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

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Kaiser Schnitzel: Mar 29, 2006; Schnitzel mit uns

EvilMerlin posted:

In today's world?

Yeah its going to be years. Decade even.

Building an M1 tank isn't near building a M4 tank, nor is building an F-35A like building a P-51D-NA.

Some things, like you mentioned, could be transitioned, like transitioning a diesel engine line to make other diesel engines. But you cant easily spool up a facility to make Chobham plates for tanks.

Hell then we can get into things like having to make 120mm cannon. Rheinmetall makes all of them currently and under war time situations, there is no way they can make enough, let alone get them to the US easily.

I don't think its going to be possible to pull another WW2 build out of the war machine. In any nation.

Weapons of war today are far far too complex.

Shipbuilding is a pretty huge industrial sector as well that the west has mostly abandoned to East Asia and recently especially China. There�s maybe half a dozen yards still around the US that build large Navy vessels and a few smaller ones that build oil and gas/commercial stuff that must be made domestically per the Jones act. Scaling up capacity and a skilled labor force to start replacing the massive losses to commercial (not to mention military) shipping a large scale war would involve would be very hard to mobilize for. Maaaybe/hopefully the core of maybe 50-100,000 shipbuilders still employed in the US are enough of a nucleus to rebuild the industry off of, but man would we need a bunch more welders. There�s only one yard (Newport News)that can build carriers and it takes a decade for each one, and IIRC only one yard (Ingalls) that can handle the smaller LHA/LHD stuff too.

It�s a very labor intensive industry not well suited to automation and involves a huge downstream supply chain as far as engines etc, which is why a big reason why developing industrial nations have historically subsidized it to develop an industrial base. That�s led to huge oversupply, and the closure of higher cost western yards, except those doing specialized defense/luxury work. Japanese and American yards put all the European yards out of work in the post war period, then in the past 30 yrs the Koreans undercut the Japanese and Americans, and now the Chinese and Vietnamese are undercutting everyone.

# ¿ Dec 17, 2019 20:42

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# ¿ May 22, 2024 00:00

Kaiser Schnitzel: Mar 29, 2006; Schnitzel mit uns

Stravag posted:

Edit: i dont know how a conflict against a nation large enough to pull it off would stay nonnuclear either its just the only way i can think of it happening in a conventional war. Im assuming the sea access to those yards is as tightly controlled as airspace at nellis or SAC hq so a speedboat with an asston of explosives wouldnt be able to suicide charge into them

You could pretty much ride a fishing boat right up to Ingalls, at least a few years ago. Don�t know about Newport News, but I�d assume security is a bit tighter. Is a fishing boat full of explosives going to do much damage to a huge concrete pier/dry dock? Probably not.

# ¿ Dec 17, 2019 21:27

Kaiser Schnitzel: Mar 29, 2006; Schnitzel mit uns

In 'poo poo My Dad Says: Chinese Pork Edition,' my dad is 100% confident the CIA made sure African Swine Flu got to China sooner rather than later.

# ¿ Dec 18, 2019 04:17

Kaiser Schnitzel: Mar 29, 2006; Schnitzel mit uns

bewbies posted:

I don't disagree that blowing up specialized shore facilities would be catastrophic, I just think that it would 1) be very hard to do, and 2) require a kind of daring deep penetration sudden stealth strike that is very, very hard to pull off. Those critical facilities aren't that big by the standards of a shore target, and it'd be hellaciously difficult to properly mensurate them without having someone actually on the ground (which I admit is totally possible). On the other hand, you can gently caress with someone's stoplights or train yards or ERP software from across the globe, virtually for free.

I mean it�s all on google maps-I�m sure anyone with the ability to launch a cruise missile has much better targeting info than that.
Carrier dry dock and the big crane at Newport News Shipbuilding:
https://goo.gl/maps/BuWWXmQLrsPT4Y5P6

Where they build LHA/LHD�s at Ingalls in Pascagoula:
https://goo.gl/maps/FrtWaADVQ1VdXYub9

Bath Iron Works:
https://goo.gl/maps/tnVFK6VijiTQZbZd9

NASSCO in San Diego:
https://goo.gl/maps/NSQ9HYgBrz5F9B338

Electric Boat in Groton, CT:
https://goo.gl/maps/Th1urVpGo3FMjgz78

That�s probably a good 80% of our big ship shipbuilding capacity in those half dozen yards, definitely the biggest dry docks/cranes. I�ve probably forgotten something in Seattle, the Bay Area, maybe Jacksonville or Charleston, but it think they mostly just do repair there now. Some recently closed yards that haven�t been turned into condos yet (Avondale, Philadelphia) could probably be put back into service pretty quickly, but it�s tough to build a brand new shipyard overnight. Much of the yard capacity that we used to churn out ships in WW2 was actually originally built during WWI, and ships were just smaller and easier to build then.

# ¿ Dec 18, 2019 20:26

Kaiser Schnitzel: Mar 29, 2006; Schnitzel mit uns

Maybe they should have just stuck with the EADS plane they picked the first time before Boeing pitched a giant hissyfit.

# ¿ Dec 21, 2019 03:57

Kaiser Schnitzel: Mar 29, 2006; Schnitzel mit uns

CIGNX posted:

One of the big reasons why quality control often comes from the outside is because of the weak legal environment in China. The lack of rule of law makes it difficult for Chinese manufacturers to predict if they can survive in the long-term. If you're not sure if your factory is going to exist in 5 years or if its going to run afoul of some new law you never knew was coming, it's just not rational to spend a lot of time and resources in building up QC. Instead, it incentivizes factory owners to make their money quick and then cash out in order to park their money in "safer" places like real estate. That's not to say there are no good Chinese manufacturers, but the system just doesn't incentivize it.

An exception to this are the large Chinese exporters, like Haier or Huawei. Their size and political importance gives them more assurance they'll be around long enough to make long term plans. And because they have to compete on the international market against foreign goods, they're also incentivized to invest in QC practices. So in other words, these are companies exist in an environment that gives them time to build up their QC and have pressure from competition to want to adopt QC.

As for the Chinese engine manufacturers, I'm not sure they have adopted QC like the large Chinese exporters because they don't really exist in a competitive market environment. They're definitely given government protection for their existence, but what's the impetus for innovation and efficiency? If it's just government pressure, the Soviet Union's experience is a pretty clear about the limitations of such a system. Soviet aerospace was nothing to scoff at, but it was definitely not at the same level of technology nor efficiency as the West. And then you repeat this same problem down the line to all of the parts and materials suppliers. Maybe the engine firm is a well-run organization, but the parts suppliers and the foundries don't really give a crap. The government can only breath down the necks of so many places for so long before something else is needed to ensure these firms maintain their quality.

This is a great book all around: https://www.amazon.com/Perfectionists-Precision-Engineers-Created-Modern/dp/0062652559 but he goes into some of the details with regards to the insane machining etc in aircraft engine turbines.

# ¿ Jan 6, 2020 03:10

Kaiser Schnitzel: Mar 29, 2006; Schnitzel mit uns

CarForumPoster posted:

Most radar specs will include a constant false alarm rate or CFAR. The obvious method of meeting this requirement is to attenuate your signal returns until you fall below the threshold. A potential way to do this is described here.

This is why you may not see a plane with a smaller radar return and the way "STC" works (i.e. by attenuating signals at a certain range gate and angle) is why you might see one "pop up" on your radar.
This is why jamming works.

To follow up on this, how does radar jamming work? I remember in some Clancy book him talking about pilots having to 'burn through' their opponent's jamming. Is that a real thing and how does it work or is it just technobabble?

# ¿ Jan 8, 2020 14:52

Kaiser Schnitzel: Mar 29, 2006; Schnitzel mit uns

Arglebargle III posted:

Well it's official, Dennis Muilenburg got $233,000 per corpse. $80.7 million pay package. They put $50 million away for compensating victims.

But hey the FAA still has a sense of humor! They're fining Boeing $5 million over the whole affair.

Boeing has been incredibly lucky that both crashes happened in far away countries full of people of whom we know nothing. If this happened in the US they'd be bankrupt by now.

# ¿ Jan 12, 2020 00:18

Kaiser Schnitzel: Mar 29, 2006; Schnitzel mit uns

Buttcoin purse posted:

So your username relates to a 747 equipped with a French fire control radar?

I would honestly be shocked if Cyrano's username were anything BUT an incredibly obscure reference to antiquated militaria

# ¿ Jan 12, 2020 03:15

Kaiser Schnitzel: Mar 29, 2006; Schnitzel mit uns

Kind of looks like a Freedom class LCS and a San Antonio class LPD had a baby

# ¿ Jan 12, 2020 15:26

Kaiser Schnitzel: Mar 29, 2006; Schnitzel mit uns

What is the current opinion of the LCS program and the two different classes? In college I worked on the Independence in the summers and even my 19yr old self could tell it/the shipyard was a clusterfuck. Have they gotten better and do they actually do the things they are designed to do (I never actually understood what that was)? The Independence class at least has the benefit of looking like a Star Wars ship?

They are sure building them in a hurry.

The Freedom class is pretty handsome imo, especially with this cool camo scheme

# ¿ Jan 12, 2020 16:32

Kaiser Schnitzel: Mar 29, 2006; Schnitzel mit uns

Cyrano4747 posted:

The LCS is a clusterfuck and a joke at this point.

Why do they keep building them? The running joke in the yard was that you could shoot a .30-06 in one side of the boat and it would come out the other because the aluminum hull plate was so thin.

# ¿ Jan 12, 2020 17:00

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# ¿ May 22, 2024 00:00

Kaiser Schnitzel: Mar 29, 2006; Schnitzel mit uns

stealie72 posted:

And theyre being built in critical purple great lakes states, arent they? They keep passing through Lake Erie.

The Freedom class is being built in Marinette, WI by Marinette Marine, which I guess is a purple state. The Independence is built by AustalUSA in Mobile, AL, a very red state.

Stravag posted:

Do both the freedom/ independence classes have issued with salt water or was it just one of them?

Freedom class is a steel hull with aluminum superstructure, Independence class is all aluminum. The lead ship of the Independence had the big galvanic corrosion problems-supposedly this has been fixed on later ships of the class with better corrosion resistant coatings, a better sacrificial anode system and electrical isolation? Freedom had/has a bunch of cracks in the steel hull, and has had a ton of engine problems. Apparently the hull is some fancy kind of high strength/lower weight steel and maybe that caused the cracks. The engine problems had been a problem on later ships of the class too, but they may have sorted that out by now too.

Both were very much built on a design/build program where design was actively taking place while the vessels were under construction-for me as a fitter's helper that meant I spent all my time doing re-work. Someone added a new antenna mast on top and now this bulkhead 3 decks down has to be cut out and replaced with 8mm plate instead of 6mm or whatever, and that gets outrageously expensive very quickly.

I didn't know automation was such a thing in them, but that makes sense of why they would wind up being so complex and expensive.

# ¿ Jan 12, 2020 20:04

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