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mlmp08 posted:Well, there are ways to make them far, far quieter and SOCOM has done this and it's not a secret, really. Also, they may be loud, but masked helicopters are very hard to hear because of the hill/mountain/whatever in the way. If you can hear a chopper, it is at VERY close range relative to air defense systems. The only chopper that comes to mind that is distinctly loving loud and has led to me hearing it before I see it is the Huey. That thing "slaps" something fierce. Two others come to mind: the Sea King and the Chinook. Sea Kings are just ridiculously loud in any possible way, like a persistent ships horn as an encouragement to shipbroken sailors. It's unbelievable. The Chinook on the other hand has this weird thud-thud-thud sound that's really distinct. Rotor design is heavy poo poo. Dead Hand is kinda sinister, but there's still an element of human control in the decision loop. It's amazing that the Russians have given out any information about it at all considering how hermetically sealed their archives usually are.
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May 6, 2011 08:43
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Chantilly Say posted:Yes, but as raised in Dr. Strangelove, a deterrent you don't publicize isn't very useful. MAD was still the relevant wargame in question, Dead Hand or not, and NATO knew this, and the Soviets knew that NATO knew this. The assuredness of mutual annihilation in case of all-out nuclear strike by one part was prevalent at this point in the Cold War. As far as I understand the history, Dead Hand more than anything served to assure old, conservative generals, often veterans of WW2, who were unsettled by IRBM deployment and advances in MIRV technology and the like and unacquainted with the finer points of nuclear war game theory, that they would indeed get the baddies no matter what.
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May 18, 2011 15:25
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B-58, the Planiest of Planes. Ask a kid to draw a "fast bomb dropping plane" and chances are what he draws will look something like the Hustler. Everything about this plane was kinda dodgy and/or cool, even the name and its intended mission. 
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Jun 4, 2011 09:54
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monkeytennis posted:A Vulcan lives behind my house. You'll never hear me complain about the noise! Are we talking an actual Avro Vulcan? Because V bombers are the bees knees. I mean look at them.   
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Jul 4, 2011 10:14
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Tacnukes aren't the individual commander's to dispose of as fit, they remain tactical assets in the sense that their use must be sanctioned. Then again, Maggie Thatcher.
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Aug 13, 2011 23:47
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Karl_moebius posted:or did plans really stop at like, step #30: congratulations, you've started global thermonuclear war; kiss your rear end goodbye? An interesting twist on this is the British concept of the Letter of Last Resort, which is a secret letter hand signed by the Prime Minister, sealed in an envelope and delivered to each captain of a nuclear submarine departing for a patrol. The letter is locked in a vault, and contains the manner of conduct to be followed by the Captain should all official functions of the Government cease to exist. In essence, the Letter of Last Resort is the final act of the Government of the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland. Only the prime minister knows the contents, as they are destroyed upon a change of government, but likely they contain orders to attack a pre-set group of targets, as well as orders to report to the Navy of a surviving government and offer services upon mission completion. Do US ballistic submarines have a similar deterrent mechanism?
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Aug 18, 2011 09:52
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Nuclear war game theory is fine and dandy until you realize that a human life is a pretty valuable commodity.
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Aug 19, 2011 10:13
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iyaayas01 posted:You would have a very hard time selling a conflict that involved taking a side with a very close ally against a country that was still considered a close anticommunist ally. And you can bet the Argentinian generals had thought of that. Essentially what they didn't think of was dumb luck for the Brits, the relatively poor training and morale of their own troops, possibly occluded to them by overly optimistic reports coming in from lower parts of the hierarchy, and the level of patriotism and support of the war the British were able to muster. As I understand it, they basically assumed the British would say "gently caress it" and throw off some symbolic retaliation. Never set a general to do the work of a sociologist.
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Oct 13, 2011 12:00
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I don't think it should be necessary to make excuses for discussing the Middle East and Israel in a Cold War thread, I wonder how many WW3 scenarios have started with some poo poo going down around Israel? Worth noting in relation to the idea of the Israeli super-soldier who perseveres against all odds is how dramatically the trauma of the near-defeat of the Yom Kippur War affected that myth in Israel itself - complacent officers, content in the automatic superiority of their soldiers, suddenly found themselves being held responsible in the media. Generals were sacked. This tendency to question the idea of the Great Jewish Warrior has continued to this day, lingering in the public discourse throughout the low-intensity conflict of the eighties and the invasion of Lebanon, and suddenly becoming a hot topic around the Second Lebanese War, when the Hezbollah seriously troubled a top-notch, high-tech, flexible, well-trained and well-armed military force. The issue of morale here is pressing - the media were asking if Israeli youth were turning into well-fed cowards, or simply growing increasingly disenchanted? The egalitarian, social-democratic state of their parents is turning into a typical Southern-European post-industrial economy where the young find themselves with few means to build their own lives, and civilian unrest is increasing as economic classes diverge. They've got the means to turn the Middle East into a radioactive wasteland, and what good is it doing them?
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Oct 17, 2011 08:54
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I was fishing a few kilometers off the landing strip of the city airport when the lights went out. Not a cloud in the sky all day and then it went into twilight in a second. I look up and around and see a C5 over my head. God loving dammit I never had reflected on just how huge those bastards are. And the king of noisy flyovers will always remain the Saab Viggen. Like a mix between a fierce jet whistle and an old Magirus V12 fire truck from the sixties struggling up the last few meters of a slightly too steep climb. A dapper looking airplane, too. 
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Nov 25, 2011 11:09
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SyHopeful posted:Enjoy Hydrofoil kitty 
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Dec 5, 2011 00:13
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Frozen Horse posted:That too, but what I was mainly pointing out is that for cargo aside from those that you want delivered to a beach you're storming, there isn't much that falls into the middle-speed category. Air cargo will always be faster for reasons we both pointed out, and container shipment is fast enough for everything that can wait a week or so. It's not that there's no market for something that could get you to Vanuatu from San Francisco at half the speed of a 747 for a little less money, but there's not enough of a market to fund actually building these things. Yeah, that's basically it, so much that the few A-90s built would cover the rather marginal (as compared to other deployment methods relevant for the mission) job of putting a mechanized battalion or so anywhere within a few hundred kilometers somewhere not too heavily protected in a few hours. And the Lun, like iyayaa01 said, could potentially make the day very interesting indeed for a carrier group with six Moskits strapped to its back. But apart from that, especially considering the high-seas issues of storms and heavy waves, it's a tough job finding a good bag of missions for it.
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Dec 5, 2011 13:14
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Yeah. The concept is impressive, but there's a lot of what-ifs and can-nots to make it work.
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Dec 5, 2011 16:30
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So the Navy does aircraft procurement for the USMC?
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Dec 14, 2011 11:30
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They're so expensive that Norway is intending to base them solely in Mid-Norway, 1600 kilometers away from the Russian border and 700 kilometers away from a well-established and well-kept base at Bodø which is awesomely placed to patrol the Norwegian Sea. Oh, and the new Minister of Defense has Lockheed's scaly cock so far down his gullet that he was even given honourable mention in a leaked US embassy cable. gently caress us all.
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Jan 17, 2012 16:26
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Was there ever any real purpose to Rolling Thunder other than to destroy the morale of North Vietnam (hee hee just writing that makes me snicker).
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Jan 17, 2012 20:30
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The Sprint missile will always have a separate room all to itself in the Museum of Literal Awesomeness.
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Jan 18, 2012 22:59
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Totally TWISTED posted:I heard you guys were talking about sexy aircraft? (bonus: with canards) Yay Swedish aircraft sex time! The Draken looks like some super-villain's personal jet from an alt-history timeline.  Gripen and Viggen. Know what's even cooler than calling your plane "Thunderbolt"?  Building a gliding sub-munitions dispenser for it that can be released from just above the treetops at mach 0.9 and naming it after the Mjollnir, the hammer of Thor, god of Thunder, that's what.   ...well, OK, sometimes I too like to go hogging   The Tunnan ("Barrel") wasn't the sleekest plane but it did stand up for itself, like a fat redneck female drunkenly defending her male companion from the lustful glances of other females at the water hole.
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Jan 25, 2012 09:51
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Chinese people will be as willing as anyone to point out problematic issues with their government. There's been an amazing climate change the past twenty years. Stuff that would land you in Disappearistan following the Tiananmen square massacre is now discussed in coffee shops. Just make sure you let them criticize their government before you do it, this is important. AIRPOWER （空权） edit:  See you over South China Sea, imperialist dog. (Square-ish air intakes are sexy). Force de Fappe fucked around with this message at 11:38 on Feb 15, 2012 |
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Feb 15, 2012 11:34
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Also note that the Chinese commanders had the added burden of having to be accountable to and even overruled by political commissars who might or might not (usually not) have any loving clue on how a military operation is carried out. And we might think the PLA command structure is lumpen and slow-responding today - and it is, believe you me - but think how much worse it must have been thirty years ago when a company CO might consider himself privileged if he had wireless comms to the higher echelons. Somebody needs to translate "veränderungsfreudigkeit" into Mandarin. If those uptight Prussians with their puckered-up Teutonic assholes knew so well how to cultivate commander initiative and intentional leadership, it ought to be possible to get it through the Confucian mindfog, too.
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Feb 16, 2012 22:11
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Stroh M.D. posted:To each his own I guess. You're looking a the Volvo L3314, known in Sweden as Personlassterrängbil 903 (that's translated to "All-terrain personnel carrier vehicle"), Its powered by a Volvo B18A 64 horsepower engine and runs on leaded gasoline. Has seats for six, weighs about a ton and half and can carry 650 kg of cargo. Max speed is 45 mph on road, 20,5 mph off road. I love these to bits, they're called "Volvovalp" in Norwegian for some reason, meaning "Volvo puppy" They are ridiculously mobile, even while the rather underpowered engine makes them somewhat interesting to drive on the highway. I used one of these to pack up my poo poo when I moved between dorms  I can't believe we have all this Swedeposting without the ULTIMATE gently caress-you-too weapon: the Bandkanon 1.  This, my friends, is a magazine-loaded artillery piece. Yes. Not one magazine, but two, each of seven rounds. With fourteen in da clips and one in da hole, it can fire (theoretically) fifteen rounds in fourty-five seconds. Then a well-drilled crew can reload the magazines in two minutes using a built-in crane. There's nothing like this when you're doing a fighting retreat. Empty a fistful of high-explosive 155mm shells, then gently caress off before counter-fire comes in. Likely the rate of fire would be less than this by choice to reduce barrel wear, but still it is an amazing amount of firepower available. Needless to say, they were stationed in the far north of Sweden, reassuringly close to Northern Norway (you got our back guys, right? Right?  )Fighting retreats is basically the sum of Norwegian Cold War ground doctrine, and it's still practiced today on excercises. Norway stockpiled enormous amounts of M72 LAW rocket launchers, even manufacturing them ourselves at Raufoss, intending for them to be used on light anti-tank patrols ("Panservernpatrulje") that would flank advancing motorized columns and force them to a halt, buying time. One particular tactic to use against lightly or non-armoured columns like supply trains was to determine a suitable ambush point with good ditches to take cover in, then blow up the leading vehicle and wait for the crews and passengers of the trucks to take cover in the ditches...before detonating the charges dug down in the ditches. Another Cold War-related concern that both Sweden and Norway shared was their responses to the Soviet emphasis on deep special forces operations in the early stages of the war. Rumours of Spetsnaz capabilities began to circulate in earnest during the sixties and seventies. The Swedes left the job of hunting Spetsnaz teams to special platoons of the Military Police, whereas the Norwegians relegated the job to the Home Guard which established special units of its otherwise rather under-equipped and poorly-trained (at the time) ranks.
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Feb 27, 2012 10:21
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Cyrano4747 posted:
No no. They're quite good. They twist off the boot with a certain lateral load - that's what the spring is there for. You get very good control of the ski, with broad skis like these they basically turn into a kind of snowshoe hybrid, awesome for heavy winter. You can even get a reasonable glide on them, if they're prepped well - we used to tar them down before the height of summer and leave them in an unventilated loft in a barn where the intense heat during the day would make the tar nice and runny and soak in real good. We've actually switched to fiberglass skis in Norway now, so no more "NATO two-by-fours" for us. Way lighter, but there's something about wooden skis and tar... 
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Feb 27, 2012 23:05
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I always heard the Asians in the Red Army were considered stone cold killaz.
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Mar 1, 2012 19:47
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VikingSkull posted:Disabling the American stockpile in Europe most likely would have resulted in the second and third strikes targeting Europe, so that sounds a bit far-fetched. If a full on exchange happened under those circumstances, it's not like the US and Soviets would throw up their hands and say "welp, Europe is neutral now". Europe would still have been hosed over, simply because an about-to-be-nuked-the-poo poo-out-of Soviet Union wouldn't allow its smoldering ruins to be steamrolled by intact Western European powers on the lookout for an easy catch. Now, it might be argued that Western Europe would see little to no use in spending vast resources in securing a huge, extremely difficult to hold territory that's been irradiated, blasted and is filled with desperate survivors. But I don't know if Soviet generals and core politburo members, battle-hardened in the meatgrinders of the Eastern fronts during WW2, would consider such trivialities in an acute situation. Europe probably would be nuked, and under any circumstance would be in deep poo poo as well as soon as the tidal waves of refugees and the fallout began to hit. Always keep in mind just how destructive nuclear war actually is. It's not like WW2 times ten. It's a logarithmic step, not linear. Dumbdog posted:Does any one have any more information about the UK RAF in the cold war? Or about Spains situation, how would things have gone down if the cold war went hot when they were under Franco? The RAF? Huge, powerful air force? Well, where to start really? Spain was initially viewed as a pariah in Europe and the West following WW2 due to their overt support of the Axis powers, even participating with troops on the Eastern front. How they ever managed to keep calling themselves neutral is something I'll never fully understand. Since they hated commies even after the war was over, the US started thawing up to dear old Franco and from the late fifties and on, they were with the Good Guys. The economy began to open up and diversify, and stuff generally went better all over right up until Franco finally croaked and the ETA killed off his designated heir in a spectacular car bombing. Following which normalcy began to return bit by bit over a period of, say, ten years. After a stable democracy was secured (there was a nasty coup attempt which the King himself played a big role in defeating), EU membership awaited, and from then on it's steady progress up until...well, right about now, in fact. Spain had a relatively big military, as would befit a militaristic dictatorship, so they were useful in addition to the extremely strategic position of Spain and her maritime provinces in the Atlantic and Africa, but there was a lot of Paper Tiger Syndrome as well as a generally low level of military technological sophistication due to the sheer economic hardships of the fifties and sixties. But a good source for an infantry division or ten (with CETMEs!)
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Mar 18, 2012 00:34
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Oxford Comma posted:That is about the most kawaii mech I've ever seen. ^____^ "Oh Heavens, another missile."  There's no denying it, somewhere in the KBP Design Bureau there is a cabal of anime fans.   BLEEP BLEEP ATTENTION HUMANS INCOMING MISSILE DETECTED *BZZT DRRR* ENGAGING COUNTERMEASURES *ffwwwwooouuuBZZZZZZZZZZ* MISSILE DESTROYED GO BACK TO SLEEP HUMAN FRIENDS Thank you, CiwsBot! we love you, CiwsBot! NO PROBLEMO HUMAN FRIENDS
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Mar 27, 2012 10:32
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Stroh M.D. posted:If the Canada deal falls through for LM you can bet that SAAB will be biting at the chain. They are still pissed at how they "lost" the Norway deal to the JSF. "Lost", that is, since the entire thing was for show. The Norwegians even claimed that the JSF would be cheaper than the Gripen for heavens sake! The charade that was the Norwegian New Combat Aircraft acquisition process shames me. The dickwit who pushed the entire thing through (according to the interceptet US Embassy cables he was "our man") is now Minister of Defense. The military top brass as well as the MoD (plus the same three or four hyper-verbose, aggressive F-35 fanboys) are struggling and spinning like a donkey strapped to a cart fallen half-way off a cliff with every new revelation of just how hosed the program is. It's amazing what bullshit they'll whip out, and I can't but help feel a little excited about maybe getting to watch the entire house of cards go down.
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Mar 27, 2012 14:53
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Same thing with space-borne systems. The Space shuttle relied completely on no-crew-kill code, and it resulted in stuff like 420000 lines of code containing one non-documented state. Do you know what corporation those developers worked for? Lockheed Martin - they originally worked for an IBM division sold in 1994, though. http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/06/writestuff.html?page=0%2C0
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Mar 29, 2012 09:20
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My rear end in a top hat would sure pucker up nicely if I was on top of a stack of burning chemicals and noticed 17 votes saying "increase thrust" and 15 saying "decrease thrust".
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Mar 29, 2012 10:16
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Now why the gently caress did they call a plane "Aardvark"? What's so variable-geometry about a pig with a long snout that likes digging?
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Mar 31, 2012 13:11
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Nerve-wracking is being one of the civilians on the ground getting the poo poo bombed out of them. At least aircrew get paid.
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Apr 3, 2012 08:15
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They didn't look very heavily armored to me, and they travel very fast at very low altitude. Imagine if a wing snags the surface. Whloump. I always imagined they'd be picked off by high and fast enemy planes unless they had really good friendly air cover. I can perfectly understand why they were mostly shelved, because there's a mountain of very possible, very serious survivability problems with the whole platform.
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Apr 3, 2012 20:21
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AlexanderCA posted:Well.... Foreign Legion pioneers @ 0:31. It's a pretty cool sight watching them coming last in the parade (they always march slow for some weird reason), there's a huge gap between them and the preceding units and it's quiet for a while..until you hear them singing in the distance. Also they do not divide their ranks to get around the Triumph Arch because they shall never be divided again The legion may be a semi-expendable army for post-colonial ventures, and extremely homophobic and violent and wood-rigid and what have you, but drat if they ain't good for a breath of refreshingly stale air in the modern age.
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Apr 5, 2012 13:20
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I'd be surprised if the gunner was even alive afterwards. Also gently caress being inside armour anywhere anytime. If you're not breaching the ice above a black, icy lake in Northern Norway you're being smeared out against a steel surface somewhere.
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Jun 11, 2012 08:29
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The Israelis have world-class air defence and monitoring. If they don't down a lone Syrian bogey coming into their airspace, which may even reply when hailed and state its non-hostile intentions, it's because the moment they decide they don't like the trim of the pilot's mustache they can drop it in thirty seconds and they know they can. Unless they start suspecting a lone suicide mission on Tel Aviv with a gun-type fission weapon somebody hammered together 
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Jun 21, 2012 22:43
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Ahahahahah, what's up with those goddamn tinned wieners I see everywhere in Sweden? 
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Jun 25, 2012 09:46
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Yeah. We're talking hosed vs. totally hosed. Having a high-radiation weapon firing above your own turf is no joke, but if it means you can miss a shockwave and fireball above some strategic point you might decide it's worth the cost. Make no mistake though, in a nuclear war we all die.
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Jul 21, 2012 21:17
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rossmum posted:I would really not be surprised if "ergonomics" as a word didn't even exist in Soviet military parlance. AKs are really handy rifles. I'd have to choose an M1 Carbine for anything more naturally pointable. The sights are just so, the trigger somewhat mushy and the safety lever is complete bullshit. Reloading quickly takes enormous amounts of drilling to come up to speed, and the operating handle is also bullshit. The Finns adressed some of those issues with their own reworking, I guess.
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Jul 26, 2012 21:57
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The 113 is a piece of poo poo and I can't wait until the last artillery shell carrier rebuild is finally purged from our stockpiles. The compartment heater is particularly loved up here in the frozen north. Nothing beats an aluminium box in -30 centigrade.
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Aug 30, 2012 22:34
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Yarr, th'Area Rule be a harsh mistress...
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Sep 17, 2012 13:53
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Force de Fappe fucked around with this message at 14:09 on Sep 17, 2012 |
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Sep 17, 2012 14:07
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