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Armyman25 posted:So, listening to Sen. Mccain's argument, would the START treaty limit the US's ability to pursue building a missile defense system? Sorta. The treaty would make it so we couldn't use old silos and ICBM equipment (except for a few sites grandfathered in at Vandenberg) for missile defense. However, nobody involved in missile defense even wants to use them - they'd much rather build specialized interceptor vehicles and launch sites. In a theoretical sense, it does limit our options, but in reality it's nothing more than a bullshit talking point. There's also a unilateral statement by Russia that basically boils down to "missile defense sucks and we hate it," but because it's a unilateral statement outside the text of the treaty, it carries exactly as much weight as Russia saying, "missile defense sucks and we hate it" at any other time (which, if you follow the news, they do quite frequently). edit for content about an airplane I love a bit too much: Propagandalf posted:This is funny. "Intelligence windfall" is a serious understatement. We drat near copied the MiG-25 to finish the F-15. The MiG-25 was also the F-22 of its time. It was advertised as a major leap ahead in fighter technology (the first of the Third generation, the F-22 is 5th for comparison) and had most of SAC and TAC making GBS threads their collective pants. Till we picked that one up. We then realized the engines had to be scrapped and changed every time the plane went supersonic, and the airframe was motherfucking STEEL. It could barely fly, and was nothing but propaganda. The old boys got a good laugh, invented the F-15, and never looked back. The MiG-25 was a paper tiger compared to the laughably overstated intelligence estimates, but it wasn't as bad as you make it out to be, either. Basically, the Soviets poo poo themselves over the XB-70, and the MiG-25 was rushed through development to provide an interceptor capable of taking it down. Viewed as an interceptor rather than a general-purpose fighter, it was actually pretty decent at its job: sure, it couldn't maneuver very well (the max load was something like 4g under good conditions), but it was more than good enough to tangle with a bomber, and it could get to altitude like anything. The whole "the engines had to be scrapped and changed every time the plane went supersonic" is a bit of an exaggeration, as well. The plane could hit Mach 2.5 without trouble; the engines didn't start to chew themselves apart until they got past Mach 3. Of course, they would occasionally blow up a MiG-25's engines on "routine training" missions where they knew NATO radar was watching them, but every military in the world loves to show off what it can do as a "don't gently caress with me" threat display. The whole idea of an engine that can deliver extra power at the cost of replacement immediately after the mission wasn't a Soviet development, either - quite a few WWII aircraft were equipped with "war emergency power" systems that could deliver massive power increases at the cost of an immediate engine teardown once the plane landed. Space Gopher fucked around with this message at 00:29 on Dec 19, 2010 |
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Dec 18, 2010 23:45
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Groda posted:The risk of a detonation on the other hand is not there because the conditions required for creating an explosion of the kind we are familiar with from nuclear weapons is the result of painstaking engineering. Civilian nuclear reactors are perfectly capable of a meltdown with hundreds of times the critical mass required by their fuels. Of course, it wouldn't explode like a nuclear bomb - but it's worth thinking about what happens when you get to the "Those bits would just get very hot and, for example, vaporize," bit. You've got a bunch of little explosions, puffing highly radioactive poo poo into the air. It's not a city-destroying mushroom cloud, but it's a "holy poo poo" level radioactive event. Plus, even if the reactor has the decency to not explode at all, you've still got a big hot (in both senses) chunk of nasty poo poo, probably sitting in a pool of jet fuel, melting its way into your runway or some poor bastard's back yard. Again, not Hiroshima, probably not even Chernobyl, but still a disaster big enough to make the news worldwide for the next few weeks. Airborne reactors were environmentally untenable from the start, even among the decidedly non-green defense contractors and Air Force of the era.
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Dec 21, 2010 08:24
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Ridgewell posted:I was not very clear what I meant in my previous post, sorry. I am not disputing that the two-man rule was ever abandoned (I simply don't know if/when it was). I felt there is a discrepancy betweens iyaayas01's most recent post and his OP. In the OP, he describes the F-106 as the only instance where the two-man rule was abandoned, but in his most recent post, he describes other single-seat fighters (earlier than the F-106) as carrying nuclear weapons. This means that one person, the pilot, had ultimate launch authority. My understanding of the two-man rule is that at any stage of ordering the use of nuclear weapons, two people have to be involved (giving the orders (POTUS and SecDef together *), passing them on, and turning the keys/pushing the buttons). This is nicely demonstrated in the opening sequence of WarGames. I think the idea was that the nuclear air-to-air weapons were the only place where one person had complete control over the weapon. The tactical bombs could have been carried by various single-seat attack aircraft, but (presumably) they never actually flew that way. The interceptors, on the other hand, (probably) actually carried live nukes with a single finger on the button. As far as the two-man rule at the top level, I think the idea is that if the President wakes up with a bad case of Alzheimers and decides to outlaw Russia forever, the Secretary of Defense will have a bit of latitude to say, "gently caress you, sir." Yes, in theory there's the chain of command, but in reality it's never quite that absolute.
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Dec 29, 2010 12:21
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McNally posted:My dad was a fuel handler on Titan IIs. The suits had positive pressure so fumes couldn't get in if it tore. He told me about a phenomenon called a BFRC, or Big loving Red Cloud, which occurred when fuel ignited. I tried Googling it for more information, but all I really got was that BFRC stood for Big loving Red Cloud and that if you saw a BFRC, run upwind of it as fast as you could. I think dad told me that a BFRC could melt your lungs, but I'm not sure how much of that was hyperbole, how much was what 18 and 19 year old fuel handlers told each other, and how much was fact. In any event, I don't imagine it was very healthy to breathe. That was probably nitrogen tetroxide, which was and is used quite a bit as an oxidizer in rockets. If you're a rocket scientist, there are a lot of things to like about nitrogen tetroxide: there's a lot of oxygen packed onto those little molecules, there's even more energy in the nitrogen part, and it's hypergolic with many rocket fuels (that is, it spontaneously ignites on contact, so you don't have to worry about an ignition system to keep the fire going). Basically, it's one half of a simple, reliable, and very powerful rocket fuel. If you're one of the guys tasked with gassing up a rocket, on the other hand, there's a lot to hate. For one, if it's exposed to water (including the water vapor in air, and more significantly, the water in your lungs if you breathe it in), it'll react and make nitric acid. Needless to say, that's not a good thing. And, well, there's this bit: quote:Very concentrated fumes produce coughing, choking, headache, nausea, pain in chest and abdomen; otherwise, few symptoms appear at time of exposure. After symptom-free period of 5-72 hours, pulmonary edema gradually develops, causing fatigue, restlessness, coughing, difficulty in breathing, frothy expectoration, mental confusion, lethargy, bluish skin, and weak, rapid pulse. Since NOX interferes with gas exchange in lungs, unconsciousness and death by asphyxiation can result, usually within a few hours after onset of pulmonary edema. Space Gopher fucked around with this message at 08:59 on Feb 10, 2011 |
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Feb 10, 2011 08:54
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I like turtles posted:Our tour guide at the Titan museum said that his guess on probably the best way to take out an ICBM would be to have a few people just shooting rifles at it during initial liftoff as quickly and accurately as they could to puncture holes in the skin and vent fuel/oxidier, either causing a catastrophic failure, or enough of a leak so that it didn't fly right. It's pretty much true. Weight is a precious, precious thing in a rocket, and so every part is designed to be only as strong and heavy as it needs to be. There's very little safety margin to deal with things like unexpected holes. The original Atlas ICBMs would actually collapse under their own weight if they weren't pressurized with fuel or inert gas. Titans weren't quite that fragile, but rockets are delicate flowers in general. Besides the structural issues, the control and guidance computers available at the time weren't exactly powerful and flexible by modern standards, either. They could keep the rocket stable if it launched under normal conditions, but they couldn't really deal with anything significantly out of the ordinary - and even a modern rocket would probably fail when presented with an issue like "hole in a fuel/oxidizer tank." When you consider that a rocket is balanced on its exhaust, it becomes obvious that even a tiny uncorrectable stability issue will become a very large stability issue, very quickly. And, even if the rocket could manage to keep itself upright enough to get into space, there's no way it would end up anywhere near its target. So, yeah. If you can get to it, early boost phase intercept is by far the best option for shooting down a rocket. A rifle could probably get the job done if you're really good at estimating lead, although I'd say that the best way to take out an ICBM would probably involve a SAM, AAM, or something with a guidance package.
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Feb 10, 2011 18:21
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Tremblay posted:Doing buddy stores with a boom would be interesting. You would not believe how cramped the operator's seat is.
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Apr 7, 2011 06:16
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karoshi posted:There was an unmaned supersonic recon aircraft. It looked like a teeny baby SR71 and was launched from one. I need names, photos and videos. Walls of text are welcome, too. Are you thinking of the D-21 drone and M-21 mothership?  Wikipedia has a decent writeup. It was designed to be launched from a two-seat A-12 called the M-21 (almost but not quite identical to the SR-71); the engine was a modified version of the ramjet used by the BOMARC long-range SAM. However, in a test mishap it destroyed the launch aircraft, so they switched to a B-52-based mothership and a solid rocket booster to get the engine up to speed. All in all, the drone flew a total of four operational missions over China, but never managed to complete its mission successfully. One crashed in China, one failed to turn around and crashed in the USSR, one had a parachute failure during recovery, and one got run over by a destroyer. Quite a few aviation museums have D-21s, and the Museum of Flight in Seattle has the only remaining M-21/D-21 combination on display.
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Apr 13, 2011 02:21
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Snowdens Secret posted:I thought this exactly, was expecting it to stand up and pop out fists any moment now "Well, we don't know just yet how we're going to solve this 'crashing all the drat time' problem, but if you cut us a check for a few billion more I'm sure we can try to come up with something."
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Nov 10, 2011 08:38
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iyaayas01 posted:Couple problems with this...first, how does the AEW asset detect the inbound? Radar homing missiles don't emit anything for a RWR setup to detect (if the AEW asset even has an RWR setup on board...USAF doesn't equip their AWACS with any, as far as I know) and by the time the seeker goes active it is probably too late for a big fat slow target like an AEW platform to evade the missile. The radars carried by these type of aircraft are powerful, but it's not like they can see a relatively small air to air missile 150 miles out. Second problem...if the asset does somehow detect the missile and evades it, that still takes it out of position for at least a good 5-10 minutes (possibly more depending on how long it takes to get back to altitude), after which the controllers on board the asset are going to have to reestablish their picture and reestablish comms with everyone in the air war. As a stand alone incident this probably isn't a huge deal, but if as an adversary you can do this at least a couple times a day you're going to disrupt the air war quite a bit, and as a bonus you'll probably manage to kill at least a couple of them. If they can see the missiles coming in, that opens up some interesting possibilities of its own. Strap a simple seeker to a big rocket motor, along with a dumb-as-a-rock passive "home on the biggest radar source you see" guidance package. Don't worry about terminal guidance, a warhead, or anything. Congratulations, you now have a "make AWACS shut off their radar and dive like mad" button, and it's not too expensive to make. If they start ignoring you, launch one that does have a terminal seeker, a warhead, counter-ECM logic, and whatever else.
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Nov 26, 2011 07:07
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Russia had a military-industrial complex as big as ours, dead-simple guidance packages were much more expensive to build back then, and any US/USSR conflict would have been a "make every shot count" situation rather than an asymmetrical "if you can't destroy 'em, harass 'em" situation. But, decoys were a thing during the Cold War when tactically appropriate - SAC B-52s used to carry cruise missiles with radar reflectors in them to gently caress with early-warning radars, SAM sites, and so on up until the 1970s.
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Nov 26, 2011 07:30
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Sperglord Actual posted:Do my eyes deceive me, or does the entire tail fin pivot above the elevators? Yeah, that's called a "stabilator" or "all-moving tailplane." Practically everything supersonic uses them, and there are a fair number of subsonic civil aircraft that use them, too.
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Nov 28, 2011 03:52
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Frozen Horse posted:They can skim up to ~1/2 wingspan above the surface, so the wave height that is negligible depends on the size of the ekranoplane. Take-off and landing will be more weather-dependent. I think the lack of them has to do with there being no market niche that isn't already filled with airliners or cargo ships. Airliners can go considerably faster, don't have to worry about saltwater corrosion, and can use airports far inland. Containerised or bulk cargo ships are slow but they are drat cheap. In comparison, the ekranoplan is neither fish nor fowl. I think they could have an application for racing, somewhere in-between jet hydrofoils and Reno Unlimited-class planes. Well, they do fill a niche: they carry heavier cargo (or weapons or whatever) than airplanes, at close-to-airplane speeds. But, besides all the other stuff you mentioned, there's another glaring issue: density. Air is much denser at sea level than at 35k feet, and that means a lot when you're going into it at a significant fraction of the speed of sound. Ekranoplan wings are more efficient in terms of lift-to-drag, but shoving that fuselage through dense air at jetliner speeds is going to eat all the efficiency savings right back up. Plus, even though they can fly over waves fairly well, they're still going to have more storm issues than an ordinary airplane that can just fly above a lot of weather.
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Dec 5, 2011 02:18
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grover posted:The numbers sound big and all, but this is a HUGE program with thousands of planes, and $1B only represents a 0.1% increase. The only real reason for concern would be if the problems are unfixable, but it sounds like they are all being addressed, and some of which at no additional cost to the US government. Careful! A billion here, a billion there, sooner or later it's going to add up to real money. Makes you wish for the days when the entire B-36 program was just a "billion dollar blunder." These days, it costs that much when some software engineer at Lockheed leaves out a semicolon or something. And, if you want to say that it's all down to inflation: when the Soviet Union was still a serious threat to the United States, Eisenhower noted that, "we pay for a single fighter with a half million bushels of wheat." Now, without a Soviet-level threat, flyaway cost estimates for the F-35 range from $120 to $150 million. Wheat is about six bucks a bushel right now. Feel free to run the numbers yourself.
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Dec 13, 2011 22:32
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theclaw posted:China dumping tens or hundreds of billions of dollars into pointless white elephants instead of more effective weapons systems isn't scary at all. On the other hand, the American reaction (oh god, they're building up one old-rear end Soviet surplus carrier, we have to commission a new class of superdupercarriers at prices even grover might describe as "a bit excessive") is frightening as poo poo. Isn't this exactly the tactic that people love to praise Reagan for using against the USSR?
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Dec 15, 2011 19:47
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Phanatic posted:How on earth is that the American reaction? The USN had been planning a new class of carriers since the late 90s, and started funding the CVN-21 program in 2001. It's for three full carriers. You think the Varyag purchase drove that? No, but I think that it's going to be used to protect it from any serious cuts no matter how dire the budget situation gets, and to drive very expensive modernization work on both the existing fleet and new vessels.
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Dec 15, 2011 21:19
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grover posted:With very little variation of that post, it honestly could have been any number of aircraft. Are you saying that your post could have applied to any number of aircraft, from successes like the B-17, to troublesome never-lived-up-to-the-promises projects like the B-36 and Bradley, to dismal failures like the F-111, XB-70, A-5, A-12, Sgt. York, Comanche, and OICW? So, in other words, there's really no point in making cute little F-35 comparisons at all?
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Jan 17, 2012 01:56
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iyaayas01 posted:To be fair, the F-111 doesn't really belong in the "dismal failure" category...the naval version definitely does, but the AF version, while having some issues, was successfully employed in two wars plus another couple of bombing raids. Hell, the A-5 doesn't really belong in their either, since it entered service and was used in combat. The F-111 and A-5 procurement processes definitely belong in the "dismal failure" category: ludicrous amounts of money spent chasing ultra-high-tech dreams that ultimately turned out to be impossible. The fact that the Navy and Air Force managed to make some sow's-ear leather purses out of them doesn't change the facts: the F-111 never flew as an interceptor, the A-5 never carried a live bomb, and they still stand as huge examples of How Not To Do It. grover posted:Edit: ah, beat; the article is a post up. I'm a bit more optimistic the engineers will fix it than that author is, though. Also, I'm a bit disappointed they didn't mention the A-4 which has a similar aspect ratio to the F-35 yet had no issues landing on carriers. Unless you're privy to information the rest of us aren't, the wing design doesn't come into it. The problem is the distance between the main landing gear and the tailhook, which is significantly shorter than anything else (yes, even the A-4). The F-35 also uses a newer tailhook design, adapted from the F/A-18, which has a blunt face: it's easier on the cable, but not as effective at scooping the cable up from the deck. They're going to try switching to a more aggressive design, but it's still up in the air whether that will actually work. Here's a comparison from the QLR. Canadians, please don't look. 
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Jan 17, 2012 04:14
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mlmp08 posted:A boost interceptor would be cool, but... that poo poo is hard. What makes it so hard? It seems like the missile would be most vulnerable during the boost phase - less total energy while it's still burning its fuel, less chance to deploy decoys, and so forth. Is the main issue the problem of detecting, tracking, and getting to the missile before it's out of reach?
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Jan 19, 2012 08:33
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priznat posted:Why not just make it a high speed single seat submarine that can bust out of the surface of the water to intercept targets? That'd make it LO as hell! Well, it's not a submarine, but close enough!  Yes that is an F-102 on waterskis.
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Jan 28, 2012 06:56
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priznat posted:They used to do some cool poo poo back in the day. On the other hand, it keeps you from pursuing projects like "gutless non-area-ruled 'supersonic' seaplane interceptor that can't actually hit mach 1 in level flight." Now, we have much more expensive and complex failures, like planes that can't make it across the International Date Line, and planes that try to set themselves on fire when they dump fuel in an emergency.
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Jan 28, 2012 07:29
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Ruse posted:Can any of you help me out with this picture? Looks like RAF 5 Squadron; their insignia is a maple leaf, and they flew Tornado ADVs.
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Mar 4, 2012 05:50
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fuf posted:I hope you guys don't mind stupid questions in this thread. The letter is, of course, the intended mission: F-something means a fighter, B-something means a bomber, A-something means attack, X-something means an experimental aicraft, and so on. Within the mission designations, numbers are assigned sequentially. A lot of them get skipped because everything - even prototypes and experimental models - gets a number, but only a limited number of aircraft go into service. The B-2 comes after the B-52 because the DoD reset the numbering in 1962, and unified aircraft naming across the Army, Navy, and Air Force.
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Mar 18, 2012 23:20
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Cyrano4747 posted:I forget the long answer for this kind of thing, and I'm sure someone who actually knows about this will be along shortly to correct me or expand on this, but my understanding of military computer poo poo is that every new "thing" that is developed has to go through some loving obscene testing/authorization/adaptation process that has its roots back in military procurement ca. WW1 or some poo poo. This isn't an issue that has its roots in WWI procurement so much as a common thing in embedded systems. Even ordinary desktop PCs can have issues with memory compatibility (your motherboard or computer manufacturer actually has an approval process as well, believe it or not), and embedded systems are designed with much tighter specs in mind. Plus, there are all sorts of things to consider that don't come up often when you're talking about a Dell or Acer or Macbook: what happens when the humidity gets too high, or too low? What happens when you hand the system out to guys working near a radar? What if a shell or IED goes off nearby, and the clips that hold the RAM in are only specified for "average college student" levels of abuse? When you go out and buy what's on sale at Best Buy, there's no guarantee you won't end up with a computer that has weird bugs when you get into a firefight. If you're talking about Battlefield 3, no big, it's just some annoying troubleshooting and a new $20 stick of RAM. If you're talking about a situation more important than your computer games, approval gets a bit more important. It's a big deal even outside the MIC; industrial robots, for instance, go through many of the same processes (and a lot of them run on what looks like seriously outdated hardware, too). Even CAD workstations usually run on expensive certified hardware, just because downtime for the engineers who work on them is really loving expensive.
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Mar 27, 2012 18:46
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emathey posted:Those are the strangest F-15s I've ever seen. I don't know what you're gripen' about, I see nothing wrong with the description.
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Mar 28, 2012 04:44
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atomicthumbs posted:Why don't they just stick 32 laptops in the plane, run them all with the same inputs, and use the output of the majority that match? Somehow I think it'd end up like the B-36's engines. "Well, let's see, we've got five true, seven false, four kernel crashes, two nonfatal exceptions, three hardware failures, and I think the rest are just flopping around loose in the avionics bay." movax posted:That's exactly what several rad-hardened systems do; several of the processing units are run in triplicate and they "vote" on decisions. One thing I've always wondered about these systems: how do they harden the component that actually handles the "voting?" It seems to me that it'd always be a single point of failure, which kind of defeats the whole exercise. Is it just given extra shielding and built on a bigger/more rad-resistant process?
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Mar 29, 2012 18:56
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Oxford Comma posted:Is there any European stuff Canada could get for less money than the F-35? MiGs? Or is it pretty much a done deal that Canada will buy the American plane because of politics? On top of everything iyaayas01 said, keep in mind that there are other American export options. The latest revisions of teen series fighters might not be quite as futuristic and sexy, but the flip side of "old-fashioned" is "mature, well-tested platform." On that note, I kind of wonder if the F-35 and Eurofighter debacles are going to push export buyers to a less speculative approach in general. It has to really sting to buy promises, subsidize the spiraling cost increases for somebody else's GI Joe superfighter dreams, and then get stuck with a hamstrung export version at a ridiculous price.
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Mar 30, 2012 04:34
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Mr. Despair posted:And in purgatory everything is made by Lockheed-Martin. Don't even ask how much indulgences cost.
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Mar 31, 2012 07:06
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priznat posted:The question is, if they did detect it what could they do about it? Can standard missiles intercept stuff that low? Can harpoons hit a target moving that quickly? Yes, you could shoot a SAM at it. Missiles like the Standard are designed to hit cruise missiles and low-flying aircraft; from the missile's perspective, a ground-effect craft is just an airplane that happens to be flying very low.
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Apr 3, 2012 20:17
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Throatwarbler posted:I mean Psion's earlier post about replacing the 105mm with a mortar. He was implying that the superior range of the 105mm vs a mortar wasn't needed because the AC-130 only ever fired "down". That's more or less true, though. If you're firing at something roughly on the same level as you, you need a lot of energy to get and keep the projectile in the air. If you're starting out at a substantially higher altitude, you don't need nearly as much energy. Delivery McGee posted:Well, it's got the same Vulcan fighters have, and the Bofors has done a lot of AA work. Finding an enemy pilot stupid enough to pass a Spooky on the left would be the main problem, I think. Though if they thought it was a regular Herc, were coming in to get a visual and just happened to be intercepting from the left ... It might have the same gun as a fighter, but it doesn't have the same lead-computing hardware, and it certainly doesn't have the same maneuverability. You're talking about a one-in-a-million chance on top of a one-in-a-million chance. As for the lack of air-to-air kills, for all the guns, the AC-130 is an easy target. It's designed for beating up on guerrillas who can't do much to shoot back; total air superiority is kind of a prerequisite. Anything on the ground that looks like it might be able to fly or otherwise present a threat will probably be taken out by other means.
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Apr 7, 2012 05:25
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Besides the efficiency concerns, delta wings have some other issues, too. A tailless design like the Vulcan doesn't have space for flaps, and while it can develop a shitload of lift at high angles of attack, it generates a lot of drag doing it. This adds up to very high takeoff and landing speeds, which limits your choice in airfields and presents safety concerns. That big, lightly loaded wing will pick up every little gust of wind and give passengers a lovely ride, as well. Not the biggest problems in the world for the military, but serious problems for any civil airliner.
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Apr 26, 2012 15:52
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Forums Terrorist posted:Hence why Concorde had some of the most advanced autopilot and fly-by-wire hardware in the world when it came out. Unfortunately, they couldn't really do anything about the takeoff speeds, which were a huge factor in the Flight 4590 crash.
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Apr 26, 2012 19:00
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mlmp08 posted:I'm guessing countries which are only buying basic transportation, rifles, and some lovely body armor do OK, since they aren't trying to outdo the entire universe. On the other hand, remember when that S&W executive got caught in a Foreign Corrupt Practices Act sting? Small countries that are only looking to buy trucks, rifles, and maybe some body armor are also often the ones where the minister of defense is the president's brother-in-law or whatever.
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May 13, 2012 05:16
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Rodrigo Diaz posted:Who said they were? It's sort of an assumption behind the people talking about the pilot defecting to Israel. It's fairly likely that he wanted to both get the hell out of Syria and stay the hell out of Israel.
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Jun 21, 2012 23:29
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Acebuckeye13 posted:
To some degree, they needed to make sure new designs actually worked. They didn't have massive supercomputers back in the day, so they couldn't exactly run simulations much more complex than "looks like that's about right." A lot of warhead designs were complex and had weird packaging requirements - remember, both sides were making not just nuclear bombs and missiles, but nuclear landmines, nuclear depth charges, nuclear artillery shells, nuclear landmines, and probably nuclear ham sandwiches. Plus, they wanted to test blast effects on everything from houses to tanks. But, like Cyrano and mlmp08 mention, there was a lot of good old fashioned "you blew some poo poo up? Well we're gonna blow MORE poo poo up REAL GOOD!" dickwaving on both sides.
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Aug 3, 2012 05:49
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And of course three people have already replied to it.
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This is a Nanchang CJ-6, a Chinese successor to the Soviet Yak-18 trainer.
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Aug 9, 2012 03:33
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Pimpmust posted:Tenth of a kiloton = 100000 kg of explosives? Well, the listed max range for the "light" version is 2km. So, if there's no headwind, you're talking about being a bit more than a mile from a 100-ton bomb. That's survivable, but not a good time. The radiation would probably be a bigger issue. Most of the small nukes were designed to kill tanks with radiation; armored vehicles are pretty good at surviving blasts, but gamma and neutron radiation don't give no fucks 'bout armor. If it's putting out enough radiation to incapacitate or outright kill the Soviet tankers directly under the blast, your future children* aren't going to be happy about you chilling just a mile away. Particularly if you're lighting off half a dozen of those things. If you set that timer to a second or two, it's "goodbye, cruel wor-" time. But, hey, most nukes let you do unsafe things with them. I believe there's at least one nuclear bomb in the US arsenal that can be delivered at a minimum altitude of 50 feet. *in the admittedly unlikely scenario that anyone tasked with defending the West German front lines in a cold-war-goes-hot WW3 scenario would have lived to be a parent
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Aug 24, 2012 08:18
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Alaan posted:It's amazing that in fifty years no one has managed/bothered to make a faster manned plane. You could make a pretty good argument for the Space Shuttle (and Buran) in that role. They're all capable of controlled hypersonic flight.
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Aug 29, 2012 08:48
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Phanatic posted:By that definition, then the Apollo RVs count. An offset center of mass caused a sideways lift, and rotating the capsule changed the direction of the lift vector, so the thing could be steered as it fell. If the space shuttle's an airplane, so's that RV. Apollo capsules could be steered in the sense that they could reliably come down in a couple-hundred-square-mile patch of ocean. The Space Shuttle had identifiable wings that generated appreciable aerodynamic lift (rather than just an offset center of mass and some lifting-body effects), and it could reliably land on a specific runway. It built on the X-15 program's research into making an airplane that was safe and controllable at hypersonic speeds. As for why the X-15 seems like a dead end - we got the data we needed from that kind of program. Once we were able to get into space, just "going really fast through the atmosphere" is easy: you use your preexisting space launch infrastructure, then drop into the atmosphere. Orbital re-entry speeds are far faster than anything the X-15 ever had to deal with. And, for stuff that stays in the atmosphere, rocket planes really aren't much of a research interest any more; again, that's more the domain of spaceflight now. If you're going to stick around down low in a reusable aircraft, where there's all that free oxidizer right there for the taking, air-breathing engines are much more interesting and useful.
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Aug 29, 2012 20:04
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mlmp08 posted:It looks like it has no room for fancy avionics, targeting devices, or actual decent armaments. The design came out of an Army request for a dirt-cheap flying gun for CAS, so avionics beyond a simple gunsight weren't much of a priority. Of course, since it was the Army asking for fixed-wing CAS, it never went anywhere beyond a single prototype and a "good job there sport" for Burt Rutan. I think the "Mudfighter" nickname comes from the same dude who's obsessed with M113s and wants everybody to call them "Gavins" and overhaul their doctrine to use them. The video description is pretty funny in that regard.
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Aug 30, 2012 20:32
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Sperglord Actual posted:Still is. Excuse me, that's the VULTURE GUN which will be carried by our boys as they fight from M113 GAVINS with MUDFIGHTER close air support. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xt7Zdp2W7eY Bonus uploader comment: Mike Sparks actually posted:American G.I. in WW2 were not insufferable weak egomaniacs like idiots who post comments here that get DELETED; they used ENEMY WEAPONS without their penises falling off...
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Aug 31, 2012 06:15
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