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iyaayas01 posted:tl;dr is the USMC "forward deployed" Harriers to a "FARP" set up in a soccer stadium. Said "FARP" obviously required insane amounts of ground transport for fuel/munitions/etc to remain operational. USAF deployed a unit of A-10s to an airfield 20 or 30 miles further away than said "FARP," A-10s managed to crush the "FARP" in pretty much every metric (sortie generation, on-station time, munitions delivered, etc). In a logical world that would've been the nail in the coffin of USMC STOVL aviation....but this is the Marines we're talking about. I'm pretty sure that operating as effectively as a unit of A-10s unopposed from an air field isn't the measurement of success anyone rational would use to evaluate effectiveness of Harriers operating somewhere (anywhere) else. Frankly, if a unit of A-10's hadn't been able to outperform a unit of Harriers after 9-10 months of prep time and under identical operating conditions there would have been something seriously stinky on the AF side of things. I kind of don't get all the posturing in this thread regarding Marines, it's like a complete inability to recognize that even if the Marines didn't exist their mission would still have to be duplicated (We live in a world covered with oceans and the US is isolated by them from pretty much everything interesting) and would probably end up looking almost identical whether you put those units under directly under Army or the Navy. If the nations amphib capability was part of the Army they would still need to be transported and supplied by the Navy and would need specialized ships for doing so. If the capability was part of the Navy, they would still need land attack capabilities and dedicated air assets. Except it would be worse because those abilities would always come out 3rd place to the demands of Big Army or the Fleet and it's officer corp would be a desolate wasteland of rejects from the main tranches of spending.
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Jul 11, 2016 15:10
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There is room for a dedicated amphib force but marine air has no place in a world where the same navy that needs to take them across those oceans to those islands has CVNs. If it's threatening enough to need local air support its threatening enough that the Marines are going in with a carrier group Edit: if CVNs are spread so thin in some hypothetical future scenario keeping China at bay that they aren't available to cover Opeartion Bomb Worthless Jungle 2035 the answer is to build either more CVNs or a bunch of light diesel carriers that carry half a dozen real aircraft or whatever. The idea that they can operate from a beachhead is retarded in a world with Mach capable land based fighters with 1000+ km combat ranges. If Guadalcanal happened tomorrow we would base out of Australia not the island itself. SVTOL is just too much of a compromise o. Something you want to be a modern combat aircraft. If you want integral support from 30 miles behind the front use a loving helicopter. Otherwise recognize that you are in unpermissive air and bring the CV group you should have in the first place. Cyrano4747 fucked around with this message at 16:11 on Jul 11, 2016 |
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Jul 11, 2016 16:02
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abolish the marine corps is a surprisingly popular position among younger NCOs/ officers and laypeople, a population which I proudly counted myself among until I got actual joint staff experience
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Jul 11, 2016 16:14
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Ascension is 4,000 miles from the Falkland Islands. The British would have lost the Falklands without Harriers but managed to win with them. Harriers were necessary and sufficient. Yes, a real carrier would have done the job better. It would have been sufficient but not necessary. It also would have been considerably more expensive, which is why the British didn't have any. We can afford real carriers, so they don't make a lot sense for us. Most countries can't, so if you get say half the capability for a much much lower cost then that makes sense, when your other option is no carriers at all. e: Murgos posted:I'm pretty sure that operating as effectively as a unit of A-10s unopposed from an air field isn't the measurement of success anyone rational would use to evaluate effectiveness of Harriers operating somewhere (anywhere) else. Those ships don't belong to the Marine Corps. Do you need that much extra training to ride in a boat until it's time to get out of the boat again? I wouldn't know, I haven't done it, but it seems unlikely. Going back to the Falklands example, which is the last significant amphibious assault in history, the British landing force consisted of both Army and Royal Marines units. Both proved perfectly capable of disembarking from landing craft. Mortabis fucked around with this message at 16:33 on Jul 11, 2016 |
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Jul 11, 2016 16:25
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bewbies posted:abolish the marine corps is a surprisingly popular position among younger NCOs/ officers and laypeople, a population which I proudly counted myself among until I got actual joint staff experience There's frankly nothing that they do that nobody else could. They learned the amphib assault mission from the Army, which literally wrote the book on it (and did it first and biggest in WWII) and the Marines started training to it in the 1930s. For the century prior to that they were basically MPs. But that's not really a strong case to roll them into the other services. But the two ideas that underpin Marine aviation are A-they do CAS better than anyone else and B-they need to operate independently because...um...because there could be a situation where the United States decides to start a war but the only air assets available are part of a MEU for some reason. "A" is at best, debatable. At worst, it takes into account that USMC aviation has less capability than literally any other form of American combat airpower in a contested environment and if they're operating from their boats they almost certainly need to be refueled which means relying on the Navy or Air Force anyway. "B" is so ball-numbingly stupid that James Forrestal must have been a goddamned psychic when he said, "The raising of that flag on Suribachi means a Marine Corps for the next five hundred years." There's no major conflict that would require action so immediately that we'd hurl a MEU's worth of AV-8s (or F-35Bs) and helicopters to certain death because we couldn't wait for a real carrier or an Air Force plus-up nearby. If it's that important we're not jumping in immediately anyway...that's not how this works. We're going to gradually escalate and in the meantime the other services are shuffling assets into position. A situation that moves faster than that is inherently less important to national strategy and defense and is, in my opinion, not worth the devastation that such a niche scenario has wrought upon the rest of the DOD.
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Jul 11, 2016 16:33
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Murgos posted:I'm pretty sure that operating as effectively as a unit of A-10s unopposed from an air field isn't the measurement of success anyone rational would use to evaluate effectiveness of Harriers operating somewhere (anywhere) else. The posturing regarding the marines is that they need their own artisanal bespoke equipment that for whatever reason has to be independent of navy, army and Air Force. The marines have unique planes, boats and ground vehicles. There is no reason for that.
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Jul 11, 2016 16:37
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Mortabis posted:Ascension is 4,000 miles from the Falkland Islands. If you are a second tier navy that can't afford a CVN it's probably better to just go with small diesel CVs than VSTOL platforms. It's not like there aren't costs incurred by that both in terms of equipment and fleet expertise. The RN used harriers because it's what they had, not because it was the best tool for the job. The Falklands was that too to bottom: using random crap they had on hand and making due because surprise thatcher era England didn't have Churchill era force projection abilities. All that is pretty immaterial to whether the USMC needs integral SVTOL air. We can an do afford real CVNs with full feature aircraft. Even if the British/French/Canadian/Indian/etc use case for SVTOL makes sense that doesn't mean we need it too.
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Jul 11, 2016 17:21
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Mortabis posted:Ascension is 4,000 miles from the Falkland Islands. The British would have lost the Falklands without Harriers but managed to win with them. Harriers were necessary and sufficient. Yes, a real carrier would have done the job better. It would have been sufficient but not necessary. It also would have been considerably more expensive, which is why the British didn't have any. We can afford real carriers, so they don't make a lot sense for us. Most countries can't, so if you get say half the capability for a much much lower cost then that makes sense, when your other option is no carriers at all. It was really just blind luck that the Britain "only" lost 4 major surface combatants and the Falklands didn't turn into Coral Sea Part Deux.
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Jul 11, 2016 17:22
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Mortabis posted:Ascension is 4,000 miles from the Falkland Islands. The British would have lost the Falklands without Harriers but managed to win with them. Harriers were necessary and sufficient. Yes, a real carrier would have done the job better. It would have been sufficient but not necessary. You're assuming that if they'd had a real carrier Argentina would still have invaded their territory. And those Harriers would have been insufficient if the Argentinians had figured out how to fuse their bombs properly. If Argonaut (hit by two bombs), Antrim (1), Plymouth (4), Glasgow (1), and three landing ships had blown up, the outcome might have been different and I'm not sure Thatcher's staying in power after that.
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Jul 11, 2016 17:49
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Cyrano4747 posted:Even if the British/French/Canadian/Indian/etc use case for SVTOL makes sense that doesn't mean we need it too. There's no French case for STOVL, there hasn't been one since the Mirage IIIV project was canceled.
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Jul 11, 2016 17:49
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Cat Mattress posted:There's no French case for STOVL, there hasn't been one since the Mirage IIIV project was canceled. They built real carriers and surprise surprise they have working carrier aviation. STOVL is execrable and to be used if and only if you literally can't get better.
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Jul 11, 2016 18:01
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It's cool tech and I'm sure it has applications. Being part of a strike fighter just isn't one.
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Jul 11, 2016 18:15
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Brits could have had a carrier running a wing of Phantoms off of it but they were broke as poo poo. No reason that wouldn't have been a better replacement overall than the Harriers instead for that entire war.
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Jul 11, 2016 18:16
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One thing I've never gotten about the Falklands War. The UK was a NATO member, the UK was attacked, the UK had to respond militarily all by itself. What prevented it from getting assistance from other NATO countries? Even if not in the form of direct military action, then in logistics or intelligence support? Was it just that the Falklands are way the hell tucked down in the rear end-end of nowhere and not north of the Tropic of Cancer?
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Jul 11, 2016 18:24
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Pretty sure the USA had offered some kind of assistance but was conditional upon their own stuff failing. The French stepped in right away to help with the Exocet specs and intel on what they gave Argentina at least but that's not NATO.
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Jul 11, 2016 18:28
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Phanatic posted:One thing I've never gotten about the Falklands War. Article 5 can only be invoked due to attacks on the home country, not overseas possessions. (Goon answer: because the Falklands aren't in the North Atlantic  )The US was moderately friendly with the Argentinian government at the time, and didn't want to overtly jeopardize that relationship.
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Jul 11, 2016 18:31
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Phanatic posted:One thing I've never gotten about the Falklands War. There was really only one NATO country that could help directly, that was the USA, and i dont think they wanted to rock the south american diplomatic boat and the Rio Pact by acting directly if they could possibly avoid it.
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Jul 11, 2016 18:33
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Also remember that this was the absolute nadir of US relations with the region. If the Brits could handle it alone that was in everyone's interest. Plus it looks really bad if the UK needs the US to defend it from loving Argentina. Now the reality is that it's military was loving gutted and it DID but no one wanted to broadcast that.
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Jul 11, 2016 18:38
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Phanatic posted:One thing I've never gotten about the Falklands War. From wiki: quote:For the purpose of Article 5, an armed attack on one or more of the Parties is deemed to include an armed attack: So the UK couldn't invoke the North Atlantic Treaty for an attack on the Falklands.
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Jul 11, 2016 18:38
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Godholio posted:"B" is so ball-numbingly stupid that James Forrestal must have been a goddamned psychic when he said, "The raising of that flag on Suribachi means a Marine Corps for the next five hundred years." That's why the Marines shoved him out a window  Throatwarbler posted:It was really just blind luck that the Britain "only" lost 4 major surface combatants and the Falklands didn't turn into Coral Sea Part Deux. Phanatic posted:You're assuming that if they'd had a real carrier Argentina would still have invaded their territory. And those Harriers would have been insufficient if the Argentinians had figured out how to fuse their bombs properly. If Argonaut (hit by two bombs), Antrim (1), Plymouth (4), Glasgow (1), and three landing ships had blown up, the outcome might have been different and I'm not sure Thatcher's staying in power after that. What these guys said. Cyrano4747 posted:If you are a second tier navy that can't afford a CVN it's probably better to just go with small diesel CVs than VSTOL platforms. It's not like there aren't costs incurred by that both in terms of equipment and fleet expertise. The RN used harriers because it's what they had, not because it was the best tool for the job. The Falklands was that too to bottom: using random crap they had on hand and making due because surprise thatcher era England didn't have Churchill era force projection abilities. This is a good point as well. If you can't afford a supercarrier, but you need carrier based aviation for something, you can always look at what you need it for the most, and focus on that (and maybe get additional abilities, depending on your budget and capability.) Hell, considering the nightmare of VSTOL fighters, you'd think somebody would start researching a dedicated drone carrier. I'm not sure if I'm alone in this, but having seen the various faces of VSTOL madness, my conclusion is that the whole idea was dumb from the start. You can create useful aircraft out of it, like the V-22, but making a conventional fighter jet take off like a helicopter is a recipe for making a really terrible fighter jet.
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Jul 11, 2016 18:39
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Phanatic posted:Was it just that the Falklands are way the hell tucked down in the rear end-end of nowhere and not north of the Tropic of Cancer? Legally, this was the reason Article V wasn't invoked. Practically a) the only people who had forces capable of assisting in a meaningful capacity were the US, and we might have jumped in if things had gone badly b) the UK pulled a fair amount of forces away from their NATO commitments to send to the Falklands...there was a tacit agreement that the other NATO members would cover for them to go do this TasogareNoKagi posted:Article 5 can only be invoked due to attacks on the home country, not overseas possessions. (Goon answer: because the Falklands aren't in the North Atlantic Not true. Article 6 spells out what Article 5 covers, it basically amounts to all territory (including overseas possessions) and forces in North America, Europe, the Med, or the North Atlantic north of the Tropic of Cancer
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Jul 11, 2016 18:40
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Phanatic posted:One thing I've never gotten about the Falklands War. Yes NATO Charter, Article 6 posted:For the purpose of Article 5, an armed attack on one or more of the Parties is deemed to include an armed attack:
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Jul 11, 2016 18:41
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Phanatic posted:You're assuming that if they'd had a real carrier Argentina would still have invaded their territory. And those Harriers would have been insufficient if the Argentinians had figured out how to fuse their bombs properly. If Argonaut (hit by two bombs), Antrim (1), Plymouth (4), Glasgow (1), and three landing ships had blown up, the outcome might have been different and I'm not sure Thatcher's staying in power after that. No, I'm not assuming anything. The British didn't have a full size carrier because it was too expensive. Even a diesel CV is way more expensive than a STOVL carrier. Maybe if they'd had a real carrier the war would never have happened. We don't know. But they didn't have one and wouldn't have so it's irrelevant. xthetenth's comment is instructive: xthetenth posted:STOVL is execrable and to be used if and only if you literally can't get better. I agree completely, but that situation is quite common. And maybe the Brits would have lost if the Argentines had done this, that, or the other thing differently, but they didn't. The Harriers worked. And they probably would have been superb if there were an AEW capability as well.
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Jul 11, 2016 18:43
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Mortabis posted:The Harriers worked. And they probably would have been superb if there were an AEW capability as well. Coming soon: the E-35B, giving America's amphibious assault ships AEW capability, 20 minutes at a time.
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Jul 11, 2016 18:51
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BIG HEADLINE posted:Coming soon: the E-35B, giving America's amphibious assault ships AEW capability, 20 minutes at a time. I didn't mean on the jet itself  There are "serious" people who talk about putting AEW V-22s on our LHAs.
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Jul 11, 2016 18:57
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Talking of British STOVL – A sudden biblical downpour flooded the Farnborough Airshow site and exhibition halls, closing the show for the day and bring the flight demos to an end less than a third of the way thorough the running order. So the F-35 didn't get to show off its dance moves proper (it did at least manage to open the show with a flyby with the Red Arrows). But it's been confirmed that  is ordering P-8s and new Apaches.
Pablo Bluth fucked around with this message at 20:13 on Jul 11, 2016 |
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Jul 11, 2016 19:33
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Pablo Bluth posted:But it's been confirmed that Well they badly need a ASW aircraft; why more Apaches?
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Jul 11, 2016 19:47
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Think they decided it was the most cost effective way to migrate from AH-64D to AH-64E spec. I don't think there's any plan to the operational fleet size.
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Jul 11, 2016 20:07
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I think between Libya and AStan they actually put a lot of hours on the their Apaches as well, and the E does some cool poo poo they probably want in on, especially the maritime ops the E has new capabilities for.
Mazz fucked around with this message at 21:15 on Jul 11, 2016 |
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Jul 11, 2016 21:12
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Does embryonic drone control too doesn't it?
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Jul 11, 2016 21:18
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Phanatic posted:One thing I've never gotten about the Falklands War. A fair bit of intelligence was handed over, including French tech info on Exocets and Norwegians supplying Argentine fleet positions, amongst other things.
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Jul 11, 2016 22:19
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Mortabis posted:I didn't mean on the jet itself Well they replaced the C-2 with the V-22 for COD so why not replace the E-2 with the Osprey...the Osprey can haul 25,000+lbs of electronics and seat a 5 person crew, right?
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Jul 11, 2016 23:30
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Force de Fappe posted:A fair bit of intelligence was handed over, including French tech info on Exocets and Norwegians supplying Argentine fleet positions, amongst other things. Why would the Norwegians have that info?
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Jul 11, 2016 23:41
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That Works posted:Why would the Norwegians have that info? gently caress with Norway and you'll find out! 
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Jul 11, 2016 23:45
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CarForumPoster posted:Well they replaced the C-2 with the V-22 for COD so why not replace the E-2 with the Osprey...the Osprey can haul 25,000+lbs of electronics and seat a 5 person crew, right? Think about the radome and the props.
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Jul 11, 2016 23:47
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Flikken posted:Think about the radome and the props. I was being sarcastic as I believe the answer to both of my questions is no...or at least not at the same time. Although if we are taking seriously the absurd...I would assume that they'd get a next gen AESA of some sort and stop the whole rotating mechanical nonsense.
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Jul 11, 2016 23:53
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That Works posted:Why would the Norwegians have that info? http://www.norwaypost.no/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=12856
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Jul 12, 2016 00:08
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Phanatic posted:One thing I've never gotten about the Falklands War. Crewed by "civilian contractors" of course since we didn't want to take sides
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Jul 12, 2016 00:09
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Flikken posted:Think about the radome and the props. Just go wedgetail style. There is room between the props over the fuselage
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Jul 12, 2016 00:16
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Jul 12, 2016 00:26
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