Unimaginable war machine

reply to post by Erectus


I think because wars are not fought like they were in the past. These numbers really don't matter or they just don't matter to me. The US will send in drones and special forces to do some damage way before they send in a massive ground force.

To my knowledge we are the only country to have a hypersonic aircraft and hypersonic missile. How greatly stronger these are from there predecessors only our military knows. But, I truly believe we are just to stronger and way more technology advanced when it comes to military strength.

Originally posted by StratosFear
With A-10s 'WarHogs" just as it was designed to do. Opening rounds and the guys in the back of the armoured columns would see what a GAU-8 30mm Avenger cannon does to a T-72 and give up on the spot. Any sane person would, and for the ones that are not sane and decide to keep coming we have CBUs and Rockeyes.

This is why Tanks mean FA when you have air superiority

Highway Of Death

Originally posted by StratosFear
With A-10s 'WarHogs" just as it was designed to do. Opening rounds and the guys in the back of the armoured columns would see what a GAU-8 30mm Avenger cannon does to a T-72 and give up on the spot. Any sane person would, and for the ones that are not sane and decide to keep coming we have CBUs and Rockeyes.

I know, it's a small thing so I apologize in advance, but it's not "WarHog." It's "Warthog"--an affectionate name:



which they kind of look like:

To the OP..

The numbers you threw out at the beginning are so speculative that it makes the whole basis of your OP irrelevant. It'll never happen. Those are the kind of questions I used to ask as a kid. I'm not calling you a kid, I was just overly obsessed with military technology and the like. They are just "what if" kind of questions.

But I will bite for old times sake.

Based one the numbers you threw out we would have to arm every single American to engage in this war.

Russia though notoriously well armed and supplied have kind of checked out of the game for the 15 years after the wall fell. They only now are really starting to invest in military technology and rearming their forces with modern equipment. Before the fall of Communism the general understanding was that NATO forces would be slugging it out conventionally over the plains of eastern Europe. Good old fashioned Patton style tactics. The Soviets had us out-tanked something like 3 to 1. After the fall they couldn't even really pay their soldiers for a few years. They basically had a conscript army for all intents and purposes. The Russians have been basically been rebuilding from scratch after those dark scary years and trying to step away from that old cold-war style training. Though they have learned a lot about COIN in Chechnya. Russia is still struggling to get money to advance their military, mostly because their government is corrupt and divided.

China on the other hand is in a completely different boat. They have more debt free money than they can spend. They just lack the technological expertise. It has been difficult for China to purchase good technology from other countries because China has a tendency to tell you that they will purchase 50000 of something and then cancel the order or not pay after receiving the first 12. They then will turn around and reverse engineer what they essentially stole. They have no business ethics when it comes to technology. Russia has even been weary about selling tech to China because of that. Other than that China is extremely capable of arming themselves and training. They just lack the legacy of arms build up and fighting that the US, Europe, and Russia have. China is learning as they go where most others countries have learned the valuable lessons of warfare first hand. China was chucking spears at the invading Japanese during WWII to put things in perspective.

India just wants you to buy their stuff and not China's. They also just want clean water for their population. They have been fighting a communist insurgency in the north, and they haven't been very good at it. India does not want war. They don't have the financial resources for it either.

You know how those cruise missiles took at the command centers of the Iraquis by fling into their windows?

That is the nature of the new warefare. That and dropping things from the sky. And knowing from the sky where "things" are to be bombed.

There will be no large-scale land warfare anymore. Command centers will be the targets not tanks and troops im the field. Kill the head of the beast and the rest dies or wanders around without direction.

The same for naval warfare. large sea-going ships will cease to exist within minutes of a total war, especially aircraft carriers. Eventually, even without war they will go the way of the big battleships, eliminated by space based systems or by some form or another of missile.

To everyone thinking war will always be violent. Weapon systems are all computerized. Hackers can take control of drones. EMP weapons will be massively utilized in wars to come. It doesn't make sense anymore to just "bomb" the target.

The reality is that owing to governments and military organisations around the world not liking the idea of disclosing their true capabilities, we are not capable of making accurate assumptions about their ability to field artillery pieces or what numbers of troops they can add to the orders of battle.

Also you must consider that not all of the battle ready forces in the world are actually beholden to a regime or nation. There are many soldiers of fortune, mercenaries, thugs, criminal gangs, and appendages of intelligence services (disguised as terror groups and merc outfits). In the case of those who follow the money, they could be a serious addition to the numbers, bringing high value expertise and experience to the field, as well as lugging privately owned artillery and heavy vehicles into the equation.

So not only are governments quite adept at hiding the capabilities of their equipment, but they are also good at hiding the scale of their military assets in terms of numbers. Add to this the existence of mercenary outfits, with their unknown (and probably unknowable) assets also, and the whole equation changes shape quite significantly. I do not believe that it is possible to make an informed assessment of the real numbers of armor and manpower that any group or collective could field as a result of the amorphous nature of the data set being examined.

I certainly do not think that the analysis you provide gives a full and fair account of the capacity of the west to out gun the east, despite having less units of fighting men, and less numbers in terms of their armor. The west has far better weapons from a technological point of view, capable of tracking more targets, and destroying more threats, in less time, than its counterparts in other parts of the world. Also they tote better, smarter rounds and missiles than thier eastern counterparts. Its not a done deal, and the parameters of such a battle are not known quantities either , so the outcomes are not clear.

reply to post by schuyler


That was not a typo at all they are in fact called WartHog but in the circles that actually deal with this particular aircraft it is and will always be known as the "WarHog". No other plane in existance can deliver the amount of punishment for its size in reality or on paper save for the heavy bombers but you dont call in a B-2 airstrike when you are in a firefight on the ground with tanks. Helos arent going to get their fast enough or be on a loitering perch long enough to do anything at the right time like an A-10 can. Its earned the name WarHog. Its a pilot thang


...and if you want to get technical about it the official name was Thunderbolt II after the P-47.

reply to post by TritonTaranis


War is Hell... And thats what the aftermath looks like when the Hogs of War are unleashed. Its so much better when its just unmanned scrap metal heaps the resemble tanks that are getting hammered by 30MM at a target range were no one gets injured. Still those MBTs didnt stand a F@#$ing chance did they?

reply to post by StratosFear


Two of these aircraft obliterated an armor unit after 1/7 Cav performed a recon/harrassment attack in Desert Storm.The show at night ruined the 4th of July for me.Then we checked to vehicles for hostiles,after the rest surrendered.Yuck,not such a cool idea.Bad memories and uranium poisoning.

Originally posted by StratosFear
reply to post by schuyler

 

you dont call in a B-2 airstrike when you are in a firefight on the ground with tanks.

In 2003, a B-52 dropped 2 CBU-105's from an altitude of 40,000 feet to support a Marine unit that was being threatened by a large Iraqi tank column. After the bombs destroyed two dozen of the enemy tanks, the remaining 60% of the enemy tank crews surrendered.

The pilot of the B-52 speaks about the incident

I worked munitions in the AF, andI have never heard an A-10 called a Warhog...

Hi,

Originally posted by Aliensun
You know how those cruise missiles took at the command centers of the Iraquis by fling into their windows?

Yes we all know about those but few are aware that it took many tries to do so even when targets were identified. Also there is no good reason why a 500 pound or KG weapon travelling at hundreds of Km's per hour needs to go trough the window when it will as easily go trough the first wall, the second and a third or level the wall when exploding several dozen meters in front of it... The GOA has done many studies over the years and it is now clear that in both the gulf war, Serbia and OIF the claims of accuracy, while improving, were massively oversold. The fact that smart weapons still make out a small percentage of total munitions , and even less so in terms of weight, is also completely ignored when hyping 'smart' weapons.

That is the nature of the new warefare. That and dropping things from the sky. And knowing from the sky where "things" are to be bombed.

Information management have always played a large part in war/battle and the effectiveness of smart weapons and technology is directly tied to the gap between your own information gathering and distribution abilities and those of your enemy. If they greatly exceed those of the enemy pin point strikes by small forces becomes practical but as the gap decreases it takes more and more assets to attain the same level of damage while minimizing your own risks&attrition. To suggest that the US 'smart' weapons would have anything like the same effect on a European/Asian/ first world power today when smart weapons proved to be so ineffective against Serbia in the late 90's is in my opinion folly. RELYING on superior technology is and has always been a bad idea and luckily not what the US armed forces is or has done so far.

There will be no large-scale land warfare anymore. Command centers will be the targets not tanks and troops im the field. Kill the head of the beast and the rest dies or wanders around without direction.

This is why a mechanized company probably processes more battlefield information today than a regiment or division could or did back in world war II. To suggest that there are 'command' centers that you can just 'take out' to make land warfare impossible is a vast over simplification and mostly presuming that the US can and will always be 'lucky' enough to be able to choose who it fights and were as they have in recent modern history.

A first world army hardly has a 'head' you can just lope off and such fanciful notions really needs to be discarded.

The same for naval warfare. large sea-going ships will cease to exist within minutes of a total war, especially aircraft carriers. Eventually, even without war they will go the way of the big battleships, eliminated by space based systems or by some form or another of missile.

The worlds oceans are rather big places and while space and orbital assets may lend huge advantage they are as vulnerable as that sniper in the church steeple.... While third world powers do not often have the means to counter that observation&communication advantage some first world powers do and in losing those integrated services the US armed forces may very well be worse off than their opponents given their dependence. The US armed forces is designed to fight a convention war while it's original rival organized and designed it's forces around the assumption that the war would be fought&concluded in a nuclear environment; that said weaponry were used to some effect in totally different and also non nuclear environments by third world powers is not often understood.

As far large naval assets ceasing to exist you are not alone in claiming that such would or could have been the case even in the 70's but one must always consider the cost of occupying the high 'space' ground. One must remember that big battleships were in fact replaced by even bigger aircraft carriers and that the larger modern ballistic missile submarines submerged displacement is very similar to that of world war II era battleships with a destructive potential that is even comparatively much much higher.

We can obviously at length discuss why this is so but the fact is that both the US and Russia are continuing to build rather large submarines/aircraft carriers so it's not obvious to me that big must be bad. If you wish to project power small ships has certainly not become the norm but i do think there is a ever stronger case for going smaller in defense more and more so as the disparity of power increase...

In closing i think you should return to what source material we have ( The GOA does decent work with little resources&political support) that i believe will indicate that war is set to remain as complex as it always was with sustainable attrition playing as big a part as it always has.

Stellar

reply to post by jaheath


Typically heavy bomber are not used for close air support, but in special cases i can see it happening. I know several pilots and guys who worked specifically with the gun that refer to the A-10 as the WarHog so maybe its not as widespread as i thought but a more appropriate name i think.

I believe that Russia has the ability to hold anything it takes in its sphere. ITs' resources are large even if partly antiquated. Its' leadership is likely much smarter than Saddams. If Russia decided to Occupy Syria the West would never get them out.

That is fundamentally different than Russia rolling across Europe toward France. That would be an offensive war for Russia. Occupying Syria....or Georgia would be defensive. Maybe they'd be on offense in Georgia, but only for a couple of days. Then the West would face an array of targets more numerous and deadly than anything since WWII. That, even if China, Pakistan and others didn't pitch in their material and geopolitical assets.

russia hold syria maybe but they did a bang up job in Afghanistan against horse men with redeyes against hinds. India would probably side with us . and if they did mobilize tanks and artillery like that you would see tactical nukes and air burst weapons used to hinder tank columns at choke points. i believe we could make the air thick with drones that were armed to the teeth with hellfire missiles.