Letter to Sen McCain RE CBRN use in Syria

[Flash]

Interesting. Looks like there's a KA-50 spotted behind the Helix. I didn't realize they were naval-ized.

Ka-52K Katran to be exact, the -52 is the side-by-side two-seat version of the Ka-50 Hokum (Katran is Spiny Dogfish in Russian apparently, I think the K designation means that it is a navalized version). They were originally supposed to quip part of the air wing for the Mistral-class amphibious assault ships that the French were selling to Russia, but since that sale was cancelled and the Egyptians are now buying the two Mistral's made for Russia and they are buying 46 Ka-52K's too. Pretty bad ass looking helo.

 

[jmcquate]

Interesting. Looks like there's a KA-50 spotted behind the Helix. I didn't realize they were naval-ized.

KA-52K Katran, very close cousin.

Edit: Flash beat me to it.

 

[Recovering LSO]

is that det chord in the canopy, a la T-45 and AV-8...?

 

[jmcquate]

is that det chord in the canopy, a la T-45 and AV-8...?

Yup. The main rotors blow. I think the Marines played around with this for the Cobra but the seats added to much weight.

 

[Flash]

is that det chord in the canopy, a la T-45 and AV-8...?

Yup. The main rotors blow. I think the Marines played around with this for the Cobra but the seats added to much weight.

Here is a video of an ejection seat test for it:

 

[nittany03]

OK, I punt. I went to the Wayback Machine to try to find an old post from Neptunus Lex, God rest his soul. Years ago (I think when Liaoning was still tuning up) he took the open-source info for the Kuznetsov and the Su-33, and did a back-of-the-envelope calculation about the air wing's capability to maintain a continuous two-jet CAP at a reasonable distance from Mom (Mat?). He basically found out that once you add a recovery tanker and/or mission tanker into the mix (to make up for lack of gas due to the ski jump), within a few cycles, it all goes to shit. The boat doesn't have enough jets, so the jet next up in the rotation for a CAP ends up not having even landed yet. And that's not counting turnarounds AND assuming all the embarked jets are actually up (fat chance on that). And that's when they operated all Flankers, and hadn't started adding Fulcrums into the mix, which are of course notoriously short on gas.

TL;DR, if you do even the open-source math, you're not going to get near the performance out of that thing that we can out of ours.

 

[nittany03]

Here is a video of an ejection seat test for it:

Looks like the old "Yankee" system they used in the A-1.

 

[Randy Daytona]

Notice the difference in the co-axial rotor systems between the Russian Alligator and the S-97 Raider. My understanding is that 40% of the drag comes from the main rotor system (Ike, where are you?) and the gap in the Russian system is much bigger than the new American Raider - which is one of the reasons the Raider is substantially faster.

 

[jmcquate]

the air wing's capability to maintain a continuous two-jet CAP at a reasonable distance from Mom (Mat?).

Educated guess......there are no CAPs. Just an FU driving through the channel, and a few combat hops over Syria until their shit goes south and limp home. The Soviet/ Russian Navy was never a global blue water fleet (except for the subs). It was built to disrupted logistics in the northern Atlantic for the next big one. Why they wasted money and time building thru-deck-ish carriers, I still don't understand. Probably political "see, we can do it to".

 

[Randy Daytona]

It might be the Daily Mail but they actually have a pretty good summary of the Russian fleet headed to the Med right now, what it consists of and what is shadowing it. And of course being the Daily Mail it has plenty of pics!

When you said British newspaper with plenty of pics, I was disappointed to see it was not The Sun and the infamous Page 3... Rhian Sugden is quite the eye candy.

The Brits have been having problems of their own with Type 45 destroyers.

What a fiasco... Navy's £1bn warships break down in the Gulf - because the sea's too HOT!

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...water-WARM-bungling-defence-chiefs-admit.html

 

[Flash]

Educated guess......there are no CAPs. Just an FU driving through the channel, and a few combat hops over Syria until their shit goes south and limp home. The Soviet/ Russian Navy was never a global blue water fleet (except for the subs). It was built to disrupted logistics in the northern Atlantic for the next big one. Why they wasted money and time building thru-deck-ish carriers, I still don't understand. Probably political "see, we can do it to".

They can't do CAPs in the narrow part of the Channel because of UNCLOS I believe. The problem for them is that they wouldn't be able to do much CAP anywhere if the rough guesstimates are right, they pay a big penalty for not having catapults combined with the the small numbers.

The Brits have been having problems of their own with Type 45 destroyers.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...water-WARM-bungling-defence-chiefs-admit.html

Teething issues for a brand new class, nothing too unusual or worrying yet.

 

[Brett327]

If memory serves, Kuznetsov deployed to the East Med 3 or 4 years ago with a similar amount of fanfare and a rather lackluster operational performance. Can anyone verify that?

 

[Flash]

If memory serves, Kuznetsov deployed to the East Med 3 or 4 years ago with a similar amount of fanfare and a rather lackluster operational performance. Can anyone verify that?

She's done two Med 'deployments' since 2010 as detailed on her Wikipedia page, neither appears to have been very arduous.

 

[Gatordev]

Ka-52K Katran to be exact, the -52 is the side-by-side two-seat version of the Ka-50 Hokum (Katran is Spiny Dogfish in Russian apparently, I think the K designation means that it is a navalized version). They were originally supposed to quip part of the air wing for the Mistral-class amphibious assault ships that the French were selling to Russia, but since that sale was cancelled and the Egyptians are now buying the two Mistral's made for Russia and they are buying 46 Ka-52K's too. Pretty bad ass looking helo.

I knew the -52 was a thing, I just didn't think it was in that wide of service, let alone with with the Navy. Again, interesting. The pod is also an interesting addition.

But more more importantly, where is the Hormone? I don't care if it's not in service anymore, I just want to call something a "Hormone."

 

[pourts]

OK, I punt. I went to the Wayback Machine to try to find an old post from Neptunus Lex, God rest his soul. Years ago (I think when Liaoning was still tuning up) he took the open-source info for the Kuznetsov and the Su-33, and did a back-of-the-envelope calculation about the air wing's capability to maintain a continuous two-jet CAP at a reasonable distance from Mom (Mat?). He basically found out that once you add a recovery tanker and/or mission tanker into the mix (to make up for lack of gas due to the ski jump), within a few cycles, it all goes to shit. The boat doesn't have enough jets, so the jet next up in the rotation for a CAP ends up not having even landed yet. And that's not counting turnarounds AND assuming all the embarked jets are actually up (fat chance on that). And that's when they operated all Flankers, and hadn't started adding Fulcrums into the mix, which are of course notoriously short on gas.

TL;DR, if you do even the open-source math, you're not going to get near the performance out of that thing that we can out of ours.

So, why are we putting F-35s on the LHA again? And those Harriers with AMAAMs from the amphib... now that's what I call a CAP!

#amphib lives matter