Crashdown109

Name: Peter Stark Gender, Age, Ethnicity: Male, 32, Causasian Occupation: USAF, F-111 Pilot (TAC), Rammstein AFB West Germany Family History:Unwed, no children. Two siblings, older brother is major of small town in eastern Washington State near Yakima, younger sister law graduate from UW. Cousin assigned to US Army base at Grafenwhoer Germany, uncle former B-25 crewman in Korea, Father served in USN during WWII, Grandfather in Royal British Navy during WWI. Preferred (Alcoholic) Drink: Christian Brothers Brandy.

Oh, I'm not saying they would not have been mildly interested (and there are a few reports of the Serbs inviting the Russians to examine the wreckage, and the Russians taking samples for testing, etc, etc), but by 1999 the stealth technology (yes, even the RAM) used in the F-117 was quite dated. The Russians would not have been spending much time and effort trying to replicate it. But do they have knowledge of their own on RAM? Is it something that can compete with the stuff we can produce?

What is their largest "ship"? Last I checked, all they have are obsolent gunboats.

High time we denied these criminals safe harbors. Piracy in the Caribbean was practically wiped out by the end of the 18th century and was virtually nonexistant until the last couple of decades, because everyone assumed it was ancient history. Take one Los Angeles-class boat, two SEAL teams and a couple of CIA operatives on the shore and we could wipe out these pirates quite handly. The spies will feed their intel to the USN taskforce (the aforementioned Sub and SEAL teams), the Sub will drop it's Tomahawks on the harbors and the SEALs can act on intelligence if the mission needs a certain level of delicate handling.

Seems improbable, but I figure that stranger things have happened.

How about the F-111? Or the Voodoo, in the Canadian Armed Forces, Air Command, equipped with nuclear tipped Genie rockets to take down strategic Bears coming in from the Cold : retired in 84, but guarded the skies over the Northern end of our continent for a bit more than 20 years ! Nuclear Air-to-Air missiles?! I think I will go with the Aardvark thank you.

Dang. Well, I could go for whatever replaced it, but something like an F-15 wouldn't be a bad fly either.

I had an idea for an art film some friends and I have been toying with for a while about this. I'll be reading this more throughly.

Looks like something out of the Axis of Time Trilogy. Oh wait............. I wonder how fast that 57mm autocannon fires.

This sounds cool. I'm going to have to see how many F-105s were still being operated, and from what air bases in '81.

My favorites were the pogo ball of suicide and the single missile MRLS unit, which had no blast shield for the single (chortle) operator. Come to think of it, I KNOW some idiots who would use this garbage in a wargame. And lose to me and my friends, as usual.

................................. .............................................. Like I said, Madder than an March Hare.

OUCH!! Am I seeing that right? How many warheads is that, and at what yields?

Sweat. Between that and Fasthawk, the USN might just have an anti-shipping missile that will make the Russkies and the Red Chinese (Along with any fool crazy enough to start something) think twice about a naval confrontation.

True right, passing animosity through an anchronism, much like the sort of tribal societies that have passed on to which it was tied to as a means of ensuring the survival of the tribe by providing a common cause to fight and labor for. I always was curious how other nations see events like the US Revolution and WW2.

Ah, the nuclear powered cruise missile. New meaning to the term "weapon of mass destruction". I read about that one somewhere. You'd have to be madder than a march hare to put that in production.

Sweet! But they say it will be air-launched, I hope they don't mean that it will ONLY be air-launched but, hopefully, will also have sub-launch, surface ship and MRLS-type launcher capability (maybe that is asking for too much, but in war I'd rather have too much than not enough).

At the risk of sounding like a war monger, let'um throw a political tandrum. The Chinese already proved that they have Anti-Satelite Capability, so it is highly hypocritical for them to complain about the US developing a new cruise missile. So politics is all that is stopping us from having a Regulas II with the brains of a Tomahawk? Since when does the opinion of another nation determine the policies enacted by the DoD?

SSN is in my collection and that is one amazingly far fetched story. I would expect no US submarine to amass the record of kills that they do in that book (and I'm a huge Seawolf fan and Virginias shouldn't be too shabby either <g>). That said, the book does raise a number of good points; if I re-read it maybe I can even remember a couple of them. The boat in the novel was a Los Angeles class, and when I first read it some of the lop-sided victories made me laugh (chinese subs sailing into their own minefields, running aground in their own waters, etc.). The mental image I got of how these went down just made things even funnier. We'd have to have a half-dozen or more Virginia-Class or equivelent in the waters off of south China, with their satellite comms masts up so as to pick up on the missile and fighter activity and with orders to pump Tomahawks into the airfields and missile bases at the first signs of immending conflict. All that would really do is possibly blunt the edge of the Chinese assault, as the first wave would only have to land at other airbases.

I think I was. Thanks. True, but I was thinking something that has the "fuselage" of the Regulus II (so as to have the range and speed) with the guidance package of the Tomahawk. If it has to be launched from a surfaced sub only (as in no other platform, like a Ticonderoga CG or a B-1 Lancer), and it is not possible or practical to engineer it otherwise, then forget I said anything.

I'd be awful naive to take a work of fiction, no matter how well researched, as anything more than idle speculation, but Tom Clancy's SSN predicts a different outcome, but it is focused in the Spratlys, not Taiwan. And on a mostly submarine campaign.

From what I have so far come to understand about this missile, it was superior to the Tomahawk in speed and, in later variants, range. I know it was abandoned for use in the role of nuclear deterent by the Polaris BM, but why weren't the plans dusted off when time came to made a cruise missile that can either sink a ship at 2,000 or more miles out at supersonic speed or hit inland targets, nuclear ordnance optional.

Why doesn't the Army already have the Vulcan Cannon (which is the core of the CIWS system)? Last I checked, they were trying to come up with something like the Soviet ZSU-23-4 using the 20mm gatling gun. Or were those plans shelved yet again for the thousandth time? That is, until now.

The impression I've gotten is that the bridge drives the ship, the CIC fights it. That's also been the picture that I've gotten, but I guess my question was what the differences in the manned consoles on the Bridge and CIC are; ie, is there a guy in charge of airborne operations at both locations or is that exclusively one or the other?

It looks like an F-105. It's a F-105. And thanks again, I see that I asked a difficult question.