Slashdot Mirror
GPS vs. Galileo; Where Are They Headed?
ben_ writes "This keynote speech from the recent European Navigation Conference talks about the history between the US military's GPS and the proposed EU Galileo system, as well as where they're both going. Interested in how you know where you are and what's going to happen to those satellites?"
It's just this fucking arrogance that makes the US the most hated country of all.
Many may think that Americans are arrogant, but when it comes to the military situation, it's hard to disagree with over a dozen aircraft carriers (most nuclear), a few dozen subs, some of the best equipped ground troops in the world, a massive arsenal of Hydrogen Bombs and Neutron Bombs, hundreds of support and supply vessels, hundreds of tanks that can outrun, outgun, and outlast anything else on the ground, air support that can fire DU rounds that can blow up even the most hardened installation, a mothballed but ready fleet of battleships, propositioned weapons around the world, heavy lifting planes and boats to move weapons anywhere in the world, etc., etc., etc.
The US is NOT the country you want to mess with. And thankfully the US is usually not the country that wants to mess with anyone else. Even though the conditions are somewhat different from WWI & WWII, you can be sure that the US would be the one who would grudgingly clean up other people's military mess.
Keep in mind that WWI was over within a year of the US's entry to the war. And that was prior to our buildup of powerful sea, air, and land weapons.
WWII might have gone very different for Europe had the Japanese not sparked the public into action. Yamamoto knew damn well that American ingenuity would eventually overcome the rigid social structure of the Japanese. He gave Japan about 6 months before the US war machine would become unstoppable. He was right. The US lost battle after battle for about 6 months, where after things started going very badly for Japan.
On the European front, the US poured massive brainpower and engineering into development of RADAR and air superiority. The Brits invented the RADAR, and had excellent fighter planes. But they took RADAR to the US to make it a viable war weapon, and the US was able to add heavy bombers, and highly survivable fighter planes (Thunderbolt anyone?).
The Germans had the technological advantage, but their technology lacked practicality. Jet fighters, Rocket planes, V-1 and V-2 flying bombs, etc. all found that their technological advantage was also their weakness. For example, the fighter pilots called the rocket planes "Blow Jobs" because they'd go by so fast that they really had no time to make much of an attack run. The fighters and bombers would stay out of their way until they ran out of fuel, and then they would destroy them.
Hate the US all you want. But unless the EU gets in gear and starts building up a REAL military, it will be the US who saves your ass.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade