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My guess would be pretty sure. Because if they did, they'd need to train on it. And with sub-meter satellite imagery, I'm guessing that it would be hard to hide the sort of large-scale artillery practice that would be needed in order for the troops to learn to fire them. If you look at US Army training, it's massive. The supply lines you need for artillery are pretty large, and if you want to practice shooting them, you need a lot of space for that. You can't learn to dial in a gun if your shots are falling into the jungle, and you don't know where. This is what we're talking about. And one gun won't do it - you would want dozens and dozens to hit Seoul. And for those, you need trained crews, and likely several of them so you can rotate them on and off. For cannon crewmen, we require 7 weeks of training, including simulated combat and live fire. If NK is doing that, I think we'd notice. If they're not, then no matter what they're getting or making for weapons, they're not going to be terribly effective.
 
That said, that's all speculation. I hope we find out the truth after a peace, rather than through a flare-up of the war.

Let's see. First we have more than one can reference on the swamp draining:
Search google for "Trump drain the swamp" and you'll find a quick 469,000 articles to reference.

As for the corporate profits, I think a quick review of his stock portfolio might shed some light:
http://www.businessinsider.com...

A quick search for his financials leads a to a whole lot more. He made a nice penny off the spike in oil last week after a little fireworks show.
http://www.cnbc.com/2017/04/06...
http://www.reuters.com/article...
https://www.bloomberg.com/news...

And one of his holdings stands to make a pretty penny on replacing those little rockets:
http://www.raytheon.com/capabi...

I can find you more if this isn't enough.

This sounds a lot like something Raytheon sells or at least sold in the past. Same pitch: for monitoring of employees, etc. I doubt the linked product is being done as a drive-by install--its sales are probably restricted to large corporations and government agencies; but it's the same kind of thing.

See subject & AFATDS -> http://www.raytheon.com/capabi...

* I know this since my brother used it during the IRAQ conflict (when he was a O2/O3 rank - now's he's "field-grade" & either a Major or a Colonel now...) - he not only used it, but had to debug/troubleshoot it as well.

APK

P.S.=> They're HUGE on software - @ least for the military's purposes... apk

Their "defense-grade cyber-security" promises to defend, detect, decide, defeat.

The cool thing is that this, being Raytheon, they have the hardware to back this up.

I can see it now:

Raytheon Cyber Security has located the source of the threat. Please choose how to defeat it:

• 1. Jam all radio communications at source.
• 2. Reformat the source building
• 3. Reformat the entire block
• 4. Nuke the entire city (Warning, this action cannot be undone)

Their "defense-grade cyber-security" promises to defend, detect, decide, defeat.

The cool thing is that this, being Raytheon, they have the hardware to back this up.

I can see it now:

Raytheon Cyber Security has located the source of the threat. Please choose how to defeat it:

• 1. Jam all radio communications at source.
• 2. Reformat the source building
• 3. Reformat the entire block
• 4. Nuke the entire city (Warning, this action cannot be undone)

Their "defense-grade cyber-security" promises to defend, detect, decide, defeat.

The cool thing is that this, being Raytheon, they have the hardware to back this up.

I can see it now:

Raytheon Cyber Security has located the source of the threat. Please choose how to defeat it:

• 1. Jam all radio communications at source.
• 2. Reformat the source building
• 3. Reformat the entire block
• 4. Nuke the entire city (Warning, this action cannot be undone)

Raytheon is also a leader in this area.

http://www.raytheon.com/capabi...

We already intercept missiles with bullets. A bullet is only a little over an order of magnitude smaller in diameter than at least this anti-ship missile?, and it should be noted that those missiles can change trajectory. Most bullets cannot, although this one can.

Unfortunately, there is a lot of overlap in your definitions, so they are by no means exclusive.
Also, if both, the manufacturer, as well as the Army, decide to call it aerostats, then I think that does carry a bit more weight than what some guy on Wikipedia thinks it should be called...

After the questionable publicity we received in this morning's story about the RIOT program, I would like to point out that we are also responsible for producing the world's best focal planes, some of which have gone into these Landsat birds, including this one.

Ugh ....
Maryland - Goddard Space Flight Center
New Mexico - AF Research Lab - Space Vehicles, Sandia Labs, Los Alamos Labs
Colorado - Ball, Raytheon, etc
California - JPL, Livermore Labs and way too many others to list
Virginia - Navy Research Lab, Wallops Island
Texas - UT Dallas, Texas A&M, Johnson Space Center, many more
Arizona - Orbital Sciences Corp., GD, etc
Tennessee - Oakridge
Alabama - U.S. Space and Rocket Center
Utah -Space Dynamics Laboratory, L3
Florida - Kennedy, ATK and many more
Alaska - Kodiak Island

The space industry is spread out over the entire country. This list could go on and on. Saying it is only Florida and Texas that benefit is mildly absurd. I agree with the idea, but it isn't nearly as narrow as that.

How about cyber-industrial complex instead. Cyber warfare and defense is becoming the new way to milk the Federal government for contracts and money, from the same people who've brought you the defense-industrial complex for the last 70 years, so it shall continue, whether you like it or not.

These would be Lockheed, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, plus a few new players like Palantir. Wonder how Palantir is able to buying up all the free real estate in Silicon Valley?

Chances are they will be gutting your Internet freedoms as a regrettable side effect of making the Internet safe for freedom.

FYI, Raytheon doesn't just make missiles and weapons. Generally they are defense oriented (war facilitators sounds better), but they've been involved with some NASA and MIL projects in the past. Space based Radar for example (which has non-military uses).

Its entirely plausible this guy was working on studying black holes. They used to have an 'intro' to black holes thing here:

http://itss.raytheon.com/cafe/qadir/abholes.html

But seems to have been taken down a few years ago.

Other (mostly military related) space stuff can be found here: http://www.raytheon.com/capabilities/space/

FYI, Raytheon doesn't just make missiles and weapons. Generally they are defense oriented (war facilitators sounds better), but they've been involved with some NASA and MIL projects in the past. Space based Radar for example (which has non-military uses).

Its entirely plausible this guy was working on studying black holes. They used to have an 'intro' to black holes thing here:

http://itss.raytheon.com/cafe/qadir/abholes.html

But seems to have been taken down a few years ago.

Other (mostly military related) space stuff can be found here: http://www.raytheon.com/capabilities/space/

How did he even get access to pancreatic cancer urine samples?

Jack Andraka is a high school research intern at The Sol Goldman Pancreatic Cancer Research Center, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland. The lab of Anirban Maitra, Associate Professor of Pathology and Oncology. Four students honored at INBT research symposium [NanoBioTechnology]

A MathMovesU Middle School Scholarship winner, Jack Andraka of Crownsville, Md., rode his way to a $1,000 campership courtesy of Raytheon to camp Awesome Math, where he can hone his problem-solving skills with students from around the world. Jack wrote about his love of mountain biking for Raytheon's MathMovesU Middle School Scholarship and Grant Program, which honors students and teachers who are passionate about science, technology, engineering and math.

Jack Andraka: Math and Mountain Biking Create Eureka Moment

I-SWEEEP 2010 Special Awards [Certificate of Achievement and Office of Naval Research Medallion]

Surface forces have no defense against missile attacks, making them useless in a real war

Ah, not exactly true.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close-in_weapon_system
http://www.raytheon.com/capabilities/products/searam/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RIM-116_Rolling_Airframe_Missile

ADS is a Raytheon product. They're already pretty good at high-energy microwave systems. And the know a little about tubes, since that was their original product line.

ADS is a Raytheon product. They're already pretty good at high-energy microwave systems. And the know a little about tubes, since that was their original product line.

My (and my CAATS predecessor's) results were not what the PHBs wanted to hear. They shaved down traffic loads and tried everything they could. Eventually, using loads not at all like what was planned, they got a number they could have a good night's sleep with.

This went on for many many months. I found others in other parts of the project with similar stories -- one was a bug finder who reported bugs that were never fixed in future versions of the program.

One day my PHB was at a meeting with his peers and they asked him a question he couldn't answer. He ran out and got me. I went to the meeting, answered the question and then flatly stated that the network spec'd could not handle the loads. This brought quite a reaction, with one "expert" (on conference call) immediately disagreeing. The only insightful remark made was from the top guy at the meeting who practically whispered "Why wasn't I told about this?"

BTW, part of the network spec was that all design documentation be available for reading and printing. Many of the manuals were not text but scanned images (who knows why, but it gives you some idea how backward big companies can be). One day, at lunch time, I decided I want to print 2 or 3 documents. The next thing you know I get a call from an excited network administrator asking what was I doing, I was saturating the network! A 10Mbps network.

I've seen lots of video (here, for example) where it looks like the "pilots" have multiple control sticks and many-paneled displays showing video feed from a UAV. So these "pilots" may have more feedback from the aircraft than an in-plane pilot would.

Also, people were commenting about the bandwidth - Reaper drones have Raytheon multispectral targeting systems that must require a good bit of bandwidth (multiple video feeds at different wavelengths). Also I would imagine that the drone is sending back tons of information that is critical to the aircraft but not to the mission, such as fuel levels, engine operation details, and feedback from thousands of sensors (each one may not contribute much, but there are probably a lot of them, plus redundancies). I still think 500 Mb/sec seems high, though...

In these sorts of situations, I wonder if there's the same level of adrenaline rush that in-plane pilots get, since that adrenaline provides a pilot with heightened awareness of his surroundings and the ability to make quicker decisions. I suppose current UAV missions don't involve "dog-fighting" or things that would require quick thinking, but that's got to be an eventual goal.

A big plus for Android is that there is already a "hardened" Android system available, the Raytheon Android Tactical System (RATS) :

http://www.raytheon.com/newsroom/technology/rtn09_rats/index.html

The problems solved by your airshow HAM are easily fixed by one of the ACU units from Raytheon JPS.

Just plug in radios for NYSP, local fire brigade, county sheriff, ambulance service, links back to one or more repeated channels with a real dispatcher (probably on a tac channel, or a P25 talkgroup), plus one that the local HAMs are legally allowed to use, and call it a day.

It's easy to bring the whole system up or down, or to add and remove individual radios, or to tie in other systems over telephone lines or cell phone or nextel or SIP, or whatever.

(This, of course, is assuming that some local dispatching agency doesn't already have the tech to accomplish this built into their console, which they likely do these days.)

(Disclaimer: We've sold a few ACU-1000 units, and a whole bunch of ACU-Ts. They work fine. Even the local SOs around here have them built into their emergency mobile communications rigs, along with enough radios to make them do useful work amongst a bunch of different trunking systems and frequencies.)

Courtesy a few minutes of googling "Raytheon +"non lethal". I'm really surprised this wasn't on /. last year. It was on Fark and my other regular sites, and I have lousy memory. Anyway here are some links to the "non lethal" techno in the parent:

link to Raytheon's article
best title for an article so far
article about why not to be in a riot when this is used I will keep this in mind next time I'm downtown in Denver and one of the teams wins or loses...CO people like to riot?!?
a fairly descriptive article that sounds more like it should be on the food network
a tiny article about how it affected stock
this site/article is definitely not biased or anything

Given the problem is the difficulty of locating and identifying said individuals pointing lasers at aircraft before they leave the area.

Maybe these http://www.raytheon.com/capabilities/products/paveway/ could be adapted to seek to the source of the laser light rather than the sparkle. Dropping a few of these on the offenders would provide a quick response which would undoubtedly deter others and I'm sure give affected pilots a warm fuzzy feeling.

The reason the guy keeps referring to his people back in Denver is because logistics and support for the South Pole station (and McMurdo, too, I think) are run by Raytheon Polar Services, which is based in Colorado. The Antarctic program is run out of Washington by the National Science Foundation, but they contract out the actual infrastructure, operations, and other support.

Forgot to post the product site. The PDF has the stats.

AFATDS developer here. If the government would cough up for faster Solaris boxes, maybe we could boot up faster, but you know, the more stuff we put in there, oddly enough, the slower things come up.

4. We realize that lives depend on them working properly. I personally have had to work on code for fixes that were needed immediately out in the field (Afghanistan, initial Iraq invasion). We've pulled all nighters to get the patches out that were urgently needed for a mission.

Ditto here, though I haven't needed to pull an all-nighter (though I know those who have worked heinous hours to get stuff done for a patch).

Raytheon Polar Services is the contractor providing services on all US antarctic installations.

Targeting: Stationary firing position with 360-degree coverage
Integrated sensors with joystick control
Single-man operation

System Setup: Automatic target tracking
Modular architecture
Secure antenna stabilization platform
able to operate in 40 mph winds

Mission Profile: Less than 2-second retargeting capability
Shoot-and-scoot capability
Less than 2 seconds to switch from standby mode to armed

Contractor Support: Complete logistics support package available to include:
- Return and repair maintenance
- System training
- Web-enabled supply support
- Supports Army two-level maintenance system

No: that's what they *want*, not what they have.

I know the guys who build:

ERGM
Excalibur
MRM

ERGM and Excalibur are GPS-guided, MRM has a dual mode SAL/IR seeker (SAL is semi-active laser). I've held MRM in my hands and seen it after a flight test (them things is *sturdy*). Wrote some of the test interface software.

Surviving launch shocks of 12-14 kilogees is no joke, and is only now becoming reliable. I sooooooo doubt that there is anything that will survive 45kgee.

Not to say they shouldn't try: definitely go for it. Hell, it would probably easier just to further harden a few of the existing projectiles than develop from scratch a new one (though they fly a lot faster than what the existing things go, so aerodynamic constraints might necessitate a redesign).

What interests me is how well electronics inside a shell will survive that intense a magnetic field. Monstrous Faraday shield around the round? Can you really seal the whole round but yet make it possible to deploy fins or canards for maneuvering?

Even more super dooper: will you have to make the round both super acceleration safe (launch shock) and then also rad-hard (it's not in space long, but neither is EKV and that's rad-hard). Course an EKV firing might be during a, uhm, "excitable" period when space has rather more radiation than normal.

What I especially like is that basically every defense contractor is on the front page of that Powerpoint presentation except the people who've gotten rounds to fly. In fact, ATK was found guilty of fraud while developing their version of MRM. They claimed to have hit a tank, but they ballistically dialed the round in beforehand: no guidance was needed to hit.

Oh God, Rockwell Collins is on that list. Well, if their GPS "expertise" is being utilized, no worries about the round hitting a goddamn thing. Yay, nothing like getting Segmentation Faults from your navigation unit during flight. We really enjoyed that. Nice job you clowns. L3's not much better.

No: that's what they *want*, not what they have.

I know the guys who build:

ERGM
Excalibur
MRM

ERGM and Excalibur are GPS-guided, MRM has a dual mode SAL/IR seeker (SAL is semi-active laser). I've held MRM in my hands and seen it after a flight test (them things is *sturdy*). Wrote some of the test interface software.

Surviving launch shocks of 12-14 kilogees is no joke, and is only now becoming reliable. I sooooooo doubt that there is anything that will survive 45kgee.

Not to say they shouldn't try: definitely go for it. Hell, it would probably easier just to further harden a few of the existing projectiles than develop from scratch a new one (though they fly a lot faster than what the existing things go, so aerodynamic constraints might necessitate a redesign).

What interests me is how well electronics inside a shell will survive that intense a magnetic field. Monstrous Faraday shield around the round? Can you really seal the whole round but yet make it possible to deploy fins or canards for maneuvering?

Even more super dooper: will you have to make the round both super acceleration safe (launch shock) and then also rad-hard (it's not in space long, but neither is EKV and that's rad-hard). Course an EKV firing might be during a, uhm, "excitable" period when space has rather more radiation than normal.

What I especially like is that basically every defense contractor is on the front page of that Powerpoint presentation except the people who've gotten rounds to fly. In fact, ATK was found guilty of fraud while developing their version of MRM. They claimed to have hit a tank, but they ballistically dialed the round in beforehand: no guidance was needed to hit.

Oh God, Rockwell Collins is on that list. Well, if their GPS "expertise" is being utilized, no worries about the round hitting a goddamn thing. Yay, nothing like getting Segmentation Faults from your navigation unit during flight. We really enjoyed that. Nice job you clowns. L3's not much better.

They would probably pop if left in the the path of the beam long enough, but as I had mentioned in a reply to a commenter above, the system isn't likely to sustain the energy long enough for that to happen.

Sidenote: Raytheon engineer Percy Spencer is credited with the creation of the microwave oven.
http://www.raytheon.com/about/history/leadership/i ndex.html

Actually, I've had such a system (millimeter wave emitter) tested on me. I voluteered myself, as did the people in charge of the project. The thing hurts like you're being cooked alive, and stops immediately once you're out of the way, but leaves no physical trace of injury.

I work for Raytheon.

While you can "use the same substance" as you suggest, it's doubtful that you could maintain the perfect mirror on the missile, or for that matter even achieve such a mirror.

I am not talking about a "perfect mirror" Let's say I can reflect 95% of incoming energy well you now need a system that's 20x as powerful. Can this be done? Well every part of your system now needs to take 20x the load including that targeting mirror. As to Masers you need to have 2 to 4 of them to cover each section of the ship. And they now need to swivel fast enough to take out 3 targets in under a second. And we are talking about moving 100's of Tuns of stuff at those speeds. Depending on the frequencies I can still reflect some of that energy but lets say they only need to be 5x as powerful.

Now let's place these things on a battle ship. Well a dumb kinetic bomb that is filled with paint can take them all out. It's not explosive so hitting it wit a laser is not going to do much. And it's a kinetic weapon so shooting it is not going to do anything. A fine mist of pant on the outside glass of your Masers is going to break said system after a single fire. Yep, it adds a new arms race but not much of one at that and your spending BILLIONS to build something that a can of paint can break.

This could still be done but we are a long way from any system that comes anywhere near this level. Lasers sound cool but a rail / coil gun is much more useful at point defense. And even still these systems are useless vs. the WWII method of shooting a few ton's of led out of a gun at your ship.

As I said "unless there moving at slow speeds at which point you can just use gun powder to do that"

http://www.navyleague.org/sea_power/may_04_10.php
http://www.raytheon.com/newsroom/articles/ddx_jane s_062403.pdf
http://www.strategypage.com/messageboards/messages /8-6263.asp

These are all low velocity rounds.
Note: Mach 10 is slow when you're talking about rail guns.

The idea behind rail guns is you can take a 1lb iron dart and fire though 10 feet of carbon steel so you can then keep 20 tunes of said darts in less space and with less danger than you could other types of ammo. These systems are based using more massage darts, which either use an explosive head to penetrate the target or the weight of the dart. But as I said these systems could use gun powder they are not the "rail gun weapons" your thinking of as they are no better off than normal guns.

PS: Except when it's not.

" the ship was only able to carry such a system because it was a heavily overpowered Orion warship. (It carried several space shuttles up into space with it.)"

Your talking about sci-fi as if it real. It's not. You can't say look at what this fact sheet says because it's sci-fi. It's like saying "If you could take all the energy from the sun for 2-3 seconds you could cut a one inch hole though the earth" And then point at that and saying see you can cut a one inch hole though the earth. If you sit there and think about the logic you can see why saying "if I can do A then I can do B" does not mean you can do B.

Found it!

Here's the previous Slashdot article. Note that I was pretty skeptical at the time, but many of the responses have since warmed me up to the idea a bit more:

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/06/22/183920 7&tid=126&tid=103

Here's the guided munition data sheet. Plans are to deploy early versions in 5" deck guns, then use future versions in the rail guns. Future versions would supposedly remove the explosives package and acceleration motor in favor of the kinetic energy imparted by the rail gun:

http://www.raytheon.com/products/ergm/ref_docs/erg m.pdf

SCI-FI is fiction. Please say that again and again till it starts to sink in.

Except when it's not. The archangel's design is considered sound by scientists and has been discussed several times on nuclear science webboards. I've asked nuclear scientists outright if the archangel's defenses would work. The answer was a resounding 'yes', along with an explanation about the issue with reflective surfaces.


Yes, Masers can use wavelengths higher than visible light but if your going to use some sort of mirror to target your system then clearly you can use that type of mirror to reflect that energy at 99+% efficiency. At this point in time your talking about a hypothetical system so feel free to pick any part of the EM Spectrum and you can find it's going to be a pain to use as either you need to rapidly swivel your laser system or you going to lose a lot of energy as it passes though the air or you can use the same substance used in your mirrors to make a missile immune to said system.

We're discussing both systems, so it's only fair to mention both. Lasers have a faster targetting system than masers (due to the ability to reflect visible wavelengths), but masers are able to penetrate better due to higher wave lengths. Both have advantages/disadvantages that to be weighed in before deploying a system. A mirror on a high powered laser is doable, but has to be precision crafted to be able to take the load. Note that such a mirror is vastly different from a "reflective surface" on a missile. From here:

The optical power levels inside the laser devices themselves are so horrendously high that the high-reflectivity laser mirrors operate just on the verge of self-destruction. Any flaw or blemish or dust particle on the mirror surface causes the mirror reflectivity to decrease or its absorption to increase. As the absorbing spot gets warmer, its absorption goes up, and the situation goes to pot in a runaway fashion. The result is near-instantaneous catastrophic runaway thermal damage which blows the surface off the mirror faster than you can possibly shut things down. The supersonic nozzles are
extremely fragile and touchy also.

While you can "use the same substance" as you suggest, it's doubtful that you could maintain the perfect mirror on the missile, or for that matter even acheive such a mirror.

You can't fire rail guns over the horizon as they a lose a lot of kinetic energy going tough the air and don't don't have ballistic trajectories unless there moving at slow speeds at which point you can just use gun powder to do that.

You obviously haven't seen the Raytheon specs on the new railguns. They fire a non-explosive, guided projectile straight up, then direct it to the target on the way down. Over the horizon is *EXACTLY* what it does, and it does it with a range of ~100 miles. (Or so the brochure says. :-)) Some links:

http://www.navyleague.org/sea_power/may_04_10.php
http://www.raytheon.com/newsroom/articles/ddx_jane s_062403.pdf
http://www.strategypage.com/messageboards/messages /8-6263.asp

I'd provide a link to the munition itself, but I can't find the article at the moment. If I find it, I'll add it in another post.

I hate to say it but anyone who is willing to have his tax money spent on a missile shield defence, of which it has been demonstrated that it will NEVER work, has to be considered low on intelligence...hence the term "idiot".

You should tell that to the US navy, which has been largely successful in its trials: five hits in (I think) six attempts. See here for example. I agree that the USAF's program, which has received more press, has been dismal.

I don't get why people keep saying it will "never" work. It's a hard problem, but I'm aware of no physical laws that are violated by BMD.

But more generally, the way things are now, the only thing defending you from nuclear attack is that the USA is prepared to commit an act of genocide to avenge your death, which incidentally conveys no protection from insanity, error, or equipment failure. As a first line of defence, I would much rather be protected by a system that could destroy the incoming warhead -- even if it had a certain percentage chance of failure.

But since you seem to be curious about who really profits from Israeli defense spending, I'll give you a hint: They are not Israelis at all. Want to profit from Israeli defense spending yourself? Those companies are hiring like crazy right now. A buddy of mine just got a kick-ass job at Raytheon.

Or did you think Israel was building fighter jets in a garage behind the Kenesset building?

A more detailed look at the Patriot missle system is very telling of the current status, viability and danger of fully automated weaponry.
http://www.raytheon.com/products/static/node3832.h tml
http://www.ceip.org/files/projects/npp/resources/p atriot.htm
Please search further results.
Personally I don't think man should be trusted with a tool more devastating than a stick, but that's just me....

The cost of the housing doubles for a cracker box 1/3 the size;

The East Coast public schools are pitiful compared to where I live;

and (amazingly) my average daily commute would be LONGER than staying where I am.

I have used these which have been around for a while (a repacked IPAQ).
I'm not sure if >$1000 counts as consumer, but anyone can buy them. They have a touchscreen that is scratch resistant, but obviously not scratch-proof.

As another Kiwi, I sometimes think we should get over the "Number 8 wire" mentality* if we really want to develop our high tech industry. A clever trick may have helped us to get over the difficult times in the past, or brought a decent living for the few founders of various tech companies.

But, we cannot create an industrial base from just ingenuity. It involves a lot of teamwork, planning and support. These are boring and difficult work. The spectacular success of the semiconductor industry in Taiwan and Telecommunication gear in Scandinavian countries in the last two decades are admired by many. But, there is no coincident: both value education very high. The university graduate level in New Zealand, esp in tech area, is not exactly high in OECD. And, many NZ employers in the tech industry today still consider ME/MSc as over-qualified... We got to ask ourselves, "are we prepared?" before cheering upon every minor success. (For the guys behind the detector project, good on you, keep your good work going.)

*For non New Zealander /.er, "Number 8 wire" refers to kiwi ingenuity. It is the spirit to solve problem on hand with minimal resources using some clever tricks. I can say Bruce Simpson (the DIY cruise missile guy is a prime modern day example). While all these ideas are cool, they cannot carry us very far. These are not breakthroughs, but cool imitations....

Well you better start doing your homework.

I worked for many years on a replacement Air Traffic Control System for Canada and as the project matured, our stage - lab (containing litterally hundreds of machines, a complete lab recreation of the coast-to-coast ATC system) started to experience an MTBF on the power supplies in the equipment that was over an order of magnitude smaller than spec'd by the manufacturer (Hewlett-Packard).

Since this was a long-term contract that included commitments to deliver over an extended period of time (25 years), the material cost of this problem was VERY significant to the equipment vendor, not the customer. (In other words there was no financial motivation to fail to find fault, quite the opposite; the fault was costing them money.)

In the spirit of "old HP" they sent us some senior hardware design guys to look at our lab and our environmentals (humidity, temp, pressures, cycles and power suppy spectra) to see what was causing the problem.

Being about 6 years ago -- I hadn't heard of the Zinc problem yet, and neither had the guys from HP. They took everything back to their labs, including about 6 failed supplies and a couple 'still good ones', some from reserve stock and some from working machines.

A few weeks later they came back; there was a big meeting -- this was an issue with potentially enormous cost -- including the ultimate customer's representatives.

I can remember the Project Manager practically spitting his coffee when informed the underlying cause. The 'special ESD safe A/C'd lab' was part of the problem. Thank fully, the final deployed environment had different flooring, so we didn't have to change the sites, just some modifications to the lab.

This is far from BS -- it's a problem that has cost millions and will likely cost millions more before it's over. But the SEM photos of the failed devices we cool to see.

The Fact Sheet, or... From Whence the Information Cometh.

Also for further reading enjoyment, I submit this article.

And I'm pretty positive I didn't ask for you to be a bastard about it. If I was talking out of my ass, I wouldn't stake my slashdot rep on it, despite the thin veil of anonymity it offers. In case you weren't aware, there is a level of creditability you risk when you say things you nothing about...well, maybe you don't, but you will now :)

The Fact Sheet, or... From Whence the Information Cometh.

Also for further reading enjoyment, I submit this article.

And I'm pretty positive I didn't ask for you to be a bastard about it. If I was talking out of my ass, I wouldn't stake my slashdot rep on it, despite the thin veil of anonymity it offers. In case you weren't aware, there is a level of creditability you risk when you say things you nothing about...well, maybe you don't, but you will now :)

• "Hi. Yeah. Erm, what the hell are 'boxen', 'VAXen', 'OSen' and 'Virii'?"
  "These are mystical non-words, which have been conjured up by stupid wankers wanting to appear hip, cool and intellectual. Nothing to see here. Please move along."

• "Why is everyone so against Microsoft? And what is up with that dollar sign?"
  "Welcome to Slashdot. Much in the same way that one dog sniffs another's ass to evaluate that individual, so is this practice of marking your grounds of viewpoint. Think of it as a Linux user bending over and farting - It is all about making their views heard.

• "Who is Junis?"
  "The most legendary troll ever to grace the pages of Slashdot. Not only was a Slashdot editor duped into posting a complete article on the opression of Kabul's geeks, but it also spawned a veritable banquet of new trolling material (such as optimum temperatures for storing Commodore hardware buried under chicken huts and the abundance of DivX Baywatch episodes)"

• "What is 'YHBT. YHL. HAND.'? I see it everywhere!"
  "This is commonly seen in comments sections after a pathetic Slashboteer or paranoid YRO fanatic has been suckered into replying to a finely crafted piece of literary genius."

• "Why the hell would someone want to re-program some obscure electronic device that is no longer produced?"
  "Many cock-smoking Slashdot users like to claim that it is 'because they can'. In fact, it boils down to 'because I've got nothing else better to do'. These are normally the same people who think that their university attendance made them technical gods and everyone else is worthless."

• "I recently saw an article on programming, and lots of people posted code snippets. Problem is, most of it was wrong. Why is that?"
  "A high percentage of Slashdot users are still in university, and think that after day 1 of 'Introduction to C' that they are ready to code embedded systems for Boeing or Raytheon . They spend endless hours posting about how they've hacked device x, when in fact all they've done is downloaded the SDK, bragged about 16-bit bus register cron-job front side bus accumulators and watched 'Anti-Trust' for the 797th time."

You missed my point. My point was that a radar return off the F-117 (or B-2) is more likely then not going to be bounced off the internal structure of the aircraft -- since the external structure either absorbs radar signals or reflects them back away from the intended receiver. My other point being that an RWS system could work in theory without external sensors by picking up the transmissions that weren't absorbed by the external structure -- since transmissions that were absorbed (or reflected elsewhere) are no threat. Try reading my statement before you jump all over it. Neither does ascribing fantastic capability to RWS (or is it ESM? How about BVR - Beyond Vague Ranging system?).

In that single comment you reveal your ignorance and arrogance about modern military technology. This has nothing to do with fancy Star Trek style technology. Most of this stuff has been around for decades. The concepts are nothing new -- they go all the way back to WW2.

To quote from this military site:

ESM is the area of Electronic Warfare (EW) that evaluates passive electronic devices used for signal intelligence (SIGINT) collection. These types of systems are RF based. ESM system evaluations include but are not limited to: SIGINT library validation, direction finding array calibration and validation, target fixing algorithm validation, intercept capability, and evaluation of special signals.

Here are some other interesting websites that you should consider reading. Google is your friend.

None of this is "fantastic capability" or 24th century technology. None of this implies mystical powers on the part of the F-117 (or any other modern aircraft or ship).

Now, unlike you, I don't pretend to be a know all expert on modern military technology. But I also don't pretend that just because I don't understand something or haven't heard about it that it must be magical Star Trek technology clearly beyond our current means.

I have no idea how playing Harpoon (whatever that is), Exocets and F-14's got into the mix.

Harpoon is an all encompassing sea-air battle simulation coined by Larry Bond that is played on paper rules or with PC software. If your interested (it's really quite good) I suggest you check it out. Exocets and F-14s got into the mix because you made the asinine comment about how realistic Top Gun was -- I was blowing this argument out of the water. Talk to any real Naval aviator (or Air Force for that matter) -- they think it's one of the funniest movies ever made. Though they would probably agree with you about the flight instructor sleeping with Tom Cruise part ;)

Modern weapons systems are limited by existing technology and the laws of physics, not magic not mysticism

No disagreement. You just don't seem to have an understanding of what modern technology is capable of. Read up on ESM/RWS technology sometime -- I think you'll be surprised at what it's capable of -- and it's hardly new -- it's been around (albeit in more primitive form) since WW2.

put away your tin foil hat.
theres nothing to see here...
if your going to say SAIC is spooky you had better include Raytheon and TASC.
All in all, their just large companies in a focused industry.

Bring it on, baby.

This'll be waiting for ya!