Cyrano4747 posted:Swiss airpower is loving awesome. I went to a big museum they have on it at an old cold-war era airfield out there and, from what I could tell, their entire reason for being is "do God drat do I need to get to Switzerland.
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Jan 26, 2012 16:52
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low level slalom runs through alpine passes" and "practice landing on highways and other Mad Max poo poo."
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Smiling Jack posted:God drat do I need to get to Switzerland. If it wasn't for the fact that the entire country costs double what the rest of the world does, it really would be one of the most perfect places on earth. Seriously, though, $9 pints of beer and $13 fast food combo meals starts to get a bit old.
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Jan 26, 2012 16:58
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Snowdens Secret posted:Clancy's portrayal of submarine / ASW warfare in RSR is frustrating. Most sub fiction is complete nonsense; Clancy's at least ridden a 688 before so he's more down to earth, but then some stuff is so wrong or bizarre you wonder if it's deliberate misinformation Such as? My least favorite bunch of bullshit in a Clancy novel, one that almost made me throw the book at the wall, is when some F-15s defeat some incoming missiles by managing to turn in an around the inbound with such precision that they keep a constant distance from the seeker head and the missiles miss because without a Doppler shift they can't track the plane.
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Jan 26, 2012 17:09
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Cyrano4747 posted:If it wasn't for the fact that the entire country costs double what the rest of the world does, it really would be one of the most perfect places on earth. Well, I've got quite a few couches to crash on over there, so that's okay, butI have to haul along all of the supply infrasturture that comes along with an infant now, sooooo...... But yeah, the exchange rate is killing Swiss tourism.
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Jan 26, 2012 17:11
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I may have mentioned it before, re: SR-71 books, but Paul Crickmore's books are excellent. 'SR-71: The secret missions exposed' has a full page photo of the old Seattle Kingdome, tack sharp, taken from 80,000 feet at speed. Amazing. BTW, military books from foreign publishers are not necessarily subject to American security review, therefore more juicy details! Sign at the Sr-71 Kadena base: "Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil, for I am at 80,000 feet and climbing." 
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Jan 26, 2012 17:30
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80,000 feet and climbing yet still in a valley? Where the hell were they, mars? 
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Jan 26, 2012 17:33
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Flanker posted:Some proper F8 porn if you haven't seen it Fantastic. That guy is awesome. That jet is awesome.
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Jan 26, 2012 17:38
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Smiling Jack posted:80,000 feet and climbing yet still in a valley? Where the hell were they, mars? If there was a plane that could do it, it would be the blackbird
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Jan 26, 2012 18:13
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Cyrano4747 posted:If it wasn't for the fact that the entire country costs double what the rest of the world does, it really would be one of the most perfect places on earth. The last time I was in Switzerland, the exchange rate was insanely good, and we were vising a very cheap backwoods area in the mountains, rather than a tourist trap so it owned. I do remember Zurich being loving pricy.
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Jan 26, 2012 19:20
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grover posted:It takes time to deploy squadrons and their support; ... Net result: Iceland would pretty much be hanging out there on its own. iyaayas01 posted:...The U.S. military is ALWAYS short of airlift. Let's move this enlightening discussion away from RSR a little bit and more into general timetables and logistics, which is something I've had a big interest in the last couple of months (more or less because of reading about Nifty Nugget). Clancy has the war starting with REFORGER 'not yet complete' which would mean that the General Defense Plan is already in being executed for I'd gather at least 5~7 days (which is what I meant with M+7). This makes sense since overall Soviet progress is pretty slow for a month long war and dug in NATO forces with ample warning of impending conflict are a prerequisite for that. Strategic airlift and the CRAF would probably have been swamped by REFORGER so my first question is how the USAF planned to get their planes into Europe anyway. Keflavik is a little more than 1500 miles way from CFB Goose Bay, which was a pretty big base up until a few years ago. Iceland would be a prime spot to use to shift forces to Norway (some attack squadrons and at least one division were earmarked IIRC) so it'd double up as a logistical pivot as well as the linchpin of naval and aerial defense in the G-I-UK area. Could you support both ground and air deployments towards NATO's northern edge with tactical airlift with multiple stopovers? Some general thoughts: Clancy messes up NATO's reinforcement plans by having Iceland dither committing to the alliance. In '99 there were a couple of unauthorized overflights of neutral Austria around and during Allied Force. Why not ignore the protestations of an unwilling ally with no ability to enforce their reservations? Hell, if such a thing had happened in one of the continental countries during a crisis I really don't think there would have been any scruples to pull off some Gladioesque capers to get the minnows in line. REFORGER only adds another couple divisions to the mix which need some time to gather up their strength and numbers with troops arriving jetlagged from a wrong-way transatlantic flight and prepositioned stocks scattered over three different countries. What's more important is when and how both the West-German Territorialheer and the French are deploying, which is dependent more on the Soviet timetable than anything else really. First echelon forces in the GDR are probably not going to wait for both a first-line American armored corps building up as a strategic reserve, the BRD getting another half a million people in position and countries like Belgium and the Netherlands pulling off some highly intricate mobilization plans to get their forces out of maldeployment without having railway flatcars on their own or enough prepositioned stocks. Either strike from the barracks with the forces you have or don't do it at all. Since even GSFG units were never really that prepared, and NATO always scaled up their readiness with large exercises on the other side of the fence, there has never been a window of opportunity large enough for the Soviets to exploit. That and not wanting to have their cities nuked of course.
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Jan 26, 2012 19:40
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Cyrano4747 posted:If it wasn't for the fact that the entire country costs double what the rest of the world does, it really would be one of the most perfect places on earth. I`ll be going in 2015. Time to think about side trips to Germany...
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Jan 26, 2012 21:26
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Overwing .303 action
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Jan 26, 2012 21:36
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Flikken posted:If there was a plane that could do it, it would be the blackbird This is the best possible response. I sorta facepalmed at that post and you carried the day. e: For all Lockheed is botching the F-35, let's remember this plane:  Lockheed 1049F (C-121C) Super Constellation - 02 by notpsion, on Flickr I don't care if the fuselage pieces all had to be basically individually made because the curve of the body meant you couldn't mass produce 10 identical fuselage tube sections, rivet them all together and call it a day, this is a gorgeous airframe. Psion fucked around with this message at 03:07 on Jan 27, 2012 |
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Jan 26, 2012 23:07
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Phanatic posted:Such as? It's been a while since I read it but this is what I remember. The entire wolfpack substory is rubbish. In RMR and Red October Clancy grossly exaggerates tactical ability to identify and pinpoint underwater vessels, because the reality would be far less drama-enabling. Nuke boats in that sort of proximity would be shooting each other by accident if they didn't straight up collide. The actual attack run is all wrong and it would take an eternity to launch that many missiles from pre-VLS boats. In RMR Clancy overstates (80's) surface ASW capability so much it's ridiculous - his premise is that the GIUK SOSUS net is down but it doesn't matter, since a towed array and a helo are good enough to catch random boats in the open sea. I know the older Soviet boats were bad, but I don't think they were that bad; Atlantic coastal listening would alert them of a boat in the area but actually finding it would still be a real struggle. The pickets don't seem to get preemptively hit, and IIRC none of the Soviet missile boats ever use their missiles, instead closing for torpedo duels with individual frigates.. The portrayal of surface ASW in Red October is far more believable (i .e. next to useless.) Like other posters have said, convoys sailing through contested waters are a Harpoon construct in the first place. In general Clancy forgets the Sturgeons ever existed, presumably because they're not sexy like 688s, but they'd be the workhorses of an early 80's war. Including that silly Tomahawk strike, since the 688s would be busy shooting Soviet boats.
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Jan 27, 2012 02:50
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While we're talking Cold War, I suppose I could mention the source of a lot of the plutonium in all the various things that went bang. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B_Reactor  Hanford B Reactor, Exterior by notpsion, on Flickr Hanford B Reactor is open to the public for guided tours from DOE and it is their hope to have it attain full museum status - that is, drive out in the middle of loving nowhere, WA (this was a design requirement from the Manhattan Project - gently caress nowheresville, USA, oh ps need a lot of water nearby) and go see it whenever. Right now, trying to get on any part of Hanford sans official approval would be ... unwise. I've been twice and I apologize in advance for the photography - it's a bitch and a half to shoot in there. Both times I've been all  at the tours not giving me enough time to set up and shoot for poo poo and there is so much in that building worth shooting photos of. I'm not going again until it's museum status so I can bring a tripod and take my time setting up something for the front reactor face; 2004 process tubes (1500 or so filled with the u-238 rods they bombarded into Pu-239) is staggering, especially the cooling system required to keep that stable - like 30,000+ gallons of water a minute shot through, front to back, in less than a second, and going from like 60F to about 200F that fast. And then dumped into a holding tank (ok so far) and then right back into the Columbia river.   Front Face 01 by notpsion, on Flickr So yeah, here's where Trinity and Fat Man's Pu-239 was created. Also, friggin' amazing engineering: They basically designed and built this sorta-kinda on the fly after the tiny test under the Chicago squash courts, in 14 months, and it worked for decades. The first time I went our tour guide was a guy who'd actually worked shifts at several of Hanford's reactors, including B. There's a lot of amateur-hour video that could use some editing up to really make the experience hammer home but when the guy talking to you in the control room where criticality was first achieved was saying "yeah, so I sat in this chair for like five years" it's  And of course, the most critical part of Hanford:  Pie Making Machine by notpsion, on Flickr I was deeply disappointed this was not saved and placed in the B Reactor facility. They do have a remote-control robot, though. Also - apparently there's an annual inspection from a bunch of Russians who take photos of the water intake pipes (which are all staked open, have been since 1968) to ensure nobody's secretly started up B Reactor - or secretly built the shitpot of support buildings which it would need to function, but ssh. Our tour guide indicated the US does this to several Russian decommissioned plants, too. Personally, I would love to see a bunch of stone-faced obviously KGB guys with Nikons or whatever snapping away at B Reactor. LOVE IT. Alas, those 'tours' don't get advertised. Psion fucked around with this message at 03:10 on Jan 27, 2012 |
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Jan 27, 2012 03:05
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Snowdens Secret posted:It's been a while since I read it but this is what I remember. I think you're misremembering, or I'm not sure which part of the book you're talking about. If it's the attack on the Kirov fleet, they weren't operating in proximity, it's just that two subs heard the thing, and both attacked, one with torpedoes and the other with a couple of Harpoons. For the Tomahawk attack on the airfields, they weren't pre-VLS boats. I think it was the Chicago, the Providence, and the somethingorother. quote:In RMR Clancy overstates (80's) surface ASW capability so much it's ridiculous - his premise is that the GIUK SOSUS net is down but it doesn't matter, since a towed array and a helo are good enough to catch random boats in the open sea. I remember they get one just off the coast, near where the Andrea Doria sank, and I also remember that the ones they find in the deeper ocean, they're getting SURTASS tracks on. quote:I know the older Soviet boats were bad, but I don't think they were that bad; Atlantic coastal listening would alert them of a boat in the area but actually finding it would still be a real struggle. And they miss some. There's at least one where some missile sub fires at a convoy and gets kills, and they never even get a track on it. quote:The pickets don't seem to get preemptively hit, Yeah, they do, that's a major plot point, where the one captain's Knox-class gets blown in half by a Russian sub. quote:and IIRC none of the Soviet missile boats ever use their missiles, instead closing for torpedo duels with individual frigates. See above. IIRC, the first warning they have of the attack is someone looks up and sees the exhaust trails from the missiles it launches. quote:The portrayal of surface ASW in Red October is far more believable (i .e. next to useless.) Like other posters have said, convoys sailing through contested waters are a Harpoon construct in the first place. Bwuh? Convoys sailed through contested waters in two previous world wars, because it turned out to be much, much safer to convoy than to try to cross on your own. Why wouldn't that be the case today? quote:In general Clancy forgets the Sturgeons ever existed, presumably because they're not sexy like 688s, but they'd be the workhorses of an early 80's war. Including that silly Tomahawk strike, since the 688s would be busy shooting Soviet boats. Could the Sturgeons even launch Tomahawks?
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Jan 27, 2012 03:20
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Psion posted:While we're talking Cold War, I suppose I could mention the source of a lot of the plutonium in all the various things that went bang. 
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Jan 27, 2012 03:28
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Totally TWISTED posted:This post owns. I live in Tennessee and I've never been to Oak Ridge. I should turn in my TFR credentials It is seriously incredible how they went from what was practically a scale model to this thing, one try, and it worked. (I know about X-10, but look at the dates - it's not like they finished X-10 before starting B) Also for anyone concerned about the Chicago pile, CP-1 had no cooling system and a single control rod. Oh and no radiation shielding. At all. Fermi was all "I was totally confident in my calculations, really, it was fine." Find a map of the University of Chicago and go for a while. Fermi, holy poo poo man.What's worse - his math was wrong for B Reactor (didn't know about neutron poisoning) so only the insistence they Build It Bigger, God drat It meant B worked at all. The addition of 500 extra tubes, ordered by the officer in charge of the project meant they could overcome the xenon poisoning to reach stable criticality. while we're at it, B Reactor scaled up like crazy. Originally specified to produce 250mW (it was never a power reactor, only a Pu-production one) they eventually jacked it up to a couple thousand, and just shot 70,000 gallons of water a minute through the cooling tubes instead. Overbuilt like hell, which - really - was probably a very good precedent for nuclear plants of any type!  e: I'm not so fond of them using Hanford as a "let's dump all our lovely nuclear waste here" site, but it is somewhat comforting to know, having been there, that nobody is gonna go anywhere near that place without a reason. You have no idea how sad and desolate and boring surrounding area is until you go. also we almost got run over on the way back by so many apple trucks when we went during apple season. Hilarious, in a way. Psion fucked around with this message at 03:43 on Jan 27, 2012 |
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Jan 27, 2012 03:35
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Phanatic is on the ball with what's actually in the book, which doesn't mean Clancy is right about ASW though since they're all just framing devices for the super awesome ship and boat drivers that make the Navy so cool.
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Jan 27, 2012 04:16
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Yeah, I must be misremembering stuff, then. I was thinking of the Tomahawk strike on the airfields; I don't remember the Kirov bit at all. I thought the destroyer got hit only after it tried to chase the sub down or some silliness, not as a preemptive attack. I think the general gist re: the convoys was that before you start pumping helpless cargo ships through, you're going to be scouring the seas of Soviet boats a lot more aggressively. You just don't really hunt subs with surface ships; you do it by scrambling American based P-3s and fast attack boats all over the drat place, killing everything that strays into their boxes, vectored on target by fixed listening assets. (In the list of things a submariner is afraid of, "surface ship trying to kill you" usually falls somewhere below "accidentally colliding with the ocean floor.") I can't say how long a window REFORGER gave you to clear a path, but you'd have boats on station long before any convoys started to roll, and the early 80's were pretty much the peak of US undersea dominance. Basically like a lot of the rest of RSR the convoy escort comes off as more trying to replay parts of WWII with modern gear than really simulating actual WWIII (because nukes, like others said.) I did Google around and see that Clancy didn't ride a fast boat until after RSR came out, so some of the little sneaky things he gets wrong are probably bad guesses and artistic license, not deliberate misinformation. He's weirdly obsessed with reactors melting, though.
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Jan 27, 2012 05:56
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NosmoKing posted:GO IN FOR GUNS and spray the bridge and superstructure with 20mm fire. A secret dream of every Eagle driver out there. This might be relevant as well, even though they're Viper dudes. Cyrano4747 posted:Swiss airpower is loving awesome. I went to a big museum they have on it at an old cold-war era airfield out there and, from what I could tell, their entire reason for being is "do I know it isn't how the mountain facilities actually worked, but I love the mental image of a Swiss pilot running to his jet inside a mountain HAS, shouting pull chocks (or whatever that is in German/French/Italian), and blasting out of the side of a mountain to go intercept someone like in a 1980s action cartoon or something. Phanatic posted:My least favorite bunch of bullshit in a Clancy novel, one that almost made me throw the book at the wall, is when some F-15s defeat some incoming missiles by managing to turn in an around the inbound with such precision that they keep a constant distance from the seeker head and the missiles miss because without a Doppler shift they can't track the plane. IIRC that was in Debt of Honor...by far not the only objectionable thing in that novel. Koesj posted:My bad on confusing D-/M-Day, I completely blanked on "M-Day" being a thing. Regarding the USAF getting planes into Europe, all the iron itself would flow over directly, drug by tankers and with the air to air guys tac ferrying munitions (IIRC this is actually a plot point in RSR, with that female Major and her flight of Eagles intercepting a bunch of Badgers or Backfires or something where there weren't supposed to be any during the whole Nimitz/Saipan/Foch cruise missile debacle thing). Their support packages would be fairly minimal due to all the prepositioned stuff already in Europe at the airbases, so the only stuff you would need to transport would be the maintenance personnel (on CRAF, more than likely) and then the required strategic airlift for that AMU's internal support equipment/parts/CTKs/etc (some of which could be palletized and therefore put on CRAF freight birds). I'm not 100% on whether or not the AF's stuff was technically considered part of REFORGER (I think it was?), but it would've been planned for and prioritized on whatever they used in place of TPFDD's back then (although maybe not as well as they could have been...I hadn't heard of Nifty Nugget before and I actually didn't realize that TRANSCOM didn't come into being until '87). As far as Norway, remember that defending the northern flank was a mission assigned to the Marines (both U.S. and Royal). I don't think the massive amounts of prepo'd equipment in caves was put up there until the mid to late '80s (which is still there, by the way, just waiting for the Soviets to round the North Cape), so as far as I know the bulk of the USMC's deployment would've been by amphib (hence why the Saipan was headed across the Atlantic when she got blown up) since a) it wouldn't be quite as time critical to get massive amounts of forces there (at least not compared to the Fulda Gap) and b) the Royal Marines were also supposed to deploy there in force and would be able to get there real quick like. Regarding tactical airlift reinforcing Norway/the northern flank...obviously it is technically feasible (we've had C-130 units self deploy from pretty much every corner of the world...Japan, Thailand, Australia, Norway, Poland...up here for exercises), whether or not that makes overall strategic sense is another question. The biggest tradeoff isn't going to be range (the -141 only has ~400-500 nm advantage on the C-130) so much as speed (around a 200 mph difference between the two). My sense is that it might be worth the tradeoffs, only because the relatively compact nature of the Central Front means the need for intra-theater airlift would be relatively low, especially since your strategic birds are going to be putting down for the most part within ground transport distance of their cargo's final destination. Good points on the rest of it...I might have more to say on that once I get some sleep. I did like the Gladio reference. ming-the-mazdaless posted:Overwing .303 action I posted a picture of those Rhodesian 336s earlier in the thread, and they own so hard.
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Jan 27, 2012 10:23
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Personally I'd find it pretty fascinating to know the details of the logistics required to maintain all those pre-positioned equipment. How do they store it? Does it get rotated and if so how often? What do they do with the obsolete/unusable stuff?
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Jan 27, 2012 15:31
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iyaayas01 posted:IIRC that was in Debt of Honor...by far not the only objectionable thing in that novel.
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Jan 27, 2012 15:59
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iyaayas01 posted:IIRC that was in Debt of Honor...by far not the only objectionable thing in that novel.
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Jan 27, 2012 16:02
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grover posted:The notch maneuver is a real thing, and a classic historical move to fall under the velocity gate pilots set for pulse-doppler radars. It's not that RADAR can't track the massive underbelly of an F-15, it's moreso that it gets automatically squelched along with ground clutter and a poo poo-ton of other extraneous slow-moving/stationary returns. I'd like to think modern US radars are smart enough that this no longer works, but I've heard it mentioned quite frequently regarding Soviet-era fighters and SAMs. That sounds like a really wide gate for slow-moving targets/clutter I mean, that would work on a Patriot radar if the pilot just landed his plane
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Jan 27, 2012 16:14
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grover posted:The notch maneuver is a real thing, and a classic historical move to fall under the velocity gate pilots set for pulse-doppler radars. It's not that RADAR can't track the massive underbelly of an F-15, it's moreso that it gets automatically squelched along with ground clutter and a poo poo-ton of other extraneous slow-moving/stationary returns. I'd like to think modern US radars are smart enough that this no longer works, but I've heard it mentioned quite frequently regarding Soviet-era fighters and SAMs. It's certainly gotten better, and US radars do have better computers that can discriminate between clutter and targets much easier and more quickly, but notching is still useful since it can allow a pilot to escape a US fighter using track-while-scan. This forces your US pilot to either go to single target track and devote all radar resources (radar energy, computational time) to following that one bandit and to sacrifice situational awareness, or to disregard him and go after easier prey. Note that this is with traditional passive phased array radars like the AN/APG-70 in the F-15. Your fancy shmancy AESA radars work completely differently and we'll have to wait until a plane with such a set (such as the F-22 or Eurofighter) starts seeing regular combat against something that isn't a Mig-23 piloted by a terrified rookie.
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Jan 27, 2012 16:14
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mlmp08 posted:That sounds like a really wide gate for slow-moving targets/clutter
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Jan 27, 2012 16:35
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grover posted:The notch maneuver is a real thing, and a classic historical move to fall under the velocity gate pilots set for pulse-doppler radars. It's not that RADAR can't track the massive underbelly of an F-15, it's moreso that it gets automatically squelched along with ground clutter and a poo poo-ton of other extraneous slow-moving/stationary returns. I'd like to think modern US radars are smart enough that this no longer works, but I've heard it mentioned quite frequently regarding Soviet-era fighters and SAMs. The missile's coming in some high Mach number, there's *no way* you're going to keep a constant distance from it and prevent your return from Doppler-shifting. A ground-based radar, sure, but against an active-homing AAM coming in at you that's moving faster than your aircraft is capable of?
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Jan 27, 2012 16:39
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Most active AAMs only engage their seekers within about 10km to the target. Notching is meant to beat the guiding/illuminating radar; if the enemy loses lock then that AMRAAM/Adder he just fired is the world's most expensive dumbfire missile. Also it's worth noting that it's purely an air to air tactic, as even taking clouds and birds into consideration the sky makes a great backdrop for ground-based targeting radars.
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Jan 27, 2012 16:43
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Insert name here posted:Wasn't that the one where some Japanese businessman somehow gets the Japanese government to start another war with the US cause the dude's mad about WW2? I don't even remember much about the book other than it was hilarious. I think it was more they were pissed off about the US saber rattling a bit about equal and fair trade in the beginning of that two book arch. That book also had another thing Clancy called out long before it happened in real life. A terrorist attack using a large civillian airliner!
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Jan 27, 2012 16:48
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Phanatic posted:The missile's coming in some high Mach number, there's *no way* you're going to keep a constant distance from it and prevent your return from Doppler-shifting. A ground-based radar, sure, but against an active-homing AAM coming in at you that's moving faster than your aircraft is capable of?
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Jan 27, 2012 16:49
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Insert name here posted:Wasn't that the one where some Japanese businessman somehow gets the Japanese government to start another war with the US cause the dude's mad about WW2? I don't even remember much about the book other than it was hilarious. Yep. Also: - Japanese sneak attack and sink two 688s + put a torpedo into the rear end of two carriers - They engineer a stock market crash - They have nukes!  - Capture...Saipan (I think), sneakily! - Some dude who lost his brother and son in the war flies his 747 into Capitol Hill The US: - uses soon-to-be-retired Ohios as attack-subs/support special operations... - F-22s rape face - RAH-66s rape face, operating from a sneaky mountain base inside Japan - does a magic hand-wave to recover from stock market sabotage Everything is solved with a dose of Jack Ryan and John Clark as well. Prior to this in the Jack Ryan universe, I think the US and Russia got rid of their ICBMs as well. e: holy series of posts batman!
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Jan 27, 2012 16:52
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movax posted:
well now i know that books a fictional story oh ho
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Jan 27, 2012 16:53
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The carrier that ate a torpedo always bugged me in Debt of Honor because it basically completely ripped of the carrier that got shot in Red Storm Rising. They'll never expect our half operational carrier out of no where! I think Debt of Honor is a safe bright line where you know Clancy is completely off the rails. There is some downward quality before that, but oh boy is it clear there.
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Jan 27, 2012 16:58
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Alaan posted:The carrier that ate a torpedo always bugged me in Debt of Honor because it basically completely ripped of the carrier that got shot in Red Storm Rising. They'll never expect our half operational carrier out of no where! Executive Orders is completely 
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Jan 27, 2012 17:30
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Can we really even be sure he writes any of his books anymore? I always assumed he spent most of his time being a d-bag and only occasionally spent an hour or two to scan the stuff his team of ghost writers gave him for his yea or nay.
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Jan 27, 2012 18:11
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That's certainly true now, that everything is "Tom Clancy's ____" or just ghostwritten/"co"written or whatever -- but back in the mid/late 90s he wrote all the stuff, but then "self edited" before it went to publishing; so there was no chance for a rational person to sit him down and say "no, Tom, the southern hemisphere is not scorchingly hot in July." (Sydney average high temp in July is 61.2F!)
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Jan 27, 2012 18:18
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Speaking of Tom Clancy, I'll crosspost this from the DPRK thread: http://goo.gl/IwTjS Dangerroom posted:
Looks like someone's been getting all of his policy ideas and ideas of America's military capability from Tom Clancy novels. There's also some pretty stuff in there about cyberwar and overthrowing the Castro regime - very entertaining.
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Jan 27, 2012 18:21
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Flikken posted:Executive Orders is completely I still want to know what the gently caress was up with those two hillbillies that spend half the book setting up their OKC style truck bomb plot, only to be pulled over and arrested and never interact with any other part of the story at all. I've never read any other book with such a completely self-contained plot thread that led nowhere.
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Jan 27, 2012 18:26
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grover posted:The notch isn't centered on the primary frequency, it's adjusted for aircraft speed. That F-15 pulling the notch is returning pretty much the exact same frequency return to the missile as every mountain, building, and cloud. The relative speed of the F-15 and the inbound is radically different from the relative speed of every mountain, building, and cloud. It's possible for an F-15 to keep a constant distance from a static emitter, it's not possible for it to keep a constant distance from an emitter headed towards it at Mach 4.
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Jan 27, 2012 18:32
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