Unofficial Aviation Buff Thread

pigfarmer

pigfarmer

tall, thin, irritable
I found a great book trilogy by Nigel Hamilton about FDR - the man's a fantastic writer. Just read the chapter that dealt with the assassination of Yamamoto.

First, P-38 lightnings - about as cool as it gets.
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Second, Operation Vengeance: The Killing of Isoroku Yamamoto

The Japanese made the mistake of broadcasting the exact timetable of the Admiral's inspection tour of various bases in a code that we had broken. FDR personally approved the mission to intercept and kill him.

Those old warbirds use commercial GPS tech today to get around. Imagine 18 of them taking off from LaGuardia airport in New York and then navigating their way accurately and on a timetable to arrive in the traffic pattern of an airfield in Dayton Ohio just when two specific planes are on approach for landing. They did this all with a compass and stop watch over open ocean. Two turned back with engine trouble while the other 16 made it. Impressive.
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A dozen P-38s kept the defensive air patrol busy while 4 went in and shot down the two medium bombers containing the Admiral and his staff. Recently many vilified a president for ordering the assassination of an Iranian general. The level of raw anger displayed in that older generation was much more honest and pure. Different circumstances of course but I think we had the balls for this sort of thing back when.

I knew that Yamamoto was not a die hard fanatic and that he did not want war with the United States. It was later revealed that a famous quote of his was a hoax - he said he'd dictate peace terms from the White House. That was a propaganda out of his control. What he really wrote to an acquaintance was:

Dear Sir,
I trust that you are in the best of health. I deeply appreciate the trip of inspection you made to the South Seas on the Uranami. In this age when armchair arguments are being glibly bandied about in the name of state politics, your sober attitude in going to so much trouble to be loyal to your own opinion is to be most highly commended. But it embarrasses me not a little to hear you say that you “feel at ease in the knowledge that Yamamoto is out at sea with his fleet.” All that I am doing is to devote my utmost, both day and night, toward building up our strength, ever bearing in mind the Imperial admonition:

“Despise not an enemy because he is weak;
“Fear him not because he is strong.”
I am counting only on the loyalty of the one hundred thousand officers and men who are going about their duties in silence and without boasting.
Should hostilities once break out between Japan and the United States, it is not enough that we take Guam and the Philippines, nor even Hawaii and San Francisco. We would have to march into Washington and sign the treaty in the White House. I wonder if our politicians (who speak so lightly of a Japanese-American war) have confidence as to the outcome and are prepared to make the necessary sacrifices?

With best wishes for your good health,
Respectfully yours,
Isoroku Yamamoto.
​


FDR certainly didn't know that or care. He wrote a letter to Yamaoto's wife ! Didn't know that.

““Dear Bill,” the President scrawled across the top of the letter in his own hand as a memo to Admiral Leahy, “Please see that the Old Girl gets the following: ‘Dear Widow Yamamoto, Time is a great leveler and somehow I never expected to see the old boy at the White House anyway. Sorry I can’t attend the funeral because I approved it. Hoping he is where we know he ain’t. Very sincerely yours, Franklin D. Roosevelt’ “And ask her to visit you at the Wilson House this summer,” Roosevelt added in a postscript to Leahy. It wasn’t kind, or gracious; indeed the President never sent the letter. But it reflected something of what, in his heart of hearts, he really felt about Japanese perfidy. And his profound satisfaction that he’d been able to see Admiral Yamamoto get his just deserts.”

— Commander In Chief: FDR's Battle with Churchill, 1943 (FDR at War Book 2) by Nigel Hamilton
Commander In Chief: FDR's Battle with Churchill, 1943 (FDR at War Book 2)

Also never heard about this from one of the pilots

“Ignoring all prohibition against radio transmissions that might give away the specific target of the operation, one of the P-38 pilots, with one engine already feathering for lack of fuel after a thousand miles of flying, radioed to fighter control at Henderson Field as he came in to land: “That son of a bitch will not be dictating any peace terms in the White House.”

— Commander In Chief: FDR's Battle with Churchill, 1943 (FDR at War Book 2) by Nigel Hamilton
Commander In Chief: FDR's Battle with Churchill, 1943 (FDR at War Book 2)
 
J Randall Murphy

J Randall Murphy

Trying To Stay Awake
Dejan Corovic said:
Not that Valkyrie was fast, it was beautiful, particularly when it would drop down wingtips so to ride supersonic shockwave.
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The CGI in these presentations is pretty cool ( very realistic ). There's an almost Klingon D-9 aura about the XB-70 — with a name to match ( in spirit anyway ) !
 
J Randall Murphy

J Randall Murphy

Trying To Stay Awake
Dejan Corovic said:
Its such a pity that such a cool job will be delegated to AI:
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I get the sentiment on one level — but combat aircraft are deadly weapons, and from an unbiased humanitarian perspective, the world would be better off without them all. The problem is that unless the whole world does away with war, the escalation will continue — and personally, I think it's absolute madness to put machines that are smarter and faster than we are in control of technology that could wipe us out.

Then again — the theme behind The Day The Earth Stood Still is just that. — Gort robots are essentially AIs in control of an ultra high tech space force, the purpose of which is to enforce the peace.
 
Dejan Corovic

Dejan Corovic

As above, so bellow
J Randall Murphy said:
I get the sentiment on one level — but combat aircraft are deadly weapons, and from an unbiased humanitarian perspective, the world would be better off without them all. The problem is that unless the whole world does away with war, the escalation will continue — and personally, I think it's absolute madness to put machines that are smarter and faster than we are in control of technology that could wipe us out.

Then again — the theme behind The Day The Earth Stood Still is just that. — Gort robots are essentially AIs in control of an ultra high tech space force, the purpose of which is to enforce the peace.
Click to expand...

If one takes point of view of an independent observer from the Mars, that we should be replaced by AI is just a Darwinian step in natural evolution, and its normal that stronger species wins. If AI is stronger it will win, and that's that. We were quite happy making extinct thousands of species over the last 200,000 years, so its very hypocritical to huff and puff now that our turn has come to be the second best. AI is just nature's revenge for us messing the planet and destroying the wildlife.

But on the upside, AI will always need servants. You know, troopers to top up the fuel, replace broken parts, just everyday maintenance etc. Plus, there is all the stuff machine can't do, where human warmth would only do. So, we'll survive. For quite some time, even before AI, some philosophers had been questioning weather computers work for us or we work for computers.

As we are familiar with, its not about how things are, but what spin we put on things. So, guys from the spin department will just find new spin, and we'll all be just fine.
 
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pigfarmer

pigfarmer

tall, thin, irritable
Navy's Rush To Test Microwave Weapons Tied To Anti-Ship Ballistic Missile Fears

Navy’s Rush To Test Microwave Weapons Tied To Anti-Ship Ballistic Missile Fears​

The Navy wants high-power microwave systems to help ships conserve other weapons, specially ones capable of downing ballistic missiles.
byJoseph Trevithick| PUBLISHED Mar 29, 2024 5:11 PM EDT

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A navalized version of Epirus’ Leonidas high-power microwave directed energy weapon, a system that has been proposed to the US Navy in the past. Epirus

OSEPH TREVITHICKView Joseph Trevithick's Articles
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The U.S. Navy hopes to have a prototype high-power microwave directed energy weapon ready for shipboard testing by the end of 2026. The service sees weapons of this type as critical additional defensive options that will help its warships keep higher-end surface-to-air missiles in reserve for threats they might be better optimized for, including anti-ship ballistic missiles. The experience of American warships shooting down Houthi missiles and drones over the past six months has rammed home concerns about the magazine depth of the Navy's surface fleets, issues The War Zone previously explored in detail in a feature you can find here.
Details about the Navy's current high-power microwave (HPM) shipboard defense plans are included in its budget request for the 2025 Fiscal Year, which the service rolled out earlier this month. USNI News was the first to report on aspects of the Navy's HPM plans from the new budget proposal.

The Navy has working toward a prototype HPM weapon system specifically for this role through a program called REDCAT since at least 2023. The service's latest budget proposal says the plan is now to rename that development effort METEOR, for reasons that are not entirely clear and that we come back to later. REDCAT and METEOR both appear to be acronyms, but their meanings are unknown.
HPM weapons, in general, are designed to generate bursts of microwave energy that are capable of disrupting or destroying the electronics inside a target system. In a maritime context, HPM systems, as they are understood now, are best suited to providing close-in defense against missiles, drones, and small boats.




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A key benefit of HPM systems, which exist in other forms, compared to much more commonly discussed laser directed energy weapons is the former's ability to produce very different graduated effects. This means a single HPM weapon could potentially offer a range of capabilities, including jamming-like functionality and more destructive effects. The wider beam that some HPM systems can emit also out gives them distinct advantages compared to lasers when it comes to their ability to engage multiple targets far faster. In certain cases, this could make them better suited to tackling drone swarms.
HPM also occupies just one end of a broader spectrum of microwave directed energy weapons. The U.S. military has even fielded lower-power microwave systems in the past on a limited (and controversial) basis as non-lethal crowd control assets.
Regardless of specific type and design, directed energy weapons are attractive because of their low cost per-shot and lack of need for any kind of physical reloading compared to traditional weapons systems involving guns or missiles. An HPM or laser weapon system has theoretically unlimited magazine depth, at least in a physical sense, although there may be limitations as to how fast they can re-emit and for how long over a given period of time. Reductions in range and general effectiveness due to atmospheric and meteorological interference is another factor. For HPM weapons, electromagnetic shielding countermeasures can be an issue, but this would add weight and complexity to the threat system. For lasers, even reflective coatings can potentially impact their efficacy under certain circumstances. As such, these systems are best utilized as part of a multi-layered defense.

With all this in mind, the Navy says "the METEOR HPM weapon development will provide capability with low cost-per-shot, deep magazine, tactically significant range, short time engagement for multi-target approach, dual deception and defeat capability," according to the service's 2025 Fiscal Year budget request. "The objective of METEOR is to demonstrate [a] tactically significant, non-kinetic, High Power Microwave (HPM) payload integration onto Naval platforms to defeat, track, engage and assess operational threats while assessing integrated sensors and weapon control options."
The sections of the US Navy's 2025 Fiscal Year budget proposal discussing the METEOR program are seen above and below. <em>USN</em>

The sections of the US Navy's 2025 Fiscal Year budget proposal discussing the METEOR program are seen above and below. USN

<em>USN</em>

USN
<em>USN</em>

USN

The Navy is seeking just over $9 million for METEOR in Fiscal Year 2025. This is a decrease from the $13.5 million the service asked for to support the previous REDCAT effort in the 2024 Fiscal year.
The Navy's budget documents say that this is in part "due to a large portions [sic] of [the REDCAT] hardware build [being] completed and moving into the testing phase." One of METEOR's main objectives now is to "transition prior REDCAT hardware into parallel activities to provide a shipboard weapon prototype for integration in FY26, as well as a test bed for continued technology maturation and evaluation," those documents add. Land-based testing of the system is also expected to occur first.
METEOR also looks to have been included in a separate section of the Navy's previous 2024 Fiscal Year budget request for programs being conducted as part of the Pentagon's Rapid Defense Experimentation Reserve (RDER) initiative. Whether or not the Navy is seeking additional funding for this HPM development effort through that part of the budget in the 2025 Fiscal Year is unclear. The service's latest budget proposal does not include specific details about the programs contained within that line item.
The METEOR entry in the Navy's proposed 2024 Fiscal Year budget provides interesting additional context about the Navy's desire for shipboard HPM defense capability.
"Currently, the Joint Force suffers from a lack of redundant, resilient hard kill/soft kill options against stressing stream raid threats of Anti-Ship Ballistic Missiles (ASBM). The issue is particularly acute in the USINDOPACOM AOR [U.S. Indo-Pacific Command Area of Responsibility] due to the vast geographic distances involved, ship magazine size and adversary actions," the service's Fiscal Year 2024 budget request explains. "Without additional hard kill/soft kill options preserving magazine depth, US forces in the AOR face unacceptably high risks to the mission and to the force. Available assets in the AOR are limited with a limited number of missile inventory. HPM payload capability will solve this problem by supplementing and conserving the ships [sic] kinetic defensive weapons."
The sections on the Meteor program that appeared in the US Navy's 2024 Fiscal Year budget request. The effort looks to be directly related to the program outlined in the service's latest proposed budget. <em>USN</em>

The sections on the Meteor program that appeared in the US Navy's 2024 Fiscal Year budget request. The effort looks to be directly related to the program outlined in the service's latest proposed budget. USN

This is a clear reference to the Chinese People's Liberation Army's (PLA) very open development and fielding of an increasingly capable and diverse array of ground, sea, and air-launched anti-ship ballistic missiles. The PLA's efforts are part of a larger anti-access/area denial strategy that is heavily focused on denying U.S. carrier strike groups the ability to operate within striking distance of its shores.

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There have been reports that Russia may now be exploring the development of similar capabilities, which it could also deploy in the Pacific region. The U.S. Army is also now pursuing anti-ship ballistic missiles of its own.
Iran has also emerged as a major developer of anti-ship ballistic missile capabilities and a key source for their increasing proliferation, including to non-state actors. Iranian-backed Houthi militants in Yemen have now become the first to employ these weapons in anger and how shown just how real a threat they pose in the course of their ongoing anti-ship campaign in and around the Red Sea. U.S. authorities say that the Houthis used anti-ship ballistic missiles in the attack that ultimately led to the sinking of the Belize-flagged cargo vessel MV Rubymar in February and the fatal attack on the Barbados-flagged container ship True Confidence earlier this month.

A view of the MV<em> True Confidence</em> on fire after a Houthi anti-ship ballistic missile attack. <em>CENTCOM</em>

A view of the MV True Confidence on fire after a Houthi anti-ship ballistic missile attack. CENTCOM
The Houthis have also been using anti-ship cruise missiles, aerial kamikaze drones, and explosive-laden uncrewed surface vessels and underwater vehicles (USVs and UUVs) – the exact kinds of threats an HPM weapon would be most useful against – to target foreign warships and commercial vessels off the southern coasts of the Arabian Peninsula. The Yemeni militants have also launched complex attacks involving multiple types of missiles and drones.
All of this only further underscores the Navy's stated reasoning behind the Meteor HPM program, even if those weapons are not primarily intended to be used against ballistic missile threats. That being said, there is a possibility that HPM systems could have some limited use against lower-tier anti-ship ballistic missiles.
Regardless, Navy warships have particularly limited and costly options for engaging ballistic missile threats, which present unique challenges for defenders just owning the very high speeds they reach during the terminal phase of flight. Advanced designs with varying degrees of maneuverability can be even harder to track and intercept. Novel hypersonic weapons, another set of emerging threats, combine these attributes to be even more difficult to protect against.

One of the Navy's main weapons for tackling ballistic, as well as hypersonic threats, to its ships today are variants of the Standard Missile 6 (SM-6). This is a highly capable multi-purpose design that can also be used against a variety of other targets in the air and on the surface, but one that is also expensive. In the surface attack role, SM-6 functions in many ways like a ballistic missile. The Navy's 2025 Fiscal Year budget request puts the unit price of an SM-6 Block IA, the most advanced variant currently in production, at $4.2 million. Each one of the still-in-development Block IB version, which will have greatly improved performance and other capabilities, is expected to have a price tag of around $8.5 million.
An SM-6 missile at the moment of launch. <em>USN</em>

An SM-6 missile at the moment of launch. USN
A portion of the Navy's Arleigh Burke class destroyers and the service's dwindling number of Ticonderoga class cruisers are also capable of employing variants of the SM-3. The members of the SM-3 family are specifically designed to intercept higher-end ballistic missiles, including intercontinental ballistic missiles (IBCM), in the mid-course portion of their flight outside of the Earth's atmosphere. The SM-3 Block IIA, the most advanced variant in production, has a unit cost of around $28 million, according to Pentagon budget documents.

A briefing slide showing details about the different versions of the SM-3. <em>MDA</em>

A briefing slide showing details about the different versions of the SM-3. MDA
The current price of a single Block IIIC variant of the SM-2, the latest version of the Navy's current standard ship-launched medium-range surface-to-air missile, is also around $2.5 million. Shorter-range RIM-162 Evolved Sea Sparrow Missiles (ESSM), each of which costs some $1.5 million, are another important component of the service's existing shipboard air and missile defense arsenal.

Navy ships can only carry so many of these missiles at once in their Vertical Launch Systems (VLS) and currently the service has no operational capacity to reload VLS cells at sea. This has long raised concerns about how quickly individual ships might deplete their magazines in a major conflict, as The War Zone explored in detail in our recent feature.
Just in operations against the Houthis between October and February, Navy warships fired at least 100 Standard series missiles. Expenditures of these and other weapons have only continued since then. The service could expect to see even higher volumes of incoming threats, including more capable anti-ship ballistic missiles, in any potential high-end fight against China in the Pacific.
"We are a learning organization. And so as we apply the concepts of defense in depth, it isn't always an expensive SM-2 missile that gets shot at a UAS [uncrewed aerial system]," Navy Adm. Christopher Grady, Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at a press conference about the proposed 2025 Fiscal Year budget earlier this month. "We've learned how to use other systems and have rapidly adjusted to this concept of defense in depth. And that's what gives me great confidence that we'll be able to sustain that as long as it takes to change the calculus over there."
The Navy's attitude toward the anti-ship ballistic missile threat, specifically, has dramatically shifted in recent years. In 2021, now-retired Navy Vice Admiral Jeffrey Trussler, then the Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Information Warfare, said "I hope they [the Chinese] just keep pouring money into that type of thing," indicating that the service felt at the time it had sufficient countermeasures and/or tactics, techniques, and procedures in place to defend against them. This assessment has clearly changed since then.
When operational Meteor HPM weapons might start being integrated onto Navy ships remains to be seen. The service could also seek to field systems, even on a limited basis, before 2026 through other programs. In February, Naval Sea Systems (NAVSEA) put out a very broad call for potential counter-drone capabilities that could be added to its ships within 12 months of a contract award.
As already noted, HPM systems are not new and a number of potentially viable designs already exist in various stages of development within the U.S. military and the commercial sector. Private firm Epirus has previously shown a concept for a shipboard version of its Leonidas HPM system, seen at the top of this story, that leverages existing components of the Mk 15 Phalanx Close-in Weapon System (CIWS) that is found on many Navy warships. BAE Systems has presented an HPM weapon concept for use in the maritime domain in the past, too.

The Air Force Research Laboratory's containerized Tactical High-power Operational Responder (THOR) system is one of a number of high-power microwave directed energy weapons known to be under development now. <em>USAF</em>

The Air Force Research Laboratory's containerized Tactical High-power Operational Responder (THOR) system is one of a number of high-power microwave directed energy weapons known to be under development now. USAF
The Navy has already been fielding various tiers of laser directed energy weapons on a limited number of warships and is in the process of developing additional designs that could be deployed on a broader basis.
No matter what, the Navy clearly sees HPM weapons as a key part of future layered defense arrangements for its warships to help ensure that they can maximize their overall defensive capabilities to protect against an array of threats, including anti-ship ballistic missiles.
Contact the author: joe@twz.com
stripe

ANTI-SHIP BALLISTIC MISSILESDIRECTED ENERGYDRONESHIGH POWERED MICROWAVESNAVAL MUNITIONSNAVIESU.S. NAVYUNMANNED
 
pigfarmer

pigfarmer

tall, thin, irritable
It never fails to amaze me seeing that 'meatball' on a modern fighter. I saw German pilots from the Luftwaffe - or whatever they called it circa 1995 - at OshKosh, Wisconsin in front of their Tornadoes. Slightly different uniforms, that iron cross, speaking German .... gave me that same strange feeling. Like, alternate universe stuff for some reason.

WWII Japan's production of the famed Zero was hampered because the Mitsubishi factory in which they were made did not have its own airfield. Completed Zeros were hauled by oxen to an airfield 24 miles away. A shortage in feed supply starved the oxen, stranding newly made aircraft at the factory.
The Conquering Tide: War in the Pacific Islands, 1942–1944 (The Pacific War Trilogy, 2)

Excellent writer/series BTW.
 
pigfarmer

pigfarmer

tall, thin, irritable
Dejan Corovic said:
Absolutely unmissable and brilliant reconstruction of aerial ambush in which Admiral Yamamoto was killed;


View: https://youtu.be/w03hc43v9do
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Some confusion in that video about aircraft. They used P-38 Lightnings because they had the range. it was a sixteen ship flight, one or two dropped out due to mechanical failures. Four went low to be the killers while the rest stayed above to deal with the CAP. A burst of cannon fire from below killed Yamamoto in his seat - they found him still strapped in amongst the wreckage of the Betty bomber he was in.

I was surprised to learn that FDR wrote a snarky letter to Mrs.Yamamoto after the attack which gloated over the fact he authorized it and suggested her husband was roasting in the afteerlife. He never sent it. I have it in a Kindle book from Nigel Hamilton. I'll dig it out.

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