Zinegata

Wait, so all those grand tank charges was so that Monty could maintain some kind of imaginary "ground taken versus men lost" statistic? Also I am glad I am not the only one who noticed how Squad Leader has a Wehraboo bias.

I'm not sold on this article because it proposes a requirement of mine-clearing while under fire. I don't think you should really do this to begin with - eliminate the enemy naval and air assets first or reduce them significantly before you begin MCM operations sounds much more sensible. Indeed, the last time I can recall that a fleet tried to clear minefields while under fire was Dardanelles, and that resulted in three pre-dreadnoughts being sunk due to an undetected minefield. Even in all of the wargames I've played the only scenario that required the USN to mine-clear while under fire was a pretty ridiculous EU + Russia vs US scenario wherein a CVBG was evacuating from the Med through Gibraltar; and the EU/Russia had to resort to limited strikes against the MCM helicopters because their air power was so decimated by the CVBG.. Moreover, I think people are a bit too hard on the LCS for MCMing. You want mine-clearing to be done by a relatively small ship with few crew, so that you minimize inevitable losses; and the primary mine-clearing asset in any case is in fact the ship's helicopter. If you want faster mine-clearing as proposed in the "Contested" scenario you'll actually need a small fleet of helicopters, which means dedicating an LHD (which is what the article proposed, albeit the ship carries only four helicopters which I think is really inadequate for fast clearing) or significant deck space on a full carrier. Which again goes back to my original point - wouldn't it be better to instead have more fighter and strike craft on your LHD/carrier and eliminate the other threats entirely before getting to work on mine-clearance? Indeed, by having less space for fighter and strike craft you're leaving yourself open to having the enemy target your MCM LHD specifically and wipe out all your MCM assets in one go.

Many of the surviving katanas also tend to be the "lucky" ones where the ore was better and the sword itself was better-maintained, which is why the lasted so long and were so treasured to begin with. There's an inherent bias towards the good swords surviving, whereas most of the swords were broken in combat or rusted down. Take this also with a grain of salt because Cracked was the first place I saw this pointed out - but the Katana is also apparently harder to master and train on because of the compromises in design due to the crummy Japanese ores. Dunno if this is really true.

There's also the ore source issue. Before the industrial age it wasn't really possible to create specific mixes of metals to create stronger types of steel, as material sciences hadn't progressed that far yet. More often than not, it was the other pre-existing metals in the ore itself which determined what sort of steel alloy came out of a medieval era forge. So a longsword from Toledo and a longsword from France may have been made with the exact same technique but one would be better than the other. In the case of the Katana, my understanding is that part of the reason they went into such extremely time-consuming production methods was because Japanese iron ore was really crummy in the first place.

Yep, though I'm convinced that this wasn't the original plan and it was only partway through shooting the movie that Tom Hardy and George Miller both just agreed that Charlize was a much better lead. At which point they stopped all pretense and decided she should be the "hero"; which is also why the next Mad Max movie's subtitle is already Furiosa. It was still a Mad Max movie through and through because of the atmosphere of the movie, even if Max's most awesome moment happened off-screen .

Before accusing me of "misrepresenting people's arguments and condescending to them" consider that you yourself admit that you never actually bothered to read the entirety of my post. Anyway I'm dropping this thread. And maybe this entire forum given that it's pretty clear to me that "low standard" is synonymous with "disagreeing with Sturgeon and his favorites" because some people are too immature and who, in the face of someone seriously discussing a topic, hides behind "don't be serious" every time an argument doesn't go their way.

Downward, I know enough about American politics that a "shitstorm" will only happen if one party can hurt the other without shooting itself in the foot. And a friendly-fire drone incident isn't going to be one of those issues because the Republicans want to portray themselves as the party of Defending Murica and they aren't about to question a program that was more successful at blowing up AQ leaders in other countries than anything Bush ever did. Meanwhile, Obama already got away with blowing up two American citizens - one a terrorist and another a hostage - using drones. Do you see any "shit storm" over drones over the death of a hostage? Maybe you should consider that the party that traditionally would be complaining over this - the Democrats - are also too busy using the drone program to play up their Defend Murica credentials hence they're also letting it pass?

It's hard to believe you're "joking" when you're grumbling about how we put dollar values on a pilot's life while ignoring that the whole point of the drone program for Western miliataries is to take the mortal danger away from the said pilots; and that the only folks who will still continue using CAS aircraft are those who train their pilots dirt-cheap like in South Africa or the Philippines because we accept some of them might not come home.

Again, you do realize that as much as a third of drone strikes *already* cause civilian casualties and nobody even questions this, yes? There is very much an understanding that drones are still controlled by people and it these people who are ultimately responsible for any collateral damage mistakes. No, as Toxn and I already explained the only niche for manned CAS aircraft is the low-cost military aircraft, because those are cheap enough to be had in large numbers - cheaper than drones in fact even with pilot training - for militaries that don't have the cash to afford drones. You do realize that the US Air Force went through a phase like this, yes, when they formed SEAD units that had the crappiest jets available? The idea being that it's better to risk some older planes like F4s for Wild Weasel duty instead of the more expensive F-15 Strike Eagle. ==== "Meh. The day when we go all-drone with CAS isn't too far off anyway." "Really, it's glaring how people keep going we shouldn't all-drone for a risky job like CAS, when Space Exploration went all-drone years ago, suffers plenty of glitches and lost missions, and yet the reaction to lost space probes is "Oh well, good thing we didn't send a guy up there or he'd be dead now!" while taking the risk to the human operator away from CAS is treated as dangerous sci-fi fantasy despite drones conducting the majority of actual air strikes (as well as most of the recon flights) since Obama became president." Finally, what does optical navigation have to do with present-day drones? Most human pilots don't even navigate optically anymore for most of the journey - that's what GPS is for and why autopilots are common for airlines. And even if we assume some optical navigation is necessary there's a reason the things still have a human operator back in the base; and nobody in this thread is advocating fully automated drones that fly without human guidance and choose targets for themselves without any human input. If you get to the point of fully automated drones, then you can retire the fighter jocks because at that point you really don't need a pilot for the dogfighting portion anymore (and dogfihts will keep happening because BVR thing just isn't going to be allowed unless in an apocalyptic war because of ROE issues). Before then CAS is actually going to be the first to end up all-drone'd because having a full picture of the battlefield is much more important to ensuring the ordnance gets dropped on the right target instead of the advantage of having no lag due to tele-operation.

These are the same tired old argument from the corners of the military that still can't accept their obsolescence that actually don't hold any water. Battlefield intelligence doesn't primarily come from air-based assets in CAS in the first place, and you'd notice this if you read my argument. You have planes flying at high speed looking at itty-bitty little figures on the ground - and this assumes that the pilot can get a good view from the cockpit and the pilot isn't terribly distracted by being shot at. Does this sound like ideal conditions for intel-gathering? Instead, the ones actually guiding the planes are your Forward Observers on the ground, which is why it's silly to claim drones can be jammed when a jammer powerful enough to do this will also break the comms between the ground team and the CAS bombers. So really there's no need for manned CAS. Battlefield intelligence comes from your FOs on the ground. Moreover, if you subscribe to the fantasy of primarily air-based recon then drones can do that for you too, and you can have a team of analysts sitting in a comfortable building to actually have time and support to figure out which of the little figures on the ground are the good guys and the bad guys to begin with; rather than asking a pilot to do this solo while being in mortal danger. Really, have you ever tried identifying targets on the ground based on an aerial recon picture, much less try identifying targets when the plane is flying really fast? Why do you think so many actual drone strikes still end up killing the wrong people even with a room full of analysts?

Actually, our OV-10s don't even have guns - they come standard but as far as I know we haven't done a gun strafing run since maybe the 70s and they've been removed or gutted to save weight for the most part. But again, the main virtue of this class of planes is that they're so cheap to fly and maintain, so your operating costs are really low, your acquisition cost is so low you can afford to replace them when one or two are lost. Sure, a 500 lb payload is totally irrelevant against the Red Amy, but against a handful of rebels a single bomb is often more than enough to win a major fight outright.

Again, you really need to reconsider "expensive pilots" when South Africa can get 30 for a million dollars in training. Flying a plane nowadays is not that hard. Heck, modern airliners are primarily flown by auto-pilot in the first place; which is why even the really basic PAL flight training is more than enough to get them civilian airliner jobs. Also, mixing manned and unmanned planes over the same area? What for? Anything the pilot can do, the drone can do also. You seem to be under the impression that the future lies in having a manned bomber "supported" by unmanned drones, but you don't need a manned bomber in the area at all when you can have the drone control center in the United States. Or are you saying that the unamanned drones do the SEAD portion to pave the way for the manned planes? Sorry, but that doesn't make sense. The SEAD portion is in fact the bit that is most likely to encounter electronic jamming in the first place which is why SEAD - despite being hugely risky - may need to be one of the roles that goes to the drones last.

That's because as Toxn pointed out Western militaries tend to have pretty ridiculous pilot training costs since they're being asked to fly very expensive aircraft for an extended period of time. For a Third World military pilot training costs are much lower, to the point that the running joke is that the Philippine Air Force is just a flight school for commercial airlines where you actually get paid instead of paying tuition but at the slight risk of death. Incidentally, this is also exactly why drones make sense for a well-funded military. With drones your well-trained Western pilots are no longer put at risk and can instead spend more time on things like target acquisition and verification to make sure that your expensive Hellfire missile actually kills actual enemy targets and not some innocent civilians in the wrong place and time. Meanwhile the Philippine Air Force pilots, while skilled, are expendable enough that they can continue to be risked on bombing runs using OV-10 prop planes. Since getting through a tour makes you employable in a high-paying commercial airline job, there is no shortage of new candidates. Moreover, for CAS to be really effective you need to have on-the-ball forward observers; and they are arguably more important than the pilots. The pilots for the most part are dependent on the FO to tell them who's the good guys and the bad guys. In the recent Masamapano fracas for instance the supposedly "elite" ground team was using Google Maps to navigate a swamp, ended up on the wrong side of the river and thus violated a cease fire agreement, and got wiped out to nearly the last man because no one could give the army any coordinates as to where they were and where the Moros were. The OV-10s in this instance didn't even bother dropping bombs, much less take off from the nearby airfield - they didn't have any valid targets and the ROE sensibly forbade willy-nilly dropping of munitions. On the other hand, with some very good intelligence and some exceptional recon one of our OV-10s actually took out one of the top AQ leaders in the region. That our pilots could drop a bomb in a properly identified hut so surprised the local media that they still think that the OV-10 bombing was a hoax and it was really a US drone that conducted the strike (at best a couple of US drones might have helped guide the OV-10, but the US has been extremely scrupulous about its "no combat" pledge in the PH).

Of course it's a death trap. That's the whole *point*. Note how "Optional Ejection Seats" are listed as one of the features? Compact size High wing for crew visibility and better field operation Low purchase and operation costs Simplified logistic support High cruise and dash speeds Payload capacity in excess of 800kg Large operating range Short Take-Off and Landing Self-protection counter measures Optional ejection seats Light attack capability

Actually, that's exactly the niche manned CAS is going to have as I mentioned above: In fact, the AHRLAC's selling point is that it's supposed to be cheaper than drones from a dollar value perspective, so if you're the sort of military that can afford to spend lives instead of dollars (and don't mind a lot of misses) it's exactly the sort of plane you'd want over a drone. (the exception being CAS over a low-threat environment, but then I'd argue it's technically a COIN as opposed to CAS aircraft - and even the USAF is getting AHRLAC-like planes like the Super Tucano for the COIN role).

And when was the last time the entire drone fleet got grounded by a friendly fire mistake? Oh wait that never happened, and in fact the drones are still flying missions despite constantly hitting civilians by mistake. Maybe it's because they figured the ones at fault are the human operators evaluating and picking the targets, and not the drones? Meanwhile entire squadrons of manned CAS aircraft get grounded whenever Joint Strike Fighter suffers some kind of glitch again - usually computer-based ones that renders the entire airplane inoperable because modern aircraft are so computer-dependent. Really, it's glaring how people keep going we shouldn't all-drone for a risky job like CAS, when Space Exploration went all-drone years ago, suffers plenty of glitches and lost missions, and yet the reaction to lost space probes is "Oh well, good thing we didn't send a guy up there or he'd be dead now!" while taking the risk to the human operator away from CAS is treated as dangerous sci-fi fantasy despite drones conducting the majority of actual air strikes (as well as most of the recon flights) since Obama became president. CAS is going the way of drones and very soon because the very nature of the entire Air Force is so hugely dependent on electronics. Yes, yes, drones may be jammed and the Iranians claim to have done it once but so can the comms of a manned CAS aircraft, which is just as bad because you now have your CAS pilot needing to figure out who the hell among those little figures on the ground are the good guys while going through the stress of being shot at. Jamming / counterjamming is not some magic counter to drones; it's just something that you have to take into account for with manned aircraft just as you do with drones. Manned CAS simply does not have a future for modern militaries if they were thinking straight instead of trying to preserve their petty little fiefdoms in the military hierarchy. Going drone is simply cheaper in terms of air frame cost (important given that the aircraft is always at risk in CAS) because you can make drones a lot smaller since you don't have to worry about fitting a pilot, and you are assured of preserving your skilled operators since they are never put in any danger. Manned CAS's niche will in fact be with very low cost militaries that can't really afford to keep up on the electronics and want something very simple to operate and maintain.

Meh. The day when we go all-drone with CAS isn't too far off anyway.

When I say "longer-term space missions requiring larger space ships in the first place" I'm actually already thinking on the scale of O'Neill Cylinders. At ISS levels of habitation or space ships there is no point to having babies in space in the first place.

By the time you want to have babies in space it's implied that we're looking at much longer-term space missions requiring larger space ships in the first place.

We could always just simulate 1G in space by creating a spinning spacecraft or station...

Was the loss of officers to the Bourbon restoration really that severe? While Ney and other Marshals were killed others were spared and even held positions in the restored government - Davout, St Cyr, and Soult being the particular stand outs. There were a couple further revolutions after Napoleon's final defeat though so I'd think those would also account for why the French army ended up having amnesia - by 1870 French politics was such a mess that I think the French army had trouble remembering who exactly they were fighting for by this point.

Just another note: Studies of Napoleonic eras revealed that bayonets only caused about 2% of the casualties, and that bayonet charges were largely mythical in nature. And when I say mythical I don't meant that entire battalions didn't charge with bayonets drawn - they certainly did. However, the charge was usually conducted when the defender was already wavering and the charge itself was just one massive bit of posturing to put them to flight. If the defender didn't run then the result was the attacker usually taking an entire volley at point-blank range resulting in the attacker getting routed instead. In fact, Jomini - one of the big Napoleonic references of the period - claimed that he in fact never witnessed a battalion ending up in a melee with another battalion. One side or another always broke first. The bayonet injuries, when they do happen, tend to happen to men who are running and are caught by the pursuit charge; or they occur during smaller charges by skirmishers (usually of only a few dozen men) fighting each other for good positions. That the French had to study the Civil War to find out the dubious utility of bayonets when their own Grand Armee actually hardly relied on it goes to show how institutions can easily end up mythologizing its own past into unsound doctrines for the present.

Key word though is "supposed", and just to be safe RoE will still very likely require final visual identification before taking any shot. Mistakes do happen when you're relying entirely on radar, such as the recent Malaysian airline shoot down or the case of an AEGIS downing an Iranian jetliner. By contrast it's almost impossible to mistakenly shoot down an innocent airliner at visual range.

Geez, am I getting my math right? Based on Zaloga's charts there were 30 Sherman vs Panther engagements, wherein a total of 20 Shermans were destroyed in exchange for 72 (!) Panthers. Total Shermans engaged was around 200 versus 150 Panthers. Some kill ratio for the Panther.

The major issue that the BVR crowd isn't addressing is that most future air warfare conflicts won't be pitting best against best. Much more likely is some kind of "peacekeeping" OP where you have a first world top-of-the-line jet going up against some rebel/rogue country Mig-21 jet. And the issue there is that it will be an invariably messy conflict over airspace that still has civilian traffic; at which point the rules of engagement will almost certainly require visual confirmation before any engagement to avoid mistakenly shooting down any civilian jet liners. Still, if a conventional war does break out, I don't think you can go very wrong with FIRE EVERYTHING.