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Not sure if this would go here or the general MilHist thread, but can someone explain to me what the hell was with the US Dragon series of ATGMs? Like, it seems from the start they were way too underpowered, inaccurate, had a wacky steering system that said "shoot me pls", and just seemed all around more terrible than everything the Russians and even the Europeans were putting out at the time. So why did the US army stick with them for so long and not just ditch them for like, Milans like everyone else in NATO?
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Apr 27, 2014 19:56
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Thwomp posted:Yeah, the Canadians saved everyone's asses during one of the first major deployments of gas. Urine actually if I recall. Something about the ammonia neutralising the chlorine gas.
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Apr 30, 2014 20:06
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priznat posted:The main losses of CF-104s were due to engine failure from eating a bird, iirc. Another reason they should have gone with the X32. That big ol' intake looks just overjoyed to eat some birds.
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Jun 10, 2014 20:52
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Maybe they copied the F-35's fifth generation feature of catching fire whenever the gun is fired?
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Jun 11, 2014 04:04
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MrChips posted:Ethiopia and Eritrea are both unbelievably totalitarian; like on the level of North Korea and perhaps further in some aspects. But they're in Africa so nobody cares. Isn't Eritrea the one that "taxes" a percentage of all their ex-pats income to go directly to the dictator on the assumption that bad things will happen to their families back home if they don't pay?
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Jul 3, 2014 20:19
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Mazz posted:
What?! Where? I checked the online store but can't seem to find them. Played the hell out of Warship gunner as a kid designing crazy ships. Never got to play the second.
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Oct 2, 2014 04:18
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I wonder if there's anyone in the Joint Chiefs not drinking the F-35 kool aid who has a backup plan for if a real conflict breaks out and they're stuck with all these useless jets. I mean, it seems like such an objectively crappy jet I just can't fathom why so many counties are putting all their airplane eggs in such a lovely basket. It seems like it'd be a major liability in a real war and are they just betting no major international conflict will break out in the next fifty years?
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Oct 3, 2014 22:03
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Honestly, I can see it shifting depending on how the election goes next year. The Conservatives depend a lot on blowing Alberta and the oil industry. Not sure how big a priority Keystone would be under a Liberal or NDP (it won't be NDP) government. .. Maybe Prime Minister Trudeau 2.0 won't care enough about Keystone to force us to by overpriced, underperforming Lockmart trash. I can dream at least 
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Nov 7, 2014 17:08
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Plinkey posted:Looks like it's free abandonware. Not anymore it ain't http://store.steampowered.com/app/329680/
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Nov 25, 2014 00:40
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Did the Soviets also have a decent stockpile of chemical weapons just prior to Barbarossa? I mean, the Nazis had no qualms gassing Soviet prisoners, so what was stopping them using it on the Eastern Front?
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Dec 1, 2014 17:27
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The Japanese Army vs. Navy rivalry is one of the most ridiculous things about the Pacific Theatre. If the war hadn't killed so many senior officers I'm sure all the inter-service assassinations would have.
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Dec 1, 2014 22:46
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Didn't Iran find some hilarious way to strap Hawk SAMs to their F-14s as a cheap substitute?
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Dec 2, 2014 17:01
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LingcodKilla posted:And if I had said Koreans someone would have been lol south or north lol. Can't win. Considering Korea is nowhere near the North Atlantic I doubt it. I think they just offered to send troops on their own accord, kinda like Australia.
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Apr 30, 2015 18:12
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ejection_seat#Pilot_safety Loving that 1970s Soviet ejection seats subjected pilots to ten more goddamn Gs than a typical western seat 
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May 19, 2015 19:21
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Wasn't that the same campaign with the mission involving a crazy ASM strike on the Charles De Gaulle's battle group? I think I still have my discs around somewhere, it work under DOSBox okay?
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Jun 26, 2015 00:15
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Warbadger posted:Apparently it suited a lot of people just fine. Flight Sim popularity took a nose dive after they all went full sperg or full cartoon. War Thunder is the first that approaches a reasonable compromise in a long time - I just wish it had a modern plane equivalent. As myself or others may have mentioned, Strike Fighters 2 with mods is reasonably close, if lacking in theatres and non dynamic missions. Also all the mods are hosted on CombatACE, the worst mod hosting site I've ever seen. Have fun downloading a mod over three days because the creator has split it into nine parts and the site only let's you download three files per day It's also expensive since the game was released piecemeal and a lot of the mods need a several random expansions. My personal fave, NATO Fighters 5 needs SF2 Europe, SF2 Israel, SF2 Europe Expansion 1, SF Europe Expansion 2. Without any sales that can total over $100.. However, with all that and the mod, you can fly pretty much anything from 1949 through the 90s. Want to fly a Delta Dart and sling nuclear Falcons at a flight of Bears? You can. Want to fight a guns only Sabre vs. Mig 15 battle? Can do. F15Cs dogfighting SU-27s? You can do that and everything in between. Radar and weapons and stuff are modelled depending on difficulty settings. On the high end you can have old 60s sets with weird oscilloscope like displays that don't tell you much, to lower difficulties that give you something like the old Jane's games. You don't need a HOTAS and all the buttons you need can fit on a basic Logitech stick. It's really the only thing that scratches that itch for me. I was really hoping for SF3, but the developer is basically only making mobile games now because apparently he makes an order of magnitude more money from it 
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Jun 26, 2015 16:13
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Cyrano4747 posted:So how does a MRBM with a conventional warhead look to everyone else when it's launching? Is there anything to distinguish a missile that's "just" trying to blow a CVN in half from a nuclear tipped device trying to take out the center of a fleet or glass Taipei? I'm pretty sure they look the same. Which again, is why most nations aren't dumb enough to use them. Didn't the US briefly have some idea for a program to convert old ICBMs into quick response conventional missiles, but cancelled it when everyone realised what a stupidly dangerous idea it was?
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Sep 3, 2015 22:00
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SeaborneClink posted:So using a laser on a squishy meatbag isn't kosher but using it on a boat, car or airplane and the meatbag inside operating it totally is? Don't todays lasers take a bit of time to burn through and your average person would just go "Ouch!", and jump out of the way before they got a hole burned through them?
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Sep 18, 2015 22:26
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chitoryu12 posted:The "air-to-air" thing was a lovely Photoshop of a satellite image of a Flanker shooting at the airliner, which a few weirdo who really get into Russian propaganda believed. It wasn't even a Flanker, it was a lovely photoshopped SU-25 IIRC. A magical Frogfoot somehow flying 10,000 feet above its service ceiling 
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Oct 14, 2015 21:36
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So I've got to write a paper for a Human Factors Engineering grad level class on some well known incident or accident that was caused by human error. I figured the KAL 007 shootdown could be a good one, since confusing navigation systems+ pilot error + Soviet pilot/ground control errors + other related stuff = a lot to write about. But holy poo poo are a ton of the "sources" I can find weird conspiracy theory laden piles of crap. Everything from "It was actually a massive air battle involving a dozen US fighters" to "Satan did it". Are there any decent authoritative sources that cover it that don't have any of this poo poo?
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Nov 17, 2015 00:01
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PittTheElder posted:There's the USS Vincennes shoot down of Iran Air Flight 655 too. Their radars told them the aircraft was squawking civilian and climbing, but the CIC crew somehow convinced themselves it was actually squawking military and descending. I wanted one similar to that, but we're advised not to do Flight 655 (or Three Mile Island) in particular because it's specifically covered a bunch in the course. Hence why I started looking at KAL 007, but I wasn't expecting this much crazy surrounding it. MANGOSTEEN CURES P posted:Pinnacle 3701, Elmendorf C-17, Fairchild B-52, Dover C-5 are all fantisc case studies That C-5 one could be good, especially since it looks like unfamiliarity with the fancy new glass cockpit interface was a factor. Thanks! Mr Luxury Yacht fucked around with this message at 01:15 on Nov 17, 2015 |
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Nov 17, 2015 01:09
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crazyivan45 posted:Avianca 52 is a good one as well University of Toronto. Just started an MASc in Industrial Engineering with a focus on Human Factors.
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Nov 17, 2015 23:54
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Humans are hilariously bad at monitoring automation and whole careers in human factors engineering have been built on that fact. Mainstream adoption of self-driving cars is quite a ways out, especially once accidents start and lawyers start asking the fun questions. Example: A self driving car hits and kills a pedestrian because some sensors hosed up and missed something. Who is liable? The driver? There will always be a way to override the automation, because it's far from perfect. i.e. there's a number of videos out there of Tesla's fancy self driving feature freaking out and almost driving off the road if the driver didn't grab the steering wheel and jerk it back (there's also a number of videos of people letting the car drive itself while they're in the back seat. Inevitably the two situations are going to coincide). But self driving cars have a major advantage in that they can be put in driving situations that are crazy unsafe for human drivers because they require impossible reaction times (i.e. Platooning. a number of self driving cars can follow each other at an extremely close headway because computers can react faster and they can in theory communicate with each other to plan for braking, etc...). Is the driver expected to override an incorrect automation decision and be held liable if they do not? What if the car put them in a situation where they can't react fast enough? So then the company that made the self driving car? If their automation hosed up and killed a pedestrian are they liable? Or is it the driver who engaged it? If I were the legal counsel of a major car company I'd be making GBS threads bricks constantly for the next ten years while this all gets sorted out.
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Dec 30, 2015 00:33
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priznat posted:Volvo has already stepped up and announced they accept full liability if one of their cars has an accident in auto driving mode. Sort of a line in the sand move to challenge other manufacturers and show why they are the better choice when some or all don't. Yeah, but contrast Volvo's self driving rollout vs. other companies. Volvo is allowing it on one major road in Gothenburg which the government modified for them (ex: the speed limit was lowered because it wouldn't have been as safe for self-driving at the old one). Tesla pushed a software update and was like "GUESS ALL OUR CARS CAN SELF DRIVE NOW HAVE FUN  "A visiting professor working on self-driving stuff gave a talk to the lab I'm doing my masters in (sorta related since we do driving distraction). One anecdote he mentioned when what you linked came up was how Ford's chief counsel was apparently super loving relieved when Ford cut Volvo loose, because Volvo's management never understood the litigation culture in the States. If that promise applies to the US they'll be sued into loving space.
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Dec 30, 2015 01:35
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david_a posted:Re: the Tu-160M2 60,000 ft thing - I figured what was meant is that the combination of speed, altitude, and munitions range would make it harder to hit. If you draw a triangle from the target to the plane where the base is along the ground, increasing both the weapon range and altitude would increase the hypotenuse (i.e. the distance a SAM has to cover). If it's booking along at Mach 2 that seems like it would make it even harder. I mean, wasn't this what the SR-71 used to avoid danger? Fly high and fast enough that they can't detect and intercept it in time? The SR-71's max speed and service ceiling was Mach 3.3/ 85,000 ft though. That's a big difference.
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Aug 17, 2016 15:11
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Antti posted:I have more photos but I haven't had time to sort through and upload them. It's a great museum if you're a thread regular, just make sure to get a ticket in advance to skip the queue if you want to turn up right when it opens. Went when I visted NYC a couple weeks ago. drat cool and made me realize I am too tall to ever join the navy. The U.S.S. Growler was also pretty cool, and included in the same ticket. I have no idea how 85 people managed to live in that thing for months and not murder each other. It's also not listed on the ticket price options, but there is a slight discount if you say you're a university student (or just have a student ID that hasn't expired yet). Think they knocked at least a few bucks off the admission price.
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Sep 25, 2016 00:42
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LingcodKilla posted:Intrepid museum in NYC is pretty decent. This. I never realised how ridiculously big the TBD Avenger is until I stood next to it and was like "How the gently caress are you supposed to climb into this this?"  I guess I always imagined it as like half the size it actually was.
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Nov 13, 2016 19:10
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Nebakenezzer posted:Tweets during the cold war would have been a vital historical document (up until the sky was burned with fire) The Nixon Tweets: What happened to the 18 missing characters?
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Dec 22, 2016 20:53
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Raenir Salazar posted:Any stories? I'm interested in applying for DoD software jobs up here in Canada when I graduate. Well if you're looking at industry also, don't work for CAE. Had a buddy work there in engineering who eventually left because he found out their craptacular starting wages were followed by sub-inflation raises . He ended up moving to General Dynamics and has been much, much happier. Although I've heard it really depends on the team. Probably no longer having to live in suburban Quebec as an Anglo also helped.
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Feb 11, 2017 22:48
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Flikken posted:Stupid question wasn't Canada using F-104's as Arctic interceptors before the Hornets? I could be wrong but I think we mostly used the CF100 then the F101 Voodoo for NORAD stuff before the Hornet (both twin engined). While the Starfighter mostly served with NATO in Germany.
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Mar 9, 2017 15:47
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Crazycryodude posted:Unless they know something we don't and have good reason to fear that the submarine leg of their triad is neutralized Pfff the Russians are the ones with the genetically engineered squids. Everyone knows the West went all in on sonic attack dolphins.
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Mar 12, 2017 07:30
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aphid_licker posted:What did the catapults of that era use to launch the plane anyway? Please tell me that it's a bigass spring. I think it was largely either hydraulics or a gunpowder charge.
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Jul 6, 2017 00:57
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inkjet_lakes posted:Had WW3 kicked off a whole load of Alpha Jet & Hawk pilots would have had a short but exhilarating war... One of my favourite things in modded Strike Fighters 2 is to load up a 1980s Germany campaign and see how long I can last flying some completely inappropriate underpowered attack plane. Flying at 20 ft in an OV-10 Bronco means that you're so low and slow don't have to worry about all the fancy radar SAMs but T-72 coax machine guns will blow you out of the sky. I think the one time I tried an Alpha Jet campaign I lasted approximately 10 seconds before multiple Alamos and SA-10s disintegrated me. Mr Luxury Yacht fucked around with this message at 04:59 on Aug 31, 2017 |
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Aug 31, 2017 04:57
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BIG HEADLINE posted:Yeah, but that's objectively harmless compared to a billionaire who can watch Moonraker and go Yeah but based on his lovely water based Libertopia plans he thinks the guy from The Spy Who Loved me had the right idea.
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Nov 2, 2017 19:19
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my kinda ape posted:Did they have some form of self-sealing? I feel like making a few dozen/hundred/thousand holes in a balloon would result in the contents swiftly leaving, even if it was a really loving big balloon and the holes were pretty small. A zeppelin isn't just a single giant gas filled tube. The hydrogen or helium is contained in a whole bunch of separate gas cells. So a bullet might pierce the skin, but it's not going to affect its ability to stay airborne unless it hits one of the gas cells. And even if it does the loss of a single cell won't necessarily sink it.
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Nov 21, 2017 00:13
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shame on an IGA posted:I want to play Kerbal Nuclear Program now Children of a Dead Earth's nuke design module is probably the closest you'll get.
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Dec 5, 2017 22:19
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Nebakenezzer posted:
So the competition won't start until after the next election and the first planes won't arrive until after the election after that one, assuming the Liberals win a majority again  Another government is totally going to come in within that timespan, cancel it all, and start from scratch aren't they... I looked it up and the entire process from the writing of the original RFP to the final selection for the CF-18s was only three years. How times have changed.
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Dec 16, 2017 06:17
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With regards to Shtora, did the Russians just believe if they were doing gun launched laser guided ATGMs, the west must be doing it to, hence the counter? It seems weird they put so much effort into countering a type of system only they used. Is it just Zimmerit 2.0?
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Dec 24, 2017 17:45
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Warbadger posted:It makes a lot more sense as a beam riding ATGM or air-dropped laser guided bomb countermeasure. Given the timing of its development (gulf war and Soviet breakup) this actually makes sense. The whole "jam optics" part of Shtora is like, the optics of what's lasing it right? Not the seeker of the munition. Against an LGB that just seems wacky. Having the turret and gun suddenly swivel up to the sky so the tank can show the gunner the 2000 lb bomb that will obliterate it in 20 seconds
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Dec 24, 2017 19:48
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howe_sam posted:The Starfighter gave us the United Servo Men's Academy Choir, so points to the F-104 https://youtu.be/Ree220FiOEg That and the poopie suit. The movie (The Starfighter a) is legit mind numbing though and makes the f-104 seem boring as hell. Not even mst3k riffing can save it.
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Feb 13, 2018 02:31
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