Exhausted
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Posts posted by Exhausted
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Beer - Sam Adams, Innis & Gunn or Guiness
Liquor - Jack, Jim or Crown
I've actually been building the past few weeks too!
Ha, in that case you need to make a choice between modeling and driving. I can't let you do both ;) !
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caffeine and booze.... just need to be able to remember to shut off the air compressor
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Combat glow belt for the win!
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Ah the Saints. There will only be one 2010 ;)
Nice area
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You can always call uncle Joe-Bob on his low and slow but tough 40 year old Tractor. Sure he'll take an hour to get there, but he'll bring his big ol' gun. and he ain't got no need for no fancy app-lee-kay-shun on some city slick cell-you-lar phone neither.
Well if you're out in the middle of the country where a bunch of pickups are already on station looking for customers, then it still would be quicker to call Bubba than calling any sportster from the nearest city to come give you a ride.
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I would love one of these for personal transportation.
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yes it did, as lond as the target was designated by another source. Also if the target was illuminated it would give the pilot a aiming point on his/her HUD.
Exactly. This returns us to my point about being able to pick precision targets for pilots to aim at. Pave Penny obviously wasn't the best system, but it was light and plentiful. One of it's weaknesses is the Pave Penny didn't allow pilots to designate their own targets for guided weapons release. Pave Penny allowed pilots to find targets for GBUs to home onto or AGM-65s they could aim by themselves, but modern pilots use their own pods to redesignate targets picked up from ground designators. The tablet model is really cool, but it's not worth throwing all our resources behind a single high-tech system because we don't know the enemy's private information about their cyber warfare capability. It could be as bad as buying a bunch of cheap Enron stock in September 2001. If the F-35 doesn't have another system that allows the pilot to do what we can do now, our JTACs could find themselves without options. Most of our money goes into force multipliers like air power... we don't have enough grunts for an attrition fight.
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I tried making one out of milli put but I was very far off. LMK if you manage to make an extra or get a mold. I think many of naval aviation enthusiasts would appreciate one of these. We also need to do the arm.
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Hell yeah I'd participate man!
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it took the A-10 21 years to get FLIR, bro.
True, but the Pave Penny gave the Hawg some ability to act within the environment it was designed for: identification, tasking, etc. It's not the whole package like we'd expect today, but 1970s it's kind of remarkable
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But you implied that it was, and this was exactly my point earlier - there hasn't been a lot of reliable information about the EOTS to say if it's broken or not, but because we've been so conditioned to think that everything with the F-35 is a charlie-foxtrot, it's become fashionable to assume that everything with the F-35 is somehow fundamentally "wrong" because it either doesn't fit within how things were done 10-20-30 years ago, or we don't know the context of a situation. Therefore when something comes up in conversation, we just assume something's broken and use language such as the following:
Which is such an obvious statement that it's ultimately worthless.
It's actually not a worthless statement to say that the coming IR systems must work with the whole package because we developed past systems for legacy aircraft that made production, only for the IR system to be removed at a later date. So many systems come to mind here...
Now the PCAS stuff is pretty cool... reminds me of some of the tablets our people used last decade. But we must also be prepared for cyber attacks that disable such systems. If an advancement can be thought of, then a counter to it is right around the corner. In some ways it's nice to have less reliance on lasers because the developed militaries of the world can jam lasers quite effectively. But pointing devices still offer advantages in the scale of conflicts we are in right now. Being able to give an exact location, without the possible error of trying to designate through map, is still a sound practice.
They'll have a tablet that displays aircraft in the area along with their loadouts. They can contact an aircraft (maybe the guy on the ground wants a couple of 500 pounders from an F-35C dropped into a tree line, or maybe he needs to make the side of a ridge disappear with a line of 1000-pounders from a B-1B) and request a strike. The aircraft can accept or deny (the aircraft needs to have this option as it may already be tasked with another strike at that moment, or it may be out of gas and heading home/back to a tanker). The aircraft accepts, the guy on the ground uploads targeting data to the aircraft, the aircraft flies within launch parameters, then releases the weapon(s).Ahhh yes, the Uber model...
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Who ever said that it was "wrong"?
No one has ever said that the F-35's IR system was broken. The only whines (and that's what it is, a whine) are coming from Tyler Rogoway and Dave Majumdar - both of whom are hacks that have not only been repeatedly discredited by those with actual operational experience in these matters, but they have even contradicted themselves - that the F-35's EOTS hardware is now dated as it was based on emerging technology that was included in the first generation Sniper pods (and again, Sniper's a really good system). They have speculated about the upgrade capabilities of the EOTS. Rogoway whined about the lack of a infrared pointer, but what Rogoway either doesn't know (or more likely, doesn't care to say as it would undermine his rants) is that JTACs are getting new pointers with which to designate targets for attack aircraft.
And the F-35 may not be as reliant upon IR to attack ground targets as previous generations of aircraft have been. IR pods such as Sniper are range-limited and their views can be blocked by clouds and smoke (this was a problem during the Gulf War; both the weather was bad at the outset of the war and smoke from burning oil wells hampered ground attack and CAS in the latter half of the war). The F-22 already has very (scary) capable ground targeting with its older AN/APG-77 AESA radar and the F-35's AN/APG-81 AESA radar's advanced air-to-ground modes include high resolution mapping, multiple ground moving target indication and track, combat identification, electronic warfare, and ultra high bandwidth communications.
Whoa there nelly, nobody said anything was wrong; only that an integrated system designed for the platform needs to serve (key word here, ahem) the F-35 better than a pod would, out of mercy for the tax payers. That doesn't mean the FLIR needs to out-LITENING the LITENING pod, that means it needs to do the best it can from within the whole package.
Next thing: ground pointers aren't the preferred method for targeting. In current usage with the Marines, who are strong leaders in developing air-ground management, ground pointers initially aid in designating the general target, but the aviators redesignate with their onboard LITENING pods for weapons release. After handing off the target, the aviator disregards the ground pointer. We don't know how the F-35 will handle this but relying exclusively on the ground pointing devices shows that we are transferring more power to the grunt either because ground pointing devices/training are improved or we are taking a step back from current (2012) norms.
So what do they do when they don't have JTACs on the ground, like every airstrike in Iraq for the last two years.
Whether the ground pointer or the onboard pod delivers final guidance, it seems the lack of either option, or a trusted equivilent, would be significantly detrimental to people depending on certain types of support.
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No that's not what it sounds like. I'll stop there because we'll end up ahead if we don't continue down that path.
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Something made me think... if we still had a draft, most would probably be more supportive of military spending when it means newer technology could be keeping their loved one safer...
Unrelated, Spreitler has a point. You want the FLIR built for the F-35 to serve the platform better than a pod serves a variety of different aircraft. I don't know if the F-35's biggest issue is the FLIR, but it either needs to be right or go.
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Southwest for the win! Texas raised, Texas based.... once was the greatest source of liquor consumption in this great state
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I'm so jealous I need to go to jeally school
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I think this is a good move. I don't care about American airlines at all. They suck, they charge for everything, they make the travel experience worse than not traveling at all. If I could drive to Europe, that's the way I'd go. Flying is the worst, I'd rather get clawed through both eyes by an angry polar bear than give a buck to a US airline.
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Eh, at the end of the day my models served me well but they it's all just effin' stuff. I can afford to lose it though I don't prefer to.
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Isn't that true across every platform?
Aren't parts produced by thousands of sub contractors?
How do you have "competition" when the government fully controls who gets the contracts and funding and development dollars?
Competition makes sense in some cases, and I belive in the free market but defense contracting is not very free market.
I think the concept of "competition" is created by defense contractors. That way two companies profit, the taxpayer pays double, and when you pay double for something you don't Save unless the savings exceed 50 percent. Look at LCS and check out the "savings"
I understand preserving the industrial base, and I do believe it's secure for the most part. But there is a ridiculously thin line between competition and redundancy
I don't know what LCS is, but...
Competition in the direct sense is tough for cases like this. We are talking about a platform which will probably dominate the three fixed-wing branches for decades. This is kind of like when our military made the jump from muskets to rifles because of the advent of interchangeable parts. It's a necessary oversimplification to say one company will have the functional monopoly for production and distribution for spares. Most likely, the "free market" will operate under Lockheed as the company tries to source out materials and parts. But there will be much interference... there always is
Now for the business end.... this is where it gets ugly and where the public gets disillusioned. When Congress appropriates funds for the F-35, it's not going to be a just few lines in an overall budget. It's going to be a giant stack of papers that delegate production to select areas, in select districts represented by select Senators and Congresspeople. It won't go by what's cheapest, it will go by who is "owed" a favor. Senator Mouth Blisters helped Senator Herpes-Butt with a Federal judge appointment, therefore a favor is owed: Sen. Mouth Blisters knows when he gets the subcontract in his district, this will aid in his reelection.
But we will tolerate this because we know the only way the F-35 will live up to Lockheed's promises is when the total infrastructure is intact. Despite the ugly parts of this deal, the integration will probably still be cheaper than the old way of doing things.
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Because I enjoy it!
Paul
Even the sanding?
Actually, I enjoy sanding MUCH more than painting. Painting exists to prevent me from spending too much of my time on models... I hate it
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a group of four Marine maintainers from MCAS Beaufort (the training hub for the F-35B for both the USMC and the UK), told reporters during an April 14, 2016 visit that ALIS has made their life easier.
One Marine cited the direction it gives a team of maintainers.“Walking you step through step. There’s literally a signoff for every task you do, every action you do,” he said.
“Compared to how it was originally, it’s night and day,” said another when asked about updates to the system. “The transition has been good. Every upgrade they do is easy to get ahold of, get your head around. It’s been pretty consistent as far as maintainability.”
All four men also agreed that they would recommend ALIS, or some equivalent system, for future aircraft, although they noted that logistically it would be almost impossible to retrofit such a system to existing aircraft like the F-18.
Part of the benefit of the system, the maintainers said, was the support Lockheed provides. Because ALIS is tied into Lockheed’s system, and because Lockheed contractors are integrated into the maintenance teams at Beaufort, needed parts can come quickly.
That IS huge. When I was a Marine maintainer, cannibalization was an issue that kept a larger fraction of the Harrier fleet down than I care to admit. Not exactly sure what ALIS is, but it seems to mean some sort of parts interchangeability program between branches and contractors. With older systems, in my experience with the Harrier, there were so few parts we could get. I don't want to get into too much detail, but the only things we could get across platform were MAYBE bolts, washers, nuts (had to be the same size as well as have a rating for certain heat ranges) and o-rings. There were times when a missing .25 inch rubber o-ring kept an engine out of a bird for months. Then there were some gasket issues that only applied to the Harrier because of its thrust vectoring capability.
There are always proponents of some plan to retro-fit a platform with a new maintenance system, usually through some sort of Airspeed initiative, but it just isn't practical to open back up production lines for these antiquated systems. If the F-35 stays in service as long as the Hornets and Vipers, then it seems our investments in integrated supply and maintenance structures will actually save us money in the coming decades. This heavily depends on the F-35 being what we hope it is in the long run. From an outsider's point of view, attaching supplies to a single company that holds a monopoly on producing parts is justifiably undesirable. But at the unit level this makes a lot of sense. You spend a LOT extra for 'peace of mind' and ease of repairability.
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That looks real
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It's normal to scrutinize the planes we spent a lot of time around but not the others. I can't believe the fins are flat on top... that's going to need a little bit of scratch.
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I picked out a few things that stand out to me, if you don't mind.
1. What I ment to say was that there were nearly zero POW's with a rank under e-7 returned.
2. The large photo bothers me to this day. Still the napalm came off a South Vietnamese air strike. Was it from an A37?
3. When you speak Vietnam, sooner than later another person says the word Tet Offensive (OK 2 words).
4. Just sight seeing by the way. Of course we were accused of being three klicks inside of Laos by the other guys on one op. Maps said about a quarter klick inside SVN. Who knows and who cares. Just another example of some fine intel under LBJ's boys.
5. In WWII the average line doggy spent between 90 to 120 days a year in front line combat (least they were smart enough to have a line). Korea was closer to two hundred days. Vietnam was a minimum of 240 days. I was in the bush about 360 days out of 436 days.
gary
1. The ratio of officers who returned versus enlisted POWs is highly suggestive about the situation inside those damned walls.
2. I've known it was a Vietnamese airstrike that hit Phan Thi Kim Phuc, and Nick Ut, seen to the left, quoted that it was an A-37. He seems to know the relevant planes since he talked about people fleeing in F-5 Tigers.
Nick Ut on the Left, Phan Thi Kim Phuc on the Right
3. I have heard that more Tet attacks happened, but I've never known the scale of implications. I know, however, that the 1968 Tet Offensive convinced Hanoi to stand back for a while because of the vulnerability of their conventional forces to US superior ground and air power. What do you remember about how the 1969 Tet Offensive was carried out? VC/NVA/Mix? Multiple cities?
4. Regarding the maps, I read the USAF's Combat Skyspot review and one of the biggest reasons they said using radio beacons to bomb through the monsoon season was inaccurate maps sourced from WWII and the immediate post-war era. By using radar F-111s helped bring the circular error probable from up to 3,600 feet to 250 feet, though the Navy and Marine aviators had a CEP of just 50 feet by using A-6s beginning 2 years before the F-111 ever made it into theater. Also, I could see how people would be confused by the spacing of landmarks and their 'supposed' distance from borders.
5. There's no excuse for having people out in the field for so long. Deployment lengths seem re-dam-diculous. There is a huge lesson to be learned about this. I don't know where people ever got the idea that the troops are just robots you can cast out for years and expect them to perform just as well on day 400 as they did on day 30.
Thanks again for sharing.
The Pinnacle of US Military Technology
in General Discussion
Posted
there is so much truth in that.... that seems to be the single biggest lasting tradition