I just watched that whole video and HOLY CRAP how has that never been made into a movie? I mean, that story has everything.

I’m really digging these Desert Storm revisited stories.

You are likely fighting a foe near or on their home turf it is about target saturation more than 1v1 high-end fighter jet combat. Think many fighters of various capabilities and throngs of cruise missiles.

The F-35 was designed (two DECADES ago) to be the “low” in a “low/high” mix, ala F-15/16. Lower cost. Lower tech.

No one is spending most of a billion dollars to resurrect a three decade old design.

I actually did an inventory recently part of a scenario I was working on for a game, and holy shit the Russian navy right now is bad.

Draw no strategic naval logic from the Russians.

I was station near King Fahd Airport. You should have seen all those A10's and Apaches taking off. An amazing site.

It stuns me to this day that so many people don’t see the larger play behind the Saudi hijackers on 9/11.

Anglico motherfucker ;)

What the fuck are you talking about?

Of course, there has only been some 70 years of development in computers and radar.

Oh, I doubt he could have taken Saudi Arabia. Like you said, too much territory and the Saudis I think had enough military capability to not be pushovers. Plus, the reason we were able to outflank them was because the Iraqis themselves didn’t have the capability to go through that part of the desert, so they reckoned…

Total BS

I dunno it seems to me that big ships make big targets and that the aircraft carrier may actually be obsolete as currently employed. The very instrument you would use the ship below, smart ballistic ordinance is what the other guy would use to sink it. Is there a defense for carriers against ballistic anti ship…

Well Mr DramaLlama, I agree with your first proposal. I do believe we need a modern gunslinging ship. What I don’t agree with is the calibre. I believe that the time and money spent into developing new 16 inch guns/parts and ammo could be better spent on maturing railgun to operational use. They are faster, have a…

Sounds like you’re thinking of the Excalibur arty round? It’s a GPS-guided 155mm round used in Desert Storm. I assume it could be scaled up to 406mm but the navy’s given up on large caliber guns. Hell, a 5" mount is considered big now.

I agree. And I predict that the combination of railguns and smart munitions are going to bring heavy naval gunfire back in a big way in the coming years.

The whole benefit of a railgun is that a much smaller (less expensive) ship can fire a munition with as much energy as a 16" naval gun.

The main reason Battleships got so big was the need for larger and larger vessels to house larger and larger guns If the current railgun designs work as reported, each 16" gun can be…

Would be ludicously expensive to operate, and would need a massive refit. You’re much better off with the Ohio class SSGN conversions, or the planned Virgina class subs with the added VPM missile tube expansion.