You can't... we're in an age of programmable systems that have entirely harmless uses.
Lets say I have a CNC machine which I could use to make chairs or cabinets or something. Safe right?
I can also make guns with a CNC machine by milling out aluminum.
Increasingly we're going to see machines that could do a lot of things at once.
Is it a 3d printer that can print in metal... that I use to make artistic sculptures... or is it a weapons factory?
There is a new machine recently developed that is to chemical processing what the 3d printer is to additive manufacturing. It can mix very precise amounts of anything... subject the liquids to temperature, pressure... and make anything if you have the base components.
And given that most base components can themselves be refined from other components. The reality is that if people have access to a machine like that they can make drugs, explosives, neuro toxins... anything that a chemical factory could pump out. And here you say "well we need to regulate that"... but that's not all it does.
What you're going to be dealing with increasingly is Omni-Tools... Everything tools. Universal tools. Tools that can make anything and so everyone will have one.
And when everyone has one they can order their omni tool to make anything they could want.
You can't regulate it. You won't.
Which means your entire regulation paradigm collapses.
Imagine a world where everyone has everything they want. Machine guns. Neuro toxins... narcotics... explosives... anything you don't want them to have. Lets say they have it and you can't stop them from having it.
How do you organize your society assuming I am right and you can't stop it?
Anarchy? That's merely an admission of failure. That would just be saying your system would collapse.
Vast aspects of our society are going to change.
Think of how the industrial revolution changed the agricultural culture or how the agricultural revolution transformed the hunter gatherer lifestyle.
That is what we're coming to here. Your regulation paradigm will not survive that transition.
For the sake of argument... lets say you're wrong.
For the sake of argument... lets say you don't know you're wrong.
For the sake of argument... how would I communicate that point to you if you're wrong, don't know it, think you're right, and are too pigheaded to realize it?
Just theoretically... how would I "win" this argument in any other way besides declaring you an idiot and leaving to do something else?
My predictions for your response:
1. I think you're not going to understand what "for the sake of argument" or "theoretically" are going to mean in this situation and are going to refuse to go along with the thought experiment.
2. I think that even if you do you're either not going to have a better response I can give you.
I'll give you the last word here, sport. You're another of these sad dopes that gets conned by sophistry from much smarter people than yourself... and you run around mouthing their bullshit. But you don't actually understand what any of it means. None of these ideas are you own and you're demonstrably unable to think for yourself in this matter.
Am I perfect? Nothing is... but at least my mistakes and my errors are my own. You're a fucking parrot mouthing talking points. You think you understand what you're saying but you don't. its all just sounds to you.
I'm alarmist you say? Tell me how I'm alarmist? You mean we're the same, bingo?
I thought you idiots were the alarmists. We're both alarmists now?!
Together at last!
As to idiots modding me down... I'm not sure what you're talking about.
As people modding me up... my only point was that there was a mutual annihilation going on with the karma points... and the people that supported me out numbered you idiots.:D
Complex dark matter, chum... Apparently the dark matter isn't enough to balance the gravity calculations out... it has to be 'complex' now. The epicycles (a reference you'll get if you're half as informed as you presume to be) have been building on this issue for awhile... I only hope I'm alive to see it all come tumbling down.
Your position is based on a dozen theoretical particles you have no empirical evidence for existing... and a fractal imprecision in your calculations that every time you correct the error with another made up particle or force that you can't actually show exists beyond needing it to exist to sustain the theory... every time you do it... there is another layer of imprecision below that necessitating another invented particle or force... and so on and so on and so on.
All I'd like out of you is a little more science and a little less make believe. And before you tell me cosmology is a hard science... is that an argument you can make to other physicists with a straight face? Because if so... know they laugh at you behind your back.
You don't understand what accuracy, precision, causation, or correlation means.
As such you really can't have this discussion.
Here is your point. You want a TAX for emissions. You are not internalizing anything. You're leveling a tax.
You want to call you tax "internalizing"... fine. I'm going to ignore any further use of that term because given that you don't know the required concepts to make the statement you can't use that term. So I'm going to just read that as 'taxing".
Which again is fine. You can tax anything. You can take people for breathing or tax people for walking or tax anything else. A tax is an entirely arbitary fee that can be levied for any reason to any amount... including all of your money for "because".
We can debate the merits of these taxes if you like. But I'm not going to waste any more time arguing over terms. I reject your use of the term internalizing and will ignore any further commentary on the issue of whether anything is or is not internalized from you.
that it should be illegal to use it against someone against their will... sure.
But to even own it? No.
You can't do system testing without tools that are effectively hack tools. And even if you've no good reason to have it, it isn't the government's place to say what programs we have or don't have.
Actually uncle sam does need causation to tax my income. He has to show that I actually earned X dollars.
And on that basis am I charged a percentage of that X.
What you're trying to do is ASSUME my damage from my emissions... particularly to cancer rates etc which you can't know and you clearly don't care. You just want to level a fine for emitting certain gases.
And that's fine. Admit it and we'll talk about that.
But you're not internalizing costs if you do that. You're just leveling a fine for X emissions. You can show that clearly. You can say "you emitted X amount of Y chemical"... and we have a tax of Z for every X of Y chemical emitted. Done.
I have no problem with you doing that. But you're not internalizing costs. To internalize a cost implies that you know what the costs are per emission or at least per power plant and not as some median average but that that power plant is personally responsible for...
And you can't possibly know that which means you can't internalize the cost. You can't. Its not fucking possible without that information.
Which means you have to assume. And that's fine. Tell me you're assuming and make it clear you're assuming. Don't tell me you know when you don't know.
And then once we've admitted we're assuming and once we've admitting that we're just leveling an arbitary tax based on that assumption... Fine. Level that tax.
But a taxing someone is not internalizing costs.
My problem with you is not what you're doing but the argument you're using for the thing you're doing. Its sophistry. You're spinning this weird argument to justify your position that is fallacious.
I've already bypassed google. Did it years ago for other reasons.
Look, if you think you can impose censorship on the internet in general.... that's a declaration of war. That's a threat to sneak in my window at night and cut my throat.
Attempts to censor must be rebuffed with extreme prejudice. And if any organization caves to such pressure then they need to THEMSELVES be bypassed.
Filter web addresses or start otherwise dicking with DNS tables and we'll bypass your meddling. No one says we have to use your version of the DNS tables. We can use our own versions. And there are augmented DNS tables already being used extensively. So go ahead and fuck with ICANN all you like. All you'll do is make them irrelevant.
And as to big corporations that will do anything for ad revenue in country X or Y... We'll see how that plays out. If they do truly sell out then they'll be bypassed. But if they want to retain their credibility then they can't dot that.
The german facebook example has facebook censoring the GERMAN version of the site... not even removing content. Just making it so germans can't see it. I'm fine with that. Have the internet say "page not found" for any country if that's how they want the internet to work. I don't care about them. You protect your OWN freedoms. You can't protect anyone else's. Best case if you succeed they little shits don't respect that blood was often as not shed to provide the freedom so they're going to trade it away for nothing.
As to india suing google... cite the lawsuit... I found something about india wanting google to not carry sex selection ads... that's not censorship of the internet for ME. That's censorship of the internet for Indians.
If the indians think they can control sex selection procedures with censorship then have fun with that idea. I can't imagine how they think that will work. But regardless I don't care... that's their own country and I have no real opinion on what they do over there.
I have not received your plus 1000 mod points as yet... I appear to be getting modded down.:-D
Doubtless I'm getting modded down by one of three different groups of idiots.
Group 1 perceives I'm being mean to idiots and they don't like that because they think we should coddle them even when they fuck up society.
Group 2 knows that they're full of shit on so many issues and feel threatened by any call to increase ethical or competence standards to the point where they would actually be meaningful... and thus shut these sophists out of any serious discussion.
Group 3 is composed entirely of autistic people that perceive my post as not being 100.000000000000000000% on topic and therefore want to down vote me for not talking specifically and exclusively about a given thing even though the issue touches on something more relevant and everything wrong with the post was caused by a larger ongoing phenomenon.
So which ever group of fuckwits is doing it... Allow me to pop the double bird and tell you to kiss my ass.
The implication is that this is the first time this has happened... when in fact it was merely the first time it was SEEN to happen.
A bunch of hurricanes forming out at sea which is something you could only see from space in the first place.
Golf clap for the editors. Nice try.
This is akin to the talks about how "cancer rates are going up in the third world"... or something of that nature when really what is happening is that "DETECTION rates of cancer going up in the third world" You have no idea what the cancer rate was before that.
Here is a fundemental problem we're having in the 21st century. We have more access to data and infomation and analytics than we've had since ever. But the education of people to understand what the data actually means is shockingly poor.
Journalists are just about the worst. Literally kill yourselves if you fail to grasp the distinction between correlation and causation... I'll wait for about 98 percent of you to off yourselves.
But politicians make this mistake all the time... sometimes intentionally which is also unacceptable.
And then you see some scientists doing it either because they're ignorant which is something people don't think scientists can be... but they're demonstrably ignorant when they don't grasp the distinction between causation and correlation which has been shown to be something they didn't understand on many occasions... Completely unacceptable. And then you'll see them sometimes do it intentionally to make their papers sound more interesting.
How many papers should be saying something along the lines of "variable X appears to move in conjunction with variable Y"... as opposed to the all too common "variable X went up because variable Y went up"... Never mind that they were unable to actually establish that anywhere in their paper.
So many papers boil down to something stupid like "Sniffles cause colds because people with more sniffles tend to have colds."
The issue is freedom of speech and censorship. If my freedoms are limited to the least common demonstrator in the world then effectively other more authoritarian societies can limit my freedom
I will not tolerate that.
I don't really care about facebook. I don't see it as central. My concern is whether it is considered valid for country X to sue company Y because content Z is being posted on their social network.
That concerns me. However, so long as the context of this restricts the government from banning the content generally... I don't care.
Country X can censor the shit out of themselves. Go full north korea on it if you want. I really don't care so long as I don't live in country X.
People that think they protect themselves with censorship are cattle. I have no patience for their nonsense and care nothing for their self mutilations so long as they don't presume to impose them on me as well.
They can cut their dicks off for all I care. Just know that if the blade comes near me... I'm going to put it in someone's eye.
Just giving the prisoners dairy products fortified with vitamin D will probably be all you need to do.
What is more, I'm not saying no light... I'm saying nothing open to the sky. You can have sky lights or even build your rec center like a giant green house. Fucking fill the thing with plants if that makes you happy.
Ultimately, the prisons will probably have anti drone defenses installed. Basically stationary drones that have motion tracking and if they see some thing moving around the yard they can train on it, alert guards, and if desired possibly shoot the drone down.
But just being aware that the drone was there and where it was is probably all that is needed. If the guards know a drone was dropping stuff in the yard and where it was dropped then they should be able to remove whatever it was before prisoners can pick it up.
First, the allies referred to the Panzer as a specific tank model.
Secondly, actually what was relevant was that the allies prevented the Germans from having air superiority. The US and English planes were not decisive in the break out... however, if the Germans had had free air reign over the battlefield then they might have pushed the allies back. There is a distinction.
Third, as to the allied bombing campaign to f' up the germans in any way possible... sure. Total war. If the NAZIs had not been driven back they would have gotten nuked. Count on it.
As to the effectiveness of combined arms... of course. Often the allies would break a german fixed defense with artillery, dive bombers, or infantry. Just because I say the Sherman is underrated and the tank crews suffered fewer losses than any other tank in service in the war on either side... that doesn't mean they were the only relevant weapon. Everything matters. I'm just saying the Sherman was actually quite good at doing what it was designed to do which was charge fixed defenses and/or engage german tanks.
Did the Sherman have an inferior gun to the Germans? Sure. But it had superior mobility. And something that is not appreciated is that the German armor while thick in material was actually designed very poorly. They didn't slope their armor. Their tanks were full of these flat perpendicular surfaces which would have been vastly better defended if they were sloped or if they just wanted to retain the same defense they could have radically cut the weight by sloping the armor.
The Sherman had sloped armor. If you look at the front armor... The gladius on the Sherman had an effective 47"s of armor. And that's what you point at the enemy tanks. That's roughly similar to the fucking tiger itself.
Did the germans have bigger guns? Sure. And german guns shooting at german tanks would have seen the german guns go through the german tanks as easily as the US tanks.
The difference was that the US tanks were remarkably lighter which made them faster and more manuverable and thus better able to attack and retreat.
Did Shermans often need to hit enemy tanks on the sides to breach them? Yes. But frankly that wasn't uncommon. A lot of shots would bounce off the front of a sherman as well. Most of the bad damage you see on shermans is on their SIDES just like the german tanks.
The formative work on this whole "shermans are shit" argument is a book from a guy that was tasked during WW2 to look at battle damage to KILLED sherman tanks. That's who that guy was... he wasn't in the battles. He didn't see the shots bouncing off the tanks. He was looking at dead US tanks after the battles. And what he also wasn't taking into consideration was that very few of the US tankers were actually dying in those hits when compared to the Germans and Russians.
The US tanks had excellent escape hatches. They opened quickly and were right in front of the tankers so they could just get the fuck out. And when they got out they had their helmets on and everything.
There were stories of US tankers that would lose several tanks in a day. That is, the same poor bastard would go out in a tank... get it destroyed... escape it... come back to base... get a new tank... rise and repeat three or four times in a day. That didn't happen in any other service because other people didn't survive that kind of punishment.
Were a lot of Shermans lost in some battles? Yep. Especially the "hedge rows" out of Normandy were a nightmare. But a lot of that was about poor maneuverability because of the hedge rows as well as poor visibility because of the hedge rows. That was a worst case scenario and its sort of like judging how effective a deep sea war ship is when it has to fight in shallow reefs. I mean, you can do it... its just not a great idea.
The Sherman had a problem in the hedge rows when it was employed alone. It did very well when it was used with combined arms of air power, infantry, and especially heavy artillery.
In practice, the first tank to hit another tank in WW2 WON that tank duel. Even if the first shot didn't penetrate. The tank that would fire first often would land a second shot before the first tank even got its first shot off.
It actually didn't suck. The US Shermans did quite well in general. The casuality rate for US tank crews in WW2 was something between 3 and 5 percent for the whole war. There was no safer combat position in the US military then in a Sherman.
The British had much higher casualties with the same tank because unlike the Americans, the Brits didn't like to wear helmets in the tanks. So their losses were closer to 10~15 percent and that was mostly head wounds.
The tank the US mostly came up against was the Panzer which was frequently mistaken for a Tiger. So US tankers were constantly saying "Its a tiger its a tiger"... and then engineers would come along later to check it out after the battle and log it as a Panzer... because it was a Panzer.
The Armor on the Sherman was fine on the front and generally speaking that is where you took a hit. What is more, US tanks frequently out numbered the German tanks... and the general rule of thumb in tank vs tank battles is that whom ever scores a hit first tends to win. Even if it bouces off. If you hit them first, you panic the enemy tank crew and while they're pissing themselves you're calmly loading another shot.
Another thing cited to say US tanks were bad was that it took 5 shermans to take out whatever. And that's a misconception. 5 tanks was a platoon. They would not send less than five tanks to do ANYTHING. They fought as a team. The unit was the 5 tank team. The Germans would sometimes send ONE tank somewhere but the US did not do that. They traveled in packs. So no, it did not take 5 shermans... it was merely the smallest unit of a tank force that would be ordered to do anything.
That is a ground attack plane and so far as I know the only proper close support attack plane of WW2. In a few battles they killed 30 percent of the Russian tanks all by themselves.
Other planes never did that kind of damage. They often radically overestimated their kills and even their over estimations weren't that high. There were a few heavy US/British combined dive bombing raids on German tanks and I think the total kills were something like 2 tanks... total. They estimated something like 20 tanks... that's what the pilots thought they got. But the engineers that went over the battlefield and tallied up what was killed and by what came back with something like 2 that was killed by dive bombers. That's garbage.
What's great about the A-10 and the AC130 and similar planes is that they're not trying to be everything to everyone. They're trying to MASTER one thing and do that ONE thing PERFECTLY.
Jack of all trades is fine if you can actually do most of those with some competence. The F35 cannot.
It went through some Air vs Air trials and was annihilated by last generation dog fighters. The stealth didn't work. Our last generation fighters with current sensors can see the F35. They can fucking SEE it. So the stealth doesn't work. Then what is your defense? Weapons? Last generation fighters are using the same weapons. So that's off the table.
The magic helmet? F15 doesn't care. It sees you... it kills you. You can't get behind it. You can't run away. You can't hide. You're fucked.
So that was the air vs air trial. It failed.
Now comes the Air vs Ground trial where the F35 people think they're going to have an easier time because after all they're mostly fighting effectively stationary targets. Riiight? Sure, but its a totally different threat matrix and the mission demands are totally different as well.In Air vs Air its totally acceptable to kill one thing and then get away. That's a win. In close support Air vs Ground... you need to kill and kill and kill and kill. Can the F35 do that? It doesn't have the magazine capacity to even begin to do that.
No, I just misremembered the plane. I said before I cited a name that I had forgotten the exact name and then cited one that sounded reasonable in my head. The plane you're citing is the one I had in mind. THAT is the plane that turn around Russian tank charges by killing 30 percent of the Russian tanks.
Obviously the A10 was designed primarily as a tank killer. However, it is employed routinely to engage bunkers and other ground targets of that nature. If you're hiding behind sand bags or something... the cannon will go right through most of that like it isn't even there. What is more the rounds hit with such force that they tend to kill infantry if they're even near the impact points of the rounds.
But excluding the gun... if you want to not talk about the gun for some reason... the A10 still wins because it can carry a LOT more bombs and missiles etc than the F35 can.
The F35 has several problems.
1. The Stealth concept is not a panacea. A lot of people think that you're actually not detectable. This is not true. It merely means you're not detected by radar until you're closer... and even then that assumes the enemy computer/radar tech can't handle the challenge. Both modern US and modern Russian radar systems can track stealth targets. The Russians accomplish this by using long wave radar more akin to what was used by the English in WW2. It has disadvantages but an advantage of it is that it isn't confused by stealth tech at all. US radar technology uses shortwave radar which gives you a much cleaner and more detailed return BUT... it is effected by stealth. However, if your signals processing is clever enough it can still track stealth planes at nearly the same range... it just takes much more powerful and sophisticated signals processing. Which is not a problem for the US.
2. A restriction of stealth is that all the weapons have to be internal to the plane and that means the plane can't carry as much firepower.
3. A requirement of stealth is that it effects what sort of shapes the plane can have... the F35 has stubby wings. Stubby wings mean shitty maneuverability.
4. If the F35 is also one of the VTOL variants then it is double fucked because the damn thing will have less internal volume for weapons and the added weight of the VTOL system makes the plane handle like a complete pig even when completely unladen.
5. The plane is fragile. You get hit... good night.
6. The plane does not have the fuel or efficiency to loiter over targets.
I could go on.
In practice if push comes to shove we'll send Drones with hellfire missiles if the AA is a problem. Worst case, they kill a drone now and again. Big deal. And once the AA is pacified... we can send in heavy ground support planes like Specter gunships, A10s, and B52s. That is... FiRE POWER. http://www.airforceworld.com/b...
I'm not interested in any one tree in the forest. Trees have their life cycle. They grow, they live, they drop seeds, they die, they rot, and that rot fertilizes the forest.
Any one tree is meaningless. You say a given tree is on fire... not a problem so long as it doesn't catch.
A tree on fire in a wet jungle isn't going to do anything. A tree on fire in a parched powder keg of a forest is something that was going to burn regardless of that one tree that lit... because if that one tree didn't light something else would have lit.
As such even in your own analogy you must appreciate that it isn't the tree that matters. It is the forest.
As to what facebook can decide on their own, I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about what they're compelled to do by myopic authoritarian busybodies.
As to facebook threading the needle... I would agree they seem to be interested in a glancing blow. Neither absorbing the hit nor entirely dodging it.
Its frankly a passive aggressive response from them which is sort of amusingly fitting out of facebook.
As to facebook's role in the internet... that is already rapidly fading. The demographics on that site show that it captured a given generation and older... but younger generations are giving it the laugh because its full of their aunties and uncles... and who wants to join that when grandma and auntie whomever are going to comment on your wall or whatever. The fact that employers are also asking for social media names and access is another reason to give facebook the laugh.
Who wants your employers and aunts and uncles invading your generally anti social internet interactions?
As to what the US will do with the internet... the only nefarious thing the US does is unleash the NSA on various governments or hostile organizations that the NSA feels are a threat to the "free" world. Like that or not... the US control over ICANN etc doesn't give the US any more ability to do what it is going to do anyway.
Take away all the US's authority over the international internet and would any of that slow the NSA down? Nope. So... what does the US do with this "power" over things like ICANN? nothing. Besides protect free speech.
The fixation of removing US control over certain things because of the hacking was one of the more ignorant things I've seen suggested. The one thing has nothing to do with the other. China hacks people all the time and what authority do they have? You don't need any. That's not how it works.
Whatever though... if the Euros want to fuck up their own end of the internet by censoring everything that's their own business. I really truly don't care what they do to themselves. They can go full blown North Korea on the whole thing for all I care. BUT... I don't want them touching MY end of the internet. They do that... and it warpaint and stirring speeches time.
Then get a nighthawk to drop a jdam on the motherfucker. But the vast overwhelming majority of close support air missions are going to require FIRE POWER. Not stealth. Go through our close support missions and what you'll find is that when FIGHTERS are pressed into close support service which was something we did with all the failed fighter designs in WW2... when they do that, you need to use five or ten of the fucking things instead of ONE of a properly designed aircraft for that role.
In WW2, I think there was only ONE close support air plane and it was German. They were able to single handedly turn back a couple Russian tank assaults JUST with those airplanes. I can get the model number if you're actually curious. I think it was the stookas or however that was spelled.
The US basically kept using these failed fighters throughout the korean war and it wasn't until vietnam when they figured out that they needed FIREPOWER.
The A10 is merely one airplane that expresses this doctrine but if you'd like to see another REAL ground support craft then look at the Specter gunship. THAT is ground support. What is the F35 going to do? Drop a bomb and run away. The plane has a shitty payload. It can't carry enough firepower to even matter. It's main gun is damaging to a tinfoil fighter but to fixed defenses or a tank... fucking useless. The only thing the F35 could carry that would hurt any such thing would be some bombs or missiles in its tiny weapons bay. And flying all the way out... dropping that, and then leaving... fucking garbage. You're going to need dozens of F35s to have the same impact on the battlefield as a SINGLE A10 or Specter gunship.
You can say "but what about AA missiles"... The A10 can probably take the fucking missile can keep coming. The Specter generally can throw a missile off with its angel counter measures.
Really, I prefer the specter when you can get away with it. Its even better than the A10 when it comes to fire power.
And really, if you're just going to drop some missiles and then fuck off... consider a B52 at the very least. Then you can at least light a whole hillside up. The F35 has the payload to blow up a few rocks... then they're spent.
I can quote pilots that flew it, designers that worked on military aircraft from that era, as well as go over a few statistics with you. None of it is good when you consider that the US pilots were vastly superior to the communist pilots. Our pilots had more training and were often vetrains of past air campaigns. And they were dying to shitty vietcong and chinese newbies.
The two big problems it had was first that it had stubby little wings. Look at it. No motherfucker... put down that chicken wing and actually look at the wing plan of that airplane. Do it now. Stubby wings. And that has a price. That means the plane has SHITTY maneuverability because it doesn't have enough wing to turn quickly. Look at the F15... largely regarded to be the best dog fighter ever built. Note that the F15 is basically all wing. Where as the phantom is basically none. The phantom has a giant engine and goes really fast in a straight line. Its a drag racer. But the pig cannot turn which is a problem in a dog fight.
The second problem that the phantom had was no mounted gun. It was the first plane produced under an "all missiles" doctrine and it was basically determined immediately to be a massive mistake. Missiles of the era could not lock on at close range or if the enemy dropped down close to the deck. That meant that you could NOT kill a mig in a phantom if it did either of those things. They compensated for this by giving the phantom an external gun pod.Basically they strapped a gun onto one of the bomb/missile hardpoints on the phantom and then if you pulled a trigger inside the cockpit it would shoot. But it wasn't a very good system and wasn't especially accurate. And even if it were... and it wasn't... you couldn't line a shot up because the fucking phantom couldn't stay on target because it couldn't maneuver.
So no.
As to the phantom being able to go to a target, fire a missile at a stationary target that we have air superior over, and then fly back... Name a plane in modern service in any military that couldn't have done that? A fucking biplane could have done that.
Look, some things are made up and not true. Such as the fact that the Sherman tank is said to be bad even though it was a great tank and the k/d statistics on it are actually pretty great. Easily most under rated tank of WW2 by a long margin. That the Sherman sucked IS a myth.
that the phantom sucks is not a myth. That's valid. it did suck.
The A-10 is obviously superior for close support. It was expressly designed for that purpose while the F35 is this insane jack of all trades plane that sucks at everything apparently.
They say in the article "the A-10 wins if nothing shoots back"... bullshit... the fucking thing can take a punch and keep flying. The F35 has a glass jaw.
When they say shoot back maybe they're talking about a serious anti aircraft missile... okay. But why are you doing close support in that kind of environment in the first place? US doctrine says you get air superiority before you advance your ground forces. Which includes pacifying ground based AA.
Then you listen to them talk about the amazing new helmet that the F35 uses... okay but there's no reason the A-10 couldn't use that as well. The A10 has been upgraded many times to take advantage of new technologies. Why not give it that new sensor package and helmet at well?
My issue with the F35 is that its trying to be everything to everyone and generally succeeds so far as I can tell at nothing. That's bullshit.
Now, I'm just as sad as everyone else that we dumped all this money into a shitty plane but buying them anyway when we know they're bad isn't going to make the situation any better. It will just get people killed.
We had a similar situation with the Phantom in Vietnam. Shitty shitty plane. It was fast and carried a lot of missiles... but it couldn't maneuver and if things got tight and close the stupid thing couldn't even fire because the missiles have a minimum range and they don't work if the enemy is close to the ground.
So an enemy Mig would just take the fight to deck and then turn harder to get behind the phantom... and then shoot it in the ass.
There was nothing the phantoms could do about that besides hitting the thrusters and flying away.
The f35 can't even do that.
I believe someone that tested it said:
"It can't fight It can't hide It can't run"
Which basically means its a flying fucking turkey. The phantom at least could run away.
Given planes should be specialized for given tasks and do that specific task.
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You can't... we're in an age of programmable systems that have entirely harmless uses.
Lets say I have a CNC machine which I could use to make chairs or cabinets or something. Safe right?
I can also make guns with a CNC machine by milling out aluminum.
Increasingly we're going to see machines that could do a lot of things at once.
Is it a 3d printer that can print in metal... that I use to make artistic sculptures... or is it a weapons factory?
There is a new machine recently developed that is to chemical processing what the 3d printer is to additive manufacturing. It can mix very precise amounts of anything... subject the liquids to temperature, pressure... and make anything if you have the base components.
And given that most base components can themselves be refined from other components. The reality is that if people have access to a machine like that they can make drugs, explosives, neuro toxins... anything that a chemical factory could pump out. And here you say "well we need to regulate that"... but that's not all it does.
What you're going to be dealing with increasingly is Omni-Tools... Everything tools. Universal tools. Tools that can make anything and so everyone will have one.
And when everyone has one they can order their omni tool to make anything they could want.
You can't regulate it. You won't.
Which means your entire regulation paradigm collapses.
Imagine a world where everyone has everything they want. Machine guns. Neuro toxins... narcotics... explosives... anything you don't want them to have. Lets say they have it and you can't stop them from having it.
How do you organize your society assuming I am right and you can't stop it?
Anarchy? That's merely an admission of failure. That would just be saying your system would collapse.
Vast aspects of our society are going to change.
Think of how the industrial revolution changed the agricultural culture or how the agricultural revolution transformed the hunter gatherer lifestyle.
That is what we're coming to here. Your regulation paradigm will not survive that transition.
For the sake of argument... lets say you're wrong.
For the sake of argument... lets say you don't know you're wrong.
For the sake of argument... how would I communicate that point to you if you're wrong, don't know it, think you're right, and are too pigheaded to realize it?
Just theoretically... how would I "win" this argument in any other way besides declaring you an idiot and leaving to do something else?
My predictions for your response:
1. I think you're not going to understand what "for the sake of argument" or "theoretically" are going to mean in this situation and are going to refuse to go along with the thought experiment.
2. I think that even if you do you're either not going to have a better response I can give you.
I'll give you the last word here, sport. You're another of these sad dopes that gets conned by sophistry from much smarter people than yourself... and you run around mouthing their bullshit. But you don't actually understand what any of it means. None of these ideas are you own and you're demonstrably unable to think for yourself in this matter.
Am I perfect? Nothing is... but at least my mistakes and my errors are my own. You're a fucking parrot mouthing talking points. You think you understand what you're saying but you don't. its all just sounds to you.
I'm alarmist you say? Tell me how I'm alarmist? You mean we're the same, bingo?
I thought you idiots were the alarmists. We're both alarmists now?!
Together at last!
As to idiots modding me down... I'm not sure what you're talking about.
As people modding me up... my only point was that there was a mutual annihilation going on with the karma points... and the people that supported me out numbered you idiots. :D
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Complex dark matter, chum... Apparently the dark matter isn't enough to balance the gravity calculations out... it has to be 'complex' now. The epicycles (a reference you'll get if you're half as informed as you presume to be) have been building on this issue for awhile... I only hope I'm alive to see it all come tumbling down.
Your position is based on a dozen theoretical particles you have no empirical evidence for existing... and a fractal imprecision in your calculations that every time you correct the error with another made up particle or force that you can't actually show exists beyond needing it to exist to sustain the theory... every time you do it... there is another layer of imprecision below that necessitating another invented particle or force... and so on and so on and so on.
All I'd like out of you is a little more science and a little less make believe. And before you tell me cosmology is a hard science... is that an argument you can make to other physicists with a straight face? Because if so... know they laugh at you behind your back.
Just FYI.
You don't understand what accuracy, precision, causation, or correlation means.
As such you really can't have this discussion.
Here is your point. You want a TAX for emissions. You are not internalizing anything. You're leveling a tax.
You want to call you tax "internalizing"... fine. I'm going to ignore any further use of that term because given that you don't know the required concepts to make the statement you can't use that term. So I'm going to just read that as 'taxing".
Which again is fine. You can tax anything. You can take people for breathing or tax people for walking or tax anything else. A tax is an entirely arbitary fee that can be levied for any reason to any amount ... including all of your money for "because".
We can debate the merits of these taxes if you like. But I'm not going to waste any more time arguing over terms. I reject your use of the term internalizing and will ignore any further commentary on the issue of whether anything is or is not internalized from you.
Full stop.
that it should be illegal to use it against someone against their will... sure.
But to even own it? No.
You can't do system testing without tools that are effectively hack tools. And even if you've no good reason to have it, it isn't the government's place to say what programs we have or don't have.
+5 insightful.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Actually uncle sam does need causation to tax my income. He has to show that I actually earned X dollars.
And on that basis am I charged a percentage of that X.
What you're trying to do is ASSUME my damage from my emissions... particularly to cancer rates etc which you can't know and you clearly don't care. You just want to level a fine for emitting certain gases.
And that's fine. Admit it and we'll talk about that.
But you're not internalizing costs if you do that. You're just leveling a fine for X emissions. You can show that clearly. You can say "you emitted X amount of Y chemical"... and we have a tax of Z for every X of Y chemical emitted. Done.
I have no problem with you doing that. But you're not internalizing costs. To internalize a cost implies that you know what the costs are per emission or at least per power plant and not as some median average but that that power plant is personally responsible for...
And you can't possibly know that which means you can't internalize the cost. You can't. Its not fucking possible without that information.
Which means you have to assume. And that's fine. Tell me you're assuming and make it clear you're assuming. Don't tell me you know when you don't know.
And then once we've admitted we're assuming and once we've admitting that we're just leveling an arbitary tax based on that assumption... Fine. Level that tax.
But a taxing someone is not internalizing costs.
My problem with you is not what you're doing but the argument you're using for the thing you're doing. Its sophistry. You're spinning this weird argument to justify your position that is fallacious.
I've already bypassed google. Did it years ago for other reasons.
Look, if you think you can impose censorship on the internet in general.... that's a declaration of war. That's a threat to sneak in my window at night and cut my throat.
Attempts to censor must be rebuffed with extreme prejudice. And if any organization caves to such pressure then they need to THEMSELVES be bypassed.
Filter web addresses or start otherwise dicking with DNS tables and we'll bypass your meddling. No one says we have to use your version of the DNS tables. We can use our own versions. And there are augmented DNS tables already being used extensively. So go ahead and fuck with ICANN all you like. All you'll do is make them irrelevant.
And as to big corporations that will do anything for ad revenue in country X or Y... We'll see how that plays out. If they do truly sell out then they'll be bypassed. But if they want to retain their credibility then they can't dot that.
The german facebook example has facebook censoring the GERMAN version of the site... not even removing content. Just making it so germans can't see it. I'm fine with that. Have the internet say "page not found" for any country if that's how they want the internet to work. I don't care about them. You protect your OWN freedoms. You can't protect anyone else's. Best case if you succeed they little shits don't respect that blood was often as not shed to provide the freedom so they're going to trade it away for nothing.
As to india suing google... cite the lawsuit... I found something about india wanting google to not carry sex selection ads... that's not censorship of the internet for ME. That's censorship of the internet for Indians.
If the indians think they can control sex selection procedures with censorship then have fun with that idea. I can't imagine how they think that will work. But regardless I don't care... that's their own country and I have no real opinion on what they do over there.
... seriously... use coal if you want but for the love of god put some filters on those things.
I have not received your plus 1000 mod points as yet... I appear to be getting modded down. :-D
Doubtless I'm getting modded down by one of three different groups of idiots.
Group 1 perceives I'm being mean to idiots and they don't like that because they think we should coddle them even when they fuck up society.
Group 2 knows that they're full of shit on so many issues and feel threatened by any call to increase ethical or competence standards to the point where they would actually be meaningful... and thus shut these sophists out of any serious discussion.
Group 3 is composed entirely of autistic people that perceive my post as not being 100.000000000000000000% on topic and therefore want to down vote me for not talking specifically and exclusively about a given thing even though the issue touches on something more relevant and everything wrong with the post was caused by a larger ongoing phenomenon.
So which ever group of fuckwits is doing it... Allow me to pop the double bird and tell you to kiss my ass.
Jesus fucking christ... next time I don't remember the name of the plane I won't preface that I didn't remember and then guess...
What I meant was this plane:
Henschel Hs 129
That's actually what I referring to from the beginning though I didn't remember the name or model number of the fucking airplane.
The implication is that this is the first time this has happened... when in fact it was merely the first time it was SEEN to happen.
A bunch of hurricanes forming out at sea which is something you could only see from space in the first place.
Golf clap for the editors. Nice try.
This is akin to the talks about how "cancer rates are going up in the third world"... or something of that nature when really what is happening is that "DETECTION rates of cancer going up in the third world" You have no idea what the cancer rate was before that.
Here is a fundemental problem we're having in the 21st century. We have more access to data and infomation and analytics than we've had since ever. But the education of people to understand what the data actually means is shockingly poor.
Journalists are just about the worst. Literally kill yourselves if you fail to grasp the distinction between correlation and causation... I'll wait for about 98 percent of you to off yourselves.
But politicians make this mistake all the time... sometimes intentionally which is also unacceptable.
And then you see some scientists doing it either because they're ignorant which is something people don't think scientists can be... but they're demonstrably ignorant when they don't grasp the distinction between causation and correlation which has been shown to be something they didn't understand on many occasions... Completely unacceptable. And then you'll see them sometimes do it intentionally to make their papers sound more interesting.
How many papers should be saying something along the lines of "variable X appears to move in conjunction with variable Y"... as opposed to the all too common "variable X went up because variable Y went up"... Never mind that they were unable to actually establish that anywhere in their paper.
So many papers boil down to something stupid like "Sniffles cause colds because people with more sniffles tend to have colds."
That's correlation, fucktards.
Logic, motherfucker.
The issue is freedom of speech and censorship. If my freedoms are limited to the least common demonstrator in the world then effectively other more authoritarian societies can limit my freedom
I will not tolerate that.
I don't really care about facebook. I don't see it as central. My concern is whether it is considered valid for country X to sue company Y because content Z is being posted on their social network.
That concerns me. However, so long as the context of this restricts the government from banning the content generally... I don't care.
Country X can censor the shit out of themselves. Go full north korea on it if you want. I really don't care so long as I don't live in country X.
People that think they protect themselves with censorship are cattle. I have no patience for their nonsense and care nothing for their self mutilations so long as they don't presume to impose them on me as well.
They can cut their dicks off for all I care. Just know that if the blade comes near me... I'm going to put it in someone's eye.
No. You just need to have vitamin D in the food.
Just giving the prisoners dairy products fortified with vitamin D will probably be all you need to do.
What is more, I'm not saying no light... I'm saying nothing open to the sky. You can have sky lights or even build your rec center like a giant green house. Fucking fill the thing with plants if that makes you happy.
Ultimately, the prisons will probably have anti drone defenses installed. Basically stationary drones that have motion tracking and if they see some thing moving around the yard they can train on it, alert guards, and if desired possibly shoot the drone down.
But just being aware that the drone was there and where it was is probably all that is needed. If the guards know a drone was dropping stuff in the yard and where it was dropped then they should be able to remove whatever it was before prisoners can pick it up.
First, the allies referred to the Panzer as a specific tank model.
Secondly, actually what was relevant was that the allies prevented the Germans from having air superiority. The US and English planes were not decisive in the break out... however, if the Germans had had free air reign over the battlefield then they might have pushed the allies back. There is a distinction.
Third, as to the allied bombing campaign to f' up the germans in any way possible... sure. Total war. If the NAZIs had not been driven back they would have gotten nuked. Count on it.
As to the effectiveness of combined arms... of course. Often the allies would break a german fixed defense with artillery, dive bombers, or infantry. Just because I say the Sherman is underrated and the tank crews suffered fewer losses than any other tank in service in the war on either side... that doesn't mean they were the only relevant weapon. Everything matters. I'm just saying the Sherman was actually quite good at doing what it was designed to do which was charge fixed defenses and/or engage german tanks.
Did the Sherman have an inferior gun to the Germans? Sure. But it had superior mobility. And something that is not appreciated is that the German armor while thick in material was actually designed very poorly. They didn't slope their armor. Their tanks were full of these flat perpendicular surfaces which would have been vastly better defended if they were sloped or if they just wanted to retain the same defense they could have radically cut the weight by sloping the armor.
The Sherman had sloped armor. If you look at the front armor... The gladius on the Sherman had an effective 47"s of armor. And that's what you point at the enemy tanks. That's roughly similar to the fucking tiger itself.
Did the germans have bigger guns? Sure. And german guns shooting at german tanks would have seen the german guns go through the german tanks as easily as the US tanks.
The difference was that the US tanks were remarkably lighter which made them faster and more manuverable and thus better able to attack and retreat.
Did Shermans often need to hit enemy tanks on the sides to breach them? Yes. But frankly that wasn't uncommon. A lot of shots would bounce off the front of a sherman as well. Most of the bad damage you see on shermans is on their SIDES just like the german tanks.
The formative work on this whole "shermans are shit" argument is a book from a guy that was tasked during WW2 to look at battle damage to KILLED sherman tanks. That's who that guy was... he wasn't in the battles. He didn't see the shots bouncing off the tanks. He was looking at dead US tanks after the battles. And what he also wasn't taking into consideration was that very few of the US tankers were actually dying in those hits when compared to the Germans and Russians.
The US tanks had excellent escape hatches. They opened quickly and were right in front of the tankers so they could just get the fuck out. And when they got out they had their helmets on and everything.
There were stories of US tankers that would lose several tanks in a day. That is, the same poor bastard would go out in a tank... get it destroyed... escape it... come back to base... get a new tank... rise and repeat three or four times in a day. That didn't happen in any other service because other people didn't survive that kind of punishment.
Were a lot of Shermans lost in some battles? Yep. Especially the "hedge rows" out of Normandy were a nightmare. But a lot of that was about poor maneuverability because of the hedge rows as well as poor visibility because of the hedge rows. That was a worst case scenario and its sort of like judging how effective a deep sea war ship is when it has to fight in shallow reefs. I mean, you can do it... its just not a great idea.
The Sherman had a problem in the hedge rows when it was employed alone. It did very well when it was used with combined arms of air power, infantry, and especially heavy artillery.
In practice, the first tank to hit another tank in WW2 WON that tank duel. Even if the first shot didn't penetrate. The tank that would fire first often would land a second shot before the first tank even got its first shot off.
I've heard senior pilots and weapons designs from that era contradict your position.
I find them more credible than you.
As to sounding like a 12 year old... The only thing I've done that is immature in this discussion is what I'm about to do...
Suck it, AC fucktwit. :-D
It actually didn't suck. The US Shermans did quite well in general. The casuality rate for US tank crews in WW2 was something between 3 and 5 percent for the whole war. There was no safer combat position in the US military then in a Sherman.
The British had much higher casualties with the same tank because unlike the Americans, the Brits didn't like to wear helmets in the tanks. So their losses were closer to 10~15 percent and that was mostly head wounds.
The tank the US mostly came up against was the Panzer which was frequently mistaken for a Tiger. So US tankers were constantly saying "Its a tiger its a tiger"... and then engineers would come along later to check it out after the battle and log it as a Panzer... because it was a Panzer.
The Armor on the Sherman was fine on the front and generally speaking that is where you took a hit. What is more, US tanks frequently out numbered the German tanks... and the general rule of thumb in tank vs tank battles is that whom ever scores a hit first tends to win. Even if it bouces off. If you hit them first, you panic the enemy tank crew and while they're pissing themselves you're calmly loading another shot.
Another thing cited to say US tanks were bad was that it took 5 shermans to take out whatever. And that's a misconception. 5 tanks was a platoon. They would not send less than five tanks to do ANYTHING. They fought as a team. The unit was the 5 tank team. The Germans would sometimes send ONE tank somewhere but the US did not do that. They traveled in packs. So no, it did not take 5 shermans... it was merely the smallest unit of a tank force that would be ordered to do anything.
I cited the wrong plane. Note that I said I had forgotten the correct name before guessing.
What I meant was this thing:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
That is a ground attack plane and so far as I know the only proper close support attack plane of WW2. In a few battles they killed 30 percent of the Russian tanks all by themselves.
Other planes never did that kind of damage. They often radically overestimated their kills and even their over estimations weren't that high. There were a few heavy US/British combined dive bombing raids on German tanks and I think the total kills were something like 2 tanks... total. They estimated something like 20 tanks... that's what the pilots thought they got. But the engineers that went over the battlefield and tallied up what was killed and by what came back with something like 2 that was killed by dive bombers. That's garbage.
What's great about the A-10 and the AC130 and similar planes is that they're not trying to be everything to everyone. They're trying to MASTER one thing and do that ONE thing PERFECTLY.
Jack of all trades is fine if you can actually do most of those with some competence. The F35 cannot.
It went through some Air vs Air trials and was annihilated by last generation dog fighters. The stealth didn't work. Our last generation fighters with current sensors can see the F35. They can fucking SEE it. So the stealth doesn't work. Then what is your defense? Weapons? Last generation fighters are using the same weapons. So that's off the table.
The magic helmet? F15 doesn't care. It sees you... it kills you. You can't get behind it. You can't run away. You can't hide. You're fucked.
So that was the air vs air trial. It failed.
Now comes the Air vs Ground trial where the F35 people think they're going to have an easier time because after all they're mostly fighting effectively stationary targets. Riiight? Sure, but its a totally different threat matrix and the mission demands are totally different as well.In Air vs Air its totally acceptable to kill one thing and then get away. That's a win. In close support Air vs Ground... you need to kill and kill and kill and kill. Can the F35 do that? It doesn't have the magazine capacity to even begin to do that.
Its a trillion dollar turkey.
No, I just misremembered the plane. I said before I cited a name that I had forgotten the exact name and then cited one that sounded reasonable in my head. The plane you're citing is the one I had in mind. THAT is the plane that turn around Russian tank charges by killing 30 percent of the Russian tanks.
Obviously the A10 was designed primarily as a tank killer. However, it is employed routinely to engage bunkers and other ground targets of that nature. If you're hiding behind sand bags or something... the cannon will go right through most of that like it isn't even there. What is more the rounds hit with such force that they tend to kill infantry if they're even near the impact points of the rounds.
But excluding the gun... if you want to not talk about the gun for some reason... the A10 still wins because it can carry a LOT more bombs and missiles etc than the F35 can.
The F35 has several problems.
1. The Stealth concept is not a panacea. A lot of people think that you're actually not detectable. This is not true. It merely means you're not detected by radar until you're closer... and even then that assumes the enemy computer/radar tech can't handle the challenge. Both modern US and modern Russian radar systems can track stealth targets. The Russians accomplish this by using long wave radar more akin to what was used by the English in WW2. It has disadvantages but an advantage of it is that it isn't confused by stealth tech at all. US radar technology uses shortwave radar which gives you a much cleaner and more detailed return BUT... it is effected by stealth. However, if your signals processing is clever enough it can still track stealth planes at nearly the same range... it just takes much more powerful and sophisticated signals processing. Which is not a problem for the US.
2. A restriction of stealth is that all the weapons have to be internal to the plane and that means the plane can't carry as much firepower.
3. A requirement of stealth is that it effects what sort of shapes the plane can have... the F35 has stubby wings. Stubby wings mean shitty maneuverability.
4. If the F35 is also one of the VTOL variants then it is double fucked because the damn thing will have less internal volume for weapons and the added weight of the VTOL system makes the plane handle like a complete pig even when completely unladen.
5. The plane is fragile. You get hit... good night.
6. The plane does not have the fuel or efficiency to loiter over targets.
I could go on.
In practice if push comes to shove we'll send Drones with hellfire missiles if the AA is a problem. Worst case, they kill a drone now and again. Big deal. And once the AA is pacified... we can send in heavy ground support planes like Specter gunships, A10s, and B52s. That is... FiRE POWER.
http://www.airforceworld.com/b...
I'm not interested in any one tree in the forest. Trees have their life cycle. They grow, they live, they drop seeds, they die, they rot, and that rot fertilizes the forest.
Any one tree is meaningless. You say a given tree is on fire... not a problem so long as it doesn't catch.
A tree on fire in a wet jungle isn't going to do anything. A tree on fire in a parched powder keg of a forest is something that was going to burn regardless of that one tree that lit... because if that one tree didn't light something else would have lit.
As such even in your own analogy you must appreciate that it isn't the tree that matters. It is the forest.
As to what facebook can decide on their own, I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about what they're compelled to do by myopic authoritarian busybodies.
As to facebook threading the needle... I would agree they seem to be interested in a glancing blow. Neither absorbing the hit nor entirely dodging it.
Its frankly a passive aggressive response from them which is sort of amusingly fitting out of facebook.
As to facebook's role in the internet... that is already rapidly fading. The demographics on that site show that it captured a given generation and older... but younger generations are giving it the laugh because its full of their aunties and uncles... and who wants to join that when grandma and auntie whomever are going to comment on your wall or whatever. The fact that employers are also asking for social media names and access is another reason to give facebook the laugh.
Who wants your employers and aunts and uncles invading your generally anti social internet interactions?
As to what the US will do with the internet... the only nefarious thing the US does is unleash the NSA on various governments or hostile organizations that the NSA feels are a threat to the "free" world. Like that or not... the US control over ICANN etc doesn't give the US any more ability to do what it is going to do anyway.
Take away all the US's authority over the international internet and would any of that slow the NSA down? Nope. So... what does the US do with this "power" over things like ICANN? nothing. Besides protect free speech.
The fixation of removing US control over certain things because of the hacking was one of the more ignorant things I've seen suggested. The one thing has nothing to do with the other. China hacks people all the time and what authority do they have? You don't need any. That's not how it works.
Whatever though... if the Euros want to fuck up their own end of the internet by censoring everything that's their own business. I really truly don't care what they do to themselves. They can go full blown North Korea on the whole thing for all I care. BUT... I don't want them touching MY end of the internet. They do that... and it warpaint and stirring speeches time.
Then get a nighthawk to drop a jdam on the motherfucker. But the vast overwhelming majority of close support air missions are going to require FIRE POWER. Not stealth. Go through our close support missions and what you'll find is that when FIGHTERS are pressed into close support service which was something we did with all the failed fighter designs in WW2... when they do that, you need to use five or ten of the fucking things instead of ONE of a properly designed aircraft for that role.
In WW2, I think there was only ONE close support air plane and it was German. They were able to single handedly turn back a couple Russian tank assaults JUST with those airplanes. I can get the model number if you're actually curious. I think it was the stookas or however that was spelled.
The US basically kept using these failed fighters throughout the korean war and it wasn't until vietnam when they figured out that they needed FIREPOWER.
The A10 is merely one airplane that expresses this doctrine but if you'd like to see another REAL ground support craft then look at the Specter gunship. THAT is ground support. What is the F35 going to do? Drop a bomb and run away. The plane has a shitty payload. It can't carry enough firepower to even matter. It's main gun is damaging to a tinfoil fighter but to fixed defenses or a tank... fucking useless. The only thing the F35 could carry that would hurt any such thing would be some bombs or missiles in its tiny weapons bay. And flying all the way out... dropping that, and then leaving... fucking garbage. You're going to need dozens of F35s to have the same impact on the battlefield as a SINGLE A10 or Specter gunship.
You can say "but what about AA missiles"... The A10 can probably take the fucking missile can keep coming. The Specter generally can throw a missile off with its angel counter measures.
Really, I prefer the specter when you can get away with it. Its even better than the A10 when it comes to fire power.
And really, if you're just going to drop some missiles and then fuck off... consider a B52 at the very least. Then you can at least light a whole hillside up. The F35 has the payload to blow up a few rocks... then they're spent.
I can quote pilots that flew it, designers that worked on military aircraft from that era, as well as go over a few statistics with you. None of it is good when you consider that the US pilots were vastly superior to the communist pilots. Our pilots had more training and were often vetrains of past air campaigns. And they were dying to shitty vietcong and chinese newbies.
The two big problems it had was first that it had stubby little wings. Look at it. No motherfucker... put down that chicken wing and actually look at the wing plan of that airplane. Do it now. Stubby wings. And that has a price. That means the plane has SHITTY maneuverability because it doesn't have enough wing to turn quickly. Look at the F15... largely regarded to be the best dog fighter ever built. Note that the F15 is basically all wing. Where as the phantom is basically none. The phantom has a giant engine and goes really fast in a straight line. Its a drag racer. But the pig cannot turn which is a problem in a dog fight.
The second problem that the phantom had was no mounted gun. It was the first plane produced under an "all missiles" doctrine and it was basically determined immediately to be a massive mistake. Missiles of the era could not lock on at close range or if the enemy dropped down close to the deck. That meant that you could NOT kill a mig in a phantom if it did either of those things. They compensated for this by giving the phantom an external gun pod.Basically they strapped a gun onto one of the bomb/missile hardpoints on the phantom and then if you pulled a trigger inside the cockpit it would shoot. But it wasn't a very good system and wasn't especially accurate. And even if it were... and it wasn't... you couldn't line a shot up because the fucking phantom couldn't stay on target because it couldn't maneuver.
So no.
As to the phantom being able to go to a target, fire a missile at a stationary target that we have air superior over, and then fly back... Name a plane in modern service in any military that couldn't have done that? A fucking biplane could have done that.
Look, some things are made up and not true. Such as the fact that the Sherman tank is said to be bad even though it was a great tank and the k/d statistics on it are actually pretty great. Easily most under rated tank of WW2 by a long margin. That the Sherman sucked IS a myth.
that the phantom sucks is not a myth. That's valid. it did suck.
The A-10 is obviously superior for close support. It was expressly designed for that purpose while the F35 is this insane jack of all trades plane that sucks at everything apparently.
They say in the article "the A-10 wins if nothing shoots back"... bullshit... the fucking thing can take a punch and keep flying. The F35 has a glass jaw.
When they say shoot back maybe they're talking about a serious anti aircraft missile... okay. But why are you doing close support in that kind of environment in the first place? US doctrine says you get air superiority before you advance your ground forces. Which includes pacifying ground based AA.
Then you listen to them talk about the amazing new helmet that the F35 uses... okay but there's no reason the A-10 couldn't use that as well. The A10 has been upgraded many times to take advantage of new technologies. Why not give it that new sensor package and helmet at well?
My issue with the F35 is that its trying to be everything to everyone and generally succeeds so far as I can tell at nothing. That's bullshit.
Now, I'm just as sad as everyone else that we dumped all this money into a shitty plane but buying them anyway when we know they're bad isn't going to make the situation any better. It will just get people killed.
We had a similar situation with the Phantom in Vietnam. Shitty shitty plane. It was fast and carried a lot of missiles... but it couldn't maneuver and if things got tight and close the stupid thing couldn't even fire because the missiles have a minimum range and they don't work if the enemy is close to the ground.
So an enemy Mig would just take the fight to deck and then turn harder to get behind the phantom... and then shoot it in the ass.
There was nothing the phantoms could do about that besides hitting the thrusters and flying away.
The f35 can't even do that.
I believe someone that tested it said:
"It can't fight
It can't hide
It can't run"
Which basically means its a flying fucking turkey. The phantom at least could run away.
Given planes should be specialized for given tasks and do that specific task.