sealordlawrenceSo who was it that said that the Tu-160 would only be used for carrying strategic cruise missiles.:rolleyes:
sealordlawrenceI think this forum has reached a new low, somebody so morally bankrupt they can defend shooting down airliners and SAR machines. Quite telling they throw an incident nobody has attempted to defend (i.e. the Iran Air A300) as some sort of vindication. Pathetic.
+1 on that.:(
sealordlawrenceThanks for posting Jack, the Mark-71 was a real loss for the USN in the long term. Had it have been adopted it could now be upgraded to take a 62 calibre barrel and extended range ammunition.
sealordlawrenceI am leaning towards fake, firstly they have come out of nowhere- no previous articles about the idea anyway. Secondly I would imagine that such an enterprise would be far from simple. Finally if one looks at the second picture the line where the bottom of the CFT meets the intake/fuselage it is far from ‘clean’.
sealordlawrenceWhilst I dont know if they are real it would be a nice little mod if they were. If you ask me they look very F-16ish (like the F-16I/E/F)
sealordlawrenceThe main point here is that there are alternative ways to provide naval fire support (note I didn’t say naval gunfire support…). A modern ‘monitor’ needn’t be armed with a massive naval gun, instead, it could use much lighter rocket based systems. In addition, you can up-gun the existing surface combattants, i.e. frigates and destroyers, to use either newer 5in guns, or navalised 155mm guns. This offers the ability to improve normal naval gunnery, allowing the ships to maintain their distance from the shore, and provide more hulls with fire support capability.
It may not be simple to add these 155mm guns, but it is doable, and if we want to improve naval fire support, it is a lot cheaper to switch guns on frigates and destroyers, than to build new ships with big guns! I would probably take three or four destroyers, each with one 155mm gun, over a single DD(X) pretty much any day of the week!
What I advocate for the coastal fire support ship would be either the Austal Corvette:
http://www.austal.com/go/product-information/defence-products/multi-role-vessel
or the US Navy’s new Fast Sea Frame:
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/ship/x-craft-pics.htm
The idea is basically to have a cheap (i.e. $50-100m) ship, capable of carrying a couple of UAVs, and an MLRS launcher with lots of reloads. The ship would be capable of receiving a helicopter, but would not have one permanently assigned (so no spares etc…). The ship would be able to act semi-independently, zooming around the coast, and able to offload naval boarding parties, and provide them with fire support as needed. They would probably have no more than a CIWS, and probably a couple of pintle mounted 30mm cannon for armament.
This kind of ship would be useful for a lot of operations, and even be able to serve as a mother ship for riverine units.
In effect what we are suggesting is a shore bombardment mission module for ships like the LCS.
sealordlawrenceOf course, and uncle Sammy will just ask you to pay more taxes:diablo:
No thats what the deficit is for.:D
sealordlawrenceThe AGS is unspeakably heavy, pehaps the heaviest naval gunmount since the battleship era. This is not a light or cheap system.
So. If you have a sufficiently large fleet that you can afford to have Hulls as dedicated Monitors you could probably afford the AGS. Furthermore the example being used here is world war 2 era Monitors that were fitted with twin 15inch gun turrets, they certainly were not cheap or light.
sealordlawrenceYou still have to wonder why they did not develop an adapter-pylon to increase separation from the fuselage. Blocking a MRAAM hardpoint would seem to be much preferrable over using a precious wet pylon.
The best idea would be to develop the 1500l conformal fuel tanks.
sealordlawrenceThere is a bit of an ‘elephant in the room’ in this – namely Trenchard.
He was not a fan of the idea of the Independent Force (the idea behind it was fine, it was the timing and fact that it risked disgusing the fact [in his thinking] that WW1 would be won on the ground) which caused him irritation. He felt that there was a risk that building a large bomber fleet would deny the RAF aircraft that could be better employed on the Western Front in support of the BEF.
He didn’t want to be the head of the IF in 1918, and the prospect of commanding the inter-allied bombing force when it was formed wasn’t the most appealing – the reason for him assuming command of the IF was that he was skilfully forced into accepting the post by Lord Weir (Sec of State for air).
If you look at the way Trenchard used the IF, I suspect there’s a chance that a lot of ‘sub-strategic’ attacks would’ve been made in areas behind the battlefront – airfields, railway stations/sidings, etc, etc – where the attacks might make a difference. We might have seen a flexibly used bomber force attacking both Germany and key targets that might influence the battle – a sort of early approach at effects based targeting in some ways.
That seems to me to be the best approach, and frankly seems like one which should be re-instilled in the minds of some of todays officers.
sealordlawrenceI don’t think there would have been any chance of this in 1918-1919.
The targets, U-boat construction, steelworks, sound alarmingly similar to those of the RAF in WW2. To try to do significant damage to these with the lumbering bombers of 1918 with their small bomb-loads (of tiny bombs) and against defending fighters is surely asking the impossible.
Navigation, even in daylight, and the weather would be much more difficult for a bomber of 1918, as would hitting the target with the bomb-sights available.
As with my point about the Western Front why put our forces into a position that so overwhelmingly favours the defender?
If we want to have an impact on the war better that our aircraft find a U-boat on the high seas when it’s isolated, far from home, where it can be shadowed and hounded at very little risk, where relatively minor damage would prove decisive, where bad weather is a problem for the U-boat too and where if it is destroyed the entire crew will perish.
I am afraid that I have to disagree. It is my opinion (for what it is worth) that a continual, concentrated effort by a fleet of over 1000 aircraft could have created an accumulative effect that would have seriously disabled the overall U-Boat effort.
sealordlawrenceIran’s army to be equipped with S-400
Vice Chairman of Russia’s State Duma Vladimir Zhirinovsky has urged the fast delivery of the magnificent S-400 anti-aircraft missile systems to Iran.
Speaking at the open session of Russia’s State Duma on Wednesday, Zhirinovsky stated, “S-400 anti-aircraft missile systems should be delivered as soon as possible to enable Iran to defend its airspace.”
The S-400 is a new generation of anti-aircraft/anti-missile weapon system developed by the Russian Almaz Central Design Bureau.
The S-400 is capable of detecting and destroying targets out to a range of 400km (250 miles), such as aircrafts, cruise missiles and ballistic missiles, including those with a range of 3,500 km.
Sources confirm that the S-400 is capable of detecting and destroying aircraft made with low observable materials such as the American ‘stealth’ aircraft.
Russia provided Belarus with the same system a short time ago.
The S-400 is so sophisticated and powerful that it can change the military balance of a region since it is capable of hitting targets previously considered untouchable.
The anti missile system has the incredible speed of 4.8 km per second which is faster than a bullet leaving a Kalashnikov machine gun.
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=21983§ionid=351020602
I have extreme doubts about this article, the bit about Belarus is what raises the biggest concern as the S-400 system has only just entered service around Moscow.
sealordlawrenceIn addition to wondering about the strategic elements of the war…
If the allies had launched large bombing raids with Vimys and 0/400s, one wonders what tactics they would have used?Boxed formations? Large numbers of fighter escorts?
Would it have been a less technolgically advanced version of 8th AF FC vs Luftwaffe or an altogther looser system?
I suspect that a closed system would have developed very quickly. Fighter escorts would have taken more development to get the required range but I think it would only have taken a matter of months to create systems very close to those used in the early part of world war 2. My personal opinion is that the heavy bombers of the time would have been far more survivable against attacks from contemporary fighters than was the case in World War 2. The V/1500 for instance was armed with up to 8 .303 MG’s, very impressive considering that the average fighter armament of the time was just 2 such weapons.
sealordlawrenceExactly.
Please would quiet observers join in this?
Don’t leave it to us blogging autists that don’t have a life. It’s actually very important, because Western media think all wars are bad.
Nobody who spends time here is stupid. No sincerely-held view is wrong. Facts might be, like “cavalry” Trenchard, but not your viewpoint.
Conventional wisdom, and marks at GCSE, are that militarism is bad, and that talking can resolve all problems.
A contempory of my son has just won a (posthumous) VC. We sent him there to do a job for us. His parents need to know he did a good thing.
Put yourself in leaders’ boots. Imagine Gothas, Heinkels overhead.
In the situation under discussion (SLL‘s WW1 Strategic Bombing Policy), what would you do? You are GAY – as Good As (You) me.
I agree with all of the above entirely!
I have already mentioned the potential for the use of the allied heavy bomber assets against sub strategic targets to the rear of the Hindenburg line. Also, taking into account the capabilities of the aircraft available it is possible that a concerted bomber effort against a specific element of the German war effort could have bought results, for instance consistent, repetative and concentrated attacks against U Boat bases and construction and repair facilities could have dramatically reduced the capacity of that force to function. As could similar attacks against steel works. However I believe that there would only have been sufficient capacity to engage one element and that any effort to systematically demolish the entire German war effort (as seems to have been attempted in round 2) would have failed.
sealordlawrenceCreaking Door. Germany’s position in 1918 was theoretically very strong, they had just defeated their eastern opponents and seized vast natural resources in the process. With proper management theses resources could have ended the social problems at home. There was really no need for a German offensive, from a grand strategy perspective they had already won having aquired a vast centrally located European empire. Indeed they would have effectively been the European hegemone under even the most favorable peace settlement the allies could have got without breaking the status qou on the western front. What was important about plan 1919 was that it was not really about ‘pushing’ the Germans back but about destroying their fighting potential and rolling up their defensive line on the Western Front. I use the Rhine as a purely hypothetical stop line on the basis of the limitations of any allied advance and the fact that it represents major physical barrier upon which a new defensive line could have been established. Allied war aims could only have been achieved by forcing a decision on the Western Front and Plan 1919 represented the best realistic prospect of achieving that.
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