Air Force Plans to Arm Next-Gen Fighters with Laser Weapons

Status
Not open for further replies.
Qinsp said:
WWI = US entered war with total crap, tens of thousands of US soldiers slaughtered.

WWII = US entered war with total crap, tens of thousands of US solders slaughtered.

Korean War = US enter war with total crap, tens of thousand of US soldiers slaughtered.

Vietnam War = US enters war with wrong equipment, tens of thousands of US soldiers slaughtered.

Gulf War = US enters war with state-of-the-art equipment, less than 1000 US soldiers die.

Seeing a pattern yet?
Click to expand...

Yeah, the quality of our enemies is directly proportional to our survival rate
 
^ Devil's advocate here.

I would say out of all those wars the terrain and opponent during the Gulf conflict were by far the crappiest we ever faced, and I mean ever. Continental Army probably even could have beat them.

Yet still tens of thousands of American soldiers maimed as a result of basically extending it. We still had the wrong equipment. Airborne lasers and stealth fighters are irrelevant.
 
Qinsp said:
WWI = US entered war with total crap, tens of thousands of US soldiers slaughtered.

WWII = US entered war with total crap, tens of thousands of US solders slaughtered.

Korean War = US enter war with total crap, tens of thousand of US soldiers slaughtered.

Vietnam War = US enters war with wrong equipment, tens of thousands of US soldiers slaughtered.

Gulf War = US enters war with state-of-the-art equipment, less than 1000 US soldiers die.

Seeing a pattern yet?
Click to expand...



Only invade school cafeterias? Actually that's a terrible example, school kids have better equipment than Iraq did.

2300 dead in Gulf War II: The Sequel against an army that barely fired a shot in response, coupled with 134,000+ civilian deaths that have been acknowledged.

Only 3400 dead against an enemy that didn't have an army at all in Afghanistan, coupled with only 17,000-19,000 civilian deaths.


Do you see the pattern? It's simple, if you only invade impoverished, almost unarmed countries it's easier on equipment and manpower. That doesn't mean the invasions were wrong, the war in Afghanistan came from the best ideals, but neither country had any ability to defend itself against any modernized military of the western world.

The US is bearing way too much of the logistical burden for NATO, nationalistic idiocy aside, Military spending in the United States has been the most massive stimulus project in world history year after year for 60 years, it can't go on. That means that the rest of NATO needs to spend more so the US doesn't need to shoulder such a massive amount of the burden when it comes to moving gear around the world. If every other country in NATO ups their spending to at least $50bn NATO becomes more versatile and more capable while the US gets to cut 30+% from her military spending, that would help with their deficit while it would help the other nations stimulate more industrial activity through their military spending.
 
Twisted Kidney said:
Power is still a massive issue, it will be interesting to see what solutions are presented.
Click to expand...

Why isn't anyone more interested in this? If the investment pays off, this will have pretty kick ass tech that will eventually come down to every day civilian life.
 
closers said:
^ Devil's advocate here.

I would say out of all those wars the terrain and opponent during the Gulf conflict were by far the crappiest we ever faced, and I mean ever. Continental Army probably even could have beat them.

Yet still tens of thousands of American soldiers maimed as a result of basically extending it. We still had the wrong equipment. Airborne lasers and stealth fighters are irrelevant.
Click to expand...

Do some research. The T-72 could punch holes in a M1 from the side. The MiG-29 was perhaps the equal to the F-15 in a dogfight.

The Iraqi troops had been in an extended desert war for about 10 years with this equipment.

We knew the Iraqi's weren't going to run away. And we knew they could kill us.

We won through tactics. But if we would have shown up with F-4 Phantoms and M-60 tanks, they would have slaughtered us.
 
Qinsp said:
We knew the Iraqi's weren't going to run away. And we knew they could kill us.
Click to expand...

Actually they kind of did run away. I remember the First Gulf War quite well and there certainly was a lot of doubt about how it was going to play out. Iraq on paper had the 4th largest army in the world at the time and they did have a lot of fighting experience from the Iraq-Iran war. But in reality Iraq was no match for the US lead coalition and Iraq didn't want to play its chemical weapon hand which probably would have lead to Sadam's death and an international takeover of Iraq.
 
Fortunately fighters won't need any kind of HUD or battle avionics, just use the force. :D:D
 
Qinsp said:
Do some research. The T-72 could punch holes in a M1 from the side.
Click to expand...
Key word is "could." In practice, the T-72M monkey model that made up the Iraqi Army's tank force lacked laser range finders and FLIR as well far less armor than actual Russian T-72s. Combined that with the poor tactics and training provided to the Iraqi Army, the possibility of an Iraqi Army T-72 actually killing an M1 from the side is rather low.
Qinsp said:
We won through tactics. But if we would have shown up with F-4 Phantoms and M-60 tanks, they would have slaughtered us.
Click to expand...
I disagree: The Iraqi army at the time of Iraq War was incredibly and horribly incompetent as well as poorly trained. Even more so than typical of Middle Eastern armies. We still would have won with F-4 Phantoms and M-60 tanks. Granted with higher casualties but still a definite win and definitely not a slaughter. In fact, the USMC did in fact fight the Iraqis with M60 tanks during the Gulf War. We also used F-4G Wild Weasels during the Gulf War as well.
 
pigwalk said:
Why isn't anyone more interested in this? If the investment pays off, this will have pretty kick ass tech that will eventually come down to every day civilian life.
Click to expand...

Honestly I think the American military doesn't have the money to solve the problem, nor does the entire country, or any two countries. Confronting massive power generation in a small space is going to require a massive global investment of brain power and capital. We know what solutions potentially exist, it's just a matter of finding the political will to stop sniping at one another long enough to solve an actual problem in the world: Energy.

If we actually managed to get a small form factor, high output, stable energy source functioning that was sustainable in a small environment and then managed to make it cheap it would absolutely redefine our entire species and what we're capable of.
 
90738-gradius-v-playstation-2-screenshot-select-weapon-styles.png
 
Dangman said:
I disagree: The Iraqi army at the time of Iraq War was incredibly and horribly incompetent as well as poorly trained. Even more so than typical of Middle Eastern armies. We still would have won with F-4 Phantoms and M-60 tanks. Granted with higher casualties but still a definite win and definitely not a slaughter. In fact, the USMC did in fact fight the Iraqis with M60 tanks during the Gulf War. We also used F-4G Wild Weasels during the Gulf War as well.
Click to expand...

Agreed. Again though war tends to be unpredictable and at the time the outcome of this war wasn't at all certain. It was 20 years ago, Vietnam was still on a lot of people's minds. And the fact that Iraq did have a significant chemical weapons stock pile that we weren't certain if or how they would use. On big worry at the time was Iraq lobbing a chemically weaponized SCUD into Israel. That might have had some very serious repercussions.
 
Qinsp said:
Do some research. The T-72 could punch holes in a M1 from the side. The MiG-29 was perhaps the equal to the F-15 in a dogfight.

The Iraqi troops had been in an extended desert war for about 10 years with this equipment.

We knew the Iraqi's weren't going to run away. And we knew they could kill us.

We won through tactics. But if we would have shown up with F-4 Phantoms and M-60 tanks, they would have slaughtered us.
Click to expand...

Seriously? We won by tactics all right, our troops for the most part didn't run away. Not to mention were better trained.

In any event if you did your research, a lot of the Iraqi equipment were monkey models or antiquated junk. Fun fact is the Israelis managed to use F-4 and M-60 to fend off better equipped neighbors, difference wasn't tech it was training and tactics.
 
Well, if nothing else, this might give us some new energy technology to power the lasers.

I think the current airborne lasers require a generator on a 787, right? It'd be an impressive technological development to make it all fit inside a compact fighter jet.
 
It will probably be more of a point defense system to defend against SAMs and AAMs. I doubt it would be powerful enough to take out other planes. (besides, missiles can already do that from long range). ie. computer detects incoming missiles, locks onto it and fires a 5-10 second burst of energy to destroy said missile before it hits the plane. increasing survivability of pilot and a multi-million dollar machine. They already have the basic tech doen with the 747 ICBM system.
 
heatlesssun said:
Actually they kind of did run away. I remember the First Gulf War quite well and there certainly was a lot of doubt about how it was going to play out. Iraq on paper had the 4th largest army in the world at the time and they did have a lot of fighting experience from the Iraq-Iran war. But in reality Iraq was no match for the US lead coalition and Iraq didn't want to play its chemical weapon hand which probably would have lead to Sadam's death and an international takeover of Iraq.
Click to expand...

We first acquired air superiority and disabled their communications.

Then, we freakin terrorized them with air power for a month.

Once you have air superiority, you pretty much can do whatever you fuckin want. :-D

The Iraqi's made a push into SA, which was a tough fight, but we stopped them.

Now, we flanked them with armor using GPS and attacked them from the side.

But by that point, the soldiers were heavily demoralized. Getting bombed for a month will do that.

The US was outnumbered. If we would have done a frontal assault, things would have gotten ugly.

Hindsight is 20/20. There was no guarantee that we could achieve air superiority, nor be able to flank them so badly.
 
Qinsp said:
Hindsight is 20/20. There was no guarantee that we could achieve air superiority, nor be able to flank them so badly.
Click to expand...

Which was my point. There was a lot of doubt about the outcome of this conflict in the Fall of 1990. That said, Iraq simply wasn't a match for the coalition in any way.
 
No, the M-60's did well, even though they were obsolete. In fact, it's smallish 105mm rifled gun defeated the T-72 armor. Keep in mind, an M1 fired a 120mm HEAT right at a T-72 on a frontal shot, and it had no effect.

The only tank known to have killed an M1 (discounting friendly fire) is a Lion of Babylon T-72.

Without the superior logistics, intel, and tactics, the M-60's would have been targets instead of tank killers.
 
Qinsp said:
The only tank known to have killed an M1 (discounting friendly fire) is a Lion of Babylon T-72.
Click to expand...
There's still a great debate whether or not those M1 kills were actually done by a T-72 and not by our own Apaches or M1 Abrams. In addition, the one U.S Army documented incident of a T-72 actually getting a penetrating hit on a M1 Abrams, the M1 wasn't actually destroyed and it was apparently later repaired at a maintenance depot.
 
The poor should help themselves by not procreating. Instead they have all these welfare babies and they leech the system dry. Entitlement mentality is definitely a huge problem. The government spending hundreds of billions on these people would just encourage them to keep doing more of the same on a bigger scale. Spending it on defense is a legitimate necessity, especially in the face of an ever aggressive China.
 
5150Joker said:
The poor should help themselves by not procreating. Instead they have all these welfare babies and they leech the system dry. Entitlement mentality is definitely a huge problem. The government spending hundreds of billions on these people would just encourage them to keep doing more of the same on a bigger scale. Spending it on defense is a legitimate necessity, especially in the face of an ever aggressive China.
Click to expand...

And yet people who tend to preach this stuff have problems with abortion and even contraception. Go figure.
 
Bullets AND butter.

We need both.

Currently we spend about $2k a year per person in the US for the Common Defense.

Total Federal taxes are about $12k per year. This does not include State, County, or Local taxes.

Federal taxation started as a method to pay for a common defense. Now, it's a minor fraction.
 
Qinsp said:
The MiG-29 was perhaps the equal to the F-15 in a dogfight.
Click to expand...

Dog fighting was irrelevant by the 90s. The short fall of the MIG-29, including the modern K/35 is that it has extremely short legs. The versions the Iraqis had did not even have an ECM. The MiG-29, especially the Iraqi version was no match for a modern fighter with modern BVR missiles like the F-15.

And plenty of F-4s were used, though in the SEAD role. M-60s were used in small numbers to (don't think they fought tanks though).

Poor training and poor equipment (remember, Iraq equipment was even worse downgraded versions of Soviet counter parts) are why they fared so poorly.
 
heatlesssun said:
And yet people who tend to preach this stuff have problems with abortion and even contraception. Go figure.
Click to expand...


I'm no Bible thumper, but can you explain how you can go to prison for killing an unborn baby in the womb of it's mother, while she is driving to an abortion clinic to kill it?

Or why Men have no reproductive rights at all?
 
Flogger23m said:
Dog fighting was irrelevant by the 90s. The short fall of the MIG-29, including the modern K/35 is that it has extremely short legs. The versions the Iraqis had did not even have an ECM. The MiG-29, especially the Iraqi version was no match for a modern fighter with modern BVR missiles like the F-15.

And plenty of F-4s were used, though in the SEAD role. M-60s were used in small numbers to (don't think they fought tanks though).

Poor training and poor equipment (remember, Iraq equipment was even worse downgraded versions of Soviet counter parts) are why they fared so poorly.
Click to expand...

Did anyone ever figure out why so many MiG-29's flew into Iran and landed during the Gulf War?

These were bitter enemies.
 
In any case, just like the Vietnam War, it was found that you need a cannon, not just missiles.

The MiG-29 has a very good predictive gunsight on it's 30mm cannon.
 
Qinsp said:
I'm no Bible thumper, but can you explain how you can go to prison for killing an unborn baby in the womb of it's mother, while she is driving to an abortion clinic to kill it?
Click to expand...

Can you quote a specific incident of this happening? People are killed in automobile accidents all of the time, sometimes there's criminality involved, but most often it is simply an unfortunate accident. I see no logical reason for drunk driver killing an unborn child getting off because the mother made a personal decision while the drunk driver endangered people he or she didn't even know while committing a crime as it is illegal to drive drunk regardless of the death count.

Qinsp said:
Or why Men have no reproductive rights at all?
Click to expand...

Since men don't normally carry babies I don't know what the point of this question is exactly.
 
Flogger23m said:
...
And plenty of F-4s were used, ....
Click to expand...

Here's what I can say. They are still making spares for RF-4x's.

Rumor - An Israeli RF-4x that was specially modified hit >2,100 mph on a Syrian run.

That was a very defective aero design with two huge engines. Kinda like a MiG-25.
 
Flogger23m said:
And plenty of F-4s were used, though in the SEAD role. M-60s were used in small numbers to (don't think they fought tanks though).
Click to expand...
According to the link that Spewn posted a few posts above yours, USMC tanks did fight Iraqi armor.
Qinsp said:
Did anyone ever figure out why so many MiG-29's flew into Iran and landed during the Gulf War?
Click to expand...
Iran was the only country that was actually offering sanctuary to the Iraqis pilots. Otherwise, the Iranians would have made more of an effort to shoot down those Iraqi aircraft like every other country in the vicinity.
Qinsp said:
The MiG-29 has a very good predictive gunsight on it's 30mm cannon.
Click to expand...
And? So does the F-15 and virtually every other U.S fighter jet since the F-16.
 
Qinsp said:
In any case, just like the Vietnam War, it was found that you need a cannon, not just missiles.

The MiG-29 has a very good predictive gunsight on it's 30mm cannon.
Click to expand...

Dated concept which dates back to the 60-70s. Shall we equip warships with sails to? :p With a hit percentage in the 80s (I don't recall the specific number) with the AIM-7F/M during Desert Storm missiles have long since become the primary weapon of the fighter/interceptor. And since then the seeker quality has made very large advances as well. A cannon is still great to have, but its use from the 60-70s in air to air combat would be very limited in a modern conflict.

And the Iraqis flew the planes to Iran so they would not be destroyed. They knew their piloting skills and technology was not up to par, and thought that if they landed in Iran they might have a chance of getting them back I would assume. Of course, that did not happen. Iran even integrated some Su-24s into their air force, giving them bomber capability. :D
 
heatlesssun said:
Can you quote a specific incident of this happening? People are killed in automobile accidents all of the time, sometimes there's criminality involved, but most often it is simply an unfortunate accident. I see no logical reason for drunk driver killing an unborn child getting off because the mother made a personal decision while the drunk driver endangered people he or she didn't even know while committing a crime as it is illegal to drive drunk regardless of the death count.



Since men don't normally carry babies I don't know what the point of this question is exactly.
Click to expand...

Ha Ha. You funny. You know the law. You're just a pussy. Not willing to take a stand.
 
Flogger23m said:
...
And the Iraqis flew the planes to Iran so they would not be destroyed. They knew their piloting skills and technology was not up to par, and thought that if they landed in Iran they might have a chance of getting them back I would assume. .... :D
Click to expand...

I'm not sure. Iraq had the same kind of air defense system as Russia (and many other countries). You are told by ground controllers what to do.

Do you think Saddam or his generals told them to fly to Iran?

Or was there a general who defected?
 
UrielDagda said:
Even worse, when he's talking about "entitlement" he's talking about the term used for Social Security, so he's naively saying that people who pay into Social Security their whole lives are leeching off of everybody else when they actually draw from it.

This is why Fox News is so unhealthy for the brain.
Click to expand...

AHAHAHA...oh man, I love you.

Brains...Faux news caters to the people with shit FOR brains who like to let other shitbags do their thinking for them, then they have the gal to criticize and ridicule others for "being on the dole" or being "leeches", when in reality, it is groups such as the military and the bankster trash who are the worst "leeches" there ever were.

Not surprising how the stupid and lazy minded fall for the oldest and most translucent plays in people like Karl Rove's playbook...accuse the other side of what you yourself are doing and let the morons take it from there.
 
This thread is about advanced weapons.

If you have no idea about them, or you want an abortion, then STFU.

:D
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top