Never thought of that!

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First Shirt
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Never thought of that!

Post by First Shirt »

So, the Darlin' Daughter showed me a poster that she's gonna send to The Gunner (aka the family's token jarhead) who is a maintenance guru on the U.S.S. Iwo Jima with VMH-365.

Can't find the poster, but the caption says:

Marine Aviation
This means that America's Navy's Army has it's own Air Force.
Because F**k You, that why!

Couldn't stop laughing! Now I've gotta find the poster!!
But there ain't many troubles that a man caint fix, with seven hundred dollars and a thirty ought six."
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Yogimus
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Re: Never thought of that!

Post by Yogimus »

Ah, the Navy. The world's second most powerful Air Force :)
Greg
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Re: Never thought of that!

Post by Greg »

Yogimus wrote:Ah, the Navy. The world's second most powerful Air Force :)
No, Marine Aviation. Not the Navy's Air Force, this is the Navy's Army's Air Force.
Maybe we're just jaded, but your villainy is not particularly impressive. -Ennesby

If you know what you're doing, you're not learning anything. -Unknown
Sanity is the process by which you continually adjust your beliefs so they are predictively sound. -esr
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Yogimus
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Re: Never thought of that!

Post by Yogimus »

O_o
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D5CAV
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Re: Never thought of that!

Post by D5CAV »

Yup.

The Navy's Army gets it's own Air Force, but thanks to that psychopath Curtis LeMay and his idiot-lackeys in Congress, the US Army gets deliveries by B52s and F15s when we ask for CAS from the Air Force. We're not allowed to have our own fixed wing aircraft.

I guess that works OK as long as we are fighting wogs, but good luck if we actually go up against a real combined arms military.

Gruber is right. We are a nation by the morons, of the morons and for the morons.
None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Yogimus
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Re: Never thought of that!

Post by Yogimus »

The air force should be relegated to air superiority, strategic bombing, nuclear delivery, and logistics missions.

The army should purchase fixed wing prop craft for air support.
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Jericho941
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Re: Never thought of that!

Post by Jericho941 »

It's not too late. I'm still in the IRR. Activate me as an O-9001 and I'll fix everything.
toad
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Re: Never thought of that!

Post by toad »

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zG9LlHcX8lg

Rutan's Mud Fighter. Some of the Army guys wanted it, but well, you know.

Some of the Air Force pilot guys drooled, but since it wasn't supersonic, multi-mission, yada, yada, no joy.
Too much like a Piper Cub dropping hand grenades for the top brass I guess. It would have been a great plane for flying Sgts and Warrant officers. For the Navy it would have needed an extra engine and room for a GIB. The Marines would have taken it if it had dual bayonet mounts and the right paint job.
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Jericho941
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Re: Never thought of that!

Post by Jericho941 »

toad wrote:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zG9LlHcX8lg

Rutan's Mud Fighter. Some of the Army guys wanted it, but well, you know.
Looks like a fun toy, but not much more. Its external weapons capacity is a joke, it doesn't look like it holds much ammo for the gun, and I noticed that nobody talking this up and crapping on the Air Force cares to divulge its capacity. It is nice, however, that it has an internally-mounted 25mm gun and doesn't rely on a pod for that.

Flown in the 90s, but no provision for pods or internally mounting comparable systems. Put one on a weapon station and you've halved its capacity. Modern CAS demands FLIR and at least passive laser acquisition. Ideally it should support Sniper XR/LITENING-level capabilities.

It's single-seat, which -Just In My Opinion- is not desirable for modern tactical aircraft, especially a CAS platform. I'd also want a little more than fiberglass composite and an ejection seat between my ass and ground fire.

The guy who uploaded the video seems to operate under a very strange concept of how fixed-wing aviation works:
Legendary aircraft designer Burt Rutan reveals the secrets of his Model 151 ARES turbofan "Mudfighter" developed for U.S. Army Close Air Support (CAS) that should be ground-mobile in its own BATTLEBOX towed by a high-technology M113 Gavin light tank to provide maneuver air support (MAS) now lacking with the centralized, pampered USAF air base & bloated fighter-bombers-need-runways mentality.
If it's a jet, it needs a runway. It can be a crappy runway, it can be a stretch of highway commandeered as a runway, but it still needs a runway. This little guy would be no different. While the ARES engine placement looks good to prevent ingesting FOD, its short landing gear gives it little clearance to prevent damage, and very little room for weapons crews to work, so this doesn't really look like a fantastic "primitive airfield" platform.

TL;DR: This doesn't seem to bring anything to the table that wasn't already available from legacy platforms.
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randy
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Re: Never thought of that!

Post by randy »

Even a Harrier likes at least a minimal amount of runway if they want to carry a decent load out to any distance. Or be able to tank pretty soon after take off.
...even before I read MHI, my response to seeing a poster for the stars of the latest Twilight movies was "I see 2 targets and a collaborator".
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