sealordlawrenceIn any case, in my reading, there were a few brief mentions of Stukas getting an air-to-air kill here and there. I was rather surprised as it mentioned both P-39’s and La-5’s as the alleged victims. I can’t imagine a Stuka getting an air-to-air kill and indeed these may have been only claims, but it does bring up an interesting point of discussion.
Has anyone ever heard of Stukas getting air-to-air victories? What about their rear gunners?
Clausewitz calls it friction, it referes to the fact that in war nothing can be truly accurately predicted, that nothing is perfect. The weather will change, mechanical objects will fail, humans will make mistakes etc etc. The consequence will be that an outcome decided as a certainty by a scientific analysis will be anything but certain, rather it will will be a victim of circumstances beyond the control of all those who had previously sought to determine the outcome as absolute.
In short, a Stuka is perfectly capable of achieving an Air to Air kill irrelevant of any technical inferiority it may have compared to its prey.
sealordlawrencecost was no issue for the liberal government that instigated the MELBOURNE’s replacement program. in the election it promised by both parties to replace Melbourne despite cost, but this was reneged on when labour came into power. any Australian essex would have included higher amounts of automation, a smaller air wing than american versions, and less sailing time.it would also have ment that we would not have had to purchase 2 of the OHP class frigates(which were added to replace the firepower of the Melbourne, so I have reason to believe it would have only cost a bit more in manpower and money compared to the payoffs provided
You are living in a fantasy land. The Essex class were fitted with WW2 era steam boilers, the kind of automomation required to reduce manning requirements has never really come about due to the obsolescent nature of the propulsion. Integrated platform management systems did not make an appearance on warships until the 1990s.
As for costing only a bit more than two new OHP’s, that is just laughable. An OHP has a crew of approximately 200 and modern gas turbine propulsion. The Essex class are WW2 era ships with crews well over 1000 with steam propulsion. And that is even before we get to the cost of running and maintaining an air wing. History would support this as larger second hand carriers were turned down on multiple occasions due to their manpower requirements.
sealordlawrenceGee, i guess that with the impening retirement of the MELBOURNE planned for the early 80’s that Australia would have been easy to take the crew and air wing from MELBOURNE and transferred it to another aircraft carrier? remember where INVINCIBLE was heading before the Falklands? The RAN’s manpower problems came with the loss of pride associated with losing the flagship
Oh really, care to compare the cost of running and manning an Invincible with the cost of running an Essex class?:rolleyes:
sealordlawrenceForget LCS and forget the 20,000t+ cruiser, what is needed is a follow on class of destroyers to replace the Tico’s and early burkes, and a class of 4,000t or 5,000t frigates to replace the FFG’s, these would be built rather then the LCS’s which are built in the case of LCS-2 to the design of a high speed ferry and in the case of LCS-1 to a fast yacht.
Why do you need frigates? The USN has a destroyer building programme that will give it over 90 Aegis destroyers by 2015?:rolleyes:
The 20,000 ton cruiser was never going to happen anyway.
sealordlawrenceYes.
That is awesomely impressive, the KKV’s in this prototype look tiny. The Raytheon images do show a mothership but ‘simply’ have six ‘conventional’ KKV’s stacked in threes on a launch vehicle.
sealordlawrenceWatching those things hover never ceases to amaze me, thanks for posting sferrin. Am I correct in assuming that each of the KKV’s would also be manoeuvrable?
sealordlawrenceYou have not shown a single thing yet. You just said ‘Apache has the edge and Apache is unmatched’ – all this without a single proof or even indication on what is so damn good on the craft.
I have described how the apache is used in Afghanistan and you have ignored it.
Apache IS vulnerable. Of AH-64s deployed in Afghanistan in 2001-02 over 80% were badly damaged by ground fire. I have found dozens of link to Apache’s vulnerability after three minutes of google searching – but this task is probably too much to ask from you…
Of course they were. they are helicopters, they fly low and slow, do you think any other helicopter would have done better?:rolleyes:
sealordlawrenceThey want the high priced blue water navy………..:o
Its not any more highly priced than a littoral one if you have to project that littoral navy and that is basically what DDG-1000 and LCS have shown.
I can actually see the USN’s perspective (partially), their procurement programmes are the longest of all the services so they need to plan up to thirty years ahead. They see little desire for further interventionist foreign policy in the US in the coming decades and their paranoia has them seeing a vast Chinese armada being assembled across the pacific. The basis of US power is naval and it is its Global Oceanic Superiority that insures it, thus look after the priorities. In short the USN does not give a rats **** about failed states or invasions, it cares about maintaing relative US power in a statist world.
sealordlawrenceAfraid not. The deal was cancelled before any detail work was done, and the layout is a matter of conjecture. The above is the most likely result of the proposals put forward at the time. Any refit would have included an major overhaul of the hull and machinery so the ’15 year’ life expectancy would have been very conservative. There were at least five unmodernised Essexs to choose from, and perhaps if the deal had gone ahead an extra hull could have been included in the program for Australia (in the 60s an Essex was offered to Oz, but rejected on cost and manpower grounds). Could have been an interesting development…
It could have been……..If the UK had had any foreign policy and thus doctrinal interest in maintaining a carrier fleet of limited availability and progressively degrading material state, which of course it did not. And how would Australia have magically been able to man and fund an Essex class if the British accepted one?
If the British had wanted to keep carriers in the 60s they had plenty of their own that had already hat their huge and costly reconstructions to make them jet age viable. Procuring an Essex in the late 1970s would have just been illogical. By that time the Phantom was aging, the RN was in the grip of a manpower crisis and the much more suitable Invincibles were being planned.
sealordlawrenceWell, the DDG1000 are much more understandable considering the cost and complexity. Yet, if the USN didn’t drop the ball on the LCS. We could have had them in large numbers………..really to bad.
The USN dropped the ball largely because they wanted to. The USN is storming headlong back towards an oceanic naval supremacy doctrine and away from the colonial policing/littoral doctrine that LCS and DDG-1000 were aimed at. The USN wants Burkes and then it wants to phase in a new Burke follow on in 2015+.
sealordlawrenceWell, the point is the project hasn’t been cancelled yet……………….So, time will tell.
I will be astonished if it is not. Given the fact that the deficit is through the roof and climbing whilst the economy falls of a cliff I find it hard to believe that anyone is going to push too hard for a class of ships over the which the USN (which already has absolute global naval supremacy) has yet to express a huge amount of interest. If that was not enough the USN has recently shown its willingness to cull overly expensive and uber modern new projects by all but killing DDG1000, and one rather gets the impression that there would be no DDG1000’s if the USN had its way given its efforts to keep the class at just two vessels.
sealordlawrenceWell, I would agree yet both LCS Designs are progress nonetheless…………:o
Progress towards what? Of all the USN ship building programs the LCS looks like the most likely to be killed and probably the easiest to dispose of. Note that beyond the units under construction there has not been a word about LCS where as the DDG programme has been transformed, the large deck amphibs are making progress as are the San Antonio’s and the Virginia programme is rolling along nicely. LCS on the other hand is still subject to stop work orders. This likely ends with the USN operating a very small number of non standard ships.
sealordlawrenceYeah, you have talked about that. So what? Is that supposed to mean something?
You have talked about Apache having an edge over its much cheaper competitors but so far I have not seen a single figure that would indicate anything. Show us the edge Apache has over Rooivalk, Tigre, ATE Mi-24 MkIII or Mi-28N. Prove that increased vulnerability of the Apache can be outweighed by other systems which are so much better than the rest, that can actually eliminate this drawback. And finally, show me the edge Apache has over other designs, that it pays off forking out $70mil UPC for an AH-64D instead of buying two Rooivalks or 2.5+ Night Hunters for the same price.
If you cannot provide any of these, then stop babbling about ‘edges’ and ‘advantages’..
I have shown the Apaches edge already. All you have done is lie about it being vulnerable.
sealordlawrence[QUOTE=DJ.;1331074]
Because they are two designs for two different purposes … Apache was designed to hide behind trees and shoot Helfires at soviet tanks from miles away… period. Its CAS ability comes from decades of upgrades on airframe designed for something else.
Cobra/Supper Cobra was born in Vietnam as a CAS machine with role of getting upclose and personal with Vietcong and taking them out, providing cover for aircavalry troops or any other ground forces. It was designed with speed and manuverability in mind and has thinnest front facing profile of any chopper today, and it can take a beating. Its tank hunting role comes from decades of upgrades on airframe designed for something else.
Wrong, the actual answer is cost.
sealordlawrenceYou have shown nothing.. You have just said that.. Which means next to nothing..
It means far more than any of your posts. I have talked about how the Apache is used in Afghanistan and hows its systems give it an edge. You have provided absolutely nothing.
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