Under Obama Army shrinks to smallest level since before World War II

The Chinese might beg to differ.

 

And most military historians would call the Pacific War and the Second Sino Japanese War seperate but linked conflicts.

 

The Ruskies anti-ship missiles couldn't penetrate the hall or the superstructures 11" to 17" armor plating. Just the bulkheads inside of an an Iowa are 11" of armor plating. All of the vital areas of the Iowa's are protected with armor, 4,000 lb. armor hatchets (doors)

That's why the Soviet Union got their red panties all bunched up during the 1980's when Reagan reactivated the four Iowa's, they didn't have a weapons platform to deal with them.

It was the Soviets who produced the first anti-ship missiles. The first ship ever sunk was an Israeli gunboat that was hit by a Egyptian patrol boat armed with Soviet anti-ship missiles.

As far as I know only two other ships were ever sunk in combat by anti-ship missiles and that was during the Falklands war. One was hit by an exocet missile in which the warhead failed to detonate and the missiles rocket engines fuel ignited and the reason why the ship sank was because someone screwed up and used aluminum instead of steel when building the ship. You don't use aluminum on warships because aluminum burns !!!

 

Rocket fuel burns at a temperature at or above the melting point of steel. You drench a significant portion of an Iowa in the stuff and you have mission killed it.

The captain of the ship is either dead (if on the bridge) or has changed his mission from whatever combat action he was committed to into the mission of "put out the fire, treat the mass casualties, and return to port of repairs". An SS-N-12 can at the very least slag the entirety of modern equipment on board the ship. Antennas, Tomahawk launchers, CIWS, etc are all outside the armor and exposed and several of those features have their own explosive payloads that can add to the secondaries and cause ever more damage.

 

BTW, the people who argue "rocket fuel from an anti-ship missile can't melt the steel of an Iowa" are dangerously close to the same people who argue "jet fuel couldn't have melted the steel beams of the World Trade Center".

 

Could you provide which incendiary weapon you are referring to ?

All of the good stuff, the incendiary weapons that actually got the job done and saved American lives have been declared by liberals to be politically incorrect. Like white phosphorus (WP) or napalm. Napalm "B" being the nap of choice since it will burn up to 10 minutes creating it's own weather pattern, changing the direction of the wind as oxygen is sucked out of the air and killing the enemy by asphyxiation.

I'm sure you've seen WW ll films where U.S. Marines with flame throwers would hit bunkers or caves with napalm. A bunch of Japs in a cave, put a little bit of napalm at the entrance of the cave and with in 10 minutes you have a lot of dead JAPs who are deep inside the cave who died of asphyxiation.

The stuff used today that replaced napalm only burns for about 5 seconds, it's not real napalm, it doesn't kill by asphyxiation.

Willie Peter ( white phosphorus ) on the battlefield was mostly used for marking targets for close air support missions or for adjusting artillery air burst missions or spotting naval gunfire air burst missions on area targets. It's kinda difficult spotting an airburst from 1/4 to 1 mile away. So you use a WP round and you can tell if the round is bursting over the target or not. It was also effective for providing a smoke screen.

 

It's called cultural-marxism, revisionist history, rewriting history to further a leftist political agenda.

 

It didn't. The jet fuel from the crashes into the Towers set fire to the thousands of tons of other flammable material in the Towers (from office furniture to various chemicals) and ultimately it was the heat from those fires that fatally weakened the steel skeleton of the buildings.

 

IIRC, the Sheffield also was noted for very poor fire fighting and damage control procedures contributing to its loss.

The impetus to returning to use steel in modern U.S. warships (notably the Burke class) was the collision in 1975 between the carrier John F. Kennedy and the cruiser Belknap.

The collision of the port side of the flight deck of the Kennedy with the superstructure of the Belknap resulted in thousands of gallons of jet fuel from the flight deck fuel supply lines of the Kennedy hosing the Belknap like giant flame throwers. The superstructure of the Belknap was basically melted off.

Though worth remembering that the ship was repaired and returned to service.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Belknap_(CG-26)#/media/File:USS_Belknap_collision_damage.jpg

 

Have you ever been aboard an Iowa class battleship ? All four have been turned into museums you should actually take a tour of one.

Did you actually watch the video that U.S. Conservative posted ? < Inside a ww2 battleship >
http://www.politicalforum.com/warfare-military/455031-inside-ww2-battleship.html

Or actually went to the three different links I provided on this thread ? < Iowa class BB, they don't build them like that today >
http://www.politicalforum.com/warfa...class-bb-they-dont-build-them-like-today.html

The thread topic was about the type of armor that was used in the construction of the four Iowas but the thread was quickly derailed. It's all about the type of armor that was used in building the Iowas.

 

There was more why the WTC towers collapsed.

On 9-11-01 I was working with Parsons an engineering company and after I watched the collapse of the towers on television I went to my office at Parsons in Pasadena, California and all of the structural engineers couldn't figure out why the towers collapsed. Considering in 1945 a B-25 bomber crashed into the Empire State building and three days later the Empire State building was open for business.

In steel construction framing all of the steel framing is fireproofed usually using gypsum plaster but also cementitious plasters or
fibrous plasters. -> https://holtarchitects.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/fireproofing-69202455_std.gif

When the fires set off the fire sprinklers you had fire pumps pumping millions of gallons of water onto the fires in the towers. But the architectural engineer who designed the WTC was a foreigner, not old schooled and obvious never served in the U.S. Navy.

When there's a fire on a warship the damage control parties go into action moving gas powered water pumps where needed pumping sea water onto the fire. For each pump putting water on the fire there has to be a pump removing that water and returning it to sea or the ship will capsize or sink under all of the weight of the water being put on the fire.

On the WTC towers all of that water was going nowhere and the fireproofing on the structural I-beams was absorbing all of that water which added more stress on the steel framing that it just got so heavy that the towers collapsed.Water weighs 8.3 pounds per gallon.

Design flaw where the water that was being used to distinguish the fires went nowhere.

 

The U.S Navy has a lot of experience in fire control procedures and pretty much have mastered it.

After the fire on the aircraft carrier USS Forrestal during the Vietnam War the U.S. Navy even got better at damage control procedures and from that day on, every American sailor is suppose to be a fireman.

Two videos with the story. -> https://youtu.be/6g6l_gjxXM4

short video -> https://youtu.be/chuiyXQKw3I

FYI: You can see John McCain jumping out of cockpit of his A-4 Skyhawk.

 

How about fuel air explosives that do the same work as napalm within an instant?

 

I thought fuel air explosives were designed primary to deliver a massive shockwave and were not even considered as an "incendiary weapon"

IIRC, what was once called "napalm" is simply designated by the U.S. military as a "firebomb" today.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_77_bomb

 

This is my first post but I have read the whole thread. And I have noticed that nobody has directly answered the question, who is going to attack us? Russia doesn't have the military capacity, nor does China and definitely not Iran. And even in the case of a pearl harbor scenario does nobody remember that we won? We had an outdated military because of the isolationist policies of the previous administrations, but it was quickly built up and turned into the superior force of ww2. Everybody on here has brought good points to the table but in reality the situation is a combination of both arguments. We should have the ability to deploy forces around the world to defend allies and interests but do we need a ww2 sized military to do it? For the argument about why Japan attacked the US you guys are not going back far enough in history, it really started when Russia, the US, and Britain began trying to establish trading rights with Japan. It gets really complicated after that... And you can find all of this info in Walter McDougalls book "Let the Sea make a noise".

 

Fuel explosives destroy and kill from overpressure.

They aren't new and have been used since WW ll. A-1 Skyraiders during the Vietnam War carried the CBU-72 FAE.

The U.S. Navy experimented using "fuel-air explosives" (FAE) against ships. In 1972 a Rudderow class destroyer escort of 1,450 tons was sunk off of California using a FAE. photo -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_M...ty_(DDE-581)_sunk_as_target_with_FAE_1972.jpg

Now a FAE being used against a 57,000 ton Iowa class BB or even a 98,000 ton Nimitz class carrier would have to be a really big fuel bomb. Our largest FAE's have to be delivered by a C-130 or C-17 that they are that big.

An Iowa class BB can withstand overpressure of 10 psi without any damage to the structure or electronics (radars, communications, etc.)
The Nimitz class carriers and Ticonderoga and Arleigh Burke's can only hold up to 5 psi overpressure without damage.

Those fuel explosives are nasty weapons.

file:///home/chronos/u-b0705d1faf56c6f81959b1f472cf69a4c1462df0/Downloads/ADA071312.pdf

 

Obama per se does not decide what size the military is..............That is a decision made by Congress thru the budget process.............more so there have been substantial across the board enforced budget cuts as a result of Congress's sequestration of the Budget...........

Factor into that the DOD's adoption of strategic operations ie (no need to have forces enough to fight two land wars) to meet small/terrorist conflicts with small well trained and equipped units........

It is not as simple as you would like to make it into a talking point

 

The goal of civilization should be the end of armies. We may never reach that goal, but the goal must exist.

 

Did you seriously just claim radar antennas can survive a fuel air explosive blast?

 

The moment Humanity develops and understand a UFT or Unified Field Theory is the moment such a goal you have described will be reached.

AA

 

Well in reality depending upon distance to the blast and length and diameter of the antenna determines such survival.

But in the bast radius...forget it.

And even in a good distance outside the blast radius....forget it as well.

AA

 

Depends on the over pressure of the FAE.

Like I've said these fuel explosives have been around in the military since the Second World War. I've seen a 40 mm fuel explosive grenade fired from a grenade launcher.

The Marine Corps was trying to develop a fuel explosive mortar round to use against buried anti-personnel and anti-tank mines. The idea was the over pressure would set off the mines. The fuel explosive mortar round was never able to produce enough over pressure (p.s.i.) to detonate the mines so the project was dropped.

Over pressure is the same thing as blast or even the wind is an over pressure. Hurricanes / typhoons can be measured in over pressure or in p.s.i.

Like I mentioned above, an Iowa class BB can withstand 10 p.s.i. of overpressure where as the Nimitz's class carriers, Ticonderoga's and Arleigh Burke's can only withstand 5 p.s.i. of overpressure.

The overpressure of an Iowa 16" gun blast at the end of the barrel produces over 10 p.s.i.

 

You know by 2020 when the FEL or Free Electron Laser will have 100 Megawatt Beaming.....that is powerful and hot enough a beam to instantly vaporize a hole STRAIGHT THROUGH one side of an Iowa Class BB and out the other as the beam exists at Solar Core Temps. it doesn't melt the metal it vaporizes it.

AA

 

Why would anyone want to burn a hole through a museum ?

 

I was just making an observation.

Some members have called for the return of the BB's but they are obsolete.

AA