You're happy that they get the bomb off, but are terrified for the kid. He's probably been taught nothing but hate for most of his short life, you hope he finds some quality of life and some sort of peace. But he's probably the same age of many of the fighter ISIS throws out on the battlefield with little or no regard for their lives. Hell I don't think the kids themselves have any value for their own lives. They've been fed so much crap from their "enlightened teachers".

You're not kidding.

*long

"One weapon has dominated the battlefields of Japan...."
and that weapon was the Naginata.

Kind of....but not as you describe.
Folks are already disqualified only if they have been found by the courts to be dangerously mentally defective after testing by a professional. That's a much bigger hurdle to leap than simply BEING defective, a hurdle that rarely is leaped.
You don't have to lie or hide anything if you've never been tested by a professional and deemed dangerous. Most mental defectives have not had that happen.
Guns MAY be confiscated after one is deemed legally dangerously mentally defective AND that determination is forwarded to the police AND they have the time and manpower to do something about it. That usually only happens when the person is already being prosecuted for some crime, they are found by the court to be dangerous to themselves and/or others, AND their guns are registered.

I have no idea where you got this idea that the law says indigence=criminally insane....it simply does not. Some elderly are having their firearms taken when they are put on welfare because they have dementia and can't manage their funds, but that's not what you said. It may be true that those forced by financial pressures to live in government run homes are not allowed to bring their firearms there, but again, that's not what you said.
The state does not move in and forcibly 'financially manage' the indigent in the US just because they're poor. Ever. If they did, we would not have a growing homeless population.

There are so many loopholes to 'compulsory service' that it's not compulsory at all, nor is it likely to ever be used again. Massive numbers of untrained soldiers is no longer a positive on the battlefield.

Being well trained in the proper use of firearms inhibits accidental misuse of firearms AND makes one reasonably 100% liable for their misuse if they ignore their training. If you were never trained what's proper and what's not, it makes it easy to misuse them and to then claim ignorance to avoid or mitigate liability for your actions.

-Newt

That's basically all there is left to say about TTIP, TPP, CETA, TiSA, etc, isn't it...

-------------------------------------
"It is of the utmost importance to work alongside other world leaders."

Just a small note on that one: thanks to the actions of Victoria "Fuck the EU" Nuland and the Nazi-supporting, oligarch-empowering regime of Yanukovich/Poroshenko in Ukraine, the "working alongside" part seems to fall awfully short when it comes to the Bear in the East. The Putin administration does some fucked-up shit, but all those tanks taking part in Anaconda 16, the biggest excercise since the end of the Cold War, they don't sport Russian insigniae. That's NATO, excercising a "Invasion of Russia" scenario at the border of Russia.

Maybe it's because I live in what would have been the battlefield of WW3, maybe it's because parts of my family come from Königsberg/Kaliningrad, but I support the old notion of "There is no safety in Europe against Russia, there is only safety in Europe with Russia".

Somehow, he doesn't seem to have issues working alongside the Saudi royalty who support all kinds of extremism while waging a war of aggression against Jemen. You know, the kind of extremism that gave the war mongerers in Washington an excuse to wage war in multiple nations.

How's Clinton doing, by the way? Still hailing her push to turn Libya into a failed state as an accomplishment and a sign of her experience in foreign policy? Still defending her vote for the illegal war of aggression in Iraq? Still pushing for more war in Syria? I would be interested in what Justice Robert H. Jackson, Chief Prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials, would have to say about the Bush administration, the Obama administration and our cherished Presidential Candidate in spe, HRC. Maybe he'd commend them on their oratory prowess or sense of fashion...

The Pro-Trump guy: "I'm in favor of doing what it takes.."
oh boy.
That's terrifying.
Episodes of "24" and the fervid imagination of the Hollywood notwithstanding ---
Torture isn't usually a good idea.
And killing EPWs (Enemy Prisoners of War) is NOT the way to get people to surrender to you. Which, if you want the other side to collapse, is exactly what you want them to do; surrender; give up; leave the battlefield. Not seek vengeance for the rest of their lives and their descendants.

@bareboards2

I've been operational in a war-zone. Shot at twice, and in a Mexican standoff once, but I never fired my own weapon.

Fact is, other developed nations manage just fine (for the most part) when it comes to things like this. It doesn't help that the US has never and probably will never allow any member of the forces to be prosecuted internationally for war crimes.

I know someone who was in Italy many years ago when a US plane decided to buzz underneath the wires of a gondola (the mountain kind, not the Venice kind, obviously). The tail of the plane caught on the wire and 12 people died, including a few children. There was no criminal prosecution for the pilot, crew, or commanding officers. I mean, just look at all the Wikileaks files on war crimes committed by US soldiers, barely any of them received any kind of judicial review (if any at all did, I never heard of them) including indiscriminate killing of random civilians.

Like it or not, that's a part of the US military culture and they worked hard to make things that way. In Vietnam it was estimated that one in a million shots fired from small arms actually HIT an enemy combatant. They learned it was because fewer than one in ten soldiers even TRIED to hit.

On top of that, the pay is so terrible, it's mostly those desperate to lift themselves and their family out of abject poverty that apply for enlisted positions. They are not well-educated and they are certainly not (for the most part) intelligent, hard-working individuals. The US chooses to spend the vast bulk of military spending on technology, rather than people (after all, it's easier to give kickbacks to your political donors that way).

Well, this is the result. A military with no fear of repercussions unless you're one of the poor scapegoats at Abu Ghraib (and if you think they represent even one tenth of the total personnel involved, you're out to lunch) and you're dumb enough to take pictures of yourself, there's pretty much nothing you can do to the 'enemy' that will get you in serious trouble.

Why do you think the Brits insisted on their own zones of Iraq for the second gulf war? In the first one they fought alongside Americans and suffered more casualties from American fire than they did from Iraqi fire. I talked to a Brit armored officer who was in the first gulf war. He went to introduce himself to the colonel of the American unit next to them, the Colonel stared in amazement at the Scorpion light tank and said, "What the hell kind of Bradley is that?" I can guarantee you, every soldier, from Private to the Colonel of my regiment could have identified every armored vehicle on the battlefield.

@enoch I agree with what you said (mostly) and agree with @Asmo even more.

The one thing not included in your pretty good analysis, enoch, is my main cri de coeur -- since the very beginning, feminists have been told not to call themselves feminists. From the very beginning. Using a lot of the same arguments that newtboy put forth, but way before there were third wave feminists.

It is a very touchy and real subject to those of us who have identified for decades as feminists despite an onslaught of reasons why that is a wrong thing to do.

I'm sorry that happened to you -- I hope I wasn't one who took you on. It is entirely possible I was -- turbocharged as a lot of us are about that "word." It doesn't take much to set some of us off -- it isn't pretty, it can feel terrible, and it is out of proportion due to the long history of having the very same conversation over and over and over again.

Because I hope I am now clear -- it isn't just a "word." The word has always been a battlefield -- the right to call ourselves that without being lectured, the right to define it for ourselves as women, the right to prioritize working for rights for a particular group and be clear about the subject.

Other than that, yeah, you are correct -- newtboy and I have the right to call ourselves what we will, for our own valid reasons.

@artician

Honestly, I'm much more a fan of stylized fantasy / sci-fi rather than just photo-realism. Like Bruti79 said, it keeps the game from ageing (e.g. TF2 still looks very good despite its age because of this).

Also a hyper realistic approach generally has less character and unique style. Admittedly, Overwatch is very Pixar inspired but stylistically that is still enough to distinguish it from your Call of / Battlefield monotony.

If there's anything I would criticize is the tone of all their titles is moving towards a PG-13-eque, appeals to the widest audience nature. They haven't released anything as dark as Diablo 1 or 2 in ages, and look like they never will.

I assume quality of rap is suppose to equate to quality of game. Seems its a theme i've seen around the last couple days.

I thought this was kinda funny https://youtu.be/9fohNO3_1rU

Although is there any actual game footage from Battlefield out yet?

Battlefield: Now with more trenchfoot and Spanish flu than ever before!

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This achievement has earned you your "Pop Star" Level 14 Badge!

My favourite comment from youtube:

"Why did they call it battlefield 1? Because you only need to take one look before you start throwing money at the screen."

I have not agreed that my position is wrong on the performance and capability designs of the F-35 and modern air combat. Please read the rest of my post above.... I'm still saying that dogfights have ended with WW1. I've never said we don't need ANY dog fighting capabilities. I'm saying that it's never the primary design idea of a modern fighter jet. You still have a cannon for back up. Just like soldiers have a side arm and a knife. Just in case you do get caught with your pants down or the main weapon fails at a critical moment.

I have agreed on the waste of money aspect of course. I'll also agree that if test goals are being downsized to accommodate flaws, then that's just terrible. If it's not able to perform to it's design then it's useless.

The F-4 != F-35. I can see why people draw parallels. But that only works if you ignore that absolutely everything on the planes is different, the adversaries are different, and stealth is requirement for survivability. You don't use stealth planes in the way you use an non stealth plane. Have you ever heard of a sniper wearing a ghillie suit run across the open battlefield with a sword or pistol? There were so many tactical mistakes in Vietnam as well. The conditions in which that article talks about are also different. Those planes were flying low and slow for a bombing run. Because they didn't have laser, gps guided bombs, infrared fire and forget air to ground missiles or cruise missiles back in those days. You don't get fog at 40,000 feet. They had to fly that low to get a visual identification of their bombing target. That does not happen anymore either. You scream past at mach 1 above the clouds and the bomb hits where it was programmed to hit. Also the phantoms missiles were unrelaiable. That hasn't been the case since the 80s. And their training was poor. None of that is true these days, and has not been true since the 80s either. That's why every single fighter plane apart from the F-16 (which is made mostly as an export product anyway) has been created to fight at long range primarily. The F-15 which is the main air superiority fighter for the US, is heavy and has a worse maneuverability than any Russian plane. But it's still the most feared plane, with no loses in combat. The article you linked even says that. So it's basically contradicting itself. At the start it says, F-4's lost because they couldn't maneuver, and ends with therefore the US made the F-15 which has worse maneuverability than the Russian planes lol.



Edit: Cracked.com doesn't count as a reputable source for anything, including basic sentences, spelling and punctuation.

Edit2: Here is an article from an actual F-35 pilot that says the F-35 dog fights better than a F-16 since they keep tuning the fly-by-wire parameters. http://theaviationist.com/2016/03/01/heres-what-ive-learned-so-far-dogfighting-in-the-f-35-a-jsf-pilot-first-hand-account/

So even if it came to a dogfighting encounter, the F-35 is still the best plane in the US arsenal for dogfighting.

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