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Sixty Years On, B-52s Are Still Going Strong
Hugh Pickens writes "Those who grew up in the 1960s and 1970s knew the B-52 Stratofortress as a central figure in the anxiety that flowed from the protracted staring match between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Now CNET reports that it was 60 years ago, on April 15, 1952, that a B-52 prototype built by Boeing took off on its maiden flight and although the 1950s-vintage B-52s are no longer in the US Air Force inventory, the 90 or so H models delivered between May 1961 and October 1962 still remain on active duty. 'The B-52 has been a wonderful flying box,' says retired Brig. Gen. Peyton Cole. 'It's persevered all these years because it's been able to adapt and still continues to fly. It started out as a high-level flying platform during the Cold War. Then as air defenses got better it became a low-level penetrator, and more than that was the first aircraft to fly low-level at night through FLIR (forward looking infrared) and night-vision TV.' The B-52's feat of longevity reflects both regular maintenance and timely upgrades — in the late 1980s, for instance, GPS capabilities were incorporated into the navigation system but it also speaks to the astronomical costs of the next-generation bombers that have followed the B-52 into service (a total of 744 were built, counting all models) with the Air Force. B-52s cost about $70 million apiece (in today's dollars), while the later, stealth-shaped B-2 Spirit bombers carried an 'eye-watering $3-billion-a-pop unit price.' The Air Force's 30-year forecast, published in March, envisions an enduring role for the B-52 and engineering studies, the Air Force says, suggest that the life span of the B-52 could extend beyond the year 2040. 'At that point, why not aim for the centennial mark?'"
Wikipedia quotes the unit cost at under $750m introductory in 1997, and with current inflation just over $1b. Where did the $3b number come from?
In other news, the B-52's from 'Love Shack' fame, are still going strong after 36 years..
I guess the USAF expects to have the better fighter jets in the decades to come, so they will maintain air superiority - and then, it doesn't matter that your bombers are 80 year old tech. They probably consider this a more viable option than counting on the expensive B-2 being purchased in large numbers.
Disclaimer: I am not an aviation or army expert. This is just something I was thinking about and you are welcome to extend or correct my thoughts.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
The B-52 may have the same airframe as those of the 1960's, but the aircraft is continuously retrofitted with the latest fly-by-wire and navigation/communication technology, and is capable of accepting newer and more efficient engines. For the role they play as a heavy bomber/delivery system (and in situations that do not warrant usage of expensive stealth technology or have additional fighter support), they are still quite effective in that role today.
But it wasn't a rock.
It was a rock lobster!
Let this be a warning to us all.
When your enemies live in caves and fire small arms it actually pays to fill their sky with the contrails of your bomber for hours on end. The Taliban can't shoot back at a B-52 so there is no need to hide.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Yeah, I thought the article was about the rock group. I suddenly felt old, very, very old. Fortunately, it's not that bad. I'm just old.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
How about 60 years of western freedom, which was guaranteed by things like this?
In the September 1965 National Geographic feature article on the USAF, they write about the B-52's capabilities, but give a warning, saying (quoting as best I can): "Weapon systems have a useful service life of about a decade, and the B-52 is almost that old now. How long will it be until we need to replacement for it?"
Mind you, in 1965 that outlook did make more sense than it does in hindsight. The USAF/USAAF's primary long-range bomber had gone from the B-29 to the B-36 to the B-47 to the B-52 within the the space of twenty years, and the B-70 hadn't been cancelled yet. The same thing applies to fighters, going from one new deployed design per year on average, then, down to one every 10-12 years now. I presume part of that is due to increased computing capability allowing more tinkering and experimentation without having to actually build something, but that can't be all of it. Anyone care to speculate?
"The Greens lynched a hacker in Chicago. Last month, but I think the body's still hanging from the old Water Tower."
No doubt some World War I planes are still airworthy, but to extend the lifespan of B-52s beyond 2040 and still expect it to be used for military bombing raid --- this is lunacy to the max !!
Just to save a penny or two they are going to put the lives of the boys and girls flying those planes
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
How about reality, which is somewhere in the middle of the extremes you guys are throwing around?
Western freedom:
Decades of defense by B-52's
Murdered one day by a quartet of 757/767's
The b-52 hasnt needed a major upgrade since we figured out, we don't need a more efficient bomber (other than one that has stealth capabilities) as when the enemy overtakes us on air superiority once these fail, and subsequently, if the b2 fails, and as do our guided missiles, drones, etc. We have ICBMs capable of glassing our enemy.
We figured out after various political treaties and the fact that no side can win in a nuclear war, no country wants to get glassed, and we have proven twice already that we are not afraid of using our nuclear arsenal when things only begin to get bad. Thus, any country capable of sparking a war that involves aircraft, and the means to take out high altitude bombers, is likely to not attack. (ironically leaving countries with inferior technology the capability to attack us, and subsequently drain us better than any large military could)
in short, the b-52 doesn't need an improvement, maybe retrofitting, but it does what it needs, as we have plenty of supplementary technologies that negate the need to do so.
Comparing the cost of B-52's and B-2's isn't really fair, they were built with very different political requirements.
The B-52's were made with WW3 in mind, and the basic MAD mission would have been to send hundreds of bombers across the USSR in the hope that most of them would reach their target. During all-out nuclear war it wouldn't matter too much politically if 20-30% of the bombers didn't make it back home, as long as the others scored a hit.
The B-2, however, is designed with the assumption of a much higher survival rate, and no politically embarrassing lost/captured crews. This basically requires that you have a few very expensive aircraft, as opposed to lots of cheap ones.
In other words, the B-2 is much more expensive because it puts a much higher value on the lives of the crews.
A good solution: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbITzCI2AU0
Today's B-52 only vaguely resembles the original version of itself. The original B-52 flew on hydraulic systems controlled by mechanical computers, on inputs from pilots reading analog gauges.
Today's B-52 has been retrofitted with the most advanced fly-by-wire control systems, avionics, engines, radars, communications, and ordnance delivery systems money can buy - all of which can be obtained from multiple sources, which is why it can still be built for $70M, as opposed to the no-bid, single source, $3B B-2.
About the only thing it has in common with its ancestors is that it's still a tin can with 8 scrolls that can rain fire and death from 40,000 feet.
If there ever was a war with China, it would probably be lost by the US's unwillingness to create mass casualties. We'd have to kill hundreds of millions, and the only way that would be acceptable was if it was an all-out invasion-and-enslave type of war.
Putting aside your politics for the moment -- let's just say that I disagree with you -- this is about a well-designed and enduring piece of technology. I can admire the technical excellence of a something without liking what it was used for, or who used it. I can, for example, still appreciate the robustness and shallow learning curve of the AK-47 without being a Marxist -- and by the way, that weapon has almost certainly killed more people over those 60 years than the B-52 has. The ideal nerd should be able to look at a high-tech device and have some part of his mind thinking "whoa, that's freakin' cool!" right up to the moment that it kills him.
"The Greens lynched a hacker in Chicago. Last month, but I think the body's still hanging from the old Water Tower."
The lowly B-1-B is now the weapon of choice for Afghanistan because its higher speed allows a single plane to be used to cover the country end to end.
For reliability if someone's trying to jam you and minimum latency, you'd want to have the pilot in a simulator in the back of an AWACS nearby. Put the thing in a computer-controlled autopilot to where it needs to be, then wake the pilot and get him in the simulator to take over and complete the mission.
The real problem is the cost of everything. It costs too much to kill an enemy. Sure, a million dollar bomb delivered by a billion dollar aircraft is safer than getting close enough for a one dollar bullet, but there's the cost, is it really worth it?
Learn to love Alaska
B-52s, A-10s, F15, F16s all saw heavy use and cost a tenth or less than the modern high tech planes. Now look at the track record for next generation aircraft. B-1 never saw a day of service, after years of testing the B-2 finally saw light use in the first gulf war and more in the latest, F-22 not a day of service. These aircraft cost 400 million to 3 billion. The military keeps insisting they need the latest and best but once they get them they rarely use them. Another plane that cost a fortune and took forever to see service was the Osprey. They finally saw service in the latest wars but development started before a lot of people on this site were born. Better to focus effort and limited funds on aircraft that actually get used. Most of these next generation aircraft were pork barrel projects. That's why they were never able to kill the Osprey. The Senator whose home state had the contract fought every attempt to shut down the program so billions were wasted.
More like a decade at best. ICBMs became the main method of getting nuclear weapons to their targets. Bombers rapidly became unusable due to advances in air defence. Instead they were relegated to taking part in various conventional wars against inferior enemies, none of which were necessary to guarantee western freedom.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
It's worth it in a democracy. The US public has substantially larger patience with a war costing a gazillion dollars than they do, over time, with coffins arriving in a steady stream.
Killing american soldiers who walk around on the ground is a lot easier to do than killing those that are in planes many kilometres up, or that control drones from dozens of miles away.
The only way to beat the US military at the moment is to take away their support at home in the USA. Make Americans demand that they come home. Beating them on the field of battle is not currently reasonably possible for any nation. This ain't surprising given that the expenditures are larger than for the next 3 runners-up combined.
And lets not forget that the B52 was designed by engineers using slide rules -- and not finite element analysis shaving things to their theoretical minimum. They designed something big and stout out of stuff they knew a lot about... (I think that was the right phrase). Wan't that long after the Comet disasters showed the impact of metal fatigue on airframe integrity, after all. These things have almost the same kind of design elegance as a Kalashnikov -- and the multiple refits show that the design has really held together. I am happy for all the modern designs that are polished as computer models before being instantiated into material -- but the durability of these old designs compared to the fragility of modern military planes is worth contemplation. Just because an approach is new does not make it automatically better.Something worth thinking about, no matter how unfashionable.
Yeah, I thought the article was about the rock group. I suddenly felt old, very, very old. Fortunately, it's not that bad. I'm just old.
Some years back here on slashdot someone was posting a flame about "being a dinosaur from the 256 color era" and I was like "uhm... I grew up with the Commodore 64 and it had 16 colors". When you're older than the dinosaurs at 24, the scale is pretty much blown. Old and getting older, lol.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I do think that we could see B-52's get additional upgrades, notably:
1. An updated version of the Pratt & Whitney PW2000 series engine, probably uprated to 42,000 lb. thrust. Four of these engines will replace the eight P&W TF33's now used on the B-52H.
2. More electronics upgrades--made easier by the fact the plane is big enough to accommodate them.
3. With more powerful engines, we could see B-52's carry heavier bomb loads and still fly longer ranges.
The 8 pack they have on their now is a tad outdated and hardly fuel efficient compared to what's now available on the Boeing 787 or C-17.
ROCK LOBSTER!
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
B-52s were the atomic bomb delivery system of choice long before either of those two. For the first couple decades, it was ALL strategic bombers. The Soviets captured and copied a few US craft just to get those capabilities themselves, back when they didn't have any.
Technology and training allows for a large disparity in kill rates. China only outnumbers the US by 4.3 to 1. Can 1 advanced fighter take out 4-5 of the Chinese's low-end junk? Most definitely. We've seen bigger disparities in previous wars.
For a quick comparison. The US has 11 active aircraft carriers. China has zero, working on one right now. That's a massive millitary advantage.
No, we're fighting for Afghani freedom. If we didn't care about them, we would have carpet-bombed the Taliban out of existence and left the wreckage for someone else to clean-up. Instead, the war has dragged on as we struggle in our attempts at nation-building.
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Despite what the author of this article might have you believe, the B-52 is not magical. "The B-52's feat of longevity reflects both regular maintenance and timely upgrades"? Bull.
The B-52's feat of longevity reflects two things: 1) the shift to ICBMs as primary mechanism to ensure mutually assured destruction in the cold war 2) the miserable failure of the USAF to solicit new bomber designs that don't cost orders of magnitude more than the B-52.
If the USAF had ever solicited designs to replace the B-52 with something *modestly* better, using cost as a priority, the B-52 would be long gone, and there would be a more capable aircraft in it's place. The fact that there's no need for such a plane does not make the B-52 magical. It's a pustule that's lanced regularly, that's all.
Exactly. The only reason the US 'lost' in Vietnam was that the length of the war, and the number of young men coming home in body bags broke the spirit of the nation, and its tolerance for more dead soldiers. To date, roughly 4400 Americans lost their lives in the Iraq War, with about 31,000 injuries. More than 58,000 Americans lost their lives in Vietnam. Big difference.
Did anyone else read this and think it meant the band, The B-52's? I mean, Fred Schneider is looking kind of old, but geeze.
They are probably running out the time to use on them. Eventually they will break/wear out. Then they will start upgrading. Remember they are already pushing 50-60 years old each for the whole plane. So they probably fly whatever it is until the rated time runs out and change it out then. And then if they can fix it they will. Much cheaper to fix a few bolts than replace a multimillion dollar engine... Notice how fuel savings does not even come into the picture there? They are not really concerned about it. When it comes time to upgrade they will. THEN fuel savings will come back to the forefront.
Colour? Ha!
Sounds like bullshit to me.
I hauled AGE (Aerospace Ground Equipment; power generators, lights, air condistioners, etc) to the BUFs in 1973-4 at Utapao AFB in Thailand. B-52s were commonly known as BUFs -- Big Ugly Fuckers. They certainly were ugly, ugly as in REALLY mean looking.
I got to Thailand 4 days before the congress' mandated end to the bombing, and one took off every thirty seconds from when I got there until the deadline. I thought they were trying to drop as many bombs as they could before the cutoff time, but I later met a man who'd been stationed there five years earlier, and one took off every thirty seconds the whole year he was there.
I was stationed at Beale in California after coming back to the states, and had the best job in the world. It was to take a pickup truck, make sure it was full of gas and everything worked, then play pool, read, play pinball, watch TV while waiting for Armageddon, when I would drive the pilot to his BUF to nuke Russia.
There were more BUFs there than I could count. Every one of them was loaded with nuclear ordinance.
I always referred to Beale as Armageddon Air Force Base.
More interesting were the SR-71s at Beale, they had nine of them. The only louder sound I ever heard was a space shuttle taking off. Watching from a mile away, the ground shook as it shot down the runway, did a wheelie, and looked like a bottlerocket taking off.
The military has some amazing tech.
Free Martian Whores!
I am not so sure of this. Into the late 70s and early 80s, B-52s were being retrofitted as cruise missile platforms (my dad worked on the guidance systems). I have no way of knowing whether this was just another boondoggle, or if this was intended to be a (second) credible deterrent to an overwhelming first strike (have B-52s with cruise missiles in the air, they survive, they launch retaliatory cruise missiles from a safe distance).
I couldn't find your source on that, but it likely means that there are hundreds of older B-52 models that have been retired, while the newest, -H models, are the only ones left in service.
Sure, it's a great plane. Yadda, yadda.
Personally, I hope that we find our way to a world of common abundance and tolerance among all societies. Then we can stop treating weapons that have the ability to wipe out mankind as like they are some kind of gee whiz project from Popular Mechanics. I'd rather we all spent our time making love and going to our kids little league baseball games.
It's pretty difficult to make a stealth platform out of something that is constantly transmitting regardless of how secure and reliable that connection is. If your solution is to make the drone-based system autonomous (no communications required), then you might as well skip the whole drone bomber platform altogether and just use ballistic missiles.
Wrong, for a couple of reasons. First off, reusable autonomous bombers would be much less expensive than missiles per ton of delivered ordinance. Second, you can communicate with autonomous aircraft without compromising their stealth. Even if they send data back, it can be quite stealthy (directional satcom), but this would likely not be needed continuously, or even often. Damage assessment could be done with video stored on the vehicle until landing, for instance.
Personally I would be cautious about allowing remote retargeting, since if your encryption scheme was compromised your own weapons could be turned against you. You could still enable a 'recall' command. If you did allow retargeting, that would seem to be the perfect spot for one time pad encryption.
The US Navy is already developing an autonomous bomber, based on the X-47 program.
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
Memories of the cold war. You kids may not remember, but for a while there we and Russia were in a Mexican-standoff where if either of us had pulled the trigger it would have been the end of all life on Earth. On the bright side though, we didn't have to worry about being selected for an anal probe when going to the airport. You know. "The Good Old Days."
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Commodore 64? 16 colours? Luxury! When I wur a lad we had ZX81s, and pixels were black & white, and we had fewer of those than the "favicons" that browsers show in the address bar for a website! ;)
I use Friend/Foe + mod-point modifiers as a karma/reputation system.
When I read the headline I thought, "No way the B-52s have been around for 60 years! No way the music group that gave us Rock Lobster and Love Shack are *that* much older than me"
I did. And I was like "wait, I thought they just celebrated their 30th anniversary, not 60th."
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
Well, amen to that. But at the same time, the government could ALWAYS murder or put anyone in prison without probable cause, the only difference is that now they can do it legally. This is what the libertarians have always been banging on about. The government that can serve all your needs can serve you for dinner.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
both wars were pointless responses to sound bites. the "taliban" we're fighting now isn't the taliban who hosted bin laden, they're long gone out of afghanistan. in fact, right now we're negotiating with the "taliban" that is there now, because we won't "win" over them. we're lining defense contractor pockets, we're giving power to some who crave it......but there is no just purpose
One of my college buddies flew in B-52s back in the '80s and '90s. He said that more than once they landed with pieces missing from the plane. The B-52 may be an excellent, timeless design, but they need to make some new ones and scrap the old ones.
"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." -- George Orwell
Black AND white? We only had black! Those were dark days, I tell ya.
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In other words, their attitude should be something like this?
If the pilot's good, see. I mean, if he's really... sharp, he can barrel that baby in so low, you oughtta see it sometime, it's a sight. A big plane, like a '52, vroom! There's jet exhaust, flyin' chickens in the barnyard!
(reference)
I am officially gone from
I'm celebrating being the rainer, rather than the rainee.
Vietnam Veteran / Former Postal Worker -- Use Caution When Taunting!
A military pilot called for a priority landing because his single-engine jet fighter was running "a bit peaked".
Air traffic control told the fighter jock that he was number two behind a B-52 that had one engine shut down.
"Ah", the pilot remarked, " the dreaded seven-engine approach".
Candygram for Mongo!
Had me going a second...I thought it was the ghost of Major Kong posting about that ride from a B-52.
The 8 pack they have on their now is a tad outdated and hardly fuel efficient compared to what's now available on the Boeing 787 or C-17.
I would have to guess that re-certification of an airframe with new engines must be hideously expensive because you almost never see them do it. Maybe the military can get around FAA certification in some cases, but in most they tend to agree to fall under the jurisdiction of the FAA. Certainly civilian aircraft tend to be designed from the ground up with a few variants of engine available. Smaller planes will sometimes come out with new engine options. But larger transport seem to stick with what they have when they were designed, even if the engine wears out. You can still to this day see 737s with the old cigar tube style engines. I would bet they aren't originals, but when it came time to replace the engines, the older 737 models were certified with that engine, and that is the one they went with. Modern 737-800 and -900s have monster engines on them compared to the older models, but you can't just tack a new engine on.
All that being said, it would be awesome to get some more modern engines on the B-52, if only to save our hearing, and some oil. But when you go from 8 60's era engines to 4 modern ones, it's clearly not just the engines that are changing. The whole control system will have to change, the engine monitoring, the linkage, fuel delivery systems, cowlings, plumbing and a plethora of other components.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
In both Battlestar Galactica series, both fictional ships were very very old. This sort of reminds me about that.
Reading the prices in the original post triggered Bill Maher's rant in my head over and over again how the U.S. spends more on "defense" than the rest of the world combined. Ugh, at the same time he has guests on his show like Regan's David Stockman who thinks the entire U.S. economy could collapse like Greece within a year.
Do we really need to be spending 70 million to 3 billion dollars for bombers?
The journalist Fareed Zakaria believes that lack of spending on education, lack of spending on infrastructure and a loss of the saving ethic are the real reasons the U.S. economy has declined over the past few decades.
Maybe it is time to use some of the military budget to pay for things that make money.
So the fail is in using innocents to protect oneself, and perhaps also in the decision to bomb
This is why you're NOT supposed to use 'innocents' to shield military targets; per the geneva conventions and law of war, as long as the attacking military is targeting a valid military target, any damage to non-valid targets such as non-combatants and other protected targets like schools, hospitals, and churches is simply 'collateral'. Even if the munition misses.
The USA does go 'above and beyond' and introduces the concept of proportionality. We're not going to hit an Infantry Fighting Vehicle(IFV) parked next to a schook with a 2k pound bomb. The famous story is that when Saddam parked some tanks next to a school, we pulled up some training bombs, basically the same steel shell but filled with concrete rather than explosives, stuck the fancy guidance package on them, and dropped those on the tanks. A live 2k bomb would have been cheaper and surer, but would have also taken out the school, which was deemed disproportionate.
I don't read AC A human right
What makes you think the Chinese want to create mass casualties on their end?
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Because you are living Free in a western country you should be happy we had those weapons of Mass destruction. Or chances are that you would have be under communist rule.
The Cold War, made sure that both sides were too afraid to go after each other. Yes the Cold War created some problems, however for the most part they were the lesser of two evils.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
No. or maybe yes. It is, however, the CORRECT spelling of colour.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
If the pilot's good, see. I mean, if he's really... sharp, he can barrel that baby in so low, you oughtta see it sometime, it's a sight. A big plane, like a '52, vroom! There's jet exhaust, flyin' chickens in the barnyard!
Wow. I watched "Strangelove" for the umpteenth time a couple of weeks ago. When George C. Scott delivers that line, I'm transported back to the early '60s, when a BUFF flew low over my yard north of Amarillo. It was magnificent and terrifying (not to mention LOUD).
It's not just B-52. There are a lot of military "platform" planes that are quite aged but very functional used for a lot of various tasks.
Notably it's the same across the globe. UK still uses older frames for much of it's air force, russians still use their TU-95s extensively and so on. The planes of that period just seem really robust and functional, even by modern standards.
B-52s were the atomic bomb delivery system of choice long before either of those two.
Wikipedia disagrees with you, and so does my memory of events (I was born in 1952) unless you count six years later as being "long after." I suppose when you're 20, six years is a pretty long time. The B52 and the nuclear sub were operational in 1954, the ICBM in 1960. I visited an ICBM facility when I was in the cub scouts.
Free Martian Whores!
Unless you mean the Allies combined forces, I am not sure what you mean by "our army" - quite a few different nations fighting there in France and Germany. I'm guessing you mean the US? one of several nations' armies fighting to liberate France in 44 and 45. None of them did it on their own.
Neither extreme is particularly useful. The function of a technological tool doesn't discount the "coolness" of its longevity, at least for an audience of a site that promises "news for nerds."
On the other hand, perpetuating the myth that the actions of the American military have always been conducted to ensure Western freedom insinuates that, if it were not for the B-52s dumping more bombs on Asia during one Cold War operation than were dropped in all of WWII, then Americans would now be speaking Vietnamese.
"Recall"
See FailSafe.
And of course, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (aka Dr. Strangelove).
The only hot war we'd have with China anytime soon is a nuclear war, and hundreds of millions on both sides would be dead long before any of the types that really cringe at mass casualties could object... if any of them were left at all.
I don't reply to ACs
most of our bombing will be vai drones to take out other drones. It will be a Drone War.
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
Your memory? From when you were 2 years old?
The introduction of the first few nuclear subs and ICBMs didn't eliminate the need for (or use of) B-52s. The Strategic Air Command continued to keep nuclear-armed B-52s in the air around-the-clock, despite the tremendous expense. There was resistance using B-52s in the Vietnam war, because it pulled them off their primary mission of nuclear deterrence.
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Their primary mission wasn't canceled until 1991. Most were destroyed as one of the terms of the arms reduction treaties.
Cite: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0910/42732.html
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
On reflection this was a bit too far to be funny. I apologise
It always amuses me when (U.S.) Americans are completely ignorant of British (and Canadian) spelling of words.
I once worked in a team of 4 developers and one day one of them was reading an article and commented "Hey, they spelled "organization" wrong. They used an 's'." I replied, "No, that just the British spelling." All three of my teammates were utterly amazed that I could know something like that, which itself was even more amazing to me.
I would comment that people should try reading books, but in fact, it occurs to me now that I probably read more non-American English on the web simply because it's so easy to access international content. e.g., A friend of mine here in Virginia blogs about U.S. politics for the Daily Mail.
Anyhow, it just amazes me that these kinds of things get complained about.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
I never used the mythical Zed-X. Are you telling me it had less than 16x16 resolution? That doesn't seem right.
The TRS-80 could do 128x48.
I first used Apple ][s and wrote a simple game... I think I have the source code printed out somewhere. Later at Virginia Tech in the fall of 1982, I discovered the computer lab in the library that had IBM PCs that only had monochrome cards and for a short while were still running DOS 1. A couple years later the PCs in the labs all had CGA capabilities. At the time I wrote a graphics editor using a hacked text mode with the block characters in the >128 range that you could use to draw in 16 colors (woo!) with a resolution of 160x100. Fun times.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
It was so cool when the original artists performed the parody.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
I thought current conventional wisdom was that the Chinese have some kind of hypersonic mortar that can one-shot US carriers within a practical striking distance of their coastline, and that the days of big carriers as the way to project force against industrialized nations are seriously numbered.
"'At that point, why not aim for the centennial mark?'""
arbitrary dates are a horrible way to do engineering.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
My memory of vising an ICBM in the Cub Scouts.
The introduction of the first few nuclear subs and ICBMs didn't eliminate the need for (or use of) B-52s. The Strategic Air Command continued to keep nuclear-armed B-52s in the air around-the-clock, despite the tremendous expense.
Exactly.
Free Martian Whores!
It could display 24x32 graphics characters, where each graphics character was 2x2, so 64x48 effectively. It's not at all unusual for favicons to be 64x64, so yes - less resolution than a favicon. ;)
I use Friend/Foe + mod-point modifiers as a karma/reputation system.
Agreed. And that's actually a problem. In effect, Americas enemies have learned that the best way of getting unwanted American troops out of the countriy, is to see too it that a steady stream of them go home in body-bags. Not by meeting them in open combat, but by using IEDs and similar tactics to harass and kill one or a few at a time.
It's not possible to "police" a country on the ground, without exposing yourself sufficiently that a determined attacker *will* succeed in killing many. Sending more soldiers doesn't help. Even if security goes up a bit as a result such that a smaller *fraction* of them get killed, it's still likely to result in a higher number of killed soldiers.