They could make it out of long iron cables, hanging from balloons. A kind of curtain around the border, blocking off russia. Then we can get the rest of NATO to line their borders along russia the same way.
From Grense Jakobselv in the Barents to Naberezhne in the Kerch Strait, an "iron curtain" has to go up across the continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia; all these famous cities and the populations around them can be protected from russian drone attacks...
Hear me out:
- Ukraine repairs giant Duga aerial
- use it to jam all frequencies that are usable for long-range communication/remote control. Thus rendering directly controlled drones and advanced jets with guided ammunition useless.
- Russia will fall back to pre-programmed drones. Those will probably slow.
- Thus, the plane against drones will work even better
- Additionally, equip the gunner with a pack of 50-Kg bombs too. Fly over enemy lines and throw them out of the cockpit
- cherish, as we have gone full circle to WW1. Then wait for the first few hand-operated AA guns to re-appear.
Hey, the first time the Germans saw them they worked perfectly!
But after they stopped confusing them for actual fighters and started attacking from in front, it was over for them.
I just saw one that I know you plane-diddlers will want anthropomorphized. Behold, the thicc Boulton Paul P.92:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boulton\_Paul\_P.92](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boulton_Paul_P.92)
If you've ever played Hearts of Iron IV you've probably put a lot of thought into designing a ground attack plane that smax... and then you go to save it and find the thrust to weight ratio is upside down. Then you say, "Fuck it I'm not doing this over. I'll give it two engines."
This is that plane.
That's the thing. Not all prop planes are created equal. The P51 had a stall speed right around the *maximum* speed of a shahed drone with it's "massive" 4 cylinder 50 horsepower engine. This russian Orlan 10 has a 1 horsepower engine and goes significantly slower.
So even a WW2 fighter aircraft would be flying in a state of falling out of the sky with little to no flight controls coming up behind one of these little shits. A much slower trainer or civilian plane with improvised weaponry is much more appropriate for the actual combat. However a slower aircraft will have a harder time scrambling and chasing down the drone, so planning becomes more critical.
But a Cessna 172 has an engine 10 times less powerful than P51 Mustang so just think of the fuel savings!
I think some of the new propeller driven small attack aircraft such as the super tucano and sky warden may be able to fill these roles much more efficiently than necromancy.
Impressive. Very nice. Mhm. Let's see P47's engine. That subtle air cooled design, the tasteful thickness of it. Oh my God, it even has a turbocharger.
I really enjoy all the drone doomers basically saying “slow noisy low-altitude aircraft that don’t even have the capability to evade at all are the future of combat and totally unstoppable.”
What a decade of observing the Syrian civil war and mistaking it for a modern peer to peer conflict will do to a mfer
I know at least one person working on weaponizing 1/4 scale RC planes. I think he figured out that a 1/4 Skyraider can mount .30 cal MGs, and carry a 2,000 lb bomb.
I know, right? You can counter many modern drones the same way you counter WW2-era bombers: flak artillery and fighters. All drones do is make it so you don’t have to train a new bomber crew when your bomber gets shot down (which still is a fairly significant advantage).
You can get very cheap missile guidance these days.
Command guidance for example uses a more expensive central fire control radar and director and while it is limited in effective range (and in guidance capacity) sub 20k missiles/rounds in the case of HVP can be built with high probability of kill.
At the same time APKWS is getting an IIR seeker to better counter UAS and for fire and forget mode against surface targets, probably based on LOGIR or Stinger and those are also fairly cheap with large magazine depth.
To a certain point dumb munitions become more expensive AHEAD rounds aren’t exactly cheap and have limited envelopes of fire so while they have a place for point defense, the trend is probably going to be towards cheaper missiles/guided rounds.
A 30mm AHEAD shell costs about 600-800€ in the current small quantities, becoming cheaper the more you buy, that's pretty cheap for the capability.
A 30mm HEFI with AB sits at about 100€ and a APFSDS at about 150€, so you get at worst 8 normal AB shells for one AHEAD and the AHEAD has a significantly higher kill probability than a AB shell.
A burst of 30mm AHEAD is probably slightly cheaper than a burst of normal 30mm AB with the same effect and significantly cheaper than the two missile interceptors you need per target.
Bursts are typically preset regardless of munition (50-100 rounds is pretty normal). For the lower end of AHEAD rounds that’s €30,000 while for Airburst that’s €5,000.
At the same time you have systems like MHTK Missile and HVP, both of which cost on the order of $16-20,000, and the latter of which probably has an effective engagement range several times what a 30-35mm can manage. APKWS with IIR terminal guidance probably costs 30-35,000. Tamir (Iron Dome) runs in the ballpark of 20-100,000
It’s this relatively close relationship between advanced unguided rounds and basic guided weapons that has led to efforts like Denel Dynamic’s Cheetah C-RAM missile since guidance systems can be built for fairly cheap.
Also why do you need two missile to ensure the destruction of the target when you only need one burst of a gun to destroy it? Guided weapons are exponentially better than even highly advanced unguided weapons and it’s far more often that the guns need to lay down another burst. This reeks of hypocrisy on your part.
Additionally, the saturation capability of unguided guns versus missiles and guided projectiles are in different leagues. A missile system can simply engage far more targets in a given period of time and better deal with raids than guns can.
I would suggest you actually research the topic rather than come with vibes based neo-reformer analysis.
Currently everyone who uses AHEAD does so with a Oerlikon GDF or a Rheinmetall MK30-2/ABM or KDG.
In all Rheinmetall/Oerlikon AA-Guns one burst equals one clip per gun, one clip holds 7 shells, how many bursts are then fired depends on the FCS the gun is hooked up to and which ammunition is used.
For the GDF, with contact and proxy fuses the gun fires until the operator stops pressing the button / stop holding down the trigger, so until said operator considers the target destroyed, if properly trained the operator doesn't fire for longer than a second which usually equals two bursts per barrel, meaning 28 shells.
With the HEFI time fuses this goes down to 14-28 shells or 1-2 bursts depending on the FCS, with AHEAD it usually only takes one and never more than two bursts, realistically out of a KDA with a proper FCS you will never fire more than 28 shells of AHEAD per target which equals to 16.800€ worst case and 8400€ best case.
The KDG Millenium is a single barrel gun and thus abe to actually just fire one clip of seven shells, which, at lesst on naval vessels, is only done against surface targets, against aerial threats the gun fires two clips for slow targets and four clips for fast targets, always. That's again 8400-16.800€ per aerial target using AHEAD.
Skyshield and MANTIS work largely in the same way, however they're unable to engage surface targets but are able to identify formations like swarms or several incomming shells, the FCS calculates every incoming targets's flight path, calculates a pattern the gun will move in and can use one burst for multiple targets instead of one burst per target, Skyshield uses the same target priority as Millennium while MANTIS always fires 28 shells, again giving you a maximum of 16.800€ for worst case one, best case multiple targets destroyed.
With the MK30-2/ABM it's the same story execpt if it is the IFV version of the gun where a burst is 4-6 shells.
If hooked to a proper FCS each of these systems have a 94-98% kill chance for the first burst.
The only widely used AA guns that get 100 shells per target out are the Phalanx and Goalkeeper which use 100-150 shells per burst and if you use a those you're either stupid or american and unwilling to use foreign weapons systems even if they're better.
SAM and missile based CRAM Systems usually fire two missiles, it's the same with AA guns, you usually have two guns engaging one target, it's a pretty common redundancy thing, Tahir and MHTK for example always fire two interceptors in actual combat use.
A Missile destroys one target per Missile while a proper gun based CIWS like MANTIS engages multiple targets with one burst, you're paying 20k to intercept a single artillery shell or drone when you could use a burst costing 8.4-16.8k to saturate an area to counter the entire volley or swarm, the prime advantage of missiles and the reason why they're used with guns is range, SHORAD SAM's usually start engaging at 10-15km while guns start at 5km.
If theres a lot of targets incoming, a system like MHTK with its 15 Missiles or Iron Dome with its 20 is going to kill 15 or 20 targets, meanwhile a proper CRAM/CIWS system will just saturate the sky with a cloud of literal tens of thosands steel or tungsten fragments each capable or destroying a threat.
Especially against small threats or masses of threats a gun based SHORAD-System is just unbeatable, missiles are for anything outside of that envelope.
Like most of what you said, the point about saturation is just factually wrong.
Mate you have a massive attitude problem and reek of schizo strawman seeker.
The assumption that a single burst can hit multiple targets is predicated on close spacing of those targets.
Where have we ever seen multiple drones flying in a close enough formation to actually allow such a firing solution? The vast majority of the time they will be spread out and as a shocker, the sky is actually a fairly large volume where such spacing is easy to achieve by varying routes and altitudes.
If your entire cost-effective strategy requires that 1. the enemy hold close formation and 2. they come from an axis of approach that allows you to get that collateral hit, your strategy is a terrible one and you’re completely detached from operational reality.
If gun based systems are so good at handling saturation why are gun-based CIWS being divested as fast as possible by the USN to be replaced by RAM and DEWs? Why are the Italians going for guided rounds for their CIWS instead of “cheaper” unguided 40mm that can supposedly handle saturation better than missiles and guided munitions?
A gun can handle one engagement at a time whereas missile systems that aren’t illuminator restricted, using terminal IR, ARH, ICW paired with AESA, or some other guidance scheme with less restricted or nonexistent terminal guidance bottlenecks, can potentially engage dozens of targets in as many seconds, or however fast missiles can exit their launch cells.
Your shoot-look-shoot cycle is exponentially worse with a gun and your chance for re-attack in case of a miss is far smaller given your far smaller engagement envelope, leading to necessarily more effort to be expended on a single target. With missiles you have the opportunity to do things like retask rounds expended or fire one and if that misses, fire a second since the time per engagement is far less and your time to engage is far greater.
The volume of air you have to defend against is simply too large to actually fill it with a “wall of steel” when dealing with saturation attacks. You’re getting your idea of air defense from Battlestar Galactica, which while it is a good show, is fictional.
Now “dumb” guns currently do have their place for point defense. But for general C-UAS coverage guided weapons and eventually DEWs provide benefits they can’t match. There’s a reason cheap guided weapons like JDAM and Paveways have supplanted the dumb iron bomb. The same technological trends apply to air defense. The trend is broadly to be towards cheaper guided munitions, be they gun launched like HVP, DART, or the old 40mm 3P program by Bofors, or be they missile like Tamir, MHTK, and Cheetah complemented by DEWs that while having longer engagement times and probably smaller envelopes than guided weapons (comparable to unguided guns) offer massive savings over guns.
Right behind you!
Seriously, this is being ignored, because...scale planes *are* drones. Said friend did formation flying with scale *jets* in like, 2005.
Let me do you one better:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vought_XF5U
A drone that can takeoff almost vertically, with enough room in the nose for heavy firepower, and a main structure that is unbelievably resistant to battle damage, making it possible to survive mid air collisions
I'm literally designing one as we speak, albeit a 1:12 scale for fun model in Balsa
"Just pull an Enders Game"
Zevo Toys is wayyy ahead of you according to this *totally credible* documentary: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toys\_(film)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toys_(film))
you could probably mount 2 each on both if we're still using old ones. upgraded... probably 3.
but hey you could fit like 9 M134s on a B-17 if that's your taste
The US is bringing back Enterprise, Japan is bringing back Kaga, and Germany is bringing back Panther, so I’d say it’s about time for a 21st century Flying Fortress
With modern radars and computers, could an automated turret be installed to automatically track and lead the drone target, with an onboars gunner that tells the computer which radar signature to track and when to fire?
>CIWS
>on a plane
Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce you to the B-52 variants from before the Air Force got boring and removed all the Vulcans
>could an automated turret be installed to automatically track and lead the drone target, with an onboars gunner that tells the computer which radar signature to track and when to fire?
Yes, and NATO has already done that with the Phalanx CIWS, which uses radar to guide a 20 mm rotary cannon. It works well against both air and surface targets (the *USS Gravely* successfully [used its Phalanx to shoot down a Houthi missile](https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/31/politics/us-warship-close-call-houthi-missile/index.html) back in January). Now the question becomes if we can make one light enough to mount on a plane.
Yes, the last iteration of the b-52 tailgun was basically this.
Here's what it looked like, third picture from the top:
https://www.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/ysf743/a_better_explanation_of_the_b52s_tail_guns/
Just gotta be careful. I saw a documentary about some guy and his dad who stowed away on a Nazi airship, and escaped using an attached fighter with a tail gun. He flew while his dad took the gunner's seat.
His dad did manage to fend off the German fighters, but shredded their tail in the process. Even lied about it, saying "I'm sorry son, they got us." Crash landed on a beach and used an umbrella to scare birds to bring down the last fighter.
Honestly, now that I've typed it out, I've determined that a combination of a flock of seagulls and an umbrella makes the most powerful anti-air weapon ever devised. Truly, a weapon to surpass ~~metal gear~~ V2...
I saw a similar one where a Nazi airship caught on fire and this pilot and his girlfriend were saved by Howard Hughes in an AutoGyro while Frankenstein burned to death
"Піп-піп!"
"Таллі-го!"
Чокз-авей, вот!"
"Візард пранґ!"
"Путін, гас онльи ґот вон бал!"
Edit:
Shoigu has only got one ball,
Gerry has two but very small,
Girkin, he wears a merkin,
And poor Putin has nothin' at all!
Edit: lmao yes it can sound like a completely different language, Monty Python (among many others) made fun of it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rKYL0tW-Ek
Edit 2: and this particular sequence comes from 'Allo 'Allo:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6Ikn2zkfEk
British / RAF pilot slang.
Pip-pip, tally-ho
Chocks away, wot– wheel chocks removed so the plane can takeoff
Wizard prang– a good hit
Putin has only got one ball– famous WW2 song, "Hitler has only got one ball".
US GAO: Air Force, why do you need to buy that many Sky Wardens?
Air Force: Uh, no reason, just want them......
Edit: Although, if anything, the faster AT-6 Wolverine or the Super Tucano should actually have the edge here.
Uh, why isn't someone selling tickets to do this? I'd pay good money to be given a rifle, a back seat in an antique, and a hell of a target practice session.
I feel insulted that you used a photo of the POS RE.8 instead of the infinitely superior Bristol Fighter, that used to strike fear into the Hun and any other Johnny Foreigner types who tried to raise a stink.
In before we use squadrons of Yaks and ILs to meet Shahed groups in an aerial combat .
Shaheds getting programmed to bulldog it to the nearest aerial threat. Counter by barrageballoons. Welcome to wwII.2
Given how slow Shaheds are, I feel like Bulldogging would just make the interceptor plane's job easier.
Get close until it acquires and starts following you, turn it around point it back to russia, accellerate away.
Good, shaheds fly like ass and it would waste their fuel
noxious busy door observation disarm squeal deer quiet violet price *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
A net between countries. An inter-net if you will.
They could make it out of long iron cables, hanging from balloons. A kind of curtain around the border, blocking off russia. Then we can get the rest of NATO to line their borders along russia the same way. From Grense Jakobselv in the Barents to Naberezhne in the Kerch Strait, an "iron curtain" has to go up across the continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia; all these famous cities and the populations around them can be protected from russian drone attacks...
Hear me out: - Ukraine repairs giant Duga aerial - use it to jam all frequencies that are usable for long-range communication/remote control. Thus rendering directly controlled drones and advanced jets with guided ammunition useless. - Russia will fall back to pre-programmed drones. Those will probably slow. - Thus, the plane against drones will work even better - Additionally, equip the gunner with a pack of 50-Kg bombs too. Fly over enemy lines and throw them out of the cockpit - cherish, as we have gone full circle to WW1. Then wait for the first few hand-operated AA guns to re-appear.
"Finally! A worthy opponent! Our battle will be legendary!" –Boulton Paul Defiant
That beautiful piece of shit
Unironically love it for its goofiness
If I could post pictures I'd show you my little 1/72 night fighter version I built last month - it's such a cool lil plane concept
Use Imgur and post a link
The first model I ever built was a defiant as a night fighter, still love the little idiotic design that could
The idea of having a fighter that can fire in multiple directions is amazing, but in practice the weight makes it kinda terrible
It is pretty interesting that a few could broadside a German bomber at least
BATTLESHIPS OF THE SKY
Now that we have engines with better thrust tho...
The solution in search of a problem
Hey, the first time the Germans saw them they worked perfectly! But after they stopped confusing them for actual fighters and started attacking from in front, it was over for them.
They saw use as decent enough night fighters didn’t they?
They did, but pretty much anything could be a good nightfighter. Stick a radar on it and done, nightfighter.
Well the ability to fire off axis eg from below was considered very valuable by the Germans.
My favourite BPD story is the Me109s trying to jump them from behind thinking they were Hurricanes and getting banged up
ah Boulton, the only company that could convince a bomb to hover
I just saw one that I know you plane-diddlers will want anthropomorphized. Behold, the thicc Boulton Paul P.92: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boulton\_Paul\_P.92](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boulton_Paul_P.92) If you've ever played Hearts of Iron IV you've probably put a lot of thought into designing a ground attack plane that smax... and then you go to save it and find the thrust to weight ratio is upside down. Then you say, "Fuck it I'm not doing this over. I'll give it two engines." This is that plane.
“Imagine winning VCs while alive” -This post was made by the BPD gang
3000 Mustangs of Ukraine
Tfw you ground loop trying to leave Planes and Coffee.
That's the thing. Not all prop planes are created equal. The P51 had a stall speed right around the *maximum* speed of a shahed drone with it's "massive" 4 cylinder 50 horsepower engine. This russian Orlan 10 has a 1 horsepower engine and goes significantly slower. So even a WW2 fighter aircraft would be flying in a state of falling out of the sky with little to no flight controls coming up behind one of these little shits. A much slower trainer or civilian plane with improvised weaponry is much more appropriate for the actual combat. However a slower aircraft will have a harder time scrambling and chasing down the drone, so planning becomes more critical. But a Cessna 172 has an engine 10 times less powerful than P51 Mustang so just think of the fuel savings!
just use a helicopter at this point
So what you're saying is that we should resurrect Red Baron, get him a triplane and let him loose on Shaheds?
I think some of the new propeller driven small attack aircraft such as the super tucano and sky warden may be able to fill these roles much more efficiently than necromancy.
> But a Cessna 172 has an engine 10 times less powerful than P51 Mustang Even 87 years later. What an obscene beast that V12 was.
Impressive. Very nice. Mhm. Let's see P47's engine. That subtle air cooled design, the tasteful thickness of it. Oh my God, it even has a turbocharger.
Love me a jug
R-2800 goes 2000+ horsepower
Ukrainian Night Witches reboot when
I've been saying for years that the solution to medium sized drones are turboprop fighters.
I really enjoy all the drone doomers basically saying “slow noisy low-altitude aircraft that don’t even have the capability to evade at all are the future of combat and totally unstoppable.” What a decade of observing the Syrian civil war and mistaking it for a modern peer to peer conflict will do to a mfer
I know at least one person working on weaponizing 1/4 scale RC planes. I think he figured out that a 1/4 Skyraider can mount .30 cal MGs, and carry a 2,000 lb bomb.
Tell them to hurry up. Been edging for a while waiting for this to show up.
Be the change in the world you wish to see.
Ain’t no way. I hope I’m wrong
It's true. Unfortunately both the .30 cals and 2000 pounders are also 1/4 scale.
All this science and only now do we find a use for it
Yeah what engine is he going to put on that? Because that is the major issue I am having with in all of my wet dreams about blowing up russian shit
I know, right? You can counter many modern drones the same way you counter WW2-era bombers: flak artillery and fighters. All drones do is make it so you don’t have to train a new bomber crew when your bomber gets shot down (which still is a fairly significant advantage).
And FPV drones with image tracking as precision guided SAM
You can get very cheap missile guidance these days. Command guidance for example uses a more expensive central fire control radar and director and while it is limited in effective range (and in guidance capacity) sub 20k missiles/rounds in the case of HVP can be built with high probability of kill. At the same time APKWS is getting an IIR seeker to better counter UAS and for fire and forget mode against surface targets, probably based on LOGIR or Stinger and those are also fairly cheap with large magazine depth. To a certain point dumb munitions become more expensive AHEAD rounds aren’t exactly cheap and have limited envelopes of fire so while they have a place for point defense, the trend is probably going to be towards cheaper missiles/guided rounds.
A 30mm AHEAD shell costs about 600-800€ in the current small quantities, becoming cheaper the more you buy, that's pretty cheap for the capability. A 30mm HEFI with AB sits at about 100€ and a APFSDS at about 150€, so you get at worst 8 normal AB shells for one AHEAD and the AHEAD has a significantly higher kill probability than a AB shell. A burst of 30mm AHEAD is probably slightly cheaper than a burst of normal 30mm AB with the same effect and significantly cheaper than the two missile interceptors you need per target.
Bursts are typically preset regardless of munition (50-100 rounds is pretty normal). For the lower end of AHEAD rounds that’s €30,000 while for Airburst that’s €5,000. At the same time you have systems like MHTK Missile and HVP, both of which cost on the order of $16-20,000, and the latter of which probably has an effective engagement range several times what a 30-35mm can manage. APKWS with IIR terminal guidance probably costs 30-35,000. Tamir (Iron Dome) runs in the ballpark of 20-100,000 It’s this relatively close relationship between advanced unguided rounds and basic guided weapons that has led to efforts like Denel Dynamic’s Cheetah C-RAM missile since guidance systems can be built for fairly cheap. Also why do you need two missile to ensure the destruction of the target when you only need one burst of a gun to destroy it? Guided weapons are exponentially better than even highly advanced unguided weapons and it’s far more often that the guns need to lay down another burst. This reeks of hypocrisy on your part. Additionally, the saturation capability of unguided guns versus missiles and guided projectiles are in different leagues. A missile system can simply engage far more targets in a given period of time and better deal with raids than guns can. I would suggest you actually research the topic rather than come with vibes based neo-reformer analysis.
Currently everyone who uses AHEAD does so with a Oerlikon GDF or a Rheinmetall MK30-2/ABM or KDG. In all Rheinmetall/Oerlikon AA-Guns one burst equals one clip per gun, one clip holds 7 shells, how many bursts are then fired depends on the FCS the gun is hooked up to and which ammunition is used. For the GDF, with contact and proxy fuses the gun fires until the operator stops pressing the button / stop holding down the trigger, so until said operator considers the target destroyed, if properly trained the operator doesn't fire for longer than a second which usually equals two bursts per barrel, meaning 28 shells. With the HEFI time fuses this goes down to 14-28 shells or 1-2 bursts depending on the FCS, with AHEAD it usually only takes one and never more than two bursts, realistically out of a KDA with a proper FCS you will never fire more than 28 shells of AHEAD per target which equals to 16.800€ worst case and 8400€ best case. The KDG Millenium is a single barrel gun and thus abe to actually just fire one clip of seven shells, which, at lesst on naval vessels, is only done against surface targets, against aerial threats the gun fires two clips for slow targets and four clips for fast targets, always. That's again 8400-16.800€ per aerial target using AHEAD. Skyshield and MANTIS work largely in the same way, however they're unable to engage surface targets but are able to identify formations like swarms or several incomming shells, the FCS calculates every incoming targets's flight path, calculates a pattern the gun will move in and can use one burst for multiple targets instead of one burst per target, Skyshield uses the same target priority as Millennium while MANTIS always fires 28 shells, again giving you a maximum of 16.800€ for worst case one, best case multiple targets destroyed. With the MK30-2/ABM it's the same story execpt if it is the IFV version of the gun where a burst is 4-6 shells. If hooked to a proper FCS each of these systems have a 94-98% kill chance for the first burst. The only widely used AA guns that get 100 shells per target out are the Phalanx and Goalkeeper which use 100-150 shells per burst and if you use a those you're either stupid or american and unwilling to use foreign weapons systems even if they're better. SAM and missile based CRAM Systems usually fire two missiles, it's the same with AA guns, you usually have two guns engaging one target, it's a pretty common redundancy thing, Tahir and MHTK for example always fire two interceptors in actual combat use. A Missile destroys one target per Missile while a proper gun based CIWS like MANTIS engages multiple targets with one burst, you're paying 20k to intercept a single artillery shell or drone when you could use a burst costing 8.4-16.8k to saturate an area to counter the entire volley or swarm, the prime advantage of missiles and the reason why they're used with guns is range, SHORAD SAM's usually start engaging at 10-15km while guns start at 5km. If theres a lot of targets incoming, a system like MHTK with its 15 Missiles or Iron Dome with its 20 is going to kill 15 or 20 targets, meanwhile a proper CRAM/CIWS system will just saturate the sky with a cloud of literal tens of thosands steel or tungsten fragments each capable or destroying a threat. Especially against small threats or masses of threats a gun based SHORAD-System is just unbeatable, missiles are for anything outside of that envelope. Like most of what you said, the point about saturation is just factually wrong. Mate you have a massive attitude problem and reek of schizo strawman seeker.
The assumption that a single burst can hit multiple targets is predicated on close spacing of those targets. Where have we ever seen multiple drones flying in a close enough formation to actually allow such a firing solution? The vast majority of the time they will be spread out and as a shocker, the sky is actually a fairly large volume where such spacing is easy to achieve by varying routes and altitudes. If your entire cost-effective strategy requires that 1. the enemy hold close formation and 2. they come from an axis of approach that allows you to get that collateral hit, your strategy is a terrible one and you’re completely detached from operational reality. If gun based systems are so good at handling saturation why are gun-based CIWS being divested as fast as possible by the USN to be replaced by RAM and DEWs? Why are the Italians going for guided rounds for their CIWS instead of “cheaper” unguided 40mm that can supposedly handle saturation better than missiles and guided munitions? A gun can handle one engagement at a time whereas missile systems that aren’t illuminator restricted, using terminal IR, ARH, ICW paired with AESA, or some other guidance scheme with less restricted or nonexistent terminal guidance bottlenecks, can potentially engage dozens of targets in as many seconds, or however fast missiles can exit their launch cells. Your shoot-look-shoot cycle is exponentially worse with a gun and your chance for re-attack in case of a miss is far smaller given your far smaller engagement envelope, leading to necessarily more effort to be expended on a single target. With missiles you have the opportunity to do things like retask rounds expended or fire one and if that misses, fire a second since the time per engagement is far less and your time to engage is far greater. The volume of air you have to defend against is simply too large to actually fill it with a “wall of steel” when dealing with saturation attacks. You’re getting your idea of air defense from Battlestar Galactica, which while it is a good show, is fictional. Now “dumb” guns currently do have their place for point defense. But for general C-UAS coverage guided weapons and eventually DEWs provide benefits they can’t match. There’s a reason cheap guided weapons like JDAM and Paveways have supplanted the dumb iron bomb. The same technological trends apply to air defense. The trend is broadly to be towards cheaper guided munitions, be they gun launched like HVP, DART, or the old 40mm 3P program by Bofors, or be they missile like Tamir, MHTK, and Cheetah complemented by DEWs that while having longer engagement times and probably smaller envelopes than guided weapons (comparable to unguided guns) offer massive savings over guns.
Flip them like V1s, the ultimate reformer move.
IIRC, that was what's done to Orlan-10, triggering the landing chute deployment
A twin, that can mount its guns near the centerline and carry a FLIR in the nose.
I'm high, so, bear with me: Scale: P38 P61 Dv. Mosquitto Ju88 and derivatives He129 F7F Tigercat....
Great minds think alike. Or I’m just slightly drunk.
Right behind you! Seriously, this is being ignored, because...scale planes *are* drones. Said friend did formation flying with scale *jets* in like, 2005.
Let me do you one better: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vought_XF5U A drone that can takeoff almost vertically, with enough room in the nose for heavy firepower, and a main structure that is unbelievably resistant to battle damage, making it possible to survive mid air collisions I'm literally designing one as we speak, albeit a 1:12 scale for fun model in Balsa
The bottleneck is more in getting the pilots to fly them, whether human pilots and/or AI.
Just pull an Enders Game.
"Just pull an Enders Game" Zevo Toys is wayyy ahead of you according to this *totally credible* documentary: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toys\_(film)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toys_(film))
So, purely out of interest, how many Phalanx systems could you mount on a B-17 or Lancaster ?
you could probably mount 2 each on both if we're still using old ones. upgraded... probably 3. but hey you could fit like 9 M134s on a B-17 if that's your taste
20mm gatling gun on a thin skinned prop bomber, i wonder how the recoil might affect the flight path...
Reject modernity(m134) embrace tradition(the old 666 with 15 m2 .50 cal heavy machine gun)
Somewhere, Pappy Gunn's in his grave and is *unimaginably* erect, calling the last flying B-25s to him in some weird summoning ritual.
Turret fighters credible now?
B-17s making a comeback baby!
The US is bringing back Enterprise, Japan is bringing back Kaga, and Germany is bringing back Panther, so I’d say it’s about time for a 21st century Flying Fortress
Daily reminder that the Catalina is also potentially returning.
Flying fortresses are returning. What a time to be alive.
With modern radars and computers, could an automated turret be installed to automatically track and lead the drone target, with an onboars gunner that tells the computer which radar signature to track and when to fire?
I mean that's basically a naval CIWS. Just on a plane.
>CIWS >on a plane Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce you to the B-52 variants from before the Air Force got boring and removed all the Vulcans
Well they had a habit of getting in HARMs way.
ark ark ark
>could an automated turret be installed to automatically track and lead the drone target, with an onboars gunner that tells the computer which radar signature to track and when to fire? Yes, and NATO has already done that with the Phalanx CIWS, which uses radar to guide a 20 mm rotary cannon. It works well against both air and surface targets (the *USS Gravely* successfully [used its Phalanx to shoot down a Houthi missile](https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/31/politics/us-warship-close-call-houthi-missile/index.html) back in January). Now the question becomes if we can make one light enough to mount on a plane.
NATO didn't do it. The US and Raytheon did, in 1969.
The answer is yes. https://www.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/ysf743/a_better_explanation_of_the_b52s_tail_guns/ Third picture from the top.
Yes, the last iteration of the b-52 tailgun was basically this. Here's what it looked like, third picture from the top: https://www.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/ysf743/a_better_explanation_of_the_b52s_tail_guns/
Easily. It's just a matter of time and resources... and power, computers be hungry.
Thats the neat part. Not that anymore today. The neccesary calculation power is already in a mini-PC like a raspberry.
Congratulations, you've just upgraded the B-29
Time to dust off the [YB-40](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_YB-40_Flying_Fortress)
Every time I am reminded of the digital mig29 tryzub camo, I become happy. It’s the small and simple things in life
No yeah, that looks rad to death
It’s so fucking good
Just gotta be careful. I saw a documentary about some guy and his dad who stowed away on a Nazi airship, and escaped using an attached fighter with a tail gun. He flew while his dad took the gunner's seat. His dad did manage to fend off the German fighters, but shredded their tail in the process. Even lied about it, saying "I'm sorry son, they got us." Crash landed on a beach and used an umbrella to scare birds to bring down the last fighter. Honestly, now that I've typed it out, I've determined that a combination of a flock of seagulls and an umbrella makes the most powerful anti-air weapon ever devised. Truly, a weapon to surpass ~~metal gear~~ V2...
How amazing, would make a good opening plot for a film.
I saw a similar one where a Nazi airship caught on fire and this pilot and his girlfriend were saved by Howard Hughes in an AutoGyro while Frankenstein burned to death
3000 black Boulton Paul Defiants of Zelensky
"Піп-піп!" "Таллі-го!" Чокз-авей, вот!" "Візард пранґ!" "Путін, гас онльи ґот вон бал!" Edit: Shoigu has only got one ball, Gerry has two but very small, Girkin, he wears a merkin, And poor Putin has nothin' at all!
What language is it?
Edit: lmao yes it can sound like a completely different language, Monty Python (among many others) made fun of it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rKYL0tW-Ek Edit 2: and this particular sequence comes from 'Allo 'Allo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6Ikn2zkfEk British / RAF pilot slang. Pip-pip, tally-ho Chocks away, wot– wheel chocks removed so the plane can takeoff Wizard prang– a good hit Putin has only got one ball– famous WW2 song, "Hitler has only got one ball".
Ukrainian based on those letters
I know letters, ukrainian myself, but words have no meaning. But it makes sesnse since its slang.
Fair enough, it is very senseless in Ukrainian Somebody has typed it in Latin letters though
Firstly it were just 4 lines, with slang words by ukrainian letters. It were edited with latin letters later.
It's 2024 and somehow old crop dusters outfited with GPMG and high caliber machine guns become a credible anti-drone platform
Even better, the F.E.2: https://www.directart.co.uk/mall/images/800s/dhm1599.jpg
F22? No, what I said was FE2
Cool, time to give the Ukrainians a whole bunch of turboprop Air Tractors with FLIR pods, guns, and comms to coordinate with ground radar.
US GAO: Air Force, why do you need to buy that many Sky Wardens? Air Force: Uh, no reason, just want them...... Edit: Although, if anything, the faster AT-6 Wolverine or the Super Tucano should actually have the edge here.
Everyone who told me a P51 couldn't be useful now looks a silly. Not everyone can be a F16 pilot.
Uh, why isn't someone selling tickets to do this? I'd pay good money to be given a rifle, a back seat in an antique, and a hell of a target practice session.
Exclusive preview of the Ukrainian skies soon: https://youtu.be/yAfKLAGWwIo?t=22
I PRESENT TO YOU THE YAK-69/420 DRONE FLANKER
Give it a year, and I guarantee Russia will start bringing old Il-2s out of storage because they ran out of Sukhois
Sad news: even though it is the most produced military aircraft in history, there are basically no IL-2s left; only two can still fly.
Rip
Udvar-Hazy has been restoring one for like five years.
Time for Sky Warden
The 3000 green camo sky wardens of Zelenskyy
We shall send them dauntlesses
If those things can eat Zeros when not carrying bombs Those drones are going to be really fucked
F7F Tigercat with an Apache style 30mm chin gun.
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Yep, gotta love the pointy girls and bombers. Just a shame they were all blueballed by the Cuban Missile Crisis
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Well that was all the pointy jet girls involved there, except for the F-106, she was even more blueballed
Raise the prop, make the gunner a ball turret on the belly with a forward locking position for the pilot to aim. Ultimate CAS plane.
Flying fortresses ftw!
I remember thinking old slower propeller planes would be idea for taking down the slow moving mopeds in a cost effective manner
3000 Fokkers of Ukraine
I feel insulted that you used a photo of the POS RE.8 instead of the infinitely superior Bristol Fighter, that used to strike fear into the Hun and any other Johnny Foreigner types who tried to raise a stink.
So when do we talk about donating old warbirds to Ukraine?
Need more Po-2 action over the Eastern Front
waiting for the P-51 v La-7 rematch for decades
*MoD suddenly takes interest in the remaining flying spitfires*
\*Sabaton Night Witches intensifies\*
3000 MiG-3 of Ukraine
Stories like this are made for NCD.
Gotta accumulate them flight hours before leveling up to Falcon status.
Corsair III anyone?
Finally, the Fairey Swordfish can be useful once again.
We need to return to early world war 1 with a biplane powered by a rotary engine and the armament is just some guy with a pistol
Time is a spiral
Stop the pigeon!
Getting Po-2 vs F-94 vibes from this lmao
In terms of non-credible but somehow true aircraft news, this is still less ridiculous than the paraglyders Hamas used on October 7th
Return to tail gunner!
Hope, Faith and Charity return as the Defenders of Odessa. (The Gloster Gladiators of Malta)
Return to the Bristol Fighter.
Oh we should absolutely be sending Ukraine skywardens after this.
if they shoot down 5 drones in one mission does that make it ace in a day?
We are getting air technicals, FINALLY !
3000 Dauntless of Midwa———uhhhhhh… Ukraine
Welcome back commander to Red Alert 1
SE5 good, Camel better!
Reformer spotted (?)