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There's not a SEAPOWER thread (though my dad used to get this big encylcopedia of ships and weapon system from the navy league every year called SEAPOWER and man would I sperg over that), so I'll ask this here. The old thread mentioned in passing that the US Navy has problems crewing all it's ships adequately and in the milhist thread someone mentioned similar problems in the Royal Navy. What's the deal? Nobody joins the navy anymore or is there something else going on? Too many ships we don't need requiring too much maintenance or what?
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Jan 16, 2020 18:41
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| # ¿ Apr 25, 2024 10:43 |
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I've always thought the Royal Navy had way cooler names. Dreadnought, Victory, Indomitable, Nemesis, Inflexible, Indefatigable, Warspite, Iron Duke, Black Prince, Conqueror, Thunderer gently caress yeah. George H.W. Bush? not quite as terrifying
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Jan 19, 2020 19:28
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piL posted:Minelayers and Minesweepers named so you wouldn't get confused:
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Jan 20, 2020 01:03
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I am way behind the times and am just now reading about the DD(X)/Zumwalt fiasco and lol they don't have any ammunition for the guns because each round was going to cost as much as a Tomahawk?! Is there any effort being made to make conventional ammunition for the Advanced Gun System, or is that just throwing good money after bad since I'm not sure how useful shore bombardment really is? I guess a shell is probably harder to shoot down than a missile, but don't the Israeli's or someone have stuff for shooting down mortars etc? Do they have any actually useful armament or are they just floating piles of sensors that are hard to detect? I guess a sneaky spy ship is sort of useful, but they seem mighty expensive for just being a toothless sneaky ship. I read that the LRLAP was theoretically accurate to within ~150 ft at ~80 nautical miles which seems pretty impressive (and it ought to be at $1,000,000/rd!), but how accurate is modern artillery generally? I was always very impressed reading about WW1 Dreadnought actions where they seem to be able to hit a pretty skinny ship at 20,000+ yards with stereoscopic manual rangefinders, so presumably this has improved considerably.
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Feb 11, 2020 00:57
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The Navy wants to retire the first 4 LCS ships already. https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/32148/the-navy-now-wants-to-retire-the-first-four-of-its-troublesome-littoral-combat-ships
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Feb 11, 2020 23:21
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Mortabis posted:I know I bang on about this a lot but just imagine how many more ships everyone would have if everyone just got their naval vessels from say South Korea, which can actually build ships economically. That and I imagine if Hyundai Heavy Industries had to deal with NAVSEA and stuff a bulk carrier full of sensitive electronics and weapons systems, they wouldn't be quite so cheap.
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Feb 12, 2020 02:06
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kill me now posted:They know how to do advanced warships too Oh I didn’t mean to imply the South Koreans don’t know how to build ships-they are far and away the best at it, and at half the price of an Arleigh Burke, that seems like something we really ought to consider. That being said, Pascagoula and Bath are gonna need waaaay more than a billion dollars worth of meth and opioid counseling if the yards there ever close. I try to see the upside of incredibly wasteful military (and especially naval) procurement as the modern CCC-making work for people and hopefully the nation gets something useful in return. We could do better on the ‘making sure they’re making something useful’ part for sure.
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Feb 12, 2020 04:43
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The Comic Cowboys are pretty infamous for their edgy bad-taste, but Mobile has held a grudge again Boeing since the KC-X fiasco where Airbus won the competition and was going to build a big new assembly plant in Mobile, but Boeing protested and it got into nasty politics, prompting a senator from washington state to say :Patty Murray posted:“I have stood on the line in Everett, Washington where we have thousands of workers who go to work every day to build these planes. I would challenge anybody to tell me that they've stood on a line in Alabama and seen anybody build anything.” (Airbus did build a huge, 1M sq ft, manufacturing facility in Mobile anyway, assembling A320's and now Bombardier CSeries things they are calling the A220 that has been quite successful)
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Feb 26, 2020 16:31
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zoux posted:*stares in LIberty ship*
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Feb 26, 2020 16:51
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joat mon posted:It's the Embraer Super Tucano.
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Feb 27, 2020 03:26
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It's partly a trick of perspective and distance, but this photo really shows how fuckin huge B-52s are.
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Mar 25, 2020 01:49
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shame on an IGA posted:I thought they were saying "boo-urns" It sounds to me like they are chanting ‘Captain Crozier’
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Apr 5, 2020 02:48
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Out of historic curiosity, has there ever been a mutiny on a US Navy ship? I’m familiar with a few in the Royal Navy but my USN history isn’t so great.
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Apr 7, 2020 04:49
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The Admiral Kuznetsov and a Gerald Ford class look to be about the same size on the flight deck (according to Wikipedia dimensions, at least) but the Kuznetsov seems to only carry 30 aircraft vs like 75 for a Ford-class and crews of 1700 vs 5000. Is the Kuznetsov actually much smaller than the flight deck length/beam numbers would suggest? E: looking at the tonnage, Kuznetsov is like 50-60% of the tonnage of a Nimitz Kaiser Schnitzel fucked around with this message at 04:43 on Apr 8, 2020 |
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Apr 8, 2020 04:34
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aphid_licker posted:Kind of impressive that comms were fast enough that you could have a political debate based on the first day of a battle. Like the news would have to be generated ("oh poo poo this is bad"), transmitted, disseminated, and then the guys it got disseminated to would have to meet up (maybe in the night or early the next morning) to have the discussion.
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Apr 9, 2020 13:16
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I think the point was that the Overland campaign was a series of tactical defeats/draws, but an overall strategic victory. Grant was the one who was able to hold the Army of the Potomac together through some very serious morale setbacks/problems AND maintain Lincoln’s confidence in his abilities.
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Apr 9, 2020 15:00
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aphid_licker posted:How the gently caress, even by Russian standards, can you get away with throwing a loving doctor out of a window If everyone thinks they will get thrown out of a window for disagreeing with you, you can throw anyone out of a window.
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Apr 30, 2020 23:51
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large hands posted:Captain Tom got a promotion to colonel and a Spitfire/Hurricane flypast for his 100th Hurricanes and Spitfires (especially spits) are two of the most handsome planes ever built.
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May 1, 2020 02:32
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Mazz posted:
I didn't know AustalUSA was bidding as a prime contractor either....with a stretched out Independence class LCS. Ingalls apparently was going to use a variation of the National Security Cutter, which has maybe been a moderately successful design?
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May 1, 2020 14:54
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Mazz posted:Yeah ESSM Block II, at least on paper, is a very impressive medium range SAM that while quad packed into VLS really starts jumping into Ace Combat loadouts. It seems like Marinette is going to be very very busy if they are still building LCSes and FFGx (which I think will be the biggest thing they've ever built?). I thought Fincantieri owned them entirely-didn't realize Lockheed still had a stake. I wonder if Ingalls didn't really want/couldn't handle the work? They are pretty busy building LPDs, the legend class cutters, and I think still a few Arleigh Burkes. Kaiser Schnitzel fucked around with this message at 15:42 on May 3, 2020 |
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May 3, 2020 15:38
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Sperglord posted:I have a Cold War question - why were the Norwegian Fjords seen as idea operating grounds for aircraft carriers? I would guess the sides of the fjords are taller than the aircraft carrier, making it much harder/impossible to spot from sea level radar and somewhat trickier to spot from airborne radar?
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May 5, 2020 17:32
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Cyrano4747 posted:Bitcoin is stupid hard to cash out right now. There was some goon in one of the financial threads a while ago who knew someone who had to unload high six figures last year, when there was still some demand, and it had to be dribbled out over months and months. If it stays high l, whatever, but you’re kind of stuck if it nosedives. People getting huge capital gains/spikes in their income and not saving any cash back to pay the taxes has provided some great fodder for the Bad With Money thread in BFC.
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May 8, 2020 15:09
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Mazz posted:Some quick videos on the FFG(X) that cover things like why the 57mm and what Marinette is going to do to build them This is interesting, thanks for posting. Several people mention that the ship is primarily an ASW vessel, but as far I can tell it has no torpedoes. Do the helicopters do all the actual sub-killing and the ship is just a base/mothership for them, or can some sort of ASW thing get shot out of the VLS tubes?
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May 21, 2020 13:53
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mlmp08 posted:LCS news. I was under the impression that they’d quit building Freedom-class ones already because they had even more problems than the Independence and because that yard was gonna start building the new frigates. I think Marinette Marine/Fincantoeri may have to do big infrastructure construction at the yard? It doesn’t look big enough to build frigates on google earth and doesn’t really have a drydock IIRC. They build/launch the LCS on big rolling units and slide them into the river-maybe that works for something 100’ longer too. E: looked it up and per Wikipedia, Marinette has facilities to launch ships up to 4500 tons and the new frigates are 6700 tons. I’m sure absolutely nothing will go wrong! Kaiser Schnitzel fucked around with this message at 17:57 on Dec 16, 2020 |
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Dec 16, 2020 17:54
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My optimistic/unlikely take is that recognizing the DPR/LPR and sending in 'peacekeepers' is all Putin will do...for now. It gives him an easy win for domestic consumption/saves face, lots of nice footage of Russian tanks protecting our Russian brethren, doesn't start a huge shooting war, doesn't trigger massive sanctions, and lets him humiliate Ukraine because what're they gonna do about it with 190k Russian troops on their borders, and if they do try to do something, then Russia can claim that the Ukrainians started the shooting. Let the 'separatists' keep fighting the Ukrainian army (presumably with some deniable support from Russian troops) and secure any gains with Russian troops the Ukrainians may not want to shoot at for fear of starting a Big War. Putin can keep trying to collapse the current Ukrainian government by other means, wait for a while for the west to forget about all this and get some more separatists going somewhere else, rinse, wash, and repeat, always just below the line where the west really does something. But I doubt that's what's really happening.
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Feb 22, 2022 01:18
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Akion posted:Is that clear packing tape over his eyes or just a weird angle thing with glasses? Its packing tape or shrink wrap or something. There's a video in the comments of that tweet where his captors get him to call his parents. He has a, uh, major bruise on his forehead it looks like.
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Feb 26, 2022 18:10
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Shumagorath posted:Didn't Russia run this exact playbook in Georgia? Very similar but Georgia is/was much more firmly in the 'far away country about which we know little' category than Ukraine which has more people than Spain and borders several EU countries. I think Georgia's separatist conflicts go all the way back to the breakup of the USSR (like South Ossetia/Akhazia have been de facto independent since the mid 90's?) and Russia did a better job in 2008 of provoking Georgia to respond to separatist attacks and creating muddier optics of who started what than they seem to have done in 2022 Ukraine.
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Feb 26, 2022 20:58
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Why was the Russian quest for a warm-water port always focused on Crimea? From google maps it looks like they have a pretty big port/shipyards and maybe Navy base at Novorossiysk on the other side of the Sea of Azov? Obviously Sevastopol is a fantastic natural harbor, but is there something I'm missing about geography/hydrography that makes a port like Novorossiysk vastly worse than Sevastopol?
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Feb 27, 2022 00:28
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Are drones less visible to radar or something because of their smaller size? What's the big advantage vs. conventional aircraft? Presumably cheaper, easier to train pilots, maybe easier to maintain? Obviously also no pilot at risk of being shot down/killed/captured. What are the trade offs?
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Feb 28, 2022 21:02
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Akion posted:Is there a good read on the likely strategy for Russia moving forward? Are they planning to try and encircle Kyiv? tl;dr is that Russia tried a bold plan for a quick victory that hasn't worked out for a number of reasons, but they'll likely change their approach to be more conventional and grinding and involve a whole lot more big guns. They haven't advanced much in the last 2 days because they're waiting on supplies and reorganizing, but when they start advancing again it is likely to be a very different picture from what we have seen so far. While the Ukrainians have had some substantial tactical successes that we've all seen on twitter, they've mostly been fighting a relatively small chunk of the Russian forces arrayed against them. The Ukrainian operational position is pretty bad. The large Russian advances in the south from Crimea and encirclement/bypassing of Kharkiv seem likely to link up and trap the bulk of the Ukranian Army in eastern Ukraine. My uninformed armchair take after listening to that is that getting the main body of the UA out of eastern Ukraine could be tricky and likely not feasible (possibly not desirable for Ukranian morale either, idk), especially if the Russian air force appears and it is Ukrainian forces in miles long traffic jams on roads, not Russians. NATO is not going to come save them, with good reason, and unless there is massive popular revolt at home/Putin falls down the stairs/massive Russian mutinies, it is probably going to get increasingly ugly for Ukraine. Maaaaybe the pain of sanctions and the Ukrainians' stiff resistance can make it painful enough that they can bring Putin to the table before it turns into a really, really nasty and bad for everyone insurgency. Maybe the Russian Army is really a complete clusterfuck, maybe there is a huge crash in Russian morale, but from my armchair I don't see an end for this that doesn't involve some likely substantial concessions from Ukraine. I was pretty hopeful until I listened to that podcast 
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Mar 1, 2022 03:22
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zoux posted:What best-case outcome do you guys think is plausible, assuming our view of the war as reported in Western outlets is reasonably accurate.
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Mar 1, 2022 21:32
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Cyrano4747 posted:I've got my money on military coup if it actually comes down to people needing him out. I don't know the internal political landscape of the Russian military to say whether or not that's likely, but at the end of the day it's probably the most realistic angle for him leaving office. I would honestly be surprised if Ukraine comes out of this with its sovereignty in tact. If I were them I would trade territory for sovereignty at the negotiating table, but I’m not sure that’s what Putin really wants. Everything I’ve read is that Putin genuinely believes that the continued existence of the Ukrainian state poses a mortal threat to Russia.
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Mar 1, 2022 21:41
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Mortabis posted:Just something I'm pondering. So suppose the Russians eventually take over all of Ukraine as folks in the know are mostly predicting. The IRA never had more than like what 1000 militants at any time? It seems a near certainty there will be enough angry people with access to frighteningly advanced weapons to make occupying Ukraine exceedingly dangerous. I mean, I think Russia can get most of the population to heel. But the place is loving swimming in Stinger missiles, anti-tank missiles, mines, explosives, etc. The more I think about it, the more I sometimes think 'nasty insurgency' is what Putin wants. I don't think he cares too much about his soldiers' lives, and a nasty insurgency would pretty much guarantee that Ukraine is a broken nation, not a threat, and not joining the EU/NATO for a generation.
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Mar 4, 2022 01:28
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Did anything ever come of the alleged mysterious explosions in Belarus last night or was that all twitter noise?
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Mar 17, 2022 17:37
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Kaal posted:Rumsfeld and the other business executive-types loved the idea of doing less with more, and other corporate jargon poo poo. The LCS was supposed to be highly automated and intended for coastal environments where the larger destroyers are vulnerable to speed boats and shore attacks. Then they roped in some guided artillery ideas to help justify a naval investment given that the US had just entered Iraq and Afghanistan. And they added some other prototype concepts like aluminum shells, catamaran hulls, equipment modularity, rolling upgrades, and competing ship designs. Then it all predictably fell apart, because none of the features were particularly useful if they even worked at all, leaving the Navy with a bunch of useless PT boats that no one wants. They're decommissioning them as fast as they're being built, with several having only a few years of "service". They’ve always seemed like a cool experimental concept to learn from, especially the Independence class, but something they should have built 3 of like the Zumwalts not fuckin 60 of.
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Mar 17, 2022 20:05
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Kaal posted:The Freedom-class series basically aren't sea-worthy, which is why they've been first on the chopping block for years now. The design is just inherently top-heavy, and it also has significant engine and transmission issues. It's possible that Saudi Arabia might want them since they ordered some significantly modified ones back in 2019. But refitting old ones probably wouldn't be worth the money, so it'd be a hard sell.
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Mar 17, 2022 21:12
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Potato Salad posted:Kinda? No....I'd argue Zumwalt wasn't an iterative facelift of DDGs. Just from an operations standpoint, where basically none of the crew was less than some kind of engineering specialist...no. Reality is the things cost twice what they were supposed to (and close to 3x now I think), there turned out to not be jihadis in speedboats off the coast of everywhere, and they just aren't all that useful if there are no jihadis in speedboats to run down. Instead of getting 6 LCS for the price and complement of an Arleigh Burke, you get like 3.5 LCS and they don't always work that good.
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Mar 17, 2022 23:29
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I am extremely doubtful that Russia is negotiating in good faith and I have to imagine any ceasefire is immediately going to be ‘broken’ by the ‘Ukrainians’ and now we have to start launching rockets again. We tried so hard to make peace, but those dastardly Ukrainians attacked us! The whole ‘I must meet Zelensky 1 on 1 thing’ is weird as hell too and just seems like a kidnapping/assassination setup.
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Mar 18, 2022 19:51
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Count Roland posted:It will be interesting to see how Ukraine and the West adapt to the change in Russian goals. How much is Ukraine willing to pay for territory in and around Donbass? Is the West prepared to loosen or drop sanctions if Russia stops attacking? The West is very keen to punish Russia and deter it from future invasions. On the other hand this war is already doing very bad things to global food markets and if the spring crop is not sown in Ukraine things will get even more dire. Negotiations about the status of Crimea/Donbas/other Russian occupied territory are supposed to take place after the ceasefire, they never get anywhere and the ceasefire line becomes the new de facto border. Putin gets to keep Ukraine on tenterhooks wondering if the ceasefire will hold and presumably still gently caress around with their internal politics and pursue the regime change he wants internally. I'm sure there will be enough provocations and random bouts of shelling along that ceasefire line to give either side ample reasons to take the war hot again and keep anyone from sleeping too soundly, and the world gets another semi-frozen post-soviet conflict. The west gets tired of high gas prices and slowly drops sanctions as the crisis wears off and public sentiment shifts away from 'bad russia!!' to 'muh gas prices!' It's probably the best cost/benefit win for Putin at this point.
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Mar 29, 2022 17:45
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| # ¿ Apr 25, 2024 10:43 |
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Cyrano4747 posted:Either way, the US is still clear cutting forests for biomass export, especially in the south. Plantation forestry for pulpwood or biomass is basically row-cropping but with a crop that takes 15-20 years to mature. Those are forests, but in name only, there's not a whole lot of biodiversity there. Biomass may be renewable and more or less net zero (except all the diesel that gets burned in harvesting and transporting and replanting), but I'm not sure it is a particularly good use of hundreds of thousands of acres of timberland etc.
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May 5, 2022 17:37
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