Cold Warriors

[Someday]

SR-71 will always be my favorite, followed by the F15, F16, P-51, and P-38 (yeah, I know, not cold war, but great planes anyways)

[Someday]

1 minute ago, Eric said:

The US attack aircraft that the Sovs called The Devil's Cross. I think this aircraft scared them.

If we are talking big, ugly/awesome monsters, then this and the B-52 are at the top of the list!

[Batesmotel]

Don't have a pic but the DefCon countdown board.

[Eric]

Here we have the US Los Angeles Class attack submarine. Submarines was another area where we had the Sovs completely outclassed.

[NPTim]

[Eric]

The Ohio Class SSBN is probably the deadliest vessel ever to put to sea. Can you imagine the destruction that a single Ohio Class submarine could unleash? It is mind boggling. They say this is probably the quietest submarine ever put to sea as well, at least back in its heyday. something might have surpassed it since.

[Eric]

5 minutes ago, NPTim said:

That thing is a bomb truck. There is a CNC-machined aluminum truss that runs from just inboard of where one wing folds, through the fuselage, to just inboard of where the opposite wing folds. That single truss supports the wings and the entire bomb load. The Intruder was built tough. It is not a glamorous aircraft, but it is damned good at what it was designed to do.

[Batesmotel]

The Red Telephone and the Football.

[Eric]

This is an F8 Crusader. It is something that a fighter/attack aircraft this big served aboard aircraft carriers. This is a big bird.

[Eric]

The F-117 Nighthawk was a factor in the Cold War ending. Once this aircraft entered service and it proved its worth, the Soviets knew that we had made nuclear war theoretically winnable, for our side. We could park nukes over Moscow with no notice. We had the capability to take out their high command before they could respond effectively. And they knew that an even more sophisticated and effective stealth bomber was on the way. We made a move they could not counter. We changed the game and they lost. They could still have attacked if they wanted to, but they could not have won. All of Reagan's spending throughout the eighties demanded a level of spending on their parts that they could even less afford than we could. By the end of the eighties, they were spent out and they simply fell short. They couldn't beat us and for the first time in decades M.A.D. was no longer a bilateral given. The F-117 didn't stay in service for a very long period, but it served long enough to help seal the fate of a dictatorship.

[Batesmotel]

13 minutes ago, Eric said:

This is an F8 Crusader. It is something that a fighter/attack aircraft this big served aboard aircraft carriers. This is a big bird.

The last gunfighter

[Eric]

[Eric]

Our three largest transport aircraft, from a time when the US Air Force's Air Mobility Command was still the Military Airlift Command.

The C-130 Hercules:

The C-141 Starlifter:

The C-5 Galaxy:

BTW, I read somewhere that the US Air Force was reactivating some C-5 Galaxies. Anyone heard anything about that?

[Animal Mother]

G.I. Joe and the X-Files might have influenced me a bit.

[Animal Mother]

True Cold Warriors

 Back row: Alan Shepard, Gus Grissom, Gordon Cooper; front row: Wally Schirra, Deke Slayton, John Glenn, Scott Carpenter.

[Eric]

5 minutes ago, Animal Mother said:

 

I remember that aircraft. It is a NASA experimental aircraft called the X-29. I learned about it in Air Force Junior ROTC, in high school. Those classes had the coolest curriculum of any class I took in high school. We learned about some great stuff.

From the looks of the X-29, it began life as a Northrop F-20 Tigershark.

[Eric]

I remember seeing E-3 Sentry AWACS aircraft flying around, when I was in a kid.

[Eric]

The Boeing 707 saw use in a lot of different variants. Here is a KC-135 Stratotanker. These have been in service for decades. The Air Force has big tanker aircraft built on newer airframes, but I believe there are still KC-135s flying for the USAF. They have been upgraded with turbofan engines and many other upgrades as well, I'm sure. The bottom pic is of an upgraded KC-135. A site I just ran across said that the KC-135s have been in service for more than 60 years.

[Animal Mother]

20 minutes ago, Eric said:

I remember that aircraft. It is a NASA experimental aircraft called the X-29. I learned about it in Air Force Junior ROTC, in high school. Those classes had the coolest curriculum of any class I took in high school. We learned about some great stuff.

To me it'll always be the plane Slip-Stream flew, the Conquest X-30.

21 minutes ago, Eric said:

From the looks of the X-29, it began life as a Northrop F-20 Tigershark.

A friend of mine's father was a pilot and my friend always had cool plane posters.  The Tigershark and the YF-23 were two of my favorites.

[Eric]

Here is an odd-looking Boeing 707 variant that was used by the USAF. It is the EC-18B. This aircraft had some advanced RADAR system, with a huge parabolic dish in that bulbous nose, called ARIA.Here is a link to a page with a lot more info on this aircraft, if you are interested in learning more about it.

https://fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ac/ec-18.htm

[TBO]

5 hours ago, Eric said:

The B-1 Lancer may be the sexiest looking military aircraft ever built.

It's like that beautiful Predatory Raptor that freezes you with it's beauty, and kills you with it's awesome power. 

[TBO]

Soviet BMP

This SOB had it all, SMALL, FAST, MOBILE/AGILE, AMPHIBIOUS, and carried both a big punch and it's own infantry squad.

Most importantly, it was more numerous than ants in an anthill!

 

As a former Armored Crew member, I fondly remember the cadence:

 

"BMP sitting on a hill, honey honey,
BMP sitting on a hill, baby baby,
BMP sitting on a hill, 50 won't get him but the main gun will, honey your baby your mine, give me your left your right your left". 

 

 

[TBO]

Soviet RPG

 

 

 

 

[TBO]

Soviet Spy Trawlers

 

[Eric]

1 hour ago, TBO said:

Soviet RPG

 

 

 

 

Of all the weapons choices we made over the years, the one that made the least amount of sense to me is the fact that we never made our own version of the RPG. The LAW rocket isn't a fair replacement for it, nor is the AT4. We could have really used a hard hitting, inexpensive weapon like that. I'll never understand why we didn't build one.