Rocketman said:
What about that little plane the Navy drives... the FA-18... bet it'd smoke your Eagle!!!
Sorry - couldn't hear you. I had something crazy in my ear...
Speaking as a guy who's spent more time than he'd care to admit to on the ground - air superiority won't win a war. It will help - to be certain - but it won't win. I think it was Woody who said "Nothing says 'we like this place' like dropping a battalion of Rangers on it."
With that in mind, I still say the best plane in the inventory (my opinion, natch!) is the A-10. Damn thing does 400 knots between trees, and carries just over twice its own weight in ordnance. The titanium bathtub for the pilot isn't a bad idea - I'd love to nail one of those down in surplus and make the "ultimate" claw-foot bathtup out of the thing!
It's a pity it's being retired - while stealth is nice and all that, how much of a beating can most of these stealth AC take?
Note that we have NEVER lost an A-10 in combat - all losses were due to some sort of "experiment" or another (I can think of a couple cases where they were trying out a new propellant for the GAU-8A, and it killed the turbofans...) I seem to want to recall that 735 or so were made, 8 or 9 lost, and one decommissioned (the two-seater at Wright-Patt - they decided that they couldn't hold W&B with the extended bathtub.)
Stealth? The A-10 don't want it, and don't need it. Hell - the A-10 version of "stealth" is called "ground clutter" - try and find it!
As far as sidearms go, the M92 is a mistake. Should have stuck with M1911/1991 and HK Mk23 - both better pistols, and so what if NATO wanted to go to the 9mm? I'm all in favour of simplified logistics, but let's simplify in a useful direction - 9mm is far from being the attention-getter a military sidearm should be. It should be borne in mind that the .45ACP was originally selected over the .38 Special simply because it was felt that the .38 was not a sufficient manstopper for military purposes (about the time of the Phillipine Insurrection, I believe) and it was agreed that we needed something that got the target's attention a little more efficiently.
The 9mm is not even the equal of the .38 Special, but quite a few of the NATO member countries think that a .32 Auto is enough for police use (I shan't get into my feelings on armed police - that's another topic!) and that the 9mm is enough. WRONG!
Also, while a "double-stack" is nice for some people, there are quite a few (like me,) who have these short, stubby little fingers that just don't get a good wrap on the double-stack mag - but the single-stack .45 just grows out of my fist, and it ain't coming out. The MK Mk23, oddly enough, worked fairly well - double-stack and all.
For those that think the double stack is workable, get a Para widebody - which takes the same upper half as the 1911/1991 (there's that simplified logistic train again!) and while magazine compatibility may be at issue, it's possible to strip single-stacks to feed double-stacks, and vice versa. After all, I've always felt better with 7+1 of .45ACP than I did with 17+1 of 9mm - and magazine changes should be done by pure muscle memory anyhow.
M16/M14/M1? There's an interesting debate - they are all different platforms with different uses. I'd not want an M16 in the jungle - there's a little phenom called "foliage deflection" that's been long known to screw things up. That's why the M14 was so highly regarded - it took a tree to deflect the .308, not a leaf.
However, the M16 does well in open areas - like the desert. It also likes to be kept dry - so it will do better in the desert (sand, dust) than the M1 or M14 - both of those like to be kept well-oiled.
Of course, the M16 does enjoy a significant advantage over its predecessors - modular upgrades! The M16 platform, with minor changes (nearly all of which are in the upper half, and can therefore be done in seconds,) can now handle a number of calibres - the .22 rimfire family, .223, .221, .222, .300 Whisper, 7.62x39 ("Commie Thirty" or "Light Thirty," depending on who you talk to,) .50AE, .50 Beowulf - and that's just the stuff right off the top of my head. Change the upper and grab different mags, and you've got a different rifle.
Another good "M16" idea that didn't work (and Heaven alone knows why!) is the old Colt Light Machine Gun (LMG.) Based upon the original M16, the LMG featured a slightly stronger recoil buffer (about a 500rpm cyclic rate, but better longevity,) a stronger-built top end (with more cooling area than you'd find on the M16,) and the ability to feed from belts or magazines.
Moreover, since both sights were on the upper half, you simply sighted in all your uppers before you went out on extended patrol, and you didn't worry about it when you changed uppers for whatever reason (the M60 had the fixed sight on the barrel and the movable on the receiver - what the Hell were they smoking? Where can I get some?)
The LMG could also be suppressed (feature that - a suppressed squad auto!) and shared quite a few internals with the M16 (which allowed unit-level cannibalism to keep the thing going.) Y'ask me, the only thing that was really done "wrong" on the LMG was to make it a bottom-ejector, but the LMG was designed by Eugene Stoner, not John Browning. Still, Stoner did have his head screwed on good and straight when he did pretty much all of his designing - the initial problems were due to misunderstanding the maintenance changes required at the individual level.
Dammit - there I go again. "But I digress..."
5-90
