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movax posted:Indeed. I've been meaning to put up a thread mocking Clancy for a few months now in GiP; I've got the OP like half-written. I had recently re-read all the Clancy books for the first-time since I was younger, and holy poo poo do they read differently when you're 21 instead of 12. I'd love for you to do this. The last Tom Clancy book I read was about evil Bulgarians assassinating the pope, and for some reason there was extended commentary about how terrible public health care systems are compared to 'merica's way.
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Nov 9, 2011 04:37
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Cyrano4747 posted:So, people who know - why the gently caress does the Harrier exist in US stocks? I'll be damned if I have ever been able to figure out what it's niche is, beyond being something that lets Marines fantasize about fighting WW2 again. That's a good question, especially when the whole VTOL thing is fiendishly complex and dangerous in an airplane. Like the Osprey demonstrated a few times, when you are going from vertical thrust to horizontal thrust, there's a dangerous window where neither system is working. I didn't pick up about the whole "Let's fight WW2 again" thing, though. This is not just a marine thing; the Navy with all it's carrier groups appears to be dreaming of fighting the Japanese Imperial fleet again. priznat posted:I really hope the Canadian gov't takes a sober second look at these planes and goes into it with full realization of what a potential albatross it's gonna be, not just for defense spending. It's one thing if the planes are expensive but a quality product, but to have something that's going to be ridiculously expensive and potentially riddled with even more expensive to fix issues, ugh. Sadly, I think the most important factor here is the amount of slush money going to Canadian businesses, rather then any sort of 'effectiveness' criteria. That and Harper's rule whenever America is concerned is to "Do whatever they want." I'm actually concerned enough about this that I'm going to write a letter to my MP, even though he's a Con and this district might actually be getting some of that slush money. After discussing this with slidebite in the other thread, I think what I really want is some kinda assurance that the government isn't just doing it for the money, that they actually give some sort of drat about the end product. It would be great if the government established some basic criteria for the acceptance of the F-35. Like "If it's not ready by X date, we'll have to pursue other options." I think the unit costs are already making the plane borderline nonviable, anyway. We'll see if that has any impact at the top.
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Dec 14, 2011 19:28
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Phanatic posted:So basically, what are you referring to? When you have a fixed wing, like with a harrier or the Osprey, you have to transition between two different sources of lift. You can do it, obviously, but doing that while the aircraft is in the sky is, well, tricky. If the pilot screws up, suddenly they are in something that a hundred feet off the ground with no lift. It's why the Harrier is(was?) the most dangerous aircraft in the western arsenal, having killed more of its own pilots then any other. But yeah, "when nether system is working" isn't quite right.
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Dec 15, 2011 02:21
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winnydpu posted:The VL part of STOVL is a little trickier, however. Interesting, the British actually used something like this operationally during WW2. Some merchant ships carried a Hurricane fighter that would launch from a catapult then ditch in the sea when it was out of gas. Yeah, the CAM ships, to protect against Fw 200 Condor attacks. They did manage to shoot down a few Condors, though the program on a whole was a big waste of resources. You needed several pilots per fighter (they'd sit in the cockpit in two hour shifts) and because the aircraft just sat on a ship's deck, they'd launch and find out things didn't work, like the machine guns. The next improvisation they tried, escort carriers, proved to be the good idea.
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Feb 8, 2012 19:10
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Canadian F-35s: God himself approves TL;DR: This week a defense journal put out a comprehensive criticism of the F-35. The responce of the asst. Defense minister was "All the people who wrote that are leftists." When pressed further (and somebody pointed out all the facts in the report were taken from American government sources, he responded: ”The member opposite is referring to a failed NDP candidate who wrote this report, critical of everything that is holy and decent about this government’s efforts to provide our military men and women with the resources,” (sic) You got that, Canadians - any criticism at all of the F-35 = blasphemy. Nebakenezzer fucked around with this message at 20:02 on Feb 11, 2012 |
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Feb 11, 2012 19:59
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priznat posted:That's pretty much how the Conservative party rolls these days.. Dissent gets you labelled as an agitator/terrorist and then whatever bill gets rammed through anyway. I was amazed before the election that the one time the Cons do something I agree with is the only time the entire political establishment rose with one voice to stop them
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Feb 11, 2012 20:04
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Cyrano4747 posted:Well, with China I suspect it has more to do with their long view on human rights, period. They have a VERY long history of vetoing anything that's done on the basis of human rights violations in general, and crackdowns on anti-government protest specifically. Given this...does that mean any attempts by the west to change the anti-human rights view is window dressing and bullshit?
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Feb 13, 2012 21:35
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Slo-Tek posted:Just picked this article out of a different aerospace blog. Potentially interesting, but I think mostly crap. Interesting, but yeah, I share your complaint. Also, blaming the people at the coal face and engineers and not mentioning at all the procurement people strikes me as intellectually dishonest. Of course projects should perform at 100% and never work. They're way more money in that then making things that work.
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Feb 14, 2012 00:58
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Thanks for the big swedepost, Stroh. I really enjoyed it. (Especially Drakens I funkin' *love* Drakens.) I've heard a bit about the Archer because Canada is evaluating them. They seem like good equipment.
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Feb 27, 2012 20:35
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Flanker posted:I used to defend the F35 purchase, now I'm full reverse and ecstatic they're talking about going with something else. Glad to hear it. I have heard a few things lately along the lines of "we can go with other options" from the Cons, but given that the whole process has been based on lies, this could be another lie to try and dampen things down a bit On the other hand, maybe the revelation that even the requirements (which were written like some pol trying to write a job ad so he only could hire his cousin) say not to buy the F-35 is an attempt to walk back on this issue, so the Cons can make a graceful exit. My cynicism says otherwise, though Flanker posted:If Canada adopts the Gripen, Typhoon or Rafale instead of the F35, I wouldn't lose a loving minute of sleep over it. Me nether. I've heard that the Gripen and the Rafale are pretty tough planes; just the thing if we're going to fly 'em like Canadians (IE constantly for like 40 years.) 
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Mar 27, 2012 19:01
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Oxford Comma posted:I can understand the Air Force, Navy, and Marines wanting the same plane to keep costs down. But in hindsight, would it be cheaper for each to buy their own plane than to try to make one plane fit three different holes? Well if you want something good and cost effective, yeah. But by getting it to replace like 12 different planes, the complexity (and development time) goes way, way, up. It also becomes more important to the government which means you can be all sorts of incompetent and they won't cancel the project. Ka-ching! Honestly, they missed a trick. They should have also proposed some sort of flying boat F-35 for the Coast Guard, and made it able to go into space for NASA.
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Mar 28, 2012 01:13
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I think starting with the T-54/55 series, the Soviet tank corps had a height max of 5'5. OK, I have a tank question. Are MBTs today in the west made to be (relatively) cheap and mass producible? I know (thanks to my nerd hobby of scale modeling) that the Soviets were fairly obsessive about making tanks to certain costs, because they were going to mass produce the poo poo out of them. The T-72, especially, was like the tank that wal-mart built. So in a WW 3 scenario, did modern western tank designs (the M1, the Leopard 2, the Challenger) take into account mass-reproducibility, so production could be cranked up if needed?
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Mar 29, 2012 23:43
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Forums Terrorist posted:It is my firm belief that in part because of all this the M1 Abrams is the finest weapons system the US has ever deployed, and I'm saying that as a huge goddamned Russophile. I think I agree. Even if the RnD programs sometimes get a little out of control (I remember this being a problem with the Challenger 2) the end products seem to work extremely well and unlike lots of other recent programs, western tanks have a handle on procurement price. As to future M1 replacements, I know with the Challenger 2 there's no plan to replace them in the foreseeable future, simply because there's nothing on the horizon that could best it in tank combat. I think the M1 is the same way; upgrades to new threats, not a new design, is the plan. That said, I have no idea if the line for producing M1s still exists. It's possible that the US could just use up its entire force of tanks over decades of low intensity conflict. Flanker posted:In my highly specified masturbatory fantasy these super flankers or PAK-FAs would be licensed built in Canada with NATO spec weapons, avionics comms etc. Essentially we'd just pay for rights to the airframes and fill it with Canadian guts. I was picturing something like this too (er, minus wet Daniel Craig) even though I know it's not very realistic. I didn't know the Eurofighrer had problems...are we talking normal sort or F-35 sort of problems? (That's another thing I utterly don't get about the F-35 - in Europe most of the buyers already have new planes in the form of the eurofighter.)
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Mar 30, 2012 21:02
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grover posted:Or 40 Mig-21s! If the F-35 is sitting broken on the runway when the attack comes a single MiG 21 will be sufficient
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Mar 31, 2012 04:12
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LavistaSays posted:They would probably be used to place heavy armor, right at the onset of conflict with other traditional airborne or air asssault forces. Instead of your tanks taking days to get to the front, you're spearheading with heavy armor integrated to your force, a mere hours after invasion. Tanks in places tanks shouldn't be in yet. Huge force multiplyer. I'm not sure what the plans were, but the Soviets also developed the world's largest hovercraft. It looks like something Cobra would use for invading. (I learned this through Wings of Russia, which has an entire episode devoted to Russian hovercraft and wing in ground effect vehicles.)
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Apr 3, 2012 22:13
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Invalido posted:Swedish Leopards Well, there goes another illusion: I always figured the gun barrel would last the Battle of Stalingrad without much trouble. So when tanks are operating, they have to have crates of barrels back at base as replacements? When a barrel is worn, can it be refurbished?
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Apr 8, 2012 19:40
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salt vampire posted:A10 Tank Killer was one of my favorite games from back in the DOS days. Tons of fun. I played it after F117A and was disappointing that all the missions were scripted and had to be done a certain way. F117A I wasted *way* too much time on. It did, however, teach me geography. When Libya exploded, I knew where Benghazi and Tripoli were. Also because I played on a 286 mostly, it ran a little slow, so the enemy aircraft using their guns always missed. I could still hit them, though, and some missions had me shoot down 10 + enemy fighters.
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Apr 10, 2012 00:43
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Myoclonic Jerk posted:My first thought was "Feh, what does Wikipedia know," then I went Sounds cool, I'll be readin' it. Will you be posting it in GiP, or here? One thing I hope you can help me out with is understanding the technology in post-war tanks. In WW2, everything is so simple: bigger gun = better, moar armor = tougher. The technology was easily understood, even by clods like me. Post-war, things get hella complected. Kinetic energy perpetrator: I get it. A pointy super-hard thing that takes its kinetic energy and dumps it into a tiny bit of an enemy tank's hull, liquifying it. A excellent way to drill through a hard thing. Explosive reactive armor I also understand. Make a counter force to the dangerous force penetrating the tank. I'm pretty much lost beyond that. HEAT explosives are explosives that only explode in one direction? Composite armor: it protects against KE rounds and cones of exploding with ceramics. And so on. These things, and the science behind them, escapes me.
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Apr 10, 2012 18:55
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Forums Terrorist posted:HEAT = An explosion forced into a single direction so that a small area of amour is overwhelmed with force. OK, I understand this, but...how?
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Apr 10, 2012 19:11
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Phanatic posted:Thank you for getting this right. If I see one more pseudo-explanation about a molten jet, or a gaseous jet, or a jet of plasma, that burns or melts through the armor...well, I guess I'll be annoyed again. Reading through the relevant Wikipedia articles, it may amuse you to know that all of them are prefaced with "BTW don't confuse this with burning or heat, it's not that"
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Apr 10, 2012 22:18
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Snowdens Secret posted:We're buying lots of the Littoral Combat Ships, but they're also mission creeped to all hell, not intended for blue-water ops, essentially unarmed, full of teething issues, and overall totally unsuited for traditional grey-hull roles. The stupid cable news crawl at the gym informed me that "the Littoral combat ship was once filled with cost overruns and delays, but now stands poised to become a central part of the US Navy's strategy." Given everything I've read about it, it sounds like the ultimate boondoggle ship, a floating F-35. And the Virgina class is turning into a poo poo parade too? Possibly the Canadian method of procurement has infected America somehow?
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Apr 13, 2012 23:18
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Psion posted:I use missile boats toting Penguins to sink Russian ships all the time. I think you just came up with the next great cellphone game.
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Apr 14, 2012 01:30
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The plant that makes the F-35 is on strike. The best part of the article is white-collar workers being used to keep the line operational, which certainly fills me with hope regarding all those quality control problems.
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Apr 24, 2012 21:46
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monkeytennis posted:She was outside for the first time this year the other day too: Is it true that the pilot was the only one who got an ejection seat?
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Apr 26, 2012 02:36
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Flanker posted:This is Canada 1000x. People seriously asked me why we need new jets, right to my face, while our guys were running sorties into Libya in F-18s from the late 70's. I was about to post "In Canada this is in the form of "why do we need fighter jets to intercept 50 year old Soviet bombers  " but you beat me to it.Armyman25 posted:The comments are, as always, terrible. I was amused by this one: quote:Sell India or Japan the Kitty Hawk and or Enterprise — both countries have a naval history. India started in WW2– when it was the Royal Indian Navy and of course Japan and the Imperial Navy. I think both of those countries are more than capabile of containing the PRC Navy. Logically one would think the next conflict in the area would start as a territorial dispute then expanding to a more protracted sea/latorial war. God help the LCS’s without air support. Read the “Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors” or “Twilight of the Fleet” to understand what happens to a naval force w/o air cover. Both India and Japan have experience operating carries and air craft at sea. What happened to SATO. Is it still functioning? Should not leave out the PI. As the PRC becomes more or a threat to their territorial waters they will either give in to China or ask for our assistance. My bet is the PI stands up for itself. And our ace in the hole is the Auzzies and New Zenlanders. New Zealand should change its name to New Zenland
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May 1, 2012 17:06
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This was my first thought; my impression is that the US navy doesn't retire carriers until they are ready for the scrapyard. Then again, I know its been 70 years, but the idea of giving the Japanese carriers is hilarious, like giving the Germans submarines.
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May 1, 2012 17:35
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Flanker posted:Another article mentions the RCAF is not looking at alternatives. What a bunch of babies. Given the systematic lying and corruption of the acquisition process thus far, I find it very difficult to believe the government is actually reconsidering things, and not just, well, telling more lies
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May 5, 2012 23:24
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Phanatic posted:At this point, I have to ask: does *any* government have a military procurement process that isn't an utter Mongolian cluster gently caress? Good question. South Africa? Israel? OK, here's a rumor that I picked up from Wikipeida: somewhere on it there's a really in-depth discussion of nuclear weapons, and who tried to get them, and who has the capacity to make them. (The list of countries that have had nuclear weapon programs at one time or another just to say "gently caress it, it's too expensive" is amazing. Australia, Brazil, and Switzerland are the names that stick out to me.) Anyway, the article also ranked nations in their ability to produce nuclear weapons in the future, if they didn't already have them. There were only three nations that could produce weapons in a short period of time (one to two years) as only they had plenty of experience with atomic technology and the resources to do it. Those were Germany, Canada, and Japan. I'm going to discount the first two, and ask about Japan. According to the article, Japan has a large stockpile of weapons grade plutonium, and a space launch vehicle that is a copy of an American ICBM. So, if they decided to go nuclear, they could do it in very short order. My question is: is this true, or is this some weird leftover yellow peril talk?
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May 13, 2012 16:33
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Memento1979 posted:
Is someone going to get yelled at for this?
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May 15, 2012 00:30
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Neophyte posted:Normal negotiation strategy: Ah, so the nation is not *actually* schizophrenic, it just appears to be.
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May 16, 2012 21:49
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Wikipedia says that there are *still* nations using the T-34/85. I imagine that means they are all rusting away in a forgotten depot somewhere. Except North Korea.
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Jun 4, 2012 02:46
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I believe the T-64 didn't appear in Moscow parades till the eighties.
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Jun 4, 2012 05:00
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Acebuckeye13 posted:Hey, I remember that book! I should dig it out and read it again sometime. Many of the sunk Midway carriers the IJN had (like the Akagi) started as merchant ship hulls, and where later converted to carriers. Carrier doctrine for the Japanese emphasized speed and firepower, at the cost of damage control. John Ford was mentioned by iyaayas. Dude was actually on Midway Island during the battle, and was actually wounded there. He was up in a water tower getting footage of a IJN air attack when he was hit by shrapnel. I mention this because he was one of the biggest directors in Hollywood, who I think had already won academy awards, and, well, I can't really picture most Hollywood types today volunteering to go to the Island where the Japanese were about to invade. Taerkar posted:IIRC most of the US Navy shipbuilding, especially of the large displacement hulls, was limited to the Eastern Seaboard and not the West Coast. If the US Pacific Fleet was crippled and Pearl Harbor isolated, then the IJN could have potentially struck the Panama Canal, resulting in the need for all USN ships to go around South America to get to the Pacific. The Japanese already had a plan to do this. They were going to build a small fleet of submarine aircraft carriers to attack the eastern portion of the Panama canal. They had good intelligence as to where to strike as well; a captured marine told them about the lightness of the defenses on the eastern side. The target would have been a specific loch that would have drained an artificial lake, rendering the canal unusable for 6 months to a year. Since I'm already kinda king sperg in the other thread, let me just say the I-400 series of submarines was really cool and in some ways groundbreaking, and here's a PBS documentary on them.
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Jun 4, 2012 18:53
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Zorak of Michigan posted:They were converted from warships, not merchant ships. IIRC Akagi was a battlecruiser and Kaga a battleship as laid down. The point is valid, though, and the descriptions of Japanese damage control and survivability features in Shattered Sword make it clear that the IJN just didn't get it. Oops, yeah, my mistake.
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Jun 4, 2012 22:03
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The carrier Taiho was the first carrier the Japanese constructed during WW2, and apparently was the first carrier designed by them to 'take damage and continue fighting.' Anyhoo, at the battle of the Philipeene Sea in '44 Taiho takes a single torpedo hit. The hit fractures the aviation fuel tank, and flooded the forward elevator well with a mixture of water and gasoline. Other than that, the hit was superficial, and Taiho continued operations.An Osprey book on Jap Aircraft carriers posted:However, the single torpedo had cracked the aviation fuel tanks in the area of the
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Jun 5, 2012 00:12
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Cyrano4747 posted:Do the Free Syrian folks generally run around shouting Allahu Ackbar after they blow something up? "Allahu Akbar" is like me exclaiming "Jesus Christ!" or "oh God!" You really can't tell anything about my beliefs (let alone connect me to very specific religious beliefs) from it.
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Jun 9, 2012 15:33
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Koesj posted:At 0:02 it looks like a T-72 with its turret traversed backwards, note the diagonal glacis outlined over the mudguards. It doesn't have an APC/IFV profile anyway. Around 0:04 you can also see a barrel with what looks like smoke coming out of it. The cook-off looks looks pretty heavy too, lots of propellant, which I don't see happening with an autocannon armed vehicle. Ammo carousel hit by spall, typical T-72 kill I guess. Slightly on Topic question: is the T-72 autoloader flawed? I've read about how the T-72 was first developed, and everybody makes a point about how it has a cheaper, slower autoloading system than the T-62 and the T-80. Was it a good system when it was first made, and just aged badly?
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Jun 11, 2012 22:21
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Cyrano4747 posted:I don't know about that, but I do seem to remember reading something about how export models of the T72 lack some kind of armored ring or somesuch around the round that's held ready in the loader, which is why you see so many dramatic cookoffs of them. Yeah, what I've heard is that the T-62-63-64 was everything the Soviets wanted (and the first tank to be called an MBT, the first to mount a smoothbore gun etc.) But it was both "too expensive" (a somewhat tricky statement with Communists) and contained too much advanced technology. So they made the T-72, a modern MBT built to a price. You'd think they would forego building knock down T-72s for export when the tank was designed for export in the first place...
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Jun 12, 2012 01:17
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Xerxes17 posted:Actually, the evolution goes a bit like this Stories of Tanks ITT Thanks. While I understood bits of this story, I've never really understood why it branched the way it did. Also I had no idea that the factory for the T-80 is in the Ukraine  I just thought the Russians were being cheap when the T-90 was a "massively upgraded T-72."Just for clarity: was the T-64 a new tank design, or was it actually an improvement on the T-54/55? Was the T-80 similarly a refresh of the T-64? They talk about lineage in these designs, and I never know how literal to take that... The IS-3 is really mad that it never got a direct successor but everybody Soviet ripped off its looks Cyrano4747 posted:Of course Goering wasn't going to have those poors in the Army paying with his ~*~*Limited Special Collector's Edition Luftwaffe Preorder Only*~*~ gun so he cock blocked that every which way he could, Thinking of Goering as some fat nerd obsessed with bullshit and bling is actually a good way to think about him, I like it.
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Jun 13, 2012 00:13
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mlmp08 posted:Still, there's just no way to spin losing a TU-22M3. That poo poo is massively embarrassing. Losing some SU-25s is kind of expected given their missions. Mother of God  I had no idea thing went that badly.
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Jun 30, 2012 21:11
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