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China's already worried and guarding the border. Things are only getting worse in NKorea, take a read of this Times of London article. Warning though, it's pretty graphic.

The Chinese are worried about a potential influx of North Korean refugees. They are also vexed with counterfeit US currency coming from North Korea and "...vast quantities of fake Viagra from North Korea."

I've also found Strategy Page a good source for intelligence and analysis on NKorea.

Here's an estimate: http://www.strategypage.com/dls/articles/200581423 1422.asp

new planes, new weapons, new profits...

..."War in Middle East" ... which got nothing to do with terrorism ... the real term should really be "War for Oil"

Iraq's current oil production is 2,900,000 barrels per day. At $70 a barrel, the value of Iraq's entire daily production is $203,000,000. The total cost of your "War Against Middle East" (so far) is $65,000,000,000 and is expected to top $300,000,000,000. If today the war magically became free and we magically got all $203 million in revenue (not profit) each day, it would take a year to "break even" on the war.

Can anyone really believe that a war was fought for oil if it costs more (just in money!) to FIGHT the war than to just buy the oil?

Also, "Climate Change" is more accurate. We're in a period of "global warming" right now (1 to 2 degrees), but we just finished with a "global cooling" - the "Little Ice Age". See here. See how our climate is changing, not just warming? And that this isn't a recent phenomenon? Not that global warming/climate change isn't an issue - climate change just isn't newspeak.

Bushspeak != Duckspeak

..."War in Middle East" ... which got nothing to do with terrorism ... the real term should really be "War for Oil"

Iraq's current oil production is 2,900,000 barrels per day. At $70 a barrel, the value of Iraq's entire daily production is $203,000,000. The total cost of your "War Against Middle East" (so far) is $65,000,000,000 and is expected to top $300,000,000,000. If today the war magically became free and we magically got all $203 million in revenue (not profit) each day, it would take a year to "break even" on the war.

Can anyone really believe that a war was fought for oil if it costs more (just in money!) to FIGHT the war than to just buy the oil?

Also, "Climate Change" is more accurate. We're in a period of "global warming" right now (1 to 2 degrees), but we just finished with a "global cooling" - the "Little Ice Age". See here. See how our climate is changing, not just warming? And that this isn't a recent phenomenon? Not that global warming/climate change isn't an issue - climate change just isn't newspeak.

Bushspeak != Duckspeak

StrategyPage runs a prediction market on geopolitical events, with a similarly high success percentage.

I prefer the World War 2 version. If World War 2 were an RTS, the chat would look like this...
http://www.strategypage.com/humor/articles/militar y_jokes_20057151.asp

You're correct. The Iraqi surrender apparently resulted in a cease-fire agreement, not a peace treaty.

What is in dispute here? That Iraq surrendered and agreed to a cease-fire?
That Iraq subsequently violated the cease-fire? (Note that the coalition commanders claimed that the squashing of the Kurdish uprising was also a violation of the cease-fire agreements.)
It's a pity I'm not easily finding any good, detailed reports of Iraq's actions against US/UK aircraft patrolling the designated "no fly" zones, but I highly doubt that was ever in question.

Or is it the fact that the US grabbed the UK and went off to clean up its mess without the agreement of the toothless UN (reminds me of the League of Nations, honestly)? I'll admit that could be an issue for the lawyers - I don't know.

If anything, the real item the disgruntled folks should be focussing on is the reason the war was sold to the general public: that Iraq had or was going to have nukes/WMD, and we need to do something now-now-now! Then again, since "intelligence" is, by nature, uncertain, that ultimately wouldn't get you very far, either.

IIRC it was because they tried to cut corners by modifying a nuclear plant originally designed for a sub rather than starting for scratch - makes sense on paper, but sub reactors solve a significantly different set of engineering challenges - as a result they ended up with the worst of both worlds, an overly complex and underpowered carrier barely capable of leaving port for the first few years of its service life.

Political pressures and cost overruns added to the problems, for example the novel propeller design never worked properly and the Charles de Gaulle is now fitted with props from its predecessor, the Foch. To add insult to injury, this actually make the Charles de Gaulle slower than the (conventionally powered) Foch.

This is an interesting background article on the current situation.

What do you expect? It's another Roland P. article. If you want to read the original article he ripped off and reworded, look here.

Yeah, but there partners built the Charles de Gaulle The engine room crew come back glowing after every cruise.

Here's a topic page with links to mostly right wing blog posts about the riots. Also, I recommend reading Jim Dunnigan In France, It's Not Jihad, and Never Has Been who's usually fairly insightful. And of course a link to my favorite blogger, Instapundit and finally The Belmont Club has a few posts about it, just scroll down.

one of the reasons is unemployment. France's national unemployment is around 8 or 10%. If you look only at young 20 somethings, then the unemployment is almost double that, and if you look at young 20 something immigrants, then its double that or so, almost 40% I think. Another reason I've heard are drug dealers and such criminals using the violence to keep the cops out of their turf. As of right now there is little suggesting islamic or jihadi influence as a cause of the riots. However I would bet that al qaeda and other radical islamic organizations are taking notice of the riots and planning. Here's a topic page with links to mostly right wing blog posts about the riots. Also, I recommend reading Jim Dunnigan In France, It's Not Jihad, and Never Has Been who's usually fairly insightful. And of course a link to my favorite blogger, Instapundit

I'm a PDA phone user, so links are hard, but here goes:

Anti-competitive

Orbit Act I think

Pirates + Govt Mandates

I have 9 years of history with Inmarsat and Iridium.

There are a few in use currently in Iraq. There is the Talon which can fire many different weapons (M249, .50 cal, M4A1, M24, etc). They are very accurate, more accurate than any soldier. Every EOD team seems to have one of these which they use to detonate IEDs.

UAVs are everywhere and are common place in almost all operations. There is the Predator, which when armed with the hellfire missile system can be very leathal and the little Raven which can be utilized at the squad level. The new Viper Strike bombs, which are starting to be depoyed on UAVs, are very usefull in urban situations where you need to take out the enemy without harming innocents in say, the next room. This is a big development because the "insurgents" like to take shelter in mosques, schools, and hospitals, etc. The new Hardstop bombs help in this situation as well (but I do not think they are carried by UAVs). Anyways, here is an exellent video/story which mixes captured enemy video with the video from the UAV which nails them. I love UAVs.

It's already 'worse in North Korea'. Internet access is very restricted there, right now.
In NK, it's cellphones rather than the internet that are breaking the government's stranglehold on communications. The fact that it's China that's providing the tools, is ironic, to say the least.

Not just the Pentagon. Strategypage runs a prediction market with this type (terrorism, and national security/defence-related in general) of events.

Actually, the new strategy to take, is to hold the country who host or export terrorism as being responsible for their own action/inaction.

Exactly. Countries like Iran which openly support international terrorism and Islamic extremism need to be held accountable. They have a government-sanctioned martyrdom brigade, for crying out loud.

If a major American city gets nuked from an Iranian government-trained suicide bomber, I think we have every right to nuke them in return--even if they claim that they aren't responsible.

It's unfortunate, and I'm not saying that it's our only option for every situation. But we have to at least have the appearance of being ready to defend ourselves proactively.

-Grym

Thirty seconds on Google shows the media has reported on how Al Queda communicates before. (Feel free to be picky about 'headlines' if you want.)

In a major breakthrough, U.S. Customs agents intercepted a cache of 250 cell phones that were to be shipped to the al Qaeda network, said John Babb, U.S. Customs director.

Osman was arrested in Rome on Friday after investigators traced his travels by monitoring cell phone activity from England to France to Italy.

But Khalid Shaikh Mohammed did not heed these warnings. He regularly used cell phones and email, and this apparently led to his capture.

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.

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.

This is just plain wrong. Astronauts aren't really much more than passengers in the same way you and I are when we ride a 747. The initial designs for the shuttle didn't even have windows - the windows were added later because they didn't want the public to realize the astronauts aren't "flying" it. The computers fly the shuttle. They need to have people on board to land it, but that's because it was deliberately designed that way. Once on a landing they allowed the pilot to take control to see if he could do it if a computer failed, and computer control was immediately reestablished when it was clear he couldn't.

The reason NASA can afford to be so picky is a simple manifestation of supply and demand - lots of people want to be astronauts and there aren't many positions, so NASA can require perfect health and multiple doctoral degrees. But those "extreme environments" are pretty much immediately deadly if something goes wrong - look at both shuttle disasters (where they didn't have time to do anything), and consider there has never been a life-threatening shuttle problem the crew could deal with. The reality is they could get by with a couple of reasonably competant blue-collar types, but NASA doesn't have to. The funny thing is everything an astronaut does in space is preplanned, pre-rehearsed, and tripple-checked with ground controllers, so it's not like he's gonna get to use his brain much anyway.

As far as physical conditioning goes, remember these guys (they are mostly men) are in their mid-to-late middle ages, so while they aren't fat or anything they wouldn't be able to keep up with with a squad of marines. The reason US spacesuits are so unreliable is they use a high O2-low pressure mix which allows our older astronauts to accomplish about as much work as the younger Russians working with stiffer 1 atmosphere suits.

So now we arrive at the real reason NASA went crazy when the Russians took money to shuttle up a geriatric rich guy so he could play astronaut. They were afraid the public would realize you don't have to be Buck Rogers to go into space. NASA's funding is dependent on the voter's romantic idea of manned space flight, and anything that lets air out of that balloon might affect next years budget.

Look, those guys don't have much to do up there - they aren't working toward any concrete goal or anything, and they aren't doing any research that couldn't be done far more cheaply with machines. You could argue the effects of LEO on human physiology are worth studying, but the Russians did far more in-depth research on that subject than NASA will ever do.

Do some research on today's military (this is a good place to start). These are people who have demanding jobs, both physically and mentally. They're dealing with a human adversary, which is much trickier than any natural phenomenon, and they have to balance military and political pressures in every decision they make.

You're probably right in that it's easier to become a soldier than an astronaut. But I think it's far easier to be an astronaut, and I think experienced soldiers are far harder to replace.

That said, there probably isn't a word in French that could describe the billion dollar tent that is the Millenium Dome!

OK, you're halfway there...

Forget the NSA and Pentagon in this discussion - it isn't their job to place agents in foreign organizations. The NSA does electronics, and the Pentagon's intelligence gathering is supposed to be related to the conduct of military operations. This is entirely in the CIA's purview.

The question you have to ask is "why doesn't the CIA have any usefull covert capabilities anymore?" The best article I've ever seen on the subject is here. In a nutshell, it's not a money problem. It's a political problem and an organizational problem that's been steadily getting worse for 30 years.

reviews say "yes"

In the southern city of Basra, police said Thursday they had arrested five Arab foreign fighters who escaped from Fallujah with plans to attack coalition troops and Iraqi police in the south.

The five - two Saudis, two Tunisians and a Libyan, were arrested Wednesday night at a checkpoint north of Basra, police said.

Here's the real thing.

It's worse. The de Gaul isn't even a supercarrier. It's a standard carrier, about 3/4 the length of a US supercarrier, and half the displacement. Even worse, she's usually laid up in dock because SOMETHING is broken.

The ship does utilize nuclear power (a plus), but that doesn't help if she can't endure more than a few days out at sea.

The French one may be smaller, but it's common knowledge that they can keep it up longer. [ducks!]

If you mean "keep it laid up for repairs", you're absolutely right. The French may have built the Queen Elizabeth II, but they've been giving leasons to the world on how NOT to build an aircraft carrier. Just to rub a little salt in, they're now considering purchasing a British designed carrier! (Oh, the irony!) ;-)

Not because the technology isn't there (remember, we DID go to the moon 35 years ago), but because there might be a .001% chance of something going wrong, and we just can't have that!!

Actually, the shuttle has a roughly %2 failure rate. By comparison, SARS killed about %4 of the people it infected. And the shuttle is about as stable and mature a space launcher as you will find. So in other words, the technology is still gambling with the lives of astronauts, though it is more vegas roulette than russian roulette.

As for being terribly expensive and taking lots of time... You're building a space ship. A space ship. How long would it take you to build a plane from scratch? How long would it take you to build a plane from scratch that people could live in? How long would it take you to build a plane from scratch that can work without oxygen, fly above our atmosphere, and let passengers out in the middle of a vaccuum? Did I mention protect the occupants from solar radiation, withstand several thousand degrees of heat, and recycle all body excretia into drinkable water?

The space plane program is taking forever because the technology isn't there. The kinds of weight-to-thrust ratio to take off without boosters isn't possible without a lot more development of our engine technologies. Remember, our trip to the moon DID cost roughly 200 billion dollars, or 5% of the GDP for several years.

It's probably just as well the French Navy would be operating close to home - does the Charles de Gaulle actually get to leave port these days?!

Guess again. And remember that very few troops are driving around in M1s. Most are in Humvee death traps.

The US soldiers have the best protection, the best fire power, the best communications, recon etc... Yet they are slowly losing control of the situation.

You are right about that. Some problems simply cannot be solved with more and better weapons.

Those futuristic weapons are designed to fight 20th century's wars, not today's or tomorrow's wars. What's the use of a gun that fires a million rounds per minute when you're trying to control a riot? How can space darts help you identify the terrorist hiding in the crowd?

I believe the US military (the military industrial complex) is still fighting (and losing) the Cold War. For all the talk of "transformation" and this "different kind of war" the paradigm remains the same: spend more money on high tech toys. Spend into bankruptcy just like the Soviet Union. The US did not win the Cold War, the Soviet Union just ran out of money first. So why keep spending on these ridiculous systems when more basic training and better armour protection for troops is what is really needed today?

These are not my ideas (I'm not that smart). I probably read them first on G2mil. Check it out, it has lots more interesting and insightful articles.

Remember, all the technology in the world cannot help you conquer a guy who is willing to die for a cause. The best you can do is try to minimize the damage he inflicts.

It's just a prototype. An out of date one at that. The whole plan for the OICW has been changed.

The two main components have been split off. The rifle part became the XM-8 and might come into use soon. The smart-grenade launcer part is now the XM-25. With a 25mm shell instead of the 20mm of the old design.

In any case, the problem with aluminium is that it is softer and melts more easily, which is also part of what happened to Columbia. There's more on aluminium in ships here.

If you have powdered alumimium (or indeed most metals, including iron) and preferably a strong oxidiser mixed with it, then you can get aluminium to burn. In a thermite reaction, powdered aluminium reacts directly with powdered iron oxide in an extremely exothermic reaction which is self-sustaining. But these aren't the conditions you'd get on a ship under attack.

Realistically, the missile and or explosion would just rip more easily through the softer metal, and any resulting fire would weaken the structure. In a vessel of that size and with the thinner dual hulls, that would be fatal enough even with a steel hull. A ship like this really has to rely on stealth or countermeasures to survive.

Ugh. It is well known that Israel is often ahead of the U.S. in developing new military technology. I think you should be asking whether the planes you saw employed by the U.S. army were bought from Israel. Although the U.S. was the first to experiment with drones during Vietnam, it is Israel that created the first incredibly succesfull drones which inspired the united states UAV program. At the time it was embarassing to the DOD that Israel's tiny budget could accomplish what they had spent billions on and failed. This is what is meant when people say that the money pumped into Israel more than pays for itself with the intelligence and technology they provide.

I'm sorry, but I'm really getting tired of the whole "[the US] really did give him all that stuff he gassed the kurds with..." crap. It just isn't true. here is a good starting point for a little more realistic idea of where and how Saddam was armed. Most of our support was in terms of intelligence and training, not weapons and money, dating back to before the Iraq-Iran war. If you have any actual information to the contrary I'd like to hear it.

Actually the US does have a large number of troups 'on the ground'. According to this link, the US has a total of 1.4 million "total uniformed, paid manpower organized into combat and support units". This makes it second only to China and India, both of who obviously have huge populations to draw from.

More info about the new and controversial infantry vehicle Stryker is available here and here. Here are two nice videos of the Stryker in action.

Senator Chuck Schumer blasted the Bush administration for not taking the steps to equip passenger planes with weapons deterrent systems. Money to equip planes with devices that could stop someone from using a missile against it, nah let's play with robots. This being said just when the FBI busts a European businessman for trying to purchase a SAM (surface to air missile) that he allegedly was going to resell to terrorists.

According to Schumer "The threat facing commercial airliners from shoulder-fired missiles here in the United States is no longer theoretical"

from http://www.strategypage.com/dls/articles/20030813a .asp

Terrorist Missiles Versus Airliners
by James Dunnigan
August 13, 2003

An Indian arms dealer was caught trying to illegally import a Russian SA-18 Igla shoulder fired anti-aircraft missile to an FBI agent posing as an Islamic terrorist. Terrorists trying to take down airliners with portable missiles has been a threat for a long time. Actually, over the last thirty years, it's been a reality. Some 29 commercial aircraft have been shot down by such missiles. However, the downed aircraft have been small, and most of these tragedies have taken place in Africa. The wars in Africa are the worst on the planet, so violent that most journalists avoid them. For three decades, this has kept the use of portable missiles against civilian aircraft off the front page.

Larger airliners, like the Airbus's, and 757s, 767s and 747s, have not been brought down because these missiles were not designed to take on aircraft with such large and powerful engines. While these missiles were originally intended for use against jet fighters operating over the battlefield, the reality turned out to be different. The most likely targets encountered were helicopters, or propeller driven transports. These aircraft proved to be just the sort of thing twenty pound missiles with 2-3 pound warheads could destroy. Against jet fighters with powerful engines, the missiles caused some damage to the tailpipe, but usually failed to bring down the jet. This was first noted during the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, where the Egyptians fired hundreds of SA-7s at Israeli A-4 light bombers. Most of the A-4s, with their 11,187 pounds of thrust engines, survived the encounter. Larger jets, like the F-4 and it's 17,000 pound thrust engines, were even more difficult to bring down. Smaller commercial jets, like the 737 or DC-9 (each using two 14,000 pounds of thrust engines) have proved vulnerable. But a 757 has much larger engines with 43,000 pounds of thrust, and the 747 is 63,000. Moreover, the rear end of jet engines are built to take a lot of punishment from all that hot exhaust spewing out. Put a bird into the front of the engine and you can do some real damage. But these missiles home in on heat, and all of that is at the rear end of the engine.

If terrorists target helicopters and smaller turboprop commuter airliners, or business jets, they are likely to take down aircraft better than half the time a missile is used. This takes into account poorly trained missile operators and defective missiles. And a lot of the missile operators will be poorly trained, and, like November, 2002 incident in Mombassa, using missiles built over two decades ago. They won't be using any of the Stingers the U.S. gave out in Afghanistan during the 1980s. The custom battery packs in those missiles gave out in the 1990s. It's a lot easier to get Russian missiles, and fresh batteries for them.

Another option for terrorists is to use anti-tank guided missiles (ATGM) against larger airliners. An ATGM is more accurate and hitting a 747, taking off, in an engine or the main fuel tank between the wings, there is a

But don't go thinking that France (or the EU, or for that matter the UN) is representative of the voice of the world, either.

France doesn't, but the UN clearly should

Should it? Have a careful look at the people who founded the UN, and their views (here's an interesting perspective on an odd piece of NU and US combined subversion), and you might form a different opinion. Likewise the EU; many of the movers and shakers are committed to rebuilding Charlemagne's empire, quite a different picture from the one held by the rest of the world and a good chunk of the EU's own constituents besides. Some are "more equal than others."

Nevertheless, the UN, regardless of its roots and covert original aim, should be representative of the world's people. It's a pity that they represent nothing like it, if any such single view actually exists.

[quoting Patrick Henry] For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth

Well, it's not by browsing CNN we are going to get that.

Oh, no. What a shocking surprise.
My faith in the impartiality of the world's media is irretrievably shaken. </sarcasm weight=leaden>

I'll have to agree. I need some boots because it is getting deep in here. Check out this little tidbit.

• Jim Dunnigan's Strategy Page News clippings, military, high reliability.
• InfoWar's Cloak and Dagger Archives Good Early Warning but lesser reliability