Typhoid

just drill baby, drill and then drill some more. We haven't begun to strip mine the Moon and Mars yet! And there is enough methane on Titan to last longer than mankind is likely to. In the meantime - lots of horse ranches out here too. Of course, shoveling through all of the horse-stuff isn't all that fun either.

"I don't have anything to add" I do; what a crock of drivel load of bull mindless insanity semi-religious dogma unencumbered by actual scientific facts corrupt scientific hoax etc.

Good analysis - right on target in my opinion and far better than the simplistic "blood for oil" idiocy that one normally sees. If anyone doesn't think Syria is and has been in the support-to-terrorist business, they're in the willfully-deluded or blindly-ignorant crowds. Syria is far more complex than other uprisings have been including the fact that Syria has been a client state of Iran for some time now. War with Syria means a general war across the mid-East including with Iran. And such a war is likely to go chem-bio-nuclear in relatively short order. With those kinds of stakes on the table - prudence and a carefully thought through strategy are paramount. Our Current Criminal Regime (US) has neither the intellect, regional background or stones to craft any sort of credible, competent or effective approach to the area. So far as our country(s) having the will to engage - I think we've now proven that we don't. We have validated the strategy of Al Queda and the Taliban to wear us out - we haven't the national will to engage and stay to acomplish the mission. By engaging in a general strategic retreat from the region short of defeating our enemies - we've proven to the other playeres in the region that we haven't got what it takes to engage and achieve our goals - whatever those goals may have been. (The Taliban predicted that we'd bail after 10 years - just about right on schedule) What will happen the next time is that we are more likely to simply stand off and pound the stuffing out of anyone who ticks us off for whatever reason. And lacking sufficient general purpose forces to sustain even that limited endeavor - one of these times could more likely include the tactic of "turning keys" for lack of any other options. Not a good prospect for the region.

OK, I am now thoroughly and officially disgusted with my USN. as background - I was the 6th Fleet Staff Anti-Air Warfare Officer (N-35) when this idiot pulled the trigger on the RF-4C in a fleet exercise. The question by VADM Williams (who was then the Commander, 6th Fleet) was "Is he dead yet?". I remember the incident and the initial inquiry very well. There was absolutely no excuse for what this numbskull pulled. I had always thought this guy had been removed not just from flight status - but from the Navy. Now it is evident that he has risen through the ranks of the Naval Reserve and has now been nominated to Flag rank. So in our current Age of Moral Insanity - putting up a slightly risque video will get a successful combat leader fired and pensioned off - but deliberately shooting down a friendly in an exercise is grounds for retention and further promotion all the way to Flag rank?!!!!!!!!!! Excuse my while I puke.............. http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/feb/16/admiral-nominee-rose-through-ranks-despite-illogic/

so when's the cockpit mod ready for download?

Indeed. The tone of some of the comments seems to imply that the evil corporations, who invested the capital to be able to provide the products and services, somehow pushed the products to the offended parties' computers and automatically billed their accounts. If someone no likee the price of the product, they don't have to buy it! Higher demand drives higher prices. If the demand drops, then so do the prices. Free markets are highly dynamic. I thought the advocacy somewhere above that a company raising their prices somehow justifies product piracy to be reprehensible.

Wishful thinking.

Some unusual Spitfire configurations.

Very cool! I was at the commisioning of my first squadron at NI also. Take pictures!!

Looking forward to running some PBY torpedo attacks in SF2!!

Ah.... I was looking through Gen2 stuff. Thanks!

Where is the PBY by Veltro that this goes with?

A surface detonation will shake a lot more than air.

if the Iranian Mullahs are not more careful, they might find out. I rather doubt we'd bother with trying to put troops there - just destroy them and let them rot. Of course, it will take a regime change here before we have anyone with the intellect and moral courage to push for a regime change there. But regardless - with the experience of Iraq and Afghanistan behind us (both made into horrendous shootouts because of Iranian intervention) I imagine the next time we'll just bomb the %!!@^s into the stone age and be done with them.

too much residual fallout - and too costly to send in specops raids. Of course, if it becomes hard enough to take out - tactical nukes start to become a more palatable option.

An interesting and sad story about the Iranian Tomcat. Too bad about the crew. I do mean that sincerely. The story seems very familiar though. An almost identical incident happened a year or so ago, so much so that I suspect someone is recycling old news. My take is that the Tomcat crew strayed by accident into the MEZ around the nuclear site and were taken out by the missile crews.

Great article. That gent is obviously a master of his trade! (and you're not going to believe who it is!)

Hilarious!

Happy Birthday!!

Having sailed on one of them in 1989, they were magnificant warships when they were modernized and operational. The various ideas for rebuilding different configurations were all dropped as being too costly for relatively little return. The actual conversion included addition of CIWS point defense, the Harpoon launchers, and the Tomahawk Armored Box launchers. In that configuration, these were excellent ships to provide a degree of striking power for support of amphib ops or to fill in for a carrier that wasn't available, or to supplement a carrier. It should be noted that in Desert Storm, two of these ships took on 4 Iraqi divisions that were deployed along the coast to block a threatened USMC amphib assualt and utterly destroyed them at the cost of ammo expended. An outstanding model of the 80's configuration is available here; http://combatace.com/files/file/12012-idiot-team-iowa-class-battleship-80s/

Of course! And then, according to the ancient traditions of the sea, we'll keel-haul the guilty $!#@#^ beneath what's left of his ship and feed his remains to the sharks.

The rocks he hit this time were a bit out from the shoreline. So he passed inside them before - this time he ran right into them. (edit: He appears to have run inside of where he went before and hit a rock very clearly marked and visible on Google Earth - 42°21'20.43"N, 10°55'48.66"E - which is insanely close to the shore.) a treacherous, incompetent idiot. He needs to be keel-hauled beneath what's left of his ship.

Looking good!! You've got great stuff!!! I've downloaded just about everything you've posted. The only changes that I've done is to use your files as skins for a single model type. I.E., I've grouped all of your MK1 models as a single aircraft with different squadron skins to load, mk1a's, etc. Saves on the number of aircraft types.

the sea-going version of flying low...........