ChakosThe test date on the video was sometime in 2004. Is this missile in service, retired, entering service etc? basically what is its status? and if it has been retired what is (if any) its replacement?
ChakosI would have to pick the RAAF
Training is marvelous. Over the last few years it has received a fair bit of combat experience in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as in releif operations throughout the region. It also has excellent infrastructure and maintenance facilities, is able to design its own weapon systems when no other exists (glide bomb version of the JDAM currently beeing tested). It has the capability to expand quickly if need be and is currently awash with government funds. Only downside is that its a little small, but currently thats all thats needed
Chakoswould have been good to see both the military and sales results if the roles where reversed. Israeli Migs V Arab Mirages. Prolly would have bankrupted Dassault.
Chakos$188 BILLION … thats unbeleivable, not 3 years ago they barelly had money to feed the troops. Amazing what a good leader and high oil prices do.
Chakoswhy do i get the impression we will still all be here talking about what the Chinese will do with the Varyag or if they will build a carrier or not when they finally do roll out half a dozen large carriers designed to take on US interests in the Pacific. Lets not be daft here.. China sees the US as the threat, not India, not Japan and definatelly not Taiwan. For China all these countries would be pretty well screwed with or without carriers, it makes no difference whether you have them or not. There is no strategic benefit of having a 1 v 1 light carrier contest with India, if China wanted to take out the Indian navy then a battlegroup built around the Sovs as well as the type 51/2/4’s would be more than adequate. Japan and Taiwan are well within land based range, both aircraft and missile.
If you accept that then you will see that the US is the only real competitor in the region that would REALLY require a carrier (probably several) and in that situation China really does NOT want 1 or 2 or 3 carriers visible for all that have a sattelite to see, sitting in dry dock somewhere known getting built. It would give the US too long a lead time to prepare for the threat (like training its pilots to fly anti-shipping missions, maybe they can ask their Argentinian friends about a trick or 2).
The way i think it would be done is that the Varyag is used for training, rotating crews on it and training as many naval aviators as possible as well as using mock ups and the like (of wich i have seen a pic of on both this website and on sinodefence.com) The carriers will be buit in secret or at the very least they will be disguised as something else until the last minute (as crude tankers possibly). Once they are built there will be already a pool of trained sailors/aviators and China will go from having 1 training carrier to 4, 5, 6 REAL carriers in a matter of weeks.. and everyone will wonder where the hell they came from… AND I WILL SAY I TOLD YOU SO
Chakosyou dont get my point do ya.. the weakness in all this is not the turn around rates, the available fighters or whatever, its the issue of the skill sets of the pilots beeing so narrowed down to perfecting the anti terror task that the skills to fight a modern conventional war against an advanced enemy are diminishing
ChakosBring it on, that whole concept should be kinda disturbing to the U.S. military. I have read in several publications including AFM and Air International over the years that although a plane may be able to swing role and the pilot is trained in all areas, it still comes down to practice, and its not like riding a bike, as you drastically concentrate on one area (CAS against an insurgent force) you train less in other areas that could one day be very much needed if a real war breaks out (REAL air combat against REAL EFFECTIVE air forces or interdiction against something more capable than a 3rd world air defence setup with more than just a silver bullet force of a handfull of modern SAM’s).
The fear should be that if, heaven forbid a war breaks out between the US and China or Russia then the US will be sending the most elite force of terrorist busters the world has ever known against a conventional advanced enemy that has been training for a bloody long time for the occasion. The AWACS guided flankers, the teen series SAM umbrellas and the modern naval fleets really dont care much if their facing a pilot whos been spending the last 5-10 years putting JDAMS on target from medium altitute with basically no surface to air or air to air threat so to speak of.
The fact that the majority of the US military is slowly unlearning how to fight a conventional war in its rush to defeat the ‘terrorists’ to the point that it may not have the basic skill and training levels required in the dark arts of conventional warfare.
Chakosonce apon a time, a long long time ago (1941) there was a cranky old man of pure (apparently) Germanic descent who decided that for whatever reason it was imperative to invade his “subhuman” neightbour (guess who?).
This neightbour was quite backwards compared to this Germanic country, its military was ‘backwards’, its economy was even worse and its leadership was barbaric to say the least, all in all it was a ****hole. The cranky old mans Generals said ‘it will be all over by winter’ the grumpy old man said ‘…is like a house of bark, all you need to do is kick down the door and the whole structure will come falling in’ and other even nastier comments.
Now, fast forward to 1945 and this backwards crappy country had troops in the capital of this germanic country wich shall remain nameless…
The moral of this story…
1)Look at history.. Napolean got raped in Russia, Hitler didnt take that into account and also got raped in Russia, and now a lot of you are talking in the same way… some people never learn.
The Russian economy is generally always pretty poor, its leadership is usually brutal and backwards and its military is in a constant state of disrepair, but it hasnt lost a REAL was (afghanistan doesnt count) in over 150 years.. that says something
ChakosIm curious to know wich way the Greeks will go in all this, i mean 91 attack helos would seem to be more than a match for the handful of apaches they own and even the Cypriot Hinds would not add too much to the equasion. My guess that no sooner than the ink is dry on the Turkish contract Greece will sign a deal for 30-40 or so more Apaches or possibly go the Tiger. For a country that doesnt really have a huge amount of wealth the Greeks are anything but stingy when it comes to defence aquisitions.
ChakosAlso, multiple stage nuclear weapons could be quite effective at taking out asteroids and the like according to wikipedia:
“Three-stage thermonuclear devices have also been developed, whereby a third, larger fusion stage (a “tertiary”) is compressed by the energy of the fusion “secondary” (described above). A three-stage bomb, the Mk 41, was deployed by the United States, and the USSR’s Tsar Bomba was also a three stage weapon. In theory, there is no limit to how many stages could be added. Though there is currently no need for five- or six-stage weapons with yields that could approach a gigaton, they could possibly be of use in deflecting Near-Earth Objects such as Asteroids and Comets which are in danger of colliding with the Earth and large enough to do significant damage (have high Torino Scale values).”
Chakosdunno if this is a rumour or what but i remember back in the cold war i was reading something about the soviets beeing able to theoretically design a multi thousand megaton nuclear weapon using (and i could be wrong) cobalt salt in place of, or in addition to hydrogen. I remember some Russian sceintist beeing interviewed about it and he was saying that 50 000 megatonnes was theoretically achievable although short of it beeing used as a doomsday weapon there was no conceivable use for it as it was pretty much a planet killer as opposed to a usable weapon (to me thats the most usable kind of weapon) :diablo: so the idea was shelved. still i think if u need to take out a great big evil asteroid (or the home planet of a particularily nasty alien species) i couldn’t think of a more effective weapon, although youd need a bit of clearance. Ill do some research and see if i can find anything to back this up. Cheers
ChakosI can understand the fuss about the seaprite although i take issue with the argument over the pig. Australia is not the United States, we do not have to ever contemplate war against Russia/China/France etc. The F-111 was for Australia the big stick in the region, yes it was 10 years late and yes it was problematic and yes it has 3 or 4 times greater cost to fly per hour than the F-18, but at the end of the day the Indonesians, Malaysians, Vientamese and even the Chinese never really concerned themselves with the F-18’s and probably never did. The Pig is a strategic deterent to a mid size regional power and in that role it fit perfectly. I was reading recently (and i apologise i cant recall the publication) that our neighbours arnet even today totally sure that the pig flies conventional missions only (wich i would tend to agree with but thats not proven anywhere and neither here nor there).
In short we dont need a B52/1B/2 for that. The pig has served us well and will continue to do so unless retired early or the wings fall off every single one of the ******s (and im not sure what will come first).
P.S. The collins class subs are apparently all working well now, so the navy says…
ChakosYoung… as far as im concerned your last 3 points pretty much amount to ethnic cleansing in a foreign country. You simply cannot march into a neighbouring country, expell the population, destroy their homes and replace it with a minefield. Any attempt at winning a hearts and mind campaign has been totally thrown out the window and to top it off you have basically handed the entire lebanese populace over to Hezbollah in a way that they could never have done on their own. Apart from that you would destroy any little peice of international support Israel has remaining and you would also do a damned good job of putting the support of the entire Arab world behind the Lebanese. The Syrians and Iranians dream that Israel would do something so politically stupid. This isnt a computer game.. you dont just kill all the enemies on a screen and the level is over. There are 4 million or so Lebanese and what you just mentioned would be the best way to turn the vast vast majority of them the enemy. I know if someone ordered me out of my home and turned my neighborhood into a flattened minefield i would make sure that i would return the favor or die trying.
ChakosThat Russian BMPT vehicle…WOW, can i take it home… please mommy pleeeaaasseeeeee :dev2:
Ive always wondered why someone hasnt developed a tank that is specifically designed to take out non-tank threats to support the proper tanks in combat and it seems someone in Russia has beaten me to the punch. Ah well, there goes my plan for making a quick buck on the arms market. I Think there should be 3 different types of main combat vehicles in an Armored assault. The tank, something like the BMPT and a heavy APC much like the Israelis use (Merkava 1 chassis, heavy mg armament, up-armored and carries a squad of men). I think traditional IFV’s try to be everything and often fail. If your going to go in with the tanks and be involved in heavy combat then you really should not be carrying a section of troops and only enough armor to stop a rifle round, its silly, stupid and wasteful in human lives. Keep the men under heavy armor with enough light MG firepower to keep enemy troops from getting too close whilst leaving the real fighting up to the heavy tanks and beasts like the BMPT.
Ah well, thats my 2c worth… ill go back to under my rock and plot to take over the world. 😀
Chakosok, maybe i missed something here (or all i do is work and i havent had a chance to read up on it) What the hell is a ‘rod from god’ sounds like the old ion cannon from C&C
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