Julhelm

The Principe de Asturias is essentially a Sea Control Ship outfitted with a skijump for Harrier ops. I've seen proposals for fitting the SCS design with a single catapult and arrester gear. Keep in mind the idea behind the Sea Control Ship was always a throwback to the escort carriers of WW2 - a cheap unit that could sail with NATO resupply convoys and provide air cover against soviet threats. Using an Essex carrier kind of runs counter to that concept.

Don't worry, your government is going to support Al Quaida and Al Nusra with weapons and air strikes, like they did in Libya. Maybe we should just call them Allied Quaida from now on?

But the point is all of the Patriot act, warrantless wiretapping, warrantless electronic spying on citizens, secret CIA renditions and drone assassinations couldn't stop actual terrorists like those two brothers in Boston. Who had been to Chechnya and back. They only seem to stop terrorist plots that are conveniently timed to coincide with internal politics, and where the only evidence of their actual existence is because the government says they exist. Supposedly all these extraordinary government powers are in place because Al Quaida and islamists are a huge threat to our freedom and democracy, but then we give them support in the form of weapons supplies and advisors so they can topple secular regimes in Libya and now Syria and impose sharia rule there. If the terrorists are such a huge threat to western democracy that we need to become police states, why is McCain in Syria posing with them for photos and Hollande in France calling for military action to support them?

Time of war? Seriously?

http://http://www.wnd.com/2013/06/military-told-not-to-read-obama-scandal-news/

So the same people who complain about gun control and socialized healthcare as horrible attacks on civil rights and liberties are totally fine with the same government having a warrantless surveillance capability, the likes of which the STASI could only have dreamt of, because terrorism. Right.

Yeah, except for the cases where the hunter is a bad shot and you have a wounded animal that bleeds to death in agony. Or when you have a fox that is hunted for hours by men on horses with dogs. What is sport hunting if not wanton acts of cruelty and violence against unsuspecting animals? What difference does it really make if the animal is a pet or not, as far as the animal is concerned? Killing for fun is killing for fun and killing for fun is morally reprehensible regardless of whether you're a 'hunter' or just a lowlife drunken thug.

Unfortunately animals still have no value to most humans and are at best viewed as simple property by the law. It is still after all a perfectly acceptable pastime to take a shotgun and blow ducks out of the sky for fun.

The Argentinian military actually won the war. They lost it because their liberal politicians stabbed them in the back.

I hope he considers a cockpit DLC for that F-104. I'd pay money for that.

There's quite a lot interesting here: All the new ships now appear to have bump and specular textures. Iceland terrain no longer desaturates when at low altitude. It also looks like it has some more variety in the splatting.

The missiles the F-4 carried performed very well in trials which is why they were accepted into service to begin with. It's ludicrous to take a fighter like the F-4 that's designed to shoot down Soviet bombers with missiles suited for that task and then call it failed because missiles designed to shoot down bombers doesn't fare as well dogfighting against fighters. Anyone who says things like that just doesn't understand the purpose of the 1960's military which was 100% all-out nuclear war against the Soviet Union. They even had to carry surplus WW2 munitions in Vietnam because they had so little conventional munitions the supplies ran out.

DAS is the gamechanger here. That russian radar is not going to do a lot of good against a VLO fighter that uses EO DAS + datalinked off-platform targeting data except light up the RWR on the F-35. Russians and the Chinese are where the US was 20 years ago with the YF-22.

Anyone who gets all hung up on the phrase 'gun pod' is a retard. It's not like on the F-4 where the gunpod was an afterthought - it's not like the the F-35 one isn't specifically designed to plug into the weapons bay while maintaining VLO or is going to be just as accurate as the podded guns on the Harrier (that noone ever complains about). Seriously, in a world with high off-boresight missiles that can pull 60g turns guns ARE an afterthought. F-35 vs Su-35 and the F-35 is going to win everytime courtesy of being able to see the SU before the SU sees it. Besides, how can anyone possibly bring up the F-4 as an example of a lemon? It's one of the most successful fighters of all time.

There's a lot more to immersion than just generating other flights as what goes on outside the missions is a big factor as well. Devs understood this in the early 90s but today we get some crapass menu screens and cheap text briefings.

I think DCS is overrated. Sure it's fine for the hardcore folks but for those of us who don't care for clickable cockpits and ultra-sterile atmosphere it's not an alternative. The problem with all these other sims like JT and Fighter Ops is that they all set out to be super-duper accurate and hyper-realistic and as a result turn out too complicated to develop for any team that doesn't get their real money from military contracts.

Should be Vought F-16 since it would replace the GD design.

I built that as a Revell 1/32 kit once

Wasn't there some greek guy working on a new one?

No, I don't think there is such a thing as Exp.3

Operation Northwoods

Is it really domestic terrorism if they are islamists? I wouldn't have called the RAF domestic german terrorists since they were funded by the KGB.

I wouldn't touch anything on AboveTopSecret with a 10 foot pole. Too many conspiracy theorists and UFO nuts there. If you want accurate info, Secret Projects is the only good forum. If you don't understand the concept, email Dr. Raymer (the designer) about it.

It's called RIVET for Reverse Installation Vectored Engine Thrust and is a concept developed by Dan Raymer while he was at Lockheed. The idea was to install the engine backwards to place the exhaust in a better position for single nozzle VTOL. http://www.aircraftdesign.com/rivet3vw.jpg

Pretty sure that's a Boeing design. Go look for it on http://www.secretprojects.co.uk.