Seen on the street in Kyiv.

Words of Advice:

"If Something Seems To Be Too Good To Be True, It's Best To Shoot It, Just In Case." -- Fiona Glenanne

“The Mob takes the Fifth. If you’re innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment?” -- The TOFF *

"Foreign Relations Boil Down to Two Things: Talking With People or Killing Them." -- Unknown

“Speed is a poor substitute for accuracy.” -- Real, no-shit, fortune from a fortune cookie

"If you believe that you are talking to G-d, you can justify anything.” — my Dad

"Colt .45s; putting bad guys in the ground since 1873." -- Unknown

"Stay Strapped or Get Clapped." -- probably not Mr. Rogers

"The Dildo of Karma rarely comes lubed." -- Unknown

"Eck!" -- George the Cat

* "TOFF" = Treasonous Orange Fat Fuck, A/K/A Dolt-45,
A/K/A Commandante (or Cadet) Bone Spurs,
A/K/A El Caudillo de Mar-a-Lago, A/K/A the Asset., A/K/A P01135809

Saturday, March 14, 2015

Military Command Grade Inflation and Operation Scare Putin

Time was that a ship with 40 or so sailors on it would have been, at most, commanded by a lieutenant commander (in lieu of serving as an XO on a tin can).

Not any more, for the boss of this one LCS is a full commander. No doubt that the toy-frigate LCSs will also be commander commands.

Even the puff-piece article had to point out that both the ASW and MCM modules for the LCS pretty much suck.

On the other side of the globe, the Army is going to drive a bunch of Strykers around Eastern Europe to send a message of some kind or another. As far as I know, armored vehicles are normally transported by truck or train because they're not designed for extended periods of road use. I don't know shit about Strykers, but I'll still bet that a thousand miles a year on their clocks would be at the high end.

And what, exactly, will this show? Strykers are glorified armor-plated buses. If they came across even a T-34 tank, let alone a T-72, they'd be flaming coffins.

6 comments:

BadTux said...

This is as ridiculous as one of the Air Farce's mouthpieces saying "The F-35 was built to fight ISIS." Can't.... stop.... laughing....

mikey said...

Well, two points to consider. Stryker is probably a better armored platform than a MBT in urban terrain, although both are pretty vulnerable in that environment.

But in a more traditional armored engagement in the 21st century, the flaming coffins will be those belonging to whoever doesn't control the air. If the Strykers had A-10s, Apaches and Reapers overhead they wouldn't have a great deal to worry about - they'd mostly be engaging dismounted infantry at that point...

BadTux said...

You mean the same A-10 that the Air Farce has never wanted and wants to scrap in order to get the funds to purchase 3/4ths of a new F-35?

Apaches and Reapers are nice and all, but are ridiculously easy targets for any enemy with MANPAD's. We've lost a shitload of them in Iraq and Afghanistan to nothing more than RPG-7's, which aren't even designed to shoot down helicopters. If we were facing an enemy that had real front-line MANPAD's such as the SA-18 they'd really be toast. Plus their range is ludicrously short, though their ability to be rearmed and refueled without an airfield somewhat makes up for that.

Reality is that even with air superiority, tanks end up killing tanks. We had absolute air superiority in 1992 when our M1A1's swept into Iraq. We still ended up knocking out a shitload of Saddam's T-72's with the M1A1's main guns at ranges where the T-72's couldn't even see the M1A1 through the murk. That would *not* have happened if it were Strykers sweeping across that border...

mikey said...

Hmm. It looks to me like we lost 12 Apaches to hostile fire in seven years of combat in Iraq.

I don't perceive that as particularly indicative of vulnerability...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aviation_shootdowns_and_accidents_during_the_Iraq_War#Summary_per_type

mikey said...

And zero losses to hostile fire in Afghanistan. That surprises even me...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aviation_accidents_and_incidents_in_the_war_in_Afghanistan#

BadTux said...

I was probably remembering the shitload of other choppers that have been shot down in Afghanistan and Iraq rather than the Apache specifically. Still, considering that there was no (zero) modern MANPADs available to the insurgents in Iraq the fact that 12 Apache helicopters (and a bunch of other helicopters) got shot down by these 60's vintage Strela antiques before the insurgents ran out of them should alarm you. Modern MANPADs make those antique Strelas look like the museum relics that they really are. Our choppers are toast to modern MANPADs, which have advanced optical tracking capability rather than simply homing in on the "hottest" source.

Look, if 3rd world dipshits wielding 60's vintage weapons can shoot down twelve Apache helicopters, what would a modern military armed with modern MANPAD's do to our choppers? Nothing good, I suspect.

The A-10 is not immune to MANPAD's, of course. But the fact that it flies faster and can do pop-up/pop-down means that enemy soldiers have less time to react and deploy MANPAD's before the A-10 is out of sight again. Plus even a relatively loud jet like the A-10 is still hella quieter than even a quiet helicopter, giving that much less reaction time to begin with...