bewbies posted:

I think the two biggest legitimate complaints about the brad are 1) the weight, which really wasn't as big of a deal when we kept 100,000 dudes forward deployed in Europe (it is a much bigger deal now as we have to move them from Hood to wherever and that is hard), and in any case in order to meet those protection levels it had to weigh that much, and 2) it can't carry a whole squad, which makes moving around with mounted dudes more awkward than it needs to be.

B4Ctom1 posted:

THAAD for S. Korea
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-36742751

I think they need something like Iron Dome. A defense in depth using Iron Dome, Patriots, and THAAD.

Mortabis posted:

You could use Iron Dome to protect military bases, artillery, and other air defenses from North Korean artillery fire in addition to the most highly populated areas.

Mortabis posted:

You might be over-estimating the amount of functioning artillery pieces the North Koreans have that: 1. can reach Seoul 2. are positioned within range of Seoul rather than elsewhere on the DMZ.

Most of their artillery is not that long-ranged; much of the rest is probably broken. Of the ones that can fire, many of the shells would miss and many of those that hit would be duds. When they shelled that island something like a quarter wound up not exploding.

In any case I think the best use for Iron Dome would be to protect the equipment that you use for counter-battery fire/air defense in the first place.

The best defense of course is the fact that we could flatten them if we got sufficiently pissed off, and they know it. (e: which also suggests that future altercations will be of the "shelling the island" form where the volume of fire isn't that huge)

B4Ctom1 posted:

6 AMRAAMS and 2 JDAMS sounds like party time for the F-35

bewbies posted:

iron dome does not have the capability to intercept large tube artillery raids

Godholio posted:

I think it's photoshopped. The shadows don't really make sense, there's no mounting hardware where those two 120s are, and the configuration is actually one AIM-120 and one JDAM per bay. The 120 on the door is legit.

Mazz posted:

Yeah definite photoshop, look at the shadow on the top two missiles then on the actual outboard one.

I think the last roadmap I saw for the F-35 had a high capacity AtA loadout in like 2025, and it was pretty reliant on the either a later mark or the follow up missile to the AMRAAM being a better fit. The goal is 3 per bay though.

Warbadger posted:

I think his argument is that it wouldn't be saturated as the North Koreans don't actually have a lot of guns that can reach downtown Seoul.

As far as tube guns go, only the biggest guns can reach Seoul across the DMZ and only if they use rocket assisted projectiles. This basically limits it to the ~500 170mm Koksan guns, minus some number supplied to Iraq and Iran. Each can fire 1 round every 2.5 mins. Even if half didn't function or weren't parked right at the border with Seoul that's still a lot of shells in the air.

Then you've got the rocket artillery.

I don't think it'd be enough to flatten Seoul, personally, but you'd need an awful lot of Iron Dome batteries to make a dent in it.

hogmartin posted:

The F-117 has come and gone in my lifetime, checking to see if RAM is intact is probably a solved - or at least addressed - problem by now.

Godholio posted:

Yes. It doesn't really get press but the F-22 has been on semi-regular deployments to the Persian Gulf for years, and they're parked outside in places like Florida and the southwest (ie humidity vs desert). There are plenty of times where sortie generation is pushed. In short this has been a non-factor for roughly a decade, but "this works fine and we do this on a daily basis" doesn't really get the headlines.

iyaayas01 posted:

As Godholio pointed out, we've been doing this for a decade now. The F-22 basically "cracked the code" on how to deal with LO coatings in an operational environment (as opposed to the F-117/B-2 "requires bespoke hangars and special snowflake treatment"). The F-35 is even better/lower maintenance in that regard.

CarForumPoster posted:

It has been my experience that anything to do with RAM is something no one in the know will ever comment on even in the most vague of terms.

Smiling Jack posted:

A STOVL stealth fighter is dope as hell, the question is were the compromises made for the AF/USN worth it.

Arglebargle III posted:

I think tactically the USAF doesn't see a need to maintain an all stealth force for the duration of a conflict. Isn't the idea that the stealth planes "kick in the door", i.e. bomb all the air defenses and shoot down all the hostile fighters? Then older planes with more payload do the bomb truck job.

hobbesmaster posted:

I was thinking more from a technical standpoint but point taken.

I guess they're not too much smaller than the Patriot missiles so it'd be the same size problem?

TCD posted:

Doesn't seem to have stopped Aegis ashore.

BIG HEADLINE posted:

http://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/this-is-a-real-tweet-from-the-russian-embassy-in-the-un-1787437075

Idiocy of this aside, I'm sure the EW/SEAD community is anxious to sniff these acquisition radars. Diplomatically it's a 'facepalm' moment, but militarily, it's "hey, while you're at it, bring down S-400s too! Can you make them all current variants, too? Pretty please?"

Of course, given how aggressively they're trying to market S-300 to everyone whose check will clear, I'm *totally* sure this isn't a way to try and demonstrate its efficacy in tracking and/or engaging the Raptor.

Murgos posted:

It kind of seems like lack of confidence in your naval air. "Whelp, once all the aircraft have been destroyed we can still operate as a lovely missile frigate."

B4Ctom1 posted:

A friend of mine called this the AWACS killer
http://alert5.com/2016/11/21/j-16-with-new-massive-air-to-air-missile/

Godholio posted:

That page is full of junior high level speculation and bullshit. I simply do not believe that 300km claim at all. Terminal sensor range of 20km...maybe, but I'd be surprised. 300 km is roughly 160 nm, well short of the E-3's 250 nm radar range. Midcourse guidance is also a problem because you don't have a fighter radar capable of seeing far enough anyway. You're effectively firing blind or based on off-board data, and there aren't many radars in the world capable of providing sufficient fidelity at that range.

Godholio posted:

Ultimately it comes down to whether you believe the Chinese have better motors than the US and Russia (to get the theorized range), and a better miniaturized IR seeker or radar set than the US and Russia. Because the active search volume for an emitter that size is not large; IR is more realistic, but I still have serious doubts. It needs to be accurately guided to have a loving prayer, and the longer the shot, the more accurate the supporting data has to be. You're right that the concept is clear; but execution is a lot more difficult.

CarForumPoster posted:

Long version:
My short time time in electronics manufacturing in the tech industry taught me that no matter how much money/American engineers you throw at the problem China has this endemic "use the cheapest ingredients" culture that will foil their best attempts at just about anything. It's so deeply ingrained it's almost impossible to break even when they're an OEM with tightly controlled procedures and the leading electronics OEM in the whole country...maybe the whole world. Even when you demonstrate that the new way is 2 seconds longer at step X but saves 5 minutes down the road. If they can skip a step to save time they will. Often that step is one that absolutely cannot skip and they usually don't tell anyone or document anything. Its amazing how it holds them back.

CarForumPoster posted:

To the first part: half my research team and my research professor in college had their undergrad from China and were PhD candidates or post docs in Mech E at an American university. All brilliant, especially at the thing Chinese undergrad does focus on which is math. None of them could fix a car. None of them built things in their free time. Even they suffered from the cheap ingredients problem as well. When they'd spec equipment they'd buy the cheapest possible thing even on a research grant with $1m+ budget and the equipment was 500 for the POS or $3000 for a good item. I didn't realize this was a Chinese culture thing until my job in tech though. We'd sometimes lose a week of work because of trying to fiddle with crappy equipment.

Godholio posted:

It probably doesn't.

CarForumPoster posted:

This is one of those questions that is a constant area of research in the military and specific enough no one will answer it.

Godholio posted:

david_a posted:

I swear you have to go to this place like a minimum of three times before you even notice half the stuff. See that big green thing next to the XB-70? That's a HEXAGON KH-9, the last and most badass film-based spy satellite the US used. Amazing in its own right, but I didn't pay any notice to it until my third trip because it used to be wedged between a B-36 and RB-47 and there was a model atomic bomb close by and omigosh look at that B-58 over there

Anyway, the "Big Bird's" camera could take stereo pictures with a maximum resolution of 0.6 meters. The KH-9 had four enormous film pods that it would detach and let fall back to earth, where something like a Flying Boxcar would snatch it in midair(!)

david_a posted:

I think somebody found your camera! The pictures in that article also clearly show that the pods have a rocket engine.

The satellite you saw is probably the same one that's at the AF Museum. Apparently there is only one total on display

Phanatic posted:

It's not so much the frequency that's directly relevant here. Again, what you are really neglecting is *aperture*. Aperture goes in large part to determining both gain and resolution, and you are limited to how wide an aperture you can have by more-or-less the diameter of the missile body.

Gain = 4*pi*aperture/wavelength^2

Low-frequency = high-wavelength. So for a given size antenna, like what you can fit into a missile, if you use a low-frequency beam then your wavelength is big and your wavelength^2 is really big so your gain sucks so you're not getting a return unless you get closer. That's why when you're trying to hit something with a missile, you use high-frequency radars so that you maximize the gain of your relatively tiny antenna.

Sperglord Actual posted:

The same world in which "not being communist" also outweighs political oppression.

quote:

As part of the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory's (AFRL) supersonic turbine engine for long-range (STELR) program, both are working on compact jet engines that would propel cruise missiles at speeds of up to Mach 3.2, or 2,435 miles an hour.

Such a missile would be as fast as the SR-71 Blackbird, the fastest plane ever built. The venerable Tomahawk cruise missile, by comparison, is powered by a small turbojet engine that flies at relatively pokey 550 miles an hour. 

BIG HEADLINE posted:

Everywhere except the United States has been able to 'enjoy' Cuba for the past few decades. Up until recently it's the only place in the world people other than Americans could vacation in the 'Americas' and not have to run into Americans.

BIG HEADLINE posted:

Europeans have a soft spot for warm and sunny places they can go to have even kinkier sex than in their own country.

M_Gargantua posted:

A Mach 3 coastal launch barrage will hit a huge swash of high value targets in minutes.

An exchange like that would functionally end civilization in an hour with a few months of nuclear pot shots with retaliatory systems that will do grave harm but nothing irrecoverable.

Yet while the east has to take the threat of a US blitzkrieg seriously we also can't not develop the capability with the hope that the incredible immenint danger and threat keeps the peace for another 100 years.

Any adversary we would use a conventional varrient on wouldn't be worth the price tag but well launch them anyway for practice, fun, and the continuing employment of lockmart

Captain von Trapp posted:

Against a modern IADS, I'm not so sure. A monolithic airbreather at mach 3 is nothing to sneeze at, but it's also been within the bailiwick of SAMs for a long time. It's no mach 20 warhead hiding in a forest of penaids.

TsarZiedonis posted:

I think the issue with the increased proliferation of such cruise missiles isn't that the technology doesn't exist to detect and destroy them, it just isn't deployed in anything like sufficient quantities around any powers respective heartland, and would probably be cost prohibitive to do so.

Providing close in anti high speed, low altitude cruise missile defense for an airbase or a tank battalion in the field is totally a done thing. Providing such coverage for, say, the eastern seaboard is not.

Murgos posted:

Oddly, the thing that gets people all jumpy lately, Conventional Prompt Global Strike, is pretty much worthless as a first strike weapon as it relies on relatively easily detected ICBM/SLBM launches and easily tracked sub orbital trajectories for 3/4ths of it's flight. I guess the fear there would be that we would disguise a nuclear first strike as a conventional strike against some lovely target in Afghanistan? Eh, I don't see it.

bewbies posted:

huh?

Anyway the biggest reason US/NATO are pursuing high speed LO cruise missiles isn't for some nuclear decapitation strike, it is to give us a viable means of suppressing or destroying 4th generation ground based air defenses. Right now we're relying on 70's-era anti radiation missiles and short range subsonic LO air launched standoff weapons, neither of which would do well against a platform like an S-400. The idea is coupling a high speed atmospheric/aerodynamic penetrator with a fancy new ballistic system and perhaps at that point we'll have caught up to the Russians and Chinese when it comes to SEAD.