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Yes, the modern army with radar, data link, radio, satellite relays, etc need power. It's a fundamental necessity in modern warfare to have electrical power.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/army/fm/5-422/Ch1.htm

Why stop at half-measures? M829 series, depleted uranium armor piercing fin stabilized discarding sabot-tracer - if you absolutely, positively need it destroyed!

What's 10 billion when you already have 50 billion? Still more money than he could spend in his lifetime.

Lol, omfg... ur serious?

I could piss away 50 billion in 3 months. I just sat here and wrote
down the first week and I'm already thru 10 billion... and that's not
even into the investing portion of the spending spree.

First day... I'm a car nut, so I'd buy every car on my 'list'. First 10
cars burn up over $20 mil. Probably close to $30 mil if I'm doing a
"i want it now". Actually, this is an *edit*, while I was thinking
about it... just the Ferrari's alone would burn thru $20 million.

The remaining list would soak a half bil easily. And that's just cars.

Vehicles... like this one,
http://www.autoblog.com/2006/01/22/gm-futurliner-rewrites-barrett-jackson-record-books-hammers-to/
I would try to buy, he lives about 10mi away...
http://maps.google.com/?&ll=33.609301,-112.199248&spn=0.001087,0.00182&t=h&z=20
$4 mil, gone...

First day of vehicles could hit $1 billion, pretty easily.

Second day... boats. cmon. another half billion easy.

Third day... planes. Really? 1 Good one, quarter million.
Gotta get the Marine One quality copter, another $241 million.
I guess I could just buy the old one?
http://www.taxpayertreasurehunt.com/index.php/Cancellation_of_Marine_One_Procurement
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/aircraft/vh-71.htm
http://www.top5pedia.com/Top5%20Military/MostExpensiveAircrafts.html

Then you have to do what most rappers forget to do,
http://www.tmz.com/2011/04/11/nate-dogg-foreclosure-pomona-house-died-dead/
http://blogs.wsj.com/developments/2010/06/04/rapper-chamillionaire-ridin-into-foreclosure-on-houston-mansion/
http://www.allmandandlee.com/bankruptcy_blog/bankruptcy-law/even-rapper-jay-z-battles-foreclosure/
set some of that money aside in an interest bearing
or investment grade account to pay for storage of all
that stuff you just bought.

I think I'd run out of money before 45 days... but
90 days is just a comfortable, I'm sure it'd be all gone
by then amount of time.

So, whomever thinks, $50 billion is more than someone
could spend (laughably) in a lifetime... doesn't have a lot
of imagination or desire.

-AI

A bargain! According to the Wikipedia article about the Raven UAV, they cost $35000 each. More details, including a sample image of the view from the UAV.

North Korea FTW.

Where is the hightech robots that Japan is known for?
Isn't it strange that there is no autonomous or even remote controlled vehicles ready for cooling the fuel rods.
This would be the showcase of all times, to show what automated vehicles can do.
North Korea has armed robots that can move about and shoot down apples at more than a one mile distance.
US has several advanced military robots.
Example: http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/ground/ugv.htm
But why don't we have firefighting robots or a fuel rod excavator.
It shouldn't take more than a day to rig an excavator with fire a hose.
Just like during the oil well fires set of by Saddam under operation desert storm.
Engineers added jet engines to fire hoses and mounted them to tanks with great success.
Why haven't we seen the same kind of enginuity from the Japanese.
Dropping water from helicopters is ridiculous and probably just causes more problems to the exposed fuel rods.

And can anybody tell how much plutonium the area (nearest 300km) can take before you have to abandon it permanently?
And how far will the cloud spread if all the rods decide to ignite and puff into the air?
How many kilo's of plutonium does it takes to kill the pacific ocean?
How does plutonium mix with air and water. Does the heavy atoms fall out or will they just float about for days/weeks/months?

Ups.! That was a lot of questions.

What?? There's already been enough fireworks already.

April Fools Day 1991, Hercules Titan IV blows up test facility at Edwards Air Force Base - http://articles.latimes.com/1991-05-29/news/mn-2539_1_air-force-officials
August 1993 - Hercules Titan IV blows up after launch at Vandenberg - http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-958781.html
August 1998 - Hercules Titan IV explodes during Spy Satellite Launch at Cape Kennedy - http://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/library/news/1998/08/202l-081398-idx.html

Thiokol - SRM Failure in Cold Weather destroys Challenger - we don't need to go into that do we?

October 1994 - ATK acquires Hercules - http://www.thefreelibrary.com/ALLIANT+TECHSYSTEMS+SIGNS+DEFINITIVE+AGREEMENT+TO+ACQUIRE+HERCULES...-a015870549
February 2001 - ATK acquires Thiokol - http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-69838505.html

Capacity of a fighter? Here's what wikipedia has to say:

Earlier stealth aircraft (such as the F-117 and B-2) lack afterburners, because the hot exhaust would increase their infrared footprint, and breaking the sound barrier would produce an obvious sonic boom, as well as surface heating of the aircraft skin which also increased the infrared footprint. As a result their performance in air combat maneuvering required in a dogfight would never match that of a dedicated fighter aircraft. This was unimportant in the case of these two aircraft since both were designed to be bombers.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stealth_aircraft#Dogfighting_ability
References: http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/aircraft/f-22-stealth.htm http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/aircraft/f-35.htm

-molo

Capacity of a fighter? Here's what wikipedia has to say:

Earlier stealth aircraft (such as the F-117 and B-2) lack afterburners, because the hot exhaust would increase their infrared footprint, and breaking the sound barrier would produce an obvious sonic boom, as well as surface heating of the aircraft skin which also increased the infrared footprint. As a result their performance in air combat maneuvering required in a dogfight would never match that of a dedicated fighter aircraft. This was unimportant in the case of these two aircraft since both were designed to be bombers.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stealth_aircraft#Dogfighting_ability
References: http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/aircraft/f-22-stealth.htm http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/aircraft/f-35.htm

-molo

There just weren't any WMD's, and really there never were ever going to be any

I think the thousands of Kurds who died in nerve gas attacks would beg to differ, if they were alive to do so.

Yes, that's right. At one time during Saddam's long, terrible reign he actually did possess WMDs, and was shown conclusively to have used them against Iranian troops on the battlefield in contravention of international law, and eventually against Kurdish civilians at Halabja. Unfortunately the US government tried for weeks to accuse Iran of that attack, lying through their teeth at press conferences and at the UN, in order to shift the blame away from their client Saddam, whom they were backing in his attack on Iran. It was the Iranian press and ABC News Nightline that set the record straight. A few years later the CIA were saying the opposite, to boost public support for a war against Saddam and his WMDs. Few remembered by then that he had been using them with the CIA's blessing.

Who knows: if the relevant State Dept documents showing their full knowledge of what Saddam was up to had been leaked sooner, rather than waiting until they were officially declassified, the political cost of tolerating his use of nerve gas might have become too great, and the attack on the Kurdish civilians at Halabja might never have happened.

They convert uranium ore -- usually in the form of uranium oxides ("yellow cake") -- into uranium hexafluoride by eventually dissolving it in hydrofluoric acid. That gas is then what gets run through centrifuges or gas diffusion plants to isotopically enrich the U-235. So, it's a lot of messy chemistry (see links) with mildly radioactive materials (uranium isn't strongly radioactive). HF is particularly nasty because although it is a weak acid it reacts with almost anything and it is quite toxic.

Yes, they require precise, constant speed. Why else would you need power supplies with very low harmonic distortion? http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/intro/u-centrifuge.htm

Consider this: Centrifuges are spun as fast as possible to maximize yield. At those speeds, they are susceptible to vibration. Vibration is bad, because it will remix the gas (or maybe just fly apart). So the likely trick is to run the devices at fastest anti-resonance physically possible. A few RPM faster or slower, and yield drops dramatically.

Two ways to fix this are to take units that react the worst offline and/or run them at a slower anti-resonance. Both reduce yield, exactly what is going on in Iran.

Ramp RPM up and down fast enough, and you get shear mixing as well, maybe even hit some resonance. Also bad.

Now, the US is pretty responsible with its landmines

Have you seen what a FASCAM minefield looks like? Responsible is not a word I would in conjunction with this ordinance.

As far as North Korea goes, I think part of the reason the West hasn't had much interest in invading them is because they hold a lot of South Korean lives hostage, with their long-range artillery targeting Seoul. (See here.) Even without the nuclear weapons they supposedly have, that would be enough of a threat that no one would really want to rock the boat. And as far as reunification goes, I think many in South Korea realize that it could be prohibitively expensive, like the German reunification, so it's not a given that they even desire that. I imagine many of them would be perfectly happy with a North that doesn't threaten Seoul or randomly attack their forces.

Otherwise, interesting post.

Shrapnel propelled by HE is going to traveling much faster than the round. A hand grenade with 60 grams TNT has a kill range of about 20 meters. Grenades

That's great that the Iraq War casualties are so low. Only 4,287 dead and 30,182 wounded. Of course that's not all the expected casualties. As of 2008, 20% of the 1.6 million vets from both wars are suffering from PTSD and it is expected that their post-combat suicide rate will produce more deaths than those KIA. Then there's the under/untreated TBI injuries, estimated at one in five soldiers. Then there's the little matter of the Iraqis, who have suffered anything from 100,000 dead to 650,000 excess dead (from just 2003-06) as reported in The Lancet. Then there's the cost of the war to the USA, estimated at $2.4 trillion by the Congressional Budget Office but this number is thought by other experts to be overly optimistic. For example, Joseph Stiglitz has estimated the cost to be higher than $3 trillion. Then there's the cost to Iraq. It was one of the most developed nations in the Middle East prior to the war, with ~90% of urban and ~50% of rural citizens enjoying access to modern water supply systems. Now, open sewers. Garbage pickup went from being efficient to being suicide by IED. Electricity has yet to match pre-war levels. One in three Iraqis now lives in poverty. Sectarian violence is still rampant. And we gave Islamic terrorist organizations a massive PR coup and recruitment tool with not only the invasion and occupation, but also the national disgrace of Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, assorted covert torture destinations, and secret renditions. All this for a war that was in the planning stage by Sept, 2000. That's before the inauguration, and nearly a year before the 9/11 attacks. It was supported by intelligence that was badly out of date, circumstantial, and in many cases transparently fabricated like the yellowcake/spy outing scandal; the 81 mm aluminum tubes for uranium enrichment (which turned out to be tubes for conventional rocket bodies very similar to our own and wholly unsuitable to uranium enrichment and was pointed out in the original, unaltered intelligence reports that only White House officials got to see at the time but red-lined my bullshit meter when Powell mentioned it in 2003); and the laughably insane sooper sekrit anthrax production semi fucking trailers which was over the top obvious bullshit to anybody with minimal training in molecular biology. But you're right, we should be thankful that life-long fuckup W didn't fuck it up even worse.

As for AIDS, President Bush let ideology trump reality and wasted the money on a program that was at best ineffectual: "One of the White House's major aid initiatives, the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), has wasted much of its funds on scientifically questionable programs designed to please American religious conservatives. Though studies show that only a comprehensive approach, including condom distribution, sexual education, and antiretrovirals, could reduce HIV, the White House insisted that PEPFAR spend one-third of its behavioral prevention budget on programs that promote abstinence until marriage. It also refused to let PEPFAR money go for programs like needle exchanges and aggressive condom promotion. Recipient nations had to sign an American pledge vowing to oppose prostitution, even though prostitutes are major carriers of HIV in Africa, and signing the pledge could scare PEPFAR recipients out of helping sex workers. Virtually no other major multinational donor agreed with PEPFAR's strategy. Even the administration's own inspector general responsible for overseeing aid couldn't prove that its methods had worked." As reported by CBS News. Heckuva job, heckuva job.

Last really big spy satellite I took notice of was one carried on board a Titan IV in 1998 that didn't get very far before before exploding and/or being destroyed by range safety personnel. We usually enjoyed rocket launches (and plenty of mixed drinks) from a friend's condo on the south side of the harbor entrance channel that had a great view of the various launch pads (or at least the rockets after they got a few feet up in the air). For this one, I was on board my ship in port. Someone made a pipe (announcement) that a rocket was going up. Good time for a break. Went up to the foc'sle with my coffee and watched as $1.3 billion of our U.S. tax dollars got blown into tiny little bits. Ughhh. Wondered briefly if pieces were going to land on the ship -- not too likely. Went back below to my stateroom and back to work. Glad this one got further along.

Drones dropping off supplies won't help you when you need that mortar and ammunition because you're pinned down halfway to your designated supply point by enemy fire, with 3 grenades and a few clips of ammunition because you wanted to "travel light".

Going on foot into hostile territory without carrying adequate supplies is risky-bordering-on-suicidal. What could possibly go wrong in territory you have tenuous or no control of? A whole hell of a lot, actually. Waiting for a supply drone to load, launch, find you, and drop off your supply cache under fire is pretty much guaranteeing that more people will die. Not to mention the fact that a drone or helicopter hovering over your position and lowering supplies sort of screams "SHOOT ROCKET/RPG HERE" to any enemy soldier with 2 brain cells, and not every surface and weather condition is amenable to landing & takeoff, even for a small uav.

A few thousand rounds of M60 ammunition is pretty heavy. A few days worth of water & food is also pretty heavy. Military doctrine (FM7-8, "Infantry Rifle Platoon & Squad") suggests that a combat load should not exceed ~60 pounds. At least one study shows that they, in reality, average 80-100 pounds of gear, depending on the weather and conditions soldiers are preparing for. Being able to carry equipment and supplies is a necessity, and it is not one which can be handled solely by air support.

How about the people who volunteered themselves for the National Guard?

This might just be me, but shouldn't the National Guard be guarding the nation? As in staying in the goddamned country? Instead they are being used to supplement forces in other countries. Isn't that what the Reserves are for?

I recall when Katrina hit we were at a severe logistical disadvantage because a goodly chunk of the National Guard of many nearby states were deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan:

Governors in several states have raised concerns about the Guard's long-term overseas deployments. That's especially true in the West, where a busy fire season may be in store because of drought; Guardsmen have been used to fight fires.

The Guard staffing shortage was an immediate concern as Katrina struck the Gulf Coast, because about 6,000 Louisiana and Mississippi National Guard troops were deployed in Iraq at the time. That left about 12,500 Guard members available in the two states for hurricane relief.

Source: http://www.globalsecurity.org/org/news/2005/050917-stretched-guard.htm

No kidding. Check this comparison of lights seen from space. North Korea isn't "Third World", it's medieval.

"Militarily, the Sherman (and the British Churchill) were terrible mistakes."

No. They fit where heavier tanks wouldn't go, they were able to provide FIRE SUPPORT where there would otherwise have been none, and the losses were acceptable.

Panzerfaust-sized weapons could break track on any tank, and killed plenty of Axis tanks. The moral there is we should have copied them instead of the producing the weak Bazooka.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/ground/bazooka-1.htm

"James M. Gavin was a colonel in the 505th Parachute Infantry of the 82d Airborne Division when his troops first used bazookas in Sicily in 1943. Expressing the men's disappointment, he wrote: "As for the 82d Airborne Division, it did not get adequate antitank weapons until it began to capture the first German Panzerfausts. By the fall of 1944 we had truckloads of them. We also captured German instructions for their use, made translations, and conducted our own training with them. They were the best hand-carried antitank weapon of the war."

You missed its move to get some current destroyers: http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/china/luhu.htm

If a virus like this were to succeed in its apparent goals (reeking havoc on the Natanz enrichment facility, or worse, the new Bushehr nuclear power plant) it could potentially cause an accident that could kill a LOT of innocent people. It had the very real capacity to send the reactors at Bushehr into meltdown. And I'm pretty sure the people who live around that facility had nothing to do with genocide against the Jews (nor have most Iranians ever fired so much as a shot against Israel).

Too bad, so sad. Beats a nuclear war between Israel and Iran.

If a virus like this were to succeed in its apparent goals (reeking havoc on the Natanz enrichment facility, or worse, the new Bushehr nuclear power plant) it could potentially cause an accident that could kill a LOT of innocent people. It had the very real capacity to send the reactors at Bushehr into meltdown. And I'm pretty sure the people who live around that facility had nothing to do with genocide against the Jews (nor have most Iranians ever fired so much as a shot against Israel).

You know your government has tanks, missiles, stealth bombers and is on its way to warships with laser cannons right?

And those tanks, missiles, stealth bombers and other weapons are manned by citizens. I used to be one. While we were joking about it a number of us, including me, argued we'd frag someone giving us a bad order. While I'm no longer in the Army my nephew is in the Marines and I could see him doing it.

Heck even the Chinese had difficulty having it's army fire on civilians during the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. Commanders for the local army units refused to order soldiers to fire on civilians. Protesters were even cheered on by the police. Communist party bosses were scared the local military units were going to revolt so Beijing called in units from other parts of China. Even then there were reports of sporadic gunfire and interfactional fighting among PLA units.

It's not as easy to get a nation's military to fire on its own citizens as you seem to think. Heck in the Israeli military there are even refuseniks who refuse to take part in the occupation.

Falcon

Bulk cargo is almost never sent by air unless it is time sensitive.

M-1 tanks to Kuwait in 1990/91, time sensitive and sent by air and sea. M-1 tanks back from Iraq in 2010, not time sensitive and sent by sea.

Grain, ore, oil, is almost never sent by air unless its fuel, food or supplies going to somewhere ships can't go and there is no road network.

A CL160 airship was expected to cost 60 million dollars.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/aircraft/cargolifter.htm

For 60 million dollars you can get a Suezmax cargo ship that instead of carrying 160 tons, carries 75,000 to 125,000 tons.

747 freighters have a niche because of speed, if there was a niche for slow airfreight we'd have airship cargo carriers.

• on Taiwan
• on Japan
• on India

When North Korea torpedoed a South Korean vessel, the US and South Korea wanted to hold a joined naval exercise - a rather measured response to an unprovoked attack. But of course China can't let the chance pass to interfere. They are aiming to expand both their military influence and their territory. It's important to them that neighboring countries will not have the means to counter a Chinese threat.

Question is whether the US can allow an already powerful authoritarian regime to expand in this manner. If they succeed in swallowing Taiwan, they'll control most of the world's chip production. Also: China delivers arms to Sudan, Burma and Iran - they don't care whether anyone in the west likes that or not. Is there a particular reason why the US should stop arms sales to democratic countries, just to please China?

This isn't really surprising, nor do I think it's worthy of time at Black Hat, IMHO. The U.S. Military set themselves up for failure already a couple months back by allowing soldiers to openly use Twit-Face-book and any other blogging/social-network internet-enabled apparatus on their NIPRNET network and not enforcing any, for a lack of better terms, real punishment for being stupid and giving away whatever the military defines as OPSEC-level information.

I was surprised myself, being a Iraqi war veteran when I got back home that all the time I was told to be very illusive when talking about where you are located overseas was a joke. Giving up that information, like geo-location, really isn't something to piss your pants over considering all the local middle easterners already know where the hell all our camps/FOBs/bases are at and the fact that it's online already. Just another case of a lonely horn-dog Army bush-wacker, flexing his muscles and telling his war stories online, looking to get some 'tang.

Keep your troll comments to yourself, I did my time in the military (and was deployed to Iraq), I know, as well as anyone with any amount of common sense, that this is plausible truth.

This test series (specifically, Starfish Prime) uncovered the electromagnetic pulse (EMP) effect, an unexpected side effect of nuclear explosions at altitude. The gamma rays from a high altitude burst hit atoms and thus eject electrons high in the atmosphere over a wide area, more or less simultaneously, and the current from the ejected electrons can cause a very wide-spread electromagnetic pulse, which can knock out power lines and electronics at great distances (> 1000 km).

So, I guess we can call Allen the father of the EMP, although I am not sure he would have wanted the honor.

"Yup. Why use tactical nukes when MOABs & Daisy-cutters work just as well".

In what alternate universe do these little weapons with _tons_ of yield work "just as well" in destroying hard military targets compared to devices that yield in _kilotons_?

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/munitions/blu-82.htm

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/munitions/moab.htm

http://www.brookings.edu/projects/archive/nucweapons/b61.aspx

"Yup. Why use tactical nukes when MOABs & Daisy-cutters work just as well".

In what alternate universe do these little weapons with _tons_ of yield work "just as well" in destroying hard military targets compared to devices that yield in _kilotons_?

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/munitions/blu-82.htm

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/munitions/moab.htm

http://www.brookings.edu/projects/archive/nucweapons/b61.aspx

North Korea has massive chem warfare capability, so the "community" the chemical agents could be drifting through is South Korea. Chems aren't great in small doses, but slather a few urban targets and widespread panic would ensure (even more than from the accompanying artillery bombardment). Since the POTUS has committed to No First Use of nukes, the NKs could use chems in the safe knowledge that we banned chems and won't use any other WMD to stop them.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/dprk/cw.htm

Marketing the cleaners as a response to "terrorists" conveniently avoids pissing off the Norks or reminding anyone on our side that the US and ROK forces are in deep shit if they get smegged.

It happened. It ended over 20 years ago. Its as relevant as the Maginot Line was to strategic planning in 1955.

Everything has changed since the fall of the Soviet Union

Look at your list there, everything was focused around the Cold War and Communism, even the US involvement in Haiti is colored as sinister, it ignores the US involvement in Somalia, Bosnia which were all about helping civilians and stabilization because it doesn't fit into the point of view of the writer and no where does it mention the tons of humanitarian operations the US undertakes around the world.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/recent-ops.htm

The bulk of those are humanitarian like
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/sea_angel.htm

More troops and equipment were involved in humanitarian assistance than military operations from the end of the Cold War in 1991 till the start of the GWoT in 2001

It happened. It ended over 20 years ago. Its as relevant as the Maginot Line was to strategic planning in 1955.

Everything has changed since the fall of the Soviet Union

Look at your list there, everything was focused around the Cold War and Communism, even the US involvement in Haiti is colored as sinister, it ignores the US involvement in Somalia, Bosnia which were all about helping civilians and stabilization because it doesn't fit into the point of view of the writer and no where does it mention the tons of humanitarian operations the US undertakes around the world.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/recent-ops.htm

The bulk of those are humanitarian like
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/sea_angel.htm

More troops and equipment were involved in humanitarian assistance than military operations from the end of the Cold War in 1991 till the start of the GWoT in 2001

with this nuclear fission, probably untrue. they are in away admitting to nuclear intentions and thermo nuclear weapons, plus their small arsenal
"North Korea Saturday warned the United States and South Korea that it will employ "all means, including the nuclear deterrent" if they intrude into its territory."
http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news/rok/2010/rok-100424-voa01.htm

just thought anyone should know whats up, you say somthing like that and the United States could start a war on a scale unknown to mankind, in my mind I could see such a thing happening with over a billion casualties, fighting all over the world an enemy with China, it would make WWII look like a skirmish billions dead trillions in damage, aresnals being rebuilt, thousands of square miles of untold destruction and waste lands, fires you can see from space, the United States Missile command actually going into operation, the white house getting hit the U.S. getting invaded for the first time in many years and wars unseen since the civil war and revolutionary wars, don't get me wrong but I can see in the near future the possibility of things gettin bad

that N. Korea is going to be able to have some lights on now?

Actually, North Korea has already done an amazing job of keeping down energy use. By restricting electricity to a handful of elites and starving everyone else, they've been able to reduce their carbon footprint to almost nothing. Just look at the results. Glorious leader has produced a much more efficient country than that wasteful South Korea!

Maybe, but they had already slated Edwards AFB to be the American spaceport for commercial ventures. There's no mention of Edwards in the article nor the associated pages, so this may be yet another great waste of time, where one department didn't realize that they had set aside resources towards their goal already.

    Edwards has been the defacto second space center in the US, with many space shuttle landings there. White Sands is a third US landing site, but from what I understand the dust made the shuttle rather messy.

    There were a whole bunch of other emergency landing sites too.

    Ya, $1 million won't buy enough land and the first construction trailer, much less a spaceport. $1 billion would be a good start, but that isn't even enough. It sounds like they're hoping to get other companies and universities to foot the bill. Good luck with that.

From our "How to look non-conspicuous department": http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/ground/images/paint-992000a.jpg

Agreed. The Intrepid is a great museum, and one of my favorite places in the world. But it's very specifically a museum of durable things. Military aircraft and supersonic transports that are designed for all-weather.

The Space Shuttle is the very definition of a Hangar Queen. It takes tens of thousands of man hours of re-fitting for each flight. The tiles are delicate, and it's not really designed to be exposed to the elements long term. It might be able to be, but given it's track record, do we really want to risk it when there are only three remaining in existence?

Yes, they probably *could* get it into the hangar bay of the Intrepid, but given the shuttle's size, they may actually have to dismantle the ship to do so.

The Essex Class carrier has a deck elevator with dimensions of 60 ft x 34 ft. It's maximum load weight was 40,000 Lbs. The shuttle orbiter by comparison is 122.17 ft by 78.06 ft and weighs 151,205 lb.

In other words, the orbiter weighs in (empty) at triple the capacity of the Intrepid's elevators. Even if they didn't use the elevators and used some kind of crane instead, it's still 78.06 ft on it's smaller dimension vs the deck opening's larger dimension which is 60 ft.

They'd have to dismantle either the Intrepid or the orbiter to get it inside. Even if they did, the hangar deck is hardly climate controlled to begin with...

To use the Intrepid site, they'd either have to dismantle part of the ship to get it inside, then extensively retrofit it to provide a climate controlled environment, or they'd have to build a new facility on the Pier along side Intrepid just to house the Shuttle. The Intrepid gets most of it's operating budget from admissions, memberships, and the occasional grant. I don't think it's going to go away tomorrow, but I do get the distinct impression that compared to the Smithsonian, or the Kennedy Space Center (both government funded), it's hanging on my the margins.

The 500 year rule makes sense to me. These are invaluable pieces of human history. The Apollo Command Modules are in the same class. The National Air And Space Museum in D.C. makes sense as a location for one. They already have the Columbia module from Apollo 11, which I assume we would want to maintain to the same standards. However, they also already have the orbiter prototype Enterprise, so it seems to make more sense to spread the three remaining orbiters to allow as many people as possible to have access to them as possible. Perhaps one one at Kennedy Space Center, and one in Houston, and one on the West Coast somewhere?

New York City would allow millions of people to have access. And Intrepid is the premier aerospace site in the city. But it's just not equipped or funded for something like this.

The Aerospace museum at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base may also be appropriate, but it has a distinct military aerospace bias.

Likewise Vandenberg Air Force Base in California could be a great site, as it was almost a second launch site for the Shuttle. Having an orbiter wind up there permanently could be very apropos. Unfortunately, I'm not aware of any museum or public exhibit at Vandenberg, which is a shame. Edwards Air Force Base (Secondary shuttle landing site) and White Sands Space Harbor in New Mexico could be appropriate for similar reasons. But again, they're both military bases, and not terribl

So with the American Civil War, that too was tribal warfare. Why else was there such a split as there was, and why does it still live today?

You defined Africa's civil war as tribal war but there's no difference.

See also Northern Ireland's Protestant/Catholic wars.

No, the American Civil War was a war between people who had been all unified under one codified governmental structure. The dividing event was a subset of those people rejecting that structure in favor of an alternative. Both the North and South had effective national government structures throughout the war.

In contrast, there is no government in Somalia. The place westerners call Somalia was defined by British and Italian colonialism, not by the indigenous people. Fighting there is between clans, tribes, and loose confederations of ethnically homogeneous groups. There are some regional quasi-governmental structures, but on the whole, the area lacks the administrative cohesiveness that Westerners recognize as a national government. As a result, it's very different fighting than the American Civil War, or the French Civil War, or the Spanish.

http://www.greenpeace.org/international/news/secret-airlift-of-nuclear-mate
http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/iraq/tuwaitha.htm
http://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/168/37640.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2856647.stm
http://www.mediamonitors.net/gowans36.html

That should get you started. Learn to use a search engine AC.

We don't need to get rid of the entire military to cut back military expenditures. Nice strawman, assigning me the slippery slope that I never promoted.

How much defense budget do we need? Probably less than 41.5% of the world's total defense expenditures. How about, instead of spending 1.3 times as much as the next 14 top nations in overall funds, we only spend as much as the next 10 top nations in military expenditures? How about, as a start, instead of spending $123,000,000,000 more than the rest of the world in absolute military expenditures we merely match the rest of the world's defense budgets?

Good news? Other reports list the US as "only" 41% to 42% of overall worldwide military spending.

• Countries by Military Expenditures
• World Wide Military Expenditures
• World Military Spending
• Military Capabilities: Defense Budgets
• Defense Spending By Country (includes a nice bar graph)

You must be a cop ;) not sure if you were deliberately leaving ceramic plates out of the discussion, so I'll bring up the differences a tad

Vests can have metal or ceramic plates, or they can be made entirely of something like kevlar. Global security has a pretty good List of Body Armor Classes that explains them.

Plates are almost always removable because that just makes the most sense in so many damned ways (as I'm sure you know). Here's a cheap-o type III with optional removable steel plates: GatorHawk Talon Spike ... it seems metal plates are still popular with the press and similar outfits?

As for DOD systems, SAPI were ceramic plates used with Interceptor and IOTV. You can find more information all over the place, but the key take-away is that the military's plates are designed to protect from high-caliber rounds rather than trauma.

Just like the Starship Troopers film, it's the difference between Infantry and Fleet.

The Air Force and Navy are both responsible for equipment that can end up costing millions - or billions - of dollars. What's the most expensive thing you ever figure a soldier in the Marines or Army ever used? An M1 Abrams tank costs about $6.2 million, and even if you crash a tank it can probably be mostly salvaged. Meanwhile, the F-15 costs $43-55 million, and when one goes down it tends to stay down and be unsalvageable.

Moreover, the Air Force and Navy both have stationary bases. Sure, a destroyer might have relatively cramped quarters, but an airbase is going to have nice accommodations. Invading a foreign country? One of the major tasks is to capture and secure their own airfields for your use.

The infantry, meanwhile, typically get stretched far, far away from the supply chain. When a C-130 brings a planeload of new supplies to the airfield, it has to then be loaded up on a truck and dodge enemy fire and IEDs to make it all the way to the forward base where the grunts are.

When the day comes that we have transporter technology, personal jetpacks, etc. - basically anything that (cheaply) allows for fast deploying and extracting of troops - then the Army and Marines will have more comfortable accommodations. Until then they have to be highly mobile and able to set up camp practically anywhere.

Just like the Starship Troopers film, it's the difference between Infantry and Fleet.

The Air Force and Navy are both responsible for equipment that can end up costing millions - or billions - of dollars. What's the most expensive thing you ever figure a soldier in the Marines or Army ever used? An M1 Abrams tank costs about $6.2 million, and even if you crash a tank it can probably be mostly salvaged. Meanwhile, the F-15 costs $43-55 million, and when one goes down it tends to stay down and be unsalvageable.

Moreover, the Air Force and Navy both have stationary bases. Sure, a destroyer might have relatively cramped quarters, but an airbase is going to have nice accommodations. Invading a foreign country? One of the major tasks is to capture and secure their own airfields for your use.

The infantry, meanwhile, typically get stretched far, far away from the supply chain. When a C-130 brings a planeload of new supplies to the airfield, it has to then be loaded up on a truck and dodge enemy fire and IEDs to make it all the way to the forward base where the grunts are.

When the day comes that we have transporter technology, personal jetpacks, etc. - basically anything that (cheaply) allows for fast deploying and extracting of troops - then the Army and Marines will have more comfortable accommodations. Until then they have to be highly mobile and able to set up camp practically anywhere.

You're just being a troll, right? Military Iraq Facilities. 'Nuff said.

Theoretically, yes. However, the US already has a method for taking out Cruise Missile type weapons. The Patriot Missile Battery was modified for this right before the Gulf War. The Israelis evaluated a similar/smaller scale laser system for taking out the rockets used by Hamas. However, the logistics of supplying the chemicals and the toxicity of the chemicals were so bad they gave it up. The next improvement to the laser itself is getting an electric, as opposed to chemical, laser of sufficient power working. Due to not having to refuel the laser chemicals, it would be much more useful with the reduced logistics footprint and higher number of shots before refueling.

Your post reminded me of the "FastHawk".

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/munitions/lcms.htm

I say that because for everything we invent a defense for, logic suggests we must also be working on the system to get around said defense (lest a competitor nation develop a similar defensive system).

The "FastHawk" was basically benched simply because it wasn't needed (no more Cold War, no more real fear of needing to blanket a country the size of the Soviet Union with warheads, etc.) and the conventional cruise missile was still cheap and dependable.

I would be very surprised if this new defense system doesn't lead to renewed calls for a weapons system like the "FastHawk".

There has been quite a bit of work put into different 'icecretes', as a matter of fact. Here are a few examples, although I'm sure there's more that I'm not even aware of:

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/army/fm/31-70/Ch6.htm
Skip down to para 6-8.c and 6-10.b

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pykrete and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Habakkuk

http://pisces.hilo.hawaii.edu/documents/VT-NIA-PISCESFinalReport.pdf
A *very* interesting paper on using lunar regolith icecrete for construction (among other topics)

-b

With the way the economy is going, and the fact that China owns most of the US debt, you should change your quote from "US citizens" to "future Chinese citizens".

What makes you think they can collect on it?

I'll tell you what, since the Chinese thought so much of the W-88 warhead that they stole its design, I say we let them have all of them. In a preemptive strike.

Fuck the Chinese. When they let their currency float and they abide by IP laws, then we'll talk. Until then they own jack shit.

And you've probably heard the saying:

If you're a bank and I owe you 10,000 dollars, it's my problem. If I owe you 1,000,000,000 dollars, it's your problem.