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Stroh M.D. posted:S tank info also who can't help but love the draken? a supersonic multirole fighter built and fielded in huge numbers in the era dominated by strictly single role jet designs. very cool.
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Feb 27, 2012 01:14
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Psion posted:In unrelated news I was looking up C-130s to make fun of Treyarch for Black Ops, but figured these are nice pictures. Go herky bird. I'd forgotten several were retrofitted into airborne tankers: this pic works well as a reminder that ch-53s are almost as long as a c-130. longer, if you count the rotor diameter in total length, and almost the same footprint. they're gigantic. edit: the ch-53e is actually longer brains fucked around with this message at 23:43 on Mar 1, 2012 |
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Mar 1, 2012 23:40
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movax posted:Also, this makes entirely too much sense, how is this happening? this is hardly the first time army helicopters have forward-staged off navy ships for marine interdiction, you just don't hear about because it's not something we advertised until now (for budget reasons).
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Apr 1, 2014 20:57
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it is a normal thing, that's more what i was trying to say. if an aviation unit is within flying distance of blue water, it's commonplace to coordinate with the navy for deck landing quals annually (or semiannually, if we can get the support), and i've personally flown missions off FFGs in the Caribbean. we do it a lot, is my point. edit: to expand a bit, the reason you didn't hear about army-navy cooperation, especially in the interdiction role, is that we didn't want congress to get the impression of overlap between army and navy rotary-wing missions when there isn't one. these days, however, it's all about the pacific and like the article says, the army is trying to stay relevant. brains fucked around with this message at 21:11 on Apr 1, 2014 |
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Apr 1, 2014 21:07
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movax posted:Ah, I see what you're saying. Do you have to pre-stage certain GSE on a given vessel, or is it generally interchangeable? (if that info can be shared). I figured the fuel is probably interchangeable as long as your stuff doesn't mind the JP-5 / whatever more stable formulation is on the ship. for the frigates and cruisers, they already have seahawks so there's a lot of commonality there for blackhawks. generally, the supported unit will bring their own stuff, though. obviously, an apache or kiowa unit working off an LHA needs to bring all of their own stuff.
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Apr 1, 2014 21:41
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Smiling Jack posted:Don't forget Traitor, by Ralph Peters. It's a book about how the F-35 is an expensive failure that doesn't work and the procurement process is a corrupt, broken failure. Main villains include evil private contractors and LockMart. haha.....hahahaha
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May 21, 2014 21:23
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Dead Reckoning posted:Here's the inescapable fact: All of the countries we've teed off on in the last two (three?) decades have been equipped with the very best the Soviet Union of the 1960's had to offer. which by the way was a major factor for china to start the massive equipment upgrade program we're seeing now. they weren't exactly enthused about how easily that 60s tech (and therefore their tech) fell apart against a modern US military.
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May 28, 2014 16:18
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Nebakenezzer posted:The thread's unoffical blog has a post on using nukes in Vietnam. from the report cited: quote:“the average number of enemy casualties per strike was about 100.” it is pretty revealing of the thought process in the upper leadership in the military at the time, in the "if things truly go to poo poo we'll just nuke because they're an insta-win" mentality. that's some cold war arrogance at its finest.
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Aug 3, 2014 17:57
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LingcodKilla posted:No bases in reality but how lovely would a chain of tactical nuke strikes north of the border be to basically create a nuclear waste barrier to prevent soldiers from infiltrating south without getting an unhealthy dose of radiation. they covered this too! radiological contamination is heavily dependent on the weather, terrain, and vegetation and even in best-case scenarios the lethal effects would be localized to ground zero for only a couple weeks. a military unit could still move through the target area with a non-significant exposure, whereas any actual population within 200 miles would really suffer the worst of the dosage. they would also have to keep nuking the borders to keep rad levels high enough to prevent troop movement. basically it would take an unsustainable number of nukes, something like 1000 a year! in order to get the rem levels necessary, you'd have to groundburst much larger weapons than sub-10KT, and obviously that puts us outside tac nuke considerations anyways. there is another neat section in that paper about penetrating ground bursts, designed to destroy tunnel systems. would work pretty well in theory, but again, just like tac nukes the hardest part is locating the targets in the first place and we all know how that story went for the air force throughout vietnam.
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Aug 4, 2014 01:06
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Mortabis posted:The way people talk about the F-35 in this thread you'd think a P-51 would make mincemeat of it. The real disadvantage to it isn't performance, it's cost. mlmp08 posted:Well, that and a lot of the things they said would work by now are still having problems or they've had to walk back claimed performance specs. I think it will be a good asset in the end, but only because we've backed ourselves into a corner where the only option is to keep throwing good money after bad until it is the good plane it needs to be. the F-35A/C are going to be good, high-performance aircraft with state-of-the-art sensors and systems (although hardy as "game-changing" as the lockmart propaganda suggests). the problem is that they could have been much better-performing aircraft if the f-35B didn't exist. and then there's the cost. what's the point of having the most state of the art multirole fighters if you can't afford enough of them? you end up crippling capabilities instead of adding them. the perfect example of this is the F-22, which by all accounts is the premier air superiorty fighter on the planet. except they cost so goddamn much we don't have enough of them (yes, i understand it was a political decision by gates, but cost was definitely a factor). now we're faced with juggling deployments of squadrons globally because they simply can't cover enough area with what they've got. now imagine this happening not just with the air superiority/interdiction mission, but all tac air missions. it's going to hurt us no matter what, even if the F-35 turns out to be the most capable aircraft ever to fly in the history of the world (pretty sure this is a lockmart tagline somewhere).
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Sep 7, 2014 18:53
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intresting article on USSR bioweapons programs: http://www.oie.int/doc/ged/D3266.PDF i'll just leave this little gem out here since it's topical I.V. Domaradskij & W. Orent posted:In conclusion, it should be noted that living standards in Russia remain low, and the overwhelming majority of scientists have a miserable existence.
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Oct 5, 2014 20:28
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-A n i m 8- posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GftPyjIm3Ps this is great
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Oct 6, 2014 01:31
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Bolow posted:Parts commonality is an amazing idea and streamlines logistics which is what I and what you're describing. Multi-role is whole 'nother beast entirely. Having a multi-role aircraft is goddamn stupid because there's a big difference between the requirements of a bomber, and a fighter and not a whole lot of overlap. The idea of a troop carrying gunship is a neat idea but it's fundamentally flawed as there's no design overlap between the 2 other than "it flies" unless you plan on stacking people like hellfires on the hardpoints with harrier man pods. bewbies posted:This is the concept I've seen. Specifically, 4 airframes: light attack/scout, attack, utility, and heavy lift. All using the same engines, transmissions, avionics where possible, etc. I think that they've abandoned the attack/utility combination but I'm not sure. i think the idea came from remembering the success of the huey gunships in vietnam alongside the modern-day DAPs, and the very short-sighted thinking that we don't need a platform that was designed and built as a tank killer anymore. the problem is, what really separates the attack birds is the sensor suite. you can accomplish a lot with pair of DAPs, but they'll never match the fidelity of an AH-64E hunter-killer team in terms of sensor coverage because they just weren't designed from the ground up to be able to. and neither would the FVL mixed role platform. since we're on the subject of the parts commonality, can anyone explain why exactly marine air continues to use and develop the superhuey/cobra airframes? especially given their parent organization uses SH-60s for the utility role and sea apaches have been a thing for decades now? is it a space issue on the LHAs or something? full disclosure, we here in army aviation are completely dreading FVL considering just how horrific army acquisitions have gone for the last 15+ years. see LUH, ARH, AAS, etc, the list goes on.
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Oct 6, 2014 23:41
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Dandywalken posted:Has anyone argued that the F-22 would be targetable by VHF/UHF radars that can independently guide in a SAM or AAM at long range via datalink then let it go active when its within range to acquire the Raptor, which would be flying at a specific flight-envelope most of the time? The Raptor would in theory only get notified when the missile is itself active, assumedly with alot of energy to spare to ensure a high probability of a kill. counterpoint: the ADM-160 MALD  S-400s are awfully expensive to waste
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Feb 3, 2015 00:43
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mlmp08 posted:One of ours who just got picked up for CW5 (basically a warrant officer general), has done literally nothing but tactics with some maintenance since the day he pinned warrant. bet that old bastard knew his poo poo like nobody's business, too. this is really the problem i have with commissioned Os; they get shifted around way too much to become truly effective at their jobs. I understand the need for "broadening," and it's definitely relevant if they're, for example, destined to stay inside a specific type of battalion (or squadron) until field-grade command. they must learn every aspect of that organization and i recognize that. the problem rears its ugly head, however, when you continually place junior Os in very technical, complex operational positions that demand at least 18 months to 2+ years to master the job. By the time they figure poo poo out (if ever), they're already out the door, doing great things for the career of the officer but hamstringing the unit operationally. the (extremely valid) counterpoint to this is that if you have toxic leadership you can at least count on them being loving gone 24 months later at the very latest. back on cold war chat, i'd be really interested to see a map of all the continental/ballistic missile defense sites across north america in relation to major population centers. growing up in Boston, i knew about the PAVE PAWS on the cape, but i wonder how many other Nike or Sprint or whatever sites were around the area i grew up in.
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Feb 10, 2015 19:32
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B4Ctom1 posted:Oh no, the SA-7 's only weakness does not appear in that video. the SA-18 and SA-24 would like to have a word.
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Feb 16, 2015 18:37
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crosspost from the space thread because if this isn't cold war i don't know what isCollateral Damage posted:Shaped-charge nuclear warheads? DeusExMachinima posted:Yes, the Casaba Howitzer. choice bits: quote:About this time the representatives of the military (who were funding this project) noticed that if you could make the plume a little faster and with a narrower cone, it would no longer be a propulsion system component. It would be a nuclear directed energy weapon. Thus was born project Casaba-Howitzer. ahh, the 60s. when space-based pumped lasers and nuclear energy weapons were being seriously considered to kill commies 
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Feb 18, 2015 04:30
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mlmp08 posted:Why are they bragging about friendly fire? the real question is why is the air force? Mazz posted:Agreed, the more I see it poo poo on the more I've actually tried to look into the details, and the more I've found people just making GBS threads on it for the sake of making GBS threads on it with very little substantiated ...except it costs about twice as much as its supposed to, which makes the F-22 far more attractive in comparison, and some of the important bits are still not mature even though we're already building them in numbers (concurrency, as you mentioned before). i've said it before and i'll say it again: the F-35A/C will eventually turn out to be a competent, capable fighter (massive expense, notwithstanding). the problem is, it would have been so much more capable if the F-35B didn't exist. the tradeoffs, the compromises, the artificial limitations imposed by the design are all stemming from the result of persistent lobbying by the navy's army's air force to stay relevant. that, and concurrency. who the gently caress could have ever honestly thought this would be a good idea for a platform characterized by upgrades rivaled in expense only by naval refits.
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Feb 18, 2015 19:49
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Nebakenezzer posted:The USAF called it 'featherweighting' and it had three stages. The first stage was removing the defense turrets save the tail gun. The second and third stages were removing the bunks and stove, and the fire suppression system. "drat, #9's on fire again...Jimmy, go grab a fire extinguisher and crawl out there!"
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Mar 3, 2015 01:52
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technically pre-cold war but a good read about what happened to the third bomb made to be dropped on japan (emphasis theirs):Nuclear Secrecy posted:[Daghlian] was carrying one brick [of tungsten carbide] in his left hand over the assembly, to place it in the center of the fifth layer. While he had this brick suspended over the assembly, he noticed (from the instruments) that the addition of this brick would have made the assembly supercritical if placed on top of the assembly. Having realized this, he was withdrawing his left hand and the brick from over the assembly and while doing so the brick slipped out of his hand and fell immediately onto the center of the assembly. Knowing that this brick would made the assembly dangerous, he instinctively and immediately pushed this brick off the assembly with his right hand. While doing this, he stated that he felt a tingling sensation in his right hand and at the same time noticed a blue glow surrounding the assembly, the depth of the blue glow being estimated to be about two inches.
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Mar 29, 2015 03:34
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Cat Hatter posted:Isn't Sikorsky the second largest military helicopter manufacturer in the world and about to win a huge military contract with its X-2 derived designs? How is that not profitable enough for UTC to want to hold on to? because UTC is in the business of pumping out aerospace parts at an insane markup, they're not interesting in building airframes at a much smaller profit margin, especially after sikorsky designed and built the entire X-2/S-97 project from in-house R&D funds (which by doing so is likely to win them the contract, btw).
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Jul 20, 2015 23:01
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Mortabis posted:Where are all the army's aircraft? They have a lot more than NOAA that's for sure. that graphic might take a while considering the army has roughly 4000 airframes. edit: to be fair, the retiring of the OH-58D has put a fair-sized dent in that. although it's nearly 5000 if you lump in all the UAS and SUAS. brains fucked around with this message at 06:31 on Sep 5, 2015 |
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Sep 5, 2015 06:24
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sounds good but the reality is if you need to move large quantities of military equipment you use rail, not interstates.
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Sep 5, 2015 22:46
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"with enough thrust, anything will fly"
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Feb 7, 2016 19:44
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B4Ctom1 posted:"like a brick" too much parasitic drag? sounds like you need more thrust.
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Feb 9, 2016 05:21
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Godholio posted:An F-111 also tricked an Iraqi pilot into flying into the loving ground cartoon-style, which to me implies a pretty short-range engagement. an EF-111, no less. not bad for a spark vark!
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Mar 3, 2016 06:24
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CarForumPoster posted:BTW I talked to an ex marine cobra pilot and he said they definitely can take small arms fire with low risk to the pilot. btw i talked to an ex apache pilot and 30 of his friends and they all said they can definitely take small arms fire with low risk to the surrounding marshes
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Oct 5, 2016 04:51
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Party Plane Jones posted:When would they not immediately get gassed up by a tanker after VTOLing, though? uhhh never because obviously the MAGTF aka The Most Self Sufficient Task Force on Earth don't want or need no stinkin' organic refueling capability* *cue last minute tanker demands yelled at AF
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Jan 26, 2017 00:31
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Platystemon posted:Has it ever been suggested that maybe the U.S. should have held back a little so as to not scare the Russkies so much? the former soviets probably weren't that surprised; the ones who truly had a rude awakening were all the countries (most notably china) that had been buying up soviet exports for decades thinking it, and poorly implemented doctrine, could hold up. remember, while the soviets loved to sell their equipment, it was always de-rated for export or straight up obsolete (to be fair, we do the same). edit: you could make the argument that, in terms of strategic success, the gulf war did more for US foreign military sales than it did in accomplishing the goals of continued stability (of oil production) in the region. brains fucked around with this message at 01:10 on Mar 7, 2017 |
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Mar 7, 2017 01:06
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late to the party so here's stuff from a few pages backDrAlexanderTobacco posted:It's more of an argument for why you should keep your helicopters where they can fight best - The Karbala attack was akin to a cavalry charge when really you want the Apache several KM up in the air (in a permissive airspace) or several miles away popping up from behind trees. MikeCrotch posted:Fair enough, I couldn't remember the specifics. i say bring back the SLAMRAAM...just for the name alone   honestly though, what the army needs is a high-low mix for SHORAD- high energy interceptor with BVR capabilities for attack threats (yes, i'm aware this is no simple feat) and laser for close range UAS/artillery defense (because interceptors are expensive) i can't believe i'm seriously advocating tactical lasers in TYOOL 2017 but here we are the real trick in the next war will be using a search and acquisition radar that doesn't immediately eat an ARM or artillery strike as soon as you turn it on.
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May 5, 2017 00:31
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JcDent posted:Maneuver force? army aviation falls under maneuver because per doctrine it's used to support the ground element and push the forward line of attack (cargo/lift), conduct recon/strikes (attack/UAS), and out-maneuver the enemy force (air assault). CAS is included inside of that.
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May 21, 2017 20:10
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Blistex posted:(cue a sperglord saying gondolas would never launch an F-35) that's never stopped navy planes from launching gondolas.
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Jun 1, 2017 00:15
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if we had 70 more B-1s I'd totally agree for scrapping of the fleet but we don't. the B-52s also have a lot of room for EW and counter-EW capabilities, literally miles of chaff if they need it, and can fire off enough MALDs to overload an IADS segment. don't think that the planners are neglecting them just because they are 1950s-era airframes.
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Aug 9, 2017 21:41
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M_Gargantua posted:Why modernize it? Refitting ancient airframes seems costly for little gain. They haven't made them since 62. Why not, instead, take the B-52 design and use the institutional knowledge to build a better bomb truck. Incorporate all our new engines, and electronics, everything you'd be renovating into old airframes anyway. That way you could start producing those and let them serve a 75 year service life too, as you retire the B-52. because hobbesmaster posted:They have to keep flying because if you look at the recent history of USAF procurement those 76 will be replaced with at best 20 planes. and at an expense that will far exceed the total costs for operating all 76 into the 2050s
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Aug 9, 2017 21:46
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M_Gargantua posted:Well, operation bomb useless dirt may have degraded equipment readiness, but has provided invaluable training to the services. Low intensity combat is still combat and is still better training than hours on a range. No other country has that at the scale we do, outside their special forces. The other big advantage we have from forever war is our logistics are actually up to snuff for mobilizing across the entire globe. Sure carriers are great for force projection but we've also got the continuation and resupply ability. Most countries will likely suffer growing pains if they have to sustain much outside their boarders. there's a couple problems with this line of thinking. the first is that combat experience is evaporating by the day- just look at the Army. outside of SF, at any given point there's only about 10,000 soldiers in actual combat theaters right now. that's 10k out of 1 million soldiers getting combat experience per year. the rate of soldiers with previous combat experience exiting the service greatly outpaces the new experience gained per year. you want to know where 15 years of Army combat experience went? the answer is out the door thanks to sequestration and RIF for the last 3 years. the next problem is the type of experience they are getting: asymmetric warfare and COIN are all fine and wonderful but they instill terrible operational habits. just look at the complete shitshow that happened when NTC switched to DATE (force-on-force or near-peer) scenarios. the units rotating through were completely unprepared for someone who actually fights back. the army is clawing back 1980s maneuver doctrine and making good progress but it took significant training failures to prove the point. a perfect example of this is the reaction of army observers sent to Ukraine, who realized that the army was completely unprepared for that type of modern warfare. another problem is the logistics network you touted. logistics is incontestably what makes the US a superpower. however, almost 30 straight years of conflict and 17 years of major ground operations have left pretty much every single link of the logistics network at the breaking point. see AMC's mission readiness, or the MSC's complete lack of ships, or the death of the US merchant marine. the last problem with all of this is the equipment we've been using to fight this whole time. every major combat system is being used far past the projected rates, and with no replacements in sight and constantly deferred maintenance, it's no wonder readiness is historically low. see the navy flying all of their hours off the F-18s to the point where they have to buy more because the replacement F-35s can't be built fast enough given current op-tempo. this is of course only considering things from the training and readiness aspect, and ignoring the strategic pointlessness of Operation Bomb Useless Dirt 2k17. edit: forget sometimes this isn't gip RIF - reduction-in-force COIN - Counter Insurgency NTC - National Training Center DATE - Decisive Action Training Environment AMC - Air Mobility Command MSC - Military Sealift Command brains fucked around with this message at 18:07 on Aug 10, 2017 |
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Aug 10, 2017 17:53
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Cyrano4747 posted:I'm normally not a fan of the Economist's "what if" articles, but they ran a pretty good one outlining a theoretical chain of events leading to nukes cooking off on the Korean peninsula. The short version is that Lil Kim had to do stupid poo poo for domestic political reasons, then had to double down on that stupid poo poo to not look weak in the face of the American response, then the Americans had to respond to THAT under the assumption that he wasn't just playing pretend, then the DPRK had to go all in because oh gently caress this is going to lead to regime change, isn't' it? ...like being antagonized into promising to splash 4 ballistic missiles 20 miles from US territory, detailing down to the time in flight, and not being able to back down because it was said so therefore it must happen to avoiding looking weak? all the while the antagonist doubles down on rhetoric? it's like we can watch the foreshadowing in real time.
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Aug 10, 2017 22:20
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Warbadger posted:Well, honestly I think you've missed the mark by a pretty long shot. It has little to do with a nuclear deterrent aimed at the outside parties who haven't made any serious move against NK for the last 60 years, if for no other reason than they already have demonstrated a nuclear deterrent. Instead, this is about the same thing the sudden cross-border shelling, sinking of the Cheonan, and the various North Korean leaders ending up dead was about - KJU is a fat nobody who was suddenly shoehorned into power as his father died. He needs to soludify his own position and lead a North Korean leadership that justifies many of its current policies and past actions on being the only defense against the ravening mud-blood horde who are poised to invade. They can't just stop doing that and they can't allow it to look like it isn't true - which is becoming more difficult over time with the dramatically expanded black and grey markets along with technology. you're right in that they won't back down to save face but wrong for the reason. the problem is that in the past, when they've interpreted aggression or dangerous military buildup and lashed out, there has historically been a muted response from the US (the ROK is always happy to trade limited artillery fire but still far short of full engagement), which to them achieves their goal of reinforcing the status quo of not being invaded. now that trump is matching or exceeding their rhetoric, they're going to be even more fearful of a preliminary strike and lash out more to show their strength and then we're on a short course to war. as for the propaganda aspect, let's not pretend like they actually need to do anything externally at all to create propaganda to control the populace. that machine is well-oiled and has no shortage of juche material to come up with. Sperglord posted:From the last page or so, we are heading into a crisis with North Korea with a military which has large readiness problems.... That Works posted:Naive question here but where's the money go? We always hear the constant harping about how we spend more on defense than x countries combined. Is it just that to run as big of a setup as we have properly we'd need even more money or?
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Aug 11, 2017 04:01
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there is no circumstance where the US can neutralize 8,000 pieces of artillery before they inflict heavy civilian casualties. and if the norks start slinging chemical weapons, which they have plenty of, only 1 needs to get through before the cost calculus fails. and now, you have to add in potential nuclear exchange. again, this isn't to say that the US and ROK forces wouldn't win handily, but only 1 warhead needs to get across the 38th and there is just no military option to prevent that from happening.
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Aug 11, 2017 04:12
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Tetraptous posted:A merger between UTC and Raytheon doesn't seem too bad from a business point of view; they don't seem to have too much overlap, despite both being major defense contractors. That said, if they're plan was to go all in on defense, selling Sikorsky seems weird in retrospect!
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Jun 10, 2019 22:56
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aphid_licker posted:Idk how to phrase this but are the Iranians actively looking for an excuse to throw down the way Bolton is or can we assume that there is fuckery involved here? This just seems fishy as hell. At this point, in lieu of hard facts (Bolton finger pointing doesn't count), it would be extremely stupid and shortsighted for the Iranians to do something like target commercial oil shipping since it's practically the one singular thing that could solidly coalesce international support for a military intervention against them. and i have a hard time believing they're actually that stupid.
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Jun 13, 2019 18:35
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