JediMaster

The problem with the "why fix it if it isn't broken?" refrain is that it IS broken, most people just haven't seen it yet. It's like the bridge that doesn't collapse until that heavy snowfall finally overloads the crumbling support. The bridge wasn't fine the day before and broken the day after, it was already broken but the rot was under the surface and no one noticed till it collapsed. The point of regulating it as a utility is because like most utilities there is little to no competition and expensive infrastructure. You don't have three sets of power lines and you're not going to have three cable companies' fiber. If I don't like Time Warner, I can't go to Comcast or Cox or whoever. My choices are slow laggy satellite or AT&Ts Uverse which is like cable on its worst day EVERY day. Your alternative to your local Chili's bad baby back ribs isn't to go get a McRib at McDonald's, that's not a comparable alternative. AT&T is bluffing. They build out more infrastructure so they can make more money. Has ANY company ever said "to make more money is going to take too much effort, we won't bother"? Will this cut into their profits? Certainly. But just like corporate taxes do not restrict hiring if the company needs more personnel to expand (because the company can't choose NOT to expand, Wall Street won't allow that), AT&T won't sit back and do nothing if Verizon decides it WILL do it and gain market share. All would need to collude together and agree to stop, in effect boycotting their customers in an attempt to force the gov'ts hand, and I can't see that happening. These ISP's profit expectations are built on the idea that they sell more capacity to their customers than they can provide. If everyone used the bandwidth they paid for continuously and simultaneously the network would collapse. To continually throttle and increase the rates of those who are using what they're paying for is a bit like throwing out the customer at the all-you-can-eat buffet for eating three people's worth of meals. If you can't afford that, why are you having an all-you-can-eat buffet? The plans that have caps on them with speeds so high that you can hit your cap in one DAY are ridiculous. The solution that no one will go for is pay-as-you-go internet. If you don't use any, you pay nothing. If you use 100mb, you pay for that, if you use 100GB you pay for that. No limits on bandwidth or data caps, pure usage. Of course, that means the vast majority will never pay that much because they really don't use that much and profits would tumble even as the network would have lower utilization. Yet that less than 1% of their customers who use tons of bandwidth WOULD cut back so their bill stayed manageable while everyone else would pay very little. That's why people are sold a speed. The "some are using too much" argument is just a way to further increase their profits as they're not in any danger of losing money.

Screw the politics, that gunner's family owes your father like no one's business, and I'm sure he never regretted not getting a bigger medal.

The problem is with like a dozen variants which one do you pick to make? Or do you make more than one?

And Iran finally gets their RC Ho229 model in flight! The paint scheme is historically inaccurate, though.

I know T-38s are often used for this purpose, and in the case of the 117 specifically (there are shots of the all-black 38s around), to keep the pilots proficient without wearing out the birds themselves. I'm sure it's a case of cycling them through to keep them airworthy until such time as the cost to do so outstrips its "insurance policy" value. As for flying with other planes, that also makes a lot of sense. If you have to fly this thing anyway to keep it working, and someone else needs to fly a mission with a plane for whatever reason, why not combine the two? Why does the airworthiness check ride have to be a boring circuit of the range? Instead of detailing a second plane like an F-16 or something, let the black jet do it. If it's a test involving RCS, it's 100x more logical than using a B-2 or F-22 or F-35.

Also, say the engine failure rate is X%. By having two engines you're doubling your chances of having one fail. Now if it's a simple one where you just shut it down, ok, dump your stores, dump some fuel, and limp home. But if it's a catastrophic failure, how far away is that other engine anyway? Unless you're in a 737-type configuration, engines that close are well known for taking out each other. Or the engine failure could cut fuel, hydraulics, anything, and make the plane unflyable even as the 2nd engine continues working. So the likelihood of being in a situation where a twin-engine plane would survive when a single would not is very small with modern engine reliability even in the case of combat damage.

The problem is that no one wants to admit it's a Very Bad Thing when ANY organization has too much power. Doesn't matter if it's the gov't or if it's a company, it's BAD. It's not "better" that it be a corporation like the GOP thinks, or "better" if it's the gov't like the Democrats think, it's equally BAD. In The Beginning there were multiple ways for people to access the internet. Then companies started buying other companies to the point where it's down to like three and the gov't. Now there are no choices. Your choice is internet or no internet, not "do I go with cable or DSL or satellite?" when most people don't have access to all three. Typhoid is one of like 5% of the population who have multiple practical avenues for internet access. Most of us get one practical one and one that's not but might work. When your choices are paying Ferrari rates for a Toyota, or Toyota rates for a Kia that actually is in the shop most of the time because it won't work, you don't have a choice. You get crap if you can't afford the Ferrari, and if you can then you're getting gouged. The knee-jerk "all gov't regulation is bad" reaction makes me laugh, because without it we'd be living in smog worse than Beijing (where ironically EVERYTHING is heavily regulated) with carcinogen-filled water to drink and driving in death traps that may or may not keep us alive in an accident to a job that had little concern if we got injured or killed on the job because they'd just get another worker, likely another child in a coal mine forced to drop out of school. The argument that a company that's not good to work for won't have any employees has been demonstrated false time and again over history. People need jobs, and if every company is almost equally bad to work for, is the whole country going to quit? Oh that's right, then we'd all be dependent on the state to provide for us! The people who work for the gov't and the people who work for these companies are the SAME. They're both driven by self-interest, which in a company usually means to get more money for themselves via a raise by making more money for the company (and if it's by cutting corners, like GM, sure, do it!) and in the gov't means either giving favors to companies which donate to reelection campaigns and thus give more security to both the elected officials and their staffs or just being a bureaucrat whose job is just to keep on doing the same thing. They don't want more to do, they want less to do for more money and benefits. No one in the FCC wants to regulate the internet because they're already working 2-3 hrs of their 8 hr days, they don't want to work for 4! They get overpaid for doing as little possible, and they want that to continue ad infinitum. THAT is working for the gov't, which is the biggest welfare program this country has--millions of people paid six-figure salaries to do the amount of work that should make them minimum wage in a real job. The idea that by working for one or the other suddenly you adopt anti-American views is ridiculous, they have the same views after they take the job that they had before--"what's in it for me?", which is pretty much the American Way. The fallacy is in standing up for either the gov't against the corporations or the corporations against the gov't and thinking it's righteous. It's not. It's disgusting. It demonstrates a willingness to demonize the mistakes of the one side while ignoring the excesses of the other which is STUPID. If you can easily rattle off 10 things wrong with gov't without being able to do the same for corporations, or vice versa, then you have a dangerously skewed perspective on the world. Neither is more or less evil than the other. They're two devils fighting for control and we're the pawns.

I'm not keen on that either! Concorde was like "do you find most jets too small? Well here's Concorde, it's smaller!"

I've seen only a handful of pics of the JAWS scheme, but I didn't realize it was full wrap around, I thought it was top and sides only. I agree that I will always think of that Euro green when I picture an A-10 in my mind. The gray one just lacks soul.

To be fair, no one cares about a prototype's visibility. Unlike in the West where the new engines tend to be tested extensively and debut with the new fighter's first flight, in China and Russia it's common practice to stuff an existing engine into a new airframe, even if it's underpowered, to work out the flight dynamics while the engine is finished. They have a lot more difficulty making engines over there, and it's the major area in which they're behind the West. Notice they made it a twin-engine design, even though it's barely bigger than the F-35, because they have no chance of getting an F135-class engine built anytime soon.

The amazing part is that neither wing nor gear "caught" the water and caused the plane to slow down enough to tumble in.

Most certainly. They're still buying them while the USMC hasn't had a new airframe in forever and the USAF stopped buying 15s and 16s long ago (although it got its under-200 F-22 buy). The USMC's AV-8s are falling apart. Their Hornets can soldier on for awhile still, but they'll need to go as well since they're just as old as the planes the USN will replace with F-35s...the legacy Hornets. Not sure about the D models, though, since they use that back seater extensively. The USAF's F-16s are getting to the point where they're going to need life extensions, and they prefer to do that only for the newest ones and the smallest number they can manage. As for the A-10, who knows? Personally I think some of the F-16s need replacing a LOT more than the A-10s ever will. The USN supposedly will replace its oldest Super Hornets (likely the old E models without AESA) with the F-35C at the end of their buy, but they could just as easily wait for the UCAS program to mature and buy those instead. I don't see the F ever being replaced by 35s since there aren't any 2-seaters (and never will be).

Looks nice! Now if you could do something about shrinking the Atlantic so it's not so far away, I'm not keen on airplane trips over 3 hours...

Hey, even a broken clock is right twice a day.

I always laugh when I hear the same "squeaky metal door opens" sound or the "dopplerized semi horn" as a truck goes by (like truck drivers just regularly blare their horns for no reason other than driving by something). Don't forget that bizarre "silenced gun" sound that doesn't sound like any gun, silenced or otherwise.

He wasn't angry, just hungry and confused.

Yup, I was in high school as well. My first thought was what Pink Floyd was going to do, then I remembered Waters had quit.

The USN version is the one on the "slow track." The USMC need the B model badly, the USAF is eager to get their A, but the USN has been rather blase' about the program with a "we get it when we get it" attitude.

Yup, it sure can fly...in circles.

I'm not really so worried about China. China thinks differently. The West (and I include all of Europe and even Russia in this) thinks globally. It's all about being big on the world stage. Are we respected? Are we feared? Are we liked? What are you doing? Why are you doing it? Even ISIS thinks that way, threatening countries far away from it. China looks inward far more. They care primarily about what happens inside their borders, above all else. As such, any UN resolution that consist of the violation of sovereignty over an internal matter (ie Syria civil war) they proclaim hands-off, because they don't want anyone interfering with THEM, so they want to maintain that precedent. After that, China looks to its neighbors. They will trade with Africa or Europe or S America, but they don't really care about anything else there. They care about the Pac Rim. India, Japan, Russia, Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan...stuff in their backyard. They don't want or need to be a global superpower, they want to be an unparalleled regional power. There are parallels to post-WWII Russia's "buffer zone" idea, but only in execution, not really in philosophy. They don't want Korea under their control as a buffer to Japanese invasion so much as they want Korea doing things their way to maintain order in the regions adjacent to Korea's border. We'll only ever fight China if we stick our noses into China's sphere, like happened in Korea. China would never send "advisors" to the Middle East to fly fighters or operate SAMs like Russia has. It doesn't matter to them. Despite the fact that our last two decades with Russia have been smoother than the last 2 with China, I still find it more likely we could fight Russia again, soon, then China. Especially as Russia has leaders who remember the "bad old days" and still have some of that mindset, while China was never a major adversary, more a wary one that we mutually tried to avoid dealing with and has no lingering resentment to deal with.

NTSB has apparently discovered an erroneous command to feather given shortly after ignition, causing severe stress leading to disintegration. Whether it was a pilot mistake or a short or other automated mistake is still not reported. However, that could absolve the new engine of fault and instead bring the other systems into focus.

Molotov's? Really? I would've thought that far too ineffective in a modern (ie post-Korea) conflct.

It's not about the lyrics, it's about the music. The man was a poet, not a songwriter, and the words are excellent while the music matched to it never did anything for me. It might be the constant climbing and descending of the octaves, I'm not sure.

A Hunter Mk58? I didn't know ATAC had one of those.