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BadgerMan45
Dec 30, 2009
They still use at least one of those drat SAGE blockhouses to see what happens when you cram a couple hundred people into a building with no windows and make them walk up and down really narrow stairwells all day. Fortunately, they just pulled all the asbestos out of it and I don't think TOO much of it got on me so I should be good.

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Propagandalf
Dec 6, 2008

itchy itchy itchy itchy

NosmoKing posted:

I don't think the youth of today get the idea that we lived in a time where it was no bullshit that in 60 minutes, every city you've ever read about in the US, Europe, East Asia, and the USSR could have been green glass and char. They may have decided to blow the poo poo out of a few parts of other continents, because, gently caress YOU, we can.

We still do live in those times. We're just less inclined to try.

SyHopeful
Jun 24, 2007
May an IDF soldier mistakenly gun down my own parents and face no repercussions i'd totally be cool with it cuz accidents are unavoidable in a low-intensity conflict, man

iyaayas01 posted:

:words:

- YESSSSS THANK YOU

- Do a followup on the DEW Line. Appropo since you're in AK.

- Cyrano this is his thread, stfu

- Surprised none of our :canada: friends have boo hooed over the CF-105.

iyaayas01
Feb 19, 2010

Perry'd
Thanks, glad you all liked the thread. While I was too young to really remember the Cold War (my first memories of stuff like that are the Gulf War), I have a soft spot for it because it truly was a different time, as many of you have pointed out. I don't think people today who didn't live during the time can fully appreciate the situation of living knowing that if a flock of birds was misinterpreted or a mentally unbalanced individual got control of one silo (I'm exaggerating of course...but not by much) we could be looking at the complete destruction of most of the developed world.

This fact generated some downright crazy ideas in military hardware (i.e. - Nosmo's entire list), as well as the will to develop them and the money to pay for them. Now, I don't mean to sound like someone pining for the Cold War, because its end was a good thing, nor do I mean to sound like someone that would like to return to Cold War levels of defense spending, because vast amounts of money spent on the military is never a good thing for society (I say this as a serving officer). However, there was a certain feel to the military and military equipment of the era that just isn't there today, in my humble non-educated opinion. That's not necessarily a good or bad thing, but it was truly a different era.

Apologies in advance, mega huge quotes post follows:

Dividend Special posted:

Sup Elmendork buddy? Air Guardsman here, we're moving to your house pretty soon. February's the word.

Yeah, you fuckers are going to have nicer poo poo than us thanks to all that BRAC money. :argh:

BaronW posted:

Great article! Is there a good aerospace history book with more like this?

Do you mean on SAGE specifically or Cold War aerospace history in general?

As an aside, you all can have your prima donna XB-70, B-58, and B-1 (seriously, one never entered service, one was in service less than a decade, and the other had one of the longest development cycles of an aircraft and then had a horrible teething period once it finally entered service), I'll have my old girl the BUFF anytime.

And it would figure that Cyrano is in to some outlandishly expensive German derived freak.

Flanker posted:

I love cold war stuff, but it usually ends up reminding me of Canada' insistence on marginalizing itself and over-relying on the US, which is still biting us in the rear end to this day. Thanks for nothing Diefenbaker and every subsequent PM. gently caress.

CF-100 was pretty tits and actually entered service (unlike the Arrow :smith:):





Captain Novolin posted:

:canada: Fun Canadian History Fact :canada:

During the '50s and '60s, a large-scale northern sovereignty/early warning project was undertaken by the Government. Radar installations were to be built in remote northern locations to provide early warning of Soviet bombers coming over the pole. To man these remote stations, they were going to re-locate the Inuit, because they're good at dealing with the cold, right?

Usually, yes. But not the ones from places like the middle of Labrador and other not-at-all-remote (and in some cases even cold) regions, who they did end up re-locating. Don't worry, though! Their inability to deal with the climate didn't get in the way of keeping us safe from Russian bombers, because immediately after the project reached completion it was declared obsolete, as everyone was using ICBMs.

That's Dief the Chief for you. No wonder he went from one of the largest majority in Canadian history to one of the smallest minorities in one term.

This story is loving hilarious.

Ygolonac posted:

And don't forget - they have have been enormous masses of metal trundling along overhead ("magnesium overcast"), but some things are bigger and more powerful yet.

Like tornados.



This picture is awesome. I can honestly say I have never seen this before, which is really saying something when it comes to military aviation history related pictures.

NosmoKing posted:

I wonder what the difference in the stall speeds are between the two planes? IIRC, big and slow bombers or planes patrolling the edge of airspace would sometimes drop speed WAY back as a means of loving with fighters charged with shadowing them. The fighter simply couldn't go that slow.

You recall correctly, that is one of the many ways they would gently caress with the intercepting/escorting fighters. Another was to slowly turn out to sea, hoping to drag the fighters with them beyond the range at which they could safely recover. And remember, like I said in the original post the Bear isn't that slow of an aircraft...I don't know what its stalling speed is, but it's performance is fairly comparable to a B-52, so I would imagine its stalling speed is as well (it has a 35 degree wing sweep, after all).


Do you know the story behind the first picture? Quite a bit more interesting than a random Soviet intercept, but I'll let you tell it if you know it.

The second picture owns.

Mr. Despair posted:

I live just outside of Ellsworth AFB, so this thread is all sorts of awesome.

Not the best picture (in fact it's pretty terrible) , but I do love it when things like this happen.



I really need to get out to the local Air and Space museum and get some decent pictures, it's small but there's some interesting planes there.

First off, that picture is sweet. Second, you need to get to that museum. It's not AWESOME or anything on the scale of the Air & Space in D.C. or the Air Force museum at Wright-Pat, but it is definitely respectable. I randomly stopped in while I was driving through the state on my way up here and wound up spending a couple of hours there. I also took the time to detour off the interstate to go see the Minuteman Missile National Historical Site, which is WELL worth your time, especially if you live in the local area. They have two sites, one is a Launch Control Facility (control capsule) and one is a Launch Facility (actual silo). They are VERY well preserved, and seriously, if you are in to that sort of thing I can't emphasize enough how much you need to check it out.

Propagandalf posted:

MST3k's The Starfighters

"So basically, according to themselves, the Air Force is a bunch of leather-faced, not-so-bright, heavy drinking, dull-witted speed-freaks who poop in their pants and can't make it with women, right?"

:siren::siren::siren:

ACTUAL CONTENT!!!!!!!!

:siren::siren::siren:

The discussion of missile launching videos caused me to go dig up this animation...while there are some things that are incorrect, it gets most of it right. Good enough to be shown at Air Force officer technical training:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kLOXZ3-7VM

This second video was also good enough to be shown at Air Force officer technical training, but for an entirely different reason. It is a production of the BBC called "Nuclear War: A Guide to Armageddon." It was done by Mick Jackson, the same guy responsible for Threads. This movie was actually done about two years before Threads and can be seen as the textbook to Threads' fiction novel. Instead of talking to us about the effects of nuclear weapons, they showed us this film. It featured revolutionary special effects that, in my opinion, stand the test of the time rather well. Of particular note is how it coldly and logically disproves every single Civil Defense recommendation on sheltering/surviving nuclear war.

It's overarching message is the same as Threads: very few will survive a nuclear exchange, and those that do will consider the dead the lucky ones.

Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Lun5UVZOG4
Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_Ew9EAG4ss&feature=related

My third video is also related to a nuclear war drama, but this time in the U.S. I'm sure most of you are familiar with The Day After, and you probably remember some scenes featuring U.S. military personnel attempting to respond to the initial attack before the warheads strike. You may even remember that these were actual U.S. military personnel. What you probably don't know is that the scenes were clipped from a longer "drama" portion of a documentary called "First Strike." Now, ignoring the fact that "First Strike" was produced by the Team B/CPD folks and drastically inflated the actual threat posed by Soviet nuclear forces, if you are in any way interested in the Cold War military, you MUST watch this film. I'm not sure what my favorite '70s kitsch bit is because there are so many, and I don't want to ruin it for you, so I won't comment any further. But seriously, watch it...it was filmed with the full cooperation of the DoD, so all the people in it are U.S. military members, U.S. military equipment, the whole shebang.

Here's the clip that contains the nuclear war :drama" portion: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlPEBROvR9w

The rest of it is also available on youtube, but it's the documentary part and just basically features a bunch of old white guys talking about how the Soviets are way ahead of us in nukes and ICBMs and bombers and everything else.

Oh yeah, almost forgot....

thats not candy posted:

Awesome thread, great read!

ammo for life

:whatup:

iyaayas01
Feb 19, 2010

Perry'd

BadgerMan45 posted:

They still use at least one of those drat SAGE blockhouses to see what happens when you cram a couple hundred people into a building with no windows and make them walk up and down really narrow stairwells all day. Fortunately, they just pulled all the asbestos out of it and I don't think TOO much of it got on me so I should be good.

...is this some sort of military training? I can't see any other purpose to that activity.

SyHopeful posted:

- YESSSSS THANK YOU

- Do a followup on the DEW Line. Appropo since you're in AK.

- Cyrano this is his thread, stfu

- Surprised none of our :canada: friends have boo hooed over the CF-105.

- You're welcome.

- I will consider it, although I am kind of radar warning system'd out at the moment, although the DEW Line is less about radar warning system and more about let's go build some huge radars out in the loving Arctic.

- I was just impressed with his ability to bring a Cold War thread somehow back to WWII Germany. Seriously, that was impressive.

- Well, a couple of them did bitch pretty hard about Dief the Chief, so I figure that counts.

Ygolonac
Nov 26, 2007

pre:
*************
CLUTCH  NIXON
*************

The Hero We Need

QuarkMartial posted:

Reminds me of the age-old joke about a fighter tailing a bomber (a B-2 or something), and the fighter being a show-off. He keeps going on and on about how awesome his jet is and about how much the bomber sucks. Having had enough, the bomber pilot says, "I bet I can do something you can't do." "What?" A few minutes pass, and nothing about the bomber's flight seems to change. "What'd you do," the fighter asks. "We cut off 2 of our engines :clint:".

Can't remember if it was a bomber or a transport, but the other punchline is "Oh, I just got up and went in the back to have a cup of coffee and take a poo poo."

I grew up in Great Falls, Montana, in the middle of the Malmstrom AFB missile fields; at highway speeds, you'd need a minimum 45 minutes to try and clear the immediate target zones. :smith: I don't recall ever hearing any evacuation planning or training...

Stupid B-52 Tricks *



* this doesn't count aerial hoonage that results in an unexpected ground interface, such as that idiot that crashed his bird at Fairchild AFB.

Ygolonac fucked around with this message at 06:26 on Dec 16, 2010

BadgerMan45
Dec 30, 2009

iyaayas01 posted:

...is this some sort of military training? I can't see any other purpose to that activity.

Nope, still performing its original function 24/7 since at least 1963, defense of US airspace. The miracles of technology have pared all the people and buildings of SAGE down to just a few. Though, at ours at least, since they didn't need that second building for that giant computer they re-purposed one of them as the education center for the base. I'm not certain which one had the computer in it though, just to give you an idea of the scale of that system they just called the whole building "the computer" as that was pretty much all that was inside of it.

Senor Science
Aug 21, 2004

MI DIOS!!! ESTA CIENCIA ES DIABOLICO!!!
I think it's interesting that the only Eastern Bloc countries besides the Soviet Union that seemed gung ho for Soviet style communism and war with the west was Eastern Germany. The rest of the nations especially Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary were either openly rebellious against the Soviets or were too caught up in their own problems to actively militarily support the Soviets.

Also when I was a kid I'd always ask my parents what this poster meant when I saw them in older areas.




Having grown up in the early 90's nuclear war was an alien idea to me.

Dr. Despair
Nov 4, 2009


39 perfect posts with each roll.

Also, B-1's basically are the best. If you're ever by Ellsworth you should try golfing at the golf course. It's not the best course at all, but it's amazing teeing off as a B-1 comes in for a landing or some A-10's circle around.

I also got to use the B-1 simulator they have on base, which was great. Apart from the fact that I got the controls second, and the person before me managed to screw up the plane getting his angle of attack too high. It's a real bitch trying to fly one of those 200 feet off the ground at mach 1 when it's impossible to trim at all. :argh:

And here's another picture.

Click here for the full 1680x1049 image.

McNally
Sep 13, 2007

Ask me about Proposition 305


Do you like muskets?
Dad started his career doing propellant transfer on Titan IIs at Little Rock Air Force Base. His stories of that time involve doing repairs on something or other while up to his waist in fuel (for which he earned the coveted title of "steely-eyed missile man"), noxious fumes capable of melting your lungs, and causing pigs to run up hills, making them lose weight and causing the farmer to sue the Air Force.

Actually, I'll tell that story because I like it.

So he and his crew were going from silo to silo doing their missileman things when one of them, who had grown up on a pig farm, sees a bunch of pigs hanging out near the fence.

"Watch this," he says, climbing on top of the concrete silo. He gathers in a lungful of air and calls out "SUUUUWEEEEEEE!! PIGS PIGS PIGS!"

The pigs scramble back towards their troughs, which happen to be on the other side of a large hill, thinking it's time to be fed. Disappointed, they eventually wander back to the fence.

This crew of young men find this to be the funniest thing ever. For months, every chance they get, someone climbs on top of the silo and calls out "SUUUUWEEEEEEE!!! PIGS PIGS PIGS!"

This continues until one day, the farmer happens to see some rear end in a top hat Air Force guy tricking his pigs into charging up a hill. Suddenly their weight loss makes sense to him. He sues the Air Force for lost revenue.

Shortly thereafter, a colonel comes down to read them the riot act. Standing on top of the silo, he glowers down at them. Then he takes a deep breath and turns around.

"SUUUUUUWEEEEE!!! PIGS PIGS PIGS! ... You're not allowed to do that anymore."

Dad crosstrained into command and control after two years in Titan II propellant transfer systems. He later spent three years with 2nd ACCS flying on Looking Glass, SAC's airborne command post. In those three years, he accumulated over 3,000 flight hours and lost a lot of his high frequency hearing.

As for my own connection with air power history, I'll just leave this here.

Armyman25
Sep 6, 2005

NosmoKing posted:

The last sequence in Atomic Cafe is terrifying. It goes a loooonnnnggg way to show that the simple ideas that are proposed in the film as "countermeasures" are pointless.

I read several books that discussed the civil defense program and talked about the Eisenhower "shitload-o-shelters" plan and city evacuation plans. They were quietly abandoned when it was shown that sheltering in place in a city was simply a good way to end up with orderly corpses for the ones that weren't reduced to constituent atoms. Evacuating a city in the time it takes for a nuclear attack is a pointless exercise. That idea was quietly dropped as well.

I met a woman in Rome and during our conversation this came up. She was pretty incredulous as the idea that the US just had random bomb shelters in all the cities. She thought I was making it up to and couldn't wrap her head around the idea that this was actually thought to be a good idea at some point.

MazeOfTzeentch
May 2, 2009

rip miso beno
Tell me more about that always delicious flying gun, the A-10, CAS planes make me :dong:

:allears:

markoshark
Nov 6, 2005

Don't suppose there is a 1920x1080 shot of that around is there :*(



Also because i suck and can't provide additional info -
During the cold war, were there actually any military clashes (barring espionage / spies etc), or was it all political?

markoshark fucked around with this message at 11:04 on Dec 16, 2010

Cyrano4747
Sep 25, 2006

Yes, I know I'm old, get off my fucking lawn so I can yell at these clouds.

Armyman25 posted:

I met a woman in Rome and during our conversation this came up. She was pretty incredulous as the idea that the US just had random bomb shelters in all the cities. She thought I was making it up to and couldn't wrap her head around the idea that this was actually thought to be a good idea at some point.

The Swiss still have those bomb shelters.

They're still pretty well maintained and used for poo poo.

In fact, I was just in one a week or so ago, listening to a middle aged Swiss Civil Defense guy tell me how much his civil defense shelter owned, and how much the German ones sucked. He did seem to have respect for the Chinese, mostly because they've allegedly got some monster in Shanghai that can house something like 200,000 people.

So, yeah. If you're ever in Zürich, apparently a bunch of the parking garages are still working bomb shelters.

McNally
Sep 13, 2007

Ask me about Proposition 305


Do you like muskets?

markoshark posted:

Also because i suck and can't provide additional info -
During the cold war, were there actually any military clashes (barring espionage / spies etc), or was it all political?

You mean other than Korea and Vietnam?

Cyrano4747
Sep 25, 2006

Yes, I know I'm old, get off my fucking lawn so I can yell at these clouds.

McNally posted:

You mean other than Korea and Vietnam?

And Afghanistan, plus easily half a dozen small African conflicts where each side was sponsoring someone or the other (although this is really more Brits vs. E. Germans).

Oh, and if we're just going to talk equipment and logistics we can't forget Israel vs. everyone around Israel. A whole poo poo ton of NATO equipment blew up an awful lot of Com Bloc equipment out in the Sinai and around the Dead Sea.

Plus there were a few times where US and Soviets were actively shooting at each other, even ignoring stuff like advisors offing each other while pretending the other person was really Korean/Vietnamese/whatever. That U2 pilot who got shot down over Russia is a good example.



My favorite cold war poo poo is the completely crazy technical stuff that various countries did to gently caress with each other. Like that time the US rigged up a fake cargo transport into a mobile salvage vessel to steal the middle (ie important) section of a Soviet submarine that sank in really deep water due to technical problems.

edit: yes, "steal" is the right word. Salvage law gets all kinds of hosed up when you're talking about warships.

evil_bunnY
Apr 2, 2003

NosmoKing posted:

Watch the video, especially at the end. The sprint missile fuckin' MOVED.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vq4mWyYl2Y
Hahaha it makes stuff like THAAD looks so slow and piddly. First stage ignition -> 100g kick in the pants ->:byewhore:

evil_bunnY fucked around with this message at 13:10 on Dec 16, 2010

NosmoKing
Nov 12, 2004

I have a rifle and a frying pan and I know how to use them

Cyrano4747 posted:

The Swiss still have those bomb shelters.

They're still pretty well maintained and used for poo poo.

In fact, I was just in one a week or so ago, listening to a middle aged Swiss Civil Defense guy tell me how much his civil defense shelter owned, and how much the German ones sucked. He did seem to have respect for the Chinese, mostly because they've allegedly got some monster in Shanghai that can house something like 200,000 people.

So, yeah. If you're ever in Zürich, apparently a bunch of the parking garages are still working bomb shelters.

Now are you talking blast shelter or fallout shelter.

Fallout shelters can work, but a REAL fallout shelter rather than "pile some crackers in the church basement" is a lot of work and a big investement and engineering challenge.

Blast shelters are often far more trouble than they are worth, and when you pop your head up, everthing is destroyed and irradiated to poo poo and back.

Naramyth
Jan 22, 2009

Australia cares about cunts. Including this one.

Armyman25 posted:

I met a woman in Rome and during our conversation this came up. She was pretty incredulous as the idea that the US just had random bomb shelters in all the cities. She thought I was making it up to and couldn't wrap her head around the idea that this was actually thought to be a good idea at some point.

The server room here on campus is/was a fallout shelter. For what it is worth, we have an airbase that was a missile command base ~20 miles from town.

I was up in our archiving area of the library I work in a few months ago and laying near the computer I was working on was government issued a "how to make your basement a bombshelter" with several variations on how to accomplish this. It then had a recommendation on which variation to use based on your property. The kicker was it had an address on it, which means it was mailed to an inspected house that isn't to far from my house.

I will see if I can get some scans of it. It was neat.

Cyrano4747
Sep 25, 2006

Yes, I know I'm old, get off my fucking lawn so I can yell at these clouds.

NosmoKing posted:

Now are you talking blast shelter or fallout shelter.

Fallout shelters can work, but a REAL fallout shelter rather than "pile some crackers in the church basement" is a lot of work and a big investement and engineering challenge.

Blast shelters are often far more trouble than they are worth, and when you pop your head up, everthing is destroyed and irradiated to poo poo and back.

Well, I know the one we were in was built during World War II, but was rated for kiloton-range poo poo and kept active until basically today. From what the guy was saying, they still use it for "mass casualty" type events (it was originally a bunker hospital) like drug freakouts at music festivals and the like, and it's still stocked with all of the water purification stuff, it still has the oil bunkers kept up to date, all the machinery is maintained, and there's food and water supplies down there.

It was located under a public park, and the general construction was silo-shaped (old WW2 style for deflecting direct hits by AP bombs). I know I'm butchering the numbers, but from what I recall of the tour it was something like 3 meters of reinforced concrete up top buried under 3 or 4 meters of dirt.

Then there was all the other crazy poo poo, like how there's about a dozen or so public wells that are drilled down into the aquifer and, in some kind of emergency that either fucks up the local water supply (poison, radiation, etc) or destroys water purification they can distribute water to basically everyone in the city. We saw a couple when we were there - they kind of look like big, sort of hosed up waste paper baskets (the ones with the round tops and the swinging door that you put garbage in).

He also mentioned a bunch of others to us that were all variations on the theme "hardened as gently caress building put under a convenient hill/mountain/city." Reforger pointed out one to me while we were driving around that he said had recently been taken over by some branch of the Swiss military and you could see the blast doors. Basically the guy was an old civil defense employee who just LOVED his organization and openly mocked similar organizations in other countries, especially Germany. If you're curious I might be able to come up with some other stuff, but it was a couple weeks ago, it was in German, and I was doing my best to not only listen to him but translate for my wife at the same time.

So, yeah, I'm sure none of that poo poo is going to take a Tsara Bomba landing on top of it, but suffice it to say that the Swiss are still dug in like motherfuckers up there in their Alpine hidey holes.

Cyrano4747 fucked around with this message at 15:54 on Dec 16, 2010

Scratch Monkey
Oct 25, 2010

👰Proč bychom se netěšili🥰když nám Pán Bůh🙌🏻zdraví dá💪?
You kids are lucky to not have grown up during the cold war. I had manly sleepless nights as a lad imagining that there were nuclear missiles on their way right at that moment to destroy everything and everyone I knew and loved. It wasn't fun, especially since I knew there was nothing anyone who normally protected me (my parents, the police, etc...) could do about it other than die with me.

Also back then I had never met a Russian. The idea of talking to an actual Russian was unthinkable. Now they're all over the place in my city.

Thankfully the end of the cold war helped ease my fears of instant nuclear annihilation a little bit, and the fall of European Communist nations made it possible for me to eventually meet my wife (not Russian).

Burning Beard
Nov 21, 2008

Choking on bits of fallen bread crumbs
Oh, this burning beard, I have come undone
It's just as I've feared. I have, I have come undone
Bugger dumb the last of academe

Mr. Despair posted:

Also, B-1's basically are the best. If you're ever by Ellsworth you should try golfing at the golf course. It's not the best course at all, but it's amazing teeing off as a B-1 comes in for a landing or some A-10's circle around.

I also got to use the B-1 simulator they have on base, which was great. Apart from the fact that I got the controls second, and the person before me managed to screw up the plane getting his angle of attack too high. It's a real bitch trying to fly one of those 200 feet off the ground at mach 1 when it's impossible to trim at all. :argh:

And here's another picture.

Click here for the full 1680x1049 image.


Hey Rapid City buddy! The Air and Space museum out near Ellsworth is a bit run down, but has some really cool stuff. I want to offer to redo their Cold War display for free though. They have a modern Russian uniform on display, complete with Russian flag as their Soviet uniform. Unless its some sort of subliminal thing, they need the classic Soviet uniform there.

I still miss going to the Dayton museum though... when I used to go as a kid I would associate that musty smell and smells wafting down from the cafeteria with the Cold War displays, so anytime I think of the Cold War, even 20 years later, I think of that unique and not altogether unpleasant smell.

Let's talk about the US Army's "Aggressor Forces" during the Cold War!

http://books.google.com/books?id=pa...d%20war&f=false

http://www.scribd.com/doc/19247939/1959-US-Army-Vietnam-War-Aggressor-the-Maneuver-Enemy-243

The only link I could find on them, I own this book, btw.

Aggressor Forces were designed as a Communist-like force for exercises. They had a complete political ideology and military history written for them, as well as Soviet style tactics, equipment and uniforms. The US wanted to avoid the direct link of Soviets as the enemy, so instead this was designed to prepare the Army for a future conflict against the Soviets.
The "Circle Trigon Party" was the enemy and the uniforms had such fun things as standard Army helmets with a wooden coomb on top and rather elaborate Officer's uniforms. I've seen the helmets, once, in a Surplus shop near Rock Island arsenal. I also have a few of the field manuals back home.
Aggressor Forces continued until the mid-70s sometime when they were replaced with Actual Soviet aggressor forces for realism. I did a Google search and found very little besides the Google Books link above. I always figured the Aggressor Forces concept for one of those little known Army ideas that tried to migrate the fact that, yes, the Soviets were the bad guys.

SyHopeful
Jun 24, 2007
May an IDF soldier mistakenly gun down my own parents and face no repercussions i'd totally be cool with it cuz accidents are unavoidable in a low-intensity conflict, man

SyHopeful posted:

- Cyrano this is his thread, stfu

seriously man, with all due respect i requested that he make this thread and i want to read what he has to say not your inane personal anecdotes

if i wanted WW2 trivia or details about you chasing korean tail I'd read, well, any other thread in TFR.

Naramyth
Jan 22, 2009

Australia cares about cunts. Including this one.

SyHopeful posted:

seriously man, with all due respect i requested that he make this thread and i want to read what he has to say not your inane personal anecdotes

if i wanted WW2 trivia or details about you chasing korean tail I'd read, well, any other thread in TFR.

:frogout:

His inane personal anecdotes are actual contributions to the thread. It is interesting that the Swiss are still rocking bomb shelters. Whatever you are posting is not.

Scratch Monkey
Oct 25, 2010

👰Proč bychom se netěšili🥰když nám Pán Bůh🙌🏻zdraví dá💪?
So, bombers?


Click here for the full 800x346 image.

SyHopeful
Jun 24, 2007
May an IDF soldier mistakenly gun down my own parents and face no repercussions i'd totally be cool with it cuz accidents are unavoidable in a low-intensity conflict, man

Naramyth posted:

:frogout:

His inane personal anecdotes are actual contributions to the thread. It is interesting that the Swiss are still rocking bomb shelters. Whatever you are posting is not.

ahahaha you again

no, they are not contributions. this thread wouldn't exist if i didn't encourage the OP to do this writeup, and once again the irony of you making a post contributing nothing but an accusation of me contributing nothing is hilariously heavy.

swiss bomb shelters are only vaguely, tangentially relevant to air power during the cold war, especially given the context of the OP. so anytime you wanna stop swinging from my nuts, go right ahead.

SyHopeful
Jun 24, 2007
May an IDF soldier mistakenly gun down my own parents and face no repercussions i'd totally be cool with it cuz accidents are unavoidable in a low-intensity conflict, man
Since Naramyth felt compelled to contribute nothing but a post being a baby about my lack of contribution, I'll make one. What is red, Hemi powered, and loud?



This is, obviously, the Chrysler Air Raid Siren. Advertised as the world's loudest sound signaling device, the sounds of these spooling up around major US metro areas during the 50s and 60s was pretty common. Running a 331ci Hemi V8 (yeah, it's got a Hemi) pushing 180hp, these beastly devices could crank out 138dB of sound. That's head-exploding loud. Under optimal conditions their tone was audible up to 30 miles away.



Like most sound signaling devices, the Chrysler sirens were usually mounted on the top of buildings or in their own special-purpose towers to help the sound waves carry further. These locations usually incorporated a rotating base to further aid the sound projection.

Unlike sirens today, which are usually electronically programmed for tone sounds and patterns, the Chrysler Air Raid Siren was all manual, baby. There was a clutch to engage the compressor with the Hemi, which started the tone with a low burbly sound. As the manual throttle was increased, the tone increased in pitch and volume. Operators were trained on how to make the proper air raid tones, manipulating the throttle for the prescribed amount of time to signal the All Clear, or run the test pattern, or, hopefully never, sound the real deal tone.



As with most relics from the Cold War period, most Chrysler Air Raid Sirens were left to weather away once they were no longer needed. Because of their weight and location, removal of them is not cost-effective, and if you are in a major city like Los Angeles or Seattle you may still be able to find one in some rusty tower tucked away in some overgrowth. Fortunately, because of nerds like me (except with more money), a not-insignificant amount of Chrysler Air Raid Sirens have been snatched up by collectors (usually for only a few thousand dollars) and restored.

Now, actually USING them is a touchy area. Usually you are required to notify the local authorities and get their permission to fire up such loud signaling devices, because if you just fired one up without telling anybody else you'd have crotchety old-soul geezers like Cyrano instinctively grabbing their Civil Defense handbooks, throwing on their favorite vintage helmet, and start practicing their duck-and-cover drills. Oh, and flooding 911 boards with calls.

Sooooo pretty much the only places you'll get to hear one is at things like car or air shows, where they'll park the siren waayyyyy far away from the stands and point it away before firing it up. I've only heard them via the internet, but maybe one day my nerd wallet will be big enough to own my own.

I leave you with a pretty awesome video of one in action.

The Eyes Have It
Feb 10, 2008

Third Eye Sees All
...snookums
I wasn't sure why ICBMs were such a huge game-changer, I tried to look it up and near as I can figure it's because they're dumb and they're cold which - unlike for example bombers - made them really hard to see before it was too late.

Is that still the case today?

SyHopeful
Jun 24, 2007
May an IDF soldier mistakenly gun down my own parents and face no repercussions i'd totally be cool with it cuz accidents are unavoidable in a low-intensity conflict, man

Mister Sinewave posted:

I wasn't sure why ICBMs were such a huge game-changer, I tried to look it up and near as I can figure it's because they're dumb and they're cold which - unlike for example bombers - made them really hard to see before it was too late.

Is that still the case today?

I'd imagine it's because the amount of time you have to react after detecting an ICBM launch is orders of magnitude smaller than the amount of reaction time you'd have after detecting an inbound flight of nuclear-armed bombers.

Scratch Monkey
Oct 25, 2010

👰Proč bychom se netěšili🥰když nám Pán Bůh🙌🏻zdraví dá💪?

Mister Sinewave posted:

Is that still the case today?

They were a game changer for two reasons. First, they can reach their targets in about a half an hour making effective detection and response difficult. Second, there's not much you can do about them once they're in the air except try and get yours in the air before they're blown up.

Additionally, the advent of submarine launched ICBMs were a super duper game changer because they could get closer to their targets further reducing available response time and were nearly impossible to target and destroy like ground based ICBM silos. They put the final stamp on the MAD based nuclear detent that kept the cold war from going hot.

Scratch Monkey fucked around with this message at 18:00 on Dec 16, 2010

The Eyes Have It
Feb 10, 2008

Third Eye Sees All
...snookums
One of the benefits of being "dumb", I guess. Can't really be confused, blinded, or otherwise distracted by shiny objects.

Scratch Monkey
Oct 25, 2010

👰Proč bychom se netěšili🥰když nám Pán Bůh🙌🏻zdraví dá💪?
It wasn't so much that ICBMs were "dumb" (they weren't) but that their ballistic nature made all over our existing defense strategies, which were based around detecting and destroying bombers, obsolete. The Strategic Defense Initiative in the 1980s was Reagan's dumb attempt to try and get a nuclear leg up by creating a defense against ICBMs much they same way iyaayas01 described the creation of the SAGE system. The main difference was that SDI relied on unproven, infeasible technologies and would have served to do little more than unbalance the MAD equation.

KYOON GRIFFEY JR
Apr 12, 2010



Runner-up, TRP Sack Race 2021/22

Mister Sinewave posted:

I wasn't sure why ICBMs were such a huge game-changer, I tried to look it up and near as I can figure it's because they're dumb and they're cold which - unlike for example bombers - made them really hard to see before it was too late.

Is that still the case today?

In addition to the "less reaction time" problem you have the "if you want to shoot it down good luck hittin something going 4 km/second" and then you have MIRVs and MIRV decoys and all sorts of clever poo poo.

It's the ultimate offensive/defensive weapon combo. The speed at which you can launch means that if deployed in any sort of quantity, you can't launch an effective first strike, and it also means that if you really want to you can destroy anything on earth in a half hour provided it can't shoot back with its own ICBMs.

kwantam
Mar 25, 2008

-=kwantam
Pretty pictures!

No discussion of cold war airpower is complete without mention of the Tu-22M Backfire. 14 years before we got our poo poo together with the B1, Ivan was cruising around in these babies at Mach 1.88.




The prettiest lady of all is the Tu-160 Blackjack, though it came very late (first service in 1987). This beast can truck along at Mach 2+.





That's a MiG-31 flying alongside in the bottom picture.

Burning Beard
Nov 21, 2008

Choking on bits of fallen bread crumbs
Oh, this burning beard, I have come undone
It's just as I've feared. I have, I have come undone
Bugger dumb the last of academe

Bombers were alllll the rage until the advent of effective ICBMs. Suddenly the idea of keeping huge forces of nuclear capable bombers was no longer in the strategic interests of either side. Why keep bombers on station when you can install things like NORAD and multiple silos around the country for cheap? (Comparatively, that is). ICBMs also played a huge role in reducing the conventional ground forces for the US. One of the platforms Eisenhower was elected on in the '50s was his stated goal to reduce the defense budget. You see, the only way it was thought to counter the Soviets was to stage huge conventional forces in Europe.

When Ike took office the switch to nuclear equipped missiles was possible because of the advances in technology, of which the space race played a major part "Hey Guyz, we can launch this satellite in orbit, bet we can do that same with a 10 megaton nuke!". The switch to nuclear deterrent from conventional was a major milestone in the Cold War. Up until this time, Atomic weapons were seen as extensions of conventional weapons, like Atomic Artillery and nuclear tipped, Jeep mounted guns (yes, these really, actually existed). Now it was short, medium and long range missiles designed to destroy the home country of the enemy.

I don't think Ike knew quite what he was getting us into, like much of the Cold War it was marked by an-almost innocence as to the true cost of nuclear weapons.

Scratch Monkey
Oct 25, 2010

👰Proč bychom se netěšili🥰když nám Pán Bůh🙌🏻zdraví dá💪?

Burning Beard posted:

I don't think Ike knew quite what he was getting us into, like much of the Cold War it was marked by an-almost innocence as to the true cost of nuclear weapons.

On the contrary. Ike was very much aware of how the technology industry was beginning to drive the military, and he was very wary of what would happen once war and defense was put mainly into the hands of the business sector.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rd8wwMFmCeE

shovelbum
Oct 21, 2010

Fun Shoe

Scratch Monkey posted:

On the contrary. Ike was very much aware of how the technology industry was beginning to drive the military, and he was very wary of what would happen once war and defense was put mainly into the hands of the business sector.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rd8wwMFmCeE

You don't even need to wait that until the 60s to get that talk from him. I always found The Chance for Peace a good example of that thinking.

Ike, 1953 posted:

This has been the way of life forged by eight years of fear and force.

What can the world, or any nation in it, hope for if no turning is found on this dread road?

The worst to be feared and the best to be expected can be simply stated.

The worst is atomic war.

The best would be this: a life of perpetual fear and tension; a burden of arms draining the wealth and the labor of all peoples; a wasting of strength that defies the American system or the Soviet system or any system to achieve true abundance and happiness for the peoples of this earth.

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.

This world in arms in not spending money alone.

It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.

The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities.

It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population.

It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals.

It is some 50 miles of concrete highway.

We pay for a single fighter with a half million bushels of wheat.

We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.

This, I repeat, is the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking.

This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.

I can never get this out of my head, when I am driving through some woefully undeveloped part of America, usually on a terrible road, especially when the radio is telling me about billions and billions spent on private Iraq "reconstruction". At least we're living the best-case scenario and not atomic war!

Burning Beard
Nov 21, 2008

Choking on bits of fallen bread crumbs
Oh, this burning beard, I have come undone
It's just as I've feared. I have, I have come undone
Bugger dumb the last of academe

Scratch Monkey posted:

On the contrary. Ike was very much aware of how the technology industry was beginning to drive the military, and he was very wary of what would happen once war and defense was put mainly into the hands of the business sector.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rd8wwMFmCeE

That's not what I meant, but my phrasing was pretty ambiguous. Sorry.. what I was getting at was the long term effects of a nuclear build up on American strategy, the environment and society. Plus the lack of knowledge on the long-term effects of nukes on human health.

Oh, I know he knew what American business was doing, I think he knew that at the end of the War when the Stock Market took a huge dip on VJ Day.

NosmoKing
Nov 12, 2004

I have a rifle and a frying pan and I know how to use them

Burning Beard posted:

Bombers were alllll the rage until the advent of effective ICBMs. Suddenly the idea of keeping huge forces of nuclear capable bombers was no longer in the strategic interests of either side. Why keep bombers on station when you can install things like NORAD and multiple silos around the country for cheap? (Comparatively, that is). ICBMs also played a huge role in reducing the conventional ground forces for the US. One of the platforms Eisenhower was elected on in the '50s was his stated goal to reduce the defense budget. You see, the only way it was thought to counter the Soviets was to stage huge conventional forces in Europe.

When Ike took office the switch to nuclear equipped missiles was possible because of the advances in technology, of which the space race played a major part "Hey Guyz, we can launch this satellite in orbit, bet we can do that same with a 10 megaton nuke!". The switch to nuclear deterrent from conventional was a major milestone in the Cold War. Up until this time, Atomic weapons were seen as extensions of conventional weapons, like Atomic Artillery and nuclear tipped, Jeep mounted guns (yes, these really, actually existed). Now it was short, medium and long range missiles designed to destroy the home country of the enemy.

I don't think Ike knew quite what he was getting us into, like much of the Cold War it was marked by an-almost innocence as to the true cost of nuclear weapons.

Bombers are great for saber rattling and shows of force. You can send up a poo poo-ton of aircraft and they can loiter and show you're angry, not loving around this time, whatever.

ICBM's are a bullet from a gun. Once the trigger is pulled, it's on the way and there's no way to stop it.

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Senor Science
Aug 21, 2004

MI DIOS!!! ESTA CIENCIA ES DIABOLICO!!!
This is probably one of my favorite defection incidents during the Cold War:

http://everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1083518

The idea of a pilot abandoning everything he knew from his family to his own country, defecting in a Mig-25 and landing at a civilian airport is pure :black101:

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