I don't get why they didn't pop some smoke and jam the radar. Those planes wouldn't come anywhere near if they can't see the water and the ship.

That, and get a solid missile lock on them until they clear out.

WTF kind of provocation is this. If we did this to their ships, they would be crying that it's an act of war and we're trying to start WW3.

I really wish that one had been taken down by a frightened seagull. THAT would have been some good karma.

First off, he's not talking about everyone who plays video games. He's talking about people who ONLY play video games to the point that they're socially maladjusted. Big difference.

And even if he was talking about the geekier video gaming crowd, I don't even understand why it even registered on your radar as insulting. If you're a group that's actually discriminated against broadly, fine, but nerds? In this day and age of Mark Zuckerburg and Bill Gates? Really?!

It reminds me of this Louie CK bit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7AbxHo9ybD0

"You can't even hurt my feelings."

Us poor nerds these days, with our solid paying upper middle class jobs and even higher, with college degrees! Pity us!

Just have the ability to laugh at yourself from time to time. Trust me, it's all going to be ok.

I miss my Commodore VIC-20. Got it in 1983 and learned how to program in BASIC with 3.5 kb of RAM. Backed up programs onto cassettes. Spent many hours playing Radar RatRace.

Dog fighting does not exist, and has not existed since WW1.

Even in WW2, planes attacked in passes. They start up high, fly down to pick up speed, attack and keep flying so that the enemy cannot catch them.

As that is happening, another pair of planes is already on it's way to make another pass.

Planes do not chase each other dodging around like X-wings and Tie Fighters. Because as soon as you do that their wingman shoots you down.

TopGun trains pilots in BFM and team work skills, not so much dog fighting. While one v one dog-fighting is part of learning good team work skills and becoming familiar with different scenarios, it isn't the focus.

In Vietnam, the missiles and radars were unreliable and missile had to be fired from a fairly close range. That hasn't been the case for some 30 years now, with missiles getting better all of the time with some insane ranges upwards of 80 miles. The plane is becoming more of a launch platform for missiles than anything else. That's why every fighter plane after the F-4 was designed that way primarily. The worlds best fighter is still the F-15 which has a massive radar and the best missiles. And less maneuverability than the F-16. Because they know dog fighting does not happen.



The scenario you mentioned where the planes are flying close together is not realistic - close in air to air combat is 100 miles.

Especially if the enemy plane has better maneuverability(which all Russian planes do already do anyway, apart from the F-16 if lightly loaded).
Pilots know very well the strengths of their planes, they would never put them in a position like that. They would be pinging each other to make their presence known (if a show of force was the desired effect) from over 100 miles away.


None of this makes the F-35 a good plane by any means. But I just don't agree with the reasoning in the comments here and in the media.

For example people keep mentioning the "Jack of all trades" issue. But they ignore the fact that ALL fighter planes built over the last 40 years have been turned into jack of all trades through necessity. Yet nobody criticizes them for it.

I mostly fly the same simulators as the US national guard does. So I'm hoping that it's accurate. But more than that I read a lot of books written by pilots about air to air and air to ground engagements. Which makes me more knowledgeable than 99.99% of the journalists reporting on the F-35. You'll notice that most aviation specific sites don't tend to bag out the F-35 because have a much better idea of how air combat works than the regular media sites.

EDIT: I was not aware they were ignoring failed tests. That's pretty worrying. Do you have more info on it I can read about?

Quite a lot of nations have old soviet Shilka's which do those supercomputer calculations. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-UnealTR-Y
You get within 1.5 miles of this thing, and it chews up anything that isn't jinking.
There are also variants of this thing which have missiles, and they can even shoot down other missiles to protect itself.
For those it's better to fire helicopter missiles from a low angle. Or bomb them from up very high.

Helicopters are less vulnerable because often they can fire without revealing their position. Modern missiles can be fired from as around 8km away. And they'll fire them while hovering low enough that their radar signatures can't be distinguished from the ground and surroundings. And since they are always facing the enemy their heat signature from the engines is facing away as well. (unlike a warthog that will show it's engines to the enemy as it flies up and away after an attack). Most attack helicopters have some kind of armour as well. At least in the pilot and critical sections.
Oh yes, and something really cool - the new Apache Longbow's can fire missiles that go around terrain to hit their targets! Super cool

They absolutely have disadvantages, but any decent pilot will fly their aircraft to it's advantages

It failed due to two reasons. The F4E was a two seater aircraft with a dedicated radar and weapons co-pilot, meaning it was really more comparable to an F15, and the weapons loadout that the F4 could carry was greater.

The only other area that the F4E was even close to the F16 in was rate of climb, and it still lost there. Now if you mean the German ICE F4E that was modified with better engines, etc, then yes, it was slightly better in RoC and turning radius.

The design and per unit cost of the F16 were much lower than the F35, because it was built on data learned from the Vietnam War, not theoretical data on a conflict that hasn't occurred yet (or may never occur). I agree we should update our weapons as needed, but we should only ever update with field tested data, not on theoretical combat.

For instance, if I came to you and said I predict our future soldiers will need to be protected from man portable rail guns, and that I needed a trillion dollars to make the new body armor, would you give it to me? Or would you say that manport rail guns are highly unlikely to be used in the near future and we need to wait and see?

I think they should call it "Hotblack' after Hotblack Desiato, the front man for Disaster Area.
Alternately, Quantum Black would be a good choice.

I wonder if you painted your car this color, would cop radar and laser speed traps not work on you?

If you're getting peculiar, welcome to my world. I wasnt attracted to her back when she first landed on my radar (Palin impressions), but there's something about her in the last few years that awakens within me the deep, sleeping desire to devour the beautiful. Now I just want to give her a tonguebath. (you know... like cats do).

Politically, maybe yes. Geographically, not so much. (I actually had thought they were closer together, but I still say it's the same region).

Of course, some people are more sensitive than others. I thought it was 'close' in the sense that it shows people almost touching an airplane in flight, which is insanely dangerous to all involved, shortly after another airplane went down, an act which is CLAIMED by terrorists to have been a terrorist act.

I thought the idea of small, private, radar invisible, personal 'aircraft' flying so incredibly close to an airliner, released right after an airliner crashed under suspicious circumstances was ill advised.
In fact, I think it's ill advised to show something like that even if there had not been a crash.
With a different title, this could have been a terrorist recruiting film showing the next level of attacks they're considering. Keep in mind that one can make (with enough technical knowledge) or purchase a set of 'wings' with no oversight, and once in the air the pilot is nearly invisible. Using them to fly right up to within touching distance of large airliners is not an idea I would have intentionally put in anyone's minds.

2 more comments have been lost in the ether at this killed duplicate.

Hmmm. Well, the old adage is that only a fool in a ship attacks a land fort. A static target, with big, obvious radars and refueling tanks?
Sounds like a missile target to me.
Geez, if a hot war ever breaks out there, it would a screw up of the most massive proportion by both sides.

As I understand it, China's biggest fear in the event of a military conflict with the U.S. is a sea blockade. These islands are meant to allow China's navel forces early warning for potential attacks (they are building long-range radar stations on some of the islands) and quick-strike capability in the event of an attempted blockade since the islands are being equipped with port facilities and will likely serve as refueling/rearming stations. They also are an attempt by China to "control" the traffic (both sea and air) moving through the area. They aren't designed to stop a full-scale invasion of the mainland and would likely just be bypassed if something like that ever came to pass.

EDIT: See here for a more detailed explanation about China's overall military strategy.

Why should any society capitulate for such an insignificant demographic group?

Statically speaking Gays are not even on the radar. Gays make up less then 4% of population. Just because gays have a larger demographic in media and hence have a greater opportunity promote their cause still does not change that fact that they are insignificant in the eyes of society.

And WE have decided that gay marriage is wrong and will not be tolerated.

NAMBLA probably has a bigger demographic. Either way should they be recognized?

I don't know if I ever said he was born in Kenya. I don't know. He ( his parents) did list him as being Kenyan citizenship on some school for or such.
His grandmother or great grandmother indicated he was born in Kenya-- So there is that.

I did say that the birth certificate he posted as a pdf did indeed look odd- When opening it in illustrator.

If you were to get your Birth Certificate copy they would give it to you in person or mail you a copy. If you were to "post" it as the White House did why would you not scan to JPEG or PNG?


They posted PDF. But would that truly produce 13 layers and look that way? We all scanned or OCR a document - you end up with odd characters and broken sentences but not what was posted by the White House..

Odd Very Odd---- never resolved- It ran for 1 week and Bin Laden was taken out and wiped this issue off the radar.

Nope. I have been a big Star Wars fan since I was a young kid (not quite old enough to have seen ANH or ESB in theaters, but I did see RotJ on the big screen, plus of course watching them all on TV many many times growing up) but somehow I missed out on those games.

Quick google shows Wing Commander 1 as 1990, Wing Commander 3 at 1994, TIE Fighter also in 1994, and X-Wing Alliance in 1999. I played those Wing Commander games (and others), and played a lot of Star Wars games during that span, including stuff like Shadows of the Empire and Rogue Squadron for N64. But somehow the X-Wing and TIE Fighter stuff stayed off my radar at the time.

Should I check GOG?