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British F-35Bs to bring vertical landing abilities to highways

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Re: British F-35Bs to bring vertical landing abilities to highways

#251

Post by 7952 »

Pixie_Dust wrote: post #129

“in light of potential Russian aggression in Europe” Who was it pushed NATO right up against Russia's border. Despite repeated statements from the Russians that there would be push-back. -- coob > “NATO have always been on Russia’s border.” (deleted) On the Soviet Unions border. When the Soviets relinquished control of the client states to the west, they were given an understanding that NATO would not expand east. (a…

Maybe the west did make some mistakes in its dealing with Russia. But that does not justify Russian aggression or negate the need to repel that agression.

Re: British F-35Bs to bring vertical landing abilities to highways

#252

Post by pessimizer »

ajuc wrote: post #121
Thoeu388 wrote: post #37

Highway landing and take-off on its own is useless. F35 requires extensive machinery to maintain, in needs proper airport and hangars. It is not possible to operate it somewhere from forest! And vertical landing/takeoff can not support any load, it can not even be fully fuelled! In Czechia we are replacing Gripens that can operate from almost anywhere. It only needs a few hundred meters of road, and single truck to r…

That's what people were complaining about in Poland in 00s when we bought F-16 in addition to our MiG-29. That the airplanes will be hard to maintain, aren't as rugged, can't handle street landing and improvised conditions. There was a huge scandal because one of the F-16 was flown from USA to Poland and did emergency landing on the way because of some minor technical issue. 20 years later and we lost two MiG-29 to b…

That's because the F-16s might be in (and even 'owned by') Poland, but they're for the defense of the US. We're not going to let them fall apart.

Re: British F-35Bs to bring vertical landing abilities to highways

#253

Post by mrguyorama »

hajile wrote: post #220
koube wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have perfect knowledge of this but disagreeing with military leaders based on a couple videos is definitely non-credible. Linking Russian drone propaganda is useful to let people know that drones exist perhaps, but not for much beyond that. Beyond that central theme, certain things don't pass the smell test in my opinion. For example: - Lancets are winning the war. Who is winning the war is debatable but usua…

Lancet is so powerful in this war that I'd be shocked if we aren't currently working on our own version as fast as we can. CAS is critical to advances. It is somewhat stopped by MANPADS, but stopped very hard by SAMs. When flying close to the trees, physics make it so that a SAM radar can't detect a plane until they are within 5-8 miles. This means intercepting a plane or helicopter attacking the front lines (launchi…

[flagged]

Re: British F-35Bs to bring vertical landing abilities to highways

#254

Post by martin8412 »

ethbr0 wrote: post #84
dumpsterdiver wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An aside thought: the days of soldiers riding horses into battle is currently considered to be an outdated mode of warfare. It seems quaint to even consider that one day warriors on horseback may again be the prominent warring force on our planet. And yet here we're are packed with nukes, as if we couldn't make it all happen.

Special forces notoriously rode horses early in the invasion of Afghanistan. Delivering force and logistics to the desired location, in a way you can support, is the end goal. In most of the industrialized world, there are better options. But there's a fair bit of the planet where animal transport is still optimal: hard to beat the fuel requirements. https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2019/10/18/...

An elite unit of the Danish military operating in the frozen wasteland of Northeastern Greenland travel by dog sled and use bolt action rifles.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sirius_Dog_Sled_Patrol

Re: British F-35Bs to bring vertical landing abilities to highways

#255

Post by pessimizer »

7952 wrote: post #251
Pixie_Dust wrote: post #129

“in light of potential Russian aggression in Europe” Who was it pushed NATO right up against Russia's border. Despite repeated statements from the Russians that there would be push-back. -- coob > “NATO have always been on Russia’s border.” (deleted) On the Soviet Unions border. When the Soviets relinquished control of the client states to the west, they were given an understanding that NATO would not expand east. (a…

Maybe the west did make some mistakes in its dealing with Russia. But that does not justify Russian aggression or negate the need to repel that agression.

West: mistakes

Russia: aggression

Re: British F-35Bs to bring vertical landing abilities to highways

#256

Post by pessimizer »

smcl wrote: post #217
D_Alex wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Russia has always been an imperialistic, genocidal and brutal country, incapable of creating anything of lasting value. Wow dude, that is quite deranged. >Unless Estonia was in NATO, Russian armors might very well be now in Tallinn. Russia borders 14 countries, and I don't think it fought with any except over the issue of NATO membership.

Russia has only fought with the countries who sought to join a military alliance to protect themselves ... from Russia? Incredible.

You don't think I might have a problem if my roommate joined the anti-pessimizer alliance?

Shocking.

Re: British F-35Bs to bring vertical landing abilities to highways

#257

Post by mrguyorama »

gostsamo wrote: post #76
lumost wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the pilot isn't the expensive kit, although the flight-hours to train them may be. Even an unmanned NGAD will probably cost ~500MM.

People can withstand only certain G-s of acceleration. Remove them, and you have a much more manueverable craft.

Dogfights are not a thing anymore. A2A missiles no longer have a 30 mile dud rate and if you want to close to gun or infrared missile range, you have 50-100 miles of eating AMRAAMs or even longer if you are facing a Russian plane. Air to Air combat hasn't been constrained by human G force tolerance since late Vietnam war.

Re: British F-35Bs to bring vertical landing abilities to highways

#258

Post by pessimizer »

fsloth wrote: post #215
D_Alex wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Russia has always been an imperialistic, genocidal and brutal country, incapable of creating anything of lasting value. Wow dude, that is quite deranged. >Unless Estonia was in NATO, Russian armors might very well be now in Tallinn. Russia borders 14 countries, and I don't think it fought with any except over the issue of NATO membership.

Neither was this war about NATO. NATO was an excuse. The war in ukraine is colonial and genocidal war with the intent of eradicating Ukrainian language and statehood and subvert the fee will of Ukrainian people under Russian yoke.

It's strange that they go ahead with making this excuse when everyone could have just consulted you.

Re: British F-35Bs to bring vertical landing abilities to highways

#259

Post by ghaff »

topkai22 wrote: post #245
ghaff wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In general, the military connection to the interstate highway system is almost certainly overplayed. From what I've read, it's something Eisenhower wanted to do and the military aspect made it easier to sell to congress.

A major military aspect comes from a general logistics perspective. Eisenhower took part in a 1919 cross country motor convoy- it took 62 days to cross the United States, with many difficulties. That experience is regularly cited as a major influence on his desire to establish the interstate highways. It’s not that they were built for the military, but the advantages to the military were also obvious. https://www.eis…

That's fair enough. I have no doubt that, given his background, Eisenhower understood the value of a large country having a good way to move people and equipment around efficiently--whether for explicit military purposes or otherwise.

Re: British F-35Bs to bring vertical landing abilities to highways

#260

Post by PedroBatista »

justin66 wrote: post #244
smcl wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the question of which ally would supply what to Ukraine was generally pretty flexible - there were various statements about not supplying hardware like Bradley, Leopard, Challenger and F-16, I guess due to Russian threats about how it'd consider that an "escalation". But those appear to have melted away, so I just figured such statements were to be taken with a pinch of salt.

Flexible is right, but with the weird caveat that the company which manufactures the hardware (and the nation in which it's headquartered) generally gets a veto when it comes to any one of its customers sending any given item to Ukraine, if they want it. That's about the contracts and terms military hardware is sold under, and the need for ongoing maintenance contracts. It's why Germany, after gifting Ukraine with so…

Yeah, the Swiss neutrality has the same quirks and hypocrisies of every neutrality that ever existed. Specially when it has a relevant arms industry.

With the banking part it was always easier to skate most pressures because at the end of the day the World is controlled by rich people and they all have interest in the "safety" of Switzerland. With weapons they are in this narrow "Buy now from us, because we will not sell during the your conflict.". When sh*t hits the fan these typical Swiss dances don't work and I'm guessing they'll have an hard time selling anything of relevance in the future..

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