Frosted Flake posted:

dead gay comedy forums posted:

my canuckian brother in christ did you by chance happen to do some spiritual artillery barrage operation against a certain archlich in order to kill time of your probation

BearsBearsBears posted:

The Old-School Artillery Shell Is Becoming High Tech
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/the-old-school-artillery-shell-is-becoming-high-tech/ar-AA1klGY1

Hell. Yes.

Megamissen posted:

ff did you see this post, theres an article out about the jet engine shells you have posted about before

Pistol_Pete posted:

The UK regularly talks as though it's still the same country that ruled a mighty empire, or even the country that could successfully send a strike force across the world to retake the Falklands.

Its so loving cringeworthy seeing some junior defense minister putting their name to newspaper articles with headlines like: "When the British lion roars, Putin trembles."

Frosted Flake posted:

Yes, which is why continental militaries (everyone other than Britain) used conscription and reserves. Build a tonne of equipment in state arsenals, a sort of Keynesianism, then upon signing for delivery, put it in storage. Conscript every able-bodied man at 18, and then, upon completing their service, put it in the reserve. The actual standing army does not need to be large, a quarter or less of the military you have trained and equipped for mobilization.

It's incredibly practical - but - the two things it runs on, state control of the required industry, which operates at a loss, like the parks service, and a social contract strong enough that the population is not just willing to bear, but often enthusiastic about conscription, aren't possible under neoliberalism. The reason

Britain had a small, professional military is twofold and relates to your point. First, popular support goes as far as a nation's own borders. As soon as people are conscripted to be sent god-knows-where, the public opposes first the conscription, and if that is not abolished, the overseas expeditions. Second, maintaining a (admittedly smaller) force that is kept at high readiness (for worldwide deployment in wars of empire) is incredibly expensive, it requires the empire.

More succinctly, it's never practical to be on a permanent war footing, but countries that are not empires are not permanently at war.

gradenko_2000 posted:

https://twitter.com/BNONews/status/1729752931740606676

Frosted Flake posted:

For the osprey, I could have swore it was about four dozen so far.

quote:

On 11 December 2000, a V-22 had a flight control error and crashed near Jacksonville, North Carolina, killing all four aboard. A vibration-induced chafing from an adjacent wiring bundle caused a leak in the hydraulic line, which fed the primary side of the swashplate actuators to the right side rotor blade controls. The leak caused a Primary Flight Control System (PFCS) alert. A previously-undiscovered error in the aircraft's control software caused it to decelerate in response to each of the pilot's eight attempts to reset the software as a result of the PFCS alert. The uncontrollable aircraft fell 1,600 feet (490 m) and crashed in a forest. The wiring harnesses and hydraulic line routing in the nacelles were subsequently modified. This caused the Marine Corps to ground its fleet of eight V-22s, the second grounding in 2000.[1][17][18]

Frosted Flake posted:

Yeah, I had a meeting on the ramjet thing and I'm curious who planted the story, since the technology has never worked, base bleed and RA shells already exist (and are already marginal in both utility and use), and basically there's no reason for it to be fielded - corps artillery range with less firepower than regular munitions is almost negatively useful, and the range and warhead requirements are already met by MRLS, the precision fires and range requirements are met by Airpower, and I suppose MRLS. Even overlooking all that, supposing you did want a gun-fired solution, there is no reason whatsoever for it to be employed by 155mm guns as opposed to 175mm or 203mm Corps/Army artillery calibre - because they may as well have the payload to be useful. Considering the specialization of the mission, the narrow scenarios where they would be usefully employed, and the expense, there's no reason why this would be a field artillery mission, and therefore field artillery calibre.

Which suggests something like this: a company that makes artillery shells wants to cut in on the business of other companies that make missiles. The task of making a ramjet engine even fit in a loving 155mm shell has never been done satisfactorily, that's without getting into the guidance unit, and so you're left with a payload that's so small, that you're talking about, probably a Hellfire missile or less. In which case, we already have a way to deliver a warhead of that size, accurately, over long ranges, the Hellfire missile. There's no overlap here unless you are in the artillery shell markup business.

Given equivalent form, a shell's weight is effectively proportional to the cube of its calibre, so you can see why to be useful it would require the old Corps guns. Since whichever contractor is pushing this clearly doesn't hold the licenses for them (the NATO 203mm howitzers were largely made by the [nationalized] Rock Island Arsenal, the M107 175mm guns were made by the [nationalized] Detroit Arsenal), we're left with what the MIC produces these days - a product, that fits their product lineup and has a nice markup, not a weapons system that meets a need.

Frosted Flake posted:

I was reading somewhere, lol this is so loving funny and really fits with what we've learned about the Brits, that loving Swinging London and the British Invasion made the Brits feel good about losing their empire

Frosted Flake posted:

Yes, which is why continental militaries (everyone other than Britain) used conscription and reserves. Build a tonne of equipment in state arsenals, a sort of Keynesianism, then upon signing for delivery, put it in storage. Conscript every able-bodied man at 18, and then, upon completing their service, put it in the reserve. The actual standing army does not need to be large, a quarter or less of the military you have trained and equipped for mobilization.

It's incredibly practical - but - the two things it runs on, state control of the required industry, which operates at a loss, like the parks service, and a social contract strong enough that the population is not just willing to bear, but often enthusiastic about conscription, aren't possible under neoliberalism. The reason

Britain had a small, professional military is twofold and relates to your point. First, popular support goes as far as a nation's own borders. As soon as people are conscripted to be sent god-knows-where, the public opposes first the conscription, and if that is not abolished, the overseas expeditions. Second, maintaining a (admittedly smaller) force that is kept at high readiness (for worldwide deployment in wars of empire) is incredibly expensive, it requires the empire.

More succinctly, it's never practical to be on a permanent war footing, but countries that are not empires are not permanently at war.

Frosted Flake posted:

Britain's problem is that when they asked postwar, "what kind of country do we want to be?", having given up India, everybody took for granted that because they couldn't return to 18th or 19th century military power, unchallenged class power in the hands of the ruling class, absence of a state or institutions that might check the ruling class, that they wouldn't (try). It's the same problem people had with Brexit. It was plainly going to destroy the UK, so obviously it wouldn't happen. There were lots of books in the 60's and 70's about the inevitable Scandinavian socialist future for the UK, because obviously the ruling class loving with this arrangement for short term profits or reasserting their class power would end up destabilizing the whole thing. What were they going to do, deindustrialize?* (They did.)

Well the problem is, Thatcher and Johnson were some of the most steadfastly ideologically committed people on the planet, and so was Blair, so the fact that they would inevitably destroy their own society, nation and state, and not be able to do the things they wanted to do - because they no longer possessed India, the foundation of the conditions they were trying to recreate - it's like it didn't loving occur to them. Put another way, destroying 21st, in Thatcher's case 20th, century Britain can't bring the glorious 19th century back, because that was built on India.

There are many, many books about this, even on the level of culture, like how they've destroyed "Britishness" as a concept, certainly as an admired one, both globally and at home, and yet they're going to keep doing what they're doing because they're true believers. Even the City of London is living on borrowed time without an empire, so sacrificing the entire country, starting with the north under Thatcher, to keep the City happy**, it's all darkly funny.

* Which is even more insane because there's no social base for them to return to being plump, red faced, country squires. Enclosures happened, people were driven into the cities, industrialization etc etc. Are they just going to sit in their country houses alone?

** Which means there's no economic base for what they want either. They chose spreadsheets, because they are infinitely more profitable than either industrial or agricultural economies (being fictitious and all), but that's incredibly socially unstable because what do you do with the working class? They can't contentedly be piers ploughman because British agriculture has been destroyed (going back to the Corn Laws, when they destroyed agriculture to fuel industry in the 19th c.). They can't be contented factory labourers or middle class, because that was built on an industrial economy.

The British ruling class successfully unravelled society to maximize their profits, but of course they're not able to create a stable social order out of it, they're all loving deranged.

BULBASAUR posted:

Welcum back buddy

US posters take note of your future

nomad2020 posted:

I’ve told people that this is the soft landing version of our future.

Nix Panicus posted:

Welcome back FF

Whats the kill count on the Osprey? Surely triple digits by now

Oneiros posted:

i recently learned that the white house press corp is shuttled around in an osprey whenever the president in is marine one and i'm just saying i'd love the see the funniest thing possible happen

Ardennes posted:

My gut feeling is more complete anarchy and the US ending up looking up like some type of janky HOI4 mod with 40 different factions in it.

Oneiros posted:

i recently learned that the white house press corp is shuttled around in an osprey whenever the president in is marine one and i'm just saying i'd love the see the funniest thing possible happen

DancingShade posted:

"Be good and stay on narrative or else they'll make you ride in the Osprey."

Frosted Flake posted:

As long as "Britishness" had perceived cultural value, they would stomach any sort of degradation or decline. Well, America has Hollywood, and I guess Madison Avenue, so I wonder if they'll seek comfort in the same sort of way?

crepeface posted:

depends the racist dickheads of europe turn nazi again

Frosted Flake posted:

Are they just going to sit in their country houses alone?

FuzzySlippers posted:

it's the opposite of that. The Iranians had not only thrown them out of Iran but had even fought on Iraqi soil for quite a while (which is when the Iraqis stiffened and prevented Iran from winning the whole thing). They were absolutely devastated by the war and it was more a broken husk that invaded Kuwait and had to confront the US. The Iran-Iraq war was far larger than most people realize (probably the largest post war since the Korean war and maybe even bigger) and it was brutal for both countries. Think more like France emerging from WW1.

Frosted Flake posted:

It’s because when Soviet coastal anti-ship missiles made the USMC playing a starring role in WW3 untenable, because they could no longer gloriously storm the beaches, (never mind that the largest amphibious landings of WW2 in both theatres were Army operations), they pivoted to this idea of airborne envelopment. It was supposed to be their thing, that set them apart from the Army, and justified continued budgets, hell continued existence, into the Cold War. Only they did it at a time when helicopters had piston engines and, frankly, were not very good.



Better turbine engined helicopters, the Huey and Sea Knight, came around and the USMC used (and lost) a lot of them in Vietnam. Unfortunately, those losses suggested that, being aluminum and slow and all, helicopters were not going to be able to land in the heavily defended areas immediately near the beaches anymore. The “aerial beachhead” needed to be deeper.

Well, there are limits to how fast and far helicopters can fly, and logistically it didn’t really make sense because while there were, big, fast, long range helicopters that could carry a decent weight, the CH-53, but due to how aerodynamics work, I guess the inefficiency of rotary wing aircraft, you could only fit a handful on a ship. Planes are more efficient at the speeds and ranges the birdbrained doctrine required, so what if the twin rotor Sea Knight replacement had wings?

e: also the MIC angle. R&D is extremely profitable, the longer the better (😉) , and large helicopters are basically figured out. Making a modern Sea Knight or Sea Stallion replacement with modern engines, avionics, materials etc. would be sort of profitable, like the newer versions of the Cobras and Hueys the Marines use, but you can’t goldbrick the same way.

Sikorsky is doing the exact same thing to the Army right now, where the UH-60 replacement can’t possibly just be a better Blackhawk.

Hatebag posted:

i was looking through the list of osprey accidents and they're all basically because vtol is a dumb idea that requires a lot of compromises. given all the other issues with the osprey a carrier-based paratrooper transport seems like a much better idea. the c17 would need like 3 or 4 aircraft carriers lined up together to land but it seems like a paratrooper transport would actually fulfill the mission of the v22. maybe make it capable of amphibious landing and have some proprietary catapult/crane system and folding wings, there's plenty of ways to price gouge!

Hatebag posted:

i was looking through the list of osprey accidents and they're all basically because vtol is a dumb idea that requires a lot of compromises. given all the other issues with the osprey a carrier-based paratrooper transport seems like a much better idea. the c17 would need like 3 or 4 aircraft carriers lined up together to land but it seems like a paratrooper transport would actually fulfill the mission of the v22. maybe make it capable of amphibious landing and have some proprietary catapult/crane system and folding wings, there's plenty of ways to price gouge!

Palladium posted:

wow maybe even the mission its built for is also a dumb idea

Frosted Flake posted:

Well, the process is complex but the underlying reality is that everyone in charge has a MBA, so they axiomatically believe that the private sector is innovative and efficient and government is not. On top of that, since they control production, even if government R&D can design requirements, they control 90% of the process. The military theory and doctrine R&D for tilt rotor medium lift generally, and what became the V-22 specifically, is a fraction of a fraction of them “making modifications for production”, “working out the kinks”, whatever.

I posted about how this played out in the UK with the SA80, from Weapon of Choice, but western governments gave up most of their engineers and other public servants with technical expertise. Not only can they not check the work and realize they’re being sold something calculated to have 30 years of profitable teething problems, they can’t do it themselves. They have no choice but to give R&D to the MIC.

It takes longer, produces worse, more expensive results, but they are ideologically predisposed to think that under the government this would be even worse, because that’s what an MBA and 20 years of unchallenged neoliberal hegemony have resulted in.

Scarabrae posted:

lol goons create an aerospace company and design a vehicle that only crashes, profit

Boat Stuck posted:

I thought that particular goon project was a rocket company with a rape submarine side gig