I DON'T SUPPORT MY TAXES. Somebody with a GUN comes to my HOUSE if I don't pay them.
As for sweatshop labor, I'd love for you to provide me with alternatives. I actually paid attention to who made my shoes, and I selected for ones that were made in America. And paid the premium. As for the rest of my clothing? Sorry, I'm a college student. I have to pick my battles. Someday I'll replace my wardrobe with one I weave myself from fucking home-grown hemp or something. How is this germane to the matter at hand? You think these people in the sweatshops would be better off if the sweatshop wasn't there?
I defy you to illustrate my "ignorance of the ways of the world", you puerile little hate-monger.
If your child doesn't understand the difference between shooting people and playing a video game, one more round of GTA3 isn't going to measurably impact their already destroyed psyche.
If I was a parent, and I saw my kid playing a game I didn't approve of, I'd take it away from them. Why is this complicated?
I haven't dropped anything on anybody. I also haven't supported Israel, or stationed troops in Saudi Arabia, or invaded Afghanistan. You know what? I bet I could find two or three other Americans who also haven't done these things.
What responsibility do I bear for the actions of others? None.
By the same token, any Palestinian who is not a suicide bomber is to be presumed innocent of any wrongdoing, and the Israelis should leave them the hell alone.
By yet the same token, any Israeli not in the uniformed military service must be presumed innocent of all oppression, and the suicide bombers should leave them the hell alone.
You're on the right track. My contention is that there's a process to be followed here. If it were to come to pass that Vivendi made what BnetD is doing illegal (gosh, now there's a sentence structure for you) then yes, they should be penalized for doing that. Much the same way that since Microsoft has been found to be doing stuff that's illegal, they should be penalized.
However, since it's NOT illegal to reverse engineer stuff, regardless as to whether it's used for profit or not, then Vivendi has no call to want BnetD taken out.
I believe that law making and law enforcement should be as disconnected from one another as possible. I also believe that We The People are entitled to representation by our legislators, which makes me either a) idealistic or b) deluded or c) both.
It's only sold as a scientific FACT by people who don't understand what a scientific THEORY is. In other words, ignorant people.
I'm an engineer, and I don't know very many scientific FACTs. The closest ones I can think of off the top of my head are the laws of thermodynamics. Everything in science is subject to being disproved. All good scientists, by definition, understand and accept this basic Truth.
I knew the Backfire had a cannon back there, but I seem to remember a big deal being made of rearward-firing missiles, both AAMs and cruise missiles. But I've been wrong before.
I agree with you in principle that new tactics and techniques must be evaluated on their own merits, but I think history demonstrates that these changes are marked by catastrophic change, rather than evolution. I cite several examples:
0. Merrimack vs. Monitor. At that point, the Naval Civil War became not a matter of delivering troops and defending lines of supply, but of avoiding the enemy's ironclads.
1. The use of carriers at Pearl Harbor, rendering battleships to the role of support vessels,
2. The charge of the Polish cavalry against the German tank forces in 1939, along with the Blitzkrieg concept as a whole.
3. To a lesser degree, I'd suggest that the MiG battles over Vietnam put to rest the idea that an air-superiority fighter (at that time) couldn't be just a stand-off missile boat, but needed to be able to defend itself at close range.
Now that last one gets complicated, because it could be argued that modern airborne radar makes a well-prepared air force pretty hard to sneak up on, but I argue that with smaller RCS aircraft, that ability to see everything is not going to be a fait accompli for much longer.
So, I agree with you in principle: More options and more capabilities for short-range AAMs is a Good Idea. However, I don't know if I agree with you that rearward-firing or sideways-firing missiles is the optimum way to get there. I'd be particularly interested in looking at short-range dazzling lasers. I think those could be way more effective (and technologically feasible) than waving your missiles around.
I, too, am always pleased to find reasoned argument around here. Happens to me about twice a year. If you wish, I'd welcome more correspondence on this...particularly if you want to tell me more about that secret stuff. Or offer me a job. : )
Look, firing at a high angle of attack is way sub-optimal. Even if you CAN do it, the missile is still going to take a serious amount of time to stabilize itself into controllable flight after it leaves the aircraft. Since we're talking about a close-range knife fight, that time is going to be employed by your target to kill you.
The rearward firing missiles never made any sense to me. The only time they'd be useful is if an adversary snuck up from behind and beneath you, in which case you're already dead. In a turning fight, the missiles mounted below the wing and fuselage will be masked from your target by your airplane once you turn them around backwards. If you want to swivel your wingtip pylons, you have an even bigger problem. The wingtip pylons on several aircraft designs (specifically, I'm certain about the various Flanker variants and the F-16) use the tip pylons as anti-flutter counterweights. Moving those, in combat, while the wing is undergoing the maximum aerodynamic loads, is a seriously bad idea.
Side note: The Backfire bomber is so named because it could mount rearward-firing air to air missiles, since it doesn't have a prayer of being able to out-turn a fighter. This system might make something like sense. But in a fighter? Not workable.
Now, if you can show me flight sim data where appropriately trained pilots get dramatically better results by using your gee-whiz backwards firing missiles, you might be able to convince people that the idea might be worth developing. Even if it were, you'd have MASSIVE practical hurdles, not the least of which being that JSF and F-22 missiles are carried internally. Swiveling THAT pylon is going to be serious trouble.
Re: unmanned combat aerial vehicles. Yes, UCAVs will someday own the air. But, unless and until they are combat proven, nobody will take them seriously. Will it happen? Yes. Will it happen to any significant degree in the next 20 years? I'm betting not.
Just as a note, UCAVs are one of my likely career paths when I graduate next Spring, so I've done a non-trivial amount of thinking and reading about the concept.
OK, I used "direction it is going to fly" as a shorthand for "angle of attack relative to the free-stream". Yes, the Russians can do amazing high-angle of attack stunts, and yes the F-16 and F-22 have excellent controllability characteristics at high-alpha, but the fact that ALL aircraft at such attitudes lose speed like mad during such maneuvers leads me to qualify my statement with "high-speed".
Optimal pitch-up for Pugachev's Cobra (the maneuver you're describing) is at approximately 400-500 knots. Airspeed drops to about 150 knots, at which point the pursuing aircraft is free to come around on the Russian's tail and blow it off for him.
The Cobra looks neat, but I don't think anybody's ever actually proposed it as an effective combat maneuver. "Put on the brakes, he'll fly right by!" only works for Tom Cruise.
My point is that the US is trying diplomacy in that situation, and it is not working.
Arafat will not respond to diplomacy. Sharon will not respond to diplomacy.
They will respond only to one thing: Force. That is the one constant of human interaction...force is sometimes necessary. Yes, we can use diplomacy to minimize the use of force, but at the end of the day, justice comes from guns. We've got to learn to deal with that.
Yup. You're right! Diplomacy is working just GREAT in Israel/Palestine right now. In fact, the Israelis promise to stop killing people any day now! We should use that more often!
You're right. Situational awareness in the MiG-29 is very poor.
I found an interview with a Luftwaffe MiG-29 pilot. He discusses the strengths and weaknesses of the Fulcrum vs. other combat aircraft. Basically, the Fulcrum is a dogfight monster, but is not nearly so effective in an air-superiority (hunter-killer) role.
Rearward is OK, I suppose, since then all the missile has to do is accelerate from -500 to +1500mph (considering its own coordinate system). But 90 deg off angle is still not going to work.
Yes, I know about the missile system you're talking about...it's just not a tactically useful stunt to be able to pull.
Until we have really good immersive VR, getting pilots out of the cockpit is going to be a great way to lose an air war. Yes, that will happen some day, but not soon.
Not gonna happen. ECUs are cheap, and pretty standard. Integrating in user-level stuff, which changes even within a single car model, would be absurdly expensive.
The AIM-120 is the best medium range missile in the world, and it is American (and widely licensed to our allies). It is a semi-active radar homing missile, meaning that it initially requires a radar fix from the mother aircraft to target the adversary. As it approaches the target, it activates its own radar for final intercept. It's a very smart bird, and is difficult for its target to detect.
It also has a 100% combat launch to kill ratio.
That's why the US hasn't been on the cutting edge of short-range missile development. They have been concentrating on improving their medium-range missile so that they never have to have a short-range fight, and then spending lots of money on pilot training.
Not an ideal strategy, IMO, but it's been darn successful so far.
IRIS-T is not the same thing. IRIS-T is a next-generation short-range missile, similar in capabilities to the AIM-9x.
Incidentally, the major reason that the US has not employed helmet mounted sights is weight. The heavy helmets used by the Russians are dangerous to the pilot in an ejection, and it's not a risk the US has been willing to take. The next-generation lightweight helmets in development for the F-22 and JSF will solve this problem.
So, yes, the US is sorta behind, but only in a very limited sense and for what I feel are good reasons.
The MiG 29 is a superb aircraft, with excellent weapons. Problem is that the pilots who fly them are, on average, freakin' awful.
The USAF is chartered to be able to fight an equal or superior adversary. Just because no such adversary exists this week doesn't mean that this is not a Good Plan.
The problem with swiveling your launch rails is that the airstream does not swivel too. When your aircraft is flying 500 knots, and you try to turn your missile to, say, 90 degrees off the heading angle and launch the missile, the missile will immediately begin tumbling and be utterly uncontrollable. You might be able to make a missile that could be launched successfully at 90 degrees, but that design would not work for 120 degrees. Or zero degrees.
In other words, I would argue that your conclusion is erroneous. Making a missile turn tightly is accomplished with thrust vectoring and other clever aerodynamic tricks. Doing as you suggest would take, well, antigravity, I think. : )
In order to successfully design a high-speed aircraft, it's very important to know which direction it is going to fly. There are, to date, exactly zero exceptions to this rule.
The ECU that controls things like spark timing and fuel delivery is a real-time controller running on hardware totally separate from anything that will ever be interacted with by the driver ever.
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I DON'T SUPPORT MY TAXES. Somebody with a GUN comes to my HOUSE if I don't pay them.
As for sweatshop labor, I'd love for you to provide me with alternatives. I actually paid attention to who made my shoes, and I selected for ones that were made in America. And paid the premium. As for the rest of my clothing? Sorry, I'm a college student. I have to pick my battles. Someday I'll replace my wardrobe with one I weave myself from fucking home-grown hemp or something. How is this germane to the matter at hand? You think these people in the sweatshops would be better off if the sweatshop wasn't there?
I defy you to illustrate my "ignorance of the ways of the world", you puerile little hate-monger.
Get a clue.
If your child doesn't understand the difference between shooting people and playing a video game, one more round of GTA3 isn't going to measurably impact their already destroyed psyche.
If I was a parent, and I saw my kid playing a game I didn't approve of, I'd take it away from them. Why is this complicated?
I haven't dropped anything on anybody. I also haven't supported Israel, or stationed troops in Saudi Arabia, or invaded Afghanistan. You know what? I bet I could find two or three other Americans who also haven't done these things.
What responsibility do I bear for the actions of others? None.
By the same token, any Palestinian who is not a suicide bomber is to be presumed innocent of any wrongdoing, and the Israelis should leave them the hell alone.
By yet the same token, any Israeli not in the uniformed military service must be presumed innocent of all oppression, and the suicide bombers should leave them the hell alone.
You see a pattern emerging here?
Do you kiss your potential employers' asses with that mouth?
If you think the US is technically inept, you're either frighteningly ignorant or wearing God's own cultural blinders.
If you think US phone companies are inept, and simply didn't express that thought well, then you and I are in complete agreement.
Overgeneralizations are for sloppy thinkers.
You're on the right track. My contention is that there's a process to be followed here. If it were to come to pass that Vivendi made what BnetD is doing illegal (gosh, now there's a sentence structure for you) then yes, they should be penalized for doing that. Much the same way that since Microsoft has been found to be doing stuff that's illegal, they should be penalized.
However, since it's NOT illegal to reverse engineer stuff, regardless as to whether it's used for profit or not, then Vivendi has no call to want BnetD taken out.
I believe that law making and law enforcement should be as disconnected from one another as possible. I also believe that We The People are entitled to representation by our legislators, which makes me either a) idealistic or b) deluded or c) both.
I'm for arresting people who drink and drive because it's illegal to drink and drive. Is that complicated?
It's only sold as a scientific FACT by people who don't understand what a scientific THEORY is. In other words, ignorant people.
I'm an engineer, and I don't know very many scientific FACTs. The closest ones I can think of off the top of my head are the laws of thermodynamics. Everything in science is subject to being disproved. All good scientists, by definition, understand and accept this basic Truth.
Would be great, if it wasn't an urban legend.
I think that anytime some person (like this WOMAN) spends time doing anything to glorify God, God appreciates it. He's not as jaded as you.
Just my opinion. I'll ask Him when I see Him.
Four bucks for that, seven bucks for CallerID, and uncountable zillions of dollars to sell the bypass service for both to the telemarketing industry.
Gosh, I wish I was the phone company.
I knew the Backfire had a cannon back there, but I seem to remember a big deal being made of rearward-firing missiles, both AAMs and cruise missiles. But I've been wrong before.
I agree with you in principle that new tactics and techniques must be evaluated on their own merits, but I think history demonstrates that these changes are marked by catastrophic change, rather than evolution. I cite several examples:
0. Merrimack vs. Monitor. At that point, the Naval Civil War became not a matter of delivering troops and defending lines of supply, but of avoiding the enemy's ironclads.
1. The use of carriers at Pearl Harbor, rendering battleships to the role of support vessels,
2. The charge of the Polish cavalry against the German tank forces in 1939, along with the Blitzkrieg concept as a whole.
3. To a lesser degree, I'd suggest that the MiG battles over Vietnam put to rest the idea that an air-superiority fighter (at that time) couldn't be just a stand-off missile boat, but needed to be able to defend itself at close range.
Now that last one gets complicated, because it could be argued that modern airborne radar makes a well-prepared air force pretty hard to sneak up on, but I argue that with smaller RCS aircraft, that ability to see everything is not going to be a fait accompli for much longer.
So, I agree with you in principle: More options and more capabilities for short-range AAMs is a Good Idea. However, I don't know if I agree with you that rearward-firing or sideways-firing missiles is the optimum way to get there. I'd be particularly interested in looking at short-range dazzling lasers. I think those could be way more effective (and technologically feasible) than waving your missiles around.
I, too, am always pleased to find reasoned argument around here. Happens to me about twice a year. If you wish, I'd welcome more correspondence on this...particularly if you want to tell me more about that secret stuff. Or offer me a job. : )
Look, firing at a high angle of attack is way sub-optimal. Even if you CAN do it, the missile is still going to take a serious amount of time to stabilize itself into controllable flight after it leaves the aircraft. Since we're talking about a close-range knife fight, that time is going to be employed by your target to kill you.
The rearward firing missiles never made any sense to me. The only time they'd be useful is if an adversary snuck up from behind and beneath you, in which case you're already dead. In a turning fight, the missiles mounted below the wing and fuselage will be masked from your target by your airplane once you turn them around backwards. If you want to swivel your wingtip pylons, you have an even bigger problem. The wingtip pylons on several aircraft designs (specifically, I'm certain about the various Flanker variants and the F-16) use the tip pylons as anti-flutter counterweights. Moving those, in combat, while the wing is undergoing the maximum aerodynamic loads, is a seriously bad idea.
Side note: The Backfire bomber is so named because it could mount rearward-firing air to air missiles, since it doesn't have a prayer of being able to out-turn a fighter. This system might make something like sense. But in a fighter? Not workable.
Now, if you can show me flight sim data where appropriately trained pilots get dramatically better results by using your gee-whiz backwards firing missiles, you might be able to convince people that the idea might be worth developing. Even if it were, you'd have MASSIVE practical hurdles, not the least of which being that JSF and F-22 missiles are carried internally. Swiveling THAT pylon is going to be serious trouble.
Re: unmanned combat aerial vehicles. Yes, UCAVs will someday own the air. But, unless and until they are combat proven, nobody will take them seriously. Will it happen? Yes. Will it happen to any significant degree in the next 20 years? I'm betting not.
Just as a note, UCAVs are one of my likely career paths when I graduate next Spring, so I've done a non-trivial amount of thinking and reading about the concept.
So buy the one with the Graffiti pad instead. Problem solved.
OK, I used "direction it is going to fly" as a shorthand for "angle of attack relative to the free-stream". Yes, the Russians can do amazing high-angle of attack stunts, and yes the F-16 and F-22 have excellent controllability characteristics at high-alpha, but the fact that ALL aircraft at such attitudes lose speed like mad during such maneuvers leads me to qualify my statement with "high-speed".
Optimal pitch-up for Pugachev's Cobra (the maneuver you're describing) is at approximately 400-500 knots. Airspeed drops to about 150 knots, at which point the pursuing aircraft is free to come around on the Russian's tail and blow it off for him.
The Cobra looks neat, but I don't think anybody's ever actually proposed it as an effective combat maneuver. "Put on the brakes, he'll fly right by!" only works for Tom Cruise.
Fighter Dictum: Speed==Life.
My point is that the US is trying diplomacy in that situation, and it is not working.
Arafat will not respond to diplomacy.
Sharon will not respond to diplomacy.
They will respond only to one thing: Force. That is the one constant of human interaction...force is sometimes necessary. Yes, we can use diplomacy to minimize the use of force, but at the end of the day, justice comes from guns. We've got to learn to deal with that.
Don't forget the F-15's.
Yup. You're right! Diplomacy is working just GREAT in Israel/Palestine right now. In fact, the Israelis promise to stop killing people any day now! We should use that more often!
You're right. Situational awareness in the MiG-29 is very poor.
I found an interview with a Luftwaffe MiG-29 pilot. He discusses the strengths and weaknesses of the Fulcrum vs. other combat aircraft. Basically, the Fulcrum is a dogfight monster, but is not nearly so effective in an air-superiority (hunter-killer) role.
Rearward is OK, I suppose, since then all the missile has to do is accelerate from -500 to +1500mph (considering its own coordinate system). But 90 deg off angle is still not going to work.
Yes, I know about the missile system you're talking about...it's just not a tactically useful stunt to be able to pull.
Until we have really good immersive VR, getting pilots out of the cockpit is going to be a great way to lose an air war. Yes, that will happen some day, but not soon.
Not gonna happen. ECUs are cheap, and pretty standard. Integrating in user-level stuff, which changes even within a single car model, would be absurdly expensive.
The AIM-120 is the best medium range missile in the world, and it is American (and widely licensed to our allies). It is a semi-active radar homing missile, meaning that it initially requires a radar fix from the mother aircraft to target the adversary. As it approaches the target, it activates its own radar for final intercept. It's a very smart bird, and is difficult for its target to detect.
It also has a 100% combat launch to kill ratio.
That's why the US hasn't been on the cutting edge of short-range missile development. They have been concentrating on improving their medium-range missile so that they never have to have a short-range fight, and then spending lots of money on pilot training.
Not an ideal strategy, IMO, but it's been darn successful so far.
IRIS-T is not the same thing. IRIS-T is a next-generation short-range missile, similar in capabilities to the AIM-9x.
Incidentally, the major reason that the US has not employed helmet mounted sights is weight. The heavy helmets used by the Russians are dangerous to the pilot in an ejection, and it's not a risk the US has been willing to take. The next-generation lightweight helmets in development for the F-22 and JSF will solve this problem.
So, yes, the US is sorta behind, but only in a very limited sense and for what I feel are good reasons.
The MiG 29 is a superb aircraft, with excellent weapons. Problem is that the pilots who fly them are, on average, freakin' awful.
The USAF is chartered to be able to fight an equal or superior adversary. Just because no such adversary exists this week doesn't mean that this is not a Good Plan.
The problem with swiveling your launch rails is that the airstream does not swivel too. When your aircraft is flying 500 knots, and you try to turn your missile to, say, 90 degrees off the heading angle and launch the missile, the missile will immediately begin tumbling and be utterly uncontrollable. You might be able to make a missile that could be launched successfully at 90 degrees, but that design would not work for 120 degrees. Or zero degrees.
In other words, I would argue that your conclusion is erroneous. Making a missile turn tightly is accomplished with thrust vectoring and other clever aerodynamic tricks. Doing as you suggest would take, well, antigravity, I think. : )
In order to successfully design a high-speed aircraft, it's very important to know which direction it is going to fly. There are, to date, exactly zero exceptions to this rule.
Different computers.
The ECU that controls things like spark timing and fuel delivery is a real-time controller running on hardware totally separate from anything that will ever be interacted with by the driver ever.
So don't worry.