Cool pic of an SU-25 landing or taking off from a flooded road...

Probably you know the stories about titanium slabs bought in Russia for cheap and used to machine some fighter parts.

Yeah, I have heard those stories. Which makes the propaganda all the more puzzling, as the USSR seemed to be a metallurgist's dream in terms of the availability of various metals with which to experiment with alloys and all that.
 
I'm sure Fencer knows as well as anybody that when the Lockheed Skunk Works developed the A-12 Oxcart for the CIA in the mid sixties (which eventually became the SR-71 Blackbird for the Air Force), they did so using almost entirely SOVIET titanium bought through CIA front companies.

It is one of history's many great ironies that Blackbirds made with Soviet titanium went on to fly recon missions over Soviet territory. :)
 
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Fencer, did you ever have any desire to fly with Long Range Aviation in TU-22s or TU-160s?
 
Fencer, did you ever have any desire to fly with Long Range Aviation in TU-22s or TU-160s?


Desire? I wouldn't say so. Possibility? Da. There was an exam after all necessary exams and physical were passed. It's so called "profotbor" bunch of stupid tests measuring reaction time and rudimentary smartness. If you are in Group 1 you are good for Sukhoi, if group 2 or 3 - Long Range Aviation or Morflot (Navy) Aviation.
 
Oh burn! We're going to have to get Fencer and Mike a "TACAIR ONLY - DO NOT DISTURB" sign for their hotel room next JC. :D
 
A-stan 1987. "Grach" 8033 was hit by Stinger. One engine stalled, controls were jammed, breaking parachute lost, all hydroliquid gone. Pilot (major Ob'edkov) made it to Kabul. Gear dropped down because hydrolics had no fluid. No breaks and gears folded and ripped off at the end of runway. Airborne in the area found the parachute and reported pilot dead. Next day he called from Kabul he was OK. The plane wasn't counted as casualty and was transported to the Motherland for study.


 
Oh burn! We're going to have to get Fencer and Mike a "TACAIR ONLY - DO NOT DISTURB" sign for their hotel room next JC. :D

That would be pretty cool. When Fencer and I talked, after 3 hours, we'd barely covered 25% of the subjects and comparisons we wanted to talk about. Getting into the "how was it going to go down", of various tactical scenarios and situations. SU-24 on his side, F-111/F-117 on my side.

Where the vaunted Warsaw Pact had its issues and weaknesses in the famed Fulda Gap fight that never happened; it's come to light that NATO (No Action, Talk Only) might not have fared alot better, what with how they've been running various operations as of late.
 
Pilot (major Ob'edkov) made it to Kabul...

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Is that him, on the right? ;)
 
in the famed Fulda Gap fight that never happened

A secondary Nerd-interest of mine has always been tank warfare. Judging by what I've read (which is, of course, very much second-hand and subject to ridicule), the Fulda Gap scenario would have almost certainly ended with a tac-nuke exchange initiated by the US. Soviet armor was, it seems, MUCH better than we'd been led to believe. Not so much in technology (although that too) but in organization and unit-level competence. Even the "Red Storm Rising" scenario where we lost slowly appears in hindsight to have been a bit of a fantasy. Or so I've been led to believe.
 
A secondary Nerd-interest of mine has always been tank warfare. Judging by what I've read (which is, of course, very much second-hand and subject to ridicule), the Fulda Gap scenario would have almost certainly ended with a tac-nuke exchange initiated by the US. Soviet armor was, it seems, MUCH better than we'd been led to believe. Not so much in technology (although that too) but in organization and unit-level competence. Even the "Red Storm Rising" scenario where we lost slowly appears in hindsight to have been a bit of a fantasy. Or so I've been led to believe.

What the Warsaw Pact had was numbers. For it's time, tech-wise, the T-72 would've been going against the M60, later the M-1. The Pact also had air defense artillery in spades..........from MANPADs, to light/medium AAA, to mobile SAMS [only talking about the mobile ADA pieces, not even getting into the fixed, heavy stuff]. At the time, the A-10 was thought to have about a 2 missionsurvival rate, with all the ZSU-23s running around. For ADA, we had the Chapparal with its AIM-9s, and the M163 Vulcans, with some M42 Dusters here and there. Pact would have their own Frogfoots doing work on the front lines and against our ADA, troops, and tanks; as well as our AH-1s/AH-64 helos, going against Mi-24 Hind, Mi-28 Havoc, and the kickass Ka-50 Hokum helos. Tactical nukes were already sitting alert with Britain-based F-111s, as well as Germany-based F-16s and F-4s; and thats not even including the Britain-based, USAF-operated GLCM medium range missiles, or the Germany-based, US Army-operated Pershing-2 missiles.

It would've been a mess, likely with no real winner. Because when it comes to nukes.....when one flies, they ALL fly.
 
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What the Warsaw Pact had was numbers. For it's time, tech-wise, the T-72 would've been going against the M60, later the M-1. The Pact also had air defense artillery in spades..........from MANPADs, to light/medium AAA, to mobile SAMS [only talking about the mobile ADA pieces, not even getting into the fixed, heavy stuff]. At the time, the A-10 was thought to have about a 2 missionsurvival rate, with all the ZSU-23s running around. For ADA, we had the Chapparal with its AIM-9s, and the M163 Vulcans, with some M42 Dusters here and there. Pact would have their own Frogfoots doing work on the front lines and against our ADA, troops, and tanks; as well as our AH-1s/AH-64 helos, going against Mi-24 Hind, Mi-28 Havoc, and the kickass Ka-50 Hokum helos. Tactical nukes were already sitting alert with Britain-based F-111s, as well as Germany-based F-16s; and thats not even including the Britain-based, USAF-operated GLCM medium range missiles, or the Germany-based, US Army-operated Pershing-2 missiles.

It would've been a mess, likely with no real winner. Because when it comes to nukes.....when one flies, they ALL fly.


... oh man keep talking... I was good at finding Pershing-2...
 
It would've been a mess, likely with no real winner. Because when it comes to nukes.....when one flies, they ALL fly.

This is the "fantasy" to which I referred. I'm not sure whether it was actually believed in the Pentagon, but there seems to have been at least the window-dressing of "We can hold them off in a conventional war long enough for operations in other theaters to have an impact". Which appears, at least to my Interwebz-Nerd appreciation to have been very much false. As far as I can tell, most of Western Europe would have been eating borscht and singing Государственный гимн СССР in that scenario, had we not rolled out the nukes all those nice Germans were so upset about.
 
I'm sure Fencer knows as well as anybody that when the Lockheed Skunk Works developed the A-12 Oxcart for the CIA in the mid sixties (which eventually became the SR-71 Blackbird for the Air Force), they did so using almost entirely SOVIET titanium bought through CIA front companies.

It is one of history's many great ironies that Blackbirds made with Soviet titanium went on to fly recon missions over Soviet territory. :)
As more and more A-12 and SR-71 information is being declassified , I'm starting to think the stories about acquiring Russian titanium have picked up steam over the years. Once Kelly revealed details about the A-12 program to Titanium Metal Corporation, they had no problem meeting demand according to multiple CIA documents that have been declassified over the last couple of years. At the same time that the A-12 was being produced, the Navy was researching the merits of titanium in shipbuilding, especially submarines. One small research vessel with a titanium hull would probably use more titanium than the entire A-12 and SR-71 fleets combined and released information on those programs have not mentioned supply being a problem. I'm going to do some research into the Cold War global market for titanium and visit the archives the next time I'm in the DC area to research further.....because I waste time in interesting ways. There is no doubt that Russia was the largest producer of titanium during the Cold War but I haven't seen any documentary mention of CIA front companies engaged in the purchase of titanium. That doesn't mean too much as some amazing secrets are declassified and trivial matters remain hidden.
 
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Oh burn! We're going to have to get Fencer and Mike a "TACAIR ONLY - DO NOT DISTURB" sign for their hotel room next JC. :D

You'd have to include @Hacker15e too, because in all truth, Hacker is closer to Fencer, doctrinally speaking, in roles and missions, and Air Interdiction (AI) specifically, than I am. The SU-24s direct counterpart in the USAF was the F-111, and the F-111s replacement was the F-15E, in all associated roles and missions and including even more. While I flew the F-117, in terms of the AI mission, we only did very specific parts of the F-111 mission, we didn't have a wide-ranging mission set. All we did was penetrate enemy air defense systems to either degrade/disrupt/destroy said systems, or get through them to attack a very high value target such as command and control, or political targets that necessitated using a stealth aircraft, and to which were too dangerous for an "aluminuim jet" to attempt to prosecute. With my being an A-10 pilot by trade, Im more doctrinally aligned with an SU-25 pilot; although I am highly experienced in the AI role too. But Hacker would be more closely aligned than I am, to be truthful.
 
The more and more I read and learn about Eastern Bloc ADA, the more and more glad I haven't had the opportunity to look down their barrels.
The Tunguska scare the lively day lights out of me.

 
Yeah, checking out the Tunguska in the flesh, all I can say is "better you than me". *eek* Particularly poignant when you consider our mid-80s posture of what I remember as a bunch of Stingers and maybe a few Rolands thrown in to the mix.
 
This fact wasn't lost on the Navy as they could hang tactical nukes on just about every plane on the boat, including the S-3. In many of the war game scenarios there wasn't a boat to return to.

So you guys had a safe from which to remove your cowboy hats, too?
 
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