The Belgians must have known that the French planned to fight their next war with Germany almost entirely on Belgian territory. The Belgians would have compared the human and economic toll of another German occupation with the cost of seeing Brussels destroyed in a Stalingrad- or Verdun-style...
Sable and Wolverine were far more useful as training platforms than in any kind of combat capacity. It would have been easier and faster to put flight decks on tankers being built on the West Coast and get them into combat as escort carriers.
That looks like the kind of quasi-aerospike that Stoke is building. The article says five engines on the first stage, but the diagram appears to show eight in an octagonal arrangement around the perimeter of the vehicle and one in the center. VTVL and air relight of a GG hydrolox motor would...
The dysfunction in the French Army was such that the first German breakthrough that could get to operational depths would collapse the entire front for 2-4 weeks. It just happened that IOTL the Germans went with the high-risk, high-reward Sickle Cut. If the Germans had concentrated their armored...
Because the Chinese would be unable to contribute to a large ground campaign except in Korea, they would be unlikely to create a significant change to the correlation of ground forces, globally speaking. NATO would still concentrate the vast majority of their forces for operations in Europe. US...
What the British needed was a single theater-level air defense commander (like a JFACC) and battle staff (like a US CAOC) to coordinate fighter operations across the entire Channel-North Sea front. A functional GCI system would be able to emulate the Big Wing tactic in the aggregate by vectoring...
If they are anything more than a security unit, like the Air Force Security Police units that used Cadillac Gage armored vehicles in Vietnam, you are going to want more off-road mobility than what a 4x4, especially an armored one, can provide. The GDLS LAV I and LAV II but probably the most...
The F-105 is a monster compared to the F-104 or Mirage III.
Aircraft
Empty
MTOW (kg)
F-105
12 tons
24 tons
F-104
6.4 tons
13 tons
Mirage III
7 tons
14 tons
The Thud was also not a fighter, and it was always escorted by real fighters during the strikes in Vietnam. The air-to-air...
Considering the amount of stuff soldiers like to carry around in the desert, like water, food, and ammunition, the unpowered wheel on the sidecar, and the dust and sun in the desert, I would much rather have a 4WD Hilux than a motorcycle. The motorcycle only has an advantage in a...
It doesn't work that way. Tank guns fire unitary ammunition and artillery pieces use separate ammunition with a variable number of charge bags (whether the charge is then cased or the breech is self-obturating), so they wouldn't be compatible even if you wanted to fire the same projectiles out...
This sounds a lot like the LCS without the speed requirement, so maybe it ends up designated as an FF or FMS (frigate minesweeper) unless Rumsfeld is set on creating an entirely new hull classification. The La Fayette class sounds pretty similar in terms of basic requirements, although this FMS...
If we can offload the LCS program's anti-small boat role to helicopters and we don't actually need to worry about ASW because the Burkes and remaining OHPs can do that, then what does an armed MCM look like? Something like an Absalon would have plenty of space for the minehunting gear and can...
All of the Osprey and Avenger class mine hunters were commissioned in the late 1980s and early 1990s, so they shouldn't have been retiring before 2010 at the absolute earliest. An OHP successor program in the 1990s shouldn't even have to worry about mine warfare.
If you're going to drop the speed requirement, why do you still need the trimaran? Is this a role that you could do with the Expeditionary Fast Transport instead?
A ~3,000 ton combatant like the MEKO 200 is going to be in a problematic capability valley. It would be substantially more expensive...
If you look at these three requirements, you end up with three different types of ships. The FAC could be something like the Ambassador Mk III built by VT Halter for the Egyptians, with a 76mm gun, 8 Harpoons, Phalanx, and a RAM launcher. The second ship might be something like the Braunschweig...