The Zero's Chinese performance was ignored by the U.S. command prior to pearl harbor, dismissed as exaggeration. That's actually the crux of my point.

Exceptional moments do not change the rule.
Yes on occasion a wildcat would get swiss cheesed and not go down, but 99% of the time when swiss cheesed they went down.
Yes, there were wildcat aces that did fairly well (and Zero aces that did even better), but 99% of wildcat pilots were just trying to not get mauled.

Hellcat didn't enter combat till mid 1943, and it is the correction to the mistake. The F6F should have been the front line fighter at the start of the war... and could have been made sooner had Japanese tech not been ignored/dismissed as exaggeration.


Russian quantity as quality? At the start they were shot down at a higher ratio than the manufacturing counter ratio (by a lot). It was a white wash in favor of the Germans.
It took improvements in Russian tech to turn the tide in the air. Lend-lease only constituted about 10% of their air force at the peak. Russia had to improve their own forces, so they did. By the end, planes like the yak3 were par with the best.


The Mig31 is a slower Mig25 with a digital radar. Their version of the F14, not really ahead of the times, par maybe.

F15 is faster than either mig29 or Su27 (roughly Mig31 speed).
F16/F18, at altitude, are moderately slower, but a wash at sea level.

Why would they shoot and run?
We have awacs, we would know they are coming, so the only chance to shoot would be at max range. Max range shots are throw-away shots, they basically won't hit unless the target is unaware, which it won't be unaware because of the RWR. Just a slight turn and the missile can't follow after tens of miles of coasting and losing energy.


Chinese railgun is in sea trials, right now. Not some lab test. It wouldn't be on a ship without first having the gun proven, the mount proven, the fire control proven, stationary testing completed, etc.
2025 is the estimate for fleet wide usage.
Try finding a picture of a U.S. railgun aboard a U.S. ship.


Why would a laser rifle not work, when you can buy crap like this : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7baI2Nyi5rI
There's ones made in China, too : https://www.sanwulasers.com/customurl.aspx?type=Product&key=7wblue&shop=
That will light paper on fire ~instantly, and it's just a pitiful hand held laser pointer.
An actual weapon would be orders of magnitude stronger than a handheld toy.
It's an excellent covert operations weapon, silently blinding and starting fires form kilometers away.


Russia does not need to sink a U.S. carrier for no reason.
And the U.S. has no interest in giving Russia proper a need to defend from a U.S. carrier. For the very reasons you mentioned.


What Russia can do is proliferate such a missile, and effectively deprecate the U.S. carrier group as a military unit.

We need carriers to get our air force to wherever we need it to be.
If everyone had these missiles, we would have no way to deliver our air force by naval means.

Russia has land access to Europe, Asia, Africa. They can send planes to anywhere they need to go, from land bases. Russia doesn't /need/ a navy.

Most of the planet does not have a navy worth sinking. It's just us. This is the kind of weapon that disproportionately affects us.

-scheherazade

A big part of the Zero's reputation came from racking up kills in China against a lot of second-rate planes with poorly-trained pilots. After all, there was a reason that the Republic of China hired the American Volunteer Group to help out during the Second Sino-Japanese War – Chinese pilots had a hard time cutting it.

The Wildcat was deficient in many ways versus the Zero, but it still had superior firepower via ammo loadout. The Zero carried very few 20mm rounds, most of it's ammo was 7.7mm. There are records of Japanese pilots unloading all their 7.7mm ammo on a Wildcat and it was still flyable. On the flip side, the Wildcat had an ample supply of .50 cal.

Stanley "Swede" Vejtasa was able to score seven kills against Japanese planes in one day with a Wildcat.

Yes, the discovery of the Akutan Zero helped the United States beat this plane. But MilitaryFactory.com notes that the Hellcat's first flight was on June 26, 1942 – three weeks after the raid on Dutch Harbor that lead to the fateful crash-landing of the Mitsubishi A6M flown by Tadayoshi Koga.

Marine Captain Kenneth Walsh described how he knew to roll to the right at high speed to lose a Zero on his tail. Walsh would end World War II with 17 kills. The Zero also had trouble in dives, thanks to a bad carburetor.

We were behind in technology for many reasons, but once the Hellcat started replacing the Wildcat, the Japanese Air Superiority was over. Even if they had maintained a lead in technology, as Russia showed in WW2, quantity has a quality all of it's own. We were always going to be able to field more pilots and planes than Japan would be able to.

As far as Soviet rockets, once we were stunned by the launch of Sputnik, we kicked into high gear. You can say what you will of reliability, consistency, and dependability, but exactly how many manned Soviet missions landed on the moon and returned? Other than Buran, which was almost a copy of our Space Shuttle, how many shuttles did the USSR field?

The Soviets did build some things that were very sophisticated and were, for a while, better than what we could field. The Mig-31 is a great example. We briefly lagged behind but have a much superior air capability now. The only advantages the Mig and Sukhoi have is speed, they can fire all their missiles and flee. If they are engaged however, they will lose if pilots are equally skilled.

As @newtboy has said, I am sure that Russia and China are working on military advancements, but the technology simply doesn't exist to make a Hypersonic missile possible at this point.

China is fielding a man portable rifle that can inflict pain, not kill, and there is no hard evidence that it works.

There is no proof that the Chinese have figured out the technology for an operational rail gun on land, let alone the sea. We also have created successful railguns, the problem is POWERING them repeatedly, especially onboard a ship. If they figured out a power source that will pull it off, then it is possible, but there is no concrete proof other than a photo of a weapon attached to a ship. Our experts are guessing they might have it functional by 2025, might...

China has shown that long range QEEC is possible. It has been around but they created the first one capable of doing it from space. The problem is, they had to jury rig it. Photons, or light, can only go through about 100 kilometers of optic fiber before getting too dim to reliably carry data. As a result, the signal needs to be relayed by a node, which decrypts and re-encrypts the data before passing it on. This process makes the nodes susceptible to hacking. There are 32 of these nodes for the Beijing-Shanghai quantum link alone.

The main issue with warfare today is that it really doesn't matter unless the battle is between one of the big 3. Which means that ANY action could provoke Nuclear conflict. Is Russia going to hypersonic missile one of our carriers without Nukes become an option on the table as a retaliation? Is China going to railgun a ship and risk nuclear war?

Hell no, no more than we would expect to blow up some major Russian or Chinese piece of military hardware without severe escalation! Which means we can create all the technological terrors we like, because we WON'T use them unless they somehow provide us a defense against nuclear annihilation.

So just like China and Russia steal stuff from us to build military hardware to counter ours, if they create something that is significantly better, we will began trying to duplicate it. The only thing which would screw this system to hell is if one of us actually did begin developing a successful counter measure to nukes. If that happens, both of the other nations are quite likely to threaten IMMEDIATE thermonuclear war to prevent that country from developing enough of the counter measures to break the tie.

Why do you think it was secret?
Why do you think nobody noticed?
Do you think they just began on it since sanctions?

Every major power has had back-burner development of this stuff since the cold war.
The only "secret" was how much progress they made. That it existed, you can freely take for granted.

Just how you can take for granted that everyone is working on genetic weapons, everyone is working on directed energy weapons, everyone is working on infrastructure hacking weapons, everyone is working on automated robotic weapons, etc.

Do you think there is a better / more-cost-efficient place for Russia to spend defense dollars, than on a system which can trade the price of a missile for the price of an aircraft carrier?
I would be more surprised if they hadn't put their money into a program such as this.

Look at what progress China has made :
Which country is fielding a rail gun today? China.
Which country is fielding a man portable laser rifle? China
Which country has demonstrated quantum entanglement encrypted communication? China.

The world is moving on, while we stand around confidently patting ourselves on the back.

-scheherazade

The tricky thing about full auto is that most people avoid it primarily because of the severe penalties. Simply owning one that isn't registered and taxed is opening yourself to up to 10 years in federal prison plus a fine of up to 250k. If you commit a crime with one, they will hit you for the crime and the NFA penalty.

It isn't difficult at all to modify most current semi auto rifles into full auto. Heck, some of the older ones like the SKS can actually duplicate full auto fire by accident via slamfire. People don't do it because of the heavy penalty if you get caught, but it 'is' doable.

Of course, that doesn't take into account international concerns over automatic weapons, where access is usually limited to the military style rifles.

As an aside, you will see people here exploit loopholes like the bump stock to simulate full auto because they can't be subject to the NFA. Personally I think that is a bigger issue than printable guns, at least in the US. I think we still have something like 400-500k of those still floating around. To me it is far more of a 'sky is falling' issue than plastic printed guns, but that's just me.

Old cartoons like this are to new cartoons....What Lone Wolf Mcquad was to "The Texas Ranger". The original went to war with the cartels, from great distances with his sniper rifle, to close up with his Mac-10's, to murderous hand to hand combat. "The Texas Ranger" and his side kick shot their guns out of their hands

Mostly the trouble depends on where you work and how publicly you make your statement. I'd mostly get called a racist, but working for a partially publicly funded place if I was vocal enough losing your job or being told to apologise and be quiet are real possibilities.

The not allowed to talk about it applies much more heavily to anyone in the media. A recent example would be an aboriginal man that was recently shot by a white farmer. The narrative on the national CBC media made a big deal about rampant racism in the region against aboriginals. In their coverage of local opinion it was even more one sided, as they described two sides, the grieving family of the deceased and their supporters, and then the racists who sided with the farmer because they hated aboriginal people. They very slowly, reluctantly and buried deep under a lot of disclaimers released more information on the case.

The young man that was killed was in a truck with 4 of his friends, and their story was that they got a flat tire and pulled into the yard to seek help with repairs. The CBC ran that much right away. They were much more reluctant to include that the RCMP had been called BEFORE the truck got onto that farm because they had been trying to steal a truck from a neighbouring farm already beforehand. It wasn't until during the trial that even more came out, and CBC again reluctantly included details from the friends that where with the victim. All the occupants of the vehicle had been drinking very heavily all afternoon. They admitted to 'checking cars' at the earlier neighbouring farm. They admitted to using the butt end of a rifle to try and break the windows of the truck at the neighbouring farm, but the stock broke off the gun. It was found at the neighbouring farm by police. Upon arriving at the final farm, they admitted trying to start up an ATV and going through and unlocked vehicle there as well, but disagreed on who was doing which. The trial even included text messages from the night before wondering if one of the friends would be able to "go on missions" tomorrow because they were hiding from police after a liquor store robbery. The farmer also mentioned being scared about what could happen the day of the shooting because he thought back to a story he'd been told about 2 farmers being killed on their yards a few years before he'd moved into the area. Only 1 media outlet in the country, and in 1 article checked out that the identity of one of those killers back then turned out to be the victims uncle. I had to go back looking for the original article from when those murders took place to be sure that the current news article wasn't just sensationalising things.

Now of course none of that means you want to see somebody getting killed over property theft. None of that means racism in any way shape or form is justified. However, when there was a rampant run of rural crime across the area and farmers were getting more and more fed up and nervous about their safety something bad was eventually going to happen. It's a tragedy, but our media was absolutely terrified of covering the full story because listing the facts I just laid out is considered racist. Your blaming the victim. My listing of the above facts is not supposed to be done without including many times more explanations and reasons that this was the white man's fault.

Ultimately, the absolute failure to talk openly about things in Canada is getting people killed. We absolutely need to be clear that stealing doesn't deserve a death penalty. We ALSO need to tell a group of young adults that were going farm to farm, with a loaded rifle, raging drunk, stealing and breaking into vehicles that doing that was a BAD idea and one of the reasons is that doing so might get you shot by someone that doesn't know if your going to hurt them or not. I really believe if the kids had been white that would have been the narrative, but because of race it wasn't. It just makes things worse and inspires more risky and dangerous decisions from people in the future and more people will continue to get hurt.

I'll bet $100 that the first political murder we see this cycle will be a Trump nut killing someone they decide is a dangerous lefty....and another $100 the right will shrink from it by saying he's a lone wolf crazy person and not a real Republican following the talking points to their logical conclusions.....oh wait, that already happened in Charlottesville, where's my $200?

I guess they learned nothing from pizza gate, and why would they, it didn't hurt them a bit when one of their own attacked a pizza parlor full of kids with his rifle looking for Clinton to kill because they told him she was there selling child sex slaves.
Jubus Fucking Christ. They're actually trying to start a civil war spouting this bullshit to impressionable morons with guns and hatred, and they know it. If you're politically left of Reagan, buy some guns, you just might need them soon.
*promote exposing the thinly veiled call for civil war if Republicans lose control.

You are right, I copied and pasted the title from YouTube as is. No intent other then the comedy aspect was in my mind at the time I posted this one.

But I have lived in the states enough to know this is a tender subject. Every time I go to Vegas I visit the gun ranges that offer full Auto Micro Tavor. Outside of those trips it's just air rifles.

Your video, Tonight, you pukes will sleep with your rifles, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

This achievement has earned you your "Pop Star" Level 268 Badge!

Good analogy except isn't there is a real purpose for having a bad cat. To effectively defend yourself from criminals or what the 2nd amendment meant to defend yourself from a bad government. Now where the line is that prevents us from driving around in tanks or having missiles to just owning a cute little kitten is... I cannot say but I would think having a standard issue combat rifle (ar-15) is within the reasonable limits. Just my take on it.

Idk, kind of not in the spirit of the original game at all.

The whole thing with Doom was it was alarming to turn a corner and have a monster RIGHT THERE in your face. Gameplay was FAST too, which added to the feeling of immersion.

I hear the pew pew pew of this plasma rifle that's firing anything less than 20 rounds a second and weep digital tears.

Yes. Lets confront the issue of mental health. The unhinged shouldn't be allowed access to any weapons, be they pistols, rifles....atomic bombs...

Excellent.

"The problem is that very dangerous people have very easy access to very dangerous weapons."

So, there's 3 issues there. Address any ONE of the three, and things would get better. Maybe not "job done" better, but better. Take moderate, corrective steps on all three, and we'd be MUCH better off.

1) Dangerous people. How could we take dangerous people out of the equation? Background checks. Licensing. Revoking gun ownership privileges for convicts and people diagnosed with mental health problems.

2) Easy access. What could we do better to sensibly and fairly restrict access to firearms? Well, lets see ... fucking anything stands a better chance of working than the nothing that we're doing now. So again, background checks, licensing, registration. Enforcement of said requirements.

3) Dangerous weapons. I think a legitimate criticism of "the left"s typical stance on gun control is that they might be a bit TOO focused on this one.
There is some core truth to the NRA harping "guns don't kill people, people kill people." If a murderous psycho decides that they want to kill a bunch of people, they can find ways of doing it that don't necessarily require guns.
However, it is also true that easy access to weapons designed for war can escalate the degree of tragedy quickly.

Basically, this one and #2 are a trade-off. Bolt action rifles and shotguns might be OK with fewer restrictions. Semi-automatic? High capacity? Doesn't it make sense at some point to at least be a bit careful about who we allow unfettered access to these things?


Trump's parroting of the NRA plan to put MORE guns in schools would be laugh out loud stupid if it wasn't guaranteed to end in tragedy rather than comedy. I can't fathom how anyone, even the nuttiest of gun nuts, could think that is a good idea. And I'm actually rather pro-gun. But, c'mon ... some limitations and restrictions just make obvious sense.

A car is a much better and more legitimate general-purpose "tool" than a firearm. But improper use is dangerous and potentially deadly, so we take some common sense steps to try to limit that. Want to drive? Get a license. Pass a safety test. Pass physical and medical tests to show that you are capable of controlling the vehicle. Periodically re-test to stay current. And, expect to LOSE your license if you drive irresponsibly (drunk, moving violations, etc.).

I don't think those are unfair requirements to be granted the privilege of a license to drive a motor vehicle. To me anybody that has a proper respect for the utility of a firearm, and also a respect for the damage that improper use of firearms can do, should be in favor of sensible restrictions and limitations placed on the privilege of being allowed to own and use a firearm, just like we accept for cars.

Sigh. What a sad day to have to read the likes of you.

I didn't know there was a strict definition. I asked a question and pondered some answers. Oh no! There world is ending. Why do you have to be a continual callow fool about such things? You'll note I didn't jump to google (like others do) to quickly look up a definition (I chose not to). I don't like using google as a false extension of my knowledge like others do. I like to have a good discussion using only the knowledge I have at that instant. But instead we all have to suffer people like you who jump in keyboard blazing "you're wrong on a thing and therefore you're an inferior fucktard who doesn't deserve to be here" instead of going "Actually, there is a strict definition of assault rifle. It's defined as...". Do you see the difference? I hate to be the one to tell you, but you need to learn to control your emotions. As an adult you should have learned this by now. You may believe you are communicating effectively but you are not. You are abrasive and abusive to anyone and everyone on far to regular a basis. You should be ashamed of yourself but I doubt you have the introspection to see your flaws.

The most irritating thing about having to point this out is that, now with strict definition in hand (provided by you), I can point out that instead of you telling Digitalfiend there is a strict definition and that "assault rifles" are already heavily restricted (as you should have pointed out), that I have to point it out to him instead.

And yes, I was already familiar with the studies I quoted previously - I have previously researched the topic of gun control in Australia.

"Why must you feign being so obtuse and naive as a pretext to sesquipedalian and pedantic argument of your own creation?"

Please stop making things up. The second you see what you consider a mistake you jump in with bullshit like this thinking you are going in for the kill. You're laughable and you're making life hard for yourself.

Shotguns aren't rifles? No shit Sherlock. It was an example of where semi-automatic is better. Semi-automatics are better than pump guns. You're dreaming if you think they're even in the same league. Duck hunting is better with a semi-automatic.

The only person who said anything about "Indiscriminately pumping animals, even nuisance animals full of lead" is you. I don't know where you learned to hunt but I learned one shot one kill. And a semi-automatic makes this more efficient (and if you do need a backup shot it comes very quickly). Most pest animals are left to rot. It's too much trouble picking up the carcasses (and often legislated that you must leave them where they drop). If you don't know how to hunt then leave it to the people who do, please (it's so easy to turn your words around).

Trapping, baiting, etc. are others methods that work well in varying circumstances.

Choosing a pump gun over a semi-auto is a beginners mistake. The spread of buckshot or home defense rounds at close quarters is fairly low and you must always aim your firearm properly. In a home defense situation, anyone who is relying on the spread of shotgun pellets to hit their target is a terrible marksman and should consider getting some lessons. You get the same loading sound from a semi-automatic when you let the bolt go forward. I don't know of any data to support the notion that the loading sound scares people away. It has some merit though.

Now, as usual for me I'll be busy for the next 4 months (back at work this morning - I shouldn't even be replying to this but I thought - "hey, I've gotta throw a dog a bone"). I may or may not get to reply to the expected vehemence to come. Have fun howling at the wind. Don't worry, you're views are the immutable truth and anyone who disagrees with you is wrong, and you're insults are totally the best (snigger).