JointStrikeFighter wrote:THREE COMPANIES OF SPACE MARINES!!111!!!
This may be a useless strategic capability. Maybe if we build them a space station called THE FREEDOM STAR they will be awesomezor.
PS What are heavy weapons and how could they be important to modern military operations?
Heavy weapons are usally things like 50 cal machine guns, automatic grenade launchers, anti vehicle weapons etc. And they're very important to modern military operations.
And the ability to put a squad of heavily armed marines any where in the world in 2 hours is actually a good tactial ability.
Are you deliberately obtuse or just a wanker? What is sarcasm.
Does anyone have any idea if a high-precision SRBM of, say, 700km range (cf SCUD-D) would be useful as a cheap complement to Tomahawk missiles?
Vulnerable to almost all forms of heavy SAM system.
Sorry for double post, but even PAC-1 has pretty good performance against theater ballistic missiles like the SCUD. I would posit also that the GPS systems of a cruise missile are cheaper and less error prone than the sophisticated INS systems needed for a high precision TBM.
Winston Blake wrote:As for the actual technical questions, I assume that 'Hot Eagle' would be intended for inserting troops when there's an American/allied presence already in the area. That would allow them to be picked up by helicopter or otherwise extracted the old-fashioned way.
If you're going to insert a mere 13 US marines/soldiers into an area that already has an American/allied presence, why bother with a fucking rocket ship? A Blackhawk or a pair of Hueys will do the job without the logistical headaches already mentioned.
Those gun nuts do not understand the meaning of "overkill," and will simply use weapon after weapon of mass destruction (WMD) until the monster is dead, or until they run out of weapons.
They have more WMD than there are monsters for us to fight. (More insanity here.)
Winston Blake wrote:As for the actual technical questions, I assume that 'Hot Eagle' would be intended for inserting troops when there's an American/allied presence already in the area. That would allow them to be picked up by helicopter or otherwise extracted the old-fashioned way.
If you're going to insert a mere 13 US marines/soldiers into an area that already has an American/allied presence, why bother with a fucking rocket ship? A Blackhawk or a pair of Hueys will do the job without the logistical headaches already mentioned.
I'm guessing that they think they can have it get there faster or something. Really, for the cost, its a pretty bad and totally unecessary idea... They should get their asses in gear and finish the other programs that have a more immediate benefit, like the XM8 and the Osprey.
Knife wrote:
Yeah, like bombing naval ships with aircraft, or amphibious landings. All the stupid ideas...
What bullshit. The first air bombing attack on a ship came in the Mexican civil war by a US civilian pilot employed as a mercenary. The first aerial torpedo attack was by the Royal Navy, the first capital warship sunk was by the USAAF. The marines didn’t invent shit in that regard. They try to steal the glory for inventing CAS too, claiming to have done so in the 1920s, despite the fact that the British had dozens and dozens of squadrons of aircraft assigned to CAS in WW1, and heck several nations even fielded armored CAS aircraft in that war.
The comment on amphibious operations is just plain laughable, people have been making landings from the sea , and even been making direct assaults on fortresses by sea for at least 2,300 years. The Romans went so far as to build siege towers supported on paired galleries as specialized assault craft.
"This cult of special forces is as sensible as to form a Royal Corps of Tree Climbers and say that no soldier who does not wear its green hat with a bunch of oak leaves stuck in it should be expected to climb a tree"
— Field Marshal William Slim 1956
JointStrikeFighter wrote:Sorry for double post, but even PAC-1 has pretty good performance against theater ballistic missiles like the SCUD. I would posit also that the GPS systems of a cruise missile are cheaper and less error prone than the sophisticated INS systems needed for a high precision TBM.
Does not compute… you can guide a TBM with GPS too, and we already do so with the latest Army Tactical Missile and GMLRS. Several foreign nations missiles may also have GPS guidance. INS is never good enough for very high accuracy at ranges of 100+ miles on its own, the high accuracy Trident D-5 and Pershing II for example used radar mapping systems to improve accuracy, and the short ranged Russian Iskander apparently uses an optical/IR scene matching system.
In the face of modern SAMs both cruise missiles and TBMs are pretty easily targets, but the simplified mission planning (big factor) and low reaction times of the ballistic missile make them quite important for battlefield commanders. How big of a conventional ballistic missile is useful depends on just what you want to shoot at (hitting an enemy submarine in port for example, could be worth firing off an ICBM) but your defiantly hitting diminishing returns big time when you want to reach more then a few hundred miles. Ballistic missiles with 150 mile range might be as much as 1/6th warhead by weight, while at 1000 miles its probably going to be less then 1/16th.
"This cult of special forces is as sensible as to form a Royal Corps of Tree Climbers and say that no soldier who does not wear its green hat with a bunch of oak leaves stuck in it should be expected to climb a tree"
— Field Marshal William Slim 1956
montypython wrote:Will this project be started up and then cancelled like the ARH-70 et al because of more cost overruns?
With the information we have so far, I can't see how it could even get as far as getting started up. Especially considering the current economic climate. Unless, of course, its true purpose is simply to be a big pork project.
Robert Gilruth to Max Faget on the Apollo program: “Max, we’re going to go back there one day, and when we do, they’re going to find out how tough it is.”
JointStrikeFighter wrote:THREE COMPANIES OF SPACE MARINES!!111!!!
This may be a useless strategic capability. Maybe if we build them a space station called THE FREEDOM STAR they will be awesomezor.
PS What are heavy weapons and how could they be important to modern military operations?
Heavy weapons are usally things like 50 cal machine guns, automatic grenade launchers, anti vehicle weapons etc. And they're very important to modern military operations.
And the ability to put a squad of heavily armed marines any where in the world in 2 hours is actually a good tactial ability.
Are you deliberately obtuse or just a wanker? What is sarcasm.
Nope just being as sarcastic as you were trying to be.
"There are very few problems that cannot be solved by the suitable application of photon torpedoes
