I've seen her fly. It'll be sad to see her go.
"Yup. That tasted purple."
V
Here's an article on Code Names for U.S. Military Projects and Operations
Interesting stuff. (Boy, this keyboard sucks.)
V
I'm also trying to find a source, but apparently the USAF's Dornier 328-110s & PZL M28-05 Skytrucks have been assigned Designations: the C-146A & C-145A, respectively.
rollin' on dubs
The US Air Force's new ultra-stealthy Long Range Strike-Bomber will be optionally manned when it enters service in the mid-2020s, the service says.
Now this is interesting.
John Sayen wrote a stinging critique of the Navy’s Littoral Combat Ship program for Time’s Battleland Blog. He’s not the first and certainly won’t be the last defense commentator to square his crosshairs on a program that has seen deadlines fly by and and costs spiral.
What’s different is the manner the Navy is so publicly pushing back against the arguments he made against the LCS. Navy’s Chief of Information Rear Adm. John Kirby wrote a stinging rebuke to Sayen’s article on the Navy’s blog, Navy Live, picking it apart in a piece entitled “LCS: Lets Talk Facts.”
:'''"DON'T LET DOOR HIT YOU ON THE WAY OUT" COL JAMES JOHNSON III BUSTED TO O-5 AND
RETIRED'''
Ex-COL James Johnson III, the arrogant former commander of the 173rd Airborne Brigade, has finally been properly punished.
Oh Military Corruption.com, you're like the National Enquirer of the military.
Heh, not quite laser guided karma that was 1Lt Murphy (heh) but still good payback.
edited 13th Oct '12 6:37:15 AM by TairaMai
All night at the computer, cuz people ain't that great. I keep to myself so I won't be on The First 48
Watching the "Anzio" film, the one with Peter Falk and Robert Mitchum, and we have reached the bit where all the Ranger battalions are suddenly surrounded by the Germans.
And every machine-gun the Germans are using in their ambush is either a BAR or a Bren Gun. Not one single MG-34 or MG 42, or even MG-3 which were available at the time of the film's production.
Not very historically accurate is it? Mind you, I have seen the film a lot of times and this is the first time I actually spotted what machine gats they damned rotten Jerries were using.
edited 13th Oct '12 9:04:27 AM by TamH70
Night Clerk of the Apacalypse.
On the LCS. The idea and theory is sound, however the attempt to put it into practice is looking dubious.
Cost being an obvious sticking point but also the political assumption is much more accurate then the navy makes it out to be. Especially when seen in the challenges to the LCS program.
Additionally for cost there is not a final price tag on the as of yet unfinished modules in a production run capacity. I expect the first run to be expensive but that doesn't always bode well for final cost even in a final product production run.
On firepower the critique has the most valid point. The LCS is armed with a little thud gun. Comprable ships that can do the same mission are far more powerful in armament. Yeah a helicopter can help extend a ships range for striking but so can a cruise missile launcher.
The ship is not outgunning current frigate designs. The current frigates for one pack a more powerful gun system. And until "cost cutting" measures were enacted that removed its missile systems it was more heavily armed in general. The Oliver Perry's have 25mm remote deck guns and a 20mm CIWS mounts. It would not be hard to put the missile system back in.
They can not count on the LCS always encountering little coastal boats. If they bump into any of the listed competitor ships they are already outgunned and likely outnumbered. The assumption that it won't ever bump into any vessel in similar role with bigger teeth smacks of ignrance or avarice.
I hate to break it to the navy but one of the roles of shallow water vessels is support for troops ashore or going ashore as well as patrolling coastal waters.
On the turbine engines I feel that is antoher valid point. The temporary boost in speed is not worth the loss of armor or other useful systems.
The navy needs to pick one design to run with instead of three (something both articles miss is the most recent design). This would notably help costs of both building the fleet of LCS vessels as well as simplifying maintenance and parts across the board.
Deciding to purchase a large number of ships before the current designs are fully tested strikes me as rather reckless and begging for trouble.
The issue of the ship being able to survive in combat environments has been a major critique point from the initial builds of the LCS ships. With the vessels not undergoing the same strenous testing to prove said survivability I am in serious doubt as to the navys claim.
The Oliver Perry class ships have some survivability. One got lucky and took two cruise missiles to the upper portion of the vessel and one didn't go off. The ship however listed badly and had to limp to a port. Luckily the seas were calm and the port not that far off. They were also tested to ensure they could take some hits and keep going. We can't say the same for the LCS program.
The navy blog twisted a point about protecting ships. If your protecting a harbour your guarding other ships not just the harbour space. Or if your doing any form of littoral based escort mission your also protecting ships.The navy blog then contradicts itself by pointing out the ship is to also help defend other ships in a task force.
On the hot swap system I will wait to see how that works. It has potential but it is not field ready and again the ships have not even been fully tested. The navy is still talking bullshit for a poorly tested system to contend it will work as advertised. The most damning bit of evidence comes from one of the navies own in the Perez Report which points out swaps could take a couple weeks due to complexity issues.
As for the contention that the ships will do their job well. What crap. They haven't even fully tested the potential of the ships as the various systems are either just now getting ready for testing or are not yet fully ready for testing.
Any statements about the ships survivability and mission capabilities also fall under the not fully tested umbrella. Until the ship gets an honest no bullshit no contractor dick sucking test vs ships that can do the same missions I am not holding out any bets for the navy statements on the two ships being reasonably accurate.
Other things the Navy blog has ignored is the large amount of contractor run maintence (costs more to maintain), smaller crew, and the corrosion issues of the current ship designs that they are just now getting around to fixing and testing.
I am not liking the picture this is painting for the future of the LCS or of Naval procurement programs. The Navy needs to pry their lips from the contractors nether regions long enough to make a solid decision. Ie pick one design, test said design thoroughly, test modules thoroughly, examine up front cost, examine average operatonal cost, and examine potential life time cost. If the overall cost comparison and peformance is not better then the vessels it is replacing it is time to consider something else.
Also something to note is that there is a strong chance that only 24 of the ships will be built and the fleet fleshed out with cheaper mission specific ships instead.
In all the Navy retort is poorly written and is a bad attempt at a take that to the perfectly valid critiques. Their statements consist of trust us it will work. Their retort has more in common with a sales pitch then a valid counter arguement. Unlike the navy report several of the critics points are based on information already gathered and he links to in his article. The navy article doesn't show us anything other then smoke and mirrors bs session.
The good thing I can say for the LCS is the most current ship design, the third in line, has been agreed that it does not have enough crewmen at a 75 man crew to run and maintain the ship in a fully operational capacity and has space for an addtional 20 crew. It has some other improvements but is still in the same troubled waters with the modules and overall fire power.
Tam: The question is could they have had enough of the German weapons vs more easily obtained English ones?
The likely reason they used the non-german weapons is that they were cheaper and easier to get.
On the army general. I noticed he was ring knocker. Possibly part of why he was let off with a fine, only one reduction in rank, and then retired. I would have hammered his ass with punishment for his horrible conduct.
edited 13th Oct '12 9:40:12 AM by TuefelHundenIV
Who watches the watchmen?
'80s TV Action Hero
Heh. Anzio. Yeah.
I like Peter Falk's little speech about why he re-enlisted.
'All he needs is for somebody to throw handgrenades at him for the rest of his life...'
Me too. The fact that he was based on a real soldier^, according to the film's wiki page was a bonus. As well as Robert Mitchum's character, who was based on a real American war correspondent with the same sort of attitude.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anzio_(film)
^who really did have a mobile ambulance mounted brothel. Smart.
Night Clerk of the Apacalypse.
what do you guys think of warrior web? DARP As troop assisting soft suit. Possibility of this being combined with the exoskeletons once they iron out the power issues.
'80s TV Action Hero
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
I never quite understood why films fictionalised real events that involved real people.
Isn't war dramatic enough without loads of extra-hokey dialogue chucked in?
QSY, reading.
Hmmm. It's going to get really sweaty, isn't it?
edited 13th Oct '12 10:18:20 AM by InverurieJones
'All he needs is for somebody to throw handgrenades at him for the rest of his life...'
Night Clerk of the Apacalypse.
On the exo skeleton front. SARCOSS may be only 5 years from being production ready Looking good.
Remember how I asked about the railgun project? There is now some competition from General Atomics version of the weapon. This is good. Competition may drive the two versions to improve their overall designs to beat out the competition.
edited 13th Oct '12 10:27:42 AM by TuefelHundenIV
Who watches the watchmen?
rollin' on dubs
The LCS is like the Stryker, an powerpoint slide the came to life. Whereas the Stryker actually has some life left in it, the LCS is looking dubious. Why?
Tuefel, the Navy fell into the trap some set it the 80's: build'em cheap. Building something cheaper means it's less sturdy. Good for the contractors because they have stuff to sell. Bad for the taxpayers because they end up buying more. And a ship that has to spend most of it's time in dock isn't really a ship.
In the 80's there was a plan to build standard designs of ships. Vary the hulls a little for the mission, but standardize most of the weapons and powerplants etc. That somehow mutated into the "mission modules" that are proposed for the LCS. None of them work. It would be nice if they did, but the most promising one used an Army missile (the N-LOS missile) that had to be canceled because it couldn't hit the broadside of a barn. The Minesweeper module exists, but it don't work at all.
At least the Army has the guts to tell the contractor where to stick it. When THAAD had it's issues, Boeing and Lock-mart were told to fix it and fix it NOW. They did. The Navy, for all the engineering know-how at Canoe-U, seems afraid to tell the shipbuilders to actually make ships that work.
All night at the computer, cuz people ain't that great. I keep to myself so I won't be on The First 48
Night Clerk of the Apacalypse.
Taira: Which is pretty much my point. The Navy is crowing about all this great stuff but it is either honestly untested or has a number of issues to still overcome before it is even viable.
Aiming for a lower price tag is not a bad thing but taking stupid shortcuts to achieve it is. Like the issue of not including the anti-galvanation gear to push cost down. Or reduced crew quarters that are so heavily reduced that it affects ship maintenance and effectiveness.
The Stryker all in all is not a bad vehicle. At least it wasn't suffering massive corrossion issues and has seen actual testing and combat.
I remember the army NLOS. The so called Missile in a Box weapon. It failed the white sands target test rather badly IIRC. Not a bad idea and certainly not the first time a stand alone weapon system like that has been created or considered. But whatever they used for tracking and targeting sucked bigger then Dallas.
The thing that gets me is other nations have effectively achieved what the LCS is trying to do with more fire power, smaller physical ship, and smaller budget impact. We now have three seperate expensive ship hulls cruising around waiting on gear and tests.
The modular idea is not in itself a bad idea but it looks like our methods of executing it are at best expensive and time consuming. The concept was based off of a successful foreign design but somehow we made it more complex and expensive. Even the inside guys are not exactly thrilled with the LCS.
Canoe-U lol. That name always cracks me up. Hence my comment about removing lips from nether regions of contractors if that is the kind of shenanigans going on behind those closed doors.
Who watches the watchmen?
V
How about basing an LCS design on the USCG's National Security Cutter?
rollin' on dubs
That's what bugs me about the whole deal. The Stryker has issues but the Army dealt with them. Same with the N-LOS missile. The Army had big plans for it, but with a heavy heart they canned it. The Navy, for all it's engineering prowess, can't let a bad idea die.
The National Security Cutter has been it's own migraine for the Coasties.
edited 13th Oct '12 3:35:26 PM by TairaMai
All night at the computer, cuz people ain't that great. I keep to myself so I won't be on The First 48
Isn't it amazing, now I have princess wings!
Apparently, someone did a bit of digging and found aerial photos of the mockup compound they used to practice the bin Laden raid.
Night Clerk of the Apacalypse.
I posted about that earlier. A page or so back. The compound has apparently vanished. here ya go
edited 13th Oct '12 4:26:25 PM by TuefelHundenIV
Who watches the watchmen?
Isn't it amazing, now I have princess wings!
Oh, didn't see that post. Sorry 'bout that.
Wise Papa Smurf, corrupted by his own power. CAN NO LEADER GO UNTAINTED?!
Night Clerk of the Apacalypse.
Eh it is not exactly an eye catching or overly noticeable post.
Who watches the watchmen?
rollin' on dubs
Those mockups are quickly built. There was one at Fort Hood the ATF used for the raid on the Branch Davidian compound, for all the good it did the ATF.
All night at the computer, cuz people ain't that great. I keep to myself so I won't be on The First 48
Night Clerk of the Apacalypse.
The ATF made a plane then wiped their asses with it.
Who watches the watchmen?
Indiana Solo
hey, I just read something that the F-22's breathing problem was a problem with a valve on a chest ...thingy that inflates. anyone else heard that?
edited 13th Oct '12 7:08:45 PM by Joesolo
I'm baaaaaaack
Night Clerk of the Apacalypse.
I was seeing it is the OBOGS because the oxygen concentration was too low.
Who watches the watchmen?
As far as I am concerned, it is the RAF's Battle of Britain flight that should be taking care of that Vulcan. Spend some tax payer's money on something decent for a change. XH 558 deserves nothing less.