the rest of the world's nuclear powers do. Instead, they view nukes as the ultimate insurance policy against some manner of outside attempt at regime change. So, with that in mind, they have very little to lose from posturing, and plenty to gain. It isn't unlike the guy who tries the "strap a bomb to my chest" technique of robbing a bank.
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Aug 10, 2017 20:53
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TTerrible posted:Whats going on here then? Hardliners or some third party maybe? I dunno why the Cubans would risk mucking up the rapprochement, they've got a lot to gain.
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Aug 10, 2017 21:33
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https://twitter.com/jaketapper/status/895747111865790465 What
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Aug 10, 2017 21:44
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Vahakyla posted:So, while KJU is a dork, he doesn't seem suicidal, and neither is his staff. I asked a similar question earlier in the thread and this is the response I got: orange juche posted:There is no real way to negotiate. The US can acknowledge NKs right to exist as is, with nukes (total non-starter), which of course Kim and KCNA would would spin as "Nukes get the US to leave you alone" kicking off nuclear proliferation anywhere countries don't want to be hosed with by the US, or NK can disarm, which would cause a probable uprising in NK due to people sensing weakness in the WPK. Kim won't pick option two, and the US won't pick option one, so we are left at a total impasse. The US will not accept them as a trading partner or offer foreign aid as long as they have or are developing nukes, and that means a ton of other countries won't either (foreign aid largely because it would be seen as an appeasement strategy). NK doesn't really have much to trade anyway, other than extremely cheap labor, which only a few countries are taking advantage. It's kind of at an impasse, right now it's just a matter of who blinks first - Trump or KJU.
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Aug 10, 2017 21:46
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Vahakyla posted:So, while KJU is a dork, he doesn't seem suicidal, and neither is his staff. I'm normally not a fan of the Economist's "what if" articles, but they ran a pretty good one outlining a theoretical chain of events leading to nukes cooking off on the Korean peninsula. The short version is that Lil Kim had to do stupid poo poo for domestic political reasons, then had to double down on that stupid poo poo to not look weak in the face of the American response, then the Americans had to respond to THAT under the assumption that he wasn't just playing pretend, then the DPRK had to go all in because oh gently caress this is going to lead to regime change, isn't' it? Remember: many of the dumbest, awful, bone headed decisions made by military or political leaders have been because of internal political circumstances that aren't visible to the outside world and which are therefore really hard to weigh in everyone else's decision making process.
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Aug 10, 2017 22:04
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Trump.
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Aug 10, 2017 22:15
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Cyrano4747 posted:I'm normally not a fan of the Economist's "what if" articles, but they ran a pretty good one outlining a theoretical chain of events leading to nukes cooking off on the Korean peninsula. The short version is that Lil Kim had to do stupid poo poo for domestic political reasons, then had to double down on that stupid poo poo to not look weak in the face of the American response, then the Americans had to respond to THAT under the assumption that he wasn't just playing pretend, then the DPRK had to go all in because oh gently caress this is going to lead to regime change, isn't' it? ...like being antagonized into promising to splash 4 ballistic missiles 20 miles from US territory, detailing down to the time in flight, and not being able to back down because it was said so therefore it must happen to avoiding looking weak? all the while the antagonist doubles down on rhetoric? it's like we can watch the foreshadowing in real time.
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Aug 10, 2017 22:20
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brains posted:...like being antagonized into promising to splash 4 ballistic missiles 20 miles from US territory, detailing down to the time in flight, and not being able to back down because it was said so therefore it must happen to avoiding looking weak? all the while the antagonist doubles down on rhetoric? So if I'm reading this right you're saying the antagonist in this isn't the fat idiot threatening to chuck missiles around, it's the orange idiot threatening vague bad things if said missiles get chucked? Also, I'm not sure talking about an "enveloping fire" w/r/t hitting Guam really encapsulates a plan to splash missiles offshore. Warbadger fucked around with this message at 22:57 on Aug 10, 2017 |
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Aug 10, 2017 22:33
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brains posted:...like being antagonized into promising to splash 4 ballistic missiles 20 miles from US territory, detailing down to the time in flight, and not being able to back down because it was said so therefore it must happen to avoiding looking weak? all the while the antagonist doubles down on rhetoric? I can't help but think this is escalating partly because a lot of people in the west seem to be in denial about NK capabilities. They're trying to build an effective deterrent and the west keeps saying "that's not a real missile", "well, that missile could not carry a nuke", "well, it could never hit us", "well, it could only hit Alaska" and the latest "well it could only put a Hiroshima bomb on Seattle". The same thing happened when China built their nuclear force, western commentators kept saying that no way could the backwards Chinese do this or that necessary step, or it would never work. Eventually they put a live warhead on a missile and fired it, as if to say "well?". You can't have an effective deterrent when the other side doesn't believe you have the capability. I half expect NK to eventually nuke some whales or something with their ICBM if the denial continues. E: Warbadger posted:So if I'm reading this right you're saying the antagonist in this isn't the fat idiot threatening to chuck missiles around, it's the orange idiot threatening vague bad things if said missiles get chucked? They're a paranoid regime that is convinced that they need a nuclear deterrent to not get regime changed and are desperately trying to develop one. Meanwhile the west keeps acting like it does not find the deterrent credible and threatening said regime change or just outright destruction. It's not about who is right or wrong, it's about who is poking the cornered animal with a stick. Right now NK is baring teeth and barking, we really don't want them biting, even if it hurts them more than us. Anta fucked around with this message at 23:05 on Aug 10, 2017 |
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Aug 10, 2017 22:56
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Anta posted:I can't help but think this is escalating partly because a lot of people in the west seem to be in denial about NK capabilities. They're trying to build an effective deterrent and the west keeps saying "that's not a real missile", "well, that missile could not carry a nuke", "well, it could never hit us", "well, it could only hit Alaska" and the latest "well it could only put a Hiroshima bomb on Seattle". Yeah. I have a MAGA friend who is completely insistent that our anti-missile defenses will take out anything that NK launches at us and then we'll nuke them into oblivion. Reminded him to check on the success rate for anti-missile systems and he could only reply that 'everyone hate NK and will help us on this one, we have 7000 nukes'. 
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Aug 10, 2017 23:02
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Seeding the upper stratosphere with juche ash is the face-saving republican solution to climate change.
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Aug 10, 2017 23:12
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That Works posted:Yeah. I have a MAGA friend who is completely insistent that our anti-missile defenses will take out anything that NK launches at us and then we'll nuke them into oblivion. Reminded him to check on the success rate for anti-missile systems and he could only reply that 'everyone hate NK and will help us on this one, we have 7000 nukes'. Show him that tweet thread from earlier in the thread. The best-case scenario where a nuclear salvo from NK is completely intercepted still involves dozens of ICBM-looking missiles flying into Russia (and China, India and Pakistan). And there are signs that the Russians have trouble seeing the NK tests. Which means the first thing the Russians see are a surprise salvo of missiles headed their way, possibly accompanied by a phone call from the US saying "hey don't worry, this is totally not us attacking." With the US government having caught a bad case of the MAGAs and Russia being...Russia there is good reason to not want to rely on that.
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Aug 10, 2017 23:17
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Anta posted:They're a paranoid regime that is convinced that they need a nuclear deterrent to not get regime changed and are desperately trying to develop one. Meanwhile the west keeps acting like it does not find the deterrent credible and threatening said regime change or just outright destruction. Well, honestly I think you've missed the mark by a pretty long shot. It has little to do with a nuclear deterrent aimed at the outside parties who haven't made any serious move against NK for the last 60 years, if for no other reason than they already have demonstrated a nuclear deterrent. Instead, this is about the same thing the sudden cross-border shelling, sinking of the Cheonan, and the various North Korean leaders ending up dead was about - KJU is a fat nobody who was suddenly shoehorned into power as his father died. He needs to soludify his own position and lead a North Korean leadership that justifies many of its current policies and past actions on being the only defense against the ravening mud-blood horde who are poised to invade. They can't just stop doing that and they can't allow it to look like it isn't true - which is becoming more difficult over time with the dramatically expanded black and grey markets along with technology. Warbadger fucked around with this message at 00:01 on Aug 11, 2017 |
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Aug 10, 2017 23:29
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hobbesmaster posted:It takes place in less than 1 ms. There's a reason that nuclear weapons contain materials like that FOGBANK that can be described as: Its probably styrofoam.
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Aug 10, 2017 23:40
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Anta posted:Show him that tweet thread from earlier in the thread. The best-case scenario where a nuclear salvo from NK is completely intercepted still involves dozens of ICBM-looking missiles flying into Russia (and China, India and Pakistan). And there are signs that the Russians have trouble seeing the NK tests. Which means the first thing the Russians see are a surprise salvo of missiles headed their way, possibly accompanied by a phone call from the US saying "hey don't worry, this is totally not us attacking." Yeah I did actually use that image and his reply was again that 'everyone is on our side with this even if we nuke them, you guys are just pussies who don't want to fight' or something along those lines.
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Aug 10, 2017 23:44
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MrChips posted:Coming from a ways back; due to the design of the B-52's control surfaces, namely it's tiny, tiny rudder, there really is no good way to go from 8x 17,000 lb thrust engines, to 4x 34,000(ish) lb thrust engines. In an engine-out situation, the 4-engined variant would overwhelm the aircraft's limited rudder authority very quickly; that basically means you're stuck with eight smaller engines unless you're willing to discuss (as Boeing is likely more than happy to do) the possibility of an all-new vertical stabiliser. Also, weight and balance become huge issues too - new engines that are too heavy or too light both cause unique problems when it comes to a re-engine, so you'd need to stay pretty close to the original ~9000 pounds per engine pod. A few pages late but if the GE passport & associated FADEC/avionics is type certificated to the FAA process, it seems like the Air Force is within their authority to accept this type certificate. Assuming the integration method pass muster as applied to the B-52, whats stopping them from saying "yep the FAA cert is good enough"? Lovers quarrel CarForumPoster fucked around with this message at 23:50 on Aug 10, 2017 |
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Aug 10, 2017 23:47
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Warbadger posted:Well, honestly I think you've missed the mark by a pretty long shot. It has little to do with a nuclear deterrent for the outside parties who haven't made any serious move against NK for the last 60 years, because they already have demonstrated a nuclear deterrent. This is about the same thing the sudden cross-border shelling, sinking of the Cheonan, and the various North Korean leaders ending up dead was about - KJU is a fat nobody who was suddenly shoehorned into power as his father died. The North Korean leadership justifies many of its current policies and past actions on being the only defense against the ravening mud-blood horde who are poised to invade. They can't just stop doing that and they can't allow it to look like it isn't true - which is becoming more difficult over time with the dramatically expanded black and grey markets along with technology. Well yeah, obviously there are internal politics at play too, which only makes the situation more unstable, if the NK regime can't back down. But I don't agree that it has nothing to do with deterrent. They have both internal and external threats. They saw what happened to other vulnerable dictators and regimes that the US does not like. They've had a sort of conventional deterrent in the artillery aimed at the Seoul outskirts for decades and personally I think that deterrent, and China, has been a large reason that NK has not been regime changed or bombed ages ago. It's not like the US has been shy about doing that and I don't think the US worries much about the conventional NK forces. I suspect this artillery was getting rapidly less effective as a deterrent in their eyes. So they developed nukes. And to make the US actually worry about the nukes they need to be able to hit the US mainland. Just look at the reactions from the US. The US population didn't exactly seem to care much about the possibility of Seoul or Tokyo getting nuked, even Alaska was "only Alaska". As a bonus it gets the US to step up rhetoric and aggressive posturing, which helps with the internal politics, but I don't think that is the main goal. They could do that with small provocations like they used to. We love getting pissed off at NK.
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Aug 11, 2017 00:03
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M_Gargantua posted:Well, operation bomb useless dirt may have degraded equipment readiness, but has provided invaluable training to the services. Low intensity combat is still combat and is still better training than hours on a range. No other country has that at the scale we do, outside their special forces. The other big advantage we have from forever war is our logistics are actually up to snuff for mobilizing across the entire globe. Sure carriers are great for force projection but we've also got the continuation and resupply ability. Most countries will likely suffer growing pains if they have to sustain much outside their boarders. It's hosed the Air Force and Navy to a degree that will probably take 15-25 years to unravel. And our logistics side was already solid just though typical pre-9/11 ops...it's now degrading due to personnel bailing as soon as they can, and equipment getting worn the gently caress out like everything else. We've already started retiring C-17s ffs. My extremely limited understanding of ground operations was that our CONOPs over the past 16 years were often completely unrelated or opposite of normal doctrine. I'm sure someone else will weigh in on that though. If that's accurate, then everybody got hosed except USMC aviation.
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Aug 11, 2017 00:36
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Godholio posted:It's hosed the Air Force and Navy to a degree that will probably take 15-25 years to unravel. And our logistics side was already solid just though typical pre-9/11 ops...it's now degrading due to personnel bailing as soon as they can, and equipment getting worn the gently caress out like everything else. We've already started retiring C-17s ffs. Naive question here but where's the money go? We always hear the constant harping about how we spend more on defense than x countries combined. Is it just that to run as big of a setup as we have properly we'd need even more money or?
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Aug 11, 2017 00:38
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That Works posted:Naive question here but where's the money go? We always hear the constant harping about how we spend more on defense than x countries combined. Is it just that to run as big of a setup as we have properly we'd need even more money or? The military budget has never been audited, we've misplaced over a trillion since the 90s at last estimate, and we keep paying millions for poo poo that was never needed. See: the tank production line we have to keep open otherwise whoops there goes all that cash for congressional districts but hey 2/3rds of the F-18 fleet can be grounded due to lack of maintenance and that's just dandy. Party Plane Jones fucked around with this message at 00:47 on Aug 11, 2017 |
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Aug 11, 2017 00:42
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Wikipedia actually breaks it down pretty well. The short answer is that ops & maintenance (O&M) is the top dog as it should be, followed by personnel (pay & healthcare), then procurement. But O&M could probably stand to gain about 25% across the board just to catch up on all the deferred maintenance because we're too busy sticking our dicks into sandy warzones. Edit: That said, there's an absurd amount of waste built into the system, some of it by design to mask secret projects, much of it by design to ensure post-retirement careers for general officers and campaign donations for legislators. Nobody responsible for fixing it has the slightest interest in doing so because it hurts them.
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Aug 11, 2017 00:46
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Purely anecdotal but all the ex service guys i work with (enlisted and officers) bailed 4-8 years in because they couldn't stand the bullshit. Probably not a good sign.
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Aug 11, 2017 00:49
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Party Plane Jones posted:The military budget has never been audited, we've misplaced over a trillion since the 90s at last estimate, and we keep paying millions for poo poo that was never needed. See: the tank production line we have to keep open otherwise whoops there goes all that cash for congressional districts but hey 2/3rds of the F-18 fleet can be grounded due to lack of maintenance and that's just dandy. This is a huge issue because the military is handcuffed on how to allocate large parts of the budget, so issues that would normally be ameliorated by regular maintenance wind up costing many times more to fix when they break. And while an asset or system is out of commission, others have to pick up the slack, further adding to wear and tear during 15 years of Operation BUD, exacerbating the problem even further. I can't speak to the readiness of any given branch, how far behind we are on maintenance for any specific system, but when you have accountants (Congress) dictate to engineers (military planners) how they can use their funding, it makes a small problem snowball into a big one. Bandaids turn into doctor's visits turn into ER and ICU stays.
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Aug 11, 2017 01:00
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From the last page or so, we are heading into a crisis with North Korea with a military which has large readiness problems.... That certainly brings up some horror scenarios.
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Aug 11, 2017 01:05
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CarForumPoster posted:A few pages late but if the GE passport & associated FADEC/avionics is type certificated to the FAA process, it seems like the Air Force is within their authority to accept this type certificate. Assuming the integration method pass muster as applied to the B-52, whats stopping them from saying "yep the FAA cert is good enough"? Nuclear/EMP hardening is probably a pretty significant barrier. Especially with our fancy pants digitally controlled engines these days.
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Aug 11, 2017 01:18
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Sperglord posted:From the last page or so, we are heading into a crisis with North Korea with a military which has large readiness problems.... South Korea could pretty much handle NK alone conventionally, we really just exist there to keep that from happening because of the horrific outcome and now for BMD.
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Aug 11, 2017 01:35
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General Battuta posted:Dear warnerds, "Squid story"? Now that sounds like something I need to read... E: Thank you CoffeeHitler. Oh my god, I read this story once, absolutely loved it, and then could never find it again. No matter what I searched, it never turned up. I looked for literal years. I was starting to think I'd hallucinated the whole experience.... and then the author just shows up on SA. God, the internet is a wonderful thing. Crazycryodude fucked around with this message at 01:49 on Aug 11, 2017 |
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Aug 11, 2017 01:38
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Xenoborg posted:Nuclear/EMP hardening is probably a pretty significant barrier. Especially with our fancy pants digitally controlled engines these days. I still think it is within the AF's authority but even this isnt a huge barrier. Specify 500V/m RS103 MIL-STD--461 testing, the contractor shields all the FADEC cabling and the box itself. Its some weight growth and $1M in testing, but hardly a show stopper.
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Aug 11, 2017 01:52
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Shooting Blanks posted:but when you have accountants (Congress) dictate to engineers (military planners) how they can use their funding, it makes a small problem snowball into a big one. Bandaids turn into doctor's visits turn into ER and ICU stays. If Congressmen were accountants, that would be a vast improvement. Businesses that do accounting the way Congress does it generally wind up with their office furniture being auctioned off by the local sheriff.
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Aug 11, 2017 01:52
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:The one where they'd basically circled the wagons like they were waiting for an attack by Geronimo? I can't seem to find the picture but in my mind there wasn't even circling it was just line everyone up and pitch tents with zero camo, concealment, defensive posture, everything was way too close together.
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Aug 11, 2017 02:05
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That Works posted:Naive question here but where's the money go? We always hear the constant harping about how we spend more on defense than x countries combined. We spend a lot, but we're a big country. For our size, our military (and its spending) is big but not disproportionately so. In percentage of, it's far behind Russia, for instance. Not that a lot of that money isn't wasted, but it's simply expensive to run an organization with a couple million direct employees and who knows how many hundreds of thousands more indirectly employed contractors.
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Aug 11, 2017 02:57
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Mazz posted:South Korea could pretty much handle NK alone conventionally, we really just exist there to keep that from happening because of the horrific outcome and now for BMD. There seems to be a decent amount of specialized capabilities which the South Koreans don't have, e.g. bombers, stealth strategic reconnaissance, etc. If the North Koreans do a Hwasong-12 flight test near Guam, I'd be curious to see if we start getting public doubt about the military's effectiveness.
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Aug 11, 2017 03:02
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Phanatic posted:If Congressmen were accountants, that would be a vast improvement. Businesses that do accounting the way Congress does it generally wind up with their office furniture being auctioned off by the local sheriff. There are a couple who were accountants or engineers or etc... but for many of them the only thing they know about planning budgets and forward spending plans is from working the desk at dads dental office during summers in college. E: looked up some numbers. 8 accountants and 8 engineers is the house. Compare this to 20 "public relations workers" and 18 insurance agents. I think thats probably a pretty good indicator for why the house has poor decision making. Murgos fucked around with this message at 03:43 on Aug 11, 2017 |
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Aug 11, 2017 03:31
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Captain von Trapp posted:We spend a lot, but we're a big country. For our size, our military (and its spending) is big but not disproportionately so. In percentage of, it's far behind Russia, for instance. Not that a lot of that money isn't wasted, but it's simply expensive to run an organization with a couple million direct employees and who knows how many hundreds of thousands more indirectly employed contractors. I would bet the contractors run into the millions, possibly more than enlisted if you go down to someone building/soldering some custom part/component full time that they don't have a clue what it even goes to.
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Aug 11, 2017 03:32
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Plinkey posted:I would bet the contractors run into the millions, possibly more than enlisted if you go down to someone building/soldering some custom part/component full time that they don't have a clue what it even goes to. Pensions. Pensions are huge. I think there's still an active civil war pension being paid out.
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Aug 11, 2017 03:38
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Phanatic posted:Pensions. Pensions are huge. I think there's still an active civil war pension being paid out. As of earlier this year, yes. https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-08-08/civil-war-vets-pension-still-remains-on-governments-payroll-151-years-after-last-shot-fired
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Aug 11, 2017 03:41
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Phanatic posted:Pensions. Pensions are huge. I think there's still an active civil war pension being paid out. Ah yeah, I was thinking currently employed/enlisted, whatever FTEs.
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Aug 11, 2017 03:47
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