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Over the life-time of the ship, the far biggest cost is salaries to the people on board.

The math doesn't work here. If there's 300 people on a destroyer and the average cost per person is $80K per year, then that's ~$500M over 20 years. The boat costs ~$1B . How much does this refit cost? If they're talking about automating/monitoring existing systems, they probably need a substantial update. The only costs they're saving by going wireless are the costs of running the cables.

Many GPS guided weapons have inertial guidance as a backup. If they lose guidance from the satellites, they remember where they where, and roughly what direction and how far they had to go to hit their target.

This article claims that GPS jamming reduces the accuracy of a 200 lb JDAM to +/- 100 feet; considering the destructive power of those weapons, the difference is academic against all but hardened targets.

The frequencies are fixed; they'll only change when the next generation of GPS satellites are launched, a prospect that hasn't even been planned yet. Anyhow, any sort of technological countermeasures deployed by Iraq against its much more powerful enemies are going to be a speed bump at best- they're hopelessly overmatched. Their best bet will be evasion, deceit, and propoganda- the only things that (barely) worked for them in Gulf War I.

By the way, if you'd like more info on the F-16's systems, here's a good source, that explains everything well.

It's true that the "A" and "B" planes are not fighters. But you said:

"Every US fighter jet has been all electronically controlled (aka, fly-by-wire) for 20+ years. No major problem, you just have to design with the problem in mind."

You didn't specify every US fighter deployed in the last 20 years. But if that's the way you want to go, the last new fighter in the US inventory was the F/A 18 Hornet. It was deployed in 1978. If you want to split hairs and consider each variant of each plane (F/A-18A F/A-18B, F/A-18C, etc), then I must point out that the F-15E Strike Eagle was deployed in 1988. It does not use fly by wire controls. The F-14 is still deployed in massive numbers. It's not being phased out yet, it's roll is actually expanding. The F-14 served admirably in Bosnia as a strike fighter. It doesn't use fly by wire either.

The A-10, while not a fighter, is a great example for the discussion of the merits of fly by wire vs. mechanical / hydraulic controls. It's one of the most recent additions to the US inventory, and yet, it's one of the most primitive! That's because it was designed to fly where it *would* take fire, not where it *might* take fire. Simply put, they decided to use the most simple, robust, and redundant systems on it that they could.

Now, I do think that fly by wire can be more robust in certain situations. But it is still susceptible to total electrical failure. Mechanical with hydraulic boost is inherently redundant, and quite fail safe. Electric can fail at multiple points (power source, or anywhere along the wire, then most fly by wire is just an interface for hydraulic control surfaces anyway, so you never eliminate the possibility of hydraulic failure).

So why isn't the F-16's fly by wire a problem? Why isn't it a problem in the upcoming F-22? Why does it work in the F-117? Because of maintenance. You sound like you're not around aviation very much. If you were, you'd probably be aware that most of the components on an aircraft *have to be* overhauled or replaced on a regular schedule (usually determined by engine hours). Most of these scheduled maintenance items aren't "if the part is bad", they're every 500 hours, or every 100 hours, weather it needs it or not. Military standards, are stricter than civil counterparts. Engines have to be overhauled after every x number of hours. Avionics get replaced periodically, hydraulic parts get replaced, even airframe components are replaced after a certain number of hours of service. Most people I know can't even remember to change their oil on a regular basis. They certainly don't do a "preflight" inspection of their car every time they drive and they're not strict on mechanical or electrical maintenance either. Inspections are limited to whatever is mandated by law in their state. Maintenance is limited to fixing something when it breaks, or once it starts to make a strange noise, or give other signs that it's death is imminent.

Yes, the odds are slim that the drive by wire system will fail, and yes, the mean time to failure will probably be very high. But, once a car like this goes into production, some of them *WILL* fail. Maybe none will fail in the first year, or 5 years, or 10 years. But some day, they will fail. And when it happens, what do you do when you are going 50 MPH and you don't have steering OR brakes? In a conventional design, you can still brake and steer manually, although not as well. There needs to be some serious redundancy, with something that screams "fix me NOW!" when one of the redundant systems goes.

I doubt you would laugh if you thought of the US military as your enemy, because you'd likely be dead or captive soon.

And why wouldn't it be cost effective? It's considerably cheaper than the $4.3 million for an M1A1 Abrams Battle Tank.

Here's your link. Shame you're a racist fuckwit.

DISCLAIMER: *DEFINITELY* offtopic

I hate to be a typical liberal with the "nothing's as simple as that" message, but I can't help it. :)

My take on this current "crisis" is that North Korea's been building nukes (or trying to build nukes, depending on whether you buy CIA's report) largely for defensive purposes. Let's indulge the following for a minute.

The joint Team Spirit exercise by South Korean and US forces between 1976 and 1993 was halted in 1994 in an effort to dissuade North Korea from continuing its nuclear development. During these 17 years, however, North Korea had to *annually* find itself in the cross-hair of the most advanced military weapons in the world. Though no real aggression was done, you have to wonder what psychological damage these "excercises" wreaked on North Korean sense of its security. Given the receding Chinese military support for its security, North Korea understandably (albeit dangerously) wants some form of military safeguard against the perceived threat from the US and South Korea. The 37,000 US troops stationed in Seoul doesn't help the situation from their perspective, I'm sure.

I'm not defending either Kim Jong-Il's ill treatment of his critics or his dogmatic insistence on sticking to failed policies of communism. I merely want to point out the complexity of the current situation. As long as North Korea perceives the US as a potential aggressor (which the US's past actions somewhat justify) it cannot help but divert a large portion of its limited resources into maintaining its armed forces while simultaneously persuing the only guarantee against the *perceived* American nuclear threat, i.e. its own nuclear program. Given its already meager resources, there's no way they can have a productive economy of any kind under these circumstances...

South Korea's prosperity came at the heavy price of decades of US-friendly military dictatorship, and I'm much more prone to credit South Korea's "fortune" in allying itself with the US, its economy, and its powerful military forces than South Korea's commitment to capitalism and foreign trade. Of course, South Koreans worked hard to get where they are. I'm not denying that. At the same time, one cannot overlook the geo-political fortune that their alliance with the US and the Western world has afforded them. In the same vein, neither can we overlook the geo-political misfortune that got North Korean into this paranoid *Cold-War* arms race with which few other countries are still engaged. If they didn't see the need to maintain one-million-strong army and their nuclear program(s), North Koreans might have some resources left over to feed their people and develop their economy. In fact, that's exactly what they appear to want out of the US at the moment. And they have also been on the track to some semblance of economic recovery through their "special economic zones" initiative in Shinuiju and Kaesong.

Yeah, I'm rambling now... But I worry that a rather simplistic "good vs. evil" global paradigm that seems to dominate much of the current American foreign policy might create more problems than solve them.

Still no evidence of weapons export to Iraq.

The US exported chemical and biological agents, machine tools and ammo to Iraq in the mid- to late-1980s. See, for example here, here, and here. The third link is especially relevant to this topic because it claims that supercomputers were given to Iraq.

Incidentally, this is all in the public record in the States. You shouldn't even need to FOIA for the information.

For some reason, when I read that I couldn't help think of some old 50's science fiction movie where they'd be calling in the Flying Wing to take out the monster.

As someone else already pointed out: it's ``berserk'' and not ``berzerk''. Maybe you were thinking of an old record label. :-)

The new homeland security department will require a massive global network. But transoceanic fiber is easily cut and the $800 million TDRS replenishment program with three satellites doesn't have the bandwidth. Intercepted SIGINT data is reportedly transmitted to Earth on a 24 GHz downlink using narrow-beam antennas. But the frequency swaths allocated for links are less than consumers can get on cable television. More bandwidth is needed.

One might speculate that a secret optical/IR satellite network downlinked in Hawaii might be developed. The European Space Agency, not to be outdone, says they're thinking of building miniaturised optical systems that fit onto a microchip. These optical networks might use optical CDMA which encodes each pulse,across a segment of wavelengths.

That's the same kind of logic that neutered our intelligence programs in the last 20 years

Yeah because you know the poor CIA just can't possibly be expected to do it's job with a measly 3.5 billon dollar anual budget. Right!

Lets see 3.5 billon divided by 365 days a year what is that like 9.5 million dollars a day. And that's JUST for the CIA. I mean wouldn't economics suggest that at some point there is a diminishing return on investment here. If they can't solve the problem with 9.5 millon dollars a day what makes you think throwing more money at it will help?

It's obvious that this thing is just a proof of concept for some of the ideas in the F-22.

Actually, this is not the case. The F-22 was in development for even longer than this one.

I believe what the original poster is referring to is not publicly released cool information (which the F-22 is), but the projects that are still secret.

Indeed, I'm inclined to agree with you. It gets worse...you don't need radar or or IR systems...all you need is a well-developed cellular phone network. Other references here.

No, but Cheney's secret hideout is here and its perfectly legal to discuss this and enter into your favorite rendering program all the building information that you can glean from the satellite photos, make a quake mod, practice assaulting the place. However, you will go straight to hell for [reading, discussing, thinking about] faulty joystick drivers. God Bless the USA!

Some ends justify some means. Yes they do.

When you go down to McDonald's, for example, the end of receiving a hamburger, for example, justifies the means of paying $0.89.

So instead of trotting out shopworn cliches, let's look at whether the ends of the bombings at Hiroshima and Dresden justified the means used.

At Hiroshima, for example, the choice we faced was to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing about 100,000 civilians, or make an island-by-island invasion of the Japanese Home Islands, killing hundreds of thousands of soldiers (American and Japanese) and almost certainly millions of civilians. If you have any doubt of this, look at the invasion of Okinawa, in which 38,000 American soldiers were killed, 107,000 Japanese soldiers were killed, and by many estimates, as many civilians died as in Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined.

So when you say the ends at Hiroshima did not justify the means, you are saying that in your book it is better for us to kill many more people, just to look a little better in the history books. Now that's hypocrisy for you...

• Military bombs that have built in shrapnel are called "Anti-personel". The Daisy Cutter is an example of this.

Only in the most tenuous sense that it's got a metal casing wrapped round the explosive. If you bother to do ten seconds of research you'll find that the BLU-828 (to which I assume that you're erroneously referring) has its effect primarily from the massive blast of the explosion, not from shrapnel. This is what makes it so useful for clearing forest (it flattens, not shreds trees), triggering mines, and (relevant to this discussion) causing crippling injuries to distant combatants even behind or inside fortifications.

You really couldn't have picked a worse example to use to make your point.

Because that impending feeling of doom is true. Well, impending doom is a bit much. The way I see it, there are two possible futures: We'll be given the dignity of all being locked away in jail cells in an Orwellian America. Or we'll be further pacified by retarded, uninforming, watered-down, cutesey, biased CNN news broadcasts, and mind-numbing television sitcoms, while the government runs its conspiratorial hands through the only remaining (and most powerful) communication medium in existance and ruins it entirely, until we've got the individuality and the capacity for thinking for ourselves of a hyperactive four year old cracked out on ridalin and rubbing his crotch to Barney. As much time as I spend rubbing my crotch, I'm hoping for the former. That's going a bit far, but there's no denying the recently made slightly public government conspiracies and all that crap. On a whole, 9/11 did more good for the country - evil, opressive legislation, oppertunities to cause war and bind all remaining dissident nations to our economic will, bettered economy, reasons to ressurect the defense industry, etc etc, than it did bad (only a couple thousand people killed, another hundred thousand jobless - no big deal when you consider what we did to the Middle East before 9/11, and then afterwards, and what we're going to do). The clear as day evidence that the US Gov knew about the attack is all right there in the open. And now it's clear that they counted on it. There's lots of crazy shit going on today in America, that's raping us of our 'rights' (if we ever had any). It's a shame that our miserable, miserable media just sort of glosses over it. And that the American people are unable, or unwilling to research it themselves, and connect the dots. For example, it's pretty esoteric knowledge that the US government began a new 45 Billion US$ s00p3r s3kr3t spy satellite project early last year. We're big on hideing the things that we don't want to know from ourselves.

The drive system that interconnects the V-22 engines is the mechanical linkage from hell. It runs at 6500 RPM, has many flexible couplings, five gearboxes, and a clutch in the middle. Plus, the whole thing is a transformer; the wings and props fold. It's amazing that they can get it to hold together.

I just watched the Discovery channel about the new weapons being developed now for the military in a few years.

The OCSW [slideshow] (Objective Crew Served Weapon). It's a newly developed weapon that fires 20mm specially designed air-bursting rounds. The weapon is designed like the .50 calibur M2 machine gun made popular in combat in the past few decades. Unlike the old M2, it can easily be carried and setup by two people, the gun box can be loaded on either side depending on who's loading.

What makes this gun so different and effective is that you can aim anywhere and make the rounds explode before it hits a wall or the earth. It does this when the soldier fires, the microprocessor in the gun electronically programs the bullet to explode in a certain amount of time based on the distance it'll need to travel based on it's discovered velocity. If that sounds trivial, you should know that shrapnel from the exploded round can be much more deadly than if the bullet did hit without exploding.

This can be very useful if a guy is behind a wall or window, the OCSW gun is set to a range to just after the wall and the bullet explodes right in their face.

They also make a regular assault gun, the OICW (Objective Individual Combat Weapon) that actually fires both the air-busting 20mm rounds and the 5.56mm NATO rounds that have been used in previous weapons. It combines the air-busting capability in the stationary gun, but you can take the 5.56 mm assault rifle part and you have the lightest machine gun ever made. which beats the AR-15 and it's derivatives like the M16-A2 used currently by the US military.

There are plenty of places to get information, HK has some good coverage with pictures of the gun, the ammo and some diagrams of how it's able to program it's mid-air explosions.

Go to google.com and learn something today.

There's a very fine line between manned spaceflight and dropping nukes on your ideological counterparts. Not that it is imminent or anything but I'm sure China would be a little more comfortable with a mutually assured destruction scenario (as opposed to simply being a target on the US nuclear hit list).

Don't think for a second that club fed isn't keeping very close tabs on china's spaceflight program.

TSX

BLU-118/B payload candidates include PBXIH-135 [one of the Navy's new insensitive polymer bonded explosives], HAS-13, or SFAE [solid fuel air explosive] loaded into existing BLU-109 Weapon Bodies.

1. "Stealth ships" are a blue-water navy idea.
   
   • Here, you're half right. But the technologies that arose from the development of Lockheed's Sea Shadow are being implemented into current designs, such as the DD-21 Land Attack Destroyer and the LPD-17 San Antonio Class Amphibious Ship, as seen by their sloping sides and angled exhaust stacks.
     
   
   
2. Armor matters more.
   
   • Interesting you say this, since most modern ships are lightly armored. (Not armed - note the distinction.) Witness the gaping hole in the side of the USS Cole from a small boat of explosives. And many people would say that stealth matters immensely as more and more rogue states acquire castoffs from the former Soviet Union.
     
   
   
3. There's a good argument for heavily armored battleships for shore bombardment...
   
   • The ERGM (scroll down for a description of it) has a range far greater than any 16-inch gun ever did. In addition, guided munitions such as the Tomahawk and the ERGM are much more accurate and precise than 16-inch gunfire is, allowing for fewer shells fired and less chance of friendly fire casualties.
     
   
   
4. The U.S. Navy had an "arsenal ship" concept in the early 1990s, but never built any.
   
   • The Navy is still reviewing this design, actually - you can see an overviews, histories and diagrams of it here, here, and here. One of the many, many reasons that it is currently in limbo has to do with a proposed plan to retrofit some of the oldest Ohio-class submarines to carry 154 Tomahawks and a SEAL team, which would duplicate the effort being expended to design an arsenal ship. The DD-21 is another duplication of effort issue further muddying the outlook for the arsenal ship, as its explicit job is land attack.
     
   
   

We've evidently got these nifty microwave zappers for crowd control. Could these be useful in taking a city? In establishing a defense perimeter? How far can they project in a tunnel? How far can they be turned up? Are they a practical alternative to tactical neutron devices?