JediMaster

Brazil hasn't had to worry about more than regional defense for a long time now. The Gripen is fine for that. I don't know what ambitions it has as far as global deployments/activities, but the Gripen should work well enough for that if they choose to, even if it's not ideal.

There's a difference between private ownership in your home and giving them to dozens of people in a very crowded area that is often filled with overly tense people.

Both American Dad and Grimm had episodes about Krampus this month. Kind of bizarre.

iPhone 6 will have "Made on the Moon" tags.

It IS real. And don't call me Shirley.

I might be wrong, but AFAIK there has yet to be a situation where armed TSA agents would've been necessary? If this is a "we think just in case" issue, I think it's going a bit too far. Now if they want to task existing LEOs to the TSA for this, that's different. Retired cops or those looking to supplement their income on their time off, sure. But to say "let's go get it for all of them" is just exponentially increasing the chances for an accident for the POSSIBLE benefit of MAYBE stopping a problem in the future.

Yeah, that's another awkward one. Surely they could've honored them in a better way.

Frankly, the Onion is the only reliable source of news.

Ah yes, the prototype for the CNDS, the Chuck Norris Delivery System.

"...and this is how we say goodbye in Tehran."

Considering this started as a very public unclassified program, there's nothing secret about it other than what they have it doing. It's appearance and overall payload and other abilities are already out there. It's like suddenly saying "wait, we want to classify the existence of the F-22!" A bit too late for that.

Shall we talk about naming ships like the Johnny Reb as a sop to political influence? One thing I find should be important is how the name sounds after "the" because that's the way people hear it. If it's some unwieldy grouping it won't work. For instance, "USS Yorktown" is fine. But "USS Battle of Yorktown" would be ridiculous. I never liked the idea to call a ship "The United States" as a result.

A powerful leader without a shirt on convinced the modder it was in their best interest to abandon it.

"Is this a lightsaber I see before me??"

I believe rFactor 2 doesn't use Steam, nor does iRacing. Does Game Stock Car? I don't have that one either, but I don't think it's on Steam.

Can you place an aircraft carrier in any of the lakes? That would be awesome.

Yeah, early RAM was very much based on fiberglass with metal fibers to help disperse the EM energy that painted it. So like all fiberglass, you have to be careful around it so as not to breathe small bits in. The F-117s major issue was the doors didn't have good seals, they used tape. So every time a panel was opened for maintenance there was a lengthy process of retaping all the door seals prior to a mission. As for the timing of its retirement, it seemed to coincide roughly with the F-22's entry into service. Although it's not done it operationally yet, it CAN carry a small bomb load and do roughly the same mission the F-117 could. In practice, it won't, as mentioned the B-2 is better at that right now.

There was no fuel dump before Tranche 3? I thought every plane had that.

I meant a laser sight/range finder on the pistol. In addition to making it more accurate (and not being that costly) it has the benefit of giving you a non-lethal option if you get them in the eyes.

I heard they stopped overflights of USSR territory years earlier due to SAM threats. They used SLAR and other instruments to look inside from along the border. As for avoiding the R-33, that would depend on the launch conditions. If the rumors are to be believed, the Blackbird might have been able to outclimb and outrun it given sufficient warning. At a minimum it was about 20k ft higher than the interceptor, and that alone kills range and speed. I think it was retired because primarily of the costs to keep them flying. After all, we still have and use the U-2s with pretty much the same sensors, and those things hadn't flown over the USSR since the 60s. Satellites are perfect for denied territory.

You could also go banned weapons route, and make the laser capable of blinding even through a canopy. So shine it at the pilot and he's forced to turn away or lose his vision. Dazzling is a big problem even with safe lasers.

The problem is people think of stealth the wrong way. Stealth does not mean "invisible and undetected, and once you are it's useless." It means being harder to detect. Once you are, you're hard to track. Once you are, you're harder to engage. Once you are, you're harder to defeat. If all those add up to you being able to destroy your adversary before he can destroy you, it doesn't matter when he saw you, it doesn't matter how he saw you, because he's gone and you're still there. No one has ever argued against ECM, saying it's not useful. Stealth is no more than passive ECM, passive as in "no work required" as opposed to chaff which still requires being ejected even if it uses no power. To rely on it solely is just as foolhardy as flying blindly into the face of the enemy and assuming your ECM will protect you. Of course, most people don't know about that because while stealth isn't classified, many of the other technologies that 5th gen aircraft use are. So all they see is "stealth = high price for no more ability"...but that's wrong.

It's SuperHDR! It's awesome, love it! Love it!! NOW!!!! Or you can change those numbers and be a downer.

It's going to be like FC3 for WWII instead of recent jets as far as that goes. Can't speak to the fidelity of the modules, though. Will they be a bunch of P-51D-level planes, or like FC3 will some be at a lower level? We won't know for sure until we have it released.

I'm glad they're addressing the CBU issue. I always hate it when someone else uses them in MP right now.