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Posted
On 6/21/2019 at 4:12 PM, sherpa said:

 

Good question.

Don't know.

 

To your point, most of the stuff I carried ex dumb bombs was pretty sophisticated seeker head stuff, and the electronics guys would always plug into the seeker and test it before launch to validate performance, but other than air to air missiles, which were left on for a day at a time, most of the stuff was offloaded between cycles.

 

 

 

On 6/21/2019 at 4:21 PM, DC Tom said:

 

I've read that it does, but not from a reliable source.  A2A in particular, since it usually has to withstand multiple cycles.

 

Makes a certain sense...but "makes sense" doesn't make it true.

Marine Corps Aviation Ordnance here so I can address these... 

There is nothing really to the degrading of ordnance due to take off and landing. I'll say Sherpa is correct however on some of the dumb stuff. I know we don't fly it anymore, but napalm in particular was very dangerous to download back off a plane, and also have to remove the initiator. Nap was really cool, but dangerous for anyone to be around... 

As for the testing, when your on the ground you have a "weight on wheels" switch that disarms the electrical part of ordnance system. This is for obvious reasons I think, you don't want someone accidentally pushing the wrong button etc...  With forward firing ordnance like your cannons for instance, there is still the possibility even slight, of stray voltage from static electricity or something to set something off. Guns, missiles, and rockets if your on base we have a designated arm/dearm area, usually way away from anything else, where your aimed away from anything, except us that is... I was the guy standing in front of all that to let you know what was going on; you bring your bird to where we test for stray voltage, then plug the ordnance in. On the guns we cycled that first one into the chamber. I think obviously these are fired by electrical impulse, not your traditional  percussion firing pin.

Anyway, point being, if you brought this back, we then had to disarm it, and if your gun was jammed, that made it even more dangerous since we had the clear that jam before letting you head back to the flight line. 

I never worked aboard a full size carrier since I was Harriers. But we still did the same pretty much with anything we flew off (for me, always rotary carriers) as we did on land regarding all the above, except of course closer quarters and notice your always pointed away from the tower, and the areas your pointed to SHOULD be clear of any support ships too... 

Sherpa, ever wonder why Ordnance is a bit crazier that everyone else? 

image.png.a0a52d325ac35a4e892c1305a75cece8.png

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Posted
3 hours ago, Deranged Rhino said:

 

What is most interesting about this is what is located in Ethiopia -- namely, IRGC and uranium mines. 

 

(And, also... the Arc of the Covenant is likely located here as well but that's added for fun)

They'll choose poorly.

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Posted
49 minutes ago, Cinga said:

Sherpa, ever wonder why Ordnance is a bit crazier that everyone else? 

 

 

No one has ever wondered that.  Everyone pretty much knew.

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Posted (edited)
3 hours ago, Cinga said:

Sherpa, ever wonder why Ordnance is a bit crazier that everyone else? 

image.png.a0a52d325ac35a4e892c1305a75cece8.png

 

Napalm?

How old are you?

I never saw that stuff, and we never had it aboard.

 

Anyway, I loved our "ordies."

As you probably know, on a carrier the various specialties wear different color sweatshirts.

The ordies wore redshirts.

If they hadn't gotten to me prior to man up, they would do their thing, look up to the cockpit and give the hand signal with the shooting gun action and a thumbs up.

 

Back ashore, I knew they had worked their butts off for two days to get a walleye working.

Walleye is a TV guided bomb  that uses a TV picture from a camera in its nose to  allow you to lock what you want to hit.

It has two parallel horizontal and two parallel vertical lies. The "box" that is created is inside the four lies the aim point, highly amplified.

I really wanted to reward them with a good video when I carried it, so I locked up an RV on a north/south highway in the Owens valley in Ca, heading at me.

I locked him at about ten miles, and got kind of carried away trying to sweeten the video.

The video is transmitted back to the cockpit and you can sweeten the picture by slewing the box.

Anyway, at about one half mile and 300 feet, I see the thing pull off the road in a cloud of dust.

He must have seen me and gotten really scared and decided to pull off the road,

A fighter flying head on at you and really low and really fast.

 

The ordies loved the video, but I told them not to let it out, and I worried about the guy making a call for days.

Edited by sherpa
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Posted

not really surprising that the PA has rejected the Trump Administrations plan. they are not interested in peace and prosperity and the advancement of their peoples.

 

https://twitter.com/WhiteHouse/status/1142450270439432192

 

https://twitter.com/TRTWorldNow/status/1142533969537146880

 

https://twitter.com/SaraCarterDC/status/1142794437006782464

 

Trump’s ‘Opportunity of the Century’: A US$ 50B ‘Marshall Plan’ for Middle East

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Posted (edited)
5 hours ago, sherpa said:

 

Napalm?

How old are you?

I never saw that stuff, and we never had it aboard.

 

Anyway, I loved our "ordies."

As you probably know, on a carrier the various specialties wear different color sweatshirts.

The ordies wore redshirts.

If they hadn't gotten to me prior to man up, they would do their thing, look up to the cockpit and give the hand signal with the shooting gun action and a thumbs up.

 

Back ashore, I knew they had worked their butts off for two days to get a walleye working.

Walleye is a TV guided bomb  that uses a TV picture from a camera in its nose to  allow you to lock what you want to hit.

It has two parallel horizontal and two parallel vertical lies. The "box" that is created is inside the four lies the aim point, highly amplified.

I really wanted to reward them with a good video when I carried it, so I locked up an RV on a north/south highway in the Owens valley in Ca, heading at me.

I locked him at about ten miles, and got kind of carried away trying to sweeten the video.

The video is transmitted back to the cockpit and you can sweeten the picture by slewing the box.

Anyway, at about one half mile and 300 feet, I see the thing pull off the road in a cloud of dust.

He must have seen me and gotten really scared and decided to pull off the road,

A fighter flying head on at you and really low and really fast.

 

The ordies loved the video, but I told them not to let it out, and I worried about the guy making a call for days.

Yup, I was a redshirt and as for how old well, let's just say I'm a well seasoned USS Tarawa LHA-1 maiden West Pac old ?

 

I'm familiar with the Walleye, they've been around forever as air to ground it seems sort of like the Sidewinder and Sparrow are for air to air. Your also correct, we rarely got to see the results of our work, Air shows in Quantico for congress critters for us were great, cause it was all our show. They were there to see big explosions and balls of fire and we loved giving them to them there cause we got to watch too.

 Anyway, got a couple stories about that and Nap  can't post, but both funny and maybe scary over a beer sometime.. 

 

 

Edited by Cinga
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Posted
On 6/21/2019 at 12:54 PM, sherpa said:

 

Some stuff is no problem.

Air to air missiles, air to ground missiles like anti radiation stuff used to take out radar sites are not a big deal.

Dumb bombs are cheap and not worth the weight and risk of bringing them back aboard.

More exotic stuff, which is far more expensive, is worth it.

 

Things like flares, which is burning magnesium, providing one million candle power for night stuff, is absolutely not worth it, but fortunately, with the US's night capability, it isn't used much anymore, but would have to be jettisoned prior to landing.

 

Either way, the sailors that work the flight deck don't like weapons on the landing airplanes, and neither does the captain.

Lot's of bad things can happen.

 

For the armaments that are not used during flight, then are jettisoned before landing, are they merely dropped into the ocean and recovered? Are they equip with a self destruct mechanism? Are they fired and explode upon impact with the water? I can't imagine that they are left intact and lying on the ocean floor (or would some float?) without recovery efforts, since these are not things you would want other nations recovering and looking inside of.

Posted
9 hours ago, Deranged Rhino said:

 

 

Honest admission:

 

When I first read "State media's highly unusual and positive handling of Trump's..."  I thought WAPO said something nice about POTUS.

 

Well....maybe some day.

Posted
1 hour ago, 4merper4mer said:

Honest admission:

 

When I first read "State media's highly unusual and positive handling of Trump's..."  I thought WAPO said something nice about POTUS.

 

Well....maybe some day.

They have pro-Trump writers that regularly produce happy pieces about him. 

 

 

But on another matter, when Trump tweeted his plans not to attack Iran because people would be killed, I just wonder what Putin said about that. The guy who murdered hundreds with airline shoot down must have laughed pretty hard. 

Posted

 

Quote

 

 “All of these countries should be protecting their own ships on what has always been . . . a dangerous journey,” he said, adding that China and Japan get most of their energy exports through the strait.

“We don’t even need to be there,” Trump said, citing energy production in the United States. “The U.S. request for Iran is very simple — No Nuclear Weapons and No Further Sponsoring of Terror!”

 

 

So why then were we 10 minutes away from war there? 

Posted
14 minutes ago, Buffalo_Gal said:

 

 

Jesus, what an idiot.  He's advocating a Chinese naval buildup, and Japan violating postwar treaties AND their own constitution with their own naval buildup?  While Japan and China are disputing the Senkaku islands?  

 

He's Warren G. Harding with much worse hair.

Posted
8 minutes ago, DC Tom said:

 

Jesus, what an idiot.  He's advocating a Chinese naval buildup, and Japan violating postwar treaties AND their own constitution with their own naval buildup?  While Japan and China are disputing the Senkaku islands?  

 

He's Warren G. Harding with much worse hair.

 

:lol:

Posted (edited)
9 minutes ago, DC Tom said:

 

Jesus, what an idiot.  He's advocating a Chinese naval buildup, and Japan violating postwar treaties AND their own constitution with their own naval buildup?  While Japan and China are disputing the Senkaku islands?  

 

He's Warren G. Harding with much worse hair.


Or perhaps he'd like to point out the Japanese should pay for protection? (Pay more? I'm not sure how the US is compensated as Japan has a brown water navy and the US (as a blue water navy) escorts or intervenes for them.) And whatever other country(ies) we are protecting should pay more?  Maybe one of the navy guys here could explain this (compensation, escort, US responsibilities, etc)? 

Or possibly it his way of highlighting that it isn't the US that directly is impacted?  The US is definitely  indirectly impacted as something like 25% of the world's energy flows (heh) through there, and if that supply is negatively impacted long term, it could bring on a worldwide depression. 

I have no specific idea what the purpose of President Trump's tweets were. The one thing I've learned over the last few years is people vastly underestimate Trump,  and his tweets usually (not always) are serving a purpose. 

Edited by Buffalo_Gal
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Posted
25 minutes ago, DC Tom said:

 

Jesus, what an idiot.  He's advocating a Chinese naval buildup, and Japan violating postwar treaties AND their own constitution with their own naval buildup?  While Japan and China are disputing the Senkaku islands?  

 

He's Warren G. Harding with much worse hair.

 

Most likely it's his special way to entice other countries to enforce the Iran sanctions and not to work the back alleys to find ways to skirt them.

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