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US Navy litoral combat ships having engineering failures 10

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spsalso

Electrical
Jun 27, 2021
943
The Independence class can only go at high speeds on a nice day:


The Freedom class is being scrapped. And it's not because they're old and worn out and there's a far better ship to replace them:




We can't leave these kids along for a minute!


spsalso
 
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Thanks for the added info, Hokie. I'd heard the UK ship was aluminum hull. I didn't know they were designed and fabricated in the US... were they designed in the US, too?

Rather than think climate change and the corona virus as science, think of it as the wrath of God. Do you feel any better?

-Dik
 
thanks, tug...

Rather than think climate change and the corona virus as science, think of it as the wrath of God. Do you feel any better?

-Dik
 

Were they designed and built in the US?

Rather than think climate change and the corona virus as science, think of it as the wrath of God. Do you feel any better?

-Dik
 
MarkR said:
modern technological marvels have many more problems than ships that were designed decades ago without the aid of computers etc. Just goes to show that the designers today are much worse and depend too much and their tools instead of knowledge when designing ships or anything else for that matter.

Decades age the designers didn't know the design loads and knew that they didn't know.

Today they don't know the design loads, but think that they do.
 
It's s world wide military equipment procurement issue.

Half of it is that any purchase is a political decision. The other half is that the end user has very little input into what will actually be delivered.

If you asked your medium experience grunt on the ground what they want to take the fight to the enemy you would be starting up the warthog production line. Once the politicians and headshed aviators get involved a single stealth aircraft gets purchased instead of 20 warthogs.

A navy which just gets what they want and that works is the Swedish Navy. The Danish also is functional and effective.
 
The MV Liemba was scuttled, reinstated and remains in service on the shores of lake Tanganyika to this day. Astounding.
 
Love those triple expansion steam engines (as on the above mentioned boat until converted to diesel). I recall watching the one on the boat that used to go down to Mount Vernon. They had a viewing area, and me being me, I tended to watch it rather than the beauteous shoreline.

Here, by the way, is another triple expansion steam engine:



spsalso
 
Alistair_Heaton,

The A-10 Warthog was a response to casualties in Vietnam. The Americans figured that about half of their aircraft lost were destroyed by small arms fire.

Question: Were the victims of small arms fire spread across all the aircraft types the Americans brought to Vietnam, or were they things that flew in range of Vietnamese small arms, like helicopters? How many F4s and B-52s were brought down by small arms?

Another question: The A-10 is supposed to be a successor to the Ilyushin Il-2 "Shturmovik". The "Shturmovik" happens to have been the most shot-down aircraft of WWII. How long would an A-10 survive in airspace occupied by hostile jet fighters, possibly using something other than small arms?

--
JHG
 
First air superiority. Can't fight anything WWII or more recent without air superiority. In essence the P51 became the first air superiority fighter even with its "P" designation. Once the Warthog only has to worry about the ground it isn't going to sustain a lot of small arms damage. At 50 or 100 feet off the deck the slew rate is beyond anything anybody with small arms can manage. One Warthog running down one column on a 2 lane road would take the whole thing out of commission even if every 10th or so vehicle was rendered immobile. If Ukraine had had 100 Warthogs in February, my guess is that it would be all over and they'd still have well over 75 of them. If they'd had the necessary coverage to allow the Warthog to do their thing.

I’ll see your silver lining and raise you two black clouds. - Protection Operations
 
I thought the A-10 was a successor to the P-47--it WAS also called the Thunderbolt II.

But another candidate was the A-1. Any of those three can deliver a lot of sadness to a column.

I suspect the A-10 was an Air Force response to an Army demand for a ground attack airplane. Odd, how the Army would want such a thing, as opposed to a Mach 2 fighter--go figure. Also contributing was the continuing threat of the Army taking over Air Force work by using helicopters. The Air Force got REALLY testy when the Army decided to get their own ground attack plane, the OV-10.

Love the A-10, but I think the Javelin (and etc) was the way to go, at least until the Russians got their act together. How they doin' on that?


spsalso
 
From what i heard about the A-10 is that apart from its ability to do the job it was purchased for....

Is that is battle damage fixability is utterly outstanding. They can swap wings about willy nilly. Engine changes take an hour.

The wall of lead is still an issue to modern aircraft and the Ukrainian's have been putting it to good effect. We also got taught to make up air Défense gravel pits by the Royal Engineers. Its basically a ditch with a focused up form at the bottom with plastic explosive. Then filled with gravel/small rocks. Then when the aircraft starts its attack run its fired and with any luck the aircraft flys through the upwards and downwards debris and the rocks take it out. Apparently it has been used with success with modernish hardware.

Someone also said that the A-10 is pretty robust to fragmentation surface to A-A and G-A missiles. So most manpads would need a very precise hit to take it out of the air.

Also the phycological effect they have is not to be under played. I saw a scramble of 4 of them in Kandahar, got told to stop and they came hurtling out the dispersal. Took off gear up and then at about 1200ft turn left and PPhruu the noise was incredible. They were 10 NM away and we had 2 garrtte turbines running on our J41 and headsets on and boy could you still hear them letting rip with that cannon. Everyone knows when they are out shopping.
 
One of my coworkers is an Iraqi that assisted the US Government during gulf War 2 in exchange for asylum. Much of the duty of our fighter jets was to fly over villages with their afterburners on to intimidate the primitives. It must work because Fleet Week in San Francisco makes our villagers tremble on fear as well. Anyways, the Iraqis called it "flashing" when the US would do it over their country. I think this is an apt name, it's all for show.
 
spsalso quote:
"I do like the part about covering the cracks in the side shell with RTV, as long as it doesn't go beyond the crack and impede inspection for crack growth. Perhaps the side shell is non-structural, because I am not seeing how RTV fixes a structural crack. I suppose it hides it pretty well."

Maybe Phil Swift and Flex Seal could help out.

Flexseal_ncllbq.jpg



My other big question is why in the world do they think they can replace the A10 with the F35? Using a really expensive fighter with a troubled history for close ground support and exposure to ground fire is stupid. Also, the gun on the F35 has very limited capability vs the A10.




Kyle
 
A search for "why replace the A-10 with the F-35" develops an interesting reading list.

I do think the Army should be in charge of ground attack airplanes: the "A" planes. Build what you want. Fly them when and where you want. Meet the ground-pounders later for beers and explain how good a job you did for your co-workers. If necessary.

Then the Air Force could use their "F" planes to take down any flying opposition to the A's.


spsalso
 
The F-35, like other modern fighter jets when used in a ground combat role, tends to be a 'stand-off' type weapons platform, while the A-10 was an in-your-face, eat-dirt type of weapons platform. About the only thing that the F-35 and A-10 have in common was that they both have two wings and one pilot.

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without
 
If you want to put kill stencils on the plane below the cockpit, an A10 could pick up more vehicles in a single sortie (sp?) the an F35 might collect aircraft over its entire life time.

I’ll see your silver lining and raise you two black clouds. - Protection Operations
 
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