>> ^EmptyFriend:

I'm not disagreeing. I'm actually currently in the middle of a research project on the decision to scrap Constellation and the implications. All I was saying is that taking the anger out on such a small program isn't fair. For $10M you'd have a hard time doing something as simple as upgrading all the PCs in a ship class to WindowsXP (and yes, that is something that is only now happening).
The total cost to launch a space shuttle into orbit is incredibly high though, also. Like in the $1B territory.
>> ^mentality:
>> ^EmptyFriend:
>> ^mentality:
So this is what $553,800,000,000 a year gets you.

_{Iraq and Afghanistan not included.}

good thing you took out the iraq and afghanistan money (or tried to at least), wouldn't want that number to seem ridiculously untrue.
a little search says this contract wasn't even $10 million (which is actually pretty small).
http://www.ga.com/news.php?read=1&id=72&page=7
EDIT: and just to be clear, i do think military and defense spending is way too high, but i at least support the development of new technologies as opposed to the continual support/retrofit of old stuff.


Oh I'm sorry, I didn't realize that new technologies to kill people were more important than other kinds of research. Good thing we're slashing NASA's budget so we can better conduct an asymmetrical war on terror using the power of electromagnetism.
Sorry for the snark, but the ridiculous defense spending, record deficit, budget cuts in all the wrong places, and development of weapons systems grossly out of touch with what's needed, is seriously pissing me off. And that goes for the F22/F35 too no matter how f awesome they are.




It's $10 million invested from the US office of Naval Research from June 2006 to Jan 2009. It doesn't say how much was invested in the last two years, and how much the project costs in total, including other sources of funding. And that's just for a proof of concept. How much is it going to cost taxpayers to make a version fit for service, and they start arming ships with it? Yeah, billions sound like the right territory.

For the most part, I agree @BoneyD. I wouldn't have been personally offended had I been on that ship but I do have some misgivings.

Members of the military tend to have a pretty crude, dark, and mean/offensive - from a civilian point of view - sense of humor. The flip side is that most of them have pretty thick skin as well and aren't offended as easily. I've heard my share of jokes that I wont tell to most civilians.

His 'gay' insults I found to be the worst part but it's hardly surprising considering he is part of an organization that until very very recently considered homosexuality worse than friendly fire.

That said, my disagreement stems from his position and how he responded to criticism. As a high-ranking officer in command (or soon to be in command) of a large number of men and women it is his job to ensure a high level of morale, to ensure his people feel safe in their place of duty and to ensure those below him feel confident with him in the lead. I could see how these videos would undermine all three, even before he refused to stop after there were complaints.

My initial response when hearing about the videos was of how his actions reflected on the Navy itself. The following is a quote from Canadian naval officer Lt(N) P. Richard Moller from his paper entitled "Bureaucracy Versus Ethics" which, I think, addresses that issue well (even if from a Canadian standpoint):

"We must, at all times, remember that while we are wearing this uniform we represent the government and the people of Canada, as well as the element whose uniform we wear. Whatever we do reflects, for better or for worse, on ourselves, our element, and on the people of Canada. We have been entrusted with the responsibility of upholding the honour of our uniform, and all that it represents. The whole world will judge this uniform and Canada on our conduct while wearing it.
We must, therefore, comport ourselves on all occasions, and in all circumstances in such a manner as to reflect credit upon our element, our government, and our country. Our every act must encourage all people to have confidence in this uniform, and what it represents."


While the videos weren't personally offensive, I think they reflected badly on the US Navy and that is why such a big issue is being made of them.

I had a random guess as well. Most of the rail systems I am familiar with have a chamber the projectile travels down like the barrel of a gun. The main problem I have heard with this systems is the problem of bracing the projectile. How do you accelerate a metal object to super sonic speeds without it destroying the chamber via friction? Some had it in a jacket that was guided by a catapult like system on an aircraft carrier. This results in sparks, fires, and smoke because of the friction involved. I can't find details on this specific gun though beyond "they fired it".

http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/bae-producing-scaleddown-rail-gun-naval-weapon-01986/

http://www.navytimes.com/news/2010/12/ap-navy-dahlgren-railgun-test-121010/

Thanks for the promote and interesting story, although the last sentence was the one that really raised my eyebrows:

"The cheating scandal is the latest blow to the Academy, which suffered a sexual harassment scandal in 1990 after eight male midshipmen chained a female classmate to a urinal."

In reply to this comment by kronosposeidon:
>> ^EmptyFriend:

interesting story.
side note: i hope it's not a math course...
"the midterm exam makeup will open at 7AM on Monday morning, Nov 8.... it will close at midnight on November the 10th... it will be open 51 hours."
Sorry professor, that's 41 hours!!!!!!!!!!!!!
If they're keeping office hours from 7:00 am to midnight just for the makeup exam, that's 17 hours per day. (I highly doubt they would stay open 24 hrs/day, even to administer the makeup exam. They ain't working in a factory with night shifts.) If they do this on November 8, November 9, and November 10, that's three days. That would be 51 hours in total.

>> ^Drachen_Jager:

He's bluffing. There's no way they could prove conclusively whether or not any one person was involved without searching their rooms/belongings for the cheat-sheet.
You're probably right. However they might compare each student's score on the cheat test with the scores they've gotten on previous tests in the course, and if their cheat test score is significantly higher than their previous test scores, then that could be a big red flag. Maybe that's just one of their lines of evidence against the 200 suspected cheaters.

However I was thinking the same thing @chtierna said: he's mainly bluffing the cheaters. The guilty parties are much better off simply retaking the exam (and even possibly doing badly) than not taking the exam and then risk being expelled for cheating.

Unfortunately this shit happens more often than many suspect, but most of the time it goes undetected. Anyone remember the cheating scandal at the US Naval Academy in the early '90s? Of course not; you're all a bunch of damn kids.

*promote

>> ^EmptyFriend:

interesting story.
side note: i hope it's not a math course...
"the midterm exam makeup will open at 7AM on Monday morning, Nov 8.... it will close at midnight on November the 10th... it will be open 51 hours."
Sorry professor, that's 41 hours!!!!!!!!!!!!!
If they're keeping office hours from 7:00 am to midnight just for the makeup exam, that's 17 hours per day. (I highly doubt they would stay open 24 hrs/day, even to administer the makeup exam. They ain't working in a factory with night shifts.) If they do this on November 8, November 9, and November 10, that's three days. That would be 51 hours in total.

>> ^Drachen_Jager:

He's bluffing. There's no way they could prove conclusively whether or not any one person was involved without searching their rooms/belongings for the cheat-sheet.
You're probably right. However they might compare each student's score on the cheat test with the scores they've gotten on previous tests in the course, and if their cheat test score is significantly higher than their previous test scores, then that could be a big red flag. Maybe that's just one of their lines of evidence against the 200 suspected cheaters.

However I was thinking the same thing @chtierna said: he's mainly bluffing the cheaters. The guilty parties are much better off simply retaking the exam (and even possibly doing badly) than not taking the exam and then risk being expelled for cheating.

Unfortunately this shit happens more often than many suspect, but most of the time it goes undetected. Anyone remember the cheating scandal at the US Naval Academy in the early '90s? Of course not; you're just a bunch of damn kids.

*promote

>> ^Fusionaut:

Trivia Time!
The naval signal flags on the boat spell "G R O," which, as we all know, is the first half of Grover.
could it get any more obscure?

Trivia Time!

The naval signal flags on the boat spell "G R O," which, as we all know, is the first half of Grover.

Was that naval base clip from Pearl Harbor?

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

I like the new look- though there is more than a nod to Anime - she looks like a Final Fantasy character.

The old costume made Lynda Carter look like she was wearing over the naval, control top granny panties, IMHO.

^Nice copy pasta. Well then I raise you with>

Cut and paste, yes, to prevent inaccuracy, and thank you.

To an ante of coin based in fact you raise in fiat of opinion. I addressed
opinion already. Don't like facts? How about polls? Opinions were all you laid down.
.
As such, and from the website of the International Committee of the Red
Cross at:

<http://www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/INTRO/560?OpenDocument>

<Forum of adoption International lawyers and naval experts convened by the International Institute of Humanitarian Law, Livorno (Italy)>

<The San Remo Manual was prepared during the period 1988-1994 by a group of legal and naval experts participating in their personal capacity in a series of Round Tables convened by the International Institute of Humanitarian Law. The purpose of the Manual is to provide a contemporary restatement of international law applicable to armed conflicts at sea. The Manual includes a few provisions which might be considered progressive developments in the law but most of its provisions are considered to state the law which is currently applicable. The Manual is viewed by the participants of the Round Tables as being in many respects a modern equivalent to the Oxford Manual on the Laws of Naval War Governing the Relations Between Belligerents adopted by the Institute of International Law in 1913. A contemporary manual was considered necessary because of developments in the law since 1913 which for the most part have not been incorporated into recent treaty law, the Second Geneva Convention of 1949 being essentially limited to the protection of the wounded, sick and shipwrecked at sea.>

Good enough for the Red Cross.

Israel had and has an extant blockade...Simply, there was no attack. Termed
a Visit within the language of the manual and is evidently reflective of Maritime
Law. Israel was within their proper bounds per the above.

All the harangue amounts to posturing. Mission(s) accomplished. This, by the
way, is the only opinion I have offered.

I'm not sure why Regev made such a point about the warship, because it's been reported a few times that Turkey said it would send naval forces with the next flotilla.

I guess he just didn't have an answer.

Those troublesome Jews

Charles Krauthammer

Friday, June 4, 2010

The world is outraged at Israel's blockade of Gaza. Turkey denounces its illegality, inhumanity, barbarity, etc. The usual U.N. suspects, Third World and European, join in. The Obama administration dithers.
This Story

But as Leslie Gelb, former president of the Council on Foreign Relations, writes, the blockade is not just perfectly rational, it is perfectly legal. Gaza under Hamas is a self-declared enemy of Israel -- a declaration backed up by more than 4,000 rockets fired at Israeli civilian territory. Yet having pledged itself to unceasing belligerency, Hamas claims victimhood when Israel imposes a blockade to prevent Hamas from arming itself with still more rockets.

In World War II, with full international legality, the United States blockaded Germany and Japan. And during the October 1962 missile crisis, we blockaded ("quarantined") Cuba. Arms-bearing Russian ships headed to Cuba turned back because the Soviets knew that the U.S. Navy would either board them or sink them. Yet Israel is accused of international criminality for doing precisely what John Kennedy did: impose a naval blockade to prevent a hostile state from acquiring lethal weaponry.

Oh, but weren't the Gaza-bound ships on a mission of humanitarian relief? No. Otherwise they would have accepted Israel's offer to bring their supplies to an Israeli port, be inspected for military materiel and have the rest trucked by Israel into Gaza -- as every week 10,000 tons of food, medicine and other humanitarian supplies are sent by Israel to Gaza.

Why was the offer refused? Because, as organizer Greta Berlin admitted, the flotilla was not about humanitarian relief but about breaking the blockade, i.e., ending Israel's inspection regime, which would mean unlimited shipping into Gaza and thus the unlimited arming of Hamas.
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Israel has already twice intercepted ships laden with Iranian arms destined for Hezbollah and Gaza. What country would allow that?

But even more important, why did Israel even have to resort to blockade? Because, blockade is Israel's fallback as the world systematically de-legitimizes its traditional ways of defending itself -- forward and active defense.

(1) Forward defense: As a small, densely populated country surrounded by hostile states, Israel had, for its first half-century, adopted forward defense -- fighting wars on enemy territory (such as the Sinai and Golan Heights) rather than its own.

Where possible (Sinai, for example) Israel has traded territory for peace. But where peace offers were refused, Israel retained the territory as a protective buffer zone. Thus Israel retained a small strip of southern Lebanon to protect the villages of northern Israel. And it took many losses in Gaza, rather than expose Israeli border towns to Palestinian terror attacks. It is for the same reason America wages a grinding war in Afghanistan: You fight them there, so you don't have to fight them here.

But under overwhelming outside pressure, Israel gave it up. The Israelis were told the occupations were not just illegal but at the root of the anti-Israel insurgencies -- and therefore withdrawal, by removing the cause, would bring peace.

Land for peace. Remember? Well, during the past decade, Israel gave the land -- evacuating South Lebanon in 2000 and Gaza in 2005. What did it get? An intensification of belligerency, heavy militarization of the enemy side, multiple kidnappings, cross-border attacks and, from Gaza, years of unrelenting rocket attack.

(2) Active defense: Israel then had to switch to active defense -- military action to disrupt, dismantle and defeat (to borrow President Obama's description of our campaign against the Taliban and al-Qaeda) the newly armed terrorist mini-states established in southern Lebanon and Gaza after Israel withdrew.

The result? The Lebanon war of 2006 and Gaza operation of 2008-09. They were met with yet another avalanche of opprobrium and calumny by the same international community that had demanded the land-for-peace Israeli withdrawals in the first place. Worse, the U.N. Goldstone report, which essentially criminalized Israel's defensive operation in Gaza while whitewashing the casus belli -- the preceding and unprovoked Hamas rocket war -- effectively de-legitimized any active Israeli defense against its self-declared terror enemies.

(3) Passive defense: Without forward or active defense, Israel is left with but the most passive and benign of all defenses -- a blockade to simply prevent enemy rearmament. Yet, as we speak, this too is headed for international de-legitimation. Even the United States is now moving toward having it abolished.

But, if none of these is permissible, what's left?

Ah, but that's the point. It's the point understood by the blockade-busting flotilla of useful idiots and terror sympathizers, by the Turkish front organization that funded it, by the automatic anti-Israel Third World chorus at the United Nations, and by the supine Europeans who've had quite enough of the Jewish problem.

What's left? Nothing. The whole point of this relentless international campaign is to deprive Israel of any legitimate form of self-defense. Why, just last week, the Obama administration joined the jackals, and reversed four decades of U.S. practice, by signing onto a consensus document that singles out Israel's possession of nuclear weapons -- thus de-legitimizing Israel's very last line of defense: deterrence.

The world is tired of these troublesome Jews, 6 million -- that number again -- hard by the Mediterranean, refusing every invitation to national suicide. For which they are relentlessly demonized, ghettoized and constrained from defending themselves, even as the more committed anti-Zionists -- Iranian in particular -- openly prepare a more final solution.

With all due respect, there are alot of feelings and opinions being expressed here. I sought facts and found this that may be read in its entirety at

<http://www.redstate.com/jeffdunetz/2010/05/31/was-israels-boarding-of-the-gaza-flotilla-a-violation-of-international-law/>

I like facts, especially when legality is at issue.

<According to the San Remo Manual on International Law Applicable to Armed Conflicts at Sea, 12 June 1994:

SECTION V : NEUTRAL MERCHANT VESSELS AND CIVIL AIRCRAFT

Neutral merchant vessels

67. Merchant vessels flying the flag of neutral States may not be attacked unless they:

(a) are believed on reasonable grounds to be carrying contraband or breaching a blockade, and after prior warning they intentionally and clearly refuse to stop, or intentionally and clearly resist visit, search or capture;

NOTE: the San Remo Manual is not a treaty, but considered by the ICRC to be reflective of customary law.

Also, on piracy: the definition of piracy under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, section 101, is clear that piracy can only occur where there are “illegal acts of violence or detention” that are “committed for private ends.” Israeli actions were legal under the law of armed conflict (as evidenced by the San Remo Manual) and in any event, were not committed for private ends. Anyone using the term piracy to describe the Israeli action is clearly not aware of international law on the subject.

Here’s the bottom Line:

* A maritime blockade is in effect off the coast of Gaza. Such blockade has been imposed, as Israel is currently in a state of armed conflict with the Hamas regime that controls Gaza, which has repeatedly bombed civilian targets in Israel with weapons that have been smuggled into Gaza via the sea.

* Maritime blockades are a legitimate and recognized measure under international law that may be implemented as part of an armed conflict at sea.

* A blockade may be imposed at sea, including in international waters, so long as it does not bar access to the ports and coasts of neutral States.

* The naval manuals of several western countries, including the US and England recognize the maritime blockade as an effective naval measure and set forth the various criteria that make a blockade valid, including the requirement of give due notice of the existence of the blockade.

* In this vein, it should be noted that Israel publicized the existence of the blockade and the precise coordinates of such by means of the accepted international professional maritime channels. Israel also provided appropriate notification to the affected governments and to the organizers of the Gaza protest flotilla. Moreover, in real time, the ships participating in the protest flotilla were warned repeatedly that a maritime blockade is in effect.

* Here, it should be noted that under customary law, knowledge of the blockade may be presumed once a blockade has been declared and appropriate notification has been granted, as above.

* Under international maritime law, when a maritime blockade is in effect, no boats can enter the blockaded area. That includes both civilian and enemy vessels.

* A State may take action to enforce a blockade. Any vessel that violates or attempts to violate a maritime blockade may be captured or even attacked under international law. The US Commander’s Handbook on the Law of Naval Operations sets forth that a vessel is considered to be in attempt to breach a blockade from the time the vessel leaves its port with the intention of evading the blockade.

* Note that the protesters indicated their clear intention to violate the blockade by means of written and oral statements. Moreover, the route of these vessels indicated their clear intention to violate the blockade in violation of international law.

* Given the protesters explicit intention to violate the naval blockade, Israel exercised its right under international law to enforce the blockade. It should be noted that prior to undertaking enforcement measures, explicit warnings were relayed directly to the captains of the vessels, expressing Israel’s intent to exercise its right to enforce the blockade.

* Israel had attempted to take control of the vessels participating in the flotilla by peaceful means and in an orderly fashion in order to enforce the blockade. Given the large number of vessels participating in the flotilla, an operational decision was made to undertake measures to enforce the blockade a certain distance from the area of the blockade.

* Israeli personnel attempting to enforce the blockade were met with violence by the “protesters” and acted in self defense to fend off such attacks.>

First of all, I never said "international waters" because the Mediterranean is not.

Secondly if there is "paint ball" guns, then you are an idiot if you think the military carries paint ball guns used by children. These are military weapons used often in Iraq and other places because the "paint balls" contain chemical weapons. These are know as less lethal crowd control weapons.

These marines illegal boarded a vessel with many many fully automatic assault weapons and shot people. Anyone trying to point to a paint ball gun like it justifies piracy and murder is really pathetic and sadly trying to justify murder by these Israelis.

What if these people were afraid and were turning back? How would you know considering they were miles from the shoreline. The truth is that Israel should have waited until this ship was in THEIR waters and violating some law or justifiable reason to board a boat and kill people.

But they were cowards and wanted to do this at night instead of waiting until they were 22 or 11 miles or whatever and it was daylight and maybe even the media could see this.

Sure, these "activists" probably should have expected to be boarded. In fact, they knew about this boarding. For some reason some people on the boats tried to defend themselves. Does that justify shooting them?

How do you know the marines weren't going to murder everyone on the ship and steal the boat? How would anyone even think that wasn't a possibility? I mean what rational reasonable navy of a modern country can't just come alongside a ship during the daylight hours and say "turn back". They have a naval blockade.. Why not use it?

>> ^Pprt:

Please see:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3L7OV414Kk
and
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bU12KW-XyZE


Very compelling stuff.

I hope everyone here sees the Muzzas attempt to "kidnap" the heavily armed commando boarding their ship and their deadly offensive with "metal objects" and folk music. Israels' pussy-arse commandos are lucky the ship wasn't carrying weapons, or anything else Israel pretends it's illegal naval blockade of the mediterranian and Gaza is supposed to prevent, otherwise they might have had to gun down some old men and women armed with inflamitory songs and "metal objets". YOU ARE SURELY TAKING THE PISS