Ok, hear me out. The hull number is for the USS Enterprise (CVN-65), which was deactivated in 2012. After that, instead of decommissioning, Elon Musk decides he needs a private military and hires Erik Prince to set it up. He buys the still-intact Enterprise, gets it modified the way he wants it, and sends it to Brazil to force X/Twitter back into service there. Full of Blackwater/Xe mercenaries, meth and coke are distributed to all personnel as daily rations. Fueled by the success of their first mission (and lots of drugs and alcohol), the bastard craft took to the high seas. It resembled a mobile party now, but a heavily-armed party. They looted, they raided, they held whole cities to ransom for fresh supplies of cheese, crackers, guacamole, spare ribs and wine and spirits that now get piped aboard from floating tankers.
I would like to participate in any rpg campaign you dm.
I'm guessing Ford and Slartibartfast will try and get in to this floating party, and it'll hit Arthur in the small of the back somehow :D
Zaphod, not Slartibartfast.
This sounds a tiny bit like the plot of Snow Crash
All it's missing is a rag-tag flotilla city towed along behind the carrier.
I think this leads to the Snow Crash timeline.
I would like to start with the chain of command that insisted a battleship turret be installed on the flight deck.
Insert Bradley committee movie .mov
I have a strange fascination with non credible defense post. Military people are like academic nerds when it comes to hyper specific vocabulary and in-the-know references. So many post and comments are like half ciphers where its a puzzle to piece together what is being talked about ad what the joke is.
I can't get a bunch of 'em, wish that there was spoiler text with context, especially on current events, where often the first I see of the event is the NCD reference.
I usually try to hyperlink or provide some context when I comment myself.
This is what you get, when you put the army in charge of a carrier, instead of the boat people.
Yeah, give it to the Coat Guard where it belongs.
Littoral carrier groups when? Blue water is dead. Long live the shallows!
Basically the entire plot to the ExFor series. Buck Army Colonel finds himself in command of an alien starship somehow. The series is one extremely non credible event after another and aware of itself.
Why do you want the army in charge of the boat people?
Hardie,har har.
That's actually pretty good.
Napoleon: The navy is just an army on boats
Cao Cao: agreed, how hard can it be?
..... and someone has allowed a local news helicopter to fly over the ship to provide live video footage of an active war scene.
I mean, if you were an embedded reporter, would you be willing to miss the opportunity to film this scene?
Note the 6th bubble: not only is this the first carrier with a deck mounted 16" turret, it's got a ro-ro ramp for the tank!
not only is this the first carrier with a deck mounted 16" turret
The HMS Furious in 1917 had both a rear 18" turret and a flight deck at the same time, though it might be questionable as to whether-or-not it'd qualify as an aircraft carrier (though the concept of an "aircraft carrier" was pretty embryonic in 1917, so some allowance probably has to be made). And while the turret was on a deck, it wasn't on the flight deck.
I thought the "18" was a typo, but the Royal Navy really did put the heaviest gun they ever fielded on a carrier.
that is furiously non credible, great find!
18"!?
Not to be confused with its bigger, angrier American counterpart, USS Really Fucking Pissed Off.
it’s got a ro-ro ramp for the tank!
I just laughing at the implications of this.
Sir, we have to abandon the mission. The enemy has closed their deep sea port - we cannot possibly launch an amphibious assault.
After reading that I'm convinced I would love a reaction video series where some military expert just eviscerates G.I Joe episodes.
I watched an episode just last night where the U.S.S. Flagg got it's shit slapped by a handful of Cobra aircraft. It basically looked like the picture above.
a deranged lunatic has parked an Abrams on the flight deck
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convoy_PQ_17
On receiving the third order to scatter on 4 July 1942, Lieutenant Leo Gradwell RNVR, commanding the anti-submarine trawler HMS Ayrshire, did not want to head for Archangelsk and led his convoy of Ayrshire and Troubador, Ironclad and Silver Sword north. On reaching the Arctic ice, the convoy pushed into it, then stopped engines and banked their fires. The crews used white paint from Troubador, covered the decks with white linen and arranged the Sherman tanks on the merchant vessels decks into a defensive formation, with loaded main guns. After a period of waiting and having evaded Luftwaffe reconnaissance aircraft, finding themselves unstuck, they proceeded to the Matochkin Strait.
Now, you might say that the USS Enterprise isn't a merchant ship desperate for some kind of defensive armament, but on the other hand, it appears to be firing battleship guns at a MiG still flying low right above the ship, and I have to believe that a tank's main gun, to say nothing of the machine guns, are probably more-suitable as short-range antiaircraft weapons than a battleship gun for that.
Frankly, I think that given the scenario, pre-positioning a tank in that situation probably demonstrates a considerable amount of foresight.
Frankly, I think that given the scenario, pre-positioning a tank in that situation probably demonstrates a considerable amount of foresight.
That sounds SUSPICIOUSLY like something a JAG defense lawyer might say
The Brits awarded Gradwell the DSC for putting tanks on his decks.
There's been recent doctrinal hotness with the Marines working on the concept of sticking a HIMARS unit on the flight decks of their amphibious assault ships.
https://taskandpurpose.com/news/himars-marine-corps-ship-deck/
...chaining the vehicle-mounted system to the vessel’s flight deck before firing off a 227mm GPS-guided M31 Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System (GLMRS) rocket at a mock target floating in the waters near a Pacific island some 70 kilometers away.
The results were, well, explosive:
Sure, parking a rocket truck on the flight deck of a vessel on the open ocean seems simple enough, but Marine officials are overjoyed with the success of the Oct. 22 exercise. “The ability to project power from and at sea is critical,” 1st Marine Expeditionary Brigade ops officer Lt. Col. Tom Savage told the U.S. Naval Institute from aboard the Dawn Blitz flagship USS Essex. “It’s a significant capability.”
The test has been in the works since at least September, when Marine Commandant Gen. Neller dropped a public hint. “We know we can shoot HIMARS [High Mobility Artillery Rocket System] off the flight deck of a ship,” Neller said during remarks at the at the Marine Corps League’s annual Modern Day Marine expo in Quantico, Virginia, on Sept. 21, according to Defense News. “You’re going to see precision fire delivered off amphib ships, whether it comes out of tube guns or rockets or delivered from unmanned systems.”
I think that the real question here isn't "should we be court-martialing the captain", but "what award should the captain receive for use of innovative tactics?"
Entire front end is useless for takeoff and landing. Also, LOTS of heads gonna roll for an entire carrier group failing to protect the fucking carrier.
I mean, the MiG has his wingman flying at very low altitude directly through what appears to be a napalm strike that he's just conducted on the starboard side of the carrier, so there's some questionable behavior on both sides here.
Well yeah its blocked off, thats where you park the tanks! Jeeze, it's like you've never heard of AFV flight deck deployments before.
The armored triple turret on the carrier that is apparently being fired at the MiG did not meet the bar to be included in the description.
That's there so the ship is classified as a cruiser instead of an aircraft carrier and the Turks let it cross the Bosporus.
I'm pretty sure that CVN-65 won't meet the displacement bar.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Enterprise_(CVN-65)
Displacement: 93,284-long-ton (94,781 t) full load[3]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreux_Convention_Regarding_the_Regime_of_the_Straits
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Montreux_Convention
The maximum aggregate tonnage of all foreign naval forces which may be in course of transit through the Straits shall not exceed 15,000 tons, except in the cases provided for in Article 11 and in Annex III to the present Convention.
Article 11.
Black Sea Powers may send through the Straits capital ships of a tonnage greater than that laid down in the first paragraph of Article 14, on condition that these vessels pass through the Straits singly, escorted by not more than two destroyers.
The US isn't a Black Sea power (though I guess maybe if the US transferred the Enterprise to Romania...). Russia can do it because it's a Black Sea power.
considers
I guess maybe if they got a whole lot of helium balloons and attached them to cables going down to the carrier, they could get the displacement below 15,000 tons.
EDIT: Actually, if they can get enough balloons to offset 80,000 tons, you'd think that they could just do the last 15,000 and convert the Enterprise into an airship and fly it into the Black Sea. The Montreaux Convention didn't think of that loophole!
Though...hmm. I think that the Enterprise relies on constant seawater cooling for the reactors, so maybe they can't do that. Maybe the turret does make sense in the context of the helium balloons after all.
Also your F-117s are rocket powered or some shit because those flames are coming from the one place that isn’t exhaust
I assume that that's just the tailgunner firing his flamethrower.
Makes sense, given the context
I mean, in fairness, at least the Mig-29 and F-117 are contemporaries, and deployed by enemies. I've seen playsets that include (iirc) an F-16 and a B-17 dogfighting against one another.
While the F-16 has the stronger letter, the B-17 takes the lead on the number. It's still anybody's game.
This is gold, thank you.
I thought the F117a doesn't have a2a capabilities. It acts like a hole in the sky, drops a couple of bombs and then the distant AWACS plane laughs maniacally.
a2a bombs, silly
you fly over them and drop your ordnance
https://www.sandboxx.us/news/how-an-f-15e-shot-down-an-iraqi-gunship-with-a-bomb/
The full story of how an F-15E scored its only air-to-air kill… with a bomb
Because they were moving so fast through the sky to close with the team in trouble, the unpowered bomb actually had a greater range than the Sidewinder missile. Bennett released the bomb 4 miles out from the Hind-24, with Bakke carefully keeping his laser sighted on the helicopter.
All you need is a steady hand and a laser designator!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_F-117_Nighthawk
For this reason, it is equipped with integrated sophisticated digital navigation and attack systems, targeting being achieved via a thermal imaging infrared system and a laser rangefinder/laser designator.
It's got the designator, so...
Ah, that makes sense. A laser-guided bomb is just a really lazy missile.
Sounds like a pretty normal day to me.
I'm assuming that the Abrams tank makes sense to protect the people on deck from the blast of the guns on that turret.
You people are weird. Obviously, the tank just landed and is being prepped to go out again.
the AeroGavin strap-on is coming up on the next elevator.
Hey don't make fun of Old Reliable - that tank is their deck gun.
