And God forgive us if we do it later rather than sooner.
Ending this war, using our full might, is not barbaric – it will be a mercy. The sooner its over, the more people will be saved.
The liberal way – this endless pussy-footing around – is going to ultimately be far more cruel and far more barbaric.
We’ve already seen this lesson played out throughout history.
Professor Blather on July 23, 2007 at 2:32 PM

So good I had to post it again.

The liberal way – this endless pussy-footing around – is going to ultimately be far more cruel and far more barbaric.

This is not just for the enemy,but for our country and allies as well. The Pentagon has a plan to end ( or the beginning of the end) this islamist barbarism, I just hope we use it soon.

Thx Professor.

PRCalDude on July 23, 2007 at 7:57 PM

The E/F “Super Hornet” might be pure FBW, but the models up through the C/D variants are computer driven with mechanical linkage as backup. Navy fighter jocks prefer to have some concrete authority over where their birds end up.

But a lawn-dart is still a lawn-dart.

Blacklake on July 24, 2007 at 1:12 AM

No worries. Well, it’s easy for a ground-based craft to have a lighter, sleeker, “sexier” airframe than one that takes the punishment of catapult launches and arrested recoveries. And yet, long before I was interested in the military, I thought the F-14 was the baddest looking plane I’d ever seen. To spend a large part of my Navy career with the Tomcats never diminished that opinion.

Back to the avionics, the F-14D radar (APG-71) is still, in spite of being in retirement, the longest-range system of any tactical aircraft (detection possible beyond 160nm, locks at over 135nm). Only the patrol birds had a longer or wider view of the airspace. Add Infrared Search/Track (IRST) with greater than 50nm of all-condition visual imagery, Television Camera (TCS) with multiple fields of view, and LANTIRN for precision bombing, and no fighter ever had (or has) a great sensor suite for keeping track of who/what is out there.

Here’s the last one Grumman built, BuNo 164604, which served its days at Point Mugu, CA

Way to go MSDF!

Sukhoi’s are nice, if you like rolling engines every 75 flight hours or so, and can accept a radar with a 65nm track limit.

Freelancer on July 23, 2007 at 7:17 PM

Well, I was talking airframe design. Avionics, engines, and maintainence are a whole different story. :)

The Indian Su-30MKI’s have a much more capable radar than Russian Su-27′s, though (albeit still Russian), and I believe the Indians are also investigating western radar alternatives, particularly for future MiG-29/35 purchases. As I understand, reliability problems and a generally low quality of technical support continue to be issues that plague Russian fighter exports.

If you look closely at the photos in the link you will see the under carrage mount of the Ohka slung under the belly of an assist plane. I wonder if this was an attempt to reach mainland USA.

By the time the Ohka went into service, there was no question about Japan going back on the offensive, let alone striking at the continental US in any conventional sense (there were still crazy notions like bio-weapon balloons and whatnot, and there was a strange but very real plan to attack the Panama Canal with custom-designed float planes concealed in submarines, though that never panned out). Neither the Ohka, the Betty bombers that carried them, or the combination had remotely the range to reach Midway, let alone the continental US.

Japan’s best bet was to leverage the defense of the home islands such that US military losses would prove so high it would negotiate a ceasefire, and in the late stages of the war by far Japan’s most successful weapon against the USN was the kamikaze. So the Ohka was designed to be the ultimate kamikaze anti-shipping weapon–essentially a bomber-deployed cruise missile too fast to shoot down, with a huge warhead and a human guidance system. So the only thing it was trying to reach was US ships closing in on Japan.

…The IDF also flies a modified version of the Falcon….

Tony737 on July 23, 2007 at 8:22 PM

The Israelis fly several versions of the F-16 with lots of custom equipment and (apparently quite good) local avionics, but they’re still inherently F-16′s. The Japanese F-2 really isn’t. It definitely looks a lot like the F-16 at a glance, and the two planes do share some common parts, but the resemblance is superficial. It really is a substantially different airplane.

The differences between the F/A-18C/D and the F/A-18E/F might be a good parallel. They look quite a bit like the same thing until you put them side-by-side. Then the differences are a little more apparent.

Exactly, I have been screaming for years that we need to hit them so hard that the world sits down in shock.

Tim Burton on July 23, 2007 at 9:50 PM

This generation has no idea what war really is. Total war. Like it was waged in WW2. Desert Storm was too quick, too clean, too painless, too perfect, the exception to the rule. War requires an absolute commitment to annihilate the enemy, not just on the part of the military, but also on the part of the populace of the nation that will win.

The problem with Islamics, though, is that so long as they believe in Mohammed, they have no choice but to fight the Kufaar. Any power hungry Caliph wannabe can rile the masses easily, and no one can deny that he’s doing what the “Prophet” (piss be upon him) would do. To be a good Muslim is to be a bad human being.

There is some hope for Iran, Syria, and Lebanon. They have non-Islamic traditions and culture to be revived. (Zoroastrianism, Christianity, dozens of smaller religions hiding in the mountains.) Failing that, there’s always Greater Kurdistan.

As for Arabia, the heart of the beast, I think, after enough Westerners have been slaughtered, enough cities burned or poisoned, we’ll have no choice but to implement the Coulter Doctrine.

1) The West has lost the stomach to fully leverage Conventional war like in the past against a Insurgency. The idea of clean civilized war has evolved to the point were its even our fault that terrorist can kill their fellow civilians randomly with car bombs.

War is not warm and fuzzy not pretty and nice nor should it be made so. To make it clean is to condemn yourself to eternal war.

If anyone doubts this go read up on the Werewolves of WW2 and how the allies easily curshed them and those who dared host them. Imagine a Chicom military rather than a US military in Iraq today, Falluja would be the name of visible flat black dot on the Western desert of Iraq and the insurgency would have been uterlly crushed by 05′.

C-Low on July 23, 2007 at 1:58 PM

Exactly, I have been screaming for years that we need to hit them so hard that the world sits down in shock.

Does anybody know if the USS Kennedy is in any kind of shape for Japanese to use?

Harpoon on July 23, 2007 at 2:58 PM

Why not sell them the USS America?!?

LOL!!! I kid.

Are we talking about the same war, here? The one where the lines pretty much stagnated in 1915 for both sides is the one I’m talking about.

Anyway, I’m waiting for some kind of clarification with regards to the importance of the ridge itself. I’m also waiting for the retraction regarding the decimation of the Canadians on Vimy.

I understand the penchant for revisionism and 20/20 hindsight, but by the standards of the day, it was an amazing feat with minimal loss of life.

The United States hasn’t won a war since we stopped being as ruthless as our adversaries. We flattened Germany and Japan, and when Japan refused to surrender we nuked ‘em. Now I am not advocating nuclear war but there isn’t anything wrong with bombing people back to the seventh century if that is what they want. We really are soft and lazy thats why a bully picks on you in the first place. It make thier inferiority complex go away for a short while.

deadbackpacker on July 23, 2007 at 1:16 PM

First, you actually have to be in the 21st Century to be be bombed back to the 7th. Since most of those regimes are in the 7th already, it won’t do much good, unless you were meaning 7th Century BC….

Israel was worried that the Government of Lebanon would fall if they hit too hard…

But Israel has no such love for Syria.

Israel was hesitant but still used Combined Effecs Munitions in Lebanon. In Syria I expect that leaving random bomblets across the countryside would simply be a side benefit.

(As for Japan, I LOVE Japan. They have one of the healthiest socio-cultural structures on the face of the earth. While every nation has problems, I really do love the Japanese.)

Now If I could just find a nice Irish-Japanese girl to settle down with…

Freelancer on July 23, 2007 at 7:17 PM

The F-18 is pure FBW isn’t it? The stick doesn’t move.

We quickly flattened the insurgency that followed our defeat of Germany. Any town that hosted “Werewolves” was shelled till they were handed over to allied troops. Civilian casualties be damned. Had we kicked out all press and taken this tact our troubled would have been over long ago.

This is really the only approach that works. Sorry, but it’s true.

Yes as a member of The Axis the Imperial Navy was given German rocket technology. Toward the end of the war they also refined and extended its uses to include the Ohka Cherry Blossom. If you look closely at the photos in the link you will see the under carrage mount of the Ohka slung under the belly of an assist plane. I wonder if this was an attempt to reach mainland USA. We inherited Japans and Germanys tecnology as the spoils of war. I am not arguing the prowess of Messerschmitt Inc., but I think Japan could be a formidable ally in the WOT. Just sayin….

The F-16 is the best airframe out there. There’s zero point in reinventing the wheel. The only other thing worth trying would be building it out of composite to give it longer legs.

Blacklake’s followup comments to this are accurate. F-16′s (until recent advances) could and would ignore pilot input in specific flight regimes, having a purely disconnected FBW system. (The “stick” is barely larger than a gaming console joystick, with nearly the same freedom and limits of movement) The F-14, on the other hand, uses a fully mechanical linkage to the actuators, the computer inputs being of the sensor variety, with the exception of the autopilot coupler, and even when the APC is active the flight stick moves with the inputs because it is still mechanically linked. In a pure FBW bird, you don’t get the same feedback in the control stick when the computer makes a flight adjustment/correction. Weird when you are used to tactile feedback from your jet.

As for the falcon being the “best airframe”, single engine, single tail makes it far too vulnerable, especially for the Japanese where most flights are over water. It’s the Porsche Carrera of fighters, fast and pretty. The Tomcat would then be the Shelby Cobra 427/DOHC, or maybe a Hemi ‘Cuda, if you will. Yeah, it’s retired, but it’s still the finest fighter around.

Sukhoi’s are nice, if you like rolling engines every 75 flight hours or so, and can accept a radar with a 65nm track limit.

War is not about weapons. War is not even about soldiers. War is about WILL. The WILL to do whatever it takes to win.

The enemy has WILL, we have Harry and Nancy.

I wonder how many (millions of) Americans have to die before we regain our will and throw the Harry Reids of our day on the scrapheap of history where they belong?

JayHaw Phrenzie on July 23, 2007 at 1:23 PM

I have often argued this point. We have the means to win any war but not the will while our enemy (Islamists) have the will but not the means…. yet.

the Syrian defense official said. “It’ll be a war of attrition that Israelis are not good at.”

I know Slim Pickens passed away in 1983. But, wouldn’t it be great to see him riding a warhead packed missile down into Damascus?

YeeeeeeeeHaaaaaaaaaaaa.

Thanks for the correction, Blacklake. I didn’t know the Indians had incorporated thrust vectoring in their newest Su-30s.

steveegg on July 23, 2007 at 5:02 PM

One of the recent British aviation milporn mags (don’t recall which one–there are usually two at the Borders, and the names of both escape me) has a nice shot of a flight line with all the tailpapes hanging down. I don’t believe they have the full-blown 3D vectoring that was seen at airshows on the Su-37 (or whichever variant that was) though. It’s a 2D system similar to that of the F-22 (from what I read they go plus or minus 15 degrees).

However, we ignored, for the most part, the insurgency that followed our own civil war and it raged for 100 years. Reconstruction was abandoned by 1873 and night riders and the Klan terrorized the south till the civil rights struggle.

SCOTUS judge Hugo Black was a klansman. And then there’s our favorite senator from West Virginia….