/k/ - Weapons

>>675310

You mean aircraft cruiser like Admiral Kuznetsov? Shit's borderline pointless unless you only plan on fighting varying degrees of niggers, at which point you might as well make a mobile FOB with infantry use in mind. Slap a railgun, or whatever provides the most cost-efficient long range fire against mud-huts on it, and some helicopters.

I like it. I'm guessing 85% of what a destroyer actually does is act as a helicopter platform, and its helicopter(s) are the most overworked part of the ship, so should be expanded.

Should have not just extras, but dedicated specialized helios, including drones.

1/2 of a big open deck could also be used to carry land-based wheeled, tracked or "legged" additional newest and latest missile/radar systems, or 155mm artillery, or a tent-city of marines, or MASH unit.

>>675322

Helicopters cruisers were a thing in the 60's-70's.

Basically a WWII style cruiser-hull with a big deck in the back and a cruiser armament up front… of course no putting weapons on the back meant the thing was in fact armed as frigate… with lots of helicopters.

It might have made sense economically (and only France, Italy and the Soviets actually did build some IIRC) but it's never gonna be better than a LHD and a destroyer…

>>675349

It wouldn't need to be that big, modern turboprops can STOL much more effectively, especially if the ship is pointed into the wind (which all carriers are). Many STOL aircraft have the ability to land on water, via pontoons which are filled with fuel initially. Gives them 15h flight time before pontoon is empty, and when they're done they can literally land on the water, eat breakfast, and take off again for home.

No one takes turboprops seriously anymore, even though the improvements in the systems are so amazing that they've outstripped helocopters and half of jet airplanes in service.

>>675394

A prop can carry a radar much higher than a helicopter, and has excellent loiter ability, this makes it perfect for AWACS duties. It's why the hawkeye is not based on a Sikorsky. This is super important when the ship horizon is 20km and the enemy has 300km range hypersonic missiles…. spotting the missile early with a high flying AEW is the only way to have even a 1% chance of surviving it.

So it can:

1. Locate low flying cruise missiles in time to respond

2. Locate enemy aircraft carrying cruise missiles in time to intercept them

3. Spot enemy ships and submarines so you can hit them with your own long range missiles (if you have them)

4. Dropping torpedoes onto dumb submarines

5. Attacking ships in port, or airplanes in hangars…. which is where ships and airplanes spend most of their time

6. Wrecking small attack craft and pirates

7. Destroying retard helicopters that can't match your altitude or speed

>>675394

Oh also it can deliver aircav and supplies a lot better, due to higher payload and speed….

>>675406

>>675407

The only advantage I think a helicopter has over a well built fixed wing turboprop is the VTOL thing, and being (at least in theory) perfectly happy without a prepared airfield to fly from. How did helos get to where they are today without being supplanted by short take off, cheaper, longer ranged, and potentially more effective lightweight turboprops?

>>675356

Yeah that's the thing it would be incredibly cheaper to operate compared to a supercarrier for bombing shit-tier fighters with no AA.

>>675419

Thanks for the explanation mate. I still think that on balance you would gain a lot from using a collection of STOL turboprops for naval aircraft. They may not be able to use a dipping sonar the way a Merlin or Sea King would, but dropping a network of sonobuoys over an area can be done much quicker than searching the same stretch of water with anything less than an airforces worth of helicopters; they can be recovered by a launch or other small ship launched from the carrier (which can also cover the rescue part of search and rescue). As there isn't all that much terrain or cover for them to hide behind and pop out of in a naval setting that advantage doesn't mean much in this context.

>>675412

It's all about the power plant.

Turboprop engines are about 11x lighter for the same level of thrust than they were in WWII, I once hilariously did a napkin design of a PW Canada in a carbon composite P-38, with slightly larger blades it had enough thrust to literally hover nose up.

Turboshafts can no longer compete as soon as boomers died off so will the romance of the helicopter. Look at what Sikorsky and Kamov are doing, largest military helicopter companies in the world, and every future helicopter design is some kind of gyrodyne.

>>675419

>hide in the terrain and pop out for ambushes

40x more money is a lot to pay for a one trick pony.

>>675541

>a carbon composite P-38, with slightly larger blades it had enough thrust to literally hover nose up

Now that is something I would like to see.

>>675541

Tiltwing P-38s when?

>>675709

It would be easier to tilt the little pilot pod instead of the wings.

Maybe put robot legs instead of the double tail, and a pair of manipulator arms on the belly.

>>675694

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dornier_Seastar

>>675774

I don't think a modern engine would need to be built that far back into the booms. You could probably use them for fuel storage, or possibly as hard points for mounting sonobuoys/torpedoes. You couldn't just cut them though, they're needed for aerodynamic reasons.

>>675541

Tilt rotors are inherently less safe than traditional rotary wing aircraft due to their inability to land on auto rotation. Not to mention the increased maintenance and failure points involved in having your power plants and in some cases wings swivel. And if your design is less safe and more maintenance heavy than a helicopter then you have some pretty big problems to be honest. I don't understand how everyone here will collectively laugh at the Osprey for its high cost overruns and lackluster safety records but then turn around and say its the future and it replacing the cheaper and safer CH-46 was the right call to make.

>an ambush is a one trick pony

Man, I guess after grug popped out of the berry bush to club berry pickers no one in the history of man ever fell for that trick ever again.

>>675694

I fail to see how this plane eliminates the main issues catapult seaplanes had that got them deleted off of every warship in a heartbeat over helicopters.

>>675750

You'd take the centre of thrust out of line with the centre of mass when the engines went vertical. That wouldn't result in a smooth, controlled, take off/hover, depending on how far away from the COM the COT(V) was the aircraft would either lurch forwards or backwards in a 180 pitch that would end in a crash. You could, potentially, rejig the weight distribution to fix this, but that would most likely result in a radically different air-frame.

>>675829

Would it be possible to have racks of them in a submarine to launch an attack of human missiles?

>>675804

IMO the LANDING roto-rocket scheme tried with a C-130 for the Iranian Hostage Rescue is worth looking into.

IIRC it basically worked fine, just a minor other issue that busted off wings as it fell or something. The rig was put together in matter of weeks as a Hail Mary, and never revisited (at least officially). You wouldn't need to use it all the time, just when normal landing not possible, and I guess it'd be OK to blast rocket exhaust into the ocean.

What you really need is one of these.

430 mph AND unlike Osprey can take off and/or land normally, for massive overloading, Cat-launch, or just in case you get some battle damage and can't do helio-landing.

I'm waiting for the moment when a Ospery full of grunts takes some damage and they figure out they can't tilt the props, and only pilots got parachutes. How long they gonna keep re-fueling?

>>675869

one of these

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LTV_XC-142

it was cancelled on brink of 'Nam escalation.

Only real issue was some vibration, but vibration can always be solved, just change something to break up the harmony.

>>675869

the retro rocket C-130 crashed because the pilot turned on the rockets too early and stalled the plane. I don't really like the idea of telling pilots that they need to fire the rockets at the exact right moment or risk falling short of the deck, smashing into the deck, skidding off the deck or into the superstructure for a 100% chance of death. Stopping planes quickly on ships has already been figured out. Its called arresting wires.

>>675871

I have a bad feeling about those shopping cart wheels not being able to hold the thing upright while taking off or landing in rough seas.

>>675829

Seems far too complicated for the small advantages you'd get from that design (how very German of you), and best of luck to the poor bastard trying to land that thing vertically on a shipboard pad. It would probably be a pain in the arse to configure initially, and could get expensive over time, but what about vertically mounted solid rocket engines on a lightweight aircraft? Say it weighs around 3800kg or so at take off, it shouldn't take too many one-shot rockets to get it high enough off the deck that it has time for the turboprop to move it forwards fast enough to start flying.

I suppose you could have a second set of weaker rockets to allow a vertical landing, you'd probably want those to be adjustable output liquid fuel engines though, as return weight isn't as fixed as max take-off weight, and you need a lot more control to land safely on a moving/rocking platform. Actually, if you're building liquid fuel rockets into the design it's probably cheaper and easier to use those for take-off as well, but that does risk the pilots using them during flight and not having enough fuel to land back on the ship. How buoyant do you think that plane would have to be to realistically have an emergency water landing option for a situation like that? It could put down close enough to its parent ship to be easily recovered in cases when it couldn't land on deck - and I think most pilots would prefer to fly a floating ship over water than one that'll sink like a brick. Any naval pilots ITT to confirm/deny?

>>675942

>arsenal ship

I really don't see how that's better than a submarine that carries an arsenal of missiles. You could argue that the hull is cheaper, but its chances of survival are much lower. On that note, what kind of a drone would be good to be launched from the VLS of a submarine, and how would you go around recovering it?

>>675946

Aren't chinks working on an arsenal sub that's just an arsenal ship with mild submersible capability to hide from ASMs?

>>675956

Not really, if anything the trend is to build smaller subs.

The chinks are building cruisers with 2x64 VLS.

Actually, looking at OP pic >>675310 is there a reason why it couldn't, with minor modifications, host a bunch of turboprops? Add arresting wires for landing, a catapult for take off and maybe widen the deck a little for a bit more maneuvering space. You could probably make the landing trajectory go sideways too, if safer landing abort is necessary.

>>675878

>>>675869 (You)

>

>the retro rocket C-130 crashed because the pilot turned on the rockets too early and stalled the plane. I don't really like the idea of telling pilots that they need to fire the rockets at the exact right moment or risk falling short of the deck, smashing into the deck, skidding off the deck or into the superstructure for a 100% chance of death. Stopping planes quickly on ships has already been figured out. Its called arresting wires.

I was addressing the problem of landing a seaplane in anything but calm seas.

But like you said, it was a "learning curve" not a fundy flaw, and IMO the concept should be retried for STOL or VTOL on small land based landing strips/pads. Rato on deck might be problematic because it gonna spray rocket blast everywhere, but that could be a "feature" of instant smoke screen for tactical use.

Firing rockets at right moment can be fixed.

>>675960

The way the deck is spaced, you can only bring one plane between decks on the elevator at a time which was a major disadvantage for a lot of the smaller carriers in WW2. Flying into the superstructure to land is just a horrible idea in general as more landings than you would think are aborted at the last second and making a side landing would be incredibly risky due to how much easier it is for a ship to roll than to pitch without going into the problems with having smaller target to hit and the decreased stopping distance with the extra stresses applied to the landing gear and pilot accordingly.

>>676002

The problem is that you still need to sacrifice a hell of a lot of deck space for even just a tiny strip to land a plane with wires or retrorockets and the inherent risk of coming on a bad approach and hitting the superstructure. Along with the problem that recovering sea planes even in calm conditions is much more energy and time consuming than landing a helicopter on the deck. A fucktarded solution I just thought up though would be catching them the same way we recover catapulted artillery observation drones. Hold out a huge net over the side that the aircraft feathers its props and crashes into. Of course such a solution will only work with small, light unmanned vehicles, but if you want to dedicate a lot of autism into it its probably your best bet to get a plane down as easily as a helicopter.

>>675942

>>675960

>>676013

What if we put a vertical hangar bay hosting coelocopters on the back of a cruiser?

>>676030

I don't see what a blimp can do that a space satellite can't already do when it comes to communication and observation. Both are sitting ducks in a real war ether way, and its impossible to hide an AAM blimp for area denial the same way you can hide and move SAM sites. It can't chase down or enforce air superiority so it would have to be used like an anti air network that again, cant hide.

>>676044

In a WW3 situation, its likely that every man made object in space will be destroyed by debris. The thing is still on a fixed course so I wouldn't know how much it would help but it might count for something.

>>676036

Due to their close proximity to the ground relatively speaking airships could perform various functions that wouldn't be possible for a Satellite, such as acting as a drone carrier, AWACS and mobile high altitude comm relay.

They'd also be more flexible than Satellites in terms of photo reconnaissance as they wouldn't be flying along a fixed orbital trajectory.

>>676050

They're also incredibly slow, impossible to hide from radar/mk. 1 eyeball, and pretty much the definition of SAM bait. How long do you expect this lighter than air AWACS to stay in one piece in an age of hypersonic, theatre level, SAMs?

>>676056

Would a missile even explode when hitting a blimp? You'd probably need a timer, or a return to flak.

>>676060

http://www.military-today.com/artillery/draco.htm

Italians had the right idea, but they completely butchered the concept with their terribly bad execution. Instead of making a recoil-operated 76,2mm autocannon with a long externally driver belt they just put their naval gun on top of a vehicle. Now it's way too big for what it is and doesn't carry enough ammunition.

>>676036

Its illegal to arm satellites with weapons and they are much more expensive too which means you can have less of them. Also as >>676050 mentioned blimps have a variety of applications not available to satellites. I guess I should have clarified that I meant these specifically as attachments to carrier groups or for coastal defense to protect against low flying cruise missiles and other hard to detect threats.

>>676065

Add to that, they're probably also more expensive to shoot down, if we assume that all the major powers have anti-satellite lasers.

Honestly, I don't get why anti-satellite missiles are even a thing. Is it that hard to overheat a satellite? It's not like it can easily dump the heat anywhere.

>>676060

Depends on the fuse in the missile. Most proximity fuses should have no trouble dealing with a huge, reflective, effectively static target.

>>676085

>not tilt-swing-wing P-38

>both with pusher and tractor propellers

>>676080

Is there actually fundamental difference from jets that makes turboprops unsuitable for somewhat conventional (so not >>675871) VTOL? Additional engines shouldn't be an issue if needed, as it competes with helicopters and not planes, you could probably remove the TO part and use a catapult too.

>>676087

Can we include a spinal and ventral turret (both rear facing) too? I know they'd be pretty small but just assign a manlet and that shouldn't be an issue.

>>676044

I don't get what's the point of this.

I mean the smaller and the closer you make satellites the sooner they're gonna come down and burn.

Do they really intend to send some every other day or something?

>>676157

>If that were economically viable

>SpaceX.

>Economically viable.

Aren't Musk companies renowned for making a lot of buzz and not making money?

Besides with the US now screaming about the nuclear test ban you can fucking bet Russia and co are gonna push to add a 0 to the altitude of the definition of airspace (so from 100 miles to 1000 miles) and are just gonna laser/maser fry everything that comes near them and watch laugh their asses off as "muh internet for poor people (read: without government oversight or regulation)" people cry as their billions and their dreams go down in literal flames.

>>676013

Zero-Launch (just blast the fuck-off, maybe short guide rail) full-blown fighter bombers of a Heli-cruiser's deck from the beam. That will avoid blasting the ship. The aircraft would then have to figure out where to land, refuel, etc, but you'd have the ability to launch real aircraft.

Probably a Rato-cradle that connects to aircraft's landing gear AND hardpoints, then drops off as soon as rockets expire. Sure it would be spendy to launch, but not used all the time.

Similar to how they used cats to launch fighters off freighters in Battle of Atlantic.

>>675793

A "hide behind tree line and pop up to hit a tank" tactic is a one tree pony. You need a convenient forest and a tank.

Also germans solved it by putting a set of mossiles on a regular commercial crane. Boom $65000 vehicle that does the same thing as your $4000000 vehicle.

>>676194

Good thing you can also use hills, mountains and buildings and if you have none of these nearby just what the fuck are you fighting for? inb4 da ocean

>>676060

Pretty much all missiles save for the latest ABMs and anti satellite missiles work on proximity fuses. The only air to air missile that was contact detonated I can think of was the first one. The AIM-4 falcon.

>>676065

Well, AWACS planes used by the navy are already turbo props, and as mentioned before, it would be much easier to just fly around the missile blimp or attack it directly vs hiding a SAM battery. And shooting a blimp down isn't considered an atrocity the same way satellites are.

>>676078

Anti-satellite lasers are stupid. If fired from the ground they will have to shoot through miles of cold air and ice crystals which will sap the beam of all of its energy to heat the surrounding air instead of doing damage to the target. Direct energy weapons in atmosphere are only ever going to be short ranged because of this.

>>676101

Probably the fact that the props provide the lift instead of the exhaust. You need to tilt the entire engine up and down to get a VTOL turbo prop whereas the harrier just needs to tilt its four nozzles down for the same effect.

>>676152

I don't quite understand what you're getting at here. Do smaller satellites de-orbit faster? Because the latest fad that all the reddit tier start up companies and apefricans that want to prove they aren't impoverished shitholes that still haven't invented powered flight or the wheel are launching micro cube sats smaller than a loaf of bread because they are relatively inexpensive to piggy back off other space launches.

>>676193

Spendy to launch was going to be the main reason why I would say it would never be adopted, but I just heard the sound of lockheeb securing a new workforce of soon to be retired top brass as you said that…

>>676193

Ship-launched ekranoplans when?

>>676314

A truck with elevated ATGM launchers cant do the run part of hit and run and is restricted to terrain that has a viable land route in and out. No poking out of some really kraggy and impassable mountains for them. Good luck deploying one on rough terrain without tipping too.

>>676216

> Do smaller satellites de-orbit faster?

Not only that, the latest SpaceX bunch are so low they are still well within earth atmosphere meaning they still have "air" drag affecting them in plus of the normal "space" drag (due do the constant gravitational pull).

I seriously doubt they last the year and they want five thousands of them! That mean two launches per week to maintain the network.

I mean it's technically doable but… does ISPs make that much money? One of the big advantage of that business is that once the cables are there all you do is sit on your ass counting the dosh. You don't rebuild your entire network every year. And the main fee is copper and fuel for the bulldozers not fucking spaceships…

>>676314

You can defeat that with a simple mortar.

>>675325

what the fuck is a clgg?

>>676359

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combustion_light-gas_gun

How fucking new are you? Magyar-anon is obsessed with them.

>>676162

I hope the Skylon makes space launches cheap enough for some African space program to accidentally the entire LEO.

>>676358

How do you know where it is if it stays behind the tree line? By that logic an Apache can be taken out by a beehive round from any artillery piece, because we can apparently psychically predict where enemies are.

>>676360

He used to be obsessed with railguns until I drilled into his head the downsides of the railgun compared to a clgg with a scramjet warhead. Same as everyone else in this website. I'm just glad I'm able to bring my knowledge down from the sissyvilized north to the uncivilized unwashed masses that exist outside the borders of leafland.

>>676360

Not just him, almost all publication on that subject those last 10 year are Russian.

Amusingly enough one the top researcher on the subject is one Mark Kalashnikov (I don't think they're related though, it's not a rare name).

>>676382

>Re-usable meme.

Threadly reminder that the shuttle programs were based on the exact same gimmick and were found that… nope it doesn't work. The cost compression, does exist but it is in fact quickly ridiculous and it is what allowed Russia that was building 100% disposable cheap aluminum alloys booster to become the giant of the civilian launch (as the US maintenance grew and grew, and the shuttle flew less and less).

It's an old false economical paradigm "the longer you have stuff the less it costs" that is in fact only true economically… because of how taxes are calculated (and therefore completely virtual and unnatural).

The truth is the older and more used shit get… the more it costs to maintain it as "brand new". And since space flight will always be space flight shit must be maintained to "brand new" level or it just won't work.

A cargo ship might be a "buy once, work for half a century" before it falls apart completely from rust because you do not keep it in a brand new state, you allow it to decay.

But that's NOT the case of, well, literal rocket science…

It's the reason why everyone stopped trying to make Mach 2.0+ planes and why Mach 3 planes almost never flew at that speed… if you have to rebuild half the plane every-time it's flying, even if it's cheaper than a brand new plane it's never gonna be cost effective, because you're gonna two entire chains, one to make and one to refurbish and the refurbishing being specialized work it's gonna be immune to cost compression via volume that you have on a "normal" production (as each refurbishing is gonna be different, not everything will have the same wear and tear).

It's the reason why disposable items exists. It's cheaper to mass produce an infinity of disposable lighters than it is to make a sturdy refillable lighter.

To actually be cost effective the refurbishing needs to be either a fraction of the cost of something new or to happen only after extensive use.

To give you an idea, the "small" refurbishing of a plane reactor engine is 1,000 hours of flight… (which is just inspection and changing anything that look tired) which is about an entire year of exploitation of a plane and the "big" (where you basically put a new one) is 10,000.

And airplanes companies struggle to keep maintenance cost effective.

Doing that after every flight is never gonna be cheap.

>>676399

But you can't just land a SpaceX booster on some Nigerian airport you racist.

A single Skylon itself is projected to be capable of 15 launches at most before having to be retired so it's all a meme anyway.

What I find intredasting about the Skylon however is less its economic efficiency or raw performance but the infrastructure surrounding it.

Having the things operate out of mildly converted airports with 5km reinforced runways, stored in airplane hangars and generally behaving like some esoteric experimental brand of autistic airplane when not going to space certainly seems less of a pain than dealing with fuckhueg rockets on specialized launch platforms, this should also make maintaining the things somewhat easier albeit not necessarily cheaper.

Sure they might not beat the Falcon rockets in pure numbers game when it comes to efficiency, but the relative lack of autism compared to conventional rocketry might make Skylons an attractive choice for those who want to launch satellites at their own discretion out of already existing airports instead of renting out the Kennedy Space centre or some shit.

Skylons could also be ferried around by simply flying in atmosphere instead of requiring dissassembly and expensive land/naval transportation via german subcontractors.

>>676403

>Just in 2018 there was 11 Soyuz-2 launch (including 4 for the Russian State including 3 civilian Glonass) VS 20 falcon (2 for the USAF, 2 for SpaceX pet projects, 5 for NASA).

>Of course Soyuz-2 launchers are but one out the Russian launchers

>Russia is 5% and SpaceX 65%.

That doesn't sound like american accounting at all.

It's true that there has been less Russian commercial launches but it's hardly due to SpaceX (it's due to Ukraine… which were both a part provider AND the subsequent US sanctions that prevent a shitload of companies to have activities in Russia. Then you have the whole Proton thing AKA literal sabotage) but you still need some sort of special kind of accounting to reach those numbers.

>>676426

(And Kourou shot 6 Ariane 5 and 2 Vega with only 1 for the ESA).

>>676403

>russian government pays roscosmos to launch 10000kg spy sat

<its one non commercial spacelaunch mission because a government is paying a government agency

>american government pays NASA to launch 10000kg spy sat

<its one non commercial spacelaunch mission because a government is paying a government agency

american government pays roscosmos to launch 5000kg geostationary satell oh wait SpaceX lobbied to make that illegal

>TV station pays roscosmos to launch a 1500kg TV sat on six seperate occasions

<its six commercial spacelaunch missions

>american government pays spacex to launch 10x 1kg nanosats for research purposes that will burn up after three orbits, on a single boost

<TEN COMMERCIAL SPACELAUNCH MISSIONS ACCOMPLISHED

>sixteen total spacelaunch missions, ten done by spacex

>*spacex has 62% market penetration*

>:^) :^) :^) :^) :^) :^) :^) :^) :^) :^) :^) :^) :^) :^) :^) :^) :^) :^) :^) :^) :^) :^) :^) :^) :^) :^) :^) :^) :^) :^) :^) :^) :^) :^) :^) :^) :^) :^) :^) :^)

Wow I'm impressed at your ability to fudge statistics until they lose all meaning.

In 2018 SpaceX launched 96 tonnes, mostly into low earth orbit, and in that amount is counted the clients own boosters which is needed to get them to their actual orbit.

Roskosmos launched 178 tonnes into orbit of pure satellite, resupply missions, manned missions, and missions beyond LEO.

That's the bare bottom numbers.

I'm a spaceX supporter and you managed to piss me off with that retarded graph.

God fucking damn you to hell.

>>676393

>How do you know where it is if it stays behind the tree line?

If it stays behind the tree line it can't shoot me.

>>676434

>lift towed to fire zone in response to an invasion

>lift sits covered by camo net

>informed by wire or radio that enemy is approaching its avenue of attack

>pops up

>fires missiles

>you detect lift firing missiles

>you kill it with mortar fire before the missiles strike

What? Are you serious?

More realistic

>fires missiles

>takes out 8 tank

>survivor climbs out bottom tank hatch

>crawls into ditch

>cries to mamma into a radio

>aircraft take off

>precision strike lifts position with JDAM that costs 10x what the lift costs

And that's the worst case scenario. Best case scenario has the lift getting towed and reused multiple times.

>>676469

Why doesn't your 'more realistic' situation include a shoulder fired/vehicle mounted SAM splashing the aircraft en route to the target? Even if it was something shitty like a Blowpipe you can trade a few misses + lost cranes for each hit and still come out ahead strategically.

If that's too much interdependence for you then give it a single (decent) vertical launch, F&F, IR SAM that the crew can fire with a single button press as they bail out. Granted, revenge weapons are tricky to sell to the poor bastard who has to use them, but it does help tip the scales in your favour - and if it's ever actually fired it's only because your air-force and air defence outfits have shit the bed rather than being an expected thing.

>>676399

You kinda lack vision. Space shuttles were not better because they were more viable logistically but because they increased technical knowledge towards future casual spaceflight, something that would be much harder with constant use of consumables.

>>676421

Also this.

>>676476

Because it's more realistic not 100% realistic. The idea that a ZERO INFRARED EMISSION target with the radar cross section of a telephone pole will be detected popping up from the tree line 5km away is…. well exactly zero.

The actual realistic thing would be that it spooges its load, folds down, and the carrier truck hooks to it and drives it to its next firing location. Rinse and repeat hundreds of times.

The only defense against this is something like APS, which maybe means its eight missiles kill two tanks instead of eight, but it's still worth it. And they'd be hell on any kind of unarmored column… ffs something like a Kornet thermobaric carries six times the explosive filler of a 155mm shell! One eight-pack crane can wreck an area the size of two football fields easily, imagine the damage that would do to fifty or so resupply trucks, and the brigade down the line who don't get food or ammo for a week because of it.

>>676469

>lift is towed to fire zone but cannot make it due to a strategic bridge being blown by interdiction bombing or cruise missile attack

>lift is towed to fire zone but cannot be set up without hours of grunt work needed to clear uneven terrain, quick fire support opportunity lost

>lift needs to cut down its possible ambush zones due to there being no proper roads to some advantageous areas or roads being destroyed by bombing or natural disasters like mudslides

>lift does its damage but is taken out by artillery 9/10 times because shoot and scoot in dense forests and foot hills on wheels and with a trailer is impossible

Vs

>helicopter does not care about the conditions on the ground. It can fly over any river, blocked road or impassible crag

>helicopter can set up anywhere and with no setup procedure. Can fire the moment it gets to its position or even on the way there

>helicopter can displace and keep setting up new ambushes as the battle progresses, advancing or retreating to cover front line

If you're fucking poor and have the time to set up static defenses then maybe the lift is a viable idea. But in real wars where the front line can collapse unexpectedly you need tank destroyers to be able to plug the gap as quickly as possible.

>>676512

>lift is towed to fire zone but cannot make it due to a strategic bridge being blown by interdiction bombing or cruise missile attack

Wouldn't that inconvenience your assault force and help the defenders? I didn't read the rest of the post honestly, if the first line is any judge it is all garbage.

>>676514

>the specific example you gave for one argument is a little dubious, therefore all four of your arguments are invalid

The leaf strikes again.

>all this lift autism

Has anyone ever tried nigger rigging an expendable quadcopter array carrying a single ATGM for a pop-up suicide attack?

>>676593

>>676559

Thats basically what helicopters are, one trick ponies.

>>676593

>what is ka226

>>676595

Helicopters can (however inefficiently) manage

>Reconnaissance

>Surveillance

>Ground attack

>ASW

>Medevac

>Freight transport

>Troop transport

>Air cav

Now, all of those could be done by properly built fixed wing aircraft (assuming VTOL designs were used for air cav and medevac), but that's hardly a 'one trick pony'.

>>676595

>>what is ka226

Not a tandem one.

>>676587

Not enough lift capacity. A less autistic system would be a ground-based vertical launcher that uses a small drone (or a hidden camera) for spotting and terminal laser/SACLOS guidance. It doesn't have the mobility of a helicopter, but in favorable terrain a vehicle like this would be a real nightmare to defend against.

>>676587

Not yet.

I've seen one with a RPG-26 (vid related, 6:20).

>>676607

The "trick" is the thing it can do better than any other vehicle design family. The American claimed that the helicopter can only do one thing better than anyone else, I proved him wrong by posting the lift.

So youre right, its hardly a one trick pony.

the pony has no tricks because trix are for kids.

>>676645

Airships are great the problem is the gas which fills them is incredibly expensive and thats why airships arent built anymore. Idiots are just terrified of hydrogen because they think an airship caught fire due to hydrogen a million years ago.

Protip: Hydrogen doesnt burn visibly yet the hindenburg fire was very visible. It was made of steel, wood and canvas painted with THERMITE PAINT. The thermite ignited not the hydrogen.

>>677164

>Thermite paint

I call bullshit. Nobody is that stupid to paint something with fucking thermite.

>>677187

>a Cruiser that has the equivalent to sounding rockets on it that launch these small satellites

Whenever I read about small satellites I think of that old study by the US Navy about launhing anti-satellite projectiles from a 16" gun.

>>676593

>>677207

huh, I forgot to address this.

Concentric shafts are a bitch to deal with within turbine engines, with Rotors it's even more of a bitch because there's more material to balance with the length of the blades. You can go the planetary gear method but that's even more complications to deal with.

>>677207

huh, looks like something in the UH-60/S-70 or Mi-8/Mi-17 weight class.

>>677167

>Nobody is that stupid to paint something with fucking thermite.

You do know about the Germans, right?

>>677193

>anti-satellite projectiles from a 16" gun

A self propelled projectile given a boost from the gun? Or actually a 16" artillery shell designed to hit satellites from sea level?

>>677216

>A self propelled projectile given a boost from the gun?

Yes, basically a barrel-launched missile, just quite a lot bigger than what we are used two. There were two concepts, a rocket-booster and a scramjet. And the whole thing was written in the 70s or 80s.

>>677164

So your evidence that the aluminum paint (autoignition temperature: 760C) ignited before the hydrogen (autoignition temperature: ~540C) is that nobody reported seeing a nearly invisible hydrogen flame through the much brighter canvas, wood and diesel flames that were raging by the time the fire reached the exterior.

>>676036

It would probably be cheaper than a satellite since you aren't spending millions of dollars just on the rocket.

>>675310

Are choppers outdated? No one has replaced it with VTOL planes yet.

>>677533

But it doesn't require a space program to shoot down a blimp with a high altitude fighter. Its also again, not an international atrocity to shoot down a blimp like how it is to hit something in orbit. A satellite can also cover a lot more ground. So if you are engaged in a global war the satellite is better. If you are against sand durkas and don't already have a fleet of sats in orbit then the blimp is probably well and good enough.

>>677627

But what if the Blimp is actually a rigid airship with a 30-ton cargo bay filled with nuclear-armed cruise missiles and 6 CIWS along the hull?

>>677284

>fire reached the exterior

Retard there wasnt enough oxygen and hydrogen inside the airship to sustain any kind of flame. The only way the hydrogen COULD have burned is if the outer skin was removed.

Even then the hydrogen was split into bags and youd only get one bag losing its hydrogen through combustion, the fire literally couldnt exist uness some extremely hot burning substance stripped the skin away and punctured all of the hydrogen cells.

As to how thermite ignoted…. I dont know nigger maybe flying a metal bubble through a thunderstorm then attaching it to a lightning pole may just have created a spark.

I hate stupid people.

You literally fucked the planet out of the most efficient mode of transportation because youre an ignorant drooling village peasant scared of his shadow.

>>677581

Bit of a glass cannon surely?

>>677627

Space programs aren't a rare thing these days. I'll give you politics but that's really the only thing keeping satellites safe. As for covering more ground, that can be a good thing or a bad thing; if you want consistent coverage of a single area you need a non-standard orbit and/or a whole lot of satellites, either of which will add an extra zero to your launch costs.

>>677644

>The only way the hydrogen COULD have burned is if the outer skin was removed.

Simple leak + St. Elmo's fire is sure as fuck more likely to have started a fire.

They knew hydrogen on massive airships was a bad idea, the Hindenburg itself was meant to use helium (which the Germans could never buy due to the economical blockade-of-germany-that-totally-didn't-happen-for-years-before-the-war).

Not because the cells themselves were at risk, but because those cells weren't well pressure-sealed, so leaky release of hydrogen was fairly common.

>>677187

That would be an excellent fleet for protecting coast hopping operation.

>>675771

Seriously though, do they count?

>>678002

Literally nothing else makes the same burning pattern as seen in the visual records. This is a controlled burn of the skin. If there was enough oxygen to do this, the hydrogen would have exploded, not burned like this.

Don't believe me, try it yourself. Make a wire frame, fill it with some hydrogen (you can get it by running electricity through water). Strike it with a high voltage spike like the lightning which was seen impacting the Hindenburg. The hydrogen can't all react with nonexistant oxygen at the same time and do a controlled burn of the skin.

Instead, what happens is that the hydrogen leaks out of the ONE hole on the ships skin, and interacts with air which is outside the vessel. It slowly burns until and the airship itself just reduces altitude through the burn until it hits the ground.

From my own personal experiment the impact might even be survivable if there is an escape capsule with coamings which can crumple and absorb the impact.

>>684696

You're forgetting one important detail, the fact that Hindenburg's skin was made out of literal rocket fuel.

>>684696

>[Tragedy Name] was an inside job!.jpg

Who was supposed to benefit from this one then?

>>685069

>x accident happened for z reason, not y reason

>OH MY GOD HES TALKING ABOUT CONSPIRACY THEORIES BAN ALEX JONES ORANGE MAN BAD RUSSIAN AGENT

That sounds like a normal reaction.

>>685147

FUCK IT, TIME FOR ALLCAPS

>If Hydrogen itself was the cause of that much burning, it would have exploded not burned

THAT'S BECAUSE A RUPTURED GASBAG DOESN'T JUST INSTANTANEOUSLY DIFFUSE INTO A PERFECT FUEL-AIR MIX, ESPECIALLY WHEN THE ONLY VENT IS CURRENTLY ON FIRE. COME ON NIGGER I SHOULDN'T NEED TO EXPLAIN ALL THIS.

>My point is that if the skin wasn't flammable the Hindenburg would not have gone down engulfed in flames.

TELL ME MORE ABOUT THIS MAGICAL SUBSTANCE THAT CAN SURVIVE CLOSE PROXIMITY TO HYDROGEN FIRES WITHOUT BURNING OR MELTING, WHILE ALSO BEING AIRTIGHT AND LIGHT ENOUGH TO FIT ON A ZEPPELIN.

>but it is basically explosive.

NO YOU RETARD, EVEN IF THE IRON AND ALUMINUM PAINTS WERE ON THE SAME LAYER (THEY WEREN'T) THE FUEL-OXIDIZER RATIO IS SUPER FUCKING LEAN AND NOT NEARLY ENOUGH TO ACCOUNT FOR THE FIRE'S SPREAD BY ITSELF. AND IN ORDER FOR THE TWO TO MIX IN THE FIRST PLACE, YOU NEED A SUSTAINED HEAT SOURCE TO COMBUST OR MELT THE UNDERLYING POLYMER, I.E. A HYDROGEN FIRE.

>It can't have been St. Elmos fire at the mooring point

THEN IT'S A GOOD THING THAT THE WITNESS WHO SAW THE ST. ELMO'S FIRE REPORTED SEEING IT ON TOP OF THE HULL, AND THE ENGINEERS WHO DESIGNED THE DAMN THING CONSIDERED STATIC DISCHARGE AS BEING LIKELY TO OCCUR AT ANY POINT ALONG THE HULL.

>it became a PART of a freaking lightning rod

AH YES, INVISIBLE LIGHTNING, THE GREAT KILLER OF ZEPPELINS (UNLESS THEY WERE HELIUM-FILLED, IN WHICH CASE THE SAME "LITERAL THERMITE SKIN" NEVER SEEMED TO CAUSE PROBLEMS FOR SOME MYSTERIOUS REASON).

>>685223

What is your conjecture? That hydrogen is more dangerous than a noble gas? Well of course it is you blithering idiot, anything used to lift an airship is either ridiculously expensive or rare noble gas, a toxic volatile, or a flammable volatile. A brief list of lifting gasses for airships - hydrogen, helium, methane, hydrogen fluoride, ammonia, acetylene, hydrogen cyanide, diborane, ethylene and hot air. Of that list even hot air is more reactive than helium, but thats not the point. Helium hasnt caught on because its difficult to produce, rare and expensive.

Helium not being a serious choice, it leaves us with hydrogen and methane. Hydrogen is only slightly more expensive than methane but it has more lifting power than helium and twice as much lifting power as methane. This means 2x less hydrogen is needed for the same job, so if and when a fire occurs it is less destructive than a methane fire.

TODAY WE REGULARLY USE METHANE AS A LIFTING GAS BUT YOUR OVARIAN HYSTERIA PREVENTS US FROM USING A SUPERIOR SAFER ALTERNATIVE.

Go fuck yourself. People like you belong in the bog with the rest of crabs holding humanity back.

By the way for comparison purposes helium costs 3x as much as hydrogen. Helium also has state rationing rules because science labs use it so cost isnt the only factor to getting some. In war time its easy to wipe out an enemys helium reserve whereas it would be impossible to do the same for a hydrogen reserve since an airship that landed on water could literally use solar power to refil its tanks.

>>675394

If only we had competent people and governments to see that come true. But I do agree on the planefu aspect.

>>687649

>If only we had competent people and governments

Surely the law of averages would have given us at least one example of a competent government by now?

>>685251

Oh and I forgot to mention, hydrogen has the benefit that no one can bomb your source of it.

>>687683

If competent governments exist then why do libertarians also exist?

CHECKMATE, ROADS!

>>676018

Wouldn't the missile roast the conning tower when it launches off the sub?

>>677627

Blimps don't require $1M/kg for every 10km of altitude. You just fill a baloon with hydrogen and have them fly at double an airliner's maximum altitude, which is way above the maximum altitude for the vast majority of SAMs, especially easily transportable ones like MANPADs. If the enemy shoots an $1M S-400 to bring down your $0.3M air filled condom guess who wins?

>>687683

Welp, as much as they suck they sure seem more successful than libertarian societies solely by managing to exist.