California is a prime example of WHY there needs to be decentralized power. Most things should be done at the state level. When national government gets things horrifically wrong, everyone suffers. When a state gets things horrifically wrong, only the people in that state suffer. With small, largely self governing states, leaving for another state is relatively easy, putting economic pressure on the state government to not do stupid stuff and to fix current stupid policies.
Not to mention there is often several ways to solve a given problem. Just look at alcohol sales. Most states have a reasonably good laws on alcohol sales. Some states are really stupid about it, but they are limited to those states. This variety makes comparison easy, since we don't have to work on theory, we can go look at how the different laws work in practice.
Not to mention that some problems are bigger in some places than others. Is anyone really going to care if a farmers pickup driving down a gravel road in North Dakota has a catalytic converter in it? One-size-fits-all national solutions simply mean that the solution will not fit anyone.
Except that all the doom and gloom about ocean acidification is junk science.
They decrease the pH in the lab by adding sulfuric acid to the water instead of the proper method of increasing the CO2 concentration. (Since it's easier to dump in a measured amount of acid and measure with pH strips rather than rig up the equipment to measure and maintain a high-CO2 environment.) That increased CO2 makes it easier for coral and other organisms to make calcium CARBONate for their shells. Where do you think that carbon to make their shells comes from? (dissolved carbon dioxide, bicarbonate ions, carbonate ions) The carbon is what is in short supply in seawater, 441ppm calcium vs 90ppm carbon, so increasing the amount of CO2 in the oceans increases the amount of carbon, meaning coral can grow faster because the process has become more efficient because of additional carbon, more than offsetting any damage to their shells.
You also have the inconvenient fact that there are past times in Earths history where CO2 levels were 10 times higher than they are now, yet coral still grew and thrived. The pH of seawater is around pH 8.2. Pure water is pH 7.0, and clean rainwater is pH 5.6. Also, seawater is a highly buffered solution. (Translation: It can take up a huge amount of dissolved inorganic carbon without significant effect on pH.) There is not the slightest possibility that the oceans could approach the neutral pH of pure water even if all the fossil fuel in the world were burned, so all talk of ‘acid’ oceans is pointless.
Unless you think that getting Apple to move to 100% renewable power is making things worse,
Green power besides hydro and nuclear is more expensive than fossil fuels. That higher price is the market telling you that it takes more resources to use "X" source of power than "Y". By using more resources you are doing more damage to the environment than by using the cheaper source of fuel that uses less resources.
True, though I wonder if it is not partially because of increased technology that we simply don't need NORAD in a mountain anymore. With better and better communications tech even after a first strike retaliation will still take place.
But the basic thing is this: if you have a lot of nukes you tend to build up a huge army precisely so that you'll never have to use them. You know nukes probably mean mutually assured destruction, so you never go "oh no problem, I'll just lean on the nukes"
Now, even though I live in Western Europe I think it's not that important: the Soviet Union was the only superpower to defend its home turf in Europe. It had a huge army. The US also had a huge army, but it didn't have its capital in Europe. The fact remains that both nuclear armed to the teeth superpowers also had strong conventional arms. .
As opposed to building up a huge army because you don't have them?
No, the reason the Soviets had large conventional force was to keep satellite nations and their own civilian population in line
The US also did have large conventional forces because it was operating under the flawed premise of perpetual "Limited War" in the third world and desire to police the world. That theory will hopefully be shot in the head and burred for good after the last few we've been in
350,000 US troops in Europe in 1980. Add different national armies to this and the fact that the defender tends to be in a better position and the certain Soviet victory starts looking a lot less certain. Not to mention that 350 000 troops mostly standing guard far away from home hardly sounds like defence is cheap.
The Soviets outnumbered NATO 3-to-1 in tanks, which at the time were technically comparable to western tanks, and had over 50% more aircraft. They also had more troops, more APCs, more SAMs, etc. A war would have been costly, but eventually the Soviets could have very well taken Europe.
No, I certainly could not, but I am sure there are people that exist who would be able to defeat the pass-code protection or reset the code to a known quantity, or reverse-engineer the detonator and engineer their own, given a sufficient amount of time.
if you have that level of engineering expertise, just skip the whole "steal nuke" part and build your own with stolen enriched Plutonium.
Accidentally entering the passcode might not be too likely... but did you consider the possibility that a faulty electrical component in the unit's electronics or software results in it arming the device when it's not supposed to be armed, or acts as if a passcode has been entered and starts a countdown when no human has instructed it to arm or detonate?
Yes that was considered all the way back in 1945, which is why nukes back then had multiple interlocks to prevent such a thing. For example. Here is the firing sequence of a "Little Boy" nuke:
Several mechanical timer switches closed 15 seconds after the bomb was dropped. ( don't have an exact number of how many there were.) These timers cut-off the barometric switches, capacitor bank, and radar switches.
At 7,000' the barometric switches closed. I believe that there were a total of 4 barometric fuses, at least two had to activate to arm the third stage. When those fuses closed they, charged the capacitors that would set off the powder charge in the gun tube. They also turned on the radar fuses.
At 1,800' the radar switches closed. There were 4 radar fuses, at least two had to activate to detonate the device. When they do, the stored energy in the capacitors set off the charge and detonated the device.
Now, point out to me where the possibility exists that a faulty electrical component in the unit's electronics could detonate the bomb?
Doesn't matter if a barometric fuse is faulty, the timers and radar fuses stop it. In addition to the need for a second barometric fuse to fail in the correct way as well to complete the circuit.
If a single timer fails you either activate a barometric sensor, arm the capacitor bank, or a radar fuse, neither of which can detonate the bomb on its own.
If a radar fuse is defective, that can't detonate the bomb either. They aren't even powered on until the timers and barometric fuses close their relays and two radar fuses need to close before the bomb can detonate.
You don't have enough monkeys and typewriters to make your scenario anywhere realistic.
It's conceivable a short circuit and software bug in your computer-controlled ignition system could result in your engine starting.
Not really. The starter switch in the ignition key switch, on my car at least, has separate wires going to power the ignition, fuel pump, and the starter solenoid. You would HAVE to have all 3 fail in the correct way at the same time to start the car. Doesn't matter how buggy the software in the computer is, without the starter motor and the fuel pump, the car isn't going anywhere
As small as the probability is, it's still far from zero, it's still a potential concern. Even if a car DOES do that, it's not that big a risk. And only a person standing directly ahead of the car is really at risk.
Hey now, you forgot about the transmission failing and going into gear. This would have to happen after the engine started, as the car physically can't start while in gear.>
While you are correct that it is not zero probability, it is close enough to be considered zero.
South Korea would wipe the floor with North Korea and you know it. North Korea does not have the materiel for a war with the South. SK spends over 10 times more than NK on defense. On paper it looks evenly matched with number of tanks and planes, but most NK equipment is obsolete and poorly maintained. NK does not have the logistics to steamroll anywhere, nor do they have an effective delivery system for their nukes.
If anyone used a nuke first it would be the North. China and Russia are going to be upset at NK, not anyone who retaliates with nukes against NK. Only reason nobody has invaded NK is because nobody wants it. No modern infrastructure, no resources, a largely illiterate population.
So you want to launch a one ton rod into orbit? Just the cost of a launching that would be about $8 million, assuming a $4,000 per pound launch cost. Add onto that several million just to build it in the first place. You won't be able to afford to deploy these in enough numbers to make any difference. A LGM-30 Minuteman III ICBM with a 3 warhead MIRV is only about $7 million.
Massive destruction without having to worry about any radioactive fall out.
You haven't done the math on this, have you?
A 2,000 pound rod traveling at Mach 10 has a kenetic energy equal to..........1.2 tons of TNT. Congratulations, you've spent $10+ million to do what two $800,000 cruise missiles can do.
People have criticized the US stoppage on the shuttle
Not me, the shuttle was a total boondoggle. One-time use rockets/capsules have proven to be the more economical method.
The maneuverability to intercept and destroy any other countries military satellites if needed would also be devastating to those countries who rely on them.
The country that most describes is the US. No other country is as heavily reliant on satellites. Note that China supposedly has an operational anti-satellite laser, which I find to be completely believable as the tech has been feasible for quite some time.
I have pointed out elsewhere that any country that has rocket tech of SCUD-C level or better could build a "shotgun" type anti-satellite weapon for LEO satellites, the main difficulty being targeting.
Please elaborate. I don't see the game changing all that much. If China, who had no problem with human wave attacks and killing tens of millions in its botched social programs, wouldn't give North Vietnam a Nuke then the same factors are at play with Iran, Pakistan, etc.
If you disagree please tell me why so I can address it.
Far more money would be saved by downsizing ones conventional forces, we don't need them for defense. Strong Nuclear Triad, reasonably sized navy, small ground forces for small scale events. That's all you really need for defense.
For those who are crazy or willing to sell the weapons to people who are, the "can't" part is more important.
Except for the historical fact is that nobody is that crazy.
The Soviet Union wouldn't give China nukes, nor would they even give them assistance in developing their own.
China/Soviet Union sent large amounts of supplies to North Vietnam, never even considered giving them a nuke.
North Korea will sell it's missile tech, but no evidence of even them being crazy enough to sell a nuke.
Iran wouldn't give a nuke to the insurgents either. (For the simple fact that the insurgents would use it against the Iranians.)
Sure some counties may hand out conventional weapons like candy to their favorite proxys, but nukes are a different breed. Conventional weapons are like letting your friend sleep over at your house. Nukes are like putting their name on the deed. A country can always stop shipments of conventional weapons if they don't like what they are doing with them before things out of hand. Not so with nukes.
Not to mention that even IF you steal one, good luck arming one. Nukes that are on active standby are heavily guarded and the detonators require pass codes to arm. Talked with someone whose duty was to guard nukes and his orders were, "ONE warning, if you do not get IMMEDIATE compliance, shoot to disable. If you can't shoot to disable, shoot anyway." People working on the weapons accidentally breaking procedure did happen on occasion, where they have to tell everyone to stop everything until the guards can sort everything out. Obviously everyone immediately complies because they know what the guards orders are and know if they get shot it's their own fault. Not unreasonable given what they are working on.
You can't just rip out the pass-coded detonator and wire all the blasting caps on the explosives together, to get the explosive "lens" in an implosion type weapon requires some blasting caps go off before others to take the core super-critical.If that timing is off all you get is a dirty bomb
Weapons that are not on active standby have vital parts removed including, when possible, the nuclear core.
This is done not only for safety, it prevents a saboteur from detonating a warhead. Worrying about a nuke accidentally going off is like me worrying about my car accidentally starting and driving over a little kid while I sit here in my house. Sure my car could accidentally catch fire, the horn could accidentally go off, but for the engine to accidentally start, the transmission accidentally shift into reverse, and the parking brake to accidentally disengage is an event so improbable that it is not worth considering.
They also don't store nukes in downtown New York, even though sometimes I think they should.
The purpose of having so many is relatively simple: Modern SOP in regards to nuclear war is "Retaliation after Ride-out". "Launch on Warning" is simply impractical given the short time between the launch of a first strike and the warhead reaching its target. Therefore a country thinking about defense will have to work on the assumption of a large portion of its nuclear weapons being destroyed in the first strike, even after extensive hardening of the launching platforms. Depending on who you ask, the military assumes a worst case scenario where between 90-95% of its strategic nuclear weapons will be destroyed/damaged in a first strike. So if you have 5,000 strategic nukes, ICBM, SLBM, bomber launched cruise missiles, that means that after ride-out you should expect to have only 250 to 500 weapons operationally available with which to immediately retaliate against the aggressor nation.
Then also remember that you don't want to use all your working weapons against the first aggressor nation, there are other nations that may take advantage of the strike to attack you, so you need to hold back some weapons in reserve in case you need to use them against other aggressor nations.
Going from 5,000 to 1,000, assuming 90-95% losses in a first strike, means you now only have between 50 to 100 warheads with which to retaliate with. When you look at it that way,you can understand why having 10,000 nukes is not seen as excessive by many in the military. They don't see us having 10,000 nukes. They see us having 500-1000 nukes after a first strike. less in fact when you consider that many will be offline for maintenance. Figure retaining half for continued deterrence and then you only have a max of 250-500 nukes to immediately retaliate with.
Of course then there is the fact that nuclear disarmament would probably make large scale war MORE likely. With nukes you do not need a large standing army for national defense. (For national OFFENSE, what the US is doing today, you do.) Without them you have to expend vast resources maintaining a conventional military for purely defensive purposes. Seriously, why DIDN'T the Soviet Union just steamroll until they got to Gibraltar? They could have done so with conventional forces largely at any time during the Cold War. Because they knew full well that such an action would result in nuclear retaliation.
Mass drivers. Too expensive to get that much mass into orbit and no matter how fast you throw your projectile, it can only penetrate so far underground, as limited by physics.
Tactical lasers: Effectively banned as they are all too easily used, intentionally or unintentionally, as blinding weapons.
Also stupid easy to destroy such systems. Launch a missile straight up in a sub-orbital intercept trajectory. Payload is aluminum spheres that is released into a fan pattern once the missile has cleared the upper atmosphere. Any Nation that has SCUDs or similar could develop such a system. A SCUD-C has a max altitude of about 124 miles at the max range of 340 miles with a 1300lb warhead. Both system you propose would be in low earth orbit, 500 miles tops. If you shot straight up and reduced the payload weight I see no reason why a SCUD-C could not launch a payload of aluminum spheres 500 miles up. Once up there, the satellites own kinetic energy will destroy it when it hits one or more of the spheres, which relative to the satellite are not moving.
Such a system has the benefit of not creating space junk, as the spheres will simply fall back and burn up in the atmosphere. The only serious technical difficulty is targeting. The targeted satellites may have maneuver capability, but if it only has a short window of warning it will take a significant amount of fuel to maneuver out of the way of such a cloud. Running the satellite out of thruster fuel will be just as effective as destroying it.
Exactly. Greenpeace achieved its goals decades ago. They used to be all about taking reasonable and cost-effective measures to reduce pollution. After years of campaigning they managed to convince the majority of people that those goals were worth of pursuing.
Now, how does your organization remain confrontational and relevant when everyone already agrees with you? You have to adopt ever more extreme and absurd positions. It is around this time that Patrick Moore, one of Greenpeace's founders, left the organization because it had been taken over by loons and, after the wall fell, by Marxists. (Often called watermelons: Green on the outside, Red on the inside.)
While I agree with the nukes, especially the nuclear subs that make any attempt at a first strike knockout against the USA a suicide mission, the thing about nukes is we WILL end up with proxy wars because it would be MAD if say the USA and Russia or China went toe to toe so the only way is by picking some third world country and going proxy war.
Why will we HAVE to end up with proxy wars? Why would we WANT to engage in proxy wars? The whole "Limited war"/ "Proxy war" theory devised by Henry Kissinger in the 50's has been pretty much shown to be a failure. Whatever enemies we may have now, a proxy war only creates more enemies and hurts us in the long term. Eventually the puppets you install fall and whatever replaces it will be openly hostile to you.
Butt out, let the tribes of the middle east fight it out and just buy the oil from them. The last 10 years of war works out to about $3,000+ for every person in the US. $3,000 buys a lot of oil. If China is stupid enough to try and start a proxy war let them get eaten up in the meat grinder. If people want to support the resistance fighters I have no problem with them freely contributing.
And THAT is where i think we are seriously fucking up. all our weapons are designed to fight a country like Russia or China and not bumfuckistan where it is much more likely we will end up with another Korea. the one thing i have always given the Russians credit for is how they can build cheap and reliable weapons that can be cranked out en masse. THAT is what we truly need and why i say the teen series, F15, F16, F18, should be what we are cranking out instead of these quarter of a billion technoturkeys. Look at the warthogs, i bet those have logged more hours than any technoturkey because in a proxy war a plane with long loiter times that can take punishment and deliver devastating fire is a hell of a lot more valuable in a proxy war type battle than something like the F22.
With you on that except for the F-18, that plane has its issues, WAY too easy to run that thing to Bingo Fuel. Have you ever read the short story "Superiority" by Arthur C. Clarke? It's available for free online and it's a superb illustrations of what's going on. Aside from references to vacuum tubes, that story could have been written today.
That is why i think we need something like the Russian S25, its easy to deliver into position, hell you could slap them in C130s and drop them just about anywhere, its got a good gun and can suppress infantry as well as take on small armored vehicles. Like you I doubt seriously we'll be running into someone stupid enough to go after American soil, in fact I'd say the next big battle will be for Africa. watching the moves the Chinese have been making I'd say Africa is a MUCH more likely target, its got tons of resources and living space while the current armies there are mostly a bad joke.
The current fighters in Afghanistan and Iraq are a bad joke, that doesn't seem to be stopping them. I say let China try if they want to. Taking resources by force is always more expensive than just buying the resource from them. We could have bought the ENTIRE opium crop in Afghanistan for less then what we spend trying, and failing, to destroy it.
But in any case i look at the path we are heading on and can only think of Germany in WWII, where all these fanciful superweapons that were a PITA were created and ultimately were crushed by cheap Shermans and T34s. It amazes me how we have forgotten the lessons of that war because as Stalin so rightly pointed out "Quantity has a quality all of its own".
Just don't make it your ONLY quality.
BTW if you like weapon histories you should really check out Battlestations which is a most excellent British documentary series. just click on the uploaders name and you'll see he is uploading the e
Really all we NEED is a strong nuclear triad for defense, a reasonable navy and a small standing army. Nuclear weapons made large standing armies obsolete when it came to national defense. The only reason we "need" the large military we have today is because out leaders are bent on national offense and CREATING enemies instead of creating friends.
I always tell those who don't want the military cut, if there are Chinese MIGs flying air support over Idaho, that's not the point where we lament canceling the F22. That's the point where targeting data has already been loaded into our ICBM and SLBM missiles and will be launched shortly against mainland China.
Apparently he wasn't very honest when he took the oath of citizenship in 1998.
Neither was Obama, and virtually all of congress, when he took the oath of office, what's your point?
People need to remember that loyalty is a two way street. If our leaders are not loyal to ALL its citizens, then why should anyone be loyal to our leaders?
Broken window fallacy. The internet would have eventually been developed just like how the telephone system was privately developed. It may have been slightly different, but it would have developed.
It's not a matter of "Race to the bottom". The companies are building for the target market. If they know that their computers are going to be, on average, replaced every 3 years then they are going to build them to last 3 years plus a little bit more. They would be stupid to build them to last 20 years.
Let me use a car analogy. The fastest speed limits in the US today is 80 mph. Why don't car makers build cars whose top speed is only 80 mph? Because the acceleration and performance when you get close to 80 mph would be crap. They also know that most people will try to do 5 over. So, in order to satisfy their target market, they have to build cars that have good performance and acceleration to 85 mph no matter what, including headwinds, are of vehicle, etc. So the effect is that the cars they build just so happen to be able to do 110-120, poorly, so they can do 85mph well.
On the flip side, car makers don't build every car so it can do 230 mph. The people who want or need a 230 mph car are corner cases. Building a car that can do 230mph is expensive and most people only want a car that can do 85. Building 85 mph cars is much cheaper and people care more about the lower price than having the capability to do 230 mph.
My old Dodge Intrepid would do 85mph easy peasy, but once you took it past 95 it started to drag ass in terms of acceleration. I eventually got it up to 115, but it took a lot of road to do so.
In the past, computers were very expensive and people held onto them for a long time so computer makers build computers that lasted a long time. As the cost to build them went down, people replaced them more frequently, especially given the speed increases. Makers adjusted to this reality by building their computers to a lower expected lifetimes to reduce costs and sell more computers. If a 286 computer in 1983 cost the equivalent of $500 today to build, you would have seen them built like computers today.
Compare this to early mass-produced cars like the Model T. EVERYONE back then bought new cars. At some of the courthouses I do work at you will see their old photo collections on the wall, courthouse in Two Harbors MN as one example, people on homesteads on the North Shore of Lake Superior living in log cabins had shiny new Model T Fords. The used car market did not exist until the mid 1930's. Why did everyone buy new cars? Because cars then were cheap to buy and cheap to maintain, cheaper than horses in fact. (A Model T Ford would weather a harsh MN Winter under a tarp just fine, horses........not so much.) If you were even considering selling your car and buying a new one it was because your current one was little more than scrap metal at that point. Even when the used market pooped up, only the poorest families bought used cars because new cars were still very cheap to buy.
That changed significantly when the government started seriously regulating the car industry, lets leave aside the merits of some of those regulations for this discussion, those regulations seriously increased the price of new cars. The government mandates cost the same regardless of if the car was designed to last 5 years or 10 so car makers started building cars to last longer. Thus because of these regulations you say the average age of cars on the road increase drastically from the 60's to today and the used car industry become the big player it is today. In fact, some older cars are very desirable now because the government has made it illegal, via regulations, to build new ones and they have design attributes that people want. late 80's early 90's Ford Ranger pickups are one example. I recently bought a 1990 Ford Ranger with 241,000 miles on it. I started searching the car forums, looking to fix it up a bit as an around town pickup and I made the mistake of posting photos showing its condition and what I paid for it. I have people literally throwing money at me wanting to buy it instead of telling me how to fix the stupid gas gauge.
Actually the Sheridan itself was a clusterfuck, with a two piece ammo that sucked and its main barrel was really designed for a missile that wasn't worth a fuck.
No, the Sheridan was more-or-less fine, it was it's main gun that sucked. The Sheridan should have mounted the 90 mm M54 Gun that the 7 ton M56 Scorpion mounted, but to the generals, if it couldn't crack a T55 from 2 miles away then it wasn't worth building so they tried to shove the 152mm gun along with the Shillelagh missile into it, with predictable results. Even back then they should have known that radio command guidance was a bad idea anyway, the concept of jamming radio signals was hardly a new idea. The Soviet's had the right idea, build a missile to fit the gun, not build a gun to fit the missile.
The US Generals of that day, all the way up to today, see the tanks only purpose is to duel other tanks. This is evident by the fact that the M1 Abrams fields no Anti-personnel or High-explosive rounds. They only recently deployed a canister round, which is a joke, machine-guns do that job. The M1 still has no HE rounds, meaning it is useless for counter-insurgency operations and destroying fortified positions. Contrast that with the Load-out for a Russian T-72, the standard loadout was at least 40% HE-FRAG rounds for use against infantry, anti-tank teams, and fortifications, with the reminder being HEAT and APFSDS. They knew full well that the job of the tank is to protect the infantry and the job of the infantry is to protect the tank, part of that job is to take on enemy infantry with its main gun.
frankly what we need is a modern Sherman, something solid and reliable with a decent range and easy to repair.
Well the M8 Buford seems to fit that bill. Level 3 Armor is supposed to defeat all HEAT rounds and up to 30mm auto-cannon rounds. Modern 105mm HEAT rounds will ironically penetrate just as much armor as 120mm HEAT and 105mm HE is cheap to make and effective against anything except other tanks. Is it the best and as good as it looks on paper and in testing? Don't know but we paid for the development and it's already type classified so lets buy some and try them out. It's certainly better, and cheaper, than the Stryker MGS that's for sure. The problem of course with the Sherman was its gasoline engine and low-velocity 75mm gun. If all M4s had had the "Firefly" 76mm cannon and a diesel engine it would have been much more able to deal with German tanks, yet still have been a good infantry support tank. The Israelis cracked T-55's with their up-gunned and diesel powered M4s.
Another option would be a vehicle like the M50 Ontos. Yes it could only hold 18 rounds of 106mm RR ammunition. Yes the loader had to expose himself to reload the guns. Yes it had a high profile. Yes the turret had a limited traversal range. But it also only weighed 8.5 tons, had a 21 hp/ton PW ratio, could travel over terrain that other armor got stuck in, and could ripple fire its 6 M40 recoilless rifles in a matter of seconds and completely devastate enemy positions. Or, if you didn't care about destroying everything behind the vehicle with the back-blast, fire all 6 at once. (If you fired 6 rounds of HESH at once, that meant that whatever you were shooting was going to be receiving 46 pounds of high explosives all at once.) In practice the Ontos would simply advance into firing position, it's armor immune to basic rifle fire, fire its guns, then retreat to cover to reload. It was incredibly effective in Vietnam despite its shortcomings and the idea was certainly worth developing further. Would have been handy in Fallujah. No matter the shortcomings of the Ontos, I think the troops would have preferred using that instead of having to run up to a building and chuck a 20lb bag of C4 through a window to deal with barricaded fighters.
None of the options given in any of the posts are "new" motherboards. All they are is old NIB mobos being sold off, most are horrifically obsolete as far as processors and ram go. Hardly any have SATA ports and the PATA ones can only take 120gb hard drives. Many of the "newer" ones only have two ISA slots, useless for the T1 switches we have deployed, we need at least 3 slots, 4 preferably.
Show me something with 3-4 ISA slots that can at least run DDR2, SATA drives, and a Core2 Duo and I'll be impressed. I'm already aware of the other stuff out there.
You don't have to rely on old computers for ISA support. There are plenty of well-known designing and producing new motherboards with ISA slots for pretty much the same price as an average motherboard, with the benefit of also supporting modern hardware.
Where might these be found? I re-solder the bad capacitors on old motherboards at work to keep ISA hardware working because you can't get new motherboards with ISA slots. I would be happy to be shown wrong and have a source for ISA motherboards.
Don't forget Finland and what they managed to do with the Brewster 239.
Also don't forget the junk the MIC is foisting onto our land forces. The 82nd airborne was promised the type classified M8 Buford Light tank to replace their M551 Sheridans, as soon as the 82nd scrapped all their Sheridans, the higher up brass went "Lol, Goatse" and canceled the program, leaving the 82nd airborne without any air-drop capable light tanks, they'll get flattened by a competent foe with anything more modern than a BMP-1.
What "replaced" the M8 was the Stryker MGS, a hack job of the most epic sort. While the M8 uses a special low-recoil gun, General Dynamics tried bolting on a cannon meant for a 50 ton tank onto a 20 ton Stryker chassis, since the US army was giving them away. You're smart enough to figure out how well that worked. What they had to do was manufacture special 105mm shells with half charges of propellant, made by a GD subsidiary of course, to keep the recoil down. So the MGS has zero ammo interchangeability with existing stocks of 105mm ammo. The M8 fired full power rounds and was type classified when the MGS was still vaporware..
Of course the MGS can't be air dropped or carried in anything smaller than a C-17 while the M8 can be air dropped from a C-130. (With limited ammo and fuel.) Would it surprise you to find out that the general who pushed the Stryker is now working for General Dynamics?
Makes you want to cry in frustration. We blow money on weapons we don't need and cancel weapon systems, costing a fraction the cost, that might actually do some good.
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California is a prime example of WHY there needs to be decentralized power. Most things should be done at the state level. When national government gets things horrifically wrong, everyone suffers. When a state gets things horrifically wrong, only the people in that state suffer. With small, largely self governing states, leaving for another state is relatively easy, putting economic pressure on the state government to not do stupid stuff and to fix current stupid policies.
Not to mention there is often several ways to solve a given problem. Just look at alcohol sales. Most states have a reasonably good laws on alcohol sales. Some states are really stupid about it, but they are limited to those states. This variety makes comparison easy, since we don't have to work on theory, we can go look at how the different laws work in practice.
Not to mention that some problems are bigger in some places than others. Is anyone really going to care if a farmers pickup driving down a gravel road in North Dakota has a catalytic converter in it? One-size-fits-all national solutions simply mean that the solution will not fit anyone.
Except that all the doom and gloom about ocean acidification is junk science.
They decrease the pH in the lab by adding sulfuric acid to the water instead of the proper method of increasing the CO2 concentration. (Since it's easier to dump in a measured amount of acid and measure with pH strips rather than rig up the equipment to measure and maintain a high-CO2 environment.) That increased CO2 makes it easier for coral and other organisms to make calcium CARBONate for their shells. Where do you think that carbon to make their shells comes from? (dissolved carbon dioxide, bicarbonate ions, carbonate ions) The carbon is what is in short supply in seawater, 441ppm calcium vs 90ppm carbon, so increasing the amount of CO2 in the oceans increases the amount of carbon, meaning coral can grow faster because the process has become more efficient because of additional carbon, more than offsetting any damage to their shells.
You also have the inconvenient fact that there are past times in Earths history where CO2 levels were 10 times higher than they are now, yet coral still grew and thrived. The pH of seawater is around pH 8.2. Pure water is pH 7.0, and clean rainwater is pH 5.6. Also, seawater is a highly buffered solution. (Translation: It can take up a huge amount of dissolved inorganic carbon without significant effect on pH.) There is not the slightest possibility that the oceans could approach the neutral pH of pure water even if all the fossil fuel in the world were burned, so all talk of ‘acid’ oceans is pointless.
Unless you think that getting Apple to move to 100% renewable power is making things worse,
Green power besides hydro and nuclear is more expensive than fossil fuels. That higher price is the market telling you that it takes more resources to use "X" source of power than "Y". By using more resources you are doing more damage to the environment than by using the cheaper source of fuel that uses less resources.
True, though I wonder if it is not partially because of increased technology that we simply don't need NORAD in a mountain anymore. With better and better communications tech even after a first strike retaliation will still take place.
But the basic thing is this: if you have a lot of nukes you tend to build up a huge army precisely so that you'll never have to use them. You know nukes probably mean mutually assured destruction, so you never go "oh no problem, I'll just lean on the nukes" Now, even though I live in Western Europe I think it's not that important: the Soviet Union was the only superpower to defend its home turf in Europe. It had a huge army. The US also had a huge army, but it didn't have its capital in Europe. The fact remains that both nuclear armed to the teeth superpowers also had strong conventional arms.
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As opposed to building up a huge army because you don't have them?
No, the reason the Soviets had large conventional force was to keep satellite nations and their own civilian population in line
The US also did have large conventional forces because it was operating under the flawed premise of perpetual "Limited War" in the third world and desire to police the world. That theory will hopefully be shot in the head and burred for good after the last few we've been in
350,000 US troops in Europe in 1980. Add different national armies to this and the fact that the defender tends to be in a better position and the certain Soviet victory starts looking a lot less certain. Not to mention that 350 000 troops mostly standing guard far away from home hardly sounds like defence is cheap.
The Soviets outnumbered NATO 3-to-1 in tanks, which at the time were technically comparable to western tanks, and had over 50% more aircraft. They also had more troops, more APCs, more SAMs, etc. A war would have been costly, but eventually the Soviets could have very well taken Europe.
No, I certainly could not, but I am sure there are people that exist who would be able to defeat the pass-code protection or reset the code to a known quantity, or reverse-engineer the detonator and engineer their own, given a sufficient amount of time.
if you have that level of engineering expertise, just skip the whole "steal nuke" part and build your own with stolen enriched Plutonium.
Accidentally entering the passcode might not be too likely... but did you consider the possibility that a faulty electrical component in the unit's electronics or software results in it arming the device when it's not supposed to be armed, or acts as if a passcode has been entered and starts a countdown when no human has instructed it to arm or detonate?
Yes that was considered all the way back in 1945, which is why nukes back then had multiple interlocks to prevent such a thing. For example. Here is the firing sequence of a "Little Boy" nuke:
Several mechanical timer switches closed 15 seconds after the bomb was dropped. ( don't have an exact number of how many there were.) These timers cut-off the barometric switches, capacitor bank, and radar switches.
At 7,000' the barometric switches closed. I believe that there were a total of 4 barometric fuses, at least two had to activate to arm the third stage. When those fuses closed they, charged the capacitors that would set off the powder charge in the gun tube. They also turned on the radar fuses.
At 1,800' the radar switches closed. There were 4 radar fuses, at least two had to activate to detonate the device. When they do, the stored energy in the capacitors set off the charge and detonated the device.
Now, point out to me where the possibility exists that a faulty electrical component in the unit's electronics could detonate the bomb?
Doesn't matter if a barometric fuse is faulty, the timers and radar fuses stop it. In addition to the need for a second barometric fuse to fail in the correct way as well to complete the circuit.
If a single timer fails you either activate a barometric sensor, arm the capacitor bank, or a radar fuse, neither of which can detonate the bomb on its own.
If a radar fuse is defective, that can't detonate the bomb either. They aren't even powered on until the timers and barometric fuses close their relays and two radar fuses need to close before the bomb can detonate.
You don't have enough monkeys and typewriters to make your scenario anywhere realistic.
It's conceivable a short circuit and software bug in your computer-controlled ignition system could result in your engine starting.
Not really. The starter switch in the ignition key switch, on my car at least, has separate wires going to power the ignition, fuel pump, and the starter solenoid. You would HAVE to have all 3 fail in the correct way at the same time to start the car. Doesn't matter how buggy the software in the computer is, without the starter motor and the fuel pump, the car isn't going anywhere
As small as the probability is, it's still far from zero, it's still a potential concern. Even if a car DOES do that, it's not that big a risk. And only a person standing directly ahead of the car is really at risk.
Hey now, you forgot about the transmission failing and going into gear. This would have to happen after the engine started, as the car physically can't start while in gear.>
While you are correct that it is not zero probability, it is close enough to be considered zero.
South Korea would wipe the floor with North Korea and you know it. North Korea does not have the materiel for a war with the South. SK spends over 10 times more than NK on defense. On paper it looks evenly matched with number of tanks and planes, but most NK equipment is obsolete and poorly maintained. NK does not have the logistics to steamroll anywhere, nor do they have an effective delivery system for their nukes.
If anyone used a nuke first it would be the North. China and Russia are going to be upset at NK, not anyone who retaliates with nukes against NK. Only reason nobody has invaded NK is because nobody wants it. No modern infrastructure, no resources, a largely illiterate population.
Launch a steel based rod metal projectile insulated using the heat shield materials that came out of old shuttle project.
Do you even have the most basic understanding of how much that would cost? Here is a white paper with the details
Price Per Pound to orbit (pdf)
http://www.futron.com/upload/wysiwyg/Resources/Whitepapers/Space_Transportation_Costs_Trends_0902.pdf
So you want to launch a one ton rod into orbit? Just the cost of a launching that would be about $8 million, assuming a $4,000 per pound launch cost. Add onto that several million just to build it in the first place. You won't be able to afford to deploy these in enough numbers to make any difference. A LGM-30 Minuteman III ICBM with a 3 warhead MIRV is only about $7 million.
Massive destruction without having to worry about any radioactive fall out.
You haven't done the math on this, have you?
A 2,000 pound rod traveling at Mach 10 has a kenetic energy equal to..........1.2 tons of TNT. Congratulations, you've spent $10+ million to do what two $800,000 cruise missiles can do.
People have criticized the US stoppage on the shuttle
Not me, the shuttle was a total boondoggle. One-time use rockets/capsules have proven to be the more economical method.
The maneuverability to intercept and destroy any other countries military satellites if needed would also be devastating to those countries who rely on them.
The country that most describes is the US. No other country is as heavily reliant on satellites. Note that China supposedly has an operational anti-satellite laser, which I find to be completely believable as the tech has been feasible for quite some time.
I have pointed out elsewhere that any country that has rocket tech of SCUD-C level or better could build a "shotgun" type anti-satellite weapon for LEO satellites, the main difficulty being targeting.
Please elaborate. I don't see the game changing all that much. If China, who had no problem with human wave attacks and killing tens of millions in its botched social programs, wouldn't give North Vietnam a Nuke then the same factors are at play with Iran, Pakistan, etc.
If you disagree please tell me why so I can address it.
Yes, but the point is to destroy your enemy, not yourself.
Far more money would be saved by downsizing ones conventional forces, we don't need them for defense. Strong Nuclear Triad, reasonably sized navy, small ground forces for small scale events. That's all you really need for defense.
For those who are crazy or willing to sell the weapons to people who are, the "can't" part is more important.
Except for the historical fact is that nobody is that crazy.
The Soviet Union wouldn't give China nukes, nor would they even give them assistance in developing their own.
China/Soviet Union sent large amounts of supplies to North Vietnam, never even considered giving them a nuke.
North Korea will sell it's missile tech, but no evidence of even them being crazy enough to sell a nuke.
Iran wouldn't give a nuke to the insurgents either. (For the simple fact that the insurgents would use it against the Iranians.)
Sure some counties may hand out conventional weapons like candy to their favorite proxys, but nukes are a different breed. Conventional weapons are like letting your friend sleep over at your house. Nukes are like putting their name on the deed. A country can always stop shipments of conventional weapons if they don't like what they are doing with them before things out of hand. Not so with nukes.
Not to mention that even IF you steal one, good luck arming one. Nukes that are on active standby are heavily guarded and the detonators require pass codes to arm. Talked with someone whose duty was to guard nukes and his orders were, "ONE warning, if you do not get IMMEDIATE compliance, shoot to disable. If you can't shoot to disable, shoot anyway." People working on the weapons accidentally breaking procedure did happen on occasion, where they have to tell everyone to stop everything until the guards can sort everything out. Obviously everyone immediately complies because they know what the guards orders are and know if they get shot it's their own fault. Not unreasonable given what they are working on.
You can't just rip out the pass-coded detonator and wire all the blasting caps on the explosives together, to get the explosive "lens" in an implosion type weapon requires some blasting caps go off before others to take the core super-critical.If that timing is off all you get is a dirty bomb
Weapons that are not on active standby have vital parts removed including, when possible, the nuclear core.
This is done not only for safety, it prevents a saboteur from detonating a warhead. Worrying about a nuke accidentally going off is like me worrying about my car accidentally starting and driving over a little kid while I sit here in my house. Sure my car could accidentally catch fire, the horn could accidentally go off, but for the engine to accidentally start, the transmission accidentally shift into reverse, and the parking brake to accidentally disengage is an event so improbable that it is not worth considering.
They also don't store nukes in downtown New York, even though sometimes I think they should.
The purpose of having so many is relatively simple: Modern SOP in regards to nuclear war is "Retaliation after Ride-out". "Launch on Warning" is simply impractical given the short time between the launch of a first strike and the warhead reaching its target. Therefore a country thinking about defense will have to work on the assumption of a large portion of its nuclear weapons being destroyed in the first strike, even after extensive hardening of the launching platforms. Depending on who you ask, the military assumes a worst case scenario where between 90-95% of its strategic nuclear weapons will be destroyed/damaged in a first strike. So if you have 5,000 strategic nukes, ICBM, SLBM, bomber launched cruise missiles, that means that after ride-out you should expect to have only 250 to 500 weapons operationally available with which to immediately retaliate against the aggressor nation.
Then also remember that you don't want to use all your working weapons against the first aggressor nation, there are other nations that may take advantage of the strike to attack you, so you need to hold back some weapons in reserve in case you need to use them against other aggressor nations.
Going from 5,000 to 1,000, assuming 90-95% losses in a first strike, means you now only have between 50 to 100 warheads with which to retaliate with. When you look at it that way,you can understand why having 10,000 nukes is not seen as excessive by many in the military. They don't see us having 10,000 nukes. They see us having 500-1000 nukes after a first strike. less in fact when you consider that many will be offline for maintenance. Figure retaining half for continued deterrence and then you only have a max of 250-500 nukes to immediately retaliate with.
Of course then there is the fact that nuclear disarmament would probably make large scale war MORE likely. With nukes you do not need a large standing army for national defense. (For national OFFENSE, what the US is doing today, you do.) Without them you have to expend vast resources maintaining a conventional military for purely defensive purposes. Seriously, why DIDN'T the Soviet Union just steamroll until they got to Gibraltar? They could have done so with conventional forces largely at any time during the Cold War. Because they knew full well that such an action would result in nuclear retaliation.
We will have neither of those
Mass drivers. Too expensive to get that much mass into orbit and no matter how fast you throw your projectile, it can only penetrate so far underground, as limited by physics.
Tactical lasers: Effectively banned as they are all too easily used, intentionally or unintentionally, as blinding weapons.
Also stupid easy to destroy such systems. Launch a missile straight up in a sub-orbital intercept trajectory. Payload is aluminum spheres that is released into a fan pattern once the missile has cleared the upper atmosphere. Any Nation that has SCUDs or similar could develop such a system. A SCUD-C has a max altitude of about 124 miles at the max range of 340 miles with a 1300lb warhead. Both system you propose would be in low earth orbit, 500 miles tops. If you shot straight up and reduced the payload weight I see no reason why a SCUD-C could not launch a payload of aluminum spheres 500 miles up. Once up there, the satellites own kinetic energy will destroy it when it hits one or more of the spheres, which relative to the satellite are not moving.
Such a system has the benefit of not creating space junk, as the spheres will simply fall back and burn up in the atmosphere. The only serious technical difficulty is targeting. The targeted satellites may have maneuver capability, but if it only has a short window of warning it will take a significant amount of fuel to maneuver out of the way of such a cloud. Running the satellite out of thruster fuel will be just as effective as destroying it.
Exactly. Greenpeace achieved its goals decades ago. They used to be all about taking reasonable and cost-effective measures to reduce pollution. After years of campaigning they managed to convince the majority of people that those goals were worth of pursuing.
Now, how does your organization remain confrontational and relevant when everyone already agrees with you? You have to adopt ever more extreme and absurd positions. It is around this time that Patrick Moore, one of Greenpeace's founders, left the organization because it had been taken over by loons and, after the wall fell, by Marxists. (Often called watermelons: Green on the outside, Red on the inside.)
Patrick Moore talk about Greenpeace
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMRUOSlQJ9A
Greenpeace, MADD, and other such organizations are irrelevant in today's world. They won, game over, move onto something else.
While I agree with the nukes, especially the nuclear subs that make any attempt at a first strike knockout against the USA a suicide mission, the thing about nukes is we WILL end up with proxy wars because it would be MAD if say the USA and Russia or China went toe to toe so the only way is by picking some third world country and going proxy war.
Why will we HAVE to end up with proxy wars? Why would we WANT to engage in proxy wars? The whole "Limited war"/ "Proxy war" theory devised by Henry Kissinger in the 50's has been pretty much shown to be a failure. Whatever enemies we may have now, a proxy war only creates more enemies and hurts us in the long term. Eventually the puppets you install fall and whatever replaces it will be openly hostile to you.
Butt out, let the tribes of the middle east fight it out and just buy the oil from them. The last 10 years of war works out to about $3,000+ for every person in the US. $3,000 buys a lot of oil. If China is stupid enough to try and start a proxy war let them get eaten up in the meat grinder. If people want to support the resistance fighters I have no problem with them freely contributing.
And THAT is where i think we are seriously fucking up. all our weapons are designed to fight a country like Russia or China and not bumfuckistan where it is much more likely we will end up with another Korea. the one thing i have always given the Russians credit for is how they can build cheap and reliable weapons that can be cranked out en masse. THAT is what we truly need and why i say the teen series, F15, F16, F18, should be what we are cranking out instead of these quarter of a billion technoturkeys. Look at the warthogs, i bet those have logged more hours than any technoturkey because in a proxy war a plane with long loiter times that can take punishment and deliver devastating fire is a hell of a lot more valuable in a proxy war type battle than something like the F22.
With you on that except for the F-18, that plane has its issues, WAY too easy to run that thing to Bingo Fuel. Have you ever read the short story "Superiority" by Arthur C. Clarke? It's available for free online and it's a superb illustrations of what's going on. Aside from references to vacuum tubes, that story could have been written today.
That is why i think we need something like the Russian S25, its easy to deliver into position, hell you could slap them in C130s and drop them just about anywhere, its got a good gun and can suppress infantry as well as take on small armored vehicles. Like you I doubt seriously we'll be running into someone stupid enough to go after American soil, in fact I'd say the next big battle will be for Africa. watching the moves the Chinese have been making I'd say Africa is a MUCH more likely target, its got tons of resources and living space while the current armies there are mostly a bad joke.
The current fighters in Afghanistan and Iraq are a bad joke, that doesn't seem to be stopping them. I say let China try if they want to. Taking resources by force is always more expensive than just buying the resource from them. We could have bought the ENTIRE opium crop in Afghanistan for less then what we spend trying, and failing, to destroy it.
But in any case i look at the path we are heading on and can only think of Germany in WWII, where all these fanciful superweapons that were a PITA were created and ultimately were crushed by cheap Shermans and T34s. It amazes me how we have forgotten the lessons of that war because as Stalin so rightly pointed out "Quantity has a quality all of its own".
Just don't make it your ONLY quality.
BTW if you like weapon histories you should really check out Battlestations which is a most excellent British documentary series. just click on the uploaders name and you'll see he is uploading the e
Really all we NEED is a strong nuclear triad for defense, a reasonable navy and a small standing army. Nuclear weapons made large standing armies obsolete when it came to national defense. The only reason we "need" the large military we have today is because out leaders are bent on national offense and CREATING enemies instead of creating friends.
I always tell those who don't want the military cut, if there are Chinese MIGs flying air support over Idaho, that's not the point where we lament canceling the F22. That's the point where targeting data has already been loaded into our ICBM and SLBM missiles and will be launched shortly against mainland China.
Apparently he wasn't very honest when he took the oath of citizenship in 1998.
Neither was Obama, and virtually all of congress, when he took the oath of office, what's your point?
People need to remember that loyalty is a two way street. If our leaders are not loyal to ALL its citizens, then why should anyone be loyal to our leaders?
Broken window fallacy. The internet would have eventually been developed just like how the telephone system was privately developed. It may have been slightly different, but it would have developed.
It's not a matter of "Race to the bottom". The companies are building for the target market. If they know that their computers are going to be, on average, replaced every 3 years then they are going to build them to last 3 years plus a little bit more. They would be stupid to build them to last 20 years.
Let me use a car analogy. The fastest speed limits in the US today is 80 mph. Why don't car makers build cars whose top speed is only 80 mph? Because the acceleration and performance when you get close to 80 mph would be crap. They also know that most people will try to do 5 over. So, in order to satisfy their target market, they have to build cars that have good performance and acceleration to 85 mph no matter what, including headwinds, are of vehicle, etc. So the effect is that the cars they build just so happen to be able to do 110-120, poorly, so they can do 85mph well.
On the flip side, car makers don't build every car so it can do 230 mph. The people who want or need a 230 mph car are corner cases. Building a car that can do 230mph is expensive and most people only want a car that can do 85. Building 85 mph cars is much cheaper and people care more about the lower price than having the capability to do 230 mph.
My old Dodge Intrepid would do 85mph easy peasy, but once you took it past 95 it started to drag ass in terms of acceleration. I eventually got it up to 115, but it took a lot of road to do so.
In the past, computers were very expensive and people held onto them for a long time so computer makers build computers that lasted a long time. As the cost to build them went down, people replaced them more frequently, especially given the speed increases. Makers adjusted to this reality by building their computers to a lower expected lifetimes to reduce costs and sell more computers. If a 286 computer in 1983 cost the equivalent of $500 today to build, you would have seen them built like computers today.
Compare this to early mass-produced cars like the Model T. EVERYONE back then bought new cars. At some of the courthouses I do work at you will see their old photo collections on the wall, courthouse in Two Harbors MN as one example, people on homesteads on the North Shore of Lake Superior living in log cabins had shiny new Model T Fords. The used car market did not exist until the mid 1930's. Why did everyone buy new cars? Because cars then were cheap to buy and cheap to maintain, cheaper than horses in fact. (A Model T Ford would weather a harsh MN Winter under a tarp just fine, horses........not so much.) If you were even considering selling your car and buying a new one it was because your current one was little more than scrap metal at that point. Even when the used market pooped up, only the poorest families bought used cars because new cars were still very cheap to buy.
That changed significantly when the government started seriously regulating the car industry, lets leave aside the merits of some of those regulations for this discussion, those regulations seriously increased the price of new cars. The government mandates cost the same regardless of if the car was designed to last 5 years or 10 so car makers started building cars to last longer. Thus because of these regulations you say the average age of cars on the road increase drastically from the 60's to today and the used car industry become the big player it is today. In fact, some older cars are very desirable now because the government has made it illegal, via regulations, to build new ones and they have design attributes that people want. late 80's early 90's Ford Ranger pickups are one example. I recently bought a 1990 Ford Ranger with 241,000 miles on it. I started searching the car forums, looking to fix it up a bit as an around town pickup and I made the mistake of posting photos showing its condition and what I paid for it. I have people literally throwing money at me wanting to buy it instead of telling me how to fix the stupid gas gauge.
Anyway, back on topic. Users like me
Actually the Sheridan itself was a clusterfuck, with a two piece ammo that sucked and its main barrel was really designed for a missile that wasn't worth a fuck.
No, the Sheridan was more-or-less fine, it was it's main gun that sucked. The Sheridan should have mounted the 90 mm M54 Gun that the 7 ton M56 Scorpion mounted, but to the generals, if it couldn't crack a T55 from 2 miles away then it wasn't worth building so they tried to shove the 152mm gun along with the Shillelagh missile into it, with predictable results. Even back then they should have known that radio command guidance was a bad idea anyway, the concept of jamming radio signals was hardly a new idea. The Soviet's had the right idea, build a missile to fit the gun, not build a gun to fit the missile.
The US Generals of that day, all the way up to today, see the tanks only purpose is to duel other tanks. This is evident by the fact that the M1 Abrams fields no Anti-personnel or High-explosive rounds. They only recently deployed a canister round, which is a joke, machine-guns do that job. The M1 still has no HE rounds, meaning it is useless for counter-insurgency operations and destroying fortified positions. Contrast that with the Load-out for a Russian T-72, the standard loadout was at least 40% HE-FRAG rounds for use against infantry, anti-tank teams, and fortifications, with the reminder being HEAT and APFSDS. They knew full well that the job of the tank is to protect the infantry and the job of the infantry is to protect the tank, part of that job is to take on enemy infantry with its main gun.
frankly what we need is a modern Sherman, something solid and reliable with a decent range and easy to repair.
Well the M8 Buford seems to fit that bill. Level 3 Armor is supposed to defeat all HEAT rounds and up to 30mm auto-cannon rounds. Modern 105mm HEAT rounds will ironically penetrate just as much armor as 120mm HEAT and 105mm HE is cheap to make and effective against anything except other tanks. Is it the best and as good as it looks on paper and in testing? Don't know but we paid for the development and it's already type classified so lets buy some and try them out. It's certainly better, and cheaper, than the Stryker MGS that's for sure. The problem of course with the Sherman was its gasoline engine and low-velocity 75mm gun. If all M4s had had the "Firefly" 76mm cannon and a diesel engine it would have been much more able to deal with German tanks, yet still have been a good infantry support tank. The Israelis cracked T-55's with their up-gunned and diesel powered M4s.
Another option would be a vehicle like the M50 Ontos. Yes it could only hold 18 rounds of 106mm RR ammunition. Yes the loader had to expose himself to reload the guns. Yes it had a high profile. Yes the turret had a limited traversal range. But it also only weighed 8.5 tons, had a 21 hp/ton PW ratio, could travel over terrain that other armor got stuck in, and could ripple fire its 6 M40 recoilless rifles in a matter of seconds and completely devastate enemy positions. Or, if you didn't care about destroying everything behind the vehicle with the back-blast, fire all 6 at once. (If you fired 6 rounds of HESH at once, that meant that whatever you were shooting was going to be receiving 46 pounds of high explosives all at once.) In practice the Ontos would simply advance into firing position, it's armor immune to basic rifle fire, fire its guns, then retreat to cover to reload. It was incredibly effective in Vietnam despite its shortcomings and the idea was certainly worth developing further. Would have been handy in Fallujah. No matter the shortcomings of the Ontos, I think the troops would have preferred using that instead of having to run up to a building and chuck a 20lb bag of C4 through a window to deal with barricaded fighters.
Thanks everyone for reenforcing my point.
None of the options given in any of the posts are "new" motherboards. All they are is old NIB mobos being sold off, most are horrifically obsolete as far as processors and ram go. Hardly any have SATA ports and the PATA ones can only take 120gb hard drives. Many of the "newer" ones only have two ISA slots, useless for the T1 switches we have deployed, we need at least 3 slots, 4 preferably.
Show me something with 3-4 ISA slots that can at least run DDR2, SATA drives, and a Core2 Duo and I'll be impressed. I'm already aware of the other stuff out there.
You don't have to rely on old computers for ISA support. There are plenty of well-known designing and producing new motherboards with ISA slots for pretty much the same price as an average motherboard, with the benefit of also supporting modern hardware.
Where might these be found? I re-solder the bad capacitors on old motherboards at work to keep ISA hardware working because you can't get new motherboards with ISA slots. I would be happy to be shown wrong and have a source for ISA motherboards.
Don't forget Finland and what they managed to do with the Brewster 239.
Also don't forget the junk the MIC is foisting onto our land forces. The 82nd airborne was promised the type classified M8 Buford Light tank to replace their M551 Sheridans, as soon as the 82nd scrapped all their Sheridans, the higher up brass went "Lol, Goatse" and canceled the program, leaving the 82nd airborne without any air-drop capable light tanks, they'll get flattened by a competent foe with anything more modern than a BMP-1.
What "replaced" the M8 was the Stryker MGS, a hack job of the most epic sort. While the M8 uses a special low-recoil gun, General Dynamics tried bolting on a cannon meant for a 50 ton tank onto a 20 ton Stryker chassis, since the US army was giving them away. You're smart enough to figure out how well that worked. What they had to do was manufacture special 105mm shells with half charges of propellant, made by a GD subsidiary of course, to keep the recoil down. So the MGS has zero ammo interchangeability with existing stocks of 105mm ammo. The M8 fired full power rounds and was type classified when the MGS was still vaporware..
Of course the MGS can't be air dropped or carried in anything smaller than a C-17 while the M8 can be air dropped from a C-130. (With limited ammo and fuel.) Would it surprise you to find out that the general who pushed the Stryker is now working for General Dynamics?
Makes you want to cry in frustration. We blow money on weapons we don't need and cancel weapon systems, costing a fraction the cost, that might actually do some good.