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BoBtheImpaler posted:This sort of non-standard weapon is pretty rad, are there any other examples? I saw mention of a "Kit-2 Tomahawk," but I can't find any reference to it outside of the Wikipedia article.
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Nov 26, 2012 12:14
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I'm sure I saw a report of concrete blocks getting jdamed in iraq as a kinetic weapon.
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Nov 26, 2012 15:35
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Cyrano4747 posted:Well, I don't know how non-standard you consider this, but the allies routinely flew formations ahead of big bomber raids that blanketed the air above German radar installations in clouds of aluminum foil strips to gently caress up the radar read on how many planes were coming in behind them, speed, altitude, direction, etc. Basically they wanted to cock up the Germans abilities to efficiently dispatch interceptors. Incidentally laying a chaff corridor was still a thing as recently as Vietnam...they'd send either a four ship of F-4s loaded up with chaff pods or just one BUFF and lay a corridor to prevent the North Vietnamese from getting advance warning of the aircraft that were going downtown. Even today the amount of chaff that a BUFF can put out is pretty staggering...here's a copy+paste from the airplane thread over in AI: Godholio posted:Their countermeasures are pretty sweet too. One of the other top RF events was a B-52 that flew in from Barksdale that was above the "no chaff" line at FL350, going to "drop" his bombs then turn and go home. Well, he got locked up by an aggressor and dropped seven miles of chaff. LA Center and Salt Lake Center were not amused, and the wing commander at Barksdale got a phone call.  Loving Africa Chaps posted:I'm sure I saw a report of concrete blocks getting jdamed in iraq as a kinetic weapon. Pretty much. The military uses inert concrete shapes for training that are the exact same size/shape/weight as a live bomb (so the ballistics are the same). Back in the '90s they realized that they also worked pretty well for when you needed to destroy a target that was next to a school or something so any actual blast/frag was out of the question (Saddam was doing this a lot with his air defense equipment during the no fly zone fun). The same principle is at work with bombs filled with DIME.
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Nov 26, 2012 16:10
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I heard nowadays they can cut the chaff to specific lengths on the fly to counter specific radar types. Crazy.
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Nov 26, 2012 16:26
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AntiTank posted:I heard nowadays they can cut the chaff to specific lengths on the fly to counter specific radar types. Crazy. Makes sense if the dispenser is a bundle of aluminized mylar ribbons fed through a chopper. Just vary the ratio of ribbon feed to chopper speed to get dipoles of the right length.
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Nov 26, 2012 18:11
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See, now I'm just imagining running that system without the chopper blades and visualizing something kind of akin to sticking a roll of toilette paper on a spool and putting it out the car window. What I'm saying is we should use the chaff dispensers on BUFFs to TP the Canadian parliament or something.
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Nov 26, 2012 18:16
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iyaayas01 posted:Stuff on the JSF It's occurred to me that there's another way that the whole JSF thing is stupid... If you have your whole airforce use L/O or stealth technology, you are creating a really strong incentive for the opposition to defeat that technology. You are also creating incentives for different groups to work together to defeat that technology, especially China and Russia, who have the engineering skills to do it. There's some historical reasons to think this way: the Enigma machine, thanks to its universality in Nazi Germany, had the Poles, the French, and later, all the allies work together to break it. More recently, the security of the first X-box console was broken simply because Microsoft had implemented a security system that covered everything. So the people who wanted to run burnt DVDs had common cause with the people who wanted to run Linux, etc. So, yeah, I guess this amplifies the point you made, iya, about the usefulness of L/O on the F-35, especially when it's a plane that is supposed to be ubiquitius in the USAF.
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Nov 27, 2012 23:19
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Nebakenezzer posted:It's occurred to me that there's another way that the whole JSF thing is stupid... Potentially. A couple points: I think there is the belief/hope that we are pretty far ahead. This means that by the time till someone develops, and fields an effective countering technology operationally we'll have "upgraded". Costs associated with procuring that technology if you aren't the country that developed it will limit proliferation. I can't seem to grasp English well right now. I promise I'm not a 4th grader.
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Nov 28, 2012 01:51
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Tremblay posted:Potentially. A couple points: Fair warning, iyaayas01 is the AD guy here and can speak better to this than I can. Based on my limited understanding, here's how I see things standing. There are already ways to counter RCS reduction. SAAB had a project a while back and there's been some similar ideas with bistatic/mulitstatic radar displays. Conventional radar systems with better computing systems might also be a viable option. A F-22 may look like a seagull on radar but not many seagulls move at Mach 1. Theoretically Longer wavelength radars are also an option. Not all of these technologies are mature, but the obstacles aren't totally unresolvable. Of course, some of these air defense strategies can be countered with electronic warfare, something the US has done fairly well. Some AESA radars can be used as jammers and the F-35 will (hopefully) get around to having the Next Generation Jammer integrated sometime before the end of this century... For now, LO/VLO is a huge force multiplier and will probably continue to be so for the forseeable future.
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Dec 3, 2012 01:35
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There's always the simple problem that what is extremely LO against one radar is not necessarily all that LO against another type of radar, and not just because the latter radar is "better" but because it uses different wavelengths, logic, etc.
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Dec 3, 2012 03:06
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Bacarruda posted:Fair warning, iyaayas01 is the AD guy here and can speak better to this than I can. Agreed.
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Dec 3, 2012 03:49
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Bacarruda posted:Fair warning, iyaayas01 is the AD guy here and can speak better to this than I can. It's not just a case of immature technology. For a semiactive missile you have to guide the missile all the way in...with an active missile you have to guide it to a short enough range that the onboard radar can acquire the target. Long-wave radars have inherent, unconquerable shortcomings in this area. The SAAB program is probably a better option from a physics standpoint, but it's tactically almost useless. Why? Because it's a huge target for Day 1. It's easily locatable and can only be defended by conventional systems; once it's out of the way, the LO aircraft are back to standard ops against the systems they were designed to defeat.
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Dec 3, 2012 08:33
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Another approach would be not trying to force our fighters to do everything everywhere and build another TACAIR platform like the old Skyhawk or the Intruder. EDIT: Oh what the gently caress, I've been ponied! I barely even post in here, c'mon. Vincent Van Goatse fucked around with this message at 09:58 on Dec 3, 2012 |
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Dec 3, 2012 09:50
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Godholio posted:It's not just a case of immature technology. For a semiactive missile you have to guide the missile all the way in...with an active missile you have to guide it to a short enough range that the onboard radar can acquire the target. Long-wave radars have inherent, unconquerable shortcomings in this area. The SAAB program is probably a better option from a physics standpoint, but it's tactically almost useless. Why? Because it's a huge target for Day 1. It's easily locatable and can only be defended by conventional systems; once it's out of the way, the LO aircraft are back to standard ops against the systems they were designed to defeat. 
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Dec 3, 2012 11:41
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sorry to quote from 8 pages back in timePsion posted:
I don't know if this is breaking canadian national security or anything, but the idea of Russians doing bad boy stuff in new Canadian arctic waters was wound up by the Canadian Navy. This gradually became considered as fact. iyaayas01 posted:Yup, although the C generally stands for "compromise" or "coercion" (i.e., blackmail). During the Cold War you would see the gamut for Soviet spies, although ideology tended to be near the beginning of the Cold War (think Rosenbergs, Klaus Fuchs, and the rest of the Atomic Spies or Guy Burgess, Kim Philby, and the rest of the Cambridge Five), while money tended to be later on along with ego...Ames, Walker, and then especially Hanssen who started off motivated by money but then become much more motivated by ego, believing he was too smart to get caught because the FBI and CIA were too stupid to catch him (not an altogether incorrect assertion, honestly), although even then he still made sure he got paid. You also saw some coercion/blackmail with homosexuals, particularly in the '40s and '50s when it was still a very big societal no-no to be out of the closet in the West. It's interesting how quickly Stalin burned through all of the pro Russian goodwill of communists in the west. There was that fighting of the Nazis, and the assumption that the Soviet Union would keep moving towards real marxism. So helping them was the right thing to do. If there was a greater realization of what they were actually doing, that lingering western communist support, that Soviet intelligence squeezed very effectively, would have probably dried up much earlier. It's kind of hard to imagine a world where communism wasn't largely identified with the excesses of Stalin and Mao. A world where it was still a viable ideological prospect.
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Dec 3, 2012 14:03
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The cat and mouse game regarding LO is certainly a concern. I think one would only need to look at how counter-measures have evolved over the last 30 years. There are models of sidewinders still in US inventory that straight up won't work against certain proliferated countermeasures. Granted it's a two way street but the cost curve is in favor of the smaller and higher volume systems over the larger platform alternatives. I remember a bunch of pages back there was a similar discussion regarding Soviet tank development, has some parallels here for usre.
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Dec 3, 2012 16:08
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daskrolator posted:The cat and mouse game regarding LO is certainly a concern. I think one would only need to look at how counter-measures have evolved over the last 30 years. There are models of sidewinders still in US inventory that straight up won't work against certain proliferated countermeasures. Granted it's a two way street but the cost curve is in favor of the smaller and higher volume systems over the larger platform alternatives. So what you're saying is, that anime had it right when they showed future wars involving robots shooting something like a billion and a half tiny missiles at each other of which apparently only 3 ever do anything.
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Dec 3, 2012 17:18
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grover posted:I just don't see how this could possibly work in practice. A stealth missile or aircraft is such an insignificantly small target than the shadow is going to be merely penumbra at best and probably damned near undetectable over noise outside of the lab. Not to mention that at the ranges this thing would work at, that conventional long-wave would work just as well (or better) at spotting low-RCS targets. It's detectable if you have the right equipment. But yeah "in practice" is the problem. It's basically a tripwire system, not an early-warning and CERTAINLY not target acquisition/tracking. It's the equivalent of knowing somebody just broke in through your window and they're inside the house, but you're blindfolded with earplugs in. It doesn't help you accomplish anything besides tell you that you're about to get hosed up. WEREWAIF posted:
The Russians have been playing the "hey I'm right outside your airspace moving at high speed and you can't do anything about it" game more in the past few years than they did at any point during the Cold War.
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Dec 3, 2012 17:55
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Cyrano4747 posted:So what you're saying is, that anime had it right when they showed future wars involving robots shooting something like a billion and a half tiny missiles at each other of which apparently only 3 ever do anything. Maybe, the UN gets all butthurt over the use of cluster munitions (most of the European states have been demilling theirs for the last decade) so I'd assume they'd have a problem with a bunch of tiny missiles.
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Dec 3, 2012 18:07
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Fun thing about the UN is that nobody really cares what they say unless they agree.
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Dec 4, 2012 01:32
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I'm not sure how much you can really downsize missiles unless they are intended for strictly knife fighting range. You can shrink down the seeker and a bit of overhead there, but you still have a thirsty engine that wants lots of fuel so it can go fast and far. Not to mention enough payload to actually do the job right.
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Dec 4, 2012 07:05
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Was in Richmond today at the airport. On the way in passed he VA Aviation Museum and saw the SR-71 out front. My luck the museum is closed Mondays. Gonna have to check it next week.
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Dec 4, 2012 08:26
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daskrolator posted:There are models of sidewinders still in US inventory that straight up won't work against certain proliferated countermeasures. This was one of the more interesting bits that I saw in one of the stories that came out after the whole Red Eagles thing got declassified, someone was talking about some of the exploitation tests they did in conjunction with the program and how they would utilize Soviet flares against captive carry seeker heads of U.S. missiles and discovered that several of the U.S. missiles flat out didn't work. The guy that was being interviewed was like, "I'm using the AIM-9P as an example because it's out of the inventory and I can talk about it; there's a lot of other stuff that we discovered that about that I can't talk about because it's still in the inventory." Godholio posted:The Russians have been playing the "hey I'm right outside your airspace moving at high speed and you can't do anything about it" game more in the past few years than they did at any point during the Cold War. Yeah, I don't think there's been any overt stuff on the naval side, although the sovereignty issues and resource rights is a big deal politically/economically, but Russians flying Bears and other assorted bombers right outside U.S./Canadian airspace stopped being a thing in 1991, and then started being a thing again in a big way about 4 years ago, and hasn't let up yet.
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Dec 4, 2012 09:51
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iyaayas01 posted:sovereignty issues and resource rights is a big deal politically/economically If you can speak and read Russian, have O&G skills and don't mind the cold, your skills are going to be in demand in a big way by the end of the decade.
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Dec 4, 2012 10:33
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O&G? Oil & gas?
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Dec 4, 2012 14:05
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Memento1979 posted:Expect this to warm up more and more as the Arctic ice cap gets less and less. That area has been subject to amazing amounts of geological scrutiny in the past 3-4 years as Russia comes to realise that with around 4000km of passive margin that has previously been covered in ice on their northern shore, they want to get the data, get drills in place and make the best claim they can to the hydrocarbon resources that are almost certainly there, that Sweden, Norway, Denmark (through Greenland) and Canada will all want as well. Sweden hasn't had territorial waters in the Arctic since 1905.
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Dec 4, 2012 18:37
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iyaayas01 posted:This was one of the more interesting bits that I saw in one of the stories that came out after the whole Red Eagles thing got declassified, someone was talking about some of the exploitation tests they did in conjunction with the program and how they would utilize Soviet flares against captive carry seeker heads of U.S. missiles and discovered that several of the U.S. missiles flat out didn't work. The guy that was being interviewed was like, "I'm using the AIM-9P as an example because it's out of the inventory and I can talk about it; there's a lot of other stuff that we discovered that about that I can't talk about because it's still in the inventory." I imagine the L/M models are gradually vanishing as X production continues. We gotta take care of those QF-4s somehow, right?
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Dec 4, 2012 20:45
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Groda posted:Sweden hasn't had territorial waters in the Arctic since 1905. Quite right, I had it in my head somehow that Svalbard was their territory.
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Dec 4, 2012 22:25
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Godholio posted:I imagine the L/M models are gradually vanishing as X production continues. We gotta take care of those QF-4s somehow, right? Raptors can't use the x yet can they?
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Dec 5, 2012 01:17
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Smiling Jack posted:O&G? Oil & gas? Lots of exploration going on in the arctic, but I think the Russians and scandinavians have developed their own expertise by now.
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Dec 5, 2012 01:18
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Iran is claiming to have captured a US Scan Eagle UAV. They say they captured it electronically, like they claim to have captured the RQ-170 last year. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yJywNdJXq0 I'm a tad skeptical. For one, the US is denying all claims and saying all our UAVs are accounted for. And for another, US puts markings on our UAVs- this one looks like they it came straight from an arms dealer. It's for sure not a USMC Scan Eagle:  Doesn't have the aircraft number behind the wing root like USN scan eagles, either (click for big):  So unless the Canadians lost one off their aircraft carrier, I'm gonna chock this up to Iran blowing smoke again.
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Dec 5, 2012 02:23
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Canadian supercarrier HMCS Brian Mulroney
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Dec 5, 2012 02:30
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I thought only the USN was saying they hadn't lost one? That leaves a few other agencies that could have lost one, and of course plenty of other countries have them.
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Dec 5, 2012 02:50
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mlmp08 posted:Raptors can't use the x yet can they? It's high in the upgrade plan, if it hasn't already started (I doubt it has). Edit: I'm actually talking about an AMRAAM capability, not AIM-9X. Godholio fucked around with this message at 04:28 on Dec 5, 2012 |
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Dec 5, 2012 03:46
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Have been going through Defend the Realm, the authorized history of MI5 they did a few years back. Quite a lot of interesting stuff in there. Starts up during the run up to WWI, but a good chunk of the book is obviously Cold War stuff. A lot of it is just filling out around stuff I kind of sort of knew, but one thing I was completely unaware of was that Britain had legit issues with Jewish terrorism post WW2. "Middle Eastern Terrorism" back then was a bunch of crazy Jews blowing up stuff because the Brits were dragging their feet on the whole Palestine/Israel issue. Funnily enough the Foreign Minister and intelligence thought giving the Jews a state there would turn into a total clusterfuck for the region. Whodda thunk it.
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Dec 5, 2012 03:59
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Irgun & Stern, get in. They told me that poo poo in high school though. What'd you learns otherwise, that the birth of a nation was performed on a bed of lilies?
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Dec 5, 2012 04:07
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Godholio posted:It's high in the upgrade plan, if it hasn't already started (I doubt it has). But to clarify, the X will tell the onboard computer that it's an older model if the jet can't handle it. So in that way, yes the Raptor can use the missile, even if it can't take full advantage of its capabilities. AFAIK it hasn't quite yet. They're doing Increment 3.1 right now, the most significant of which is the introduction of SDB and SAR mapping capability (the first squadron just did a Combat Hammer in August so I've got to think they're right at declaring IOC if not already there), and AIM-9X and AIM-120D are supposed to be part of Increment 3.2...but the schedule has slipped (again) and they broke 3.2 up into several subincrements. So right now there's an upgrade to give a very basic rudimentary AIM-120D capability sometime this FY, FY2015 is when it's supposed to get AIM-9X, and then not until FY2018 (riiiiight) for full capability for both advanced air to air missiles. And I didn't know that about the -9X as far as telling the computer it's an older model...I thought the F-22's SMS straight up wouldn't recognize a -9X, and that would be some pretty advanced technological trickery because the -9L/M and -9X use two completely different types of umbilicals.
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Dec 5, 2012 04:09
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I think it consisted of "And then there was Israel". 20th century history was very, very heavily bent towards the US. I mean, it makes perfect sense really. It just never had come up. Which is surprising cause I vacuum up quite a lot of random useless info as I go along.
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Dec 5, 2012 04:10
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iyaayas01 posted:AFAIK it hasn't quite yet. They're doing Increment 3.1 right now, the most significant of which is the introduction of SDB and SAR mapping capability (the first squadron just did a Combat Hammer in August so I've got to think they're right at declaring IOC if not already there), and AIM-9X and AIM-120D are supposed to be part of Increment 3.2...but the schedule has slipped (again) and they broke 3.2 up into several subincrements. So right now there's an upgrade to give a very basic rudimentary AIM-120D capability sometime this FY, FY2015 is when it's supposed to get AIM-9X, and then not until FY2018 (riiiiight) for full capability for both advanced air to air missiles. Now that I'm thinking about it, I'm pretty sure its actually the AMRAAM (120C variants, at least) that does that, not the Sidewinder. I didn't realize the 120D was that far along. I gave up on following its progress a few years ago.
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Dec 5, 2012 04:27
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grover posted:And for another, US puts markings on our UAVs- this one looks like they it came straight from an arms dealer.  too much here but I don't think it's out of the question that someone US government agency and not .mil folk were operating a drone in Iran that was captured.Not that I have any idea how feasible it is for Iran to capture any drones but I just don't think no markings == not US property.
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Dec 5, 2012 04:28
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