AIRPOWER/Cold War - Its literally the first two lines of their hymn

The Something Awful Forums > Archives > Comedy Goldmine > The Goodmine > AIRPOWER/Cold War - Its literally the first two lines of their hymn

Rodrigo Diaz: Apr 16, 2007; Knights who are at the wars eat their bread in sorrow;
their ease is weariness and sweat;
they have one good day after many bad

gently caress planes.

From the DIA art series The Threat in the 80's

# ¿ Dec 17, 2010 00:48

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# ¿ May 3, 2024 08:45

Rodrigo Diaz: Apr 16, 2007; Knights who are at the wars eat their bread in sorrow;
their ease is weariness and sweat;
they have one good day after many bad

old dog child posted:

A certain Air Force officer needs to finish his CAS write up.

Hahaha you say that like the Air Force knows anything about CAS other than what they cribbed off the sea services' footnotes.

# ¿ Apr 23, 2011 04:46

Rodrigo Diaz: Apr 16, 2007; Knights who are at the wars eat their bread in sorrow;
their ease is weariness and sweat;
they have one good day after many bad

iyaayas01 posted:

we're historically more retarded about tactical aviation than the Navy

fixed this for you. In the two major wars after the Air Force got out from under the Army's thumb, Korea and Vietnam, the Navy and Marine Corps have, often literally, had to teach or re-teach them how to conduct CAS.

The Air Force has been so dedicated to strategic air that arch-loonie Curtis LeMay was convinced that if only the White House had taken the kid gloves off of strategic bombing in North Vietnam the US would have won. This is ignoring the fact that after two years of Rolling Thunder the US had dropped more bombs on Vietnam than on the entirety of Europe in WWII, and that the targets LeMay wished to strike, most notably Petroleum, Oil, and Lubricant facilities basically did not exist in Vietnam.

# ¿ Jun 6, 2011 12:57

Rodrigo Diaz: Apr 16, 2007; Knights who are at the wars eat their bread in sorrow;
their ease is weariness and sweat;
they have one good day after many bad

On Su-27s at least it's where the drogue chute comes out.

# ¿ Jan 24, 2012 13:07

Rodrigo Diaz: Apr 16, 2007; Knights who are at the wars eat their bread in sorrow;
their ease is weariness and sweat;
they have one good day after many bad

Throatwarbler posted:

Is this really true? What weapons did NATO supply to the Libyan opposition?

Caro.

# ¿ Feb 14, 2012 04:56

Rodrigo Diaz: Apr 16, 2007; Knights who are at the wars eat their bread in sorrow;
their ease is weariness and sweat;
they have one good day after many bad

co199 posted:

Funny anecdote out of that is the Iraqis were aware of the AN/AWG-9 and so when the USN turned theirs on during Desert Storm, the Iraqis would turn and run due to the perceived threat from the AIM-54. Of course the counter argument to that is that the Iraqis ran from everything, so it's debatable.

They did run from everything. Their key objective in the air very quickly became force preservation, which is why they parked planes next to cultural monuments like Babylonian ruins, and sent some planes to Iran.

# ¿ Mar 23, 2012 21:14

Rodrigo Diaz: Apr 16, 2007; Knights who are at the wars eat their bread in sorrow;
their ease is weariness and sweat;
they have one good day after many bad

mlmp08 posted:

I'm thinking that disliking Israel and disliking Bashar Al-Assad's regime are not mutually exclusive positions, guys.

Who said they were?

# ¿ Jun 21, 2012 22:53

Rodrigo Diaz: Apr 16, 2007; Knights who are at the wars eat their bread in sorrow;
their ease is weariness and sweat;
they have one good day after many bad

iyaayas01 posted:

I post this every time the subject comes up, but data from pretty much every war a Western/Western-equipped power has fought from '73 on indicates that production rates can't keep up with munition expenditures.

We haven't fought a total war since '45 though. I mean, I still agree, it just needs to be qualified.

# ¿ Jun 8, 2013 04:03

Rodrigo Diaz: Apr 16, 2007; Knights who are at the wars eat their bread in sorrow;
their ease is weariness and sweat;
they have one good day after many bad

Warbadger posted:

It also ignores the impact on Germany's ability to actually transport materiel and troops.

Strategic bombing had very little effect on this. Air interdiction was vastly more important.

# ¿ Jun 11, 2013 14:32

Rodrigo Diaz: Apr 16, 2007; Knights who are at the wars eat their bread in sorrow;
their ease is weariness and sweat;
they have one good day after many bad

Dead Reckoning posted:

In May we had a plane crash and kill three crew, but no taxpayer is going to get in the grill of anyone involved in delaying the procurement of a new tanker. A Marine flying squadron commander was killed by infiltrators in September. I'm sure I'm forgetting a bunch of helo shootdowns and crashes. Fact is, soldiers, or pilots, dying on the other side of the planet is pretty much a non-event for most Americans.

It's a non-event now because it happens so seldom. Additionally, a decade of war has somewhat inured the American populace to deaths in those two wars. However, look at the hullabaloo around Cliff Acree and Guy Hunter or the Black Hawk in Mogadishu or, more recently, the rescue of the F-15 pilot in Libya.

Also, being killed by hostile fire (or worse, captured and executed) is perceived very differently to deaths by accidents.

# ¿ Jun 13, 2013 22:22

Rodrigo Diaz: Apr 16, 2007; Knights who are at the wars eat their bread in sorrow;
their ease is weariness and sweat;
they have one good day after many bad

Phanatic posted:

So your high-energy mirror is okay in a lab or in a controlled environment, but out in the atmosphere where poo poo like sand or dust or grease or leaked hydraulic fluid or JP-5 will contaminate the surface? Nope. Bit of dust on the mirror, laser hits mirror, bit of dust gets really hot and explodes, damaging the little bit of mirror surface it was sitting on, which now isn't very reflective and starts absorbing many kilowatts of concentrated laser energy. Boom.

So how do we keep all of these contaminants from getting on the laser itself? Because that seems like it could be a problem.

# ¿ Jun 14, 2013 19:26

Rodrigo Diaz: Apr 16, 2007; Knights who are at the wars eat their bread in sorrow;
their ease is weariness and sweat;
they have one good day after many bad

Phanatic posted:

The energy density of the beam as it passes through the lens is considerably lower than the energy density of the beam where it's focused on the target, and you can keep the laser optics concealed and protected until it's time to take a shot.

The former point is far more reassuring than the latter. Especially in an environment with things like salt spray, lubricants, or fine dust I have full faith in the ability of poo poo to Get Everywhere Somehow.

# ¿ Jun 14, 2013 19:52

Rodrigo Diaz: Apr 16, 2007; Knights who are at the wars eat their bread in sorrow;
their ease is weariness and sweat;
they have one good day after many bad

wkarma posted:

Marines need a CAS platform based on the Sikorsky X2 technology, as I've said before.

Actually, if we could talk pie-in-the-sky for a moment, would heavily-armed tiltrotor be of any use? Is that even notionally feasible?

# ¿ Jun 16, 2013 04:25

Rodrigo Diaz: Apr 16, 2007; Knights who are at the wars eat their bread in sorrow;
their ease is weariness and sweat;
they have one good day after many bad

Throatwarbler posted:

Now that we have drones and railguns is a guy in a slow moving low flying plane with machine guns still needed?

Well I was spitballing re: the problems of Cobras keeping up with Ospreys and the problems of STOVL jets. It's an unhappy compromise if it seeks to solve both of those problems but at the very least provides an (admittedly expensive and lengthy) solution to the first problem.

# ¿ Jun 16, 2013 05:04

Rodrigo Diaz: Apr 16, 2007; Knights who are at the wars eat their bread in sorrow;
their ease is weariness and sweat;
they have one good day after many bad

Frozen Horse posted:

The other change is that the spoilt children are more sober now. From the neolithic to the 20th century (Churchill...), everyone in a decision-making capacity in the western world was drunk at the time. The third crusade makes a lot more sense when you realize that it was all planned by a bunch of drunken kids.

This is supremely wrong and you should hit yourself with a brick for believing such retarded nonsense.

# ¿ Jun 28, 2013 06:08

Rodrigo Diaz: Apr 16, 2007; Knights who are at the wars eat their bread in sorrow;
their ease is weariness and sweat;
they have one good day after many bad

hogmartin posted:

They... can sail through space?

each Astute class comes with a Holtzmann drive and Guild navigator.

# ¿ Jul 23, 2013 03:43

Rodrigo Diaz: Apr 16, 2007; Knights who are at the wars eat their bread in sorrow;
their ease is weariness and sweat;
they have one good day after many bad

StandardVC10 posted:

The Flanker is the Su-27, I thought, and I was under the impression that those were pretty big. The MiG-29 is the Fulcrum (which is one of the cooler NATO reporting names, IMO.)

Yes you are correct on all counts. The Flanker's wingspan and length are both greater than the F-15's.

# ¿ Feb 4, 2014 19:51

Rodrigo Diaz: Apr 16, 2007; Knights who are at the wars eat their bread in sorrow;
their ease is weariness and sweat;
they have one good day after many bad

Koesj posted:

Also those US M1s were of the -A1(HA) standard which are a pretty far cry form the vanilla M1 that went into service in 1980.

There were also M60A1 RISE Passives from the Marines' 1st, 3rd, and 4th Tank Battalions

# ¿ Feb 5, 2014 23:49

Rodrigo Diaz: Apr 16, 2007; Knights who are at the wars eat their bread in sorrow;
their ease is weariness and sweat;
they have one good day after many bad

Outside Dawg posted:

Desert Storm was the M-60 series swan song in the US military, the USMC finally got the Abrams shortly after that.

Incorrect. 2d Tank Battalion, commanded by LtCol Cesare Cardi from 1989 until after the war, was fully equipped with M1A1s for Desert Storm. B Company, the first trained in using the Abrams, completed its M1A1 training on 19 November 1990, and the remaining companies finished by 23 December.

Somewhere on one of my hard drives I have a picture of one of 2d Tank Battalion's Abrams, but alas I cannot find it.

Luckily this occasional paper from the USMC History Division has a picture of them right on the cover:
https://www.mcu.usmc.mil/historydiv...ert%20Storm.pdf

edit: I was looking in the wrong place!

double edit: The bottom two pictures of the M60s in my last post are from Desert Storm.

Rodrigo Diaz fucked around with this message at 06:18 on Feb 6, 2014

# ¿ Feb 6, 2014 06:08

Rodrigo Diaz: Apr 16, 2007; Knights who are at the wars eat their bread in sorrow;
their ease is weariness and sweat;
they have one good day after many bad

Outside Dawg posted:

No, not entirely incorrect. "2D" was not entirely equipped with Abrams, trained in their use yes, but fully equipped with Abrams no. 2D was still using the M60A1's during Desert Storm. I could see a platoon or perhaps even a Company of the Battalion having some M1's . Accordingly here is a picture (DOD released image)captioned, "Marines from Company D, 2nd Tank Battalion, drive their M-60A1 main battle tank over a sand berm on Hill 231 while rehearsing their role as part of Task Force Breach Alpha during Operation Desert Storm. The tank is fitted with reactive armor and an M-9 bulldozer kit."

Entirely incorrect.

That tank is either attached from 4th Tank Battalion, which gave its B and C companies to the 2d, or that caption is flat-out wrong. Poor captioning is a relatively common problem in DOD imagery, unfortunately.

I have an oral history interview (which is public domain incidentally) with LtCol Cardi from 8 April 1991 in which he states:

quote:

Shortly after our arrival, we began deprocessing 60 M1A1 main battle tanks ... We deprocessed those tanks between the period of between 7-10 January, a period of about four days, when normally the deprocessing period takes approximately 20 days for the same number of vehicles.
After deprocessing we conducted a road march via hard surface roads to our initial assembly area, which was to be the Thunderbolt Range Complex north of the port of Al Jubayl.

Now, 60 is larger than a full battalion (58) but Cardi may just be rounding up. On the other hand, the occasional paper mentions that there were 5 companies equipped with Abrams, which would mean one of the companies from the 4th would have them, but because it is part of an occasional paper rather than a definitive history, mistakes are relatively common.

quote:

I'm not sure about the link to the paper you posted, but it would not load, which sucks because I would really like to give it a read.

Try right-clicking and downloading it.

# ¿ Feb 6, 2014 15:55

Rodrigo Diaz: Apr 16, 2007; Knights who are at the wars eat their bread in sorrow;
their ease is weariness and sweat;
they have one good day after many bad

Cyrano4747 posted:

I've got not dog in this fight, but just to be an rear end I'll point out that any kind of oral history project needs to be taken with a giant loving grain of salt when you're talking about the specifics of "this had that many of these and we took them to this specific location." Memory is a bitch and even people who shouldn't gently caress up the details (officers, NCOs, etc. who were looking at the original paperwork and maps as part of their daily jobs) do, even after just a couple of years. It can certainly be used for this kind of thing, but it should also be corroborated with either other testimony or a different type of resource whenever possible, especially if you are asserting it over another piece of evidence that you feel is flawed.

And, yes, official captions on images are frequently all loving kinds of cocked up.

This interview was taken about a month and a half after the war ended, so while some of the details are questionable I somehow doubt a battalion commander would forget the difference between having only a company of tanks and an entire battalion of them.

# ¿ Feb 6, 2014 18:17

Rodrigo Diaz: Apr 16, 2007; Knights who are at the wars eat their bread in sorrow;
their ease is weariness and sweat;
they have one good day after many bad

Outside Dawg posted:

A bit more looking into it provided more information than I had read on this before. You are correct that 2D upgraded to Abrams upon deployment, and I was mistaken on that point. However for you to label the entire post as "entirely incorrect" is mistaken, as the Gulf War was indeed the last hurrah for the M60A1 tank in the US military. I did come across this; http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/histories/db/marines/usmcpersiangulfdoc3_016.html

If you'll notice a few posts prior to yours I mentioned that the 1st, 3d, and 4th had M60A1 RISE Passive tanks (shamefully forgetting the reservists of 8th which Veins brought up) and indeed posted pictures of Gulf War M60s. I've never argued against the "last hurrah" point, though I should have edited that out of my post for clarity.

quote:

This seems to suggest that 4th BN, was also equipped with M-1's at the time. Marine Battalions, both Armored and Amphibious, are comprised of 3 "combat" Companies and 1 H&S Company. The M60A1 that I posted is likely part of 2D's Combat Engineer Battalion.

Where are you getting your information from? Marine Tank Battalions had 4 companies equipped with main battle tanks, plus the H&S and a TOW company. By the time Desert Storm actually started, 2d was operating 5 companies (another from 4th), all with M1A1s according to the 2 Mar Div command chronology, a total of 76 Abrams.

That seems like too many tanks, but the command chronology is almost certainly correct.

# ¿ Feb 6, 2014 21:08

Rodrigo Diaz: Apr 16, 2007; Knights who are at the wars eat their bread in sorrow;
their ease is weariness and sweat;
they have one good day after many bad

Helter Skelter posted:

Second page has some info, looks like 2 battalions participated (1st and 3rd, don't know exact number of tanks). No losses to enemy fire (further reading in the thread indicates the Iraqis were terrible shots), though 10 mobility kills were sustained from mines. Between the two, total of 112 tank kills (nearly all being T-55s/T-62s), 32 APCs (BTR/BMP), and 10 trucks. Majority of engagement ranges were under 1000m.

It makes no mention of 8th Tank Battalion, which was attached to 6th Marines and definitely saw combat. Apparently elements of 4th Tank Bn provided tanks for Task Force Breach Alpha, which used M60s, so there were still some Pattons in 4th as well.

That thread mentions 277 M60A1s. Assuming that number is correct that would mean almost 5 full battalions. However, with 1st, 3d, 4th (minus a company equipped with M1A1s), and 8th accounted for, I cannot think of where the remaining battalion would come from. Marines afloat?

# ¿ Feb 7, 2014 18:26

Rodrigo Diaz: Apr 16, 2007; Knights who are at the wars eat their bread in sorrow;
their ease is weariness and sweat;
they have one good day after many bad

Sperglord Actual posted:

Strictly speaking, Merrimack was a wooden ship and Virginia had the cladding.

strictly speaking only traitors acknowledge rebel naming conventions.

# ¿ Sep 24, 2014 20:42

Rodrigo Diaz: Apr 16, 2007; Knights who are at the wars eat their bread in sorrow;
their ease is weariness and sweat;
they have one good day after many bad

buttcoinbrony posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cp7mM2TP_1A

E: Just noticed "Fresh Fruits" on the side of the truck. This is no Russian attack, it was the Ukrainian homonazis!

The best part about the attack on the airbase (i stopped watching after that) is that, implicitly, nobody dies. Even the one F-16 pilot you see is just looking around inside his cockpit confused.

# ¿ Oct 10, 2015 00:27

Rodrigo Diaz: Apr 16, 2007; Knights who are at the wars eat their bread in sorrow;
their ease is weariness and sweat;
they have one good day after many bad

Here's some high definition drone footage of Syria. It's meant to be Russian propaganda but doesn't express any real narrative, it's just explosions and tanks shooting buildings.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Q60yBQG8XI

# ¿ Oct 21, 2015 01:23

Rodrigo Diaz: Apr 16, 2007; Knights who are at the wars eat their bread in sorrow;
their ease is weariness and sweat;
they have one good day after many bad

Well, there goes a KSA M1A2.

Inside the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dL0iK2h5IuM

# ¿ Feb 8, 2016 17:58

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# ¿ May 3, 2024 08:45

Rodrigo Diaz: Apr 16, 2007; Knights who are at the wars eat their bread in sorrow;
their ease is weariness and sweat;
they have one good day after many bad

Force de Fappe posted:

Buk. No capitalization. The Russians have an awesome habit of assigning ominous-sounding codenames to weapons systems, and trees seem to have been in vogue for a while with the Kashtan (chestnut) CIWS, Buk (beech) SAM, and of course the Topol (poplar) ICBM. I believe there are others as well.

In fairness the Topol-M is really loving scary.

# ¿ Apr 24, 2016 22:25

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