Typhoon & Brimstone

[Tourist]

Originally Posted by skua

This is not a cheap conflict if the MOD release of ops on 30 Nov is anything to go by:


So that's £30k to knock out each machine gun position!

A little bit of research might show you that £30k is actually very reasonable in the context of what a kill cost in any war of the last couple of hundred years..

I have read that in Vietnam it was 50,000 rounds per kill, plus you need to pay all the wages etc.

Read "On Killing"

[Courtney Mil]

So, every time the UK Armed Forces fire a Brimstone, the U.K. loses a nurse. Every time they drop an LGB a teacher has to resign and go on the dole. Every time ISIS loses a Landcruiser with four murdering bastards in it, they come closer to beating the West through economic attrition.

I'm surprised the Government hasn't added a statement to go with SDSR to say you can have your new carriers, but don't fly anything from them or all the schools will have to close.

I hate to think how many dog rescue centres will face the chop just to fly the six Typhoons to Cyprus.

[Pontius Navigator]

Background Noise, not just Eurofighter 2000:

SA80, AS90, MS 2000, Nimrod 2000 just a PR Media 'good idea'.

Just to even things up, AK47 and AK74.

[AR1]

Not forgetting 'Plant a tree in 73'

[KenV]

I don't disagree that tabloid accounting is stupid, however beancounting is important in war.

So fighter pilots should close to short range and use "cheap" Sidewinder/ASRAAM and avoid using "expensive" AMRAAM. Or better yet, close to gun range so they can use even cheaper gun rounds. And only drop cheap dumb bombs and never expensive guided weapons. And should mostly fly cheap Jaguars, avoid flying expensive Typhoons, and NEVER fly exhorbitantly expensive F-35s.

And when flying MPA, the crew should limit their sonobuoy fields to three or four buoys to cut down on costs. And use only "cheap" LOFAR buoys rather than expensive DIFAR buoys and heaven forbid exhorbitant Active Buoys. And only fly cheap C295 MPA aircraft and not expensive P-8 MPA aircraft.

And infantry should use handguns as much as possible because 9mm ammo is much cheaper than 5.56mm ammo. And avoid using machine guns altogether because the vast majority of machine gun rounds miss their target and that's just a waste of ammo. And forget about using weapons that require exhorbitantly expensive 7.62mm or heaven forbid 12.5mm ammo.

Makes sense to me.

[Davef68]

Originally Posted by AR1

Not forgetting 'Plant a tree in 73'

Watch it grow in '74!

[Pontius Navigator]

Originally Posted by KenV

And when flying MPA, the crew should limit their sonobuoy fields to three or four buoys to cut down on costs. And use only "cheap" LOFAR buoys rather than expensive DIFAR buoys.

Didn't realise you were on Nimrods in the 70s. No buoys if you had used your allocation, Don t drop CH x, x1 x5 etc. Dont drop a 1c buoy on a contact lost over 5 miles. Don't drop a second even if first u/s.

[Yellow Sun]

Quote:
Originally Posted by KenV View Post
And when flying MPA, the crew should limit their sonobuoy fields to three or four buoys to cut down on costs. And use only "cheap" LOFAR buoys rather than expensive DIFAR buoys.

Didn't realise you were on Nimrods in the 70s. No buoys if you had used your allocation, Don t drop CH x, x1 x5 etc. Dont drop a 1c buoy on a contact lost over 5 miles. Don't drop a second even if first u/s.

I knew things were getting tight when they started to limit the use of Free Markers

YS

[Roadster280]

If that machine gun position isn't taken out, and it kills one of your guys or brings down one of your aircraft, you have just lost considerably more than 30 grand.

On the "that's three primary school teachers" argument, it would only hold true if the money that the munition cost were to be allocated to the education budget. But since the rounds have been bought whether they are fired or age out on the shelf, the money will never go to fund more teachers. It's already been spent.

Now granted, the ammo will be replaced if expended, but perhaps a better metric would be how many immigrants can be kept on state benefits per week.

[strake]

Just saw an interview with the Staish of Marham saying that the blast area of a Brimstone is " a very small dining-table size". Does he mean the damage area because the pics I've seen show something a little bigger? Genuinely interested.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-34985628

Interview starts at 1:21

[Royalistflyer]

An Amy friend of mine got the MC for taking out a machine gun emplacement single-handed - I must remind him to go and claim his £10,000

[JointShiteFighter]

Originally Posted by skua

So that's £30k to knock out each machine gun position!

It would have been cheaper to ask Corbyn to send them a letter.

[Pontius Navigator]

Royalist, but they would have to deduct 50,000 bullets from his invoice unless he could prove that he hadn't expended any.

BZ

[ORAC]

Winning a war, however, is far less expensive than losing one.

[Training Risky]

Or instead of wasting a £200k PW4 on an Islamic State landcruiser, we could always start using cheap, unguided weapons with a wide frag pattern: cluster bombs!

(Provided the collateral damage estimate shows there would be no risk of civcas...)

[Easy Street]

Collateral damage estimates only measure the short-term risk of civcas. Cluster bombs were not banned because of their short-term effects; they were banned because of the high proportion of bomblets which failed to explode, leaving a long-term problem which no collateral damage assessment could possibly account for.

[VX275]

the Staish of Marham saying that the blast area of a Brimstone is " a very small dining-table size".


Is that an Imperial or Metric dinning table?
How many dinning tables does it take to cover a football pitch? or Wales for that matter?
Blast usually has a radius, so I take it the dinning tables have to be circular rather than rectangular.

[dctyke]

'Winning a war, however, is far less expensive than losing one.'

Did we win in Libya and Afghanistan, I really don't know. What I do know is that it was expensive whatever the outcome was.

[Training Risky]

Thanks for reminding me of that Easy...

I was thinking that the tricky issue of legacy bomblets affecting civilians could be easily mitigated against by actively noting where each CBU was dropped, then going to account for every bomblet once the ground environment allows. Maybe the desert roads of Syria far from established dwellings may reduce further the very real risk of kids coming across a UXB next to a smoking wreck of a landcruiser!

Being a very efficient military, we would obvs make a better job of tidying up bomblets than the Cambodians/Argentines did in previous conflicts.

[Pontius Navigator]

TR, fine in theory, if they were all lying exposed on bare earth. All you need is one in the long grass. The frag range is 30 yards, there are 144 of the little b*offers in each store. How do you know you have accounted for all of them.

I don't know, but I expect the plasma bolt could still work too.