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You were probably joking but you should look into what happened to the funding for things like NORAD. It is actually quite interesting to see posted line by line spending = half of the budget during some years yet nobody questions it. MIB $$? ;)

From here

A bottom-up line-item aggregation in the Meteorology program area successfully reproduces with negligible divergence the DoD estimates from 1980 through 1986, and from 1991 through 1994. However, there is a gross discrepancy from 1987 through 1990, during which the DoD estimate is nearly twice the total that can be derived through line-item aggregation. There is no apparent explanation for this, as a close examination of budget documents reveals no meteorology or oceanography related programs not included in the line-item estimates.

Many more interesting facts on that page and some others on a quick google search of '+NAFTA +funding'

The Rainbow Series was a series of books published by the government on developing and deploying secure computing platforms in the late 80s, in conjunction with the DoD and MITRE. It's now largely dated, but there's still some good theory to be found. It's also freakin huge, and would take years to read them all.

Well, only if you believe the most pessimistic assumptions of planners, add 50% margin, then add another bit of margin to account for worst-case weapon performance, neglect the effects of firestorms etc. etc. You say it has to hit within 800m to destroy the target (which is easy these days) - an uninformed reader might think that implies that if you're 800m away you'll be fine. Far, far from the truth... Check out this link to see for yourself.

A while back I took a course on nuclear warfare at a major institute of technology on the East Coast taught by a former targeting specialist for (I think) the Navy. Very macabre, but interesting. We had one homework set where we were to place ourselves in the shoes of a Soviet planner tasked with "eliminating the economic potential of Boston", specifically by cutting road and rail links to the city. To do this you had to take out a couple of bridges. Now, it turns out that by standard planning assumptions bridges need something like 1000 psi overpressure to be destroyed - which means you have to be within a few hundred yards with a medium-sized nuke. I'm fuzzy on the details, but I think you eneded up havin to lob something like four 150 kiloton warheads at the damned thing to have a 90% assurance of destruction. This somes from the fact that planners assume that anything short of vaporization can be repaired on short notice. You mention Dresden - the only way they got rail links working in a few days was because the stockpiled rails, and basically laid new track. None of these calculations take into account the effects of EMP and other attacks utteryly destroying essentially all industry and manufacturing.

Then he had us calculate what this would do to Boston itself. This is where you discover that cities are fragile. The city would be destroyed by fire, mostly. For reference to those who live there, a 5 Mt airburst over the MIT dome would cause firestorms as far away as Natick. Dangerous fallout, if the wind blew inland (unusual) would reach upstate New York; the dose rate in Worcester could be 500 rads/hour (lethal in one to two hours).

Then, a few years ago, The Business looked into the effects of a 1 Mt citykiller dropped on London. It turns out you'd kill 20% of the population, but only destroy 5% of the economic value of London... meaning that immediately following a nuclear strike, the survivors would find themselves 18% wealthier. (They'd need it, too, thanks to the rampant inflation which would soon hit.)

Bullshit. I don't care which psychotic group of thinktank warriors came up with that crap, but it ain't gonna happen. 20% of the poulation is close to 20% of the economic value of the city, at least in terms of wartime value. Never mind the fact that if you nuked London, the survivors would hardly brush off the fallout and go down and start investing in the stock market, or go shopping. Look at what 9/11 did in the US - 3000 casualties in one city, and something like 200 billion dollars of economic damage. Now imagine killing 2 million people outright, not to mention annihilating everything in a 5-mile radius around Buckingham Palace. The survivors get richer?

Did you notice the references to radiation sickness in the article?

Most government employees that have sufficient clearance and have been granted access to SECRET material on a need to know basis are pretty well informed about the required Operating Procedures

That's baloney. The US military loves the air launch thing. Back in the '70s there was a pathfinder-type mission that air launched a Minuteman. And the MDA is heavily invested in air launched targets for the various interceptor programs. There was the LRALT program and a newer target launched by Orbital Sciences. And, of course, there's also Orbital's Pegasus space launch vehicle.

The benefit of the type of air launch method that t/Space is showing is that the LRALT and MRT programs require the extremely heavy sleds that they sit on and that they are limited by the cargo capacity of a C-17. And Pegasus has to carry that enormous wing and tail structure (not to mention its failures, such as the first X-43A flight).

I think if t/Space can show superiority over the existing air launch methods (which doesn't seem to be difficult), they will definitely fill a demand in both the small space launch and targets markets.

Why not for air if it works for sea ?

http://www.stratmag.com/issueJan-15/page03.htm

http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/missile/row/shk val.htm

http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Supercavi tation

In fact, every one of the various functional specifications has been used.

he acquisition of these technologies resulted in China's production of more advanced surface combatants during the past decade-- including a single 6,000-ton Luhai-class guided-missile destroyer (DDG), two Luhu-class DDGs (4,200 tons), and nine Jiangwei-class frigates (2,250 tons). These units are equipped with the HQ-7 or HQ-61 short-range air defense systems that likely will be replaced by a longer-range vertical-launch system within the next three to five years. These ships also have integrated tactical data systems, an improved antisubmarine warfare suite that includes embarked helicopters, and gas turbine propulsion.

Notwithstanding these improvements, the backbone of the PLA surface fleet remains its 16 aging Luda-class destroyers (3,250 tons) and 30 Jianghu-class frigates (1,425 tons) that are largely inadequate to meet the requirements of modern warfare. The planned acquisition of two 7,940-ton Russian-built Sovremenny-class DDGs in the 2000 to 2001 period will improve the PLAN's surface-combatant capabilities. These units are likely to be equipped with an advanced SAN-7 air-defense system, the KA-28 Helix Helicopter, and SSN-22 cruise-missile technology. The PLAN's HQ-61 and HQ-7 systems are based on the French Crotale land-based surface-to-air missile system, and they do not provide surface units with an effective area-defense capability. This deficiency makes PLAN surface units extremely vulnerable to air attack.

Note: we do not currently use explosives in tank-to-tank anti-armor shells! They have much less penetrating power than shaped charges, particularly against composite armor.

At these velocities, it won't matter; the projectile will have more KE than the chemical energy of explosive would be, and it won't go through intact; most of that will be converted to heat.

US Tank shells

Congratulations, you've heard of the SIPRNET. Now a few facts should intercede:

#1- No messages from the SIPRNET are transmitted over the internet. The encryption devices you are refering to are:
a) not used to protect classified information from the public, they are used to segregate those with a similar clearance that have/have not a "need to know".
b) not universal. or even common.

#2- The secure facilities that you mention are ...nothing like what you mention. What you are referring to is known as a "SCIF", (Secured Compartmented Information Facility). A SCIF is a really really sturdy box. It typically houses a barrage of white-elephant technology experts who would kill for a window. http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/dcid1-21.htm

#3- While many may see the advantage of "heavy use of fiber optics, pressurized conduits" etc, I'm afraid the ruling bodies in the DoD simply do not watch THAT many movies, and I think you would find the truth a bit lackluster. Security issues are addressed without the use of negative pressurization in doors, or any other such coolness.
(Though the average scif is really devoid of dust now that I think about it...)

#4- "Fortunately I don't often have to deal with that stuff."
Then may I suggest not presenting as fact something that is not, especially about something you admit you are not a member of, let alone an expert.

Now, go ahead. Ask me where I'm posting this from.

No, like a SCIF.

There are 2 military networks. Niprnet and Siprnet. Niprnet is the unclassified network, while siprnet is obviously classified. Anything that is determined to be confidential or higher is supposed to be on the siprnet. The siprnet is also supposed to have absolutely no connectivity to the niprnet. This doesn't mean that people don't use niprnet email for stuff they shouldn't, but it is clearly outlined and military members are constantly reminded to be discrete in any email or what not. Just like Tom Clancy books, you can put together a lot of information from unclassified material.

As far as unsecured systems, this isn't a surprise at all. When I was stationed in Germany (98-01), I was only authorized to run win95 on my 486dx machine. Even though NT and then 2000 were both authorized by the US Army, it than had to be certified for us by USAEUR (US Army Europe). After that, it had to be approved by V Corps for usage. Once that was available, it would than be possible to run NT or 2000 on the desktop machines. When I left in June 2001, it still wasn't authorized for usage. Even though many officers were running 2000 on their shinny new laptops and "Toughbooks". The network admin's were purposely too lazy to downgrade to an authorized OS. The domain servers were NT4 however.

The sad reality is that most systems within the military are unsecured because of time constraints. It is foolish to think that a organization that is understaffed and has a primary focus of defense and offense, is going to spend much time worrying about things like computers. Unfortunately, most of the people I worked with in the Division's Automation shop weren't experienced with computers at all, and their first experience with a virus/worm was the ILOVEYOU virus.

Of course, something as Earth-shattering as UFO proof wouldn't get anywhere near a computer only approved for 'Secret'. Think secure facilities with guards, shielded rooms and computers, and vaults. Where classified networks do exist, you'll see mandatory physical separation distances between cables to avoid crosstalk, heavy use of fiber optics, pressurized conduits, and so forth.

Fortunately I don't often have to deal with that stuff. As exciting and mysterious as classified data processing might sound, it's mostly boring and a freaking pain in the ass to deal with.

The U.S. Military is going to a model where the "heavy lifting" of combat will be done by autonomous or semi-autonomous units. It is all about reducing training costs and the "political cost" of human lives.

The Air Force is going to this model with the http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ac/ucav.htm/UCA V. You will F-22 fighters for Air-to-Air Superiority to control the skies as F-35 Joint Strike Fighter squadrons augmented with UCAVs take out ground targets. The UCAVs get the dangerous missions and the F-35s do clean-up work. Targets are found and designated by UAVs like the Predator and the Global Hawk. 80% of the Air Force's costs are training and personnel. Even when you get to hard equipment costs, the UCAV is 1/3 the price of a JSF and 8 - 9% the cost of a F-22.

The Army and the Marines will have the "packbot" and Talon robots to engage "hardened targets". Ground robots will still require human guidance and will most likely be an extension of the eyes, ears, and rifle instead of autonomous soldiers.

As a veteran of the Gulf War and a former paratrooper of the 82nd Airborne, I can not even begin to describe the advantages of a highly mobile force that can air-deployed or sea-deployed in 1 - 3 days anywhere in the world. The 82nd Airborne can have 1/3 of the Division anywhere in the world in 18 hours or less of the President saying "Go." Imagine them having that same deployability but now having that same size force able to employ more firepower than the entire Division thanks to robotic augementation.

The problems here are still those of logistics and command and control. You still need boats and planes to put your forces on site. Commanders still need to be able to get an assessment of the tactical situation from the field and give orders to their forces. Robots put that much more of a strain on command and control and logistically are yet another thing that must be transported to the front, kept running, and repaired as needed.

I wonder what the MOS of a robot repairman is in the Army?

They are directly tasked with assassinations (since presidential directive after 9/11)

Which executive order number is that, specifically? The one you claim supercedes 12333, I mean.

If you have a source for this assertion, I'd be interested in seeing it.

It's called "Google", it's not hard to use.

For the first hit, http://www.fas.org/faspir/2002/v55n2/dirtybomb.htm

In order to compare against Chernobyl, you'd need to have Germans drop a working nuclear reactor on London.

No. Any two things can be compared if they are measured in the same units, such as Curies per square meter. This comparison is quite easy, since the Federation of Atomic Scientists has already done the work for you. In the link I gave (which was presented to the USA Congress), the effects of a bomb on NYC are drawn in units of Chernobyl-equivalencies.

Just because the total radioactive mass of the Chernobyl was so much larger than any reasonable bomb doesn't mean it's threat is incomparably greater. Only a little of the material drifted away from the reactor, but an intentionally weaponized release would mean 100% of the substance is dispersed on the target.

The Chernobyl release covered an area of about 70 km length with a radation level of 40+ Ci/km*km, while a hypothetical terrorist Cobalt bomb used in the FAS analysis would spread the same radioactivity level over a 7 km length. So a small bomb is 1% as powerful as the Chernobyl release, but of course, it can be positioned on a high-population target for maximum damage.

There, that wasn't so hard. Now remember that the 100s of cases of acute radiation poisoning occured at Chernobyl mainly amoung people who were unaware of the radiation risk. They were evacuated within the day, which is something that 1945 victims of a dirty bomb attack would not have understood to do.

If used in '45, no one would have noticed and things would have gone along fine. Years later there would have been a spike in birth defect and cancer.

Eh? That's like worrying about smoke inhalation when someone has just doused you in burning napalm.

Cancer and birth defects are rather meaningless in comparison to the mass dieoffs from radition poisoning within two weeks of the attack. That's the main effect!

Do not be confused by the threat estimates produced by modern analyses of dirty bomb attacks, because they both assume a small, amateurishly improvised weapon, and a victim population that flees the target area within one day. Instead, compare against the Chernobyl disaster.

If someone in Nazi Germany had had the bright idea to drop a half dozen 500 lb dirty bombs from submarine-launched rockets, the combination of the large radioactive mass and the total ignorance about it's hazard would've been sufficient to kill the 90% of the populations of London, NYC, Washington DC, and Pearl Harbor.

(The crews of those submarines, however, would surely experience heightened cancer incidence...)

And only in America are there those that believe that Saddam's government didn't have the refining capabilities to work with the uranium. At the very least, he was persuing the material to experiment with, with the full intention of proceding towards modern weaponry.

Lest we forget, his government was 90% of the way to completing a French-built nuclear reactor (before it was severely damaged in 1981). The French abandoned the project in 1984; Iraq rebuilt the plant without outside assistance in 1988. After invading Kuwait, in late 1990 Iraq began converting the plant to produce weapons grade plutonium. The plant was leveled by Desert Storm air attacks in Feb 1991.

It is idiotic to believe that Iraq technology remained static for 10 years, and it is rather naive to believe that with that length of time to aquire material with the illbegotten oil-for-food revenue, that he didn't already have the equipment within his country to refine whatever uranium he was able to import. But this is America, where we allow people to believe whatever they want to believe...

hacker: Originally, a hacker was someone who made furniture with an axe. In computing slang it is a person who enjoys exploring the details of programmable systems and how to stretch their capabilities, as opposed to most users, who prefer to learn only the minimum necessary. Also, one who programs enthusiastically (even obsessively) or who enjoys programming rather than just theorizing about programming. http://www.fas.org/news/reference/probert/PA.HTM

well if there after hackers there goes slashdot's readers.......

There are differences in shipboard landing VTOL vs. conventional. They both have their issues but the VTOL thing is not an order of magnitude harder. One difference is that the energy level of a conventional landing is way higher than a VTOL landing because a multi-ton plane is moving at around 100 knots when it hits. So if something goes wrong its a bigger mess, tearing up more than just the plane. A VTOL mishap usually just wrecks the plane. I have worked on both VTOL and conventional autoland systems and the level of precision and the complexity of the system required is about the same.

The big problem JPALS and the system mentioned in TFA are trying to solve is getting good and reliable enough GPS data to land with (remember the ship is moving so you can't use conventional DGPS or RTK systems because you don't have a fixed reference point). Its actually a hard problem and thats what these folks are proud of. Thats why most autoland systems in use use tracking radars.

So, you're nitpicking over semantics. No, we didn't have enough firepower to destroy the world a la Star Wars. However, the term "destroy the world" as I and most other people were using it referred to destroying all life on the world. THAT we were able to do with enough coverage to engulf the world multiple times over.

No, you're not listening. We don't have enough firepower to cover any more than a fraction of the surface area. There's nowhere near enough weapons to wipe out all life on Earth. As I said, not even enough antimatter to go to Alpha-Centauri could do it. We're good, but we're nowhere near THAT good.

Yes, and they still spent to keep up with us. So what? It still doesn't change the fact that they overspent because we overspent.

You complained that the Russian equipment always outnumbered ours. That's not as true as it was made out to be, and there equipment ended up being non-comparable to our own. i.e. They were all bark and no bite. And because of their attempts to keep up with our technology, the Russians easily outspent us on military ventures. The overspending ended up being a good thing because our economy could take it and their's couldn't.

Then again, what's overspending when your very existance depends on it?

I've had talks with a technician that serviced nuclear weapons. You need to build a device with a shaped charge that will detonate in a precise sequence while still maintaining the integrity of the device. No such device is so easy to make that an uneducated person could do so with "the proper equipment".

Be careful about your usage of the term "uneducated". Uneducated is not the same as no higher education. Education comes in two components:

1. Access to knowledge
2. Experience

The access to knowledge is already solved and that is all the US can actually control. Experience comes by doing things. Designing a proper charge and shell can be done by an experienced engineer who understands his materials. Even third world countries have industry similar to what the US had in the 1940s. Not to mention that the properties of many materials are better understood (e.g. Depleted Uranium makes an excellent construction material for something that has to be super-strong. This wasn't fully understood in the 1940s.)

Were your statement true, then every country in the world would have plutonium nukes.

They would, if it weren't for one minor issue: Where do they get the Plutonium from? The method for generating sufficient plutonium is a nuclear reactor. In case you haven't noticed, nuclear reactors are carefully controlled by the UN. All nuclear materials must be accounted for or there will be hell to pay.

Note that pretty much every first world (and now some second and third world countries) has nuclear weapons, especially implosion devices. And that's despite the fact that gun devices are far easier to construct and obtain materials for.

Here's an interesting account for you. The Israelis attacked an Iraqi nuclear power plant explicitly to prevent Saddam from obtaining plutonium. Wonder why they might do that? ;-)

I was hoping you'd fall into that trap. We are talking about weapons. These weapons are physical devices one could touch or hold. Learning French does not enable you to make a weapon. And yes, you could steal a weapon, but knowing French does not specifically give you the ability to steal. However, knowing nuclear engineering certainly does give you the knowledge to build a nuclear weapon.

It's not a trap. A spy is just as much of weapon as a nuclear bomb. A spy can not only steal information, but can plant fake information, reduce operating capacity, ensure defects in weapons, sow discord, and potentially even have key people executed. Spys are *very* dangerous weapons.

I don't particularly care about saving lives in China, Cuba, In

info on aurora :

http://www.fas.org/irp/mystery/aurora.htm

why don't we wait for somebody to start building the things

Like this?

The Russians are extremely intelligent, but it doesn't take a genius to figure out that US / NATO military power relies heavily on over-the-horizon information systems and space sensors.

possibly challenge US Superiority in what we do best.

USAF C-23 Sherpa
USCG HH-65A Dolphin (Dauphin)
Sony
Panasonic Toughbook
Software for the F-35 Strike Fighter (p.17)
Fox NBC Rec Vehicle

Not huge projects, but not inconsequential, either.

..because I thought they meant one of these SSNs

do you have a refrence, or did you pull that out of your mother's peed-in-vagina?

Assuming you're referring to the stealth bomber:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B-2_Spirit

The B-2 is the most expensive plane built to date, costing approximately $2.2 billion USD per plane. [1] (http://www.fas.org/man/gao/gao94217.htm) Some writers have suggested that the huge program cost may actually include costs for other black projects that remain classified. The high per-unit cost may also be partially explained by the small number of planes produced coupled with a large research overhead in the B-2 program (see below).

they sign the treaty in return for a promise that signatories that already have nuclear weapons will never use them against them

No, the acknowledged nuclear weapons states promise not to help a non nuclear weapons state build nukes.
"The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, also referred to as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), obligates the five acknowledged nuclear-weapon states (the United States, Russian Federation, United Kingdom, France, and China) not to transfer nuclear weapons, other nuclear explosive devices, or their technology to any non-nuclear-weapon state."

"Non-nuclear-weapon States Parties undertake not to acquire or produce nuclear weapons or nuclear explosive devices."

That only applies to those 188 counties (and Kofi Annan).

"As of early 2000 a total of 187 states were Parties to the NPT. Cuba, Israel, India, and Pakistan were the only states that were not members of the NPT."

Here is a list of signatories as of December 3, 1998.

And in principle those countries still had the right to build nuclear weapons prior to signing the treaty

But they didn't. Once they signed it, all bets are off.

they sign the treaty in return for a promise that signatories that already have nuclear weapons will never use them against them

No, the acknowledged nuclear weapons states promise not to help a non nuclear weapons state build nukes.
"The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, also referred to as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), obligates the five acknowledged nuclear-weapon states (the United States, Russian Federation, United Kingdom, France, and China) not to transfer nuclear weapons, other nuclear explosive devices, or their technology to any non-nuclear-weapon state."

"Non-nuclear-weapon States Parties undertake not to acquire or produce nuclear weapons or nuclear explosive devices."

That only applies to those 188 counties (and Kofi Annan).

"As of early 2000 a total of 187 states were Parties to the NPT. Cuba, Israel, India, and Pakistan were the only states that were not members of the NPT."

Here is a list of signatories as of December 3, 1998.

And in principle those countries still had the right to build nuclear weapons prior to signing the treaty

But they didn't. Once they signed it, all bets are off.

Actually, no, it isn't. Kofi Annan and 188 countries disagree with you.

Who doesn't get to see them via satellite photos?

115d47m30sWx37d16m30sN
Brings Area 51 right up on Google maps, an old photo at limited resolution. But other satellite services have published better images, see: http://www.fas.org/irp/overhead/groom.htm

We all know the really good stuff is underground, and the odds of a classified plane being on the runways is pretty slim. Especially when the companies publish when they'll be collecting images. So no, there's no real supression of commercial satellite images going on.

China has existed for more than 2000 years. See them as a superpower will be very interesting. As the very least they have much more culture than the US. Unfortunately, their regime is not exactly open to human rights - but the USA won't be for long, either.

Tha'ts the Big Problem. The former Communist states are, for the most part, little more than reformed despotisms. There are exceptions: Poland, Hungary, Czech Rep., etc. but for every Former East Germany, there's a Belarus... China's pretty much part of that syndrome, just amplified to a frightning degree.

About the Oil Peak thing: a real irony would be that the oil fields replenish, as has been theorized in several papers (which have NOT been debunked - abiotic oil exists, however it is considered as unlikely that it makes a significant amount of the oil we need)

Actually microscopic, at this point - we're pulling it out of the ground so fast I don't see any significant oil stocks coming into existence for at least another 100 million years, abiotic or otherwise.

Now this really scares me. See, its quite obvious that the ruling class would extract the ABC-arsenal out of the US - after all, they don't want those peasants to ruin their off-shored homes. But if the peasants get hold of bombs, several parts of the globe will turn into major warzones.

Actually not that scary. All these American idiots will be trying to fill the tanks of their SUVs so they can drive to the Walmart to get food on the other side of the suburban hell they live in. IF they throw nukes ANYWHERE it will be at the Chinese or Koreans (likey in some proxy state like Taiwan or Korea or Nepal). There's an excellent paper on that here:

China delates future security environoment

Apparently the year 2012 is considered the beginning of a crucial time...

As for NYC, SF, LA, well - I'm European, I have never visited the USA, but it seems to be that 90% of what the US image is about is concentrated in the coasts. The glorious land of the free mostly exists there, or so it seems.

It's more of an archipelago. NYC is very liberal, but if you go out into the rural sections, you end up dealing with the same fucking retards you'd find in Indiana, Kansas, or Kentucky.

An interesting article on that is here:

URBAN ARCHIPELAGO

Cheers,

RS

Unlike South Africa, which decided on its own to eliminate its nuclear weapons and welcomed inspection as a means of creating confidence in its disarmament, Iraq appears not to have come to a genuine acceptance - not even today - of the disarmament, which was demanded of it and which it needs to carry out to win the confidence of the world and to live in peace.

Actually, there was a 1995 executive order that mandated the use of the nondisclosure agreement. This is the executive order was implemented in regulation by AR 380-5. However, the executive order issued by Bill Clinton on April 17, 1995, and went into effect 180 days later.

The executive order requires anyone with access to classified information to sign an approved NDA, That approved NDA was SF 312. More information on this here. See questions 3 and 4, specifically.

Go ahead, claim more service time (with the awards and medals) and show what a loser you are for not being worthy of promotion...
or
Admit that you didn't serve the time you've hinted at and that you didn't sign the forms you claimed.

I entered service in 1995. Promotion points for my MOS were high for E-5 in 1998, but not unachievable. I was studying for the promotion board when I had an abrupt TDY assignment in the latter half of 1998. When I returned, I was assigned to the transition unit and never attended the promotion board.

I signed the SF 312, the copy of which I have in my posession, in Dec, 1998.

I can admit that they now make enlisted sign NDA's. That's because I'm a man and don't have to attempt to bolster my ego by being anonymous on web sites.

Are you sure you've got no ego-boosting going on? You've been pissed off from the start that I might know more about something than you, and you've just *had* to be right this entire time.

And I can show that the NDA's are a very recent change and did not coincide with your previously stated service dates.

Except your date is wrong. The SF 312 has been required since 1995, per the executive order or Bill Clinton, Commander in Chief at the time. The aforementioned AR 380-5 says as much, since the executive order is what caused its creation.

We both know that executive orders go into effect, and the specific regulation follows. Bill Clinton mandated NDAs in 1995.

Third, the "Security Debriefing Acknowledgement," which appears in the SF 189-A, but not the SF 189,is included in the SF 312. Its use is optional at the discretion of the implementing agency.

You were never in the service. I suspect that you play a little too much America's Army in your parents basement.

Soviet SS-9.

Oh, that was Poindexter that you were responding to? Then the gp's post makes a lot more sense!

Depends on what you mean by nearby locale. This post gives a link to the D&C movie, and if you read the reviews, you get the feeling a lot of people who mock the previous generation for believing government advice for surviving an atomic blast suscribe to an equally erroneous belief, i.e. that atomic bombs are the equivalent of a super death ray which any attempt to survive is pointless.

I suggest anyone who thinks along these lines to take a look at this report on the subject. True, virtually everyone close to the blast will die, but if, as Duck and Cover presupposes, someone saw the flash and *weren't* incinerated, it means they're some distance away from ground zero and thus stand a chance of survival. Since the main cause of death at longer range is the wind blast (as opposed to the heat wave), ducking and covering makes sense.

Like the movie says, you'll be safER, not safe, but it's better than just waiting to be blown into a brick wall.

GE makes NUKES! It's their job. They crank them out like candy.

If you're going to accuse any company of cranking out any kind of weapons "like candy," at least be sure to include Lockheed-Martin, Northrop Grumman, Boeing and Raytheon (in that order), because they are the real big dogs in that industry. Unless you have better information than I do, GE isn't even in the defense market anymore. They sold that off to Lockheed-Martin years ago (please feel free to correct me if you have more recent information). In any case, your panic about BIG, SCARY NUKES just makes you look ignorant.

GE makes NUKES! It's their job. They crank them out like candy.

If you're going to accuse any company of cranking out any kind of weapons "like candy," at least be sure to include Lockheed-Martin, Northrop Grumman, Boeing and Raytheon (in that order), because they are the real big dogs in that industry. Unless you have better information than I do, GE isn't even in the defense market anymore. They sold that off to Lockheed-Martin years ago (please feel free to correct me if you have more recent information). In any case, your panic about BIG, SCARY NUKES just makes you look ignorant.

What was The Italian Job if not a mini cooper advertisement?

Wrong. In that case, the product was driven by the plot. The director wanted an indoor car-chase, and the mini-coop was the most plausible way to make it happen. There was no other car with the dimensions needed.

May as well call True Lies a Harrier advertisement...

There hasn't been a *public* Soyuz crew death since 1971

There haven't been any, and so the statistic stands. There are no gaps in the Soyuz launch records, no missing crews. Jim Oberg has pretty much debunked claims of covered up deaths in space. The deaths you explicitly refer to were indeed training accidents, and just as I don't count the crew of Apollo 1 (or people like Eliott See for that matter) in launch reliability statistics, you're correct not to count them either.

The Proton is a rocket family, but it doesn't contain the Soyuz, so I don't know where that non-sequiter comes from, especially given the proton is not human-rated. The Soyuz is also a family, but the differences between the family members comes from what upper stage you stick on top (Fregat, etc). The lower stage plus boosters is the same, right back to the original R-7 ICBM adapted to launch Sputnik. You can find more recent launch data from Starsem, the Soyuz launch company, and historical data can be also be found pretty easily, assuming you're searching for the right rocket family! If you're vague on Russian rocket families, this diagram will help. The Proton statistics -- a completely different, cargo rated booster-- have no bearing on the Soyuz statistics, the actual launch vehicle that is in the same arena as the shuttle (and these days the Long March 2F) in putting humans in orbit.

You missed $10K.

http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/smart/gbu-12.ht m

A GBU-12 is $19K .. which would be around two DS-3 circuits for a month.

-AC

Space shuttle replacements

Hypersonic X-30 cancelled in 1993.

What happened to the X-33.
Cnn article on the troubles of the X-33
aerospike engine for x-33

Right here or right here.

This has been around awhile, tho the idea of the fallout from rocket operation is not appealing.

Nothing you haven't seen before on the Federation of American Scientists' Groom Lake page, but here it is.

The writer of that novel was partly correct.

The NSA was a customer for the standard cell IC layout editor sold by my employer. I was talking with a couple of AE's who provided support to the chip designers working for the spooks. Based on the kind questions and examples they were shown, the AE's were guessing that the NSA was building semi-custom IC's to decrypt electronic surveilence data.

These IC's would run the decryption algorithm 1000's of times faster than any general purpose CPU. A hardware solution like makes using 1000's of these chips working in parallel really practical without the unreasonable cost of building some ol' fatass supercomputer.

This was prior to the big stink about the the boys at NSA doing domestic signal intell. I'm pretty sure that ol' ECHELON will be parsing this msg and flagging it for human attention. So I used some other dude's internet access ID. I'm afraid the spooks are gonna be on that poor sorry schmuck with a microscope up his ass.

Hey, better him than me, right?!

buck futt

To be on topic, the LeT is mostly comprised of Pakistani extremists and is a declared terrorist outfit by the USA and one of the first Kashmiri terrorists outfits to be banned by Pakistan. To end on a positive note, read this editorial in the pakistan newspaper Dawn.

The "Militants" were a group called the LeT - Lashkar-e-Taiba

Here's some more background on them. Looks like they're tied into the infamous Al-Qaida too.