|
I know in his memoirs, Ludendorf goes out of his way to say that the various German militaries got along great during WWI, which probably means they got along terribly.
|
#
?
May 13, 2018 00:43
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 27, 2024 11:55 |
|
Randarkman posted:Speaking of the Ottoman Empire, Russian painters actually produced a number of really cool battle scenes from the Russo-Turkish war of 1877-1878. Known as the War of '93 in Muslim sources, this war was a complete disaster for the Ottomans and almost ended in the whole edifice going up in smoke. Even though the Ottoman Army at the time was probably the strongest it had been for more than a century, it just wasn't enough. The Ottomans actually had, for the large part, superior weapons to the Russians, modern long-ranged rapid-fire artillery, repeating carbines for the cavalry and a greater proportion of breech-loading rifles. What failed them was that they lacked the infrastructure and economic base to effectively supply and support their armies in the field, especially if they were maneuvring or, God forbid, on the offensive. They also weren't able to conscript enough soldiers (related to my work, yeah!) to maintain field strength and replace losses, not to mention that they weren't able to get them to the front fast enough. Thus, while the Turks could often inflict considerable casualties on the Russians due to their superior firepower (well, if and when they had ammunition), the Russians were nearly always eventually able to overwhelm, exhaust and/or outmaneuver the Turks. Still they had some baller uniforms so they had that going for them.
|
|
|
#
?
May 13, 2018 03:13
|
|
|
“Tell my mother... I died... dapper...” croaked the dandy lieutenant as he breathed his last
|
|
#
?
May 13, 2018 03:24
|
|
|
Milo and POTUS posted:Well yeah, weren't you a marine? Is it open to them too? You'd have to get your discharge from the USMC, then join the Navy, then go SEALs. I have never heard of anyone doing this, but I suppose it is possible in theory. The USMC has their own special ops units that do similar jobs, like Force Recon and the Marine Raiders. Traditionally the USMC has a bit of an anti-elite cultural bias. The idea is - well, look at the Army. A lot of the really good and motivated soldiers go Airborne. The ones who thrive there go Rangers, and the ones who do well there go Special Forces, etc. But the concern is that this draws a lot of talent our of regular line units. The USMC, in contrast, tries to keep the high-performers in their units and promote them and develop their leadership, so that their ability can have a broader impact. Also, units as a whole would go through things like MEU(SOC) rotations so that average line units would get to do some sort of special operations training on occasion. No, this wouldn't bring them to uber-elite status, but it was good training nonetheless. But in today's world the elites get a lot of attention, so the USMC has - reluctantly, perhaps - joined in, resurrecting the Marine Raiders and using them and Recon for more special forces deployments. I was an armor crewman myself; these uber-elites draw from the infantry, so this is a little out of my area.
|
|
#
?
May 13, 2018 03:50
|
|
|
SeanBeansShako posted:Still they had some baller uniforms so they had that going for them. Ottoman 19th century uniforms are in general really cool, they also look really comfortable, though with the horrible situation of Ottoman logistics and infrastructure when faced with war it probably got noticeably less nice and comfortable. Dark blue and red nearly always look nice. Attested to by the huge number of sports teams using those colors.
|
|
#
?
May 13, 2018 04:41
|
|
|
StandardVC10 posted:One difference was that the F-4 design had essentially already been finished for the Navy when McNamara told the Air Force to use it, rather than McDonnell trying to implement the requirements of both services early on. Though, the Navy had spent a lot of that time waffling on what the F-4 would actually do, so the result had a fair amount of versatility baked in. The F-4 is an interesting case. I don’t know a lot about it’s development but I’m guessing it wasn’t as laser-focused as say the F-15 and F-16. These seemed to be developed to be very good at one job and then because they were good designs, they were used in more versatile roles. Considering the origins of the F-16 as a lightweight, daytime only dogfighter with the “not a pound for air-to-ground” mentality it’s interesting to see how much of a bomb truck it is in various air forces. Whether the US Navy envisioned such a wide role for the Phantom in the first place I’m not sure, but it certainly had a long career in all sorts of roles and air forces. The proposal for the Israeli water injected Mach 3 version certainly shows how far the air frame could be pushed. It will be interesting to see how the F-35 is viewed in say 30 years time after some operational use.
|
|
#
?
May 13, 2018 04:48
|
|
|
Randarkman posted:they also look really comfortable the fez wouldn't keep the sun off your face though
|
|
#
?
May 13, 2018 04:53
|
|
|
HEY GUNS posted:the fez wouldn't keep the sun off your face though Eh, it looks cool. I don't know about the military (it would probably be against regulation) but fezes were often worn with a cloth wrapped around them like a turban*, that would probide some shade and utility. *You can actually see that on some of the soldiers (and some that I think are civilians) in the paintings, though judging by their clothing I'd guess them to be irregulars. Randarkman fucked around with this message at 05:04 on May 13, 2018 |
|
#
?
May 13, 2018 05:00
|
|
|
slothrop posted:It will be interesting to see how the F-35 is viewed in say 30 years time after some operational use. lol if you believe the f-35 will ever be operational or useful
|
|
#
?
May 13, 2018 05:01
|
|
|
I thought the consensus is it will be, just vastly more expensive than promised and probably won't be as good as expected.
|
|
#
?
May 13, 2018 05:05
|
|
Randarkman posted:Eh, it looks cool. I don't know about the military (it would probably be against regulation) but fezes were often worn with a cloth wrapped around them like a turban*, that would probide some shade and utility. British soldiers did this in India, they'd wrap a wet cloth around their shako or forage caps and create a crude band called a Puggaree which was copied from Indian troops in Company service.
|
|
|
#
?
May 13, 2018 05:09
|
|
|
slothrop posted:The F-4 is an interesting case. I don’t know a lot about it’s development but I’m guessing it wasn’t as laser-focused as say the F-15 and F-16. These seemed to be developed to be very good at one job and then because they were good designs, they were used in more versatile roles. The F-4 had a weird development history. Through the late 1940s and early 1950s, McDonnell had made a good business designing fighters for the Navy and Air Force, producing designs such as the FH Phantom, the F2H Banshee, the F3H Demon, and the F-101 Voodoo. With no future naval fighter contracts on the horizon after the Demon, however, McDonnell made the bold prediction that the Navy's biggest need was an attack aircraft, and decided to get ahead of the game and start building one. Fortunately for McDonnell, the proposed design (Which utilized the brand-new J79 engine) got the Navy's attention-but it turned out they didn't need an attack aircraft, so McDonnell decided to rework the design into a fighter-bomber. The Navy remained sufficiently interested to order two prototypes... and then six months later, told McDonnell that what they actually wanted was a fleet defense interceptor. McDonnell reworked the design again, adding an extra crewman and a powerful radar set, and the XF4H Phantom finally made its first flight in 1958. so in the end, mcdonnell and the navy basically spent six years deciding what kind of plane they actually wanted, redesigned the aircraft multiple times, and somehow came out of it with one of the most successful aircraft designs of all time
|
|
#
?
May 13, 2018 06:02
|
|
|
Acebuckeye13 posted:so in the end, mcdonnell and the navy basically spent six years deciding what kind of plane they actually wanted, redesigned the aircraft multiple times, and somehow came out of it with one of the most successful aircraft designs of all time I mean, it eventually ended up being used for all three of those missions by someone or another.
|
|
#
?
May 13, 2018 06:18
|
|
|
Imagine how much more successful it could've been if they had designed a STOVL version as well e: thanks for the effortpost, SysMet, I only had a very hazy understanding of the stuff you described before. aphid_licker fucked around with this message at 15:24 on May 13, 2018 |
|
#
?
May 13, 2018 12:38
|
|
|
Rodrigo Diaz posted:All of this loving rules, and there's also a lot of specific tactical/operational things the Russians did right and the Ottomans did wrong. Iirc some of the Russian cavalry actions just annihilated ottoman lines of communication and supply, but it's been years since I looked at this war. Oh, I bet. It's been a long while since I looked specifically into this war as well*. I'm not doing it for my writing about Ottoman conscription either (I'm focusing on the earlier period, when and how conscription was first implemented). I just remembered that the paintings of battle scenes were really good. * I first looked into and read about the 1877-1878 for an assignment in high school. No, we did not in any way devote serious time to the study of the Ottoman Empire. Or the Middle East in general. But we were given a somewhat broad assignment and I managed to convince my teacher, who was well disposed towards me, to let me write about the 1877-1878 War and the first Constituional Period in the Ottoman Empire. Randarkman fucked around with this message at 14:42 on May 13, 2018 |
|
#
?
May 13, 2018 14:36
|
|
|
Are there any innate features of a fighter that impede using it as an all-round/attack aircraft, or vice versa?
|
|
#
?
May 13, 2018 16:18
|
|
|
GotLag posted:Are there any innate features of a fighter that impede using it as an all-round/attack aircraft, or vice versa? Presumably, how much it can carry. Bombs are heavy. Also low altitude performance or the lack of it. Things you want to bomb are on the ground.
|
|
#
?
May 13, 2018 16:52
|
|
|
feedmegin posted:Presumably, how much it can carry. Bombs are heavy. Also low altitude performance or the lack of it. Things you want to bomb are on the ground. Also, what hardpoints it's capable of mounting, or for modern stealth aircraft, the dimensions of its internal weapons bay. Have to be able to lug those bombs around. I'm not sure how innate something like the plane's sensors are, I suspect there's some striking differences in what sensor packages a plane intended for an air to air role and a plane intended for air to ground carry, but I'm not too familiar with modern planechat.
|
|
#
?
May 13, 2018 17:00
|
|
|
Cythereal posted:Also, what hardpoints it's capable of mounting, or for modern stealth aircraft, the dimensions of its internal weapons bay. Have to be able to lug those bombs around. Ground attack and weapons systems are hard with modern fighters. For bombs, you could just mount them and try to eyeball it, but in reality you need a ground radar system that can calculate CCRP/CCIP- either it is programmed with a release point and will automatically do so at the right time, or it draws an impact point on the hud to show where the bomb lands. Which means divebombing but it's at least computer assisted highly accurate divebombing. Even stuff like unguided rockets need software to tell the HUD where to aim. The SEPECAT Jaguar was given rockets during the Gulf War, but it tooks weeks for the computers to give an accurate aimpoint (which could only programmed to be a dot) and they could do more than scatter rockets all over the desert. The one thing that's easy- laser guided munitions. Those same Jaguars were rigged up with Paveways and just needed a Pavetack armed aircraft to paint a target, and tell them to drop. No changes to their bomb racks or computers.
|
|
#
?
May 13, 2018 17:25
|
|
|
JDAM and it’s evolutionary products like SDB kind of offset the need for complex aiming reticles and flying; you just attach the JDAM kits to the tails of existing Mk82/83/84s and drop from space. The bomb racks need to be able to communicate with the bombs but that’s a solved problem a long time ago. The USAF at least does not drop very many dumb bombs anymore because they can just slap guidance kits to that inventory now. We don’t carpet bomb too much jungle these days, they just feed GPS coordinates to all 80 of those bombs first. Even old 70mm rockets have full laser guidance kits available now. Raenir Salazar posted:I thought the consensus is it will be, just vastly more expensive than promised and probably won't be as good as expected. This is pretty much correct, although the F-35A will be about as good at the strike fighter role as expected. They will be better bomb trucks that your average F-16 because they have better attributes in every category for that mission; range, payload, avionics, etc. Same with 35B vs the Harrier it replaces. They are good airplanes for what they were designed for, they are just colossally expensive to maintain right now and concurrency was one of the most terrible ideas for airplane production in a long time. It turns out having to fix tens/hundreds of built planes when you find the normal flaws you would in the extended testing phase makes things harder/more expensively quickly. I’m not going to drag 35 chat into this thread anymore than that though, the AIRPOWER in TFR is better if anyone wants to shitpost on that for awhile. Mazz fucked around with this message at 17:55 on May 13, 2018 |
|
#
?
May 13, 2018 17:43
|
|
|
Cessna posted:The USMC is really good at doing well with comparatively little money (about 4% of the Defense budget)*. They have their own Air Wing, which is more adapted to giving close air support than their Air Force peers. They also have a really flexible organization which allows for the creation of units on an as-needed basis more efficiently than the army (MAGTAFs). In the discussion of why the US military is so hosed up, it's been pointed out that the Marines also have the best HR practices, being stuck in the 1980s rather than the 1950s. From a document on the American Post-war analysis of the Luftwaffe, which I'm sure I got from a link ITT 
|
|
#
?
May 13, 2018 17:50
|
|
|
Nebakenezzer posted:In the discussion of why the US military is so hosed up, it's been pointed out that the Marines also have the best HR practices, being stuck in the 1980s rather than the 1950s. I'm not totally sure that was the wrong move. If Germany was going to beat the USSR it was going to be in 1941 or 1942. If the war wasn't practically over by then it was lost anyway, especially after they declared war on the US. May as well throw everything you have into those critical months.
|
|
#
?
May 13, 2018 18:23
|
|
|
Raenir Salazar posted:I thought the consensus is it will be, just vastly more expensive than promised and probably won't be as good as expected. It will look fine at airshows and flying over the Super Bowls, which is probably all we'll need it for.
|
|
#
?
May 13, 2018 19:43
|
|
|
Nebakenezzer posted:In the discussion of why the US military is so hosed up, it's been pointed out that the Marines also have the best HR practices, being stuck in the 1980s rather than the 1950s. Anyone able to go into detail on this?
|
|
#
?
May 13, 2018 19:51
|
|
|
After finishing the flashman series I'm pretty interested in knowing more about Otto Bismark. A general history book or something more focused on his campaigns would be great. If anyone knows of any podcasts or documentaries dealing with his time in power I'm all ears.
|
|
#
?
May 13, 2018 20:01
|
|
|
Extra Credits did a little series on the man, as well as the boat, although that's probably shallower than the other things people could recommend.
|
|
#
?
May 13, 2018 20:34
|
|
|
It's a bit gossipy, and the focus isn't on Bismarck alone, but Massie's Dreadnought goes into a fair bit of detail about Bismarck and does a pretty good job of placing him within the context of greater European politics at the time, as well as noting how his influence and the influence of his successors led eventually to WW1. Fakeedit: Not to say that he was responsible for WW1, mind you, just pointing out the chain of events and how his policies were still echoing in Germany when WW1 broke out.
|
|
#
?
May 13, 2018 20:59
|
|
|
Tomn posted:It's a bit gossipy, and the focus isn't on Bismarck alone, but Massie's Dreadnought goes into a fair bit of detail about Bismarck and does a pretty good job of placing him within the context of greater European politics at the time, as well as noting how his influence and the influence of his successors led eventually to WW1. I can see WWI happening because of successors blindly trying to copy his actions without having his skill or observations, or circumstances that let it work. Much like I think a lot of people in Germany probably got the wrong messages from Clauswitz.
|
|
#
?
May 13, 2018 21:49
|
|
|
Lee/Grant tanks Queue: Matilda, T26E4 Super Pershing, GMC M12, PzII Ausf. J, VK 30.01(P)/Typ 100/Leopard, VK 36.01(H), Luchs, Leopard, and other recon tanks, PzIII Ausf. G trials in the USSR, SU-203, 105 mm howitzer M2A1, Mosin, Baranov's pocket mortar, Pz.Sfl.IVc, Jagdpanzer 38(t) "Hetzer", Soviet tank winter camo, Semovente L40 da 47/32, Semovente da 75/18, Semovente da 105/25, 7.92 mm wz. 35 anti-tank rifle, 76.2 mm wz. 1902 and 75 mm wz. 1902/26, IM-1 squeezebore cannon, 45 mm M-6 gun, 25-pounder, 25-pounder "Baby", 37 mm Anti-Tank Gun M3, 36 inch Little David mortar, 105 mm howitzer M3, 15 cm sIG 33, 10.5 cm leFH 18, 7.5 cm LG 40, 10.5 cm LG 42, 17 cm K i. Mrs. Laf., 47 mm wz.25 infantry gun, Ferdinand, Tiger (P), Scorpion, SKS Available for request:  Schmeisser's work in the USSR Object 237 (IS-1 prototype) SU-85 T-29-5 KV-85 Tank sleds T-80 (the light tank) Proposed Soviet heavy tank destroyers DS-39 tank machinegun IS-1 (IS-85) IS-2 (object 240) Production of the IS-2 Russian Renault MS-1/T-18 KV-100 and KV-122 Kalashnikov's debut works SU-152 combat debut MS-1 production Kalashnikov-Petrov self-loading carbine  Cruiser Tank Mk.I Cruiser Tank Mk.II Valentine III and V Valentine IX Valentine X and XI Australian Centurions in Vietnam NEW  Medium Tank M3 use in the USSR GMC M8 Medium Tank M4A2E8 NEW HMC T82 57 mm gun M1  Stahlhelm in WWI Stahlhelm in WWII Nashorn/Hornisse PzIII Ausf. E and F PzIII Ausf. G and H Jagdpanzer IV Grosstraktor Trials of the PzIII Ausf. H in the USSR P.1000 and other work by Grotte PzIII Ausf.J-N  7TP and Vickers Mk.E trials in the USSR  SD-100 (Czech SU-100 clone) TACAM R-2  Hotchkiss H 35 and H 39
|
|
#
?
May 13, 2018 21:58
|
|
|
Mazz posted:JDAM and it’s evolutionary products like SDB kind of offset the need for complex aiming reticles and flying; you just attach the JDAM kits to the tails of existing Mk82/83/84s and drop from space. The bomb racks need to be able to communicate with the bombs but that’s a solved problem a long time ago. It seems to me that after factoring cost vs effectiveness that the whole JDAM thing was wildly successful to the point that it's development and deployment was like the anti- F35. Is this fair or am I being too generous or am I just hearing about its successes and not what (might) suck about it
|
|
#
?
May 13, 2018 22:31
|
|
|
At the core, JDAM was simply the marriage of two existing and highly successful projects. I'm sure development wasn't trivial, but the underlying technologies were so solved that it was probably just an in-depth engineering problem.
|
|
#
?
May 13, 2018 22:35
|
|
|
Sure but what I'm getting at is I've never heard anyone say one cross word about it. For military development, procurement and deployment that seems highly unusual.
|
|
#
?
May 13, 2018 22:58
|
|
|
feedmegin posted:Presumably, how much it can carry. Bombs are heavy. Also low altitude performance or the lack of it. Things you want to bomb are on the ground. Not really. There's a proud History of fighters taking on the ground attack mission and excelling. Like the F-14D or the P-38.
|
|
#
?
May 13, 2018 23:25
|
|
|
Raenir Salazar posted:I can see WWI happening because of successors blindly trying to copy his actions without having his skill or observations, or circumstances that let it work. Much like I think a lot of people in Germany probably got the wrong messages from Clauswitz. My impression from The Sleepwalkers is that Bismarck's successors were trying to break away from how he did things, looking for a more assertive foreign policy rather than one that just played the other European powers off one another.
|
|
#
?
May 14, 2018 00:02
|
|
|
Europe was a Jenga tower post 1880 and Bismarck was just one of the blocks
|
|
#
?
May 14, 2018 00:34
|
|
|
Milo and POTUS posted:Sure but what I'm getting at is I've never heard anyone say one cross word about it. For military development, procurement and deployment that seems highly unusual. Pretty much. The only negative (to fighter jocks) is that it's too effective and took all the effort out of air-to-mud, in a community that thrives on one-up-manship and being better than everyone else https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZ0EVXaaXug
|
|
#
?
May 14, 2018 00:48
|
|
|
Mazz posted:they just feed GPS coordinates to all 80 of those bombs first. So what happens when the US fights a nation technologically advanced enough to jam GPS satellite signals ... or is this a moot question since most everybody with that kind of skill also has nukes and the world would end if we got into an actual shooting war with them?
|
|
#
?
May 14, 2018 01:00
|
|
|
Lake Effect posted:So what happens when the US fights a nation technologically advanced enough to jam GPS satellite signals ... or is this a moot question since most everybody with that kind of skill also has nukes and the world would end if we got into an actual shooting war with them? Jamming GPS is relatively easy. The signals come in very weak. There are fallbacks, like inertial navigation. https://youtube.com/watch?v=bZe5J8SVCYQ The Navy is interested in celestial navigation again just in case.
|
|
#
?
May 14, 2018 01:19
|
|
|
Lake Effect posted:So what happens when the US fights a nation technologically advanced enough to jam GPS satellite signals ... or is this a moot question since most everybody with that kind of skill also has nukes and the world would end if we got into an actual shooting war with them? Advanced? There's nothing advanced about it. Just blast a shitload of noise at high power over ~1.1 GHz to ~1.7 GHz and you knock out all GPS in the area. But also all GLONASS, BeiDou, Galileo, etc positioning systems too. So, hope you weren't relying on ever having satellite navigation for your own stuff, and the attackers can still use their satellite navigation from outside your broadcast range to get very good location info before venturing into your territory.
|
|
#
?
May 14, 2018 01:25
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 27, 2024 11:55 |
|
|
Lol about breaking pikes/spearpoints with a sword. I'm rewatching Return of the king and some king or some poo poo is riding along the front lines pumping his cavalry up by tapping their lances with his sword. Then I imagined him slicing off the points of hundreds/thousands of dudes and had a laugh. They just keep getting madder but he's the king and will just not stop hacking off their tips like the mohel from hell.
|
|
#
?
May 14, 2018 02:18
|
|