heliostatic

Comment Threads

• TRX commented on Down tools
  same waypoints That's the USAF's version of "working to rule." When the Pentagon doesn't like the orders they get from the Oval Office, they interpret them in such as way as to increase casualties. That's why they flew the same paths and altitudes hitting North Vietnam when they were ordered to make sorties to facilitate bringing the NV back to the negotiating table. When Nixon saw the rise in casualty figures he went ballistic; he talks about it in "The White House Years." It wasn't politically feasible to have the officers responsible executed, but I'm sure Tricky Dick thought...
• Nojay commented on Down tools
  A CVN doesn't have "spare reactor juice" to make fuel from seawater and CO2. You can run the numbers yourself if you wish but to fuel up a two-plane flight for CAP purely from the reactors of a Ford class CVN would take a couple of hours of 100% of its 300MW maximum capacity, assuming an electricity-to-fuel efficiency of maybe 10%. To do that the ship would have to sit dead in the water (emphasis on the word "dead") with all internal systems switched off. Said recumbent Scipidae would soon be inducted into the Silent Service in a shooting war....
• existentialistjoy commented on Down tools
  The plan isn't spare juice - the plan is to replace tankers which have to come and go from the group, with a dedicated jetfuel-manufacturing ship, which is basically a hull stuffed to the gills with chemical plant and reactors. Propulsion system? The water intake and outflow from the cooling system is what moves it through the water. Point being that it never leaves the aegis of the carrier group. That isn't the selling point for having a reactor in a carrier though. The point of having carriers be nuclear is that it gets you strategic mobility. A nuclear carrier...
• gravelbelly22 commented on Down tools
  Sorry - your strategic mobility argument fails as soon as the escorts in your CVBG can't keep up. The carrier can't steam around on its own without AAW and ASW escorts, and the SSN that apparently escorts USN CVBG will lose all of its advantages....
• gravelbelly22 commented on Down tools
  That's the USAF's version of "working to rule." When the Pentagon doesn't like the orders they get from the Oval Office, they interpret them in such as way as to increase casualties. Sorry, that's using conspiracy theories when plain old incompetence or complacency will do. There are some reasonable and detailed articles on how the Serbian cloudpuncher brought down the F-117; essentially, the lowered observability is aimed at the most effective guidance radar frequencies. The Serb, like the RN's Type 42 destroyers, had a lower-than-typical-frequency search radar (in both cases, rather old). This let them detect the aircraft; but not...