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Godholio posted:There's a good chance this actually starts a loving war. Possession of a weapon is not the same thing as deploying it in a sensitive area. It provides an option. Exercising it is not mandatory. Further, China has a gigantic quantity of road mobile conventional short and medium range ballistic missiles. It's like their main thing. They can hardly complain. I mean they will, but they'll look stupid.
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Apr 8, 2021 04:03
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Sagebrush posted:Even if you do have a military, you need something pretty fuckin' serious to fend off 4,000 B-29s. A couple of MiG-21s and Iglas aren't gonna do it I’d be impressed if we can muster 4000 suicidal pilots. Seems like a waste of pilots tho. aphid_licker posted:Range and loiter time, probably relatively comfortably And the other essential functional requirements? Lots of power for the B-29s radar? How’s the B-29s SATCOM bandwidth is it great or just okay? Maybe comparing the cost of the F-35 and B-29 doesn’t make much more sense than comparing the cost of a super tuc and an F-35. CarForumPoster fucked around with this message at 04:08 on Apr 8, 2021 |
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Apr 8, 2021 04:05
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I find it difficult to believe the F35 costs are anywhere in the neighborhood of 3% GDP
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Apr 8, 2021 04:30
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shame on an IGA posted:I find it difficult to believe the F35 costs are anywhere in the neighborhood of 3% GDP Do you know how many hookers Lockmart employs?
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Apr 8, 2021 04:41
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Blistex posted:Do you know how many hookers Lockmart employs? Theyre only a hooker if they come from the hooker street in vegas otherwise they're just a sparkling escort (fighter)
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Apr 8, 2021 06:17
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Captain von Trapp posted:Who said anything about strategic? Or bases, for that matter? Mortabis posted:And if the war is going to start anyway, that doesn't matter. And maybe your ability to do it prevents the war from happening without actually having to move anything there. Mortabis posted:First: the western pacific isn't the only place we have strategic obligations. Second: it's not at all implausible that you would put missiles on trucks to defend Guam so that we don't need missiles to be on scarce ships instead. And third, the obvious place to put them is Taiwan. Them being on trucks means they can be flown in at the last minute if things look like they're about to get real. The only situation where road mobile basing makes sense is if one or more countries in the region agree to host road mobile American strategic missiles, and all of the useful candidates have indicated they are deeply uninterested in the idea. We'd be purchasing a multi-billion dollar system in the hope that someone changes their mind after we acquire it. The money could be better directed into building more B-21s or stealthy standoff weapons for air/sea platforms that don't have to worry nearly as much about these things. The idea of deploying them to Taiwan is even more asinine. If we think that China is mobilizing to invade Taiwan, deploying LRHW to the island will take any chance they might be talked out of it off the table. It would be both insanely escalatory and extremely stupid, like if Kennedy had deployed Jupiter missiles to West Berlin instead of Turkey. I think we went over this when you were Staning the F-35B, but the island right next to China that they keep under constant surveillance and is ranged by every weapon in their arsenal is not the most survivable place. Plus, the shortened ToF for both American and Chinese missiles raises the escalation risks even further. If you think Eastern Europe is a less problematic theater for American road mobile standoff missiles, it sure isn't by much. Dead Reckoning fucked around with this message at 06:44 on Apr 8, 2021 |
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Apr 8, 2021 06:42
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Snipping bitsDead Reckoning posted:
Andersen Air Force Base plus any other random building or installation on Guam is already a "Use it or lose it" capability, so adding something extra isn't going to change the equation much. That said, road mobile hypersonic missiles you could conceivably (i.e. much easier than every installation on Guam) hide or move on a regular basis or if things warmed up.
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Apr 8, 2021 07:05
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There exists levels of war and deterrence and weapons employment between “TIC” and strategic warfare. And initial heavy lift for the Army isn’t a lot of hypersonic weapons, it’s non-hypersonic ~500km+ range missiles that can hold ships and radars at risk. The initial hypersonic experimental unit is four launchers and eight missiles being set up in 2023. A missile having the ability to mission kill a ship isn’t strategic just because the missile goes real fast. And a strategic bomber firing JASSMs at tactical or operational targets does not equate to strategic warfare. One of the huge problems we see time and time again in public facing wargames is that as built, the air component can and will dismantle the IADS and then start trying to attrit enemy missiles forces. The problem: this almost always occurs so slowly based on MX, ordnance, and sortie generation in general that it puts the rest of the joint operation at severe risk. It also relies upon the enemy ground-based missile hunt being pretty successful. Historically, that has not been the case! The air component meticulously picking apart the enemy with little or no losses is cool, but it’s not so cool if the rest of the joint force wither loses or has severe losses and setbacks in the meantime. I have it on good authority (air force targeteers) that even a couple dozen miles of mobility makes targeting mobile things hell. Hotter take: spending a gajillion dollars on sea control immediately next to China might not be as valuable long term as using resources for things like educational investment, diplomatic influence, cultural influence, economic influence, etc.
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Apr 8, 2021 07:06
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BIG HEADLINE posted:I can't remember how many airworthy F-5s Mexico has (they have six in total so figure 1-2 at any given time are able to get aloft), but pretty sure a B-29 would gently caress Mexico up and they're hardly "abjectly poor." How about we slightly modify the statement? "If they wished to prepare for it, even the most abjectly poor country in the world today could fend off a B-29 raid." Sagebrush posted:Even if you do have a military, you need something pretty fuckin' serious to fend off 4,000 B-29s. A couple of MiG-21s and Iglas aren't gonna do it This though is pure strawman. The US would have issues fending off 20 million B-29's. See? The number of B-29s is made of straw and even then you did a poor job whacking it down.
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Apr 8, 2021 15:15
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Murgos posted:This though is pure strawman. The US would have issues fending off 20 million B-29's. See? The number of B-29s is made of straw and even then you did a poor job whacking it down. Wikipedia states 3970 built, not 20,000,000.
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Apr 8, 2021 15:22
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TCD posted:Wikipedia states 3970 built, not 20,000,000. Ah, yea, because in 2021 that's a reasonable number to use in this hypothetical thought game? It's straw. A number pulled out of the ether to make a fake point. Because everyone knows that a B-29 raid always meant every B-29 ever produced, am I rite?
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Apr 8, 2021 15:25
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Murgos posted:Ah, yea, because in 2021 that's a reasonable number to use in this hypothetical thought game? Okay how many B-29's were deployed at once at their nadir?
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Apr 8, 2021 15:47
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The original question was about fending off "a B-29 raid". A classic example was Operation MEETINGHOUSE, using 279 of them. https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/hellfire-earth-operation-meetinghouse The whole argument is pretty silly btw.
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Apr 8, 2021 15:51
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mlmp08 posted:There exists levels of war and deterrence and weapons employment between “TIC” and strategic warfare. And initial heavy lift for the Army isn’t a lot of hypersonic weapons, it’s non-hypersonic ~500km+ range missiles that can hold ships and radars at risk. The initial hypersonic experimental unit is four launchers and eight missiles being set up in 2023. soft power? in my cold war thread?
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Apr 8, 2021 15:52
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What did pilots think about flying the B-29? Or hell the B-52 or any giant fuckoff plane, does that suck or are they fun to fly?
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Apr 8, 2021 17:35
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Hell, the real cost of absolutely massive numbers of aircraft in a weird B-29 reborn project would be the massive amount of manning in crew and maintainers. The air force had about three times the personnel in the early 1950s that it has today. Other branches have also shrunk, but not as much, proportionately.
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Apr 8, 2021 17:51
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zoux posted:What did pilots think about flying the B-29? Or hell the B-52 or any giant fuckoff plane, does that suck or are they fun to fly? * Bud_Holland has entered the terrain
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Apr 8, 2021 17:54
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PCjr sidecar posted:* Bud_Holland has entered the terrain 
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Apr 8, 2021 18:16
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It was not great flying, at first.quote:Brig. Gen. LaVerne G. Saunders led the first raid from China on June 5, 1944, with 98 B-29s attacking Bangkok, Thailand. The mission was a fiasco, with less than two dozen bombs hitting the target railroad yard. Fourteen Superforts aborted en route, 42 diverted to alternate airfields, and five crashed on landing.
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Apr 8, 2021 18:18
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Dante80 posted:The original question was about fending off "a B-29 raid". A classic example was Operation MEETINGHOUSE, using 279 of them. Yes, it's dumb, but kind of fun. I think you could easily show a squadron of Mig 21's and a battery of Igla's housing a 279 airframe B-29 raid. The Mig's get what? 3 or 4 opportunities to sortie out, hit the 29's return, refuel, rearm and hit them again starting from max range? How many can they get per sortie before they run out of missiles and cannon rounds? 40? 50? How many reloads are you giving the Iglas? Because the miss rate is going to be pretty much just the failure rate of the rocket motor to fire and 29's are going to be in range at basically the optimal intercept altitude for half of eternity. Also, probably half the 29's will have turned back for mechanical issues before the engagement even starts. Murgos fucked around with this message at 18:51 on Apr 8, 2021 |
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Apr 8, 2021 18:49
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zoux posted:What did pilots think about flying the B-29? Or hell the B-52 or any giant fuckoff plane, does that suck or are they fun to fly? I know a few of these: The Avro Lancaster was incredibly neutral and forgiving to fly, a joy, basically. The B-24 was by most accounts I've read something of a bear on takeoffs and landings, and had quirks that in an emergency could kill the unawares. The B-36 was, despite its great size, a very stable and safe flyer. Not fun - I know there's a quote from a pilot who described it as like "flying around in your front porch". But giant wings and 6-10 engines meant there was a lot of safety margin. There was a case where the rudder fell off, and the plane landed with no issues. The Ju 290 was another stable, neutral flyer - the only problem for German pilots was getting used to how high the cockpit was off the ground. The He 177 - maybe this is just psychology - felt fragile and claustrophobic, and never inspired confidence. The Tu-22 Blinder was fuckin' nightmarish. Limited visibility, especially when landing. Extremely high landing speed. The worst ergonomics possibly of any military plane - crew had to attach strings to switches, because once strapped in to their ejection seat, they couldn't physically reach important controls. The knowledge that the downward ejection seats meant death was certian if badness happened at low altitudes. When it comes to big planes, I think the spectrum runs from "nice forgiving flight characteristics and stable" to "you can practically feel the thing scheming to kill you".
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Apr 8, 2021 19:08
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Russian planes in particular seem to hunger for man flesh. From the TU-22 wiki "It initially received the NATO reporting name 'Bullshot', which was deemed to be inappropriate, then 'Beauty', which was deemed to be too complimentary, and finally the 'Blinder'." I thought they just picked those out of a hat by letter, I didn't realize there was an approval process. Guess they were trying to be very malicious when they named the MiG-15 zoux fucked around with this message at 19:12 on Apr 8, 2021 |
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Apr 8, 2021 19:09
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Murgos posted:Yes, it's dumb, but kind of fun. I thought Iglas\MANPADS had a max ceiling of like ~10k ish feet?
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Apr 8, 2021 19:40
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Saint Celestine posted:I thought Iglas\MANPADS had a max ceiling of like ~10k ish feet? The 29s should be flying above MANPADS. https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/russia/9m337.htm says 5KM for the improved Igla-S, but the 29 can fly higher than that. Also per Murgos point on aircraft reliability, 334 aircraft launched on the Tokoyo raid with 279 dropping bombs.
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Apr 8, 2021 19:45
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If the B-29 wants to hit its target, it is well within Igla range. If it wants to bomb a town a mile or five from the target, it is out of Igla range. When the B-29s couldn’t hit targets from altitude by day, they switched to 5,000 foot bombing runs at night.
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Apr 8, 2021 20:07
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zoux posted:Russian planes in particular seem to hunger for man flesh. In the Blinder's case, very literally. The original Tu-22 was supposedly a real bitch and a half to keep aloft, and maintenance crews loving HATED the elevated engines.
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Apr 8, 2021 20:25
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mlmp08 posted:If the B-29 wants to hit its target, it is well within Igla range. If it wants to bomb a town a mile or five from the target, it is out of Igla range. Can we modify the B-29 to carry PGMs or an ALCM in its bomb bay? Has this hypothetical argument gone completely off the rails yet?
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Apr 8, 2021 20:38
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You know those military combat simulators where you have armies of different types and then hit go and they fight? I realized I want that but for air power/air defense.
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Apr 8, 2021 20:53
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priznat posted:You know those military combat simulators where you have armies of different types and then hit go and they fight? I realized I want that but for air power/air defense. I kind of want one for dismantling an IADS with a set number of assets. It would be a puzzle game sort of. First you hit that radar with your expensive long range or steathy stuff, which lets you get to that missile battery over there. Once that's down you have a window to get to a deep target that has a bunch of secondary effects. And so on.
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Apr 8, 2021 21:04
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Speed run! *mashes SRAM button*
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Apr 8, 2021 21:07
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On 25 June 1951, General O'Donnell, commander of the Far Eastern Air Force Bomber Command, testified in answer to a question from Senator John C. Stennis ("...North Korea has been virtually destroyed, hasn't it?): "Oh, yes; ... I would say that the entire, almost the entire Korean Peninsula is just a terrible mess. Everything is destroyed. There is nothing standing worthy of the name ... Just before the Chinese came in we were grounded. There were no more targets in Korea." the b-29 was effective enough
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Apr 8, 2021 21:13
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Saint Celestine posted:Can we modify the B-29 to carry PGMs or an ALCM in its bomb bay? Has this hypothetical argument gone completely off the rails yet? Pretty sure the B-29 could already carry the M117, which means I think it could carry the GBU-1/B. 
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Apr 8, 2021 21:14
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Greg12 posted:On 25 June 1951, General O'Donnell, commander of the Far Eastern Air Force Bomber Command, testified in answer to a question from Senator John C. Stennis ("...North Korea has been virtually destroyed, hasn't it?): "Oh, yes; ... I would say that the entire, almost the entire Korean Peninsula is just a terrible mess. Everything is destroyed. There is nothing standing worthy of the name ... Just before the Chinese came in we were grounded. There were no more targets in Korea." Strategic bombing.txt
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Apr 8, 2021 21:14
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Greg12 posted:On 25 June 1951, General O'Donnell, commander of the Far Eastern Air Force Bomber Command, testified in answer to a question from Senator John C. Stennis ("...North Korea has been virtually destroyed, hasn't it?): "Oh, yes; ... I would say that the entire, almost the entire Korean Peninsula is just a terrible mess. Everything is destroyed. There is nothing standing worthy of the name ... Just before the Chinese came in we were grounded. There were no more targets in Korea." Developing TTPs to be used in the next war in Asia to (Yes bombing rail and transportation hubs was quite important. But cutting off supply lines with ground forces was just a weeeeeee bit more decisive than strat bombing rail yards and mountains) E: I regret to inform that the B-29 appears to lack the payload to deliver airborne M113s to the front. mlmp08 fucked around with this message at 21:29 on Apr 8, 2021 |
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Apr 8, 2021 21:24
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Saint Celestine posted:Can we modify the B-29 to carry PGMs or an ALCM in its bomb bay? Has this hypothetical argument gone completely off the rails yet? Now, P in PGM is a bit of a stretch, but it kind of worked. B-17 and B-24 did carry Azon, so I don't see why B-29 could not.
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Apr 8, 2021 21:53
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mlmp08 posted:
It just tows the aerogavins behind it, obviously. How many aerogavins could each B-29 tow??
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Apr 8, 2021 22:20
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This is probably the best thread to ask this but did/do DC museums have special measures to protect their inventory from nuclear attack during the cold war? Even if its just moving things out of the city when itd seem prudent. And how badly would they be damaged from a nuclear attack?
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Apr 8, 2021 22:27
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Warbadger posted:It just tows the aerogavins behind it, obviously. How many aerogavins could each B-29 tow??  Two?
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Apr 8, 2021 22:29
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Communist Zombie posted:This is probably the best thread to ask this but did/do DC museums have special measures to protect their inventory from nuclear attack during the cold war? Even if its just moving things out of the city when itd seem prudent. And how badly would they be damaged from a nuclear attack? Doubtful. DC wouldve been so saturated its not even funny, and museum admin would likely have been very aware of this.
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Apr 8, 2021 22:34
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MrYenko posted:
Then yeah, you'd be hard pressed finding a modern military who could defend a facility against 600 aerogavins and 6600 infantry dropping on it. Gliding aerogavins aren't gonna be especially vulnerable to MANPADS so do the aerogavins establish air superiority against a couple MiG-21's or do they have to flood the sky with stingers when they hit the ground?
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Apr 8, 2021 22:37
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