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Domain: af.mil

Stories and comments across the archive that link to af.mil.

Comments · 904

  1. For more REALISTIC predictions by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1 · on Short History of the 21st Century
    Clarke has never been known for a realistic timeline in his predictions. Some of his visions has come true, but only the small scale predictions. Of all his large scale predictions: Manned Mars missions, Manned interplanetary missions, AI, Space sturctures, exotic energy sources. . . etc., NONE have come true. For a more realistic timeline check out these two links from the Air Force's Air University.

    2025 Spacecast 2020 WARNING: these are pretty long and very involved. For the serious minded person only.

    These offer many different scenerios, and possible outcomes and consequences.

    Cold fusion within 30 years when we aren't even CLOSE to hot fusion? I don't think so. And I can tell you right now: even if the technology exhists for Aero-Space planes by 2020, they will certainly not be in general use because of cost.

  2. Re:RAND and the NSA by merlin94121 · · Score: 1 · on Ask Slashdot: What's the Real NSA Like?

    cyanoacrylate wrote:
    > You obviously didn't read the summary

    I read the entire document. You have a interesting point, let's not get personal.

    > The whole point was that a repressive government > was vulnerable to a netwar if and only if it is:
    >
    > 1. In a state of political flux
    > 2. In the process of opening up political freedom
    > 3. Requiring greater world participation in its
    economy

    Although you don't say it, you seem to imply that even if the foreign government is repressive, it is OK for our government to aid them in repression. It is supposedly justifiable because if foreign government is assisted in destroying the militant social activists then they'll become less repressive sooner. And militant social activists are exactly the people most discussed in the RAND study ( see ch2 pg20 for example ).

    This is naive, IMO. Repressive governments become less oppressive when it becomes clear they can't sustain their society without healing internal divisions. See, for example, the history of South Africa. Governments try to open up 'just enough' to spur economic growth, but not enough for people to have real control over the elites who oppress them. However, as events in Eastern Europe, South Africa, etc.. show, once given some freedom, people will try to get more freedom and push past the false limits set by the ruling elites. This pushing does not 'set the country back 10 year', it propels it forward.

    The question is, should the United States use its spying expertise to assist repressive governments in destroying networks of militant social activists. I think according to law and ethics the answer is no.

    -Merlin

    p.s. there are a lot of papers written by various
    folks about what 'netwar' is and is not. Stick to the '.mil' analysis, for example as it by and large avoids the hype. Netwar, to the extent that it is different from psychological-warfare, is about connections between people, institutions, etc... Intelligence helps repressive governments pick exactly who/what will 'disrupt the network' if eliminated, discredited, threatened, etc....

  3. Re:x-37 by Lesson1 · · Score: 2 · on NASA's X-37

    aka blackbird, possible typing mistake? While the x-15 was incapable of self powered takeoff, it was capable of much faster speeds than mach 1. check out this. the unofficial speed is over 4500 mph. If my math works like it used to do in high school-- mach 1 is the speed of sound at sea level. .2 mps * 60 sec * 60 min = 720 mph, then this gives the x-15 around mach 6.25 if the speed of sound remained constant up to the height which I do not think it does, but I would think that it wouldn't decrease by a factor of 6.25.

  4. RS Satellite Launches by nstrug · · Score: 1 · on Ikonos 1 lost in space
    Unfortunately, IKONOS-1 is just the latest in a long sequence of failed remote sensing satellite launches. The biggest blow to the RS community was the launch failure of Landsat 6 a few years ago, the loss of Lewis in 1997 was also extremely depressing. Luckily, Landsat 7 launched succesfully last week. The next major RS launch is that of EOS AM-1 in July - if this isn't successful I'm out of a PhD :-(

    The IKONOS-1 people aren't too bothered, these things happen and of course they were fully insured - IKONOS-2 is complete and will be launched by the end of the year. My theory is that the launch was disrupted by SPOT :-)

    As far as the guff people are talking about spy satellites - remote sensing imagery has a THEORETICAL resolution of about 15cm. This is imposed by atmospheric disturbance. Spy satellites are designed for this resolution but the resulting imagery rarely approaches it. The main difference between spy satellites and RS satellites is that the spy satellites can execute orbit transfers a limited number of times (before they run out of propellant), resulting in an increased revist rate. They also of course do stereo (like SPOT). Unfortunately the military aren't exactly clued on how to analyse satellite data - we're talking transparencies, light tables and magic markers - don't believe the stuff you see in the movies.

    Actually, the allies in the gulf war ended up buying a shitload of imagery from SPOT simply because the spy satellite stuff wasn't up to scratch (not multispectral, images too small and too high resolution to go launcher-hunting in the desert). The French government tried to lean on SPOT to give a discount but they actually upped their rates realising they had a monopoly...

    Nick