US Navy Destroyer Collision Again!!!

[Olddan1943]

Originally Posted by DeborahLee

The Navy has changed in the last few years. They don't transmit messages in all caps anymore because the captains thought they were being yelled at, a tender in the gulf war was nicknamed the Love Boat when 37 of the crew ended up pregnant, and the new carrier Gerald R Ford has no urinals on board. Always knew those air-dales had to sit down.

DeborahLee, I heard more than one Wave say, if they didn't get their desired duty station they would just get pregnant and an "out" from the service.

With 3000 people on board, for discussion we will say there is 500 females, the difficulty of finding the father might have been daunting except, I believe now, the health records include a print out the DNA. LOL

If I were the 'father' I might feel a bit disappointed because she said she loved me, not that she was using me to get a free pass out of the service. Shedding a tear.

[a64pilot]

Read what the General in charge of US Army Aviation says about this crash.
The most Damning statement is the one that Flight hours are the lowest in 30 years, which with as much Combat as there has been for most of those years, astonishes me. If you can’t practice, you won’t be any good at what you do.
https://www.military.com/daily-news/...alifornia.html

[boatman61]

Originally Posted by a64pilot

Read what the General in charge of US Army Aviation says about this crash.
The most Damning statement is the one that Flight hours are the lowest in 30 years, which with as much Combat as there has been for most of those years, astonishes me. If you can’t practice, you won’t be any good at what you do.
https://www.military.com/daily-news/...alifornia.html

Why waste expensive planes and pilots when one guy in a room can control half a dozen drones instead.. and bomb the $£it outa folk.. and as a smaller target..
BlackHawk Down maybe helped re helicopter gunships as well.

[a64pilot]

Originally Posted by boatman61

Why waste expensive planes and pilots when one guy in a room can control half a dozen drones instead.. and bomb the $£it outa folk.. and as a smaller target..
BlackHawk Down maybe helped re helicopter gunships as well.

Because you can’t, and I suspect you know that. Any drone is very limited in its response and capabilities. Actual combat is very fluid, and never goes according to your plan.
Blackhawk down was TF 160 and they are equipped differently than regular Army, therefore they don’t have say Apaches, they have “little birds”, which are very similar to Vietnam era Losh and in many ways are not really gunships. So they then developed the DAP bird, which is a Bkackhawk with some Apache weapon systems, but missing the important stuff, namely the target acquisition and designation sight system.

The takeaway to me is several fold, first that General committed career suicide by telling the truth as he sees it, so to him it’s was important.
Secondly if he is correct, and something as simple as Flight hours is a very easy to measure metric so I do not think he could be stretching the truth, then the state of training for US Army Aviation is in serious trouble, and I’d suspect that may also be true of the US Navy.

[boatman61]

Could these strikes in just one theatre be contributing to fewer flying hours.. then there's Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen.
Times they are a changing.

Reported US strikes, Afghanistan 2017

Strikes recorded by the Bureau
Total reported strikes
2607-2609
Total reported killed
852-1445
Civilians reported killed
13-149
Children reported killed
2-27
Total reported injured
147-295

Arial combat is a different beast.. and once you've controlled the air its over.

[JPA Cate]

It is hard to believe any reported kill figures. Political climates change, and what to under report changes with that; plus such figures can be used to manipulate public opinion. Frankly, I view all of them with some withholding of belief.

Ann

[boatman61]

Originally Posted by JPA Cate

It is hard to believe any reported kill figures. Political climates change, and what to under report changes with that; plus such figures can be used to manipulate public opinion. Frankly, I view all of them with some withholding of belief.

Ann

Ann.. the kill figures are bollox.. who goes there to verify them.. its just guesses kept low be acceptable to the public.. kinda like knowing how many civilians live around an ISIS house in Mosul..
I was pointing out the amount of Drone strikes that would off yore been carried out by a piloted craft.. response to A64's comment on reduced flying hours for pilots.

[a64pilot]

It’s TRAINING hours he and I am talking about, not Combat time.
You need to train, before you fight. I have seen the Army Aviation anyway go from a high state of readiness, to one of being inept, and it all was based upon ability to train.

[boatman61]

Is not a large part done in simulators these days.

[DumnMad]

Originally Posted by boatman61

Is not a large part done in simulators these days.

Yeah, and what about the thousands of hours spent on computor games during their youth. Surely that counts for something compared to the games played in years past.

[a64pilot]

Originally Posted by boatman61

Is not a large part done in simulators these days.

Yes, The CMS or Combat Mission Simulator for the AH-64a was a building much larger than a Gymnasium and was partially filled with Cray supercomputers. It had both cockpits as rooms if you will that raised up in the air about 20” and were full motion.
Now they are truck mounted so that they can deploy as not having use of the simulators in the first gulf war was considered to be a real problem. Plus the truck mounted ones are I’m sure tens of millions of dollars cheaper.
However a simulator really doesn’t train you as well as actually doing it. Nothing replaces actual experience.
They are very good at training for Emergency procedures and Combat weapons procedures as that is tough to train for in real life, but so far as say training for nap of the earth Flight at night? No simulator can actually train you for that, only doing it can.

Simulator training first became very widely used in WWII for instrument training I believe.

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by boatman61

. . .

A[e]rial combat is a different beast.. and once you've controlled the air its over.

This is severe thread drift, but not necessarily.

We had air superiority during most of the Vietnam War, but we lost.

The Germans had air superiority over the Eastern Front almost to the very end (despite huge numbers of planes produced by and supplied to the Soviets), but they were smashed on the ground.

Air superiority is awfully nice, but does not always determine the outcome of a war.

[boatman61]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

This is severe thread drift, but not necessarily.

We had air superiority during most of the Vietnam War, but we lost.

The Germans had air superiority over the Eastern Front almost to the very end (despite huge numbers of planes produced by and supplied to the Soviets), but they were smashed on the ground.

Air superiority is awfully nice, but does not always determine the outcome of a war.

The reference was to aerial combat Dock.. once air supremacy is won in modern warfare, drones can and often do take over for the ground strikes.. also most all the surveillance flights.
On the ground its down to the quality, determination and skills of the troops and their leaders..
The Russians won through sheer numbers and the fact the Germans had stretched their supply lines too far.. a magnificent feat in reaching the outskirts of Moscow but.. the Russians use of the scorched earth policy cut their legs from under them.

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by boatman61

The reference was to aerial combat Dock.. once air supremacy is won in modern warfare, drones can and often do take over for the ground strikes.. also most all the surveillance flights.

Oh, I see what you mean. Thanks for clarifying.

That's interesting and new information for me. I don't know anything about aerial warfare post drones. Need to do some reading

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by Exile

So you're saying that int'l (and perhaps internal) politics is driving it, but military procedure & protocol require it due to Russia's "enemy" status? Makes sense, but hard to see any actual military or other practical purpose behind it. But certainly more innocuous than Russia's "buzzing" of US Navy ships & aircraft I suppose.

As to why the Russians are being treated as an enemy, some of the (perhaps superficial) explanations include Putin's comments years ago that the demise of the old Soviet Union was a "catastrophe" and he therefore (it is assumed) desires a reconquest of the old empire, his threats & actions in cutting off gas supplies to Poland & other areas of E. Europe should they join NATO, and his military actions & political interference in Crimea & Ukraine. But what was at least attributed to triggering the latest round of sanctions was the alleged interference in the US presidential election. And I say "alleged" for two reasons: (i) not definitively proven, or at least proven to a higher degree than the interference in previous elections by both sides; and (ii) because there are many who believe that the latest sanctions were imposed purely as a political tool to kick off the yet unproven "collusion" accusations btwn the Russians & the Trump election campaign.

In other words, and assuming the above, the Russians are being scapegoated for the sake of internal US politics. Despite no evidence yet uncovered of this alleged Russian collusion, the Dems cannot undo sanctions because it would appear as a concession that the collusion never existed, and neither Trump nor the Repubs can undo it because they don't want to give any credence to the other parties' meme that Trump is in cahoots with Putin.

I am, of course, engaging in some speculation here which may or many not be well-founded. But as you say, it's definitely political, and also potentially ridiculous depending on which reason(s) one chooses to believe.

Wow, I am impressed by how intelligent all these comments and questions on Russia are from different people here. It seems my sailing friends have more nuanced views than some diplomats I know

I don't think we want to get into the whole history of the relationship between Russia and the West on here -- it's not really relevant to cruising and no doubt someone with less nuanced views will pile on trying to start an argument.

I'd like to just make one comment -- since such intelligent questions were asked -- on one little question, about Putin's referring to the demise of the USSR as a "catastrophe", a statement which is totally misunderstood by a lot of people in the West.

Putin is a complicated figure and I don't want to get into that -- suffice it to say that he's not a nice man and I'm not defending him per se, although neither is he the devil incarnate.

But I agree with him that the dissolution of the Soviet Union was a catastrophe, and probably most former Soviet citizens agree with him.

Putin was not saying that the demise of COMMUNISM was a catastrophe -- don't confuse these things! Putin, like almost all former Soviet citizens, hates communism and would never want to go back to that failed and oppressive system. To paraphrase Nixon, we are all capitalists now.

The Soviet Union was nothing other than pre-revolutionary Russia. Transcaucasia (Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan) had been part of Russia since the early 19th century (Georgia -- 1801, Armenia and Azerbaijan -- taken from Persia in 1828), Central Asia since the late 19th century, the Baltic States were taken from Sweden in 1721, Belarus re-taken from Poland in 1772, and Ukraine actually IS Russia, to the extent Ukraine can be said to have ever been a nation -- Kiev was the first capital of something we can call Russia. Starting in the 9th century, more than 1100 years ago!

None of these areas can be said to be less a historic part of Russia, than we can say that Texas or California are historic parts of the U.S.


Now all governments are oppressive, so there are always some valid reasons for some area to want to get out from under some government and form their own -- my own ancestors fought the evil Yankees and died trying to preserve our own unique Confederate nationality. But since we lost, we are now more or less content to be Yankees ourselves; if we had won, then of course we would be celebrating the heroism of Confederate patriots. Does it matter much? I don't think so. Not in my opinion. Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel -- nationalism, in my opinion, is just the way that power manipulates people for its own purposes. Changing one government for another is usually just changing one exploiter for another and rarely really changes anyone's life for the better.


And all this is entirely relevant to the Soviet Union. In 1991, Soviet Communism, the failed and evil system, died, and was not missed by almost anyone except a few idiots. Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin spent a great deal of effort killing it off once and for all. But the Soviet Union is NOT the same as Soviet Communism! The USSR could have just as easily become a reformed democratic and capitalist country, and that's what most former Soviet citizens would have preferred to see rather than fragmentation into a number of basically banana republic countries, at least during the first years (note that there were various votes for independent in 1991 in various republics, but those were as much referendums on ending Communism as they were referendums on independence -- see subsequent opinion polls). The exception is the Baltic States, which, uniquely among the former Soviet republics, managed, together with Finland, and fighting basically as White Russians in the Russian Civil War, to resist the Bolsheviks and managed to stay free, and subsequently became successful independent nations from 1918 until World War II. Baltic State citizens did really want out of the USSR and not just out of Communism, and should have been let out in any case (and see how well they are doing today).

As to the rest? I know well, have spent much time in, and love very much a number of the former USSR republics like Georgia and Kazakhstan, but I no more believe that they are better off as independent countries than I think my native Confederate States would have been better off being independent (and Tennessee and Georgia had been part of the U.S. for only 72 years when they seceded! Compared to centuries for all of the former Soviet republics. The Confederate claim to independence was much stronger than the claim of Ukraine or Georgia!). And I think Russia is worse off by being shrunken by losing these constituent republics -- the USSR was 300 million people! Today's Russia is only 140! It would have been much harder for Putin to kill (or put into suspended animation, anyway) Russian democracy, if all these countries were still part of Russia -- the bigger a country it is, the harder it is to make a banana republic out of it. And the world would be much better off without all the geopolitical complexities which resulted from the breakup of the Soviet Union, and would sure as heck be better off if we had normal friendly and constructive relationships with the most powerful nation in Europe, no longer separated from us by ideology.

That's all Putin was saying, and without saying that he is a nice man, which he is not, I agree with him on this one point, as I believe a large number even of Ukrainians agree even today, even if the awful and tragic conflict there has made that no longer a majority who so think.


Think about it this way -- imagine that after WWII, the Allies had broken up the German Empire as it was formed in 1871, leaving the Kingdom of Prussia by itself and Bavaria and all the other Laender as independent as they were before 1870. And someone expressed regret at the breakup of Germany, calling it a "catastrophe". Would it be fair to accuse that person of being a Nazi? Heck no!! Germany is NOT indeed the same as the Third Reich, even if the territory is co-extensive, and regretting the breakup of Germany would NOT indeed make you a Nazi! This would be outrageously absurd and unfair. Well -- the Soviet Union is EXACTLY the same case; in fact, the Soviet Union was a more integral nation which existed for a longer period, than Germany (united only in 1871) ever was. People are simply confused by the names -- at the end of the Russian Civil War, the Bolsheviks called the former provinces "republics", gave them their own Supreme Soviets, and gave them the nominal right to secede, but this is mere eyewash -- these "republics" had been provinces for decades or centuries (with varying degrees of symbolic nationhood, and with something like partial autonomy only in the case of Finland), and remained provinces de facto once reconquered from the Whites. The Bolsheviks renamed the whole construction, which was formerly just the "Russian Empire", the "Soviet Union" -- in doing so, they were looking forward to imminent world revolution and were trying to distance themselves from bourgeois concepts of nationhood. The Germans did it a little differently -- what had been the "Kingdom of Prussia" became the "German Empire" ("das deutsche Reich"*) when the rest of the North German Confederation, the Kingdom of Bavaria, and other territories were incorporated into it, and the Prussian King Wilhelm became "der deutsche Kaiser" or German Emperor ("Kaiser" is a German transliteration of "Caesar" just like "Tsar" is a Russian transliteration of "Caesar"). Unlike the case with the Bolsheviks, the Nazis, when they took over the German Empire, did not change its name which since 1871 had always been called "das deutsche Reich" (the Weimar Republic itself was only known as such informally -- the official name of the Weimar Republic was just the "German Reich". "Deutsches Kaiserreich", 1871-1918, is also just a nickname, by the way.).


So in short, regretting the breakup of the Soviet Union does not in any way express nostalgia for the failed system of communism or for a return to the Cold War. It is merely an expression of regret for the breakup of the historical territory of Russia. And, perhaps, an expression of regret of the destruction of the bonds of affection and shared culture and shared memories which joined, and which even today to a large extent still join, former Soviet citizens, even as they hate the oppression they all endured under the Bolsheviks. Note well that unlike the Germans and the Nazis, the Russians never elected the Bolsheviks -- the Bolsheviks seized power in an incredibly bloody coup d' etat, one of the bloodiest and most vicious in all of human history. The Russians, Ukrainians, Georgians, Kazakhs, and other former Soviet citizens are equally victims of these events.




(* Tiny footnote: The Nazis called Germany the "Third Reich" because they claimed, grandiosely, and without historical justification, that the 1871 German Reich was the "Second Reich" -- they were trying to claim that this construction was the successor state to the Holy Roman Empire, the "First Reich", which is as nonsensical as the medieval claim that the HRE was the successor state to the Roman Empire.)