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Antonov

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Posts posted by Antonov

    1/144 MX/Peacekeeper -> Minotaur and Titan II Gemini Conversions

    in Real Space Modeling

    Posted

    Hey, all.

    I've ordered the Monogram 1/144 US/USSR Missile Set, which comes with an MX/Peacekeeper ICBM. I understand that the Orbital Sciences Minotaur rocket series (or at least, the Minotaur IV/V) is made by modifying decommissioned Peacekeepers into launch vehicles. If I wanted to convert the Monogram Peacekeeper into a Minotaur, how would I go about it?

    While we're at it, if I wanted to convert the kit's Titan II ICBM into a Gemini Launch Vehicle (GLV), what would I need to do for that?

    Thanks.

    Phasing out the A-10

    in General Discussion

    Posted · Edited by Antonov

    its absolutely foolish to think that people of certain ranks have it completely together and people of other ranks have no clue what the hell is going on. I have met brilliant Colonels and absolutely stupid Captains. I've met incredible sergeants, and yet First Sgts who's sole qualification was not letting the place completely burn down on their watch. (Their "watch" ending promptly at 1300 after a 2 hour lunch)You have to be extremely careful about making grand sweeping remarks like this.

    Oh, come now. We both know that people who make it to the top in the military get there because they know how to play politics. And yes, I will take the word of a sergeant who actually walked the streets of Fallujah over that of a Pentagon General whose idea of a bad day is PowerPoint crashing, his golf date with the SecDef getting rained out, or the Starbucks in Georgetown running out of whipped cream.

    I also have to ask you, just who was responsible for the A-10 in this case, as I promise it wasn't fathered by a bunch of kids fresh from the 'Nam that started calling the shots. Please tell me all about how defense contractors were just good honest fellas back in the 1970's, the pentagon was brilliant, and the Oval office contained our best leaders (which IIRC was Nixon, Ford, and then Carter...) And thanks to that we have the A-10 because all the young upstarts worked them and made it happen.

    Who was responsible? Guys like John Boyd and Pierre Sprey, who made themselves very unpopular by 1) knowing what the hell they were talking about and 2) not being afraid to say so.

    There is also a fine line of course. If some "military" O-3 comes out of Iraqistan with some brilliant aircraft ideal for the terrain and situation of those two conflicts, (and after years and billions of dollars and hundreds of units) suddenly war breaks out in Korea and the aircraft suffers heavy loses or is useless, critics will happily blame the "Five-Sided Wind Tunnel on the Potomac" for "fighting the last war"

    Erm... what? That doesn't even make any sense. Yes, Generals do get the blame - and the credit. That's why they get the corner office and the big bucks. Responsibility comes with the job.

    Secondly, I just don't get this attitude of "We can't know with 100% certainty what the next war will look like, so let's spend astronomical sums of money preparing for one specific scenario even though we haven't fought a war that looks like that in 70 years, and there's not much reason to think that that specific scenario is a highly likely one in the future". The logic of this - especially at a time when the head of the JCS has said that the biggest threat to this country's national security is the national debt - escapes me.

    not that something like that would happen:

    http://www.stripes.c...ecides-1.235725

    So this proves... what, exactly? MRAP's are wrong for Korea. And? Not every piece of equipment is right for every battlefield. Winter coats are wrong for Kuwait - does that mean that the military shouldn't have any? "Sorry, Private - I know guard duty at Elmendorf is kind of cold in February, but we didn't buy any cold weather gear because it just wouldn't make any sense at Ali al Salem". Crazy as a soup sandwich.

    Phasing out the A-10

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    It's very interesting that you would paint the A-10 as a result of a battle hardened veterans applying smart lessons after a long tramautic war like Vietnam, and yet think that post Global War on Terror veteran military has no combat experience and is more for show, and takes nothing seriously, and learned no lessons...

    Let's define: "military".

    I think that the military is full of enlisteds and NCOs and junior officers who are greatly sensible people and who have learned tremendous lessons from the last dozen years of combat.

    I also think that has nothing to do with the people who work in the Capitol or in the Five-Sided Wind Tunnel on the Potomac or in the management of vast defense contractor conglomerates. Who, incidentally, are the ones making the big decisions.

    Only the dead have seen the end of war...

    True enough, but there's also a very wide variance in what "war" might look like. Nobody says it has to be huge nation-states sending supersonic whiz-boomers at each other. In a couple of hundred years - or less - "war" could mean here what it does in a lot of the world: teenagers with AKs riding around in the back of a Toyota Hilux with a recoilless rifle bolted to the bed, fighting over a usable water supply or the last working generator for a hundred miles. No, I'm not saying that will definitely happen (twenty years ago I would have called that idea ridiculous and impossible - now I just say it's not likely for the immediate future), but I am trying to say that the idea that wars will go away altogether in the future is a very different proposition than the idea that wars in the future might look very different from the ones we saw in the 20th century.

    Next one, China/Russia vs The World...and we're toast.

    It won't happen. It was mutually-assured suicide for two nuclear-armed nations to step off on each other 50 years ago, and it still is today. Our leadership may suffer from a severe lack of grownups, but I doubt they're so delusional that they don't understand that at least.

    Phasing out the A-10

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    Of course they're phasing out the A-10. The A-10, designed in the wake of the hard lessons learned in Vietnam, is a machine designed for serious combat by the serious military of a serious nation facing a serious enemy. Increasingly our military exists for show instead of combat, we are ever-more an unserious nation full of unserious people with unserious leaders, and where we have real enemies to speak of, they are largely creations of our own incomprehensible and self-defeating foreign policies. This has been the trend under the leadership of both parties for at least twenty years now. It's not the fault of the average man in uniform, but it is what it is nonetheless.

    Also in the article is the news that the KC-10s will be getting the ax, leaving the half-century-old KC-135s as our sole big tanker - aircraft for which there is no replacement in sight despite a decade or so of trying to make that happen. What could possibly go wrong?

    Bankrupt By Beanies

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    Not exactly modeling-related, but I think we can all relate to spending a foolishly large amount of money on a hobby.

    Yahoo Finance has an interesting article on the Robinson family of Los Angeles, who tried cashing in on the Beanie Baby craze of the 90s by becoming huge collectors of the toys. When the Beanie Baby bubble burst, it left them bankrupt. Full story, along with a short documentary on the subject, here:

    http://finance.yahoo.com/news/a-family-spent--100-000-on-beanie-babies-to-put-their-kids-through-college-155053345.html

    The Wind Rises

    in General Discussion

    Posted · Edited by Antonov

    The Wind Rises is the new film by Hayao Miyazaki, creator of My Neighbor Totoro, Kiki's Delivery Service Porco Rosso, Ponyo, and many others. It's based on writer Tatsuo Hori's biography of Jiro Horikoshi, designer of the A6M Zero. It follows Horikoshi's life from his childhood, through his experience in the Great Kanto Earthquake, and into his career at Mitsubishi leading up to WWII. Trailer here:

    The film was just released in Japan, so it might not hit America for a while, but I'll definitely be keen to see it when it does.

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