Armageddon???? (Part Fifty Up)

[Typhonis 1]

How long till the US troops get droped some RPG-7s and ammo?

Also why do I see some Technical trucks running loose with twin 19 tube hydra 70 rocket lauchers in the bed as a way to annoy the alderics?

[[R_H]]

<F-84s>

And on the upside, you can rack just about any plane up with enough AIM-9s to blow an enormous hole in a cloud of Harpies.

I thought infrared seekers had trouble locking onto the harpies?

Edit: Found the part I was talking about

Broomstick didn’t acknowledge, she didn’t have to. The AH-6 could do about 180 miles per hour flat out and the harpies were closing the range. She pulled back and swung the nose round, flipping her armament selector switch to the pair of Stingers mounted on the side of her cockpit. The annunciator tone was mixed, even in the cold of a desert night, they were having difficulty locking on. It was no good, whatever lock they had would have to do. She fired into the mass of harpies, watching as one missile went through the formation without exploding, the other struck home and she saw a harpy briefly outlined in fire as the Stinger tore into it.

[JN1]

Since it's not been mentioned yet I was having a think about what the UK would be doing. As Stuart has mentioned elsewhere one thing we would be doing is re-starting tank ammunition production, so hopefully RoF Bishopton has not been completely demolished.

A State of Emergency will have been declared and several Emergency Powers Acts will have been passed by Parliament (presumably those prepared during the Cold War will still be stored in some Whitehall filing cabinet somewhere).
The entirety of Britain's reserve forces - TA, Army Reserve, RAuxAF, RNR, will be mobilised, including those who have left in the last few years. I would even expect Army Pensioners and the Cadet Forces to be put to use.
Conscription will be rapidly reintroduced; AFAIK the Army and other service acts allow for this to be done without any extra legislation.

The army, RM and RAF Regiment are going to be searching through their armouries to find anything that has been squirreled away. The RAF are going to be looking to return aircraft in storage back into service, so RAF St. Athan is likely to be pretty busy, and we might see the Jaguar returned to service, just as the F-111 returning to service with the USAF.
The RAF may also look at employing their Nimrods as bombers, as they can in theory carry 1,000lb iron bombs. I can also imagine that the RN might wish to return the Sea Harrier to service.
BAES can probably increase production of things like the Typhoon and Hawk, and probably restart Tornado production.

I think that Britain's main problem is that AFAIK we have not stored as much military equipment as the United States has, so there is less to tide us over until the armaments industry gets production ramped up. Will the USA have enough spare capacity for a later day Lend-Lease?

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Yes, the F-16 is not, and is not in sufficient quantities of production.

The F-84 Thunderstreak (I assume that's the version we have the toolings for), on the other hand, is perfect for killing harpies....

The F-16 is RUNNING and its still in MAJOR worldwide service, meaning there are people trained to fly it, plenty of spare parts stockpiled, production lines for those kinds of space parts running. It means it can run with modern ordinance and components rahter then having to start up a whole tree of production lines and you have factory workers already in the workplace who build F-16's for a living and probably a market of people who did it not THAT long ago.

Its going to be FAR easier to just order more F-16 factories, expand existing factories and so on then building F-84 factories, training people to make them, service them and fly them. I'm betting there are FAR more retried pilots qualified on the F-16 who will only need a quick refresher course, then pilots flying F-84's.

If you need lots of lightweight fighters fast, you just can't go past the lawndart, there have been be zillions of those things made.

See what Skimmer said. We can build F-84s in car factories most likely, they're nowhere near as sophisticated as modern fighters, and they will not be using the same limited strategic resources as the F-16. Mind you, we'll be building as many F-16s as we can, but some sort of F-84 would also be extremely useful, extremely cheap, and would not cut into our limited strategic production of high end materials and electronics, are we clear?

The final point is that it will be much easier to qualify entirely new pilots on the Thunderstreak than the F-16, and we are going to need lots of entirely new pilots.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

If you need lots of lightweight fighters fast, you just can't go past the lawndart, there have been be zillions of those things made.

Evyer existing production line will be worked as hard as it can be, but the F-84 or other simple lightweight fighters would draw on a much lower level of technology and manufacturing expertise then anything like an F-16. You could probably make most of the airframes for somthing like the F-84 or Skyraider in a modern car plant.

What do you think of my idea for an Avon Thunderstreak, anyhow?

[The Duchess of Zeon]

It appears we could actually wedge a J79 into the original design functionally enough--except we'd need to lengthen the fuselage by 5 feet, 6 inches.

We basically need an engine with a diameter of about 3.2 feet and a length of 12 feet.

Though I wonder if a simplified J79 without an afterburner might do without excessive modification? I'm asking because, again, there's a stationary power-generation version of the J79, the LM1500, which has almost total parts commonality with the J79, and is still in production.

[JN1]

If you need lots of lightweight fighters fast, you just can't go past the lawndart, there have been be zillions of those things made.

Evyer existing production line will be worked as hard as it can be, but the F-84 or other simple lightweight fighters would draw on a much lower level of technology and manufacturing expertise then anything like an F-16. You could probably make most of the airframes for somthing like the F-84 or Skyraider in a modern car plant.

What do you think of my idea for an Avon Thunderstreak, anyhow?

I don't see why not, though I've no idea if Rolls Royce have kept the tooling, or even the engineering drawings for the Avon.
I wonder whether something similar could be done with the Meteor (examples of which are still flying), or even the Vampire? The latter was partially built out of plywood, so does not use as much strategic materials as an F-84. How about an upgraded Hunter, like those used by the Swiss, or are they just a little too sophisticated for this requirement?

[The Duchess of Zeon]

I don't see why not, though I've no idea if Rolls Royce have kept the tooling, or even the engineering drawings for the Avon.
I wonder whether something similar could be done with the Meteor (examples of which are still flying), or even the Vampire? The latter was partially built out of plywood, so does not use as much strategic materials as an F-84. How about an upgraded Hunter, like those used by the Swiss, or are they just a little too sophisticated for this requirement?

As I noted, the Avon is actually still in production as a stationary powerplant gas turbine.


Stuart, unrelated question:

Do these toolings give us the capability to build the navalized version of the F-111 as well? Because the F-111B would give some nice strike capability to the navy when suitably reconfigured. Mind you, getting the Hog back in any way whatsoever is beautiful, but it would be nice to replace the Tomcat with something in the navy.

[JN1]

Oh, I didn't know that, so thanks for letting me know, Your Grace. In that case there should not be too much trouble in making them for aircraft if necessary. Any idea who is making is these days, still Rolls Royce?

Looking back through the thead I do notice that you had mentioned it was still in production. I really should engage brain before posting, sorry about that.

[Beowulf]

<F-84s>

And on the upside, you can rack just about any plane up with enough AIM-9s to blow an enormous hole in a cloud of Harpies.

More likely is something like the F-86D SaberDog. Give it a bunch of aerial rockets in a pod. Give it a couple guns to work after the rockets are gone, and with dealing with singular harpies. Stick a simple radar on there, so it can have some night fighting capability, or better yet, a link from AWACS, which can stay far out of range of the harpies.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

<F-84s>

And on the upside, you can rack just about any plane up with enough AIM-9s to blow an enormous hole in a cloud of Harpies.

More likely is something like the F-86D SaberDog. Give it a bunch of aerial rockets in a pod. Give it a couple guns to work after the rockets are gone, and with dealing with singular harpies. Stick a simple radar on there, so it can have some night fighting capability, or better yet, a link from AWACS, which can stay far out of range of the harpies.

That's a pretty good idea right there. The simple fact is that the USA, even now, has a huge excess in production of combat vehicles in our automotive factories; most "foreign" cars, particularly Toyota for instance, are built more or less entirely in the United States. By completely eliminating production of new civilian cars we can certainly not only max out our capacity to build armoured vehicles but also task a factor or two with churning out 10 - 12,000 Thunderstreaks. Possibly 20,000, depending on how long the war lasts.


As another aside, I believe we have about 37 preserved Tomcat frames + aggressor squadron training F-14As (to simulate the Iranians) + the fact that DM had only chopped up 28 of the 165 remaining Tomcats there by mid-2007. There are probably enough Tomcat airframes left that we can return 100 or so to service, I'd think, maybe even 120.

[JN1]

I agree, though I must say I do have something of a hankering for seeing Hunters back in service, but that's just me. They did, apart from the F.2, use the Avon engine, and they could carry a decent weapons load in later versions. However I suspect that they may be too complex for rapid production in car factories etc, unlike the F-84 and F-86D.

Over the next few years, like in WW2, civilian car production is not going to be a priority. We'll all just have to get used to driving around in what we've got already, so the car factories and their suppliers can be turned over to military production.

I was actually thinking about Tomcats myself, but Your Grace beat me to it. Talking about the Iranians, now that they are on our side the US can supply them with spare parts for their F-4s and F-14s. An engine upgrade for their Tomcats would certainly make them more effective.
Pity that Tomcat tooling has apparently been destroyed.

[Sea Skimmer]

What do you think of my idea for an Avon Thunderstreak, anyhow?

Sounds like it could work fine, an turbine being produced for a power plant won’t directly work though, but they should have ample time to redesign it back into a fighter engine while the production line is setup. I suspect though that to really make Thunderstreak production worthwhile we’d need more engines then any one factory can currently produce. Using multiple engines not designed to be compatible is the groundwork for a maintenance nightmare, but with potentially anywhere from a half million to several million Harpies to kill which may appear anywhere in the world this may be necessary.

A J-79 requiring extensive airframe modifications is more trouble then its worth, the range on the F-84 isn’t exactly good to start with and adding 1,000 extra pounds of engine requiring more fuel sure wont help. Anyway, the J-79 is powerful enough to be used on F-16s, and was actually flight tested on that airframe as F-16/79 under the Carter Administration. Since F-16 production is likely to be limited by engines and the pieces of equipment, not airframes, building simplified F-16s is likely the best use of those power plants.

Royce have kept the tooling, or even the engineering drawings for the Avon.
I wonder whether something similar could be done with the Meteor (examples of which are still flying), or even the Vampire? The latter was partially built out of plywood, so does not use as much strategic materials as an F-84. How about an upgraded Hunter, like those used by the Swiss, or are they just a little too sophisticated for this requirement?

The specialized wood working industrial base the British exploited to build wooden aircraft is long dead, no point to trying to bring it back. I’m sure a completed Hunter production line doesn’t exist, so it’s really not even worth considering. The F-84 is worth at least looking at since we have the tooling, and thus we can copy the tool and jig designs directly, rather then trying to reverse engineer what is required based on taking an old plane apart, which would take years.

In the end it’s likely that practical problems would prevent any new simple fighter from getting into combat for two years or even more, which may already be too long to matter. Still, the potential half million plus Harpies Hell has are going to take an awful lot of killing. That’s on par with needing to shoot down every single plane built by all nations in all of WW2 put together.

Maybe we should be dusting off the plans to the 5in 38cal gun mount while were at it...

[JN1]

The specialized wood working industrial base the British exploited to build wooden aircraft is long dead, no point to trying to bring it back. I’m sure a completed Hunter production line doesn’t exist, so it’s really not even worth considering.

Rather what I thought, still it was worth a thought. The F-84 does sound like an excellent solution to the problem, after all it seems that killing Harpies does not require sophisticated fighters like the F-22A, or the Typhoon.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Well, it looks like the Avon Thunderstreak is a real possibility, then. The question is, how many engine factories can we possibly get up to meet the demand for the huge number of airframes? I suppose they would be designated F-84Ks in service, next in the developmental sequence after the YF-84J they're based on. So we have a exceptionally simple, definitely transonic bird we can mass produce capable of carrying plenty of rocket/missile ordnance and with six .50's.

Producing a larger number of F-16s by equipping some with J79s would also be, of course, very useful.

[JN1]

So we have a exceptionally simple, definitely transonic bird we can mass produce capable of carrying plenty of rocket/missile ordnance and with six .50's.

Any chance of putting 20mm on it rather than .50s? IMHO they might be more effective against Harpies.

[JCady]

I would point out that the aircraft version of the .50-cal is no longer in production, and even by WWII standards six fifties was an average armament at best. You'd really want to redesign the F-84Ks to mount one or two modern autocannon in the 20mm-30mm range.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

I would point out that the aircraft version of the .50-cal is no longer in production, and even by WWII standards six fifties was an average armament at best. You'd really want to redesign the F-84Ks to mount one or two modern autocannon in the 20mm-30mm range.

A quite reasonable point. I mostly want to keep design changes down as much as possible--ideally it would be possible to put together a crash programme that could have them in service in as little as two and a half years, three more realistically, as some compromises must certainly be made like this--enhanced effectiveness is a plus anyway. The question being, try for 4 x 20mm or 2 x 30mm? Obviously gatlings are quite impractical to mount.

[JN1]

I think that 4x20mm would be a good compromise between hitting power and amount of ammunition carried.

[KlavoHunter]

I agree, 20-millimeter cannon would seem to be more useful in this case for blowing flying Baldricks apart into a bloody mess, as the problem here is not that the individual Baldrick is difficult to kill, it's just that there's so blasted MANY of them. Thus having deep magazines sounds quite important.

[Firethorn]

I think that Britain's main problem is that AFAIK we have not stored as much military equipment as the United States has, so there is less to tide us over until the armaments industry gets production ramped up. Will the USA have enough spare capacity for a later day Lend-Lease?

Just a nitpick, I know, but the last time we loaned the brits a bunch of weapons they dumped them into the ocean rather than return them after the war was done.

As for aircraft, I can see reactivating old airframes out of boneyards, but beyond that I don't see reactivating any lines.

Though new mustangs might be cool. They'd also be easy to produce in car factories. A small arms factory should be able to produce .50's or even 20mm guns without depriving ground troops too much.

Add in some modern avionics, perhaps an advanced aiming system, and you'd be good to go.

[Beowulf]

Actually, the M3 machine gun isn't very dissimilar to the M2, which is still in production, I believe. Should be nearly the same parts. And while .50 was marginal against aerial targets in the 50s, Baldricks seem to go down fairly quickly to .50. Though, .50 BMG is already going to be a critical resource for the infantry, and 20mm isn't, so even though .50 is sufficient, 20mm may be better for arming them. Of course, I'm wondering whether a single M61 could be mounted in the airframe.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Actually, the M3 machine gun isn't very dissimilar to the M2, which is still in production, I believe. Should be nearly the same parts. And while .50 was marginal against aerial targets in the 50s, Baldricks seem to go down fairly quickly to .50. Though, .50 BMG is already going to be a critical resource for the infantry, and 20mm isn't, so even though .50 is sufficient, 20mm may be better for arming them. Of course, I'm wondering whether a single M61 could be mounted in the airframe.

Yeah, it might have to be much slower-firing regular autocannon.

[JN1]

I think that Britain's main problem is that AFAIK we have not stored as much military equipment as the United States has, so there is less to tide us over until the armaments industry gets production ramped up. Will the USA have enough spare capacity for a later day Lend-Lease?

Just a nitpick, I know, but the last time we loaned the brits a bunch of weapons they dumped them into the ocean rather than return them after the war was done.

It wasn't exactly as if we had a choice.
The L-L agreement, IIRC, said we either had to buy what was supplied to us; not going to happen as we'd spent all of our money; return them (the US wasn't interested in a bunch of worn out equipment), or scrap them, which essentially what was done.
I don't think we got any of the Reverse L-L equipment back from the Americans, AFAIK.

[JBG]

"Yeah, it might have to be much slower-firing regular autocannon."

That might not be too bad a thing Your Grace. The rate of fire of the M61 is beyond what is required as the Harpies aren't that big or tough. They need as much as anything to be set alight then their biology finishes the work. The rate of fire of the rotary cannon means that often a target will be simply blown in two etc by the force of the number of shells far beyond what is required in a situation that may be not only target rich but target saturated. A couple of non-dud body hits should be sufficient.

With modern fire control such "regular autocannon" would be much more economical in ammo usage and may be able to take out more harpies.

I note the comment about naval F-111s replacing in some way F-14s. They would certainly return a long distance strike platform to the USN. Our F-111s are fitted for, together with guided and iron bombs and attack missles, Sidewinders and Harpoon. Perhaps the digital pigs could be rewired to carry AIM-120s or the AIR-120s that Stuart referred to. Better probably to refurbish the F-14s for the carriers and keep F-111s for strikes into the very gaping maw of hell. Thinking about naval strike, where are all of the old A-6s and what shape are they in? I'll check the AMARC site Stuart linked to but they were one good bomb truck and worth considering.

A few thoughts about US aircraft otherwise:

- ramp up production of F-16s, F-15Es and F-22s as well as F-18E/Fs.
- restart B-1 production.
- restart if possible A-10 production.
- perhaps one old type reintroduced, F-84 or F-86. For the latter, the Australian Sabre was the best with the Avon engine and 4x30 mm cannon, cannon big enough for a decent HE warhead.
- ramp up MV-22 production ( as conventional helicopters are vulnerable to harpies ).
- ramp up C-17 production. As well as its other virtues this aircraft should be able to deliver MOABs to the most deserving!

Helicopters are problematical. Abigor's army was specifically referred to as being unusually infantry strong and harpy weak. From experience Stuart's little subtle hints are like acorns. Something may eat them and they go nowhere ( false leads too on occasion! ) but mighty oaks may grow therefrom. Future demon armies may have considerably more harpies meaning that fewer and fewer occasions arise where it is safe to use helicopters as there is such a task ahead of the flyboys to knock the harpies out of the sky that the accomplishment of that task takes longer and longer. Maybe the Cheyenne would have been fast enough to escape harpies but only the MV-22 otherwise seems to have that speed edge.

And if harpies are not enough of a concern now and in the future, what about angelic flyers, if Heaven becomes involved. What capabilities or vulnerabilities they would have is not known ( apart from one angelic herald who was still alive, though mortally wounded, after a close range hit from a 120 mm canister shell ) so there could be new problems. There may also be new opportunities.

Typhonis1, the only problem with "technicals" is the lack of protection from harpy and lightning bolt attack. Hence the reference already to armoured units surviving lightning bolt and harpy attack. The inference was that the armour protected the troops inside and that otherwise they might have been toast or cat food. Hence also the treatment of the 10th Mountain Division. The minimum platform for protected crew served weapons may be something like an M113. Tracked rather than wheeled as I am wary of the effect of lightning bolts or harpy claws on tires. As for RPGs I would prefer LAWs and a greater issue of grenade launchers, whether underslung or automatic. Dragon, Milan, TOW etc can take out the larger rhinolobsters etc. Classic Soviet RPGs are really inaccurate.

Jonathan