It would behoove you not to pay heed to the "possiblility" of his
ideas, because they are almost always mutally exclusive from the
feasibility of them.
Such as running for his life by rendering himself defenceless
carrying his rifle by the SAR scope, fitting grunts with inline
skates, crashing UAVs and launching non- STOVL from LHDs...
all these can be possibly done but the soundness of such
plans leave more questions to be answered on the general ability of
their suggestor to use common sense.
Pretty much lionnoisy is the kind of person who climbs a tree
with his underwear on his head- ie. a person who is trying to find
new ways to do things without really making any direction into
finding a better way of doing things- or worse, even making things
worse then they were before...
I like his point on the SAR-21... in his desperate attempt to
beat out any more advanced designs he insisted that grunts have to
use the scope handle while "running for their lives" when it would
not only leave them defenceless but is actually one of the least
efficent ways to carry a rifle and run! So his "ideas" actually
makes things worse!
His ideal may be weird ... and unsound but we still can
give it benefit of doubt and further analyst it, if there is a
chance of it may work , we still have to acknowledge it - althought
it is unsound, uneconomical and not practical !
I would say launching non- STOVL from LHDs is unsound under
normal warfare... but we still can discuss over it , as there
is desperate time when people may do it ... !!!
Take the Doolittle Raid, 18 April 1942, is classical example of it
.... people all say b-25 is too heavy, too short runway - they too
just try it on the airfield only...never on a
real aircraft carrier ... that how they did the testing and
training too ... Of course at that time people say no wanker in his
right minds will do it ... but in the end it was
done....... althought - as we know it was a unsound mission - as
the payload drop is small and did little damages, but it did wonder
for the moral !
With all the facts, i think LHD is not designed for
normal F-18 operations ... it will never be able to
handle normal rountine f-18 operations..... thus lionnoisy is
definitely way off in his thinking that Aust can operate f-18 on
LHD...!!
But if you want to consider a one-time type of extreme mission
one-way ticket like Doolittle operations ... with f-18 & LHD +
skip-ramp.... actually it may just be possible.
from the dolittle raid as example ... and the testing... i think
launching with mininal fuel and weapon - for a f-18 from a lHD
using the full length is actually possible ..... as for landing
.... with nets ...... well it is possible .... but it may cause
damage to the f-18. But considering the fact that f-18 with the
launching without extra fuel tanks, the time to setup net to land
each f-18 ... well i don't think any f-18 will be landing any time
soon on LHD ... as they would have run out of fuel on
mission and just waiting to land !!! It will be a one way
ticket !!!
