Oops. My bad. No doubt the large munitions would be better, but where I was coming from was “fast response.” Monster waddles out of the East River. Cops can’t kill it. Scramble anything with weapons. I’m assuming here that the fighters on +15 standby are armed with air-to-air munitions, not Mavericks. The initial goal is to stop the monster before he kills more people, so they aren’t going to wait around for the right munitions to be fetched, they are going to scramble what they have RIGHT NOW! It would only be after those failed that somebody would start looking for the larger, more appropriate munitions.
As a side note: where would you find said munitions on the East Coast? It’s not like they’re the normal load for a defensive fighter unit. Does the Navy have anything like that handy? Probably, I’d guess. I wonder what a Harpoon would do to Mr. Monster?
I would think that a group of fighters with 20mm guns could cause severe damage to the monster. While any one shot wouldn’t kill the beast, thousands of high-explosive shells would cause a massive amount of tissue damage.
Small problem. As near as I can tell, the nearest unit equipped with Apaches is stationed at Ft. Eustis, VA, and they’re a training facility. I think the Coast Guard is going to be first at the scene with weaponry big enough to have an effect.
This is what I think about when I’m bored. Thanks, people.
I’m pretty sure that the Navy uses Doppler Radar. Only things that move will show up on it. If Mr. Monster is behind the sky scrapers he, obviously, won’t be able to be seen, but the Navy wouldn’t have any problem picking him up against the backdrop of the city.
Yes, if you can hit it thousands of times… but a 20mm is still a small projectile and a strafing run not the best way to put 1,000 rounds into target - you’d be lucky if you hit him 10 or 20 times per strafing run, assuming he’s not standing still, and against a 300ft 100,000lb monster, I’d say a 20mm HE round is roughly the equivalent of shooting a BB at a person. Sure, it would hurt, but not do the type of massive tissue damage you’d need to knock over Mr Monster through hydrostatic shock, which is what kills people with normal bullets. The explosives in the 20mm shells would add to the pain, but not significantly - you’re not talking about enough explosive to make a great deal of difference here.
Silenious - every Air Force base has it’s own (heavily guarded) bomb dump as well as fuel depot on base; this is generally up to and including (but not always) each base’s own nuclear arsenal - Spangdahlem, where I was stationed, had a conventional bomb dump but our nuclear weapons store was at a different location for security reasons. A rough timeline, based on my experience, goes something like this:
Order given; this takes half an hour to get confirmed, etc…
Weapons troops (my old job) scramble to the aircraft, Ammo troops (the guys who fetch the bombs) to the bomb dump. Say this takes 30 minutes.
Weapons prep the jets and the loading areas, whilst the Ammo troops arm the bombs / missiles, then they bring them out to us on trailers. This takes a minimum of 30 minutes, more like an hour, per jet.
Weps then load the bombs on the aircraft. Fully loading an F-16 with 6x MK-82, 2x AIM-120, 2x AIM-9, and 650x 20mm, plus chaff and flare takes about an hour; Weps would obviously tailor this load for the strike package (i.e. skip the Slammers and Sidewinders) selected and it would likely take less time - loading AGM-65 Mavericks takes about 20 minutes each and each jet can carry 2 unless it’s a F-15e Strike Eagle. At the same time as Weps are loading up, the ground crew is loading fuel, liquid O2, etc…
Pilot shows up, aircraft launches, flies to target. Say 1 hour at max speed with in-air refueling.
Bombs target,
Total time = 3 hours to first strike, then every hour after that another jet can hit Mr Monster. Multiply this by 8 load crews per Squadron and 2 Squadrons per Wing (or Base), and you’ve got 16 aircraft bombing Mr Monster in 5 hours, then another 16 every 3 hours after that.
When I was at Osan Air Base in South Korea, we trained hard to have all of our jets (26 in my Squadron) ready and loaded in 6 hours, but we had our live weapons right beside the aircraft in our hardened aircraft shelters which is not something done in normal bases anywhere else for safety reasons, especially stateside bases.
I like Bosda’s idea - likely the first decent firepower on scene would be Coast Guard, the rest of our air to mud or sea to mud or arty or tanks are too far away / already deployed / etc…
