JediMaster

I'll just throw in that external ord will add weight and drag, but not affect area or lift. So the weight figures in directly, the drag of course just affects the speed.

Heh, if you go to Dulles and Intrepid you will see 2 of the shuttle orbiters, not to be missed!

Crimson Tide is post-Cold War but almost the same. However, the "bad guys" are really just an offscreen impetus for the action, you know next to nothing about them, it's the drama on board that drives it.

I've always been partial to "what in the wide, wide world of sports??"

To be honest, I always thought there was one there, somewhere. Never heard about it, but it seemed logical to assume it existed.

What are the stats on losses of F-16 due to engine failures vs Hornets? In other words, how many times has a Hornet made it home when an F-16 did not? How many Hornets were lost when the one engine failure was so bad that it went down anyway, either due to fire or taking out the 2nd engine, making redundancy irrelevant? I always hear this 1970's era argument about engine reliability thrown about, but that was based on the reliability of engines in the 1960s. How do engines in the 21st century actually behave? Of course, I'm sure Canada believes the US Navy has no regard for its pilots and doesn't care if they all splash down in the middle of the ocean which is why they had no qualms using single engined jets like the 35B and C, or the A-7s, or the A-4, or any of a vast number of single engined planes over the last 100 years. Only Canada is smart enough to realize that one engine = FREEZING DEATH TO PILOTS, naturally. If only the DoD had someone as intelligent and with as much experience as armchair generals, then no single engined plane would be developed or purchased ever again. But yeah, I'm sure buying a plane that has 2x the number of engines (and therefore will have 2x the number of failures) that will be obsolete in just a couple of decades is better than buying a plane that will be competitive for as long as the old Hornets have been around. Why buy a 2017 car you can use for 20 years when there's a 1997 model with low mileage available, even if the laws say it will be banned from road use in 5 years because of emissions standards? Buying a military platform based on what is best for peace time instead of war time seems a bit shortsighted...

Yeah, the A-10C was not built for extended inverted flight.

Exactly. And the right replies by falsely stating that it was better *insert random date in the past here* even when it can be proven that unless you are referring to white Western males it most likely wasn't. The problem is both sides are wrong in different ways. But those on the left say the right is MORE wrong, and wrong in the ways that count, while their flaws are smaller. Meanwhile those on the right say the left is more wrong, and is wrong in the ways that count, while their flaws are smaller. Found something that makes my side look bad? Attack the source for credibility, claim it's overblown, it's a conspiracy, it's a distraction from the REAL issues, why are we talking about it instead of X, blah blah blah. Found something that makes the other side look bad? Attack anyone that attacks it source, claim it's being covered up without adequate attention, decry how it proves how corrupt THEY are, demand it be treated as the greatest threat ever, blah blah blah. The cold truth is that if either the left or the right get their way, society will collapse. Only a balance down the center has made society grow, with balances between soulless capitalism putting children slaves in factories with a rich oligarchy treating the masses as subhuman and mindless socialism where people are actually supposed to work just as hard as everyone else, with no one slacking or overachieving and everyone having the same things as everyone else, in total disregard for actual human behavior and abilities. The idiotic demonizing of the other side so that it seems morally repugnant to compromise (the very foundation of the Constitution that both sides claim to admire, actually) is what is going to destroy this country. Not the right. Not the left. The unwillingness of the two sides to work together and insistence that ONLY they are correct will.

I've had a couple of instances of the site not coming up right when I first come here, but it could be my link which is combatace.com/index for some reason.

No. The world's climate is in no danger from nuclear plants. Worst case scenario is people near a plant might be in danger in specific cases. Yet the plant itself emits steam. An electric car emits nothing. You can charge it with solar power, or wind power, or coal power, or literally anything. A team of mules turning a wheel even. If petrol is so safe, I challenge you to sit in an enclosed space with a running internal combustion engine for a few hours. Then you will see how harmless it is. I refuse to drive with my windows open the air is so foul. I sit and imagine all the idiots around me with their windows open dying from cancer in a few decades from sucking it in all the time. There is also so much energy lost to heat and noise that is wasted instead of being used on powering the engine. Dreadfully inefficient. Oh, and I HATE filling up the car. I dream of the day where I can just plug it in at home and leave every morning with a full charge. No more visits to those awful smelling filling stations and stepping in a puddle you thought was water, but it wasn't, and now your shoes smell like it for the rest of the day, as does the inside of your car...

I never understood holding losers in such high esteem. The South was fighting for their homes and their way of life. They had every reason to give it their all. The North consisted of soldiers who didn't want to be there fighting an enemy they didn't care about to prevent them from leaving. Ever get in a fight with someone because they wanted to leave your party but, even though you didn't like them, you demanded they stay? I didn't think so. Yet the North won. So, QED the South's war was run by losers and they lost. Maybe if the vast majority of their population wasn't maltreated slaves they would've done better? Doesn't matter, they lost badly. Then they got even by spending the next 150 years whining about how great they were. Of course, if they had their way, we'd all be slaves to the Reich or Imperial Japan now, because a split US wouldn't have tipped the balance to win WWII. Or even if it had, it wouldn't have been strong enough to stand up to the USSR, so Stalin would've crushed us. If only the South had won to preserve the right to enslave, so that we could all be slaves now. Ah, dare to dream...

You referring to the engine or the APU? That APU is definitely higher-pitched than most, the engines themselves don't sound that different to me.

As far as I know there was never a carrier that had Tomcats that did not have Hornet as wells, at least once the Hornets entered service. While there were a few older carriers too small to take the 'Cat, I thought they were mostly all gone by the time the Hornet saw widespread adoption anyway. It's not like there were any restrictions, and they served for the 80s and 90s together, so there were I'm sure tons of pics of it. Now if you mean Super Hornets, that was a very small window and I'm sure more specific.

Anyone else wanna negotiate??

No kidding. Even those of us without the issue often need that for those times when you can't make noise and speaking or listening are out. At some point I've played almost every game I own with no sound for some period, some longer than others. With subtitles and chat and other indicators I can play successfully in most games. The experience is lesser, certainly, but it was either play the game that way or not play it at all. PUBG has made a ton of money, it's not struggling, it can afford to have these relatively inexpensive features. It's not like rewriting for DX12 or something!

It used to be they would do whatever was necessary to secure the votes to get reelected. This meant pandering to the people. Usually, this was actually a good thing, although sometimes it went wrong. Now thanks to things like unbridled money and gerrymandering it's largely irrelevant. You pander to the base to appeal to rich donors so you can effectively buy your position. With the majority of your constituents no longer important to your chances of being elected, why cater to them at all? The bureaucrats get rewarded for saving money, not spending it, unless it's an expenditure that will save in the long run but cost more now. In that case, keep on keepin' on the same old way as before because it's a cost that already existed and is therefore acceptable. There are only two safe assumptions: people will do what they think is needed to keep their jobs (and for bureaucrats that means doing nothing is usually safer than doing the wrong thing because elected officials love to come down harder on mistakes than inaction) and being able to blame someone else for something going wrong is paramount. Whatever your shortcoming, your failing, your error, make sure that there is another party that can be adequately blamed to prevent it from really being your fault, because hey, what can you do when working within the restrictions/directions/orders/regulations from the other group?

By all estimates, that would mean eliminating over half the population of the US and well over half the global population. Let's say 4 billion people to make it a nice round number. Everyone under 15, almost everyone over 70, the sick, the disabled... Are you willing to push the button?

Yes, but what does that say about the system if you can be tried, found guilty, and sentenced for a ridiculous amount of time that doesn't fit the crime you were actually charged with? Was he guilty in 2007? Sure, but that was an excessive sentence that shouldn't even have been possible. The thing over 20 years ago was fishy, no debating that, and he was acquitted because the state failed to prove "beyond a reasonable doubt." All the jurors said pretty much the same thing--they think he did it, but there wasn't sufficient evidence and plenty of room for doubt, so they had to acquit. Now why did the state fail so miserably? Tons of words written on that subject with no clear answer, we won't solve it here either, because no one but the dead and the perpetrator know. However, there is clear precedent of people getting "what they deserve" later to compensate for something earlier. Clearest case I can think of is Denzel Washington's Oscar for Training Day. I don't think it was the best performance that year, and it certainly wasn't his best in his career, but by that time it was felt he deserved to get one after missing out on earlier ones he clearly deserved more. So someone else got robbed of their deserved award so he could get it then to make up for when he didn't get the earlier one he did. Inverse situation of what happened with OJ, but it's the same principle.

Am I the only one who took notice of this? Specifically, if BST is doing this...what is ED doing? Maybe it's me, but besides 3D model/visuals I can't think of anything else a plane needs to be implemented in DCS World. It sounds like BST is doing everything that is not the appearance of the plane. Did BST overstate their contribution or is ED actually contributing that much less to the Hornet? I'm quite surprised.

This is cool. Glad to see the 33 getting some attention, I liked it back in the Flanker 2 days.

Were there? I've watched a lot of TV and film in the past decade, and I've seen a lot of the news reports, and I've seen very few bright stars. Quite a few train wrecks, though.

Right, many Euro projects have been jobs and R&D programs with a final system as almost an afterthought. Often seems to be about national pride (look what we made/what's our workshare) more than about what their militaries really need or could use. That said, their systems cost far less. So for only double (or triple, or more) the price, the US gets a small jobs and large corporate subsidy program along with a final system. Or, the respective countries could simply put all those workers on the payroll for like $50k to do nothing and it would cost 90% less. A military weapons program is the LEAST effective way to keep citizens employed that can really be imagined. It's a lousy justification yet it always gets used. "Supports X jobs!" For $50 billion? You could support 10X jobs easily for that much. Especially as with time these programs cost more and more while the number of actual workers utilized drops as automation takes over. It's the 2014 Toyota Camry! For $20,000! Supports over 10,000 jobs! It's the 2015 Toyota Camry! For $40,000! Supports over 1000 jobs! It's the 2016 Toyota Camry! For $60,000! Supports over 200 jobs! If ever a swamp needed draining, it's in military procurement regulations and oversight. This pattern should NOT be acceptable OR legal. There are equal parts incompetence and corruption joining forces to milk the taxpayers of as much money as they can manage while providing equipment that just barely meets the needs of the services. I mean, look at the widespread hypoxia issues in numerous planes across all the services. We've had oxygen systems on planes since WWII, what is the big difficulty here? This isn't some revolutionary new tech, it's a basic system that should be as reliable as wheels not flying off on landing.

Where's Weezer? Han Solo theme will be written by them. "Ooh, wee, ooh, I look just like Captain Solo. Oh oh and you're Leia Organa. I don't care what the odds are anyway, I don't care bout that."

I don't know if it would go over or not.TBH, I never thought the reboots of Doom and Wolfenstein would go over as well as they did considering how badly the 2004 and 2009 versions, respectively, did. Well, Doom 3 didn't do badly, but it got critically trounced and history hasn't been kind to it. Leaked footage of the first try at a sequel, Doom 4, showed an SF COD-clone with the same kind of scripted battle sequences that series has become all too known for. It looked like COD on Mars with "Doom" slapped on it because the company thought THAT was what would work. Instead, they took a chance and made a game like they used to make them and WHOA it was good and people flocked to it. They repeated with the other franchise and got the same result. So, the lesson is there that you can copy 90s gameplay with today's effects and other advances and still make a game that is both good and sells well. The question is if anyone else will take note... BTW--an overarching thread tying together those 3 things you named is they are supposed to be stupid and brainless which makes AI programming for them a lot easier than something like the Marines in Half Life or NK soldiers in Crysis. One of my favorite games for AI coding was the hilarious No One Lives Forever. You'd overhear the enemies talking about the most amusing things, then when the combat started depending on their situation they could be aggressive, take cover, or even run away shouting "Oh, ho, bullets!!" Another good one was the original FEAR, where they'd call for backup and flank you and such.

It didn't when it entered service, it got it later as an upgrade, not sure exactly when.