The spaceship that looks...out of place...in the future

POSTED BY: Steve580
UPDATED: Monday, May 3, 2004 22:30
VIEWED: 9385
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GUNRUNNER

Saturday, May 1, 2004 5:39 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Kugelblitz:
Hmm, I thought that the A10 was built to take hits from the 23mm stuff the Russians used on their AAA platforms.

Newer (70’s, 80's on) Russian guns use 30mm. One land vehicle (I forget the designation) has twin 30mm guns and a pair of SAM launchers. The ZSU-30 has a single 30mm gattaling gun. (Similar to the A10s tank-busting gun but with Radar guidance!)

When these weapons began appearing in the early 70's (when the A10 was being designed) they chewed up US military jets in Vietnam. When the A10 entered service it was realized that these modern guns would force the A10 to keep their distance from enemy armored units causing them to be relegated to scout duty despite there armor.

It should be noted that even small AAA and small arms fire in sufficient quantities would bring down even the toughest jet. That is one reason why the low altitude attack jets like the A-6 Intruder have been retired, and why the British Tornado jets took high losses in the Gulf War during missions to crater the Iraqi airstrips.

The Firefly CCG Web Site:
http://mywebpage.netscape.com/Bllm119/firefly_ccg_web_site.htm
>Help out today!

GUNHAND

Saturday, May 1, 2004 6:18 AM

From what I can remember, and most of which is probably out of date but probably not by a large margin since modern weapons systems have a much longer "shelf life" than systems from say 50 years ago. Mostly because of cost but partially from technolgy. Anyhow, from my hazy brainpan:

The 30mm/SA-19 armed version of what's basically a redesigned ZSU-23-4 Shilka is the 2S6M Tunguska. Service entry on it wasn't until 1990, and the jury is pretty much still out if it was much of an improvement over the Shilka or not. The gun was basically a high elevation model of the one on the BMP-2 and the muzzle velocity never seemed to be good enough for fast movers, helicopters yeah; jets, not so much. And the missile system is basically a MANPAD, so same story on effectiveness against jets/helicopters. I never saw one in action, never saw one outside of a recognition manual actually and from what I gather it's not heavilly deployed and almost never exported.

ZSU-30 gatling-style was something that we heard about in the early '90s but no one ever confirmed that it was actually built in series production, and I've never seen a confirmed picture of one in service. Some grainy shots of Soviet/Russian tests but after the USSR went kaput we found out a lot of what they showed off in 'training excercises' was stuff they wanted the west to see.

Strategic disinformation was a cornerstone of Soviet military planning. And we fell for it a lot of times, some weapon systems the US fielded in particuliar were designed with a bogus threat in mind. Usually we caught on, sometimes, not so much. A few things in the current inventory were built to be used against non-existant weapon systems. We still have them, but the use has been adapted.

At least up until the early '90s the A-10 was still expected to perform in a "Fulda Gap" sort of situation against Soviet/Russian massed armored formations. Whether or not that's wise is a matter of debate but it was still on the table. Much like the Germans in WWII had a proportionally (much) larger number of machineguns over Allied units of the same size the Soviets were very lavish about antiaircraft defenses, especially mobile systems in their Shock Armies, those guys had a system for everything it seemed like and in bulk.

You're right on the money though about small arms fire being dangerous to aircraft, one of the loss reports on a Cobra in Desert Storm indicated it was downed from .303 rifle fire. Which means probably some farmer got lucky with his grandpa's Enfield. Never discount the Magic BB.

Back on topic:

One of the things I loved most about the Firefly class is the lightningbug effect, and the oil slick. Now those are some nifty effects. Just wish we get an idea at some point over what a full burn really constitutes.

~-~-~-~-~-~-~-
"Oh hey, I got an idea. Instead of us hanging
around playing art critic till I get pinched by
the Man, how's about we move away from this
eerie-ass piece of work and get on with our
increasingly eerie-ass day, how's that?"

My eerie-ass website:
http://gunhandsfirefly.homestead.com/Index.html

KUGELBLITZ

Monday, May 3, 2004 4:34 PM

One Gundish radar or its equivalent is the guidance you mention, which provides range data only. I think the other version with the twin weapons has laser guided missiles.

I can never be sure what is commonly known through varuous sources and what isn't.

"We are exporting democracy because we have all of this unused democracy lying around at home. Why not make some money doing it?"

GUNRUNNER

Monday, May 3, 2004 9:25 PM

Kugeblitz the twin weapon's missile is the SA-19 (SA-N-11 is the navalized version which is very common) is radio control guided, while the Navy one most likely has an additional IR seeker for use against Anti Ship Missiles (which are much faster than a jet so they can be used against fast movers). It may have a Laser Proximity Fuse and that was what you where thinking of.

I didn't know the Gundish radar was for range only, however you can easily link several other radar systems together for targeting of AAA.

Quote:
Originally posted by Gunhand:
Strategic disinformation was a cornerstone of Soviet military planning. And we fell for it a lot of times, some weapon systems the US fielded in particuliar were designed with a bogus threat in mind. Usually we caught on, sometimes, not so much. A few things in the current inventory were built to be used against non-existant weapon systems. We still have them, but the use has been adapted.

One Hi larious example is the Russian "Alfa" class attack sub; we believed it could go down to 3000 feet. So we built the Los Angeles class and deep diving torpedoes to counter it. So one Intel guy’s misinterptaion caused a whole class of boats to be built, luckily the ship’s designers had the foresight to include space for VLS missile tubes, or the USN would be stuck with a boat designed to fight a error on the pages of Jane’s.

The Firefly CCG Web Site:
http://mywebpage.netscape.com/Bllm119/firefly_ccg_web_site.htm
>Help out today!

GUNHAND

Monday, May 3, 2004 10:30 PM

Yeah Gunhand the Alfa is a good example there. The funny thing was the Russians would have a testbed vehicle/system that could do x, then in their reports they know we'd read they'd basically write it up as x+ (with the + being whatever they though would be as technically impossible yet believable enough that it could have a 1 in a very large number of being true maybe) just to trick us into trying to make the "impossible".

Thing is, we usually did. In a way it backfired on them because we wound up with systems they thought would be impossible, but when we fielded them there was no way they could have a prayer of matching them.

In a way one of the reasons we won the Cold War by just throwing so much money at the false Russian tech that they just had no hope in the world to come close. They tried and spent themselves into a black hole they couldn't crawl out of.

Worked a bit both ways though, the MiG-25 was built to destroy a bomber that we'd already cancelled as being impractical and too expensive for the improvement it gave over what we already had. But the KGB/GRU saw the prototype test flights and couldn't believe we'd cancel it after putting all the money into R&D to make it. So they wound up with a world class interceptor that didn't have the target it was designed for.

~-~-~-~-~-~-~-
"Oh hey, I got an idea. Instead of us hanging
around playing art critic till I get pinched by
the Man, how's about we move away from this
eerie-ass piece of work and get on with our
increasingly eerie-ass day, how's that?"

My eerie-ass website:
http://gunhandsfirefly.homestead.com/Index.html

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