A 105mm would damage a skyscraper, and would definitely bust a lot of windows, but it’s nowhere close enough to take one down. Smaller buildings, maybe, but not a skyscraper. You’re talking 3-4 foot wide craters, so a big bang and lots of fragments, but not a lot of structural damage.
ETA - a 105mm projectile is less than 4kg of explosives. So a big bang, but definitely won’t take out a whole building. Per wikipedia.
As for taking out Mr Monster, sure - HE rounds would do a treat, and SABOT would punch through whatever biological armor Mr Monster has - it’s designed to punch through tank armour after all. Blast would wreak havoc on his internal organs, and blow big big chunks out of him.
As for the rest of the loadout, I’d prefer the twin 30mm GAU-8 avenger for the secondaries; 30mm rounds, and a lot of them (firing 2-4k rounds per minute per gun) would be a literal rain of high-velocity high explosives and would do some serious damage.
Guess what my favourite scene in Transformers was?
Japan invaded various Pacific Islands that were territories or protectorates of the USA during WWII.
During the War of 1812, Canadian troops invaded some northern states, and British troops invaded New Orleans.
During or just proceeding the Mexican-American war, I believe that there were incursions into America, either by Mexican troops or guerrilla troops (Pacho Villa?).
Iran invaded our embassy, and took employees hostage in 1979-1980. Embassy grounds in a foreign country are generally considered sovereign territory of our country.
But it’s basically true that we have not been in serious fear of an invasion over the last 200 years.
You liked that bit too eh? I’m considering buying and doing the same thing I do with Mad Max, bookmark a bit of the film and watch it when I’m bored and have a few minutes to spare.
Actually, Bosda might be onto something (as opposed to on something). Where are the closest Naval units to NYC? Anything with 5" guns or better. They’ve got the firepower, they don’t have to worry about traffic or the like, and they can sail around Manhattan all day, pounding the crap out of our beastie. A 5" shell can ruin your whole day.
Heh.
Just occurred to me that if we could persuade this thing to show up in Baghdad instead of NYC we’d probably have it dead in 30 minutes and Haliburton catering cooking it up in 2 hours…
You mean the cruisers, frigates and destroyers I mentioned back in post #17? My guesstimate for having a couple of those on station is about 6-18 hours. A few of them would have 5" guns, and surface-to-air misslies. A monster that big has bot to be able to attract a few of those.
There may be one or two at the Earle Weapons station at the time, but most would have to come from Groton or Norfolk.
How would a SA missile lock onto a monster? Heat? That thing has to have a tremendous body temperature, but is it enough to attract the attention of an AIM-9? It would have to show up on radar, but wouldn’t it get lost in the ground clutter? I think naval gunnery would be the best approach. 2 cruisers ought to do it.
According to the most recent edition of Harper’s magazine, NYC has (something like) the 4th-largest fleet in the world, with dozens or hundreds of trash-hauling barges. Surely those barges could be used as troop-transports in fairly short order.
They’re already in the area, so I guess they could work to ferry troops from the mainland without too much trouble. Of course, it would be almost impossible to load them up with vehicles of any kind.
Even closer – he invaded during or just preceding World War 1, during a Mexican civil war, invading New Mexico and raiding and executing people in a border town. Even moreso than Attu and Kiska and shelling of our coasts by subs, I’d count this as the most recent substantive invasion of the U.S., because NM was a state at the time and it is in the lower 48.
Like mentioned by someone in this thread before, it’s highly unlikely they’d be using a barrage of AIM-9’s (or any other air-to-air missile in common use, for that matter) to pummel the beastie into the ground. These missiles have tiny warheads; essentially, they’re designed to shred engine parts and vital control surfaces. It might be able to lock onto the monster, but it’d do nothing more than tick it off.
Now, I do think a beast that size would have a serious radar signature; a human-sized target picks up well enough against a police radar gun (confirmed by actual experience; I once got a particularly bored cop to clock me at a sprint, and he got a believable figure of about 17mph).
I think a military radar would be more sensitive and would likely do just fine locking onto a 300-foot tall monster, even with ground clutter like buildings and scared New Yorkers running amok. Remember, these things have fairly serious computer processing power behind them, at least in comparison to your local highway patrolman’s radar gun.
You’re mixing up your acronyms - SA stands for Surface to Air, an AIM-9 is an Air to Air. What you’re looking for is AGM (Air to Ground Missile) i.e. AGM-65 Maverick. As to your question, an AIM-9 probably couldn’t track a ground target at all unless it was hundreds of degrees hotter than the surrounding environment. Above and beyond the tiny warhead, the Aim-9 has a very dumb seeker head; it’s easily fooled by flares and the like, so it wouldn’t be able to differentiate between say a fire and a warm body standing next to it - they’re just not that sensitive.
For your air-to-ground capability, however, you’re looking at either an AGM-65 missile, which is TV or laser guided, or else GBU (Guided Bomb Units) which are either laser or GPS guided. I’d think laser guided would be the way to go, unless Mr Monster has hidden in a building or has gone to ground or something; if he’s moving, it would be better to have a target designation laser rather than bombing an area of ground. The AGM-65 is a high-precision weapon, and would do nicely with it’s 60-kg HE warhead - I’d think the trauma and shock from the explosion would do some serious damage to Mr Monster and knock him right down, added to the fact that it’s a solid rocket missile doing more damage from the impact itself - visualize an exploding bullet hitting someone at multiple times the speed of sound to put it in scale.
ignis_glaciesque - almost right on. The Aim-9 has a 9.4 kg warhead, called an “angular blast fragmentation” warhead, which is further wrapped in pre-cut steel surrounds. What this does is create a massive cloud of fragments when it explodes, which it does when it’s proximity sensor says ‘aircraft near’, not when it hits something. This does several things - it kicks out a huge could of fragments which shred the engine components when sucked into the intakes of jet aircraft, and also sends out a ton of high-speed very hot metal fragments that puncture fuel tanks and light the fuel on fire. Sometimes you’ll get a Sidewinder tracking all the way into the engine, in which case you get a ‘catatrophic kill’ by explosion of the engine, but that’s not as common. But you’re absolutely right - 9.4 kilos would make Mr 100,000lb 300ft Monster go ‘ouch’ but not much more.
Pushkin - I almost cross-trained into aerial gunnery, just so I could go play on AC-130 Spectres. I love the ruddy things!
I’m considering buying and doing the same thing I do with Mad Max, bookmark a bit of the film and watch it when I’m bored and have a few minutes to spare.