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Platystemon posted:There are scenarios where special measures must be taken to keep water from freezing. Yeah; in my experience in heavy industry, a lot if not most high duty coolant systems have a heating system integrated - even if just to heat up the cooling circuit to normal operating temperature (greater than ambient) prior to circuit startup after maintenance downtime and is not used again until the next maintenance event eight weeks later.
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Jan 28, 2020 14:11
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If you could put a workable 1,600km range gun on a frigate sized ship, it would obsolete carriers. Naval warfare would then join the drones/remote sensing and arty game that land warfare is becoming.
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Mar 6, 2020 17:55
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Just curious as someone from outside the US, is it apparent to everyone else as it is to me that President Trump ordered the dismissal of the ships captain? It seems likely USN ships at sea were not allowed to take preventive action ahead of Trump having his mate contract covid and have an epiphany so the result of a cruise ship petri dish experiment navy edition was always going to happen but the expectation was the captain was going to cover it up?
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Apr 5, 2020 00:52
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Update as I had a chat to me old man who served RAN - he thinks Crozier was foolish and was always going to be tramped (by the Navy) because at the end of the day - sailors might die but the mission needs to succeed (which in my old man's view, has obviously been compromised by Croziers public admission of USN failure). If Crozier thought something absolutely needed doing to enhance the chance of success of the mission he should have ordered it directly but to write a letter to the press was always foolish. My old man served during the cold war ('62 - '74) so his thinking might be out of date.
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Apr 5, 2020 03:37
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Old mate secdefnav or whatever seems like a bit of a wanker but naming a class of ships to encourage naming of ships with emotion (Attack, Revenge, Renown, Gay Viking) sounds pretty good. Although in this day and age, I guess it would also end up with names like "Stand Up Meeting, Inside The Loop and the Doing the Needful"
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Apr 9, 2020 22:23
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Cyrano4747 posted:Just make a USS Powerpoint and be done with it. USS Power Point nuclear ballistic missile armed boomer with a motto of "USS Power Point and be done with it" is not the worst of the ship name motto combos.
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Apr 9, 2020 22:38
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Nebakenezzer posted:I've a dumb observation for the thread: As the saying goes (attributable to Churchill?) - There are no eternal friends or eternal enemies, only eternal interests. You let others into your bases based upon that axiom. The US has the most extensive string of bases but most significant powers have bases in areas of interest to them. You can see the cause of some regional conflicts based upon where bases are or being set up.
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Apr 9, 2020 23:00
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Murgos posted:I like it. Now this is a Task Force Team Building For Shared Values I can get behind. As long as it visits the new Okinawa Base "Impacted Stakeholders" for the Marines aboard.
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Apr 9, 2020 23:09
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piL posted:These names are horseshit; if we use up all our ships, how are we supposed to name them after Congressmen (and only men) who J4Gd the Navy Reserves for 3 years in the 90s? Now you can see why they got old mate to sack Crozier - two birds with one stone!
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Apr 9, 2020 23:36
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Or any sort of construction really - I have been part of a couple of process plants that burnt badly during construction but never been part of a significant fire in operating plant (I'm not O&G). During construction, everything is all combustibles, sources of ignition and too many work fronts. Fires during construction, chemicals and pinch points during operation and mobile plant throughout all the time no matter what you do. And pandemic, I guess (fun fact we added pandemic to our business risks in Q4 2019 after 10 years as an operating multinational - how is that for just in time risk appraisal? - even put a quarantine facility design together that upon dragging out for use was obviously not expected to be used but hey, box ticked!)
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Apr 11, 2020 18:01
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Flikken posted:Yeah I'm going to venture a guess that the IJN was slightly larger than the Italian Navy and German Navy combined Yeah, but the IJN was sinking the brits, not the other way around.
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Apr 19, 2020 14:59
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Is an interesting thought exercise as the English decided that they had to have a bomb with a Union Jack on it because of how mercurial the Americans turned out to be on the question of nuclear weapons after WWII. A lot of the American hijinks with the bug over the typhoon is obviously to try and mix up aircraft development in Europe (and hence conventional force projection outside the control of the US) so you wonder what is in it from the German side.
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Apr 20, 2020 16:16
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Murgos posted:The standard 57mm or the ALaMO guided 57mm round failed to meet accuracy requirements? I thought the Alamo was basically guided ammunition? Is there something specific about how they intend to implement it that is silly? Because for me it is pretty straight forward that as cost and miniaturization improve, the scope of precision guidance is added to smaller and smaller missions. I remember the term plinking being a bit derogatory of the US using GBUs on tanks and now it is a no brainer. The missions of these FFG's is to go around doing all the policing, showing flag, etc and the like freeing up destroyers, right? I seen the LCS as doing these mundane but necessary tasks but they are going the way of the dodo.
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May 2, 2020 09:21
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mllaneza posted:In a pinch it's also a datalinked ship with 40 VLS, 2 helos, limited Aegis, and some SSMs to fill a hole in a task force. It's also a unit that can be dispatched solo that has some teeth if it it gets into trouble. In theory you could instead buy 2 LCS for the money, the FFG(x) can only be in one place, but it can shoot at modern surface combatants, which the LCS just can't. Yeah, I see that it could be used like that, but is that really a good thing or just a temptation for planners to undertake a DD mission on the cheap? My impression is that the US has the resources to put in place the DDs it needs for BGs and missile defense, etc if it is not using those same ships to go running around playing dodgem with container ships (looking forward to floating wedding barge edition). Maybe the good for UAV defense and scaring civies pop gun is a means of trying to dissuade planners (and ambitious Captains) from thinking they are meant for fighting modern surface combatants?
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May 2, 2020 12:55
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LimburgLimbo posted:I would be honestly not be at all surprised if this was actually pushed by Trump somehow. Because Trump and Kushner coming up with some mindblowingly half-assed scheme to get around existing govt agencies by googling, finding this dudes' website, and asking him to set up a revolution would be so true to form that it seriously can't be ruled out. Only hiccup is that if it were true there would almost certainly be some tape somewhere of Trump bragging about how there's soon to be a big, beautiful, capitalist revolution in Venezuela. and couldn't even google well.
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May 5, 2020 11:59
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Cyrano4747 posted:Speaking of hiluxes there’s an article in the most recent Economist about how they get into the hands of warlords etc in Africa when Toyota has a policy of not selling to them. We’re talking brand new trucks showing up as technicals, not something that had been knocking around rural war zones for decades. They are definitely brand new Toyotas, I have seen them in the flesh when we helped recover 60 from one car pool of them after a local government operation complete with brownish khaki factory paint (trivia - mineral companies only order white). Made me wonder which country is funding all the drama here in West Africa to pay for so many brand spanking new wagons.
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May 7, 2020 20:37
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Shooting Blanks posted:I wasn't aware there was a gold boom. Welp. Welp? Don't be like that friend, it is taking the sting out of the guys still onsite keeping production running flat out that they get a 50% salary bonus for the duration of being stuck onsite. And not kidding about boom times, I feel absolutely no sense of job insecurity at the moment even as I sit stuck offsite on full salary. Old mines are being started up, new projects are being pushed through development and existing plants being expanded. Only threat is transport of people and the worry about critical vendors going under as the rest of their market collapses so they stop making an irreplaceable widget for a big machine. Good point on new light vehicles (LV) being diverted, I was always leary of how hard village chiefs and the like push for LVs from us and hate how we fold over sometimes but this is something I can remind them of.
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May 8, 2020 10:09
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Cat Hatter posted:"Conn, sonar. Picking up an Akula.” Thanks for this! Also, amazing what the quarantine has done for us.
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May 9, 2020 22:10
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bit like with the trailer - after you spent what you have on the missile, a few soldiers is insignificant
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May 20, 2020 14:18
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https://www.csis.org/analysis/marine-corps-radical-shift-toward-china Seems to set upon getting marines out of tanks and policing and onto the beach and back into the Philippines (where I think they are happiest). Makes the FFG(x) make even more sense as well as explain for me why the Marines have been looking at tomahawks (not for attacking land targets as I had just assumed, but for projecting from shore to sea). A lot depends on how much Duturte keeps the US out of the Philippines versus China but from the Philippines, a lot of the recent island additions of China would be untenable if marine detachments were on say Palawan with a few truckloads of anti ship tomahawks - the Chinese not being able to keep track of all trucks versus keeping track of (thinly spread) DDGs. Between Taiwan, Malaysia and The Philippines controls access to the Pacific and Indian oceans. Also, the army can have more tanks if it is feeling short...
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May 23, 2020 12:43
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LibCrusher posted:Turns out the 737NG is still pretty good and easy to build For me the P8 is a pretty good platform for Australia - in flight refueling, facilities and systems in place (with commercial air carriers) to keep very high availability and modern air to surface missiles/guided weapons, it makes me think of it as potentially Australia's fill-in baby B52 - not knocking in the front door but a good economical way to deliver air dropped air freight. That's on top of being a good sea search platform with the support of our A330 tankers (KC30) and B737 based AWACS (E7). I actually kind of wonder if the various wars on dirt would not have been far more economically carried out with P8s tooling around with SDBs. The operational cost per hour of B737s has to be cheaper than B52/B1/B2 and maybe even not that different to fighters once you take into account loiter time, precious F15 hours and maybe even not too different from drones. Probably not so fun to think of bombing missions as glorified freight though.
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May 24, 2020 23:31
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Godholio posted:They tried it with 747s. The thing is you sort of defeat the purpose of going with the biggest commercial plane - what does a 747 add over a 737 except far greater costs and reduced deploy-ability? Especially now that a well placed SDB is as effective as the big old GBUs for most purposes. LibCrusher posted:I’m surprised Boeing hasn’t pitched this. Now I think about it, I am surprised the DoD didn't buy all B737max production until Boeing can go back to selling to commercial operators - but that is beside the point. priznat posted:Still seems weird seeing a sub hunter that size that isn’t 4 engined turboprops. (Yah I know, S-3 but that was pretty wee.) Turboprops are cool and good and P3 used to be one of my favourite planes. I love the Pilatus PC-12 for being so much plane performance for the money.
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May 25, 2020 09:10
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Godholio posted:You don't get to just hang whatever you want from any pylon. If we're trying to pretend this thing has a future as a B-52 or F-15E replacement it needs a lot more than just four pylons. It also can't carry JDAM, SDB, or MALD, so it's of basically no use to anyone else until that gets solved too (the Navy is currently looking into expanding its weapons compatibility). And it STILL has to justify the added expenses. It has to be better than a B-52 or F-15E. It has bomb doors, can carry and deploy Air->Surface missiles and free fall bombs (small bickies to GBUs from there), can already operate drones, has a proposed JSTARS equivalent system for it (pod mounted and maybe not relevant in 'Stan), has operator stations and manning onboard to give far greater service to forward air/ground controllers than A10's or F15s would consider, 4,000 of them already being operated every day so expect >99% dispatchability >85% total airtime (because that is what commercial B737s average over 20 years). I never thought of it as a permanent replacement for any aircraft, just something they would procure to prevent the massive wastage of hours that occurred on US defense force aircraft during bomb dirts. Let's be honest, likely 90% of missions in 'Stan could have been just as easily been completed with less aircraft hours by the P8 at a fraction of the cost (or spend the same amount and having way more loitering air support on tap). Those 10% of missions that it couldn't do, well you have your fresh legs B1s/B2s/B52s/F15s/F18s tonguing for less training missions and more action (because they would not have been using all their training budget hours/$s bombing dirt). This assumes you donate them to LAPD after bomb dirt like the MRAPs. Cheaper, more effective, lower risk, more reliable just not as sexy and a promotability in line with a C130 crew ahh yeah you're right, non-starter for sky-knights.
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May 25, 2020 20:55
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Godholio posted:The Air Force is also perpetually 2,000 pilots short already, although that might start to inch in the right direction over the next few years. If doing CAS right was such a massive undertaking, it would not have been attempted with F15s, B1s, B2s and B52s (and their as trained pilots) as they were all arguably less suited than a P8 with sniper pod and JSTARs radar. 2000's avionics, larger mission crew aboard in a more ergonomic environment, cheaper to purchase and operate, in production to replace any P8s with the hours all run up by the time bomb dirt is finished and against that is F15 go fast and B2s look cool doing it. Air force is buying F15s now to replace all the hours consumed flying circles a UPS pilot would grow board of flying so buying 10 or 30 additional airframes for the navy after you run up the hours on the ones already in service is not a great bar to leap over. The pilot training program between the forces and civilians for B737s is large (there is no need to practice low swooping dives or crazy climb outs on one wing until I crash, teach them the pilot normal civilian training program with a few modules for flying the track for releasing guided ordinance. Heh, in fact it would cheapen the CAS training for your other platform pilots because it would be easy to carry aloft a few extra skynobles during a mission and they can all take turns talking to a real live ground savage and dropping jdams on or near them and being able to hang around to look at their efforts after with the fancy mounted FLIR aboard. On the F35 and marines, it seems it is a point noted and the proposal included reducing the number of aircraft in a squadron to 10 aircraft. Electric Wrigglies fucked around with this message at 13:51 on May 26, 2020 |
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May 26, 2020 08:51
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MrYenko posted:I mean responding to the situation evolving on the ground. You don’t know when you’re going to need a gun run, or a JDAM, or a maverick, so your CAS platform is sent with a mix of the above. You might just need a show of force, which an F-35 or A-10 is a hell of a lot more capable of than a 737. The only aircraft that can do effective gun runs are the A10, MC130 and helicopters - none of which the airforce is excited about. The P8 can or would easily be able to deploy all other useful weapons more effectively than the other aircraft flying at 30,000 feet with a few "interface with army" mods - after all it was designed as a high use long loiter search and deploy precision weapon platform with minimal compromise for threat environment. The point of its economy is not the cost of doing war, but how ineffectual that fighting proved to be when instead of getting in fighting the fight, F15s got involved to pretend flying mach 1.5 at 100ft agl achieves anything, B52s got to pretend that a 1950s jet is still useful for something other than airfreighting tomahawks to the delivery point, B2s because everyone else was in the party and he got all FOMO. WIKI posted:On 18 January 2017, two B-2s attacked an ISIS training camp 19 miles (30 km) southwest of Sirte, Libya, killing around 85 militants. The B-2s together dropped 108 500-pound precision-guided Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) bombs. These strikes were followed by an MQ-9 Reaper unmanned aerial vehicle firing Hellfire missiles. Each B-2 flew a 34-hour, round-trip mission from Whiteman Air Force Base, Missouri with 15 refuelings during the trip.[140][141 hahahaha, yeah gotta make sure that you have all the options of gun run, fend off SA20s, follow up attack and high speed re-deploy to another mission at short notice when air freighting bombs. Sometimes the tools you provide your workers shape their thinking to the job at hand. You give them a crane one time, next time they will refuse to lift something on the back of a truck like they did every time up until the one time you had a spare crane. You give them a really high quality laser alignment tool, they will take care and be precise way more than if you gave them a dial gauge just as capable of doing the job. You give them a F15, they think the fight is about the high speed low drag air to ground mission, you give them an air freighter with excellent search and collaboration capacity, those same aircrew will treat the job as an every day methodical search and collaboration mission.
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May 26, 2020 19:24
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priznat posted:Some kind of weird horse trading that ends up them having to pay 3x the going rate in the end. ahhh I was wondering why Canada is buying Australia's clapped out F-18s, I didn't realise it's Canada's kink - not that there's anything wrong with that.
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May 27, 2020 22:08
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drgitlin posted:Why do you correctly capitalize SBD but not YF-22, YF-23, or F-22? It makes my eyes hurt. Maybe the same reason the US DoD capitalizes words like soldier, marine or pilot - personal preference.
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May 28, 2020 08:39
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With the F35B, it looks like it draws its air through the top when in STOL mode, bit like the Russians do on their aircraft to avoid FOD. I assume that is only the lift fan getting its air through that or is the gas turbine also receiving air through the top and in effect could reduce FOD risk? One thing forgotten I think with near peer confrontation is if it doesn't go thermonuclear, it can and will spread out. There will be daily actions from South Africa to central America. From the Sulu Islands to Djibouti and to Kazakhstan. Is the no-marines needed theory for that situation just 13xair refuelings 39 hour B2 mission every outpost, oilfield or port that is threatened attack by maybe 150 guys that might also have some top quality iglas with them? Or maybe the plan is whenever these rumors of local anger build, just to build a F35a capable airbase near each one. It might not even be near peer soon, the US state department (taking over from British intelligence) put a monster effort into limiting quality weapons getting to its opponents and out of general circulation. If the US State Department is less effective in this and (for arguments sake) the Chinese get better at seeing the agitators it likes get guided weapons, it puts pressure on the widely spread out interests of the US. Marines protect a lot of those interests now with rifles, cobras and harriers (and an effective US State Department behind the scenes locally) but that soon might not be enough.
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May 28, 2020 14:08
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Wingnut Ninja posted:There's concept art out there of an F-22 with a Tomcat-style swing wing for carrier operation. How to make that work with LO is probably something that makes aerospace engineers wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat. A Lockheed Martin developmental contracts exec just got a yaaahuuuge hard-on and doesn't know why.
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May 28, 2020 15:06
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Stravag posted:Ive got it, the a-10 replacement will have swing wings. Extended for CAS, in for faster movement to target areas. And the GAU will be in 45mm. And two of them! Eith blackjack, and hookers! So the 57 mm gun with guided munitions out the side of the B1?
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May 29, 2020 17:13
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Platystemon posted:Just tell him that we can add Russia to the G7 and call it the G8. he also mentioned adding Australia, South Korea and India.
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May 31, 2020 08:59
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BIG HEADLINE posted:Except the Americas cost ~$3.5b apiece. A modified America with a ski-jump (which would require more engineering than 'just bolt one on') would easily cost as much if not more than a new-build Nimitz, which runs ~$4.5b. Latest I seen was about $9.5B for a Nimitz but it is not just the procurement it is also the ongoing operational costs. They are far simpler without steam catapult, nuclear propulsion, etc and far smaller so not outsized for a lot of tasks where 6-8,000 sailors and 100+ aircraft for a CBG is simply not required or indeed not an unnecessary escalation. An USS America embarking 10x F35Bs with two FFG(x) and a SSN is a lot of force projection at a fraction of the cost of a CBG.
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Jun 1, 2020 21:32
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aphid_licker posted:Are those formations unusually white or did they just grab whatever was closest? Probably a coincidence but one of the first rules of using an army on people is to use the least sympathetic army units possible.
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Jun 2, 2020 12:46
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Awesome specimen. I don't have the colouring in skills to be a geo but I do appreciate a good rock.
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Jun 5, 2020 14:50
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oh hey, my trade (Metallurgist) makes the headlines... neat. And for adjusting testing results in line with his experience and knowledge. Brings a tear to my eye it does. One of the hardest things to teach a budding metallurgist is to maintain all the paperwork to ensure the blame for finger on the scales is allocated to the person that put pressure upon you to finger the scales (if you are not confident enough to push back effectively). So many mets have been done over by "marching towards Hitler" on trying to please their boss on the interpretation of lab/testing results.
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Jun 16, 2020 10:52
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Grenrow posted:Every single time someone criticizes China in this thread, you always jump in to have a page long argument about how it's not an issue and actually we're all just bullying China. It's the most tedious conversation and it plays out exactly the same way every time. The standard you walk past is the standard you condone. It is interesting news for people interested in the region or geo-politics in general but the words and style as used by Warbadger is disingenuous to a proper debate and discussion or a dry analysis of the underlying events as opposed to a first blush fox news take.
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Jun 17, 2020 14:56
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ahhh that's what we were looking for for our new CAS platform. Not rotary but a good start. More seriously, I thought that the Navy just worked out that the 57 mm gun with guided ammo was the sweet spot for RPM, effective range, magazine size etc.
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Jun 19, 2020 17:26
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Is all the explanation a cover story to explain why the US went out of its way to obtain air defense hardware so they can supply the counter measures to Israel / Turkey for their games in Syria (does Iran get AD hardware from Russia?)? I assume the Russian electronic warfare equipment has been a bit more effective in countering efforts than has been led to believe. Linking the coasts of Syria and Libya with truck mounted hardware into a integrated southern flank against NATO sounds like hogwash.
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Jun 22, 2020 08:42
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^that is a huge subject you have just asked about^ I think you will have to do some general reading as you seem to be asking for general knowledge. Iron Coffins is an enjoyable read about life on U-boats and does cover how deadly the Allies got with DF gear. An understanding of how radios work and properties of the various frequencies will guide your thinking a lot - for instance, transmitting through water requires low frequency which requires significantly more power and is less directional so only on submarines did you see ULF radios be deployed. Carrying around a multi 100's of kw ULF radio on your back (and its km of aerial) as a foot soldier is not so tenable so UHF is utilized there. Crypto is its own fascinating story and a story within the fascinating subject of intelligent (a little anecdote the germens had a very skilled radio intercept and analysis group in Africa that helped them clean up the English (via knowing the complete UK order of battle for instance) in the early African campaign but the unit got overrun through good fortune (leading the UK to discover how compromised it had been) and led to the English completely overhauling radio communication procedures. Simple things like confirming who you are talking to on a radio with a code book phrase before you share information or ask (revealing) questions. Wingnut Ninja posted:LOL, I had never noticed the poor fucks that had to stand on the Hornet wing strakes in the background. And violating fall protection guidelines by not wearing cranials, at that. I was thinking the exact same thing about the guys standing without fall arrest. Electric Wrigglies fucked around with this message at 11:23 on Jun 26, 2020 |
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Jun 26, 2020 10:50
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Raenir Salazar posted:Would it be closer to the WW1 example of "kinda easy" if its WW2 or early cold war? Depends you what you are up against, in the 60's my old man was part of radio operators team on a destroyer that wrecked a naval exercise by intercepting all the Opfor radio traffic at a certain level, jamming on the same wavelength and retransmitting a slightly different message just up or just down frequency (so the opfor radio operator looking for the frequ would hear a heap of noise then find a nice crystal clear signal and then would try and authentic my old man but because they were slack about enforcing timing, dad could then use the same code to challenge someone else in the opfor team with the phrase book and then get the correct answer to answer back and get in. My old man had been taught the Opfor language for his job so could read and re-transmit inside the compromised network fairly well. He tells that he felt kinda bad when a message come down on the opfor side for a fellow on an opfor side who had a close relative on deaths door and permission for a final chat with his loved one on an over the radio conversation if he wanted it (very rare in non-US navies in the 60's). Because that would have revealed the Aussie ship in the middle they just binned the message - Aussie ship gets to wreck the exercise and old mate never gets the chance to chat to his loved one before they passed. Evidently the captain of the destroy got a very naughty boy lecture at the wash-up because as people have indicated before, exercises are about training more than winning so all the ships never even sighting each other (the destroyers team of radio operators had sent the Opfor task force in completely wrong the wrong direction) was great for the three radio operators and the captains ego and demonstrated fatal vulnerabilities in the opfor communications equipment, procedures and training but was a huge waste of time and money otherwise.
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Jun 29, 2020 08:24
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