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The problem with armor on late war tanks in ww2 is that the guns were outpacing armor by a lot because their technology was improving, but RHA was hitting its limit as far as how much protection it could really provide. When tanks started carrying 105-120mm antitank cannons, there simply wasn't a practical amount of RHA that could provide protection from these guns.
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Apr 24, 2014 22:48
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brakeless posted:CV90 supremacy. The idea originally of the BMP was that the men would pretty much stay inside the vehicle most of the time. It's why they put in firing ports. The Sheridan is kinda cool(though the gun on it and the missile it fired was not very well conceived) because it's probably what IFVs should have been. The need to carry troops is what makes the IFVs not a good idea, though there's a role they try to fill.
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Jul 22, 2014 12:44
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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. The DMZ was not really a primary infiltration route. The narrowness made it fairly easy to cover. Weighed against the problems of the Russians introducing tactical nukes of their own in there, it's not much of a reward. One of the problems with using tactical nukes in Europe is that the Red Army was adapting to fighting in a nuclear-fallout wasteland, so the protective barrier of fallout would not be so useful.
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Aug 3, 2014 18:20
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Snowdens Secret posted:Is the joke that this well describes the F-15? It's a better description of the Mig-25, though mig-25s actually have a fairly good combat record, mostly because of the missile they can carry though.
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Sep 1, 2014 14:36
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Mortabis posted:F-15s have a far better combat record. I'm not disagreeing with that but I was just saying that it was surprising that such an impractical aircraft managed to do so well.
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Sep 2, 2014 14:39
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Godholio posted:It's not hard when the adversary uses such tactics as "fly straight and level until making visual contact, then get permission from the ground to fire." Although one did sneak up behind an F-18 after initially breaking contact and tricking the Hornet into leaving. They did well in the Iran-Iraq war, too.
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Sep 2, 2014 17:32
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Party Plane Jones posted:Were the F-16A/Bs the ones that didn't have the hardware capable of launching Sparrows or am I thinking of a different plane? The Mig-23 was the first Soviet fighter capable of firing MRAAMs natively(the mig-21 needs an extensive modernization package to do so).
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Sep 7, 2014 00:24
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Servicio en Espanol posted:Shithead answer is 'how hard is it to make a dump truck out of a Honda Civic?' As I understand it, it would really depend on what what sort of resources you are willing to spend, what specific capabilities you want, and how good/bad a ground attack job you are willing to accept out of it. The gun is probably one of the most overrated parts of the A-10's capabilities. Strafing has historically been one of the statistically least useful means of ground attack.
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Sep 29, 2014 12:21
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Smiling Jack posted:If you ever really want to piss off a marine just point out that the army saved their asses at the 'Canal and the Navy took more casualties. The Marines should have been phased out in 1948 but their PR people tugged at the heartstrings of guys who would later dance to McCarthy's tune.
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Sep 29, 2014 12:51
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bewbies posted:It has always been fine for what it is, which is a light APC. They were never intended to be resistant to mines or heavy weapons. Yeah. I think people really underestimate how important light weight is in an infantry carrying vehicle. Even IFVs like the BMP or Bradley are not much better armored than the M113 but they sure are quite a bit heavier. Sparks is hilariously comical when he suggests just putting a big turret and gun on an M113 while also having the vehicle somehow be light enough that you can practically fly it around with this hilarious biplane addon thing with sidewinders(how the hell is that thing supposed to use the flight controls on the detachable, much less acquire targets and fire sidewinders?). The thing about the M113 variants with more armament is that the troop compartment is used to store ammunition for the vulcan or TOW launcher, you don't get both troop carrying capacity and heavy armament on that thing. There's no turret you can make where the ammo is stored itself. Panzeh fucked around with this message at 18:20 on Oct 1, 2014 |
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Oct 1, 2014 18:12
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MassivelyBuckNegro posted:There is a distinction to be made between an APC and an IFV. That distinction is armor and armament. 113s aren't intended to support the infantry through the fight, just deliver them. IFVs are not much better armored than APCs, though. They can't really get any closer than an APC can to the action, they just have better firepower. To be quite honest, the IFV always struck me as an attempt to fill a niche that would have been better filled by a different kind of vehicle. The necessity to carry troops AND ammunition for heavy armament causes too many compromises.
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Oct 1, 2014 18:21
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Insane Totoro posted:Isn't that the Stryker? To have both IFV and APC in multiple configurations? The stryker is a really expensive BTR(it's actually a LAV) with the ability to mount larger weapons. Most BTR users passed on putting big autocannons or cannons on their BTRs. They don't really offer any particular advantage over the current crop of vehicles but the Army sure drank some kool-aid. What I was referring to was a light tank or light fire support vehicle rather than an adapted APC. Something close to a T-55 in terms of weight. Panzeh fucked around with this message at 18:34 on Oct 1, 2014 |
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Oct 1, 2014 18:30
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I'm trying to think about some poor guy trying to fly a plane out of the M113's driver viewport and I can't help but laugh.
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Oct 1, 2014 19:23
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Throatwarbler posted:It worked fine for the USSR until the other side got MANPADS, because those are pretty good against helicopters. If Vietnam happened in the 1980s instead of the 1960s the US would have found the same thing. There were a lot of practical problems with the tactical employments of Hinds as troop carriers. For example, the Hind is actually an excellent performer, but holding troops and their gear adds a significant amount of weight to the airframe, so they end up being slower. Also, having your troop carriers seperate from your attack helicopters lets the troop carrying element do its own thing and operate behind the attack helos. I have no idea what the obsession with having everything be the same platform is. It sounds like if they could get away with it, the Pentagon would scrap all other US Army vehicles but the Stryker and just make everything a Stryker variant.
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Oct 6, 2014 10:44
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666 posted:The greatest irony of the internet is that rather than allowing russians to inform themselves and counter the propaganda pervasive to their country, they choose to use the internet to regurgitate that very propaganda with an unmatched zeal. Most people use the internet to confirm what they already believe rather than branching out and expanding their horizons. BTW, if you want to see an interesting example, look at what happened to the F4F Wildcat and how it developed post-being a modern fighter as a sort of utility plane for the CVEs, mostly for ground attack purposes.
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Oct 8, 2014 02:19
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ArchangeI posted:"Hey guys let's forward base all of our B-2s but not, like, patrol the perimeter or anything. Lol what are the Russians gonna do, ship in a quadcopter drone with a minigun or something?" Putting hundreds of F-16s on the runway at once sounds like the right way to do air operations.
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Oct 9, 2014 02:00
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Nebakenezzer posted:So if I read this as "never trust Russia for anything, as when you displease them they will try to dick you over and start running puppet parties in your national elections" would I be wrong? It's not as huge a problem as you think. There's plenty of expertise in that equipment in both Israel and other countries in E. Europe.
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Oct 15, 2014 03:03
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Godholio posted:Against anything in the F-15/Su-27/F-16/MiG-29 families, or any Eurasian fighter since about 1980, an F-5 is hosed. It's going to die before it gets a chance to shoot. The problem with the F-5 in a modern environment(this problem plagued both the f-20 and mig-21 90s era modifications) is that they just aren't cheaper enough than real modern fighters to be worth going that route for. Only mig-21s have any success in the market at all and it's not that great. That being said, mig-21s and f-20s with pricey modernization packages could compete, but it's just not very practical on procurement terms. Better to just take your old mig-21s and f-5s and use them as bomb trucks.
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Nov 19, 2014 04:44
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The problem with putting a bunch of LRAAMs on the AWACS planes is that the Russians have some long ranged missiles themselves and a plane that can't maneuver is exceedingly vulnerable to them.
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Dec 9, 2014 00:22
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There's something to be said about the idea that strafing is just not that effective a form of support. The thing that makes it more viable for supporting troops in proximity with the enemy is also the thing that makes it not very effective as they generally do nothing to enemy troops doing anything other than standing up and walking. Strafing is also not particularly precise, particularly from a fast-flying aircraft.
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Jan 1, 2015 19:13
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Dead Reckoning posted:It's not really "wrong" as it is contrived. In American military war games (the ones they play at the War College or in exercises, not the ones used for analysis or the ones sold for desktop computers), which Red Storm Rising is based on, the scenario is always designed such that it 1) is winnable, 2) is suitable for all relevant units/branches/services/nations to participate, and 3) lets America use its latest and greatest acquisition programs to full effect. It doesn't matter how realistic the assumptions required are, because the whole thing is based around letting the players in the war game exercise their wartime roles/capabilities. The exercise planners also won't run with things like "you hosed up and got all your ground attack guys killed by Red Air on day one, so the pilots and JTACs have to sit on their hands for the next week" or "you hosed up and got slimed and now everyone is either a casualty or in chem gear 24/7". Even though it would be more realistic, it would be a waste of training dollars because it would derail the entire exercise (unless the exercise is about operating in a chemical environment.) The thing to understand about war games is that they're designed for training purposes, not exploration of possibilities. Brainstorming is cheap, and there are wargames that are made for that(those are your board and computer wargames you can find on say, boardgamegeek). Training is distinctly not. It's more like a game of D&D than a game of chess.
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Jan 9, 2015 01:31
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TheFluff posted:The F-15 is certainly a good aircraft, but it's just a small part of the total US domination in the air. Air combat is a very big system with a lot of interconnecting parts, and the thing is that the US dominates almost all of them. Just having AWACS is a huge advantage - very few countries can afford flying radar stations at all, let alone gigantic ones like the E-3. Pilot training, sensors, doctrine, intelligence, supporting assets, the weapons you have access to - they're all part of the system. I'd say individual aircraft performance is actually a pretty small part of the big puzzle that is air combat these days, but people tend to focus on it because fighter jets are so drat cool. The Soviets developed their entire aerial warfare doctrine around working within US air dominance(for example, there's a focus on long range aerial cruise missiles and anti-radiation missiles designed to attack AWACS planes.). It's very telling how they considered their prospects in that regard, though it did lead them to develop air defense in a more comprehensive way than the US.
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Jan 31, 2015 19:47
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Dead Reckoning posted:Y'know, everyone likes to hypothesize about how Russian development was driven by their experiences in WWII or by expectations about a Fulda Gap scenario, but I honestly think it has more to do with how the Russians planned to integrate air power with ground forces. (Frontal Aviation being a separate service from Air Defense, emphasis on centralized control and execution, lack of air refueling capability, etc.) Yeah, you're not wrong with that, either, though I don't think a country that expects to be able to conduct large scale air operations against NATO develops conventional ballistic missile capability to the scale that the Russians/Soviets did. Arrath posted:Now I am curious why the ZSU 57 was so bad. Low shell velocity further hamstringing an already anemic engagement envelope? Useless fire control? Suboptimal turret tracking and elevation speeds? Couldn't fire enough rounds in the small window it got to have a reasonable chance of doing damage? The ZSU-57 used a hand cranked turret. They did have some use as fire support vehicles but that was mostly the client states trying to find something to do with them. The old M113 VADS also lacked any kind of radar system, either, though it saw some service in Vietnam because AA guns have a knack for being useful in ground support roles.
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Feb 1, 2015 14:03
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Attack helicopters have a really poor record against air defense.
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Mar 6, 2015 19:24
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Mazz posted:The army is probably going to solve that problem for them in the next decade with FVL, but of course the Marines will demand their own platform anyway and waste perfectly good R+D money on it. The difference in air defense vulnerability for choppers vis a vis CAS planes is that helicopters are a lot more vulnerable to yokels on trucks with ZPTUs and strelas than any jet aircraft. While MANPADS are dangerous to planes in a few situations, they're pretty dangerous to helicopters in many others, and there's not always the kind of terrain that allows a helo to stay hidden. The Soviets in Afghanistan made extensive use of Mi-24s and Mi-8s and they had problems with autocannons and manpads, taking a lot more losses than they expected. There's a reason the Apache was developed to try to stay back as far as possible.
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Mar 6, 2015 21:46
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Cat Mattress posted:First step, discover and destroy all enemy air defense. Once that first step is done, you can bring in the very-high-observability bomb trucks to take out the rest. It's in the first step that the LO aircraft find their justification. Yeah, I think it's functionally impossible to knock out every infantry air defense team or autocannon in a country so it never really gets that permissive for attack helos, though there are obviously degrees here. I think had Vietnam come in the era where Strelas were more available air cavalry would not be remembered anywhere near as fondly.
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Mar 7, 2015 02:35
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Baracula posted:Shooting at Israel Yeah, that kind of system as described is not very useful to a conventional force who might want to fire, you know, a full barrage but it's perfect for insurgents. In Vietnam the VC used very sproadic harassment fire from mortars to slow down US troops and it proved to be a pretty effective tactic which has been there ever since, though in Iraq it was more a dude firing a mortar at a FOB and then driving his truck off.
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Mar 7, 2015 13:45
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The Japanese military leadership may have actually had a better chance of surrendering had the US said in no uncertain terms that they had no interest in invading Japan's home islands. A lot of the logic in the Army was that the US could only be bloodied in a great land battle(which is a dubious prospect, Japan is not particularly bad terrain and the advantage of US mechanized troops would have been quite acute).
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Mar 29, 2015 21:33
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iyaayas01 posted:SEATO was a thing From what I understand, a lot of the reason there were ROK troops in Vietnam was that the US offered to pay a lot of money, to help try to provide some international legitimacy to the fight. Both US and ROK marines had a bad reputation in Vietnam in terms of atrocities, so it evens out.
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May 2, 2015 12:27
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Nebakenezzer posted:On the side there: HSBC fires six for performing mock ‘Islamic State’ execution as team-building exercise Sounds like a lame company that can't take a joke.
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Jul 13, 2015 01:15
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Cyrano4747 posted:In all fairness, though, your average multi-role strike fighter can carry more ordinance than a WW2 era heavy bomber. If poo poo ever got serious and someone just wanted to wreck the living poo poo out of some city's downtown a squadron of Mirages or whatever other post-Korean War jet will do just fine. I mean a Mig-21 is a fine bomb truck and it's the most numerous jet fighter ever.
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Nov 8, 2015 01:34
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MrYenko posted:It's amazing how an aircraft designed to excel at one thing tends to end up being a good airplane, and readily adaptable to other roles, isn't it? The mig 21 is the most common strike bomber in tge world.
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Apr 3, 2016 13:16
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I was reading Bradleychat and I just wanted to say that the big danger in IFVs is more all the ammunition they have to lug around than fuel. The BMP-3 is a dangerous vehicle to be in because of the huge amount of ammunition it's carrying for its two weapons, a 100mm cannon and a 30mm autocannon. It's skimpy on armor but any troop carrying vehicle of a sane weight is skimping on armor. The fuel is less of a big deal- it's ammunition that makes armored vehicles explode.
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Jul 2, 2016 11:28
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I don't think the decisions made at Midway make sense without the context of the Coral Sea and you'd have to include a little bit of that. You'd have a scene of a horde of Japanese bombers descending on a fleet oiler and missing a chance to hit the US carriers. It's important because it explains why the Japanese didn't launch an all out strike on a hazy scout contact at midway.
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Jul 3, 2016 14:00
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feedmegin posted:The idea with the firing ports was that you could use them while the Bradley was buttoned up in an NBC environment. In a full World War 3 environment, firing ports beats a) no firing at all and b) being irradiated and/or gassed to death. Theyre on the BMP as well. The BMP-1's armament was chosen with this in mind. It was entirely geared toward fighting other vehicles.
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Jul 4, 2016 21:41
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