LOL Things the American Military has tried to make

[Imperious Leader]

I agree but a truce was called. Lets note if it ends, who is the party that does that.

To do that you note who reply’s first to whom.

@ Crunch, sorry you got mad. I can only offer you my opinion of how to compare military defeats. It works for me because i am comparing battles, not 4 man commando operations where 4 dudes got shot, netting 100% lost. That is ridiculous example of how to twist an argument that was never submitted.

Nothing wrong with comparing two battles:

example: 500,000 men deployed and they lose 100,000
example: 100,000 men deployed and they lose 80,000

The second battle is worse in terms of total force lost. That is an indication ( whether anybody likes it or not) of assessing how big of a military disaster can be compared with another.

If you just compare 100,000 to 80,000 you got no frame of reference.

Just like Romney’s taxes. He paid 2 million and another 4 million to charity. But he only paid 13% of his income in taxes. That’s why they never make the argument about raw numbers because you got no frame of reference. Everybody reports the % because it is the only manner where people who pay less can compare the rate that they pay to him.

Pretty basic stuff.

[Imperious Leader]

The U.S recovered from it’s defeat in the Philippines to exit the war as a world power. Singapore was the beginning of the end of the British Empire.

Right, but i am only interested in comparing the actual battles, rather than what developed from it. Regarding the example about Hawaii, which is true in terms of the ultimate victory, but Japanese defeat ALSO made them greater than ever in the post war period, so it can be argued ( if we entertain the notion that one battle must tie into a result years latter) that Japan did good to attack Hawaii because her defeat ended the half baked political philosophy that dominated the state. Democratization was the best thing Japan got from the war.

Who says you can only compare one time-frame, i say if you have such an argument it must also be for different periods.

[Clyde85]

@MrMalachiCrunch:

This was a civil thread before I left for my doctors appointment.  I come back to find Imperious Leader and ONLY Imperious Leader engaged in petty name calling.

Whatever, You guys are just made because IL said not nice things about Canada.  :-D

Is there even a point to this thread any more, and if there is what was it to begin with? American military dose stupid things? Cause boy could we get way deeper down the rabbit hole then this, doing dumb things is one of the few things the US military excels at!

[MrMalachiCrunch]

The thread certainly was not “American military dose (sic) stupid things”.    Please read the thread carefully before going off half-cocked.

If you are correct in that:

You guys are just made because IL said not nice things about Canada.

Then that would be classic troll like behaviour.  I think Cylde you are correct.

[WARRIOR888]

After Congress repealed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in January 1971, President Richard Nixon continued to wage war in Vietnam, Congress passed the War Powers Resolution (Pub.L. 93-148) over the veto of Nixon in an attempt to rein in some of the president’s claimed powers. Today, Congress recognizes no claimed power of the president to wage war outside of the War Powers Resolution.  A Presidental decree does not mean we have declared war.

So does this in make Vietnam a declared war, or just a police action? Any thoughts on this?

[Imperious Leader]

So does this in make Vietnam a declared war, or just a police action? Any thoughts on this?

It makes it a new thread.

[WARRIOR888]

Il sorry about that.  My fault.

Now for a really stupid US Army idea, Ever heard of this?
Over a period of three decades four successive generations of upgraded forward area air defense systems – from Mauler to Roland to Sgt. York to ADATS – were all canceled, at a total cost of more than $6.7 billion. The M247 Sergeant York DIVAD (Division Air Defence gun) was born of the Army’s need for a replacement for the ageing M163 20mm Vulcan A/A gun and M48 Chaparral missile systems. With the Soviet Mi-24 Hind attack helicopter being fitted with the longer range AT-6 SPIRAL Anti-tank missiles and twin barrelled 23mm cannon, and the Mi-28 Havoc nearing deployment, the M163 and M48 systems would be out-classed in a future conflict. In addition, the Soviet’s ZSU-23/4 SHILKA Quad 23mm A/A gun combined a radar with a proven gun fitted to an existing chassis resulting in a highly successful and lethal design.

The new self-propelled anti-aircraft gun system was to be based on the M48A5 tank chassis, using as much off-the-shelf equipment as possible. Two designs were submitted, one from General Dynamics using twin 35mm Oerlikon cannon (as with the West German Leopard) and the other from Ford Aerospace and Communications Corporation which utilised twin 40mm L/70 Bofors Guns. In May 1981 the Ford Aerospace entry was selected and designated M247 Sergeant York, featuring the twin 40mm guns mounted in a new box like armoured turret with both tracking and surveillance radar fitted atop, these could be folded down to reduce overall height. The gunner was provided with roof mounted sight incorporating a laser range-finder. the commander having a panoramic roof mounted periscope and fixed periscopes. The radar was a modified version of the Westinghouse APG-66 system used in the F-16 Fighting Falcon.

With the first production vehicles being delivered in late 1983 many problems remained, the most serious being the radar’s inability to track low flying targets due to excessive ground clutter. The radar could not distinguish between a hovering helicopter and a clump of trees. And when tracking high flying targets, the radar return from the gun barrel tips confused the fire control system. Turret traverse was also too slow to track a fast crossing target. The ECM (electronic counter-measures) suite could be defeated by only minor jamming. And the use of the 30 year old M48 chassis design meant the vehicle had trouble keeping pace with the newer M1 Abrams and M2/3 Bradley’s, the very vehicles it was designed to protect.

These problems proved insurmountable, and in December 1986 after about 50 vehicles had been produced the entire program was terminated.

[Imperious Leader]

Man you know alot about this. Holy crap. :-D

[CWO Marc]

Another expensive US defense project which went nowhere was the AGM-136 Tacit Rainbow loitering anti-radiation missile.  About 4 billion dollars were spent on it, for a total output of zero production models.

[MrMalachiCrunch]

WARRIOR888, now that’s what I’m talking about!  Conjecture and flimsy premises are fine for pseudo academic debate but facts are trump!

[WARRIOR888]

IL,

31 years in Transportation and Logistics Management for the Air Force and DOD you see a lot of good and and you see a lot of bad stuff.
Here is one that can really freak you out.

Rockwell B1-B Bomber.  100 produced and furnished to the SAC in the early 90s.  The idiot’s who developed them never thought about an ability to de-ice the aircraft before low level missions.  It cost several aircraft and crews being killed before somone wised up and decided they needed to be de-iced.  Second, B1-B bomber was supposed to have a computer that would tell supply to order parts that would fail within 24 to 48 hours so it was on the shelf when needed.  Millions spent and it never was realized.

[CWO Marc]

@WARRIOR888:

31 years in Transportation and Logistics Management for the Air Force and DOD you see a lot of good and and you see a lot of bad stuff.

Would you happen to know if the development problems with the V-22 Osprey were ever straightened out?  I’ve heard the V-22 cited as an example of the principle that “flight manuals are printed in blood.”

[MrMalachiCrunch]

What about the SDI of Ronald Reagan?  Amazing how ambitious that idea was.  Roughly 30 years later and about a million times as much computing power for the same buck/square inch and still a challenge to take a missile out never mind a swarm of them.  I’m sure some interesting tech came from it….it better have for the billions and billions spent.

[WARRIOR888]

V-22 Osprey is in production and the Marines and Air Force are using them in Afgahanistan, Iraq, and Other theatres.  It was a problem child from the beginning and without getting too tech savy it was a venture purchased with lot of test pilot blood.  Exact figures as to how many crashed and how many died in protype tests are really not released.  What you find on Wiki and other sites is the PR release data for this.
Exact numbers built is still speculative at best.  I currently do not know what Air Force units are flying them.
I suspect it is Special OPS out of Hurlburt Field Florida the same unit flys our C-130 gunships with 105mm Howitzers and 40 mm guns, which the Air Force denied we had in use for years. As a Airman 1st Class I landed in the Azores and there was 4 of the blasted non-exsistant gunships sitting on the ready ramp with all thier guns sticking out.  In my carreer I never saw one V-22 in actual flight operations.  I think there was a cover up of any additional losses since it became fully operational.

SDI I will provide an update later.  I can till you this the name has changed multiple times since President Reagan and its nickname of Star Wars.  It scared the crap out of the Russians and the Warsaw Pact that they feared it would knock out their ability for MAD Mutually Assured Destruction.  More on this later.

[General 6 Stars]

So is there more than one kind of V-22 fighter? I saw they deployed 2 of them over New jersey do to 2 planes invading air space during the UN meeting. Probably F-22’s. The 2 things I heard about the V-22 was pilots passing out and all kinds of electronic problems.

[WARRIOR888]

F-22 are supersonic air superiority jet fighters, V-22 Osprey is a roto-tilt aircraft that takes off and lands like a helicopter but in flight fly like a prop driven aircraft.

[General 6 Stars]

Sorry, my mistake. Then the 2 things I heard about were with the F-22’s. Thankyou Warrior.

[CWO Marc]

@WARRIOR888:

V-22 Osprey is in production and the Marines and Air Force are using them in Afgahanistan, Iraq, and Other theatres.  […] I think there was a cover up of any additional losses since it became fully operational.Â

Thanks for the info.  There were quite a few articles about the Osprey in Jane’s Defense Weekly, way back when I used to subscribe to it, but I haven’t seen the magazine in years so I lost track of what happened to this project.  I think one of the things which made the V-22 prone to crashing was some kind of tricky aerodynamic phenomenon which tended to occur at a particular point of the rotor transition from horizontal to vertical flight (or vice-versa), but I can’t recall the details and in any case I don’t have any technical expertise on this subject.

[CWO Marc]

Coincidentally, here’s a news story on the V-22 Osprey which appeared just today:

1 October 2012

US Osprey military aircraft begin Okinawa base move

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-19782283