Some images posted on the San Diego Air & Space Museum Flickr account are a bit of a mystery. They are *probably* all General Dynamics/Convair images, though that ‘s not certain.
First: Some sort of bus-borne interceptors? Space-based anti-satellite systems?
Second: Some sorta…. somethings. Space based weapons seems likely, but which is the business end? Are these nuclear-pumped X-Ray lasers in that picosecond before they’re blown to bits, shooting at something off to the lower left, with the upper-right satellite being the radar guidance system for the squadron? Are they more conventional interceptors with a single small and rather unusual thruster in a mysteriously long tail, aimed at the upper-right satellite? Phased plasma rifles in the 40-watt range?
Third: Probably a supersonic bomber (perhaps a B-70 competitor). But maybe an aerospaceplane.
What with the Israeli “Iron Dome” anti-missile system swatting Gazan rockets out of the sky recently, it seems like as good a time as any to post these really quite awful-quality yet still interesting in-flight photos of the Sprint ABM.
It’s easy to see that Sprint was a missile on a mission.
When you need to shoot down small rockets and mortars, C-RAM is there:
[youtube V2004nrHxa0]
The Counter Rocket And Mortar Protection System is a modification of the naval Phalanx Close In Weapons System. Both use basically the same 20mm M-61 Vulcan gatling gun and turret to shoot about 6,000 rounds per minute of depleted uranium or tungsten sabot rounds. in the case of the C-RAM, since it’s shooting over ground and over the heads of friendlies and civilians, the rounds detonate in flight if they miss the target, turning themselves into little bits that will not hit the ground nearly as fast as an intact projectile.
[youtube euwf6TA9dIc]
A 20mm round is of course quite sufficient to take out virtually any projectile likely to be lobbed at you. But when you want to send a message, you use the Goalkeeper. Same basic idea as CIWS/C-RAM, but with the 30mm GAU-8a gun used on the A-10 Warthog.
How to clear a minefield in just a few seconds: blow it to hell.
[youtube a52-rOC8_Zk]
This is the M58 MICLIC (mine-clearing line charge) in action. Put simply, it’s a rocket on a string. Put less simply, a 5-inch rocket is launched from a carrier vehicle and tows behind it a string, which gets laid down over a mine field. This is a string with a bit of a difference, though… it’s 350 feet long and carries with it five pounds of C4 plastic explosives. That’s five pounds of C4 PER FOOT. When the line is laid down, the C4 is set off, and 350 feet of terrain gets a mighty whoopin’. Most (but not all) types of mines and IEDS will sympathetically detonate if they are anywhere nearby. This would, I imagine, also be handy for dealing with small buildings, guys in spiderholes, trenches, etc.
You have to choose from a limited selection of nukes, rather that imputing the parameters yourself. They range from a 1 kton suitcase nuke, to the 50 mton Tsar bomb… to the K-T impactor.
If you remember the movie Aliens – and if you read this blog, it’s a safe bet you do – one of the sci-fi elements you’ll recall is that all the soldiers had little video cameras on their helmets. In the mid 1980’s, this was of course a bit fanciful… any decent video camera would weigh several *pounds.* But those days are over; cameras you can mount to a helmet are now *smaller* than the ones in Aliens. And as it turns out, American soldiers & Marines are, in fact, going into combat with helmet cams.
Note: these are actual fighting men in actual combat. That means there’s some NSFW language. So if you’re at the office, crank it up, man!
A firefight with danger-close support from A-10s. The A-10 opening up with that monster GAU-8A gatling gun adds a certain special something to the proceedings.
[youtube llEWrL9ghyg]
In this one, the solider gets shot. The description says that the round didn’t penetrate his body armor… another feature that Aliens got right, and that American soldiers in prior wars might have done well to have had.
[youtube rLHU-_OhT8g]
A firefight from the viewpoint of a machinegunner. You can occasionally also hear one of his buddies light lighting the Taliban up with a shotgun… kind of the quintessential American combat firearm. Note that, as in many/most firefights in reality (rather than Hollywood), the bulk of the firing is suppressive firing… shooting not at individual enemies, but just in their general direction to make them keep their heads down. That’s why it takes tens and even hundreds of thousands of rounds, statistically, to kill a single enemy.
[youtube uZ2SWWDt8Wg]
[youtube 4_GZzjFyeaM]
And a firefight in what sure looks like a giant patch of weed (with the ultimate combat commentary at about the 0:40 mark):
The only thing that compares with the interestingness of an a-bomb test is the fact that camera technology was advanced enough almost from the beginning of the program to record the initial progress of the nuclear fireballs.
Operation Sailor Hat was a series of three non-nuclear explosions designed to test the responses of US Navy ships and equipment to nuclear-level explosions. Since these tests were carried out in 1965, above-ground nuclear tests were banned, so half-kilotons bursts were simulated with 500 tons of TNT. Goes to show that you don’t need nuclear explosives to have fun.
A number of “Sailor Hat” videos are on YouTube, but most have been mangled with craptacular editing or irritating watermarks. Here are a few.
A brief clip from an official briefing film:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZeFAhbzlF2Q
A longer clip with an annoying watermark and music spliced in from “Trinity and Beyond::”
[youtube tXeXvp4YaI0]
Here Stacey Keach narrates several minutes worth of clips, but with a *really* annoying watermark:
The same video, but without the massive watermark… but with a smaller one, and Keach over-dubbed in Russian (I think):
And because why not… a “music video” of atomic bomb tests (including the non-nuclear Sailor Hat vids) set to White Zombie:
Using chemical explosives as stand-ins for nukes of course has definite limitations. For starters and most obviously… not neutron or gamma ray radiation. Second, chemical explosives don’t get anywhere near a hot as nuclear explosions… thousands of degrees vs. millions. Third, the fireball from a nuke is caused by the air around the nuke absorbing the prompt X-rays and such and being heated to a bagrillion degrees; the fireball of a non-nuke is generally the mass of the bomb itself converted into an incandescent cloud.
And if you’ve an interest in nukes buy haven’t seen “Trinity and Beyond…” sheesh, why not? It is indisputably awesome. A-bomb footage cleaned up and restored by a Hollywood special effects expert. Result = awesome.
The talks failed in July because the Obama administration didn’t want to have to deal with the “gun grabber” issue in the debates. But within *hours* of the re-election, the adminstration jumps back in. A quote from one of the “officials:”
“We will not accept any treaty that infringes on the constitutional rights of our citizens to bear arms”
Translation: “We will accept any treaty that infringes on the constitutional rights of our citizens to bear arms.”
A photo from the recent Air Force Association Technology Expo 2012 shows a large display model of the F-35 with weapons bays loaded with Lockheed-Martin “Cuda” air-to-air missiles:
A Lockheed Martin model shows how its “’Cuda” concept for a small AMRAAM-class radar guided dogfight missile could triple the air-to-air internal loadout on an F-35. The missile is about the size of a Small Diameter Bomb and fits on an SDB-style rack.
I’ve not seen anything on this missile before (at least not under the name “Cuda”). So off to Google I went… and came away equally unenlightened. About the only relevant thing I could find was that Lock-Mart took out a trademark on “CUDA” for a guided missile in 2011.
