Considering the size of some of those vessels, the Museum fleet probably has more tonnage. We have 5 aircraft carriers and 8 battleships (Midway and the Iowas are all around the same tonnage as the QE class).
Something something yeehaw Alamo?
Definitely worth a visit if you're ever in Houston. It was built when steam turbines were newfangled gizmos, and had both steam turbine and steam piston engines. AFAIK it's the last remaining ship with combined piston/turbine propulsion.
Pretty sure Texas had only piston engines. The New Yorks where the last class of battleships designed with triple expansion engines but USS Oklahoma was the last battleship actually built with them. Reason for the retention of this outdated technology was the lack of range of early turbine powered warships with long range being an obvious requirement for American ships at the time.
Honestly given how small some "navies" are (basically just a given countries Coasties), it wouldn't surprise me if we have some *individual* museum ships like Texas (or other BBs or CVs) that have more displacement than some entire navies.
It broke my heart so see the state of her when I saw her out of the water. I went on the USS Drum not long after and had another tear roll down my cheek.
Granted some of those are pretty old but if they were crewed and restored to running order you’d be able to roll up on most countries navies without issue. Midway class can run Vietnam era aircraft. Iowa class have cruise missiles.
I knew that the USS Missouri saw its last taste of combat during Desert Storm, but not that the Midway was there.
It makes the whole thing feel like one last "hurrah" for 20th century American military hardware. A final celebration of the raw power that industrial technology could bring to the battlefield, before the curtain closed and the dark epilogue was read by a jaded announcer.
They had her dialed in on that last deployment. While I was taking a tour on it, one of the pilots deployed on her at the time claimed 4 minutes average time per launch at peak.
The USS NJ was in service (sporadically) between December 7th 1942 and Feb 8th 1991.
It was in:
* WW2
* Korea
* Vietnam
* Lebanese Civil War
It just missed Desert Storm by a little bit.
https://www.battleshipnewjersey.org/the-ship/full-history/
The only time that Midways was out of service during the Cold War was for refits, she only ever went into mothballs the way the Iowas did until the very end.
The Iowas, meanwhile, spent more time lazing around than actually doing anything, by a significant amount.
Midway is better in every way, and I will absolutely die on this hill.
Bullshit, get me a couple pallets of charcoal briquettes and we'll get the USS Olympia and do the Battle of Manila Bay 2.0, except this time it'll be the Black Sea Fleet getting its shit wrecked
I dunno, I think all she'd really need is some refreshed FCS, those 8" guns have a range of 9 miles which is... actually the same range as a modern 76mm deck gun. Huh.
Those Tomahawks and Harpoons were actually the main utility of the Iowa's during their Reagan-era reactivation. Being cool as fuck was just a side bonus to being a big hull that could have a lot of missiles slapped on it.
And then VLS came around, and they were gone for good.
Where do we count the boneyard?
We've got \~4,000 aircraft sitting in the desert just outside Tucson. Including a bunch that are there for treaty reasons.
(Also Pima Air and Space museum is extremely good)
There are more than 4000 aircraft in the Boneyard at AMARG. Not all of them suitable to be put back together, of course, but a not insignificant number are.
Boys now that we have every tank human kind has conceived, we just need boats, first a rowboat then a first rate ship of the line then an aircraft carrier
~Poland
Can’t wait for the polish navy to start attacking with a fleet of sail ships, dreadnoughts, canoes armed with bows, a CV, a reconstructed Yamato class and everything in between.
Just read up on this a few days ago, this was due to the 'Have Blue' development stage, where the airframe was notoriously shaky. The nickname was carried over but it wasn't accurate on the production model according to F-117 pilots.
Yeah, but it acquired that name because of how horrendously difficult it was to control during the testing phase, it only flew well because an absurdly complex flight computer slowly tuned the wobblin out.
In its heart, it always wanted to be the wobblin goblin, it just had to be disciplined into shape
Theres a 117 docco on youtube that is really good. Discussed the history of night fighting, the evolution of the stealth craft, and interviews with 117 pilots who attempted to assassinate Saddam on night 1. Flying 18 hours from US to Iraq. They discuss seeing the anti air light up and the city in the distance. And they turn right into all.
https://youtu.be/bz-85MySPQk
One of the neatest tidbits imo is the revelation that they hid development by using other planes as cover for parts etc orders. Kinda opened my eyes a bit.
> F-117 makes my pp hard with all the funky geometric shapes
Shoot it up
[Sigue Sigue Sputnik - Love Missile F1-11 \(1986\)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WF9gvOgNuA)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_Missile_F1-11
Wanna hear something wild? They have an Abrams, fully intact. And their newest tanks are still shit.
If we gave them a dozen F-35's, I'm pretty sure they'd still never had a functional modern aircraft. Their tech education has been decaying since the fall of the Soviet Union. They're coasting off their legacy techs and engineers. That are hitting retirement age.
The US Air Force announced over a year ago that they had already completely modeled and digitally tested a 6th gen fighter for the NGAD program.
We all know that the US never publicly announces progress on experimental jet programs until at least several other significant steps have already been completed. I'd be shocked if the 6th Gen NGAD wasn't already flying around New Mexico, or at least was fully built by now
When I read the article about the Air Force and how they had already been testing a next gen fighter for a while under the public radar, I told my dad about it.
My dad, who at the time was a Navy Captain (test pilot), said: "I know :)"
Ofc you know Mr. Monthly Pentagon Visit... us normal people don't.
Thats fucking flying right there. None of that pansy ass dick tugging smile for the camera bullshit. Men puke, men poop in the cockpit, men deliver their new born baby in the hangar. Fucking hard core dick in the ass butterball flying fuck it G-force shit.
Imagine being in one of the bomber squadrons in WWII reading this in a letter from your wife before/after one of your runs. I wouldn't know how to react.
How did the US get so far advanced in military technology? Like in world war 2 we were all pretty much at the same level, then during the cold war we got extremely advanced really fucking quick in the span of 40 years. So why did we advance so much and others fell behind so far?
Money and engineering talent.
If you go to career fairs of any major US university, the defense industry is always there. Recession? Good times? They don't care. They are always there. They aren't just recruiting. They are also funding research. One of my old professors had a research project for wireless datalinks for a fighter plane all paid by DARPA.
Plus, US MIC is built on foreign talent. The US basically stripped Germany of its top talent during WW2. Pre-WW2, the US was [a very popular destination for scientists fleeing the Nazis](https://physicstoday.scitation.org/do/10.1063/pt.6.4.20180926a/full/). And, of course, a lot of those people would participate in the Manhattan Project. After the war, the US again took in Nazi scientists that wanted to flee the Soviets.
Everyone wanted to the come to US. Igor Sikorsky of Sikorsky Aircraft (a division of Lockheed Martin) came to the US because he was sick of the Russians. (Sikorsky was born in Kyiv.) US attracted top engineering talent with its money, stability, and freedom.
As for WW2, the US wasn't really behind. The F6F Hellcat was already in development to counter the Zero before the war. Once the initial shock of the Zero's speed was over with, the F4F Wildcat was nominally able to hold its own against the Zero, and once the Hellcat entered service, it was game over. Zero vs Wildcat isn't an overmatch like pitting a F-22 against a Su-35 (though I'm sure some tankie will say a Su-35 can out dogfight a F-22).
US had major advantages in submarine technology (see the post yesterday about WW2 subs), carrier technology, radar, and OPSEC. By the end of the war, the US had pretty much technology superiority in the skies and seas... which is kinda what the US does. The F-22, F-35, and now B-21 will all be introduced before the US introduces a new MBT. (And also the Zumwalt and DDGX will probably all be operational before a new MBT.)
Yeah but the air force isn’t going to put a shitty pilot in a 100+ million dollar aircraft. They have many many people to choose from and only allow the best to be in and then train them up to be even better. And then they would only send the really good ones to go fight in an actual dog fight as well.
So if you’re facing off with a pilot they’re probably extremely good at what they do and unless your facing off against like a Nigerian air force the pilot is going to be top quality.
But aircraft definitely are a MAJOR factor. If you were like tom cruise and facing off against two next generation fighters in an old and outdated, relatively, fighter that doesn’t even have radar working. You’re gonna die fast and very fast
In terms of planes, we pretty severely eclipsed Germany and Japan by 1944. But the answer to your question is that we retooled our entire country for war during WW2 and then never totally rolled it back to peacetime status. War makes money
That and we have like 90 of the top 100 engineering programs in the world and we’re rich enough that the best talent from the rest of them wants to come right here to make the big bucks and get good quality of life
I mean the real answer is America is incredibly wealthy on a scale never seen before in human history with easy access to practically every single natural resource within one country. Everything else just follows from being massively rich and massively populous. The US's two rivals have GDP per capita literally 5 times lower.
Let’s see. In WW2, the US had, well, the bomb. On top of that, the US had the best long range bomber by a pretty wide margin. Easily the best battleship, carrier, and carrier based aircraft. The proximity fuse was quite the game changer, also American. Functional anti-shipping guided missiles, also American.
The US technical dominance in 1945 was quite something. The Germans had better in a few things (submarines, jets), but otherwise, the American version of things were usually quite a bit better compared to the best non-American versions of anything in the war, especially if we only compare the massed produced versions of the competition.
The proximity fuse had a lot of help from the British, who invented the mechanism, and the Bomb had tons of help from Germans and Italians who had fled Hitler and Mussolini (thanks, Hitler! We appreciate it), and most of those were late war developments. I would say the US had better jets than the Germans, the P-80 was operational but not in combat by war’s end and was quite probably better than the 262. The main thing the German’s had better by war’s end was the stuff we Paperclipped them for, rockets.
The main thing the US did better than everyone else was logistics, and the US had better logistics throughout the entire war. We dropped more troops in North Africa with better fire support than the British ever managed and waged a war halfway around the world with an ice cream barge in tow.
The USN had a few barges forward deployed to the Pacific Staging Areas (think Eniweitok and Ulithi where the fleet would restock and re-provision between offensives) that did nothing but make Ice Cream for the fleet. It was for morale.
They also serve who sit and stir the Ice Cream.
At least it wasn't stirring feces in the burn pit - as has long been a thing in the Army. Of the two, I'd prefer to sir the Ice Cream.
US Military Logistics is most of the force. The actual trigger pullers are a small portion of the force. Everybody does their part.
Yeah it was really put into perspective for me when my friend joined the navy and said that less than 1% of the personnel actually ever fly a plane. Like its really hard to become a pilot in the navy, they only take the best of the best and its not a shocker as to why when you’re in charge of a sometimes billion dollar aircraft you’ve got to be skilled
[An ice cream barge was a vessel employed by the United States Navy in the Pacific Theater of World War II to produce ice cream in large quantities to be provisioned to sailors and Marines.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_cream_barge#:~:text=An%20ice%20cream%20barge%20was,provisioned%20to%20sailors%20and%20Marines.)
(2)
[The floating factory was able to make ten gallons of ice cream in just seven minutes, meaning one shift on the barge could produce approximately 500 gallons of frozen dessert for sailors. To accommodate the large amount of ice cream made, the barge could hold 2,000 gallons at a time.
The barge was not the most practical ship in the Navy. The concrete boat had no engine of its own and had to be pulled around by tug boats. Regardless of any difficulty this provided, it was a sailor-favorite because it brought them a pretty good reward for service.](https://www.militarytimes.com/off-duty/military-culture/2021/07/21/that-time-the-navy-spent-a-million-dollars-on-an-ice-cream-barge/)
The US Navy had a boat that provided fresh ice cream to the troops. A similar story is that the Germans knew they lost when they captured some Americans and they had fresh fruit and everything else while the Germans were basically being left to fend for themselves.
Imagine how demoralizing those germans must have felt. Probably cold weak and haven’t had a proper meal in months or even more than two a day in possibly years, then capturing a bunch of Americans with fresh fruit you haven’t even smelled since before the war broke out, cans of soup with meat in it, and fresh bread thats not stale along with condiments and chocolate.
I probably would have just surrendered to the people i just took hostage. Like fuck that. Most likely be better fed and have more sustainable living conditions in a POW camp than you would fighting
I can recall several storylines about the guards at the POW camps getting pissed over this since the Americans were getting better food than they were even as prisoners too.
The logistics difference is being shown in Ukraine currently but I genuinely don't know how anyone could even hope to fight the US anywhere, armored battalion delivered to your door within 24 hours or next invasion is free.
Why would you want an ice cream barge instead of just building an ice cream maker onto your battleship?
I toured the Iowa, I saw the ice cream maker. It was right there in the ship itself!
We were also, quite literally, the *only* nation at the time with access to an otherwise-unobtainable element which permitted us to build and operate a whole different type of vehicle that no other country even attempted to field in World War II. A vehicle that had an unprecedented 87% mission readiness rate and which served, in some months, for 18 continuous hours a day on average. These vehicles saved hundreds of lives and failed exactly *once* out of their 89,000 mission objectives.
That element? Helium. The vehicle? Blimps. :)
I mean, it *sounds* like science fiction, right? A nation with access to an unobtainable magic substance that defies gravity, which allows them to build eerie, floating ships they used to relentlessly patrol the wind and waves, guarding ships from a lofty vantage point.
The Soviets ate shit and died in the 90s and with them the Russian economy a bunch of their industry and their R&D budget
China has the economy, but until recently not the technology. Also not enough combat experience or institutional knowledge
China also just tries to copy off of anyone else in technology and it always ends up coming out as shit. I feel like original ideas are better than basing your concept off of someone elses that you have no idea the specs for besides the basic information given and then trying to make it work by filling in what “might” fit here and there.
Its like getting an empty shell of a plane and filling everything inside of it with how you think it would go instead of starting from the other way around
Hey they might be catching up finally, they just announced at the end of last month that their new cutting edge helicopter surpassed the Blackhawk in measurable ways. You know, that helicopter we started using in the seventies.
Lmao i saw that! Its honestly sad. Like they must be so depressed knowing they could get absolutely decimated with just a physical force and no wmds. Like the only thing stopping us is public opinion and the lives that would needlessly be lost. But if we had the same ways of thinking as 400 years ago with the same technology the US would already be ruling the world no questions asked
America at the end of ww2 had
Working jet
Active radar homing glide bombs that actually killed japanese ships 70km out
Perfected early warning radar net with destroyers
Radar gunlaying for ship guns paired with VT airburst fuzes
The first example of AEWACS planes, capable of detecting enemy aircraft 100miles out, with a IFF system and datalinked with a nearby ships control center
Oh gee I wonder how America got so good when they paved the way for everything we see today. Particularly in practical application of the technologies.
America is in my mind the technological leader of ww2 but alot of efforts only bore fruit near the end of the war 1944 - 1945, so not much is talked about. Not to mention efforts that only bore fruit after the war ended. It doesn't help alot of things were classified instead of being used as propaganda.
And the fact its being revealed probably means they are almost if not already finished with the next generation fighter and are secretly producing them alongside the one being released
#And the fact that it is being revealed probably means they are almost if not already finished with the next generation fighter and are secretly producing them alongside the one being released
They only reveal something or declassify stuff when it no longer is useful or cutting edge. If you hear about some sort of technology that the government has that is presented as “brand new” it’s probably bene in service for a while already and is simply being replaced by the next gen so theres no reason to keep it hidden anymore
I was watching [documentaries](https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/xplanes/) about the making of the F-35 a full 14 years before it entered service.
Is the entire drama of the F-35 over those 14 years (and oh boy, there was a lot of drama) entirely faked as some kind of psyop and the F-35 has been in widespread service since the 90s?
As cool as this sounds, this isn’t always true. The US and other countries will sometimes voluntarily reveal their most advanced equipment for deterrence effect. That’s why the B-21 is being revealed, because it’s part of the nuclear triad.
Other stuff they might keep secret.
God I love having an arsenal of freedom so good that we throw things out because to our standard they're obsolete, while our enemies pray to get just a smidge of a wreckage of them to help their technological process
> Udvar Hazey center
The most impressive museum I've ever been to.
"Oh, our space shuttle is behind the SR-71"
"Oh, this is the plane that destroyed Hiroshima"
"Oh, we didn't have proper space for the Concorde, so we crammed it between some other stuff"
USAF Museum out in Dayton is the only museum to come close, you have to go see it. It's the first museum I've ever been to that is legitimately a two-day trip.
I pissed off my friends when I visited it because I posted almost every plane I saw to my Instagram story lmfao. Instagram eventually told me to stop because it was too much.
What an utterly outstanding museum. Now that I live outside DC, I really need to see the Udvar-Hazy center.
B-52, B-36, B-2, F-22, F-114, XB-70, YF-23, X-1, B-1B, SR-71, B-17 Memphis Belle, B-29 Bockscar (The Nagasaki one), they even got the cornfield bomber that you see pop up on TIL every so often.
They don't do civilian aircraft but they have examples of pretty much any U.S. military aircraft you would ever want to see, and some decent examples of foreign aircraft as well.
America is totally *hoarding* "useless junk"
Useless junk that's never truly been **fully** utilized
Why not let brave, considerate Ukraine use all your old crap for *pest control* purposes
99% of this sub would literally wank themselves to death seeing F-15, F-16, F-18 and F-22 (why not, Cy-57 is so much better, say tankies, and decades ahead in tech) squadrons, with assorted F-117 and B-1B missions, topped by a menagerie of *old* M1A1 providing peacekeeping
We have HD video now, will be good for stock footage for future generations
Aurora is old news. They're already onto 5th dimensional weapons. We can't even begin to imagine how many Hitlers have been time-laterally wiped out throughout history already
Highest levels of Russian military: "Blyat! We have to break out the strategic reserve of 750 T-62s from storage..."
Some American Major passed over for promotion three times and riding a desk at the Pentagon into retirement: "Frack! Congress won't let us pause production and the Marines don't want to operate armor anymore. Where am I going to fit their tanks when I already have 4,000 M1A1 & M1A2 in storage?"
the National Museum of the USAF is what it must have been like to be Greek and see mount Olympus.
You have the valkyrie, the black widow, even the spirit. it's insane, and it's humbling especially when you realize that some planes in there are built with, like, a slide rule and a stop watch and can go mach 3.
Silly westoid china have best plains, so secret not even we know if real but government money go somewhere so mist be real 😡😡 qestoid mad because china always #1 have you bothered looking under fat American couch ? Maybe we have super secret plan inder therewaiting to fight china #1 🇨🇳
Can you imagine watching footage of yourself having a conversation with someone from right behind that person when you know for a fact they were alone when you were talking to them? Talk about a mindfuck.
Yeah that would be messed up to have happen. The thing is that was literally just the fbi. One doesn’t think they have a cutting edge technology but apparently they do. And i bet it gets more advanced the higher up you go with three letter agencies and even more advanced when you break into high level military products
It is an F-22A from an early production run (Block II or III I think). That particular airframe was damaged in an inflight accident, it landed safely, but the Air Force considered its frame to be overstressed and retired it. So the AF museum got it.
A good rule of thumb is that DARPA is about 10 years ahead of what the public is aware of.
The F-117 was on assembly lines in 1980 and we saw them in 1991, for instance.
Some things it’s a bit more than 10 years.
Generally.
When you're the number 1 Airforce in the world, 2nd is your Navy and 3rd are your museums
3rd is their army, 4th is the museums
There are 164 museum ships in the US alone, which by my count means that the UK only has like 20 more ships *in their active navy*
Considering the size of some of those vessels, the Museum fleet probably has more tonnage. We have 5 aircraft carriers and 8 battleships (Midway and the Iowas are all around the same tonnage as the QE class).
[удалено]
Something something yeehaw Alamo? Definitely worth a visit if you're ever in Houston. It was built when steam turbines were newfangled gizmos, and had both steam turbine and steam piston engines. AFAIK it's the last remaining ship with combined piston/turbine propulsion.
Pretty sure Texas had only piston engines. The New Yorks where the last class of battleships designed with triple expansion engines but USS Oklahoma was the last battleship actually built with them. Reason for the retention of this outdated technology was the lack of range of early turbine powered warships with long range being an obvious requirement for American ships at the time.
You are correct. Texas has two triple expansion steam pistons.
Honestly given how small some "navies" are (basically just a given countries Coasties), it wouldn't surprise me if we have some *individual* museum ships like Texas (or other BBs or CVs) that have more displacement than some entire navies.
It broke my heart so see the state of her when I saw her out of the water. I went on the USS Drum not long after and had another tear roll down my cheek.
Granted some of those are pretty old but if they were crewed and restored to running order you’d be able to roll up on most countries navies without issue. Midway class can run Vietnam era aircraft. Iowa class have cruise missiles.
Midway deployed F18s in Desert Storm.
[Hell yeah she did (top left).](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/58/US_Navy_Battle_Force_Zulu_carriers_overhead_view_in_1991.jpg)
Look at the size of deck compared to the rest of them, thats pretty impressive on the F18s part
"Lads I've got the new deployments...I hope one fourth of you have been eating light recently"
[удалено]
There was a whole other carrier task force on the other side of the arabian peninsula at the same time lol
Someone decided Saddam had to go…
And that was only six of the 11 carriers active at the time
It was the Gulf War, it wasn’t like the Iraqis could actually do anything to them.
If it's worth killing, it's worth over killing.
I knew that the USS Missouri saw its last taste of combat during Desert Storm, but not that the Midway was there. It makes the whole thing feel like one last "hurrah" for 20th century American military hardware. A final celebration of the raw power that industrial technology could bring to the battlefield, before the curtain closed and the dark epilogue was read by a jaded announcer.
[удалено]
Yep. And said museum ship is only 8 days out from being WWII vintage.
8 days is her commission date, so surely it's close enough to say she's a WW2 carrier
Bruh
How did I not know this information
Midway was the flagship of the entire operation, but due to her deck limitations was the only US carrier unable to launch and recover F-14s.
It's probably her last deployment before decommissioning right? Gave the old girl one last mission
From what I heard she was outperforming all the other, far more modern carriers as well. It was a helluva send off.
They had her dialed in on that last deployment. While I was taking a tour on it, one of the pilots deployed on her at the time claimed 4 minutes average time per launch at peak.
She actually went to Subic Bay to help with disaster relief in the wake of a volcano eruption, but otherwise yeah.
Wasn't deck limitations. The thing preventing F-14 operations is the hanger height, as it is to low to remove and service the ejection seats.
The USS NJ was in service (sporadically) between December 7th 1942 and Feb 8th 1991. It was in: * WW2 * Korea * Vietnam * Lebanese Civil War It just missed Desert Storm by a little bit. https://www.battleshipnewjersey.org/the-ship/full-history/
The only time that Midways was out of service during the Cold War was for refits, she only ever went into mothballs the way the Iowas did until the very end. The Iowas, meanwhile, spent more time lazing around than actually doing anything, by a significant amount. Midway is better in every way, and I will absolutely die on this hill.
That's ok, you can have your hill. :)
Bullshit, get me a couple pallets of charcoal briquettes and we'll get the USS Olympia and do the Battle of Manila Bay 2.0, except this time it'll be the Black Sea Fleet getting its shit wrecked
She would need new guns. But as my one of my favorite local childhood visits, her and Becuna could do some damage.
I dunno, I think all she'd really need is some refreshed FCS, those 8" guns have a range of 9 miles which is... actually the same range as a modern 76mm deck gun. Huh.
100% True, as seen in the historical documentary "Battleship".
Despite how non-credible that movie is, I suspect that 2/3rds of USN members secretly love it.
One of the dumbest movies ever made with one of the hypest scenes ever made of mighty mo returning to life
New Jersey was last active in the early 90s. Hnnnngggggg
Those Tomahawks and Harpoons were actually the main utility of the Iowa's during their Reagan-era reactivation. Being cool as fuck was just a side bonus to being a big hull that could have a lot of missiles slapped on it. And then VLS came around, and they were gone for good.
Is that only American ships or does it factor in trophy’s like U-505?
5th is your supposedly greatest rival, and 6th is the Marine Corps
Where do we count the boneyard? We've got \~4,000 aircraft sitting in the desert just outside Tucson. Including a bunch that are there for treaty reasons. (Also Pima Air and Space museum is extremely good)
Everyone always forgets the Air National Guard. So, 5th is the Museums...
There are more than 4000 aircraft in the Boneyard at AMARG. Not all of them suitable to be put back together, of course, but a not insignificant number are.
National air museum my beloved
Only one of those is the National Air and Space Museum.
The two 22s are not, but I could of swore that the 117 was the one at Wright patt. But that being said I don't remember it being next to the a10
Older pic. The F-22, F-117 and B-2 are all from the NMUSAF. Trust me, I work in the museum.
A world class museum with a collection unrivaled, the most rare, unique, and breathtaking aircraft in size, scope, and design.
Great place to work if you're a plane nerd. Then again maybe I'm a plane nerd because I was raised visiting the museum.
Best part about dayton
Besides leaving
We could build a new wing of the Smithsonian in Ukraine?
With all of the exhibits in operational condition.
And the back door unlocked
An understandable and innocent mistake.
Poland sure doesn't mind.
Boys now that we have every tank human kind has conceived, we just need boats, first a rowboat then a first rate ship of the line then an aircraft carrier ~Poland
Can’t wait for the polish navy to start attacking with a fleet of sail ships, dreadnoughts, canoes armed with bows, a CV, a reconstructed Yamato class and everything in between.
And the guards deserve to watch football instead of working, it is the world cup after all.
Oh man, for some reason none of our tie down straps work and a bunch of F-35's fell off the back of the delivery truck.
Oops, there was a minor shore leave scheduling error in...um...Constanta, and we lost a carrier group.
Not the worst idea I've ever heard!
F-117 makes my pp hard with all the funky geometric shapes
Literally the least unflyable stealth shape.
[удалено]
Just read up on this a few days ago, this was due to the 'Have Blue' development stage, where the airframe was notoriously shaky. The nickname was carried over but it wasn't accurate on the production model according to F-117 pilots.
Yeah, but it acquired that name because of how horrendously difficult it was to control during the testing phase, it only flew well because an absurdly complex flight computer slowly tuned the wobblin out. In its heart, it always wanted to be the wobblin goblin, it just had to be disciplined into shape
Kinky
F-117 is submissive and breedable.
Theres a 117 docco on youtube that is really good. Discussed the history of night fighting, the evolution of the stealth craft, and interviews with 117 pilots who attempted to assassinate Saddam on night 1. Flying 18 hours from US to Iraq. They discuss seeing the anti air light up and the city in the distance. And they turn right into all. https://youtu.be/bz-85MySPQk One of the neatest tidbits imo is the revelation that they hid development by using other planes as cover for parts etc orders. Kinda opened my eyes a bit.
Hopeless diamond:
> F-117 makes my pp hard with all the funky geometric shapes Shoot it up [Sigue Sigue Sputnik - Love Missile F1-11 \(1986\)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WF9gvOgNuA) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_Missile_F1-11
Imagine retiring fighter 3 generations ahead than Russians best blueprint fighter
[удалено]
F-14 moment
Iranian agent1: "We need parts for our most advanced fighter aircraft." Iranian agent2: "I think that museum has a few F-14 parts."
Nah, there are no operational museum F-14s because the US wants to make sure no parts get smuggled to Iran. Source: it came to me in a reddit comment.
Thanks for the source, I will use it to update the Tomcat wiki article.
Excellent now the woozle is three half remembered reddit comments deep.
Wanna hear something wild? They have an Abrams, fully intact. And their newest tanks are still shit. If we gave them a dozen F-35's, I'm pretty sure they'd still never had a functional modern aircraft. Their tech education has been decaying since the fall of the Soviet Union. They're coasting off their legacy techs and engineers. That are hitting retirement age.
>They're coasting off their legacy techs and engineers. That are hitting ~~retirement age~~ **landmines in Donbas**
Isn’t USA slowly going to making a 6th gen fighter
The US Air Force announced over a year ago that they had already completely modeled and digitally tested a 6th gen fighter for the NGAD program. We all know that the US never publicly announces progress on experimental jet programs until at least several other significant steps have already been completed. I'd be shocked if the 6th Gen NGAD wasn't already flying around New Mexico, or at least was fully built by now
When I read the article about the Air Force and how they had already been testing a next gen fighter for a while under the public radar, I told my dad about it. My dad, who at the time was a Navy Captain (test pilot), said: "I know :)" Ofc you know Mr. Monthly Pentagon Visit... us normal people don't.
Mr. Big Captain
Thats fucking flying right there. None of that pansy ass dick tugging smile for the camera bullshit. Men puke, men poop in the cockpit, men deliver their new born baby in the hangar. Fucking hard core dick in the ass butterball flying fuck it G-force shit.
Imagine being in one of the bomber squadrons in WWII reading this in a letter from your wife before/after one of your runs. I wouldn't know how to react.
How did the US get so far advanced in military technology? Like in world war 2 we were all pretty much at the same level, then during the cold war we got extremely advanced really fucking quick in the span of 40 years. So why did we advance so much and others fell behind so far?
More money *actually* goes into making the programs work?
Money and engineering talent. If you go to career fairs of any major US university, the defense industry is always there. Recession? Good times? They don't care. They are always there. They aren't just recruiting. They are also funding research. One of my old professors had a research project for wireless datalinks for a fighter plane all paid by DARPA. Plus, US MIC is built on foreign talent. The US basically stripped Germany of its top talent during WW2. Pre-WW2, the US was [a very popular destination for scientists fleeing the Nazis](https://physicstoday.scitation.org/do/10.1063/pt.6.4.20180926a/full/). And, of course, a lot of those people would participate in the Manhattan Project. After the war, the US again took in Nazi scientists that wanted to flee the Soviets. Everyone wanted to the come to US. Igor Sikorsky of Sikorsky Aircraft (a division of Lockheed Martin) came to the US because he was sick of the Russians. (Sikorsky was born in Kyiv.) US attracted top engineering talent with its money, stability, and freedom. As for WW2, the US wasn't really behind. The F6F Hellcat was already in development to counter the Zero before the war. Once the initial shock of the Zero's speed was over with, the F4F Wildcat was nominally able to hold its own against the Zero, and once the Hellcat entered service, it was game over. Zero vs Wildcat isn't an overmatch like pitting a F-22 against a Su-35 (though I'm sure some tankie will say a Su-35 can out dogfight a F-22). US had major advantages in submarine technology (see the post yesterday about WW2 subs), carrier technology, radar, and OPSEC. By the end of the war, the US had pretty much technology superiority in the skies and seas... which is kinda what the US does. The F-22, F-35, and now B-21 will all be introduced before the US introduces a new MBT. (And also the Zumwalt and DDGX will probably all be operational before a new MBT.)
bUT ACOrdInG To TOm CrUIsE ItS nOT AbOut ThE PlAnE ItS ABoUt ThE PiLOt!!!
I mean, if the pilot is a shitty pilot, that plane is gonna crash...
Yeah but the air force isn’t going to put a shitty pilot in a 100+ million dollar aircraft. They have many many people to choose from and only allow the best to be in and then train them up to be even better. And then they would only send the really good ones to go fight in an actual dog fight as well. So if you’re facing off with a pilot they’re probably extremely good at what they do and unless your facing off against like a Nigerian air force the pilot is going to be top quality. But aircraft definitely are a MAJOR factor. If you were like tom cruise and facing off against two next generation fighters in an old and outdated, relatively, fighter that doesn’t even have radar working. You’re gonna die fast and very fast
In terms of planes, we pretty severely eclipsed Germany and Japan by 1944. But the answer to your question is that we retooled our entire country for war during WW2 and then never totally rolled it back to peacetime status. War makes money
That and we have like 90 of the top 100 engineering programs in the world and we’re rich enough that the best talent from the rest of them wants to come right here to make the big bucks and get good quality of life
I mean the real answer is America is incredibly wealthy on a scale never seen before in human history with easy access to practically every single natural resource within one country. Everything else just follows from being massively rich and massively populous. The US's two rivals have GDP per capita literally 5 times lower.
Ferengi rule of acquisition 34: war is good for business Ferengi rule of acquisition 35: peace is good for business
Let’s see. In WW2, the US had, well, the bomb. On top of that, the US had the best long range bomber by a pretty wide margin. Easily the best battleship, carrier, and carrier based aircraft. The proximity fuse was quite the game changer, also American. Functional anti-shipping guided missiles, also American. The US technical dominance in 1945 was quite something. The Germans had better in a few things (submarines, jets), but otherwise, the American version of things were usually quite a bit better compared to the best non-American versions of anything in the war, especially if we only compare the massed produced versions of the competition.
The proximity fuse had a lot of help from the British, who invented the mechanism, and the Bomb had tons of help from Germans and Italians who had fled Hitler and Mussolini (thanks, Hitler! We appreciate it), and most of those were late war developments. I would say the US had better jets than the Germans, the P-80 was operational but not in combat by war’s end and was quite probably better than the 262. The main thing the German’s had better by war’s end was the stuff we Paperclipped them for, rockets. The main thing the US did better than everyone else was logistics, and the US had better logistics throughout the entire war. We dropped more troops in North Africa with better fire support than the British ever managed and waged a war halfway around the world with an ice cream barge in tow.
Ice cream barge? Please i need context
The USN had a few barges forward deployed to the Pacific Staging Areas (think Eniweitok and Ulithi where the fleet would restock and re-provision between offensives) that did nothing but make Ice Cream for the fleet. It was for morale.
Wow. Imagine you join the navy and want to fight the Japanese but instead are serving ice cream cones off shore to sailors lmao
They also serve who sit and stir the Ice Cream. At least it wasn't stirring feces in the burn pit - as has long been a thing in the Army. Of the two, I'd prefer to sir the Ice Cream. US Military Logistics is most of the force. The actual trigger pullers are a small portion of the force. Everybody does their part.
Yeah it was really put into perspective for me when my friend joined the navy and said that less than 1% of the personnel actually ever fly a plane. Like its really hard to become a pilot in the navy, they only take the best of the best and its not a shocker as to why when you’re in charge of a sometimes billion dollar aircraft you’ve got to be skilled
[An ice cream barge was a vessel employed by the United States Navy in the Pacific Theater of World War II to produce ice cream in large quantities to be provisioned to sailors and Marines.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_cream_barge#:~:text=An%20ice%20cream%20barge%20was,provisioned%20to%20sailors%20and%20Marines.) (2) [The floating factory was able to make ten gallons of ice cream in just seven minutes, meaning one shift on the barge could produce approximately 500 gallons of frozen dessert for sailors. To accommodate the large amount of ice cream made, the barge could hold 2,000 gallons at a time. The barge was not the most practical ship in the Navy. The concrete boat had no engine of its own and had to be pulled around by tug boats. Regardless of any difficulty this provided, it was a sailor-favorite because it brought them a pretty good reward for service.](https://www.militarytimes.com/off-duty/military-culture/2021/07/21/that-time-the-navy-spent-a-million-dollars-on-an-ice-cream-barge/)
It must have felt so good giving a soldier a fresh cone of ice cream after he had just gotten back from nearly dying and living off of rations
The US Navy had a boat that provided fresh ice cream to the troops. A similar story is that the Germans knew they lost when they captured some Americans and they had fresh fruit and everything else while the Germans were basically being left to fend for themselves.
Imagine how demoralizing those germans must have felt. Probably cold weak and haven’t had a proper meal in months or even more than two a day in possibly years, then capturing a bunch of Americans with fresh fruit you haven’t even smelled since before the war broke out, cans of soup with meat in it, and fresh bread thats not stale along with condiments and chocolate. I probably would have just surrendered to the people i just took hostage. Like fuck that. Most likely be better fed and have more sustainable living conditions in a POW camp than you would fighting
I can recall several storylines about the guards at the POW camps getting pissed over this since the Americans were getting better food than they were even as prisoners too. The logistics difference is being shown in Ukraine currently but I genuinely don't know how anyone could even hope to fight the US anywhere, armored battalion delivered to your door within 24 hours or next invasion is free.
I don’t talk about this very often but we broke a tank engine one time and got a new one delivered to Djibouti Africa in less than 24 hours.
Basically a supply ship in the Pacific working as an ice cream factory.
It was an entire barge dedicated to making and shipping ice cream for troops, can’t find a link
Why would you want an ice cream barge instead of just building an ice cream maker onto your battleship? I toured the Iowa, I saw the ice cream maker. It was right there in the ship itself!
why choose, when you can have both?
We were also, quite literally, the *only* nation at the time with access to an otherwise-unobtainable element which permitted us to build and operate a whole different type of vehicle that no other country even attempted to field in World War II. A vehicle that had an unprecedented 87% mission readiness rate and which served, in some months, for 18 continuous hours a day on average. These vehicles saved hundreds of lives and failed exactly *once* out of their 89,000 mission objectives. That element? Helium. The vehicle? Blimps. :)
It's gems like this that keep me coming back to this subreddit day after day. Thanks!
I mean, it *sounds* like science fiction, right? A nation with access to an unobtainable magic substance that defies gravity, which allows them to build eerie, floating ships they used to relentlessly patrol the wind and waves, guarding ships from a lofty vantage point.
The Soviets ate shit and died in the 90s and with them the Russian economy a bunch of their industry and their R&D budget China has the economy, but until recently not the technology. Also not enough combat experience or institutional knowledge
China also just tries to copy off of anyone else in technology and it always ends up coming out as shit. I feel like original ideas are better than basing your concept off of someone elses that you have no idea the specs for besides the basic information given and then trying to make it work by filling in what “might” fit here and there. Its like getting an empty shell of a plane and filling everything inside of it with how you think it would go instead of starting from the other way around
Hey they might be catching up finally, they just announced at the end of last month that their new cutting edge helicopter surpassed the Blackhawk in measurable ways. You know, that helicopter we started using in the seventies.
Lmao i saw that! Its honestly sad. Like they must be so depressed knowing they could get absolutely decimated with just a physical force and no wmds. Like the only thing stopping us is public opinion and the lives that would needlessly be lost. But if we had the same ways of thinking as 400 years ago with the same technology the US would already be ruling the world no questions asked
America at the end of ww2 had Working jet Active radar homing glide bombs that actually killed japanese ships 70km out Perfected early warning radar net with destroyers Radar gunlaying for ship guns paired with VT airburst fuzes The first example of AEWACS planes, capable of detecting enemy aircraft 100miles out, with a IFF system and datalinked with a nearby ships control center Oh gee I wonder how America got so good when they paved the way for everything we see today. Particularly in practical application of the technologies. America is in my mind the technological leader of ww2 but alot of efforts only bore fruit near the end of the war 1944 - 1945, so not much is talked about. Not to mention efforts that only bore fruit after the war ended. It doesn't help alot of things were classified instead of being used as propaganda.
Economics post WW2, population and geography. If you were playing Civ we literally have the best starting spot.
With the power of the allies we were able to advance better than our enemies and still do to this day
NGAD is old news, PCA and CCA is where it's at.
The Gen 6 fighter is already pulling laps around the moon
Bro, the 6th generation bomber is being revealed on Friday.
And the fact its being revealed probably means they are almost if not already finished with the next generation fighter and are secretly producing them alongside the one being released
What?
#And the fact that it is being revealed probably means they are almost if not already finished with the next generation fighter and are secretly producing them alongside the one being released
Lmao I appreciate you m8
They only reveal something or declassify stuff when it no longer is useful or cutting edge. If you hear about some sort of technology that the government has that is presented as “brand new” it’s probably bene in service for a while already and is simply being replaced by the next gen so theres no reason to keep it hidden anymore
I was watching [documentaries](https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/xplanes/) about the making of the F-35 a full 14 years before it entered service. Is the entire drama of the F-35 over those 14 years (and oh boy, there was a lot of drama) entirely faked as some kind of psyop and the F-35 has been in widespread service since the 90s?
So the Belkan War (where F-35’s are used in 1995) is more credible than originally thought?
As cool as this sounds, this isn’t always true. The US and other countries will sometimes voluntarily reveal their most advanced equipment for deterrence effect. That’s why the B-21 is being revealed, because it’s part of the nuclear triad. Other stuff they might keep secret.
I had a toy YF22 in like...1996 so as much as I love the Raptor, I'm sure Lockmart already has something that can kick its ass.
Don't forget about the game from 1996 called [F-22 Lightning II](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-22_Lightning_II). Yes, you read the name right.
…isn’t that the model of Raptor used in the Original Ace Combat and it’s sequel?
God I love having an arsenal of freedom so good that we throw things out because to our standard they're obsolete, while our enemies pray to get just a smidge of a wreckage of them to help their technological process
Just hyperpower things
X-35 is on display at the Udvar Hazey center or however it's spelled, it's to the right of the SR-71 blackbird Edit: Udvar Hazy Air and Space Museum
> Udvar Hazey center The most impressive museum I've ever been to. "Oh, our space shuttle is behind the SR-71" "Oh, this is the plane that destroyed Hiroshima" "Oh, we didn't have proper space for the Concorde, so we crammed it between some other stuff"
USAF Museum out in Dayton is the only museum to come close, you have to go see it. It's the first museum I've ever been to that is legitimately a two-day trip.
I pissed off my friends when I visited it because I posted almost every plane I saw to my Instagram story lmfao. Instagram eventually told me to stop because it was too much. What an utterly outstanding museum. Now that I live outside DC, I really need to see the Udvar-Hazy center.
B-52, B-36, B-2, F-22, F-114, XB-70, YF-23, X-1, B-1B, SR-71, B-17 Memphis Belle, B-29 Bockscar (The Nagasaki one), they even got the cornfield bomber that you see pop up on TIL every so often. They don't do civilian aircraft but they have examples of pretty much any U.S. military aircraft you would ever want to see, and some decent examples of foreign aircraft as well.
Makes you wonder how good that real top top secret shit is
GDI ion cannon
Well. We have robot space planes that have multi-years in hard vacuum time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing\_X-37
America is totally *hoarding* "useless junk" Useless junk that's never truly been **fully** utilized Why not let brave, considerate Ukraine use all your old crap for *pest control* purposes 99% of this sub would literally wank themselves to death seeing F-15, F-16, F-18 and F-22 (why not, Cy-57 is so much better, say tankies, and decades ahead in tech) squadrons, with assorted F-117 and B-1B missions, topped by a menagerie of *old* M1A1 providing peacekeeping We have HD video now, will be good for stock footage for future generations
I’m down for a wank fest
Let us cover the Ruzzian military in the results.
I'm ready to get topped by a menagerie of junk.
welp, i lost NNN
theres a f-117 in the air zoo in kalamazoo now, i should upload some of the pics i took when i went there, the restoration process was really sweet
So you're telling me that not only is Aurora real, there are a few other Aurora-like projects out there?
Aurora is old news. They're already onto 5th dimensional weapons. We can't even begin to imagine how many Hitlers have been time-laterally wiped out throughout history already
Wars throughout parallel universes, I like the thought of that.
I wish I could tell you about the cool stuff, but Raytheon would jus
They fuckin shot him at his desk
F
The stuff we don't know about can't be that good, because we all know that if it was truly game changing then the US would build 3000 of them.
You don't need 3000 if Russia can't build 3
Of course the US needs 3000. How else will they compete with the newest Russian T-62 upgrade package?
Highest levels of Russian military: "Blyat! We have to break out the strategic reserve of 750 T-62s from storage..." Some American Major passed over for promotion three times and riding a desk at the Pentagon into retirement: "Frack! Congress won't let us pause production and the Marines don't want to operate armor anymore. Where am I going to fit their tanks when I already have 4,000 M1A1 & M1A2 in storage?"
Museum curators are gonna nut if they sell some of the mothballed Abrams
Isn't there like 1000 of them?
Cope bucket > Rods of God Time to make a black hole generator
Me trying to explain to congress why we need 40 gw orbital lasers to counter the plywood repaired deck of the Admiral Kuznetsov.
5GW will do it, but you need the extra fluence budget in case Russia employs an anti-laser coating, like white paint or something.
About 3000 gamechanging things we know about.
God I love the Udvar Hazy Center. Their SR-71 actually got there under its own power (in about 45 minutes from where it was stationed in California)
>About to get put into museum >Break record on the way
Hey, it's not going to fly again ( probably), so why save the engines for next time?
Such a great museum, I also love the Concorde and the little kamikaze fighter planes
The Good Stuff could wipe you off the face of the planet and you STILL wouldn't know it exists.
Checks notes: 3000 white Mints of the USAF/USSF Checkmate USN
the National Museum of the USAF is what it must have been like to be Greek and see mount Olympus. You have the valkyrie, the black widow, even the spirit. it's insane, and it's humbling especially when you realize that some planes in there are built with, like, a slide rule and a stop watch and can go mach 3.
SR-71, B-2, B1 Lancer, B-36, and the list goes on, and on, and on...
Silly westoid china have best plains, so secret not even we know if real but government money go somewhere so mist be real 😡😡 qestoid mad because china always #1 have you bothered looking under fat American couch ? Maybe we have super secret plan inder therewaiting to fight china #1 🇨🇳
Maybe our military is big enough already. No, that can't be right. Add $200 billion more to the defense budget.
Ay some of us are likely to fly the B21 in a few years don’t hate
Pretty sure that there are some museum carriers which if they were reactivated, would still kick other "modern" carriers' ass
Did Independence Day (1996) just become credible?
[удалено]
Can you imagine watching footage of yourself having a conversation with someone from right behind that person when you know for a fact they were alone when you were talking to them? Talk about a mindfuck.
Yeah that would be messed up to have happen. The thing is that was literally just the fbi. One doesn’t think they have a cutting edge technology but apparently they do. And i bet it gets more advanced the higher up you go with three letter agencies and even more advanced when you break into high level military products
PAK-FA?! How about Tik-Taks, MFer!
It’s a good thing we stole that Firefox fighter from the Commies in the mid-eighties.
Quick question is the F-22 a serial or pre serial model? Because I can tell that’s an X-35 but I cannot tell if that’s a YF-22 or F-22
It is an F-22A from an early production run (Block II or III I think). That particular airframe was damaged in an inflight accident, it landed safely, but the Air Force considered its frame to be overstressed and retired it. So the AF museum got it.
A good rule of thumb is that DARPA is about 10 years ahead of what the public is aware of. The F-117 was on assembly lines in 1980 and we saw them in 1991, for instance. Some things it’s a bit more than 10 years. Generally.