SOCApologies if my commenting offends or irritates anyone, but:
I totally agree that it would be pointless but Putin’s going to do what Putin’s going to do so we’ll see.
I guess my point here is that if Putin feels the need to deploy some IRBMs or GLCMs to counter the perceived “threat” posed by a limited ABM system in Europe, then there is no reason to counter that with a Western buildup, apart from the desire to achieve one-upsmanship.
Personally, if Iran represents that significant of a threat, go in there and bomb the related facilities when they appear and save yourself the money for the ABM system, while at the same time improving relations with Russia in the near-term.
SOCApologies if my commenting offends or irritates anyone, but:
I can think of plenty of platforms for W-80s if they still exist. 😉
Yeah, but I bet the Russians can figure out how to make the Kh-102 into a GLCM as well. Do we really need to go down that path again? Last time there was at least an ideological difference at the political level to somehow justify the Cold War, but this time it’d be a pointless arms race for basically no reason. If we needed that kind of capability, fit nuclear Tomahawks into an Ohio SSGN and send it off the coast of Europe. That keeps you out of the asinine arms race and allows you to retain the potential for that capability if hell freezes over and we need to worry about having enough nukes to fire in the European theater.
SOCApologies if my commenting offends or irritates anyone, but:
Kaveri is still in development, right? I know its had its far share of problems (which may be an understatement), but have there been any recent major setbacks to indicate that it may not be available to power the LCA in the future?
Barring that of the GE F404, I wonder how complicated a redesign it’d be to fit a GE F110 back there. That’d give it power to spare. They should’ve thought this out better, they might have been able to go with a Russian powerplant and try and cut off the sale of engines to Pakistan via China by ordering a large number of engines themselves. Just thinking out loud with that one.
SOCApologies if my commenting offends or irritates anyone, but:
Yeah but that was due to the Cold War ending more than anything else. Not to mention wasn’t cruise missile capability (of any sort) given up for START? I know the pylons were for AGM-129s and the double-length forward bay for AGM-86Bs. Of course now you have JASSM and JASSM-EX or ER or whatever-the-hell in the mix. :confused:
Cruise missile capability left the building due to START, yes. I was on the inspection team at McConnell when the 184th still had Bones and we had to know what the Russians were going to be looking for, that was a pretty cool detail.
The Bone did in fact sit nuclear alert, however, but it relied on gravity bombs and the AGM-69.
I guess the point would be that while the Bone was intended to have the ability to carry ALCMs, it was not an ALCM-exclusive platform, like the Tu-160 was.
SOCApologies if my commenting offends or irritates anyone, but:
Expecting the F-35 to replace the A-10 in the CAS role is just asinine in my opinion. Here are some of the ways NOT to perform the CAS role in a 21st century conflict:
-Make a 5th generation, expensive, low-RCS aircraft your new CAS asset. Didn’t we try to replace it with the F-16 at one point? That didn’t work either.
-Remake Hellfire as Brimstone and hang it off of a canard-delta air superiority fighter.
If you need stealth, you’ve got bigger problems than CAS, face it. There are two nations with sufficient air defenses to warrant such a counter, China and Russia. If anyone honestly thinks that F-35s are going to be searching for targets in either nation, then you’re missing the bigger picture. For that type of conflict to take place things have to SERIOUSLY deteriorate, and in that end you better hope that the F-35 is sufficiently EMP-hardened to make any sort of difference.
If you want stealth because its the cool new thing to have, you should be fired for massively misappropriating your taxpayers dollars. I wrote on here a while ago about life without the JSF, and how it’d actually not be the end of the world like some might think. Raptor will be around to handle anything in the air for the next two or three decades. For the type of A/G work, specifically CAS, that the US or European militaries are going ot get into over the next few decades, its not the F-35 that you need. What you need is a true follow-on to the A-10, a survivable aircraft capable of dealing out obnoxious amounts of damage to the types of targets you’ll be facing.
Now, F-35 does make sense as a sort of “Raptor-lite” for air defense work to replace Mirages, F-15s, or F-16s. What we need to do is gut the airframe, forget about the STOVL variant, and create a new, lighter version tailored to the A/A role. There’s your perfect complement to the Raptor for the USAF, like the F-15 and F-16 back in the 70s. You can still fit it with SDBs for A/G work when stealth is required, but you get a much more sensible aircraft. Even a smaller nation, outfitted with a unit of F-35Ds and a few units of the A-10 follow-on would be very well equipped to deal with just about anything they could logically face. The only mission potentially left out is SEAD, but develop an AMRAAM variant for that and you’re golden as it’ll fit internally without any issues.
I daresay that if you had an A/A optimized F-35, it’d be much more enthusiastically received on the open market. All the extraneous high-tech A/G systems would be gone, the jet would be lighter and more potent in the A/A role, and you’d get a jet capable of first-day stealth ground attack and air superiority. You’ve basically evolved it from an F-16 and Harrier replacement into a Hornet replacement, sorta.
I’ll stop there for now, my train of thought is becoming convoluted.
SOCApologies if my commenting offends or irritates anyone, but:
Bigger but essentially the same thing.
Not the same thing, the Bone never got an operational ALCM capability, the Tu-160 is for the moment exclusively a cruise missile carrier.
Anyways copying is a whole topic on its own. Some of us will deny any copying (just arriving at the same solution). Others will say its a two way street and bring examples like:
F-35
Yak-141
That wasn’t so much a blatant rip-off as it was Lockheed consulting with Yakovlev specifically on the engine lobsterback assembly. As they say, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!
SOCApologies if my commenting offends or irritates anyone, but:
I don’t see that it matters much as NATO countries have not even ratified it yet… how important can it be?
It’s a political thing.
It has become a joke now anyway…
It was a joke to begin with, really…who in their right mind really expected an all-out NATO-WarPac war over Europe to NOT go nuclear, despite agreements and promises to the contrary?
The US wants it and the Russians don’t… what is there to discuss?
I just found it interesting that this announcement comes two days after Russia said it’d welcome further talks on the ABM issue, it would seem that with this announcement they have decided to change their mind.
He seems to be wanting US guarantees of protection including Patriot or even THAAD. That will make it very clear who the site is directed at because Iran and North Korea have no assets that would make Patriot or THAAD necessary…
Patriot and THAAD are a different story altogether, they have no capability to even consider downing a Russian ICBM.
It’s a purely political move with very, very limited actual significance.
I think it is very significant. It shows the West that Russia is willing to withdraw from these agreements to meet its own goals, just like the USA did wth the ABM treaty. If I were NATO, I’d be sweating about the INF treaty…
SOCThe Mirage 4000 was actually pretty impressive. Something like 19,000-20,000 pounds of internal fuel and a WAY bigger wing than the Eagle.
Apologies if my commenting offends or irritates anyone, but:
Right on. With all the talk about US and Russian designs we sometimes forget that the other European nations, especially France, had some interesting and impressive designs, with most of them being offshoots of the Mirage family. The Mirage 4000 and the G series were among some of my favorite historical European aircraft designs.
It’s almost a pity that the new fighter is called Rafale, the Mirage line is now forever to be consigned to the history books. So Mirage 2000 and 4000 were taken, it’s a 21st century fighter, right? Shoulda called it the Mirage 21!
SOCApologies if my commenting offends or irritates anyone, but:
The teacher was jailed because her students named the bear Muhammed, right? If this was an issue regarding the practicing of Islam, shouldn’t these morons be calling for the deaths of the children that actually gave the bear the name? Or is it more convenient to attack the non-Muslim foreigner?
And if it’s not right to give Muhammed’s name to an inanimate object, or as I have also heard an animal, why is it right to let people take his name for themselves?
SOCApologies if my commenting offends or irritates anyone, but:
The teacher was jailed because her students named the bear Muhammed, right? If this was an issue regarding the practicing of Islam, shouldn’t these morons be calling for the deaths of the children that actually gave the bear the name? Or is it more convenient to attack the non-Muslim foreigner?
And if it’s not right to give Muhammed’s name to an inanimate object, or as I have also heard an animal, why is it right to let people take his name for themselves?
SOCApologies if my commenting offends or irritates anyone, but:
Given the way things work in our defense establishment, all of those overruns are probably closer to the norm than an indication of some sort of crisis, unfortunately. If you ask me the aberration would be the Ohio SSGN being on time and on budget 😀
SOCThe operative part of what I said and you chose to overlook was:
“what I see is a nationalistic slanging match that nobody is winning”
SOC. Congratulations on your ancestry, I would not have known about it had you not said anything, which suggests to me that it is more important to you than anybody else. Generally the rest of us just go through life not bleating about ours or expecting people to comment on it. Also we don’t generally fall off our horses when somebody does.
I wasn’t the one who brought up the fact that I am of Irish descent in the first place, so how am I bleating about my nationality apart from using it as an example of how I didn’t go off on a power trip and ban someone who I was debating with, which is what you were accusing me of in the first place?
In direct answer to your question, as you know I have had issues with your moderator status for a while. It is indeed one of the reasons I don’t post here very much anymore and no, its got nothing to do with your nationality.
Yes, issues which as far as I am concerned, you have never been able to adequately explain when I have attempted to work out whatever problems you have. I still have the PMs saved. And that was from December of last year, so apparently my presence is offensive enough to keep you away from here over the majority of 11 months. I had no idea I was just that bad of a person, really.
There you go again, it has to be about nationality with you doesn’t it? Its a real chip on your shoulder and I don’t understand why. Yet you keep on mentioning it and directing your own insecurities at others.
That’s asinine, now you’re claiming it is my fault that you are mentioning the concept of nationality in your own sentence? I have no chip on my shoulder, and I fail to see what your problem is. This was a debate about a US-UK issue. Taking the side of the US in this case does not make it a nationalistic position just because tossing such labels about makes you feel better about having avoided this place over the last year.
SOCNo what I see is a nationalistic slanging match that nobody is winning. You however have that big stick don’t you? You’re not afraid to swing it around either. You add a certain edge to your vitriol that others dare’nt because they know you are a ‘moderator’.
Out of curiosity, do you raise these concerns to all the other moderators who choose to actually participate in the discussions around here? Or am I being specifically targeted for some reason? Perhaps it is you who is being nationalistic because I am the token Yank moderator around here?
As for some sort of “moderator defense”, it didn’t stop Jack from sarcastically bringing my Irish heritage into the argument. Like I said, you’ll notice that I have not moderated any comments that were made towards me, so what is the problem?
And as for some sort of nationalistic argument, the issue is between the UK and the USA. Taking one side or the other of the argument does not necessarily imply some nationalistic sense of superiority. If you want me to start listing the countless ways that the US government has acted the fool over the last decade or so, trust me, I have no problems doing that. I’ve listed many on here before, like that the entire Iraq thing was a major foul-up on our part, for one, so if you choose to label me as nationalistic because I don’t take your side in this specific issue, that’s your prerogative.
And I’ll see Sean’s Cornwallis and raise him Sir George Cockburn…..
That’s alright, it allowed us to demonstrate our prowess at building large white houses and the like in swampy areas of Virginia 😀
And what did I tell you guys? I knew the F136 wasn’t going to stay out of this for long, thanks a lot Eric :diablo:
SOCIt could of course be argued that if the US decides to try to ‘punish’ the UK for drawing down forces in Iraq, then the UK ought to ‘punish’ the US when it does the same thing in a year or two. Perhaps the UK should be talking about kicking the US off Diego Garcia, out of Lakenheath, etc… :rolleyes:
Without getting into details of leasing agreements of which I have no knowledge on, if the UK wanted to ask the US to extricate itself from sovereign British soil, I would think it would be within its rights to do so, and if you ask me wouldn’t even need to justify it with a reason. It’s British soil.
The reality is that the US should just remember that it does need help sometimes, and just throwing a hissy fit every time anyone else has different opinions is not a good demonstration of sound leadership. The UK is legally bound not to sell on US technology, and has a very long history of ageeing not to divulge US-sourced info. Just take a look at the F-117 program, which has even had RAF pilots, and the UK’s resulting lack of cooperation with European allies on stealth projects, because they had agreed with the US not to.
All true, but that doesn’t mean some genius in Congress isn’t above using the lack of such legislation as a reason to be wary of technology transfer. The guy is a politician and as such might not be the best person to offer an opinion on high-tech military hardware, but on paper he does have something of a point, and apparently that’s good enough for him and the decision makers that were listening to him.
Also, to dismiss the concerns as automatically unfounded just because of the people not being party to the classified materials is unwise.
And to take the concerns as automatically genuine just because the people “complaining” (couldn’t think of a better word off the top of my head, sorry) haven’t seen the documentation they are basing their argument on is equally unwise!
As for Basra, yes, it is certainly a mess
The situation got progressively worse because the strategy employed to monitor that area was evidently not up to par. That is, of course, not any different from strategies employed by other nations in other parts of the country at various times, most especially the United States.
SOCI was being sarcastic dude. 🙂
And I was trying to be funny…man, my humor has really been lost on you guys the past few days 😀
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