is this familiar with anyone?

[supersix-four 10]

First off, i live on Whidbey island, Washington, home to the prowlers (and now growlers!) of VAQ-129 through -142, or something like that. Puget sound, where our island is, has like 3 naval bases, and driving home today, i saw this in the waterway seperating us from the mainland:

http://www.missilethreat.com/repository/imgLib/20071203_xband.jpg

is it just me or does this look like something straight outta James Bond? its a missile defense platform, the "Sea-Based X-Band to be exact", and was driving itself to be repaired at one of our naval shipyards.

[Hans Ludwig 0]

It's a trojan horse filled with 1 billion red Chinese.

[ArmAriffic 10]

damn i thought i hid my nuclear ball launcher better than that :cool:

[Minutemen 10]

is this familiar with anyone?

[purepassion 22]

its a TRAP!!

dont touch it!

[abs 2]

Are you sure that it's not a cinema, like the one here in Toronto?

Abs

[due-_- 10]

click

[walker 0]

Hi supersix-four

An expensive Billion Dollar white elephant dreamed up by people in the Oil Industry as a way of getting the tax payer to pay for oil rig development and the cost of maintaining the rig building yards. It is the worst kind of military pork barrel project. It is just a juicy cheap drone target. One cutprice Iranian or Korean cruise missile or sea skimmer and it is toast. Half the time it is never even on station.

Far cheaper and infinitely more effective to use technology like this:

hVNV-FFUOnc

Long Endurance Multi-Intelligence Vehicles (LEMV) cost a 10th of that pile of oil company 2nd hand scrap. And their height above ground gives them both longer range radar and look down capabilities.

As you can buy tens of them for the cost of one of those, second hand oil rigs, you also get multiple redundancy, increased survivability, and much vaster coverage. Replacement is quicker and cheaper and mobility is massivley higher. You can place one over a fleet at sea or anywhere you deploy.

The US military chose this version:

http://www.hybridairvehicles.com/hav304.aspx

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/11/northrops-huge-army-spy-blimp-floats-on/

As have the Brits:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1293460/Giant-unmanned-airships-patrol-Afghanistan-skies-weeks-time.html

They are why we no longer need the Nimrods and Raytheon Sentinel.

Rumour has it that LEMVs have already been deployed and that one or more of them already sit over Afghanistan every day.

Kind Regards walker

Edited May 11, 2011 by walker

[supersix-four 10]

"An expensive Billion Dollar white elephant dreamed up by people in the Oil Industry as a way of getting the tax payer to pay for oil rig development and the cost of maintaining the rig building yards. It is the worst kind of military pork barrel project. It is just a juicy cheap drone target. One cutprice Iranian or Korean cruise missile or sea skimmer and it is toast. Half the time it is never even on station."

Being that its whole purpose is to detect missiles, i dont think it would be that easy to destroy. apparently, i t has the power to track a baseball-size object in the san Fransisco area from Chesapeak (spelling) bay. at least we know we'll be ready if north korea decides to attack us with baseballs. from the bay area. and apparently it rarely leaves its station in the Bering sea...and it cost 900 million, not a billion

:D

[walker 0]

Being that its whole purpose is to detect missiles, i dont think it would be that easy to destroy. apparently, i t has the power to track a baseball-size object in the san Fransisco area from Chesapeak (spelling) bay. at least we know we'll be ready if north korea decides to attack us with baseballs. from the bay area. and apparently it rarely leaves its station in the Bering sea...and it cost 900 million, not a billion

:D

Hi supersix-four

It is designed to detect balistic missiles not sea skimmers.

It has no over the horizon capability.

It is a static object; missing it would be quite hard and does not even require a guided weapon, a balistic shot from a cannon would be suffient.

A submarine could blow it out of the water with a torpedo easier than the Belgrano "Gotcha" as once again, it is static.

It spends most of the time not working either under maintenance at sea, or in dock or being towed to or from there. It has never been deployed where it was intended eg up in Alaska as it could not survive the seas up there.

900 Million was the sticker price. You then have to add in the daily maintenance and defense costs. It has to have a small fleet stationed round it 24 7 just to protect it from torpedos and cutprice sea skimmers, suicide jockies in an inflatable etc. heck even a second hand u-boat with its deck gun could destroy it.

And of course the killer -TaDa- it dont work.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8492677.stm

As I said it is a White Elephant.

Still I am sure the Bush administration Big Oil money people, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice "et al" apreciate another Billion Dollars of Welfare for the Wealthy from the US tax Payer.

Kind Regards walker

Edited May 12, 2011 by walker

[rksl-rock 1301]

OK lets add some actual facts here:

...

Far cheaper and infinitely more effective to use technology like this:

[YOUTUBE]hVNV-FFUOnc[YOUTUBE]

Long Endurance Multi-Intelligence Vehicles (LEMV) cost a 10th of that pile of oil company 2nd hand scrap. And their height above ground gives them both longer range radar and look down capabilities.

As you can buy tens of them for the cost of one of those, second hand oil rigs, you also get multiple redundancy, increased survivability, and much vaster coverage. Replacement is quicker and cheaper and mobility is massivley higher. You can place one over a fleet at sea or anywhere you deploy.

The US military chose this version:

http://www.hybridairvehicles.com/hav304.aspx

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/11/northrops-huge-army-spy-blimp-floats-on/

As have the Brits:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1293460/Giant-unmanned-airships-patrol-Afghanistan-skies-weeks-time.html

They are why we no longer need the Nimrods and Raytheon Sentinel.

FACT 1 - Northrop and other have been touting this "solution" for a very long time. So far the only contract they have is to develop "upto three prototype test beds to prove out the concept and investigate the feasibility of using "hybrid aircraft" for other military roles".

Please note the upto 3 part. This is because while the US are interested in this technology so far its proved very difficult to actually make reality at these sorts of dimensions, endurance and capability. Previous projects to create large format aerostats have run into some serious technical issues and proved of limited practical use due to practical things like internal power generation, payload and vulnerability to the vagaries of the weather. Previous attempts has fallen due to huge cost overruns and cheaper more readily available systems eg Predator/Reaper/Warrior UAVs.

FACT 2 - They are not intended to replace any current capability nor do they have any anti-missile capability or anti-ballistic missile detection capability.

The original TARS system was intended to detect low flying subsonic and low super sonic cruise missiles. But due to the changing threats it is now also being used much like the ASTOR/JSTARS/JTIDS system to track cross border movements in the US, Iraq and Afgahnistan.

FACT 3 - Britain has not ordered any of these "blimps". There is a British company developing similar Hybrid aircraft. And they do have a R&D contract with Qinetiq but not on the scale Northrop have. Nor do they have any orders to produce large scale Aerostats for the British Armed Forces.

FACT 4 - Nimrod was cancelled due to cost overruns and the Royal Navy's insistence that they could perform the same wartime (ASW) and peace time (SAR) functions with frigates and the updated Merlin HM2 fleet. Not because of some new system being brought in.

FACT 5 - Sentinel R1 was cancelled/scrapped/cast away - some say due to pressure from the US - due to the overlap in capability between the R1 and the US JSTARS/JTIDS systems. The story goes some "genius" in the current government decided that since the US operates JSTARS/JTIDS we don't need our own capability. So rather than standing the fleet down and storing it until we get more cash the entire GB£1 billion fleet will be broken up in 2014 or after we withdraw from Afghanistan. There is no official plan to replace it or any ISTAR system with blimps. UK or US made.

Rumour has it that LEMVs have already been deployed and that one or more of them already sit over Afghanistan every day.

LEMVs havent even made it out of the continetal United States. The only "blimp" like thing operating in Afghanistan are varients of the Tethered Aerostat Radar System.

There are discussions about seeding the Helmand/Pakistan region with TARS stations just like the US/Mexico border areas but that's it.

http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/Time-for-TARS-Along-USAs-Southern-Borders-04973/

As always do some research yourself. You may just find the "truth is out there" :D

PS remove your tinfoil hat too. It helps. :rolleyes: (well ok it doesnt "help". but you'll look like less of a twat in public)

Edited May 12, 2011 by RKSL-Rock

[walker 0]

Ignore this

Edited May 12, 2011 by walker