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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:yeah going from memory the sloth is not adjusting well to life aboard ship. Jack gives him a little grog to which the sloth responds (probably overly) positively, and then Jack starts feeding the sloth a daily grog ration. Sort of. It's in the third book. The sloth loves Maturin and everyone else on the ship except Jack, until Jack gets it drunk.
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Jul 15, 2019 15:28
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LatwPIAT posted:OK so let's talk about the Bradley design in Pentagon Wars This is a good post. Pentagon Wars is good for illustrating things like test planning and requirements development and bad organizational practices. It is not an historically accurate depiction of the Brad's development. I will add though, there was one major failing/error in the Brad's development. I have no idea if it was touched on in the movie. The late Cold War "Big 5" (Patriot, Abrams, Apache, Bradley, Blackhawk) were all developed based around REFORGER-like requirements --- basically, rapid deployment of forces to whatever Western European country the Russian Horde decided to invade. This deployment was huge, basically two full armored corps, plus the troops already in Europe. They all had to be moved huge distances from Army bases in the US and a few in Europe to various bases and depots around where we thought the Russians would want to go. The C-130 was the backbone of the last leg of this deployment...we had a ton of them, as did all of our allies, so being able to pack into one was a huge advantage when you're trying to rapidly move a ton of dudes and vehicles. We knew that no tank was ever going to be C-130 transportable, so one of the big things driving the Brad's requirements was to provide some meaningful tank-like firepower to the crunchies being rapidly flown out to stand in front of the Red Army. The IFV capabilities were a huge upgrade over the old metal box APCs, and would have been incredibly useful in a situation like what we thought WWIII in Western Europe would look like. The Brad's...rapid expansion through the course of its development, however, sized it out of the C-130, which now meant it had to be rail or line hauled to where it needed to go, which in turn made things a whole lot slower and more vulnerable. This capability wasn't really backfilled until the Stryker came along, and even then, not completely. It is one of those rather boring capabilities -- not nearly as fun as missiles or guns or range or penetration or whatever -- but it is probably more important all things considered.
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Jul 15, 2019 15:29
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Animals on ships is a super underappreciated part of naval history.my favorite was the elephant a bunch of sailors "acquired" and taught it what ropes to hold
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Jul 15, 2019 15:31
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Raenir Salazar posted:One guy responded, "Because the Bradley is a piece of crap!" linking the Pentagon Wars, but troubled development has nothing to do with how it would perform in some theoretical scifi setting. These guys are the absolute worst and I pity them and their sad little lives.
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Jul 15, 2019 15:41
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bewbies posted:It is one of those rather boring capabilities -- not nearly as fun as missiles or guns or range or penetration or whatever -- but it is probably more important all things considered. I wasn't really aware that this was something the Bradley failed to accomplish, but I do know the US kept trying to acquire this capability throughout the 1980s: the 9ID (Motorized) High-Tech Test Bed and their fast attack concept with their Mk.19s and HMMWV-TOWs and never-materializing wheeled APCs and guns, and a small reference to Anniston trying to convert old M551 hulls into an AmeriBMD to give the 101st armour, autocannons, and under-armour TOW in the late 80s. My impression is that the US Army never really managed to prioritize that kind of quick, airborne deployability to a level that matched how much they said they wanted it. The 9ID kept getting loaded down with heavy brigades, and the XVIII Airborne Corps had a mechanized division with Bradleys and Abrams attached to it...
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Jul 15, 2019 15:47
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SeanBeansShako posted:These guys are the absolute worst and I pity them and their sad little lives. Is that chap who wanted to make 'Gavin' happen for the M113 still around?
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Jul 15, 2019 15:48
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Agean90 posted:Animals on ships is a super underappreciated part of naval history.my favorite was the elephant a bunch of sailors "acquired" and taught it what ropes to hold Up until the middle of WWII, the Royal Navy had a zoo on Whale Island in Portsmouth, to hold all the animals it had collected that were too big to fit on the ships that acquired them. The main attraction were a couple of polar bears and a small pride of lions, but it had all sorts of creatures.
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Jul 15, 2019 15:50
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LatwPIAT posted:I wasn't really aware that this was something the Bradley failed to accomplish, but I do know the US kept trying to acquire this capability throughout the 1980s: the 9ID (Motorized) High-Tech Test Bed and their fast attack concept with their Mk.19s and HMMWV-TOWs and never-materializing wheeled APCs and guns, and a small reference to Anniston trying to convert old M551 hulls into an AmeriBMD to give the 101st armour, autocannons, and under-armour TOW in the late 80s. My impression is that the US Army never really managed to prioritize that kind of quick, airborne deployability to a level that matched how much they said they wanted it. The 9ID kept getting loaded down with heavy brigades, and the XVIII Airborne Corps had a mechanized division with Bradleys and Abrams attached to it... You can kind of trace how it went as you look at the Brad prototypes from back in the day...whenever it was they decided to put the main gun in a turret, the C-130 was out, more or less. The expectation was that lighter forces would get an AT/APC like what you're describing but as you note that never really came close to materializing.
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Jul 15, 2019 15:52
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bewbies posted:We knew that no tank was ever going to be C-130 transportable, so one of the big things driving the Brad's requirements was to provide some meaningful tank-like firepower to the crunchies being rapidly flown out to stand in front of the Red Army. The IFV capabilities were a huge upgrade over the old metal box APCs, and would have been incredibly useful in a situation like what we thought WWIII in Western Europe would look like. The Brad's...rapid expansion through the course of its development, however, sized it out of the C-130, which now meant it had to be rail or line hauled to where it needed to go, which in turn made things a whole lot slower and more vulnerable. This capability wasn't really backfilled until the Stryker came along, and even then, not completely. SeanBeansShako posted:These guys are the absolute worst and I pity them and their sad little lives.
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Jul 15, 2019 15:53
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Cessna posted:Sort of. It's in the third book. It's even better than I remembered
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Jul 15, 2019 15:53
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LatwPIAT posted:I wasn't really aware that this was something the Bradley failed to accomplish, but I do know the US kept trying to acquire this capability throughout the 1980s: the 9ID (Motorized) High-Tech Test Bed and their fast attack concept with their Mk.19s and HMMWV-TOWs and never-materializing wheeled APCs and guns, and a small reference to Anniston trying to convert old M551 hulls into an AmeriBMD to give the 101st armour, autocannons, and under-armour TOW in the late 80s. My impression is that the US Army never really managed to prioritize that kind of quick, airborne deployability to a level that matched how much they said they wanted it. The 9ID kept getting loaded down with heavy brigades, and the XVIII Airborne Corps had a mechanized division with Bradleys and Abrams attached to it...
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Jul 15, 2019 15:56
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So what the poo poo is the deal with the hoverboard shown off at that french parade?
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Jul 15, 2019 15:57
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:It's even better than I remembered They're beautiful, aren't they? If you (anyone reading this) are having a hard time getting into the books, maybe try the Audible version. Make sure you get the series narrated by Patrick Tull. He sounds like an old English sailor and it fits perfectly. I've read all of the books, but will put Tull's voice on when I'm doing hobby stuff for inspiration.
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Jul 15, 2019 16:02
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SeanBeansShako posted:These guys are the absolute worst and I pity them and their sad little lives. Yeah words failed me. I was like, "But the Brad isn't any worse than any of its direct competitors in a hypothetical peer conflict? What makes it bad for a peer conflict?" and the response was "Just because it's less poo poo then some other poo poo, doesn't make it not poo poo." Some people are just obnoxious contrarians and there's no rhyme or reason to their thoughts or actions other then strutting their hate boner. The whole point was, "It seems like it could squeeze through the Gate, it'd be interesting if they could've done that, and I wonder why they didn't when the US Airforce seemed more than happy to give them surplus equipment for filming."
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Jul 15, 2019 16:05
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Yeah, I see that a lot. If someone is dead set on calling something poo poo, they will compare it not with its contemporaries or even modern tanks, but some kind of platonic ideal they created in their head of what a "good" tank should be.
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Jul 15, 2019 16:07
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Cessna posted:- The Mk-19 is a wonderful weapon, but it isn't in the same league as things like an ATGM. It's great for keeping enemy infantry's heads down, but I wouldn't want to use it in a shootout with a BMP or the like. Like you say, "fire support," but it's more like a mortar in practical terms. To expand on this: The problem with the Mk-19 on the AAV is the mount. Tanks usually have some sort of control that lets the gunner or TC move the gun on both the X and Y axis with variable speeds, so they can quickly move the gun around then make fine adjustments to get it onto the target. They'll also have a manual control (a crank of some sort) for fine adjustments or for if/when the power goes out. The AAV doesn't have this. There's an electric motor for traverse, but it's on/off. There's no fine adjustment, it's just whip the turret around, stop. Fine adjustments are made with manual crank wheels. This is perfectly fine if you're using the MK-19 to suppress targets or for relatively long range fire. But it's not responsive enough to use in a shoot-out. Cessna fucked around with this message at 15:10 on Jul 17, 2019 |
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Jul 15, 2019 16:07
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Ensign Expendable posted:Yeah, I see that a lot. If someone is dead set on calling something poo poo, they will compare it not with its contemporaries or even modern tanks, but some kind of platonic ideal they created in their head of what a "good" tank should be. Yeah, he ignored congressional evidence of its performance, and dismissed its good showing in the Iraq war as "winning against untrained guerrillas" when I'm pretty sure Iraq's army in both Gulf Wars are more than perfectly capable of punching holes in the Brad on a perfectly flat plane with perfectly spherical frictionless tanks.
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Jul 15, 2019 16:10
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The US army was even better at punching holes in Bradleys in the Gulf War 
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Jul 15, 2019 16:16
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Cessna posted:They're beautiful, aren't they? I read them as a child sort of indifferently, and then I re-read them in my late 20s and appreciated them much more.
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Jul 15, 2019 16:22
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Cessna posted:The AAV doesn't have this. There's an electric motor for traverse, but it's on/off. There's no fine adjustment, it's just whip the turret around, stop. 
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Jul 15, 2019 16:25
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Epicurius posted:I thought Burton's bigger complaint about the Bradley was less mission creep and more about the army's initial reluctance to subject it to live fire testing, and then when they did and it did terribly, suppress the results and rerun rigged tests. IIRC this is something the author got weird about but there were two schools of thought. The first was to run scientific tests where you take armor plates and subject them to hits from various weapons at various angles to figure out what they can survive. The second is to put a whole vehicle out there and just shoot it with a big tank gun and see what happens. The author was in the second camp and specifically wanted to see overmatch tests.
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Jul 15, 2019 16:37
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That's a pretty reasonable progression: test plates, then empty hulls, then entire vehicles to see if vital equipment falls off on nonpenetrating hits. Obviously you don't skip straight to #3 and shoot it with the biggest gun you have, because then you don't really learn anything.
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Jul 15, 2019 16:40
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As this says: Ensign Expendable posted:Yeah, I see that a lot. If someone is dead set on calling something poo poo, they will compare it not with its contemporaries or even modern tanks, but some kind of platonic ideal they created in their head of what a "good" tank should be. It's not a tank. It's not supposed to be a tank. It's not supposed to fight AFVs. It's a big truck with a little bit of protection against small arms that can carry lots of troops from ship to shore, then lob some grenades at enemy grunts to keep their heads down.
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Jul 15, 2019 16:40
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Anything with tracks and armour is a tank if you're a mediocre infantry commander!
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Jul 15, 2019 16:43
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Ensign Expendable posted:Anything with tracks and armour is a tank if you're a mediocre infantry commander! Exactly. And that's why the USMC doesn't want to put TOWs on their APCs, they know that gung-ho grunt captains would think they can use them to go hunt tanks.
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Jul 15, 2019 16:51
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Cessna posted:It's not a tank. It's not supposed to be a tank. It's not supposed to fight AFVs. I'm not screaming because it doesn't let you fight tanks, I'm screaming because it's a terrible way to make a system for pointing precisely at things. And, sure, grenade launcher doesn't care about precision, but doesn't that turret also have a machine gun?
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Jul 15, 2019 16:53
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Ensign Expendable posted:Anything with tracks and armour is a tank if you're a mediocre infantry commander! the closer it resembles a tank the more likely you'll be tempted to use it as such edit: this is basically the Battlecruiser problem
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Jul 15, 2019 16:58
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LatwPIAT posted:I'm not screaming because it doesn't let you fight tanks, I'm screaming because it's a terrible way to make a system for pointing precisely at things. And, sure, grenade launcher doesn't care about precision, but doesn't that turret also have a machine gun? The manual control is perfectly fine for that. You get the guns close with the electric motor, then crank them onto the target. Edit: Don't think of the 40mm as a direct fire weapon. It IS, but think of it as a rapid-fire mortar; you lob shells at the enemy, correct, lob a few more. Manual control works fine. And the .50 cal? Again, manual control is fine. It's more stable and precise than a pintle mount. Cessna fucked around with this message at 17:07 on Jul 15, 2019 |
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Jul 15, 2019 17:01
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Ensign Expendable posted:That's a pretty reasonable progression: test plates, then empty hulls, then entire vehicles to see if vital equipment falls off on nonpenetrating hits. Obviously you don't skip straight to #3 and shoot it with the biggest gun you have, because then you don't really learn anything. My understanding is that he wanted to skip to #3 and start with overmatch (stuff that would obviously penetrate, like anti-tank missiles and tank guns).
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Jul 15, 2019 17:02
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Cessna posted:Exactly. This feels like a really dubious argument. It'd be like going "let's take the machine gun off the Ferdinand so people don't use them to fight infantry". "Let's strip the anti-air machine gun from the MBT so they don't chase helicopters". "Let's not issue HE shells to our tank destroyers." "Let's not issue our artillery crew small arms because we don't want them to just charge at the enemy shooting their guns." Fangz fucked around with this message at 17:13 on Jul 15, 2019 |
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Jul 15, 2019 17:09
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Cessna posted:They're beautiful, aren't they? That’s a good suggestion, thanks; I’ve tried three times to read master and commander but the nautical vocab puts me off too much. I’m told that you just have to kind of push through it and it eventually starts to click, I might have a better time of it in spoken format than having to go at my own pace. Plus I’m a sucker for salty English sailor accents
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Jul 15, 2019 17:12
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Fangz posted:This feels like a really dubious argument. It'd be like going "let's take the machine gun off the Ferdinand so people don't use them to fight infantry". "Let's strip the anti-air machine gun from the MBT so they don't chase helicopters". Every system doesn't have to do every job. Do you similarly upbraid big Chinook helicopters for not carrying AMRAAM missiles so they can hunt fighter planes? The whole point of an AAV is, as it says in the name, Amphibious Assault. It is there to take a LOT of troops from ship to shore in as expedient of a manner as possible. The more jarheads you can haul, the better. If you can haul them around on land after that assault has succeeded, so much the better, but at that point it is a tracked truck, not an IFV. Why make a vehicle into something it isn't?
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Jul 15, 2019 17:14
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Agean90 posted:Animals on ships is a super underappreciated part of naval history.my favorite was the elephant a bunch of sailors "acquired" and taught it what ropes to hold The one that surprised me most was WW1 submarines having ships dogs on them. Granted, I think they were mainly dogs they picked up from the ships they sank. But still. U29 rescued a pregnant dog at one point, so they had to meet up with other submarines to hand out puppies.
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Jul 15, 2019 17:16
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Cessna posted:Every system doesn't have to do every job. Do you similarly upbraid big Chinook helicopters for not carrying AMRAAM missiles so they can hunt fighter planes? The argument that adding the TOW capability would compromise their core function is fine but an altogether different argument to "well the troops will be dumb and misuse this capability". The ultimate question is whether you expect AAVs to come across tanks in the process of their amphibious assaulting. I dunno, do they? Fangz fucked around with this message at 17:25 on Jul 15, 2019 |
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Jul 15, 2019 17:22
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Fangz posted:The argument that adding the TOW capability would compromise their core function is fine but an altogether different argument to "well the troops will be dumb and misuse this capability". No, the two are related. Putting TOWs on an AAV wouldn't compromise their mission in a mechanical or engineering manner (despite the fact that there really isn't a way to do it) but it is, in the eyes of the USMC, completely unnecessary. And adding them would undoubtedly lead to some sort of mission-creep (hey, we have TOWs now!) so why do it? If a grunt commander wants TOWs, great, they're available - as part of a TOW platoon or carried by helos. Don't try to make the AAV into something it isn't so it can do a job it shouldn't do. Edit, since you added this: Fangz posted:The ultimate question is whether you expect AAVs to come across tanks in the process of their amphibious assaulting. I dunno, do they? If they do they're dead anyway. They're big lumbering vehicles - again, think "truck with tracks." If the enemy's tanks haven't already been taken out by air/helos/TOW platoons/our tanks things have gone so badly already that you're only fighting over where exactly your corpse will land. Cessna fucked around with this message at 17:29 on Jul 15, 2019 |
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Jul 15, 2019 17:26
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MrBling posted:The one that surprised me most was WW1 submarines having ships dogs on them. Granted, I think they were mainly dogs they picked up from the ships they sank. But still. Cats also were not heard of on subs. Same origin.
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Jul 15, 2019 17:59
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Geisladisk posted:So what the poo poo is the deal with the hoverboard shown off at that french parade? The Flyboard Air is an upgraded version of those things that you see that spray out water to do acrobatics, and was invented by (and is so difficult to use it can only be flown by) an olympic athlete
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Jul 15, 2019 18:41
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WW2 Data Continuing with German flares, we see a number of smaller examples. How did some of them function? Which flare was typically used in a triple-layered container? Which flare, and its associated container, was sometimes mixed in with SD2 butterfly bombs? All that and more at the blog!
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Jul 16, 2019 00:09
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MrBling posted:The one that surprised me most was WW1 submarines having ships dogs on them. Granted, I think they were mainly dogs they picked up from the ships they sank. But still. 
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Jul 16, 2019 01:20
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FrangibleCover posted:And the XM8 Armored Gun System, of course, which is exactly what they needed to fulfill the requirement arriving too late for anyone to want it. The MFP most likely candidate is modernized M8  Also the Bradley’s replacement is in the works as the OMFV but after the GCV and FCS along with the fact the AMPV and 109A7 leverage the Bradley chassis I just don’t see anything evolutionary materializing as of right now. It’ll be interesting to see what ends up coming from it though. There is potential that both MFP and OMFV are based on the Griffin, which is itself a derivative of the British Ajax/the ASCOD. https://fas.org/sgp/crs/weapons/R45519.pdf Mazz fucked around with this message at 04:15 on Jul 16, 2019 |
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Jul 16, 2019 04:05
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