The Military Thread

Fast jet fighters can land on one wing too. [1] [2]

The A-10’s capabilities have been tremendously overexaggerated over the years, and if you get all your defense information online you might find those capabilities exceptional. Most combat aircraft can land on one wing these days, and a titanium bathtub won’t do jack shit against a SAM. The A-10 hasn’t even carried out the majority of the CAS missions conducted in permissive airspace over the Middle East, as it happens.

To piggyback off of Jovian, basically the situation is like this: the A-10 wasn’t designed for low-and-slow CAS in permissive environments. It wasn’t intended to be a high end air-to-ground specialist. It was designed, essentially, to be cheap, low-complexity, and easy to regenerate. This is because it was designed to fight WW3 in the 1970s. All of its design features are due to the fact that it was intended to operate from austere airbases in the nuclear wasteland that used to be Europe and get shot down by the hundreds. [3]

Finally, Ukraine has maybe a handful of pilots checked out on any western aircraft whatsoever. It would take a minimum of 3-6 months to get their current pilots to a point where they could fly any western aircraft at even just a functional level. Sending them A-10s or F-16s is just not a good way to help, plain and simple. It won’t be useful for them and it’ll be a waste of our resources that could be better committed in other ways.

Edited by archonspeaks on May 7th 2022 at 9:24:01 AM

Technically-speaking, any plane can land on any part of itself.

No guarantee on the survival of the plane, but it will have landed.

F-111 is the true unsung hero of American CAS and it deserve more love.

https://www.reddit.com/r/UkraineWarVideoReport/comments/ukmgtp/tiktok_battalion_no_words/

Video of two Kadyrovtsy soldiers firing. Check the one guy at the left when you play the video.

iirc, isn't the Su-24 Fencer the F-111's opposite number from the Soviets?

This discussion about the A-10 reminded me how obnoxious the internets' boner over it is.

Yeah, I remember the discussions of A-10 in the aviation thread and it's like an Internet obsession second only to the F-35.

I think everyone is missing the obvious solution to filling the A-10's role despite the airframe's growing age and vulnerability to modern Anti-Air:

The QA-10. Reduce weight by removing the cockpit. Maybe design it to be remotely-controlled from a special two-seat variant of the F-35 operating at a safe distance/altitude.

That, or just use up-armed Cessna Caravans, the Toyota Hilux of the skies.

So, two questions from someone not well-versed in military matters:

1. Where does one draw the line between a tank and artillery? Is there one, or are tanks just one particular type of artillery?
2. How would one call a weapon that is specifically aimed at the enemy's logistic means, say one that blows large craters in railroads? Tactical, strategic, or something else?

The "line" is in application/doctrine. The Sturmgeschütz is probably the best example, insofar as it started its career in World War 2 as a self-propelled close support artillery piece and ended the war as a tank, because it was moved from being part of the artillery branch to being under the command of the tank branch. It's a question of how they're organized, what role they're supposed to fulfill, and depending on how pedantic you're feeling, certain performance characteristics. Generally, though, a tank will always be used in the direct fire role where artillery can be direct or indirect, and a tank unit can be a maneuver arm of its own whereas artillery mostly supports another maneuver arm (such as tanks or infantry.)

Edited by math792d on May 8th 2022 at 7:38:59 PM

You joke, but the AC-208 Combat Caravan is a real thing.

Edited by NativeJovian on May 8th 2022 at 1:53:49 PM

Yep, the Combat Caravan was exactly what I had in mind. Definitely a step up from the WWII method of jury-rigging bomb racks onto the landing gear of a Stinson Reliant like what the Civil Air Patrol did.

I’d say this is the main difference, given that most tanks are capable of indirect fire.

Yeah, a tank per modern doctrine takes the place of Cavalry. It's meant to break enemy lines, or fight other tanks. Self-Propelled Guns are meant to sit back and pummel at range, which is also why SP Gs tend to have far lighter armor than Tanks, as a Tank is more likely to actually get shot at, being used on the front line.

There's a pretty good Lock and Load with R. Lee Ermey ep about "Armored Fighting Vehicles" and how they AREN'T tanks that does a decent job of explaining why.

The May 9th "Victory Day" parade in Russia has revealed a new unstoppable prototype tank.

BEHOLD!

Edited by SgtRicko on May 9th 2022 at 6:44:26 AM

So, another question (thanks for the tank question but the missile one has been missed): What is the (technical, not doctrinal) difference between a blue-water and a green-water navy?

For the missile question:

If it's designed to strike at logistical centers far away from the front, I would call that a strategic weapon - it's not designed to help your troops win a firefight (tactical) and I don't know if there's a catch-all term for weapons designed to help win on an organizational level, but otherwise it might also fit in there.

Again for the missile question, when you are fighting near the enemy's population centers and logistics infrastructure, then tactical weapons would be used, so there isn't much of a difference. Unless you are talking about nukes or heavy bombers (which only a handful of countries have), the difference between tactical and strategic is not inherent to the hardware. For example, ATACMS were designed to be used against enemy armored formations (tactical) but they have the range to hit enemy infrastructure close to the border.

Blue-Water is Ocean-going. Green-water is Coastal defense. Green-Water ships for the most part aren't meant for dealing with storms or waves on the open ocean, but tend to be more or less fine on waters closer to coastline where the weather isn't as severe.

Littoral Combat ships are an example of Green-Water Naval assets.

This is also why China's as little of a threat to Taiwan as it is currently, due to most of its current Navy be limited to Green-Water Coastal Defense ships. Anything specifically meant for Blue-Water is heavily outgunned by Taiwan-allied Naval Assets in the area, and trying to send Coastal Defense assets into open ocean would risk them being capsized by inclement weather or waves just as much as sunk by enemy fire. China has an excellent Air Force and Ground Military, at least on paper, but without a dedicated Blue-Water force, they could never hold Taiwan because they just couldn't get the troops to it.

Edited by Pendrake on May 9th 2022 at 9:42:48 AM

The LCS is traditionally considered a brown-water vessel, not a green-water vessel. "Green water" is a somewhat subjective term, it's loosely defined. Mostly it means navies that can operate in littoral zones but are still seaworthy enough for blue-water operations, but it's been used to describe a number of things. There's really no one definition for it and it's not commonly accepted in academia or naval circles yet. Brown-water is the preferred naval terminology, meaning any vessels or forces that are meant to operate in littoral and riverine zones.

It's not exactly accurate to say China poses "little" threat to Taiwan. China would certainly have a tough time of it, but they're not Russia. They have more than enough ships and aircraft on hand, all of which have enough range to reach mainland Taiwan, to make it an absolutely brutal fight. Even the most conservative estimates suggest that Taiwan would see millions of civilian casualties in the opening days of the war, in addition to thousands or tens of thousands of military casualties, and China would likely see even greater numbers given that available evidence suggests they would mobilize close to 2 million troops for the invasion.

Edited by archonspeaks on May 9th 2022 at 2:11:36 AM

Didn't say it'd be impossible, but it'd be extremely costly to China simply due to their lack of Blue-Water vessels. That and China wants Taiwan's industry intact, so they'd be loathe to bombard the crap out of the Island too.

Eh, China's logistics and ability to move bodies places has always been markedly worse than the Russians, to say nothing of the quality of their equipment.

I think they're not going to be having any better of a time than the Russians are in Ukraine.

Huh. Shouldn't they be able to buy more/better stuff, on account of having a larger military budget?

There's a question of what's actually available to them on the open market. The US and most NATO countries won't sell gear to China because of the industrial scale patent theft and concerns over local security partners like South Korea and Japan.

And it takes a long time to develop a capability you didn't have before. It's not until the newest generation of Chinese fighters where their ability to manufacture engine parts is on par with current Russian inventory. That said, their logistics sector is probably at least okay given how much stuff moves in and out of China, but that's not useful if the PLAN can't establish firm control of the Strait of Taiwan and keep it for the duration of a hypothetical amphibious invasion.

While money buys you a lot of things in the defense sector, some things require time, plain and simple.

Edited by math792d on May 9th 2022 at 12:06:40 PM

China's got absolutely no combat experience either and their military is bloated and is more of a political/population reshuffling tool than an actual fighting force.

Of China's enormous standing army it's estimated that a pretty small percentage of it is actually expected or equipped and trained to be used in actual anger and how effective they'd be is very much an open question.