Senate The Weekly Discussion of Military Technology

Yeah, I'd give BRNO's craftsman nod to more collectable, sporting rifles, ala Mauser-based bolt actions and such. I think, although I may be wrong, that this is the first Czech military rifle self-produced in 5.56mm NATO caliber. Even though the Czech republic was invited to join NATO 10+ years ago, it's been a slow process. Up until about 3 years ago or so, the Czech military still used the 7.62mmS caliber.

If India is going to do a complete military wide replacement of its standard rifle, it probably shouldn't select a weapon that isn't even fully adopted by the country that invented it. As you pointed out, it's doing its upgrading on the cheap, and it definitely can't afford to be the major end user to work the bugs out of a new design, especially given the experience with the INSAS. India would be well served with an updated M16A1. It's already proven, and it would be kind of a hybrid of what the Canadian military uses, produced by Colt Canada. Although Beretta's ARX series would be the "bells and whistles," bragging choice.

 

Yeah, was just saying that we shouldn't dismiss the Czechs as being pretty good at the whole firearms deal.

I'd agree about an updated M16A1, TBH; just put rails and a collapsing stock on there.

 

Japan's helicopter carrier

And, jeez, forgot today was the anniversary of Hiroshima. I think the psychology of Japan showing off a ship design they haven't possessed since 1945 on today of all days is disturbing in that even a "helicopter" carrier isn't really a defensive weapon per se-yeah, it can be used against subs, but Japan already has an excellent fleet of diesel-electrics, and P-3s, and their Kongo-class destroyers and well...most of their legacy ships are weighted towards ASW as well. A carrier of any sort is inherently a strike weapon first and foremost.

 

Well, that is interesting. Although a "destroyer" it is not, at least based on the definition that every other navy uses. For a carrier, it has no catapults-not even the framework for any- and not even an up-angled "ski lift" front deck like what the British and French pocket carriers use to launch Harrier-esque aircraft. Although carrying 14 helicopters is quite the fleet. The article mentions Japan's dispute with China, but I also wonder how it could be used to address concerns about North Korea, which seems to launch ballistic missiles at Japan like they are going out of style? 14 helicopters all armed with ATG missiles would certainly take out a lot of NK's launch sites if need be.....

 

Mmm....B-model JSF, maybe? Not sure if Japan's looked at those, but they're obviously suited to a catapult-less design.

 

How much does the B version still need some sort of angled carrier deck, if any? Does the newer technology allow it to use that short of a runway in the "STOVL" aspect on a completely flat deck? It would seem to be that the 200 usable meters of deck space on this small carrier would become increasingly short to a pilot taking off in the wind. If it would work, this could become quite the sleeper. Although I wonder out much recovery space would be taken up by a F-35? If the same space for 14 helicopters only translates in to something like 6 F-35's, I'm not sure it would be worth it. Perhaps it would be good at augmenting a larger multi-national force?

 

Well, if Marines are planning on flying them off the Wasp you obviously don't need a ski-jump to get them in the air; Wasp and this are nearly the same in terms of flight deck dimensions-252 meters long by 31 meters wide for the Wasp, and 248 meters by 38 meters for the Izumo. Also, Wasp can comfortably hold about 20 Harrier-sized aircraft...although Wasp and America are a great deal heavier; they're 45,000-ton ships to Izumo's 27,000 tons. And I'd take six F-35Bs over some helicopters for flying strike missions into North Korea, myself

 

The Wasp can hold 20 Harrier aircraft? You mean, Harrier-sized in a kind of numerical weight translation, or actually 20 Harriers? I never knew that. Has an amphibious assault ship ever carried that many? Still, if it has room to hold a mixture of 30 helicopters and Ospreys and Harriers, it still looses a lot to go down to 20 straight Harriers. I mean, a Seahawk weighs about half as much as an F35B, correct? It's interesting to think about.

I don't know about the helicopters vs jet aircraft. The JDF use their own versions of both the Apache and the Cobra. They can be pretty effective for that type of operation.

 

Yeah, the sea control mission set is 20 actual Harriers for the Wasp.

Edit: Was going to say that a great deal of the additional tonnage in Wasp and America is probably berthage for the 2200 Marines aboard.

 

"Sea control mission" sounds like some sort of end all, be all WWIII type of set-up. Just the idea of the Marines putting 20 Harriers on a single ship would have to be worth it, considering the Marines only have about 120 Harriers across the entire service. With that many Harriers, I'd imagine the officer in charge would double and triple check the phalanx system, and probably still not sleep the entire time.

 

I believe that was the intent-using the Wasps (and now the Americas) as basically convoy escorts.

 

Is this Fleet Week Asia, or something? ( ) India just launched their first nuclear submarine:

arihant-class general description
This article says the Arihant was supposed to launch two years ago...I'd imagine India's quality control issues are responsible for the delays.

NPR link

 

Ah, so it's based on the original version of the Cold War 1980's Soviet Akula class submarine. I guess it served quite well in The Hunt for Red October, that is, being back in the day.

It's interesting that the Arihant is slated to carry 12 nuclear SLBM's. While it's already a nuclear power with nuclear missiles based on its home soil, I wonder if the Indian government has the stomach to assume the risk of sailing around with nukes? Also, since it cost upwards of 3 billion dollars, so much for India upgrading on the cheap.

 

Well, given that they built it, I'd hope they have the stomach to sail it around. Of course..having faced a nuclear threat that there'd be no buffer time at all for (a missile launch in Pakistan would have a flight time to India of what, a few minutes at best?) the risk of nuclear missiles on a sub might not seem like much.

 

But there's extra security, emergency preparedness, etc... It's a bit extreme, but imagine the worth of such a catch by pirates or such-or on the flip side, the huge hit that a sea-borne disaster would represent. Not that the Indian government is inept. I'm sure they planned for all of this, but it also takes continuous investment. It all seems a bit of overkill. As you pointed out, it's not like the Indian navy is going to send this sub up to patrol the Atlantic, so I think the main rationale for spending billions of dollars is to simply have one as source of pride against Pakistan. But yeah, even if that was the case, this sub would be responding to a launch alert of minutes, vs the same time for India's silo based missiles anyway.

 

I think its main usefulness for them will be the inherent unpredictability of a missile submarine-as far as I know, both sides have their land-based missiles in silos, right? Those can always be targeted by low-flying aircraft, or helicopters, or even commandos...I don't think Pakistan has a peer-competitor ability to neutralize a missile sub, even one based on twenty-year-old technology.

 

And, India again:

India unveils first locally-made aircraft carrier

Wiki specs

Unlike Japan's carrier from earlier this week, this is unambigously a carrier; she'll have a dozen MiG-29Ks and eight locally-built HAL Tejas fighters in addition to some helicopters, and a ski jump. Tonnage is approximately 40,000 tons, with the follow-on ship to weigh in the neighborhood of 65,000 tons-it seems to me India is gradually moving towards being able to build a Nimitz/CVN77 weigh equivalent. The two ships will be commissioned in 2015 and 2018, respectively.

You'd think aircraft carriers were in style or something.

 

Forgive me for being cynical, but given India's success with indigenous military vehicles I doubt 2015 will see anything happen except more delays.

 

Yeah, we'll see. It appeared on the wiki article that their new missile sub had about three years of delays.

 

Going back a bit to the previous discussion about long service life for aircraft, it looks like this summer marks the final flight for the F-4 Phantom in Luftwaffe service. The F-4 was Germany's contribution to NATO's Quick Reaction Force, and Luftwaffe QRF Phantom's flew continuously in this role from 1973-2013, 40 years... What's even more amazing, and actually kind of cool, is that the very first Phantom delivered to Germany (serial number 37-01) was still being flown and took place in the final operational flight, so it served the entire 40 years. (although the last F-4 actually built was under license in Japan back in 1979) I think that's an indication of how solid the Phantom was.



There's another interesting story which sheds some light on the previous story regarding India's horrible experience with the MiG. It seems that back in 2007, Algeria placed an order with Moscow for 34 MiG-29's. (28 fighters and 6 trainers) at a cost of 1.3 billion dollars, which represented all of Algeria's multi-year upgrade budget. The initial batch of MiG's that were delivered all had either equipment that was outright inoperable, or decommissioned avionics that had forged inspection certificates which indicated that the equipment was brand new. So Algeria refused to make any payments. But interestingly, the Russian government actually initiated criminal proceedings against 4 Russian officials who engineered the scheme. (probably to try and recapture the contract). The final person involved, the Director General, was removed from command and received basically 4 years of probation, ending his career.

I wonder how many different contracts to what countries were fulfilled by Russia which weren't caught? I'm guessing quite a few.

 

I think it was the throw-it-at-the-wall-and-see-if-it-sticks attitude of the 1950s/1960s aerospace industry that led to the Phantom being such a solid design...just an absolutely furious rate of technological development, there-in that twenty years from 1950 to 1970, we designed, tested, and built:

F-51
A-4
F-86
F-105
A-7
A-6
RA-5
F-104

And those are just off the top of my head....lots of lessons learned in that period.

 

You got something against deltas? F-102 and F-106! And F-101 Voodoo and F-8 Crusader, and if we can move past the fast movers and look at heavies, BUFF and my favorite flying pig, the Herk.

 

Was just going with what I could remember off the top of my head

 

Yes, the Phantom is a very good jet. I remember reading, I believe in former British pilot Ian Black's book Last of the Phantoms, that when the Tornado first came out and the RAF began replacing their F4-Ms with the Tornado F3s, it was almost universally acknowledged among the RAF pilots that they liked the Phantom better. It was a similar situation in the Luftwaffe. Like you mentioned above, they used the F-4 extensively for decades. Even when newer jets were being introduced, such as when the Marineflieger got their Tornadoes, as far as I know the Phantom could still somewhat hold it's own.

Of course, there are several other factors to consider. While the F3 looks weak on paper (Lower thrust/weight ratio, higher wing loading than the Phantom), it had many advantages that made up for this, such as fly-by-wire controls, high lift devices, and a much more aerodynamically clean shape. The F3 had all this over the Phantom. I think that while the British and German pilots loved the Phantom, it was realistically no match for the newer fighters. Probably more of a joy to fly, however, hence all the praise from the pilots.

Also, from what I've read one of the biggest issues with the F-4 was the engines. They were Rolls-Royce Speys, and weren't known in the long term to work well and had to be constantly maintained. I think that if cold war had really turned into an all out war, the Phantom's engines would have had trouble keeping up with the non-stop combat, and probably would have been out of action a lot sooner.

Anyways, nevertheless an awesome jet that served well past its prime and earned the love and admiration of everyone who flew it.

 

Yeah, Europe in general keeps aircraft in service longer than we do-IIRC Germany updated their A4 Skyhawks to be relevant all the way into the 90s.