ELPHere is some additional help they received in tech gain…
Four arrests linked to Chinese spy ring
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20051104-111851-2539r.htm
ELPNeville Chamberlain would be proud of how we are all handholding this situation. Including the already existing history of NK exporting various weapons. Looks like they are suiting up for another test. I guess an especailly concerned letter from the U.N. would be in order here if that is the case. We need to cut off their air supply now. Cruel? What war isn’t? Better them then regional allies in the area. Which… btw will end up growing their own nuke program if this gets even more out of hand. Then there really will be a mess.
ELPMaybe that should have been in the ceasefire terms, but it wasn’t. And you forget – or don’t care – that bombing N. Korea would result in the artillery bombardment of Seoul, probably the use of biological & chemical weapons (& just possibly, nuclear), causing the deaths of hundreds of thousands of South Koreans, thousands of American soldiers & assorted non-Korean civilians, & a host of other undesirable consequences.
The South Korean “Sunshine Policy” has been a failure, but it was an honest attempt to get North Korea to change by offering it a way out of the hole it’s in at the moment, & so an opportunity for the leaders to survive without blackmailing the neighbours. The Chinese have been trying to persuade Kim Jong Il to follow their example, & free the economy while maintaining political control, for the same reason. You seem to think that opportunities for killing as many people as possible should be actively sought. That is contemptible.
Contemptible, would be pretending normal diplomacy works with NK. Contemptible, would be not taking this opportunity now to punish, when the results of not doing it could be even more casualties on several orders of magnitude in coming years. Not only contemptible, but really, really stupid.
ELPGood LSM ( Lame Stream Media ) article:
The weird and scary saga of how an isolated, bankrupt nation went nuclear—and how the United States failed to stop it.
and then…
There were privateers, too: defectors, Chinese technology firms, Japanese trading houses and front companies scattered from Thailand to Scandinavia—all provided critical technologies, components or know-how by circumventing a global nonproliferation regime designed to thwart such commerce. Even the International Atomic Energy Agency unwittingly helped: analysts say a single North Korean diplomat, Choi Hak Gun, who was posted to IAEA headquarters in Vienna from 1974 to 1978, scoured the agency’s library for nuclear know-how.
The only thing we “failed” to do is remind them what exists since 1953 is a cease fire and nothing more. That if they did a nuke test, we would turn them into a bombing range. Big opportunity missed.
ELPSean, i guess your office is going to be crowded with co-workers soon. I can’t imagine the amount of intel personell needed to research, clear and assign targets for a single B-2 sortie with 142 SDB’s aboard… Sorry to spoil the hoorray-party for this GPS-guided-Mk81bis-bomb, but my guess is that the amount of intel necessary to effectively use VeryPGM is exceptionally higher than with any previous ordnance. For attacking a city, a primary-school atlas will do. For attacking a bridge or Chinese embassy, any COTS Falk-cityplan will equally give enough info to asses and clear a target. But for a bunker hidden under a civilian house – who is going to find THAT target? Let alone a few dozen of those targets for a single sortie.
And don’t forget: a 250lbs bomb coming down at 1000m/s does not penetrate as deeply as a 500lbs bomb coming down at 500m/s. The impulse might be equal, the lighter weapon will lose it’s energy quicker than the heavier one.
Hi Arthur,
My thoughts were that the penetration of the SDB is in fact more than a common 500 pounder. Where the SDB tip will penetrate as much as a BLU-109 ( forged pointy tip 2000 pounder ).
As for the intel work, well, lots of aircraft take off today with no targets and get them when they check in with JSTARS. Most of these PGMs have shown that we need less airframes to do a lot of common A2G jobs. 4 aircraft with a variety of todays cheap near all weather PGMs, can hit more targets effectively, compared to years ago, using a whole squadron of the same aircraft using dumb iron and a low mix of laser guided bombs. This is just one of many reasons the USAF is downsizing. Also where our last USAF boss Gen Jumper, considered lowering the order of JSF A models for this very reason alone.
Nice thing about the SDB is less workload from the munitions people. While the first batch of 24,000 of these is expensive per unit ( they had to pay to build a new factory ) at around 60K a piece….. and while the total cost of a JDAM is ( kit and dumb iron ) is around 20k, …. JDAMs and Paveways have to be assembled on site. Requiring a lot of workload/people. Where a parking lot is turned into a bomb assembly area. With the SDB, you just have to maintain the quad rack, pull the weapon out of the box, test it, and put it on the rack and put the rack on the aircraft. Even with GI death benefits for KIA soldiers to new highs in payouts to surviving family members, these PGMs when used to save ground troops from trouble, still come out being not too expensive, given the alternative.
ELPGee, wish I had that government contract. :diablo:
ELPFact is that it will be very difficult if not impossible to defeat such a well organised partisan organisation who are not fighting for a King,Government or even possibly a country…they are fighting for their GOD!
First goal will to be defeat an insurgent MOD and political cabal that wants nothing more than to cut a fine group of military institutions.
ELPFact is that it will be very difficult if not impossible to defeat such a well organised partisan organisation who are not fighting for a King,Government or even possibly a country…they are fighting for their GOD!
First goal will to be defeat an insurgent MOD and political cabal that wants nothing more than to cut a fine group of military institutions.
ELPIt demands high pilot skill… be pretty tricky to fly that thing from half way across the world I would think. So many things in it…. the way it flys, need immediate judgement and response from a pilot in the cockpit.
ELPYup…
Lets change the uniform yet again = chair-warming-moron-think and “leadership” by email and PowerPoint.
My priority list would be:
-Anyone that thinks up a new uniform change can be immediately released from the USAF. If this is all they bring to the fight, we don’t need to be paying for their lack of value to the organization.
-No Wings commanded by one star generals. This is obviously a result of the “No general left behind act” when we downsized so much but the boys on top had to create job titles for all their buddies. When I was active, a full colonel commanded a SAC B-52 wing/base and it worked…. for years. These were large organizations, B-52, tankers, nuke storage, large maintenance units and all in the era of the typewriter and carbon paper. If you can’t command a Wing as a colonel then you can’t do it as a general either.
-Don’t cut ops, training, maintenance budgets. This is really a bad idea.
-A ban on facilities construction unless it is for repair or a seriously peer reviewed need. I see way too much construction where in this era of tight budgets we are needing oxygen.
-Less supervisors. Enough said here. If you are in this organization, you know what I mean.
****
-Less shooter airframes and other airframe types…. If we are going to pay for the JSF, even before it is fielded there are some airframes we don’t need. …
Kill off the F-117 yesterday.
Retire all the A model C-5s yesterday. The flow days to do heavy maintenance on this pig would kill an airline. It looks like an airlift wing here at the depot. Not all cargo needs are roll on roll off. Recognize this and outsource more airlift or convert some airliners out in the desert to cargo aircraft.
Kill the body bag maker called the V-22. Use real helicopters.
-Options for turning some C-17s into an arsenal ship. Use your imagination. This includes it’s ability to carry 25 or more JAASM or Taurus and kick them out the back. ( Taurus has already been kicked out the door of a C-160, and started it’s motor in a dive. ). Expand other uses for the C-17. Again use your imagination here. People keep complaining about long range strike, well, this would be an excellent helper untill we get a B-3 or whatever.
-Fix up and sustain the B-1 to a much higher standard or get rid of it.
-Get rid of all A model F-15s. Put small motor E model F-15s into the Guard/Reserve, where they would also sit alert for air defense. AESA upgrades on Es only, no Cs. Sorry no money. If it isn’t a dual use airframe, we don’t have the time for it.
-Pull everything but a small airlift and support presense out of NATO bases. All shooter airframes come home. We don’t have the money to waste on this nonsense.
-Put all F-16s in the Guard and Reserve and or blended wing setup. No AESA upgrades, we need the cash for other things.
-Kill the idea of the USAF getting the small airlifter in the C-27 class. ( an exception being USAF special operations which may or may not have a need ) We don’t have time or cash for this nonsense. Let the Army have what ever airframes of those they see fit as planned.
-Retire all the C-130 E models today. Keep a low rate J buy and harden up the J to better mil spec standards.
-Go through the Pentagon and reassign every other person back into an operational unit. The people in the Pentagon will have to do without some of the fluff. Just like people in the real air force are doing with shrinking budgets.
***
ELPBefore the end of the cold war I saw a brief that outlined all of these nuke detection assets, aircraft like that, earthquake sensors etc. In our rush to cut everything post cold war, I wonder how much of these assets we have left to do a decent job?
ELPThanks for the info.
My christmas list for the B-1 :p
-New flight control system
-Glass cockpit
-Proper annual sustainment funding for maintenance and ops.
-AESA radar in the F-18E/F performance category
-A super high end combat crew simulator
-MALD
-Standoff Jamming Ability ( ala the B-52 plan ( hmmm don’t know if I am running out of amps here… 😀 )
-Proper netcentric gear ( if it doesn’t already exist ) to watch video feeds from other sources such as UAVs AC-130 gunships etc
Additional weapons-
HARM
Penquin ( somthing nice and small for small ship targets )
SLAM-ER
Harpoon
GBU-37
Anti-ship mines
Other:
Ability to drop numerous life raft packages for use on massive search and rescue ops.
Ability to drop para supply packages (GPS assisted) for droping emergency supplys to specfors in a slightly higher threat area that might be too risky for common transports, including a faster response time.
Note the naval stuff would be nice extra tools in the bag for Pacific environs.
ELPSaw a 26 at Farnborough many many years ago. Very cool.
Would be neat to see what it would take to license build Mi-8/17 and Mi-26’s… especially if the price was way cheaper than our overly expensive helos. Utility helo work isn’t rocket science.
My only concern would be that the helos mentioned for use have proper self protection systems on them ( sensor eyes to detect plumes, cockpit indicators, and flare/chaff ) to give them at least a fighting chance against MANPAD threats.
ELPBlock E was just announced as being complete. I remember this on the older 2000-1 bomber roadmap to have been done long ago. Will we see Block F ?
ELPYet another reason to hate the Yankees.
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