sullat posted:

Yeah he used his connections in the war office to get his son moved to the front lines because he didn't want his kid to miss out on the glorious upcoming battle (he was too young at the time you had to be 19 to go overseas and the kid was 17) and the kid got killed on the first day of the Somme. Talk about a whoopsie-doodle, which did make Kipling a bit more introspective. However looking at his earlier stuff is definitely an peek inside the mindset of an Imperialist and how they manage to otherize the colonials.

The Oldest Man posted:

Lol'd at "We identified a problem and the solution is for the DoD to behave more like a private company"

“Ars posted:

In a conference call with analysts on Wednesday, Boeing's chief executive, David Calhoun, and chief financial officer, Brian West, expressed disappointment in these results from the defense and space division. They reiterated their goal of returning the company's defense and space businesses to profitability by the 2025 to 2026 period.

Notably, the pair pinned the blame for performance by its defense and space division, referred to internally as BDS, on fixed-price contracts. As the BDS division seeks a return to profitability, West said Boeing will not be using fixed-price contracts anymore.

Zadok Allen posted:

Raised By Wolves’ cancellation was criminal. All 5 seasons were already written and they still cancelled it because apparently it wasn’t getting GoT numbers.

Fuckers.

fizzy posted:

Good news for people who are looking forward to World War 3 - Joe "Genocide-Lovin" Biden is actively trying to provoke a third front with China, on-top of the US's existing proxy wars with Russia and with Hamas / Hezbollah / Syria / Iran.

Whitenoise Poster posted:

Everyone and everywhere please immediately throw everything you have and destroy America entirely.

Frosted Flake posted:

ee: Nobody has produced a gun as light and cheap as the OTO-Melara Mod 56 (L5 ) in literally a generation. I feel like I'm slowly going crazy watching "gun" and "thing that tows gun" become projects that balloon to F-35 proportions.

FirstnameLastname posted:

shut up

PawParole posted:

https://twitter.com/Hippokleides/status/1717266158649286796

Tempora Mutantur posted:

thank you and holy poo poo it's better than I remember

https://www.baen.com/Chapters/1439133476/1439133476___5.htm

quote:

The Battle Analyzer would change all this by replacing the operations staff with electronic calculators. The idea was not new, in theory, but until now it had been no more than a Utopian dream. Many of us found it difficult to believe that it was still anything but a dream: after we had run through several very complex dummy battles, however, we were convinced.

quote:

The Analyzer contained just short of a million vacuum tubes and needed a team of five hundred technicians to maintain and operate it. It was quite impossible to accommodate the extra staff aboard a battleship, so each of the four units had to be accompanied by a converted liner to carry the technicians not on duty. Installation was also a very slow and tedious business, but by gigantic efforts it was completed in six months.

quote:

In the next engagement, the enemy used his superior numbers to launch an overwhelming attack on the Analyzer ship and its unarmed consort. The attack was made without regard to losses—both ships were, of course, very heavily protected—and it succeeded. The result was the virtual decapitation of the Fleet, since an effectual transfer to the old operational methods proved impossible. We disengaged under heavy fire, and so lost all our gains and also the systems of Lormyia, Ismarnus, Beronis, Alphanidon and Sideneus.

Regarde Aduck posted:

we could try holding our arms up goku spirit bomb style

ClassActionFursuit posted:

I understand the mechanisms for how we, the US, got here but maybe FF can fill me in, was it always this way? How were imperial adventures sold to the citizenry of the British Empire? Did they bother? Did they even suffer the humiliating losses that would require them to be justified? I mean, they obviously lost the American colonies so I can think of at least once that something would have to have been said...

Frosted Flake posted:

It's complicated because there is an "American" Kipling and a "Commonwealth" Kipling. I would imagine there is a Rest of World Kipling as well. White Man's Burden and Recessional are two sides of the same coin, where our Empire's failings were recognized - Kipling was a harsh critic - but there was hope that the emerging power across the sea would make good on the lessons learned.

That Empire should exist was unquestioned by him, but how Empire existed was something he never turned away from. Even in the case of the Burma Wars, Kipling was never under any illusion about how things were proceeding on the North-East Frontier.

I could also throw up a bibliography if there's interest, my shelves sag under books about Kipling and his world, but I think the American idea of Kipling comes from not having experienced the epigenetic trauma of Black Week and the First Day on the Somme.

The Killing Jelq posted:

Ah, the dynamism of free enterprise

https://arstechnica.com/space/2023/10/boeing-says-it-cant-make-money-with-fixed-price-contracts/

dads friend steve posted:

Nowadays when I travel I always make sure to check that I’m not gonna be on a 737-Max lol

OhFunny posted:

Not just to young. His son's eyesight was really bad as well. He was last seen by other soldiers stumbling blindly in the mud of no man's land.

ClassActionFursuit posted:

I thought most of the remaining 737 max customers ponied up for the override nosedive DLC that they made available?

Junkozeyne posted:

Boeing had to pay for all retrofits themselves. MCAS now factors in both available sensors, only trims down the nose once instead of repatedly activating and also has an indicator for all planes activated that shows AOA disagreements, which was a former "DLC"

quote:

Congressional leaders reached an agreement early Tuesday morning on an end-of-year government spending bill that includes an amendment to give Boeing the clearance it needs to get its 737 MAX 7 and MAX 10 jets certified without further changes.

The amendment ensures a deadline included in legislation passed in 2020 does not apply to the MAX 7 and MAX 10 models that have yet to enter service.

Absent that waiver, past the deadline, the Federal Aviation Administration could not certify those two planes to fly passengers without an extensive design upgrade to the systems that alert the crew when something goes wrong in flight.

While the crew-alerting system upgrade won’t be required, the language in the new bill includes a condition proposed earlier this month by U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell that will require all airlines to retrofit two specific safety enhancements.

Boeing developed those enhancements for the MAX 10. The bill requires them to be retrofitted to the MAX 7 and to the two earlier models already certified and in service, the MAX 8 and MAX 9 jets.

The amendment gives Boeing three years after the MAX 10 is certified to retrofit those safety enhancements to all models of the MAX, after which none can be operated without them.

The bill requires Boeing to bear the cost of the retrofits.

The legislative step provides relief to Boeing, which had lobbied hard for an amendment to avoid considerable additional costs and delay in getting the MAX 7 and MAX 10 into service.

Cerebral Bore posted:

look pal, gun get big, defense contractor paycheck get big, general's dilz get big, and after all are these not the important things here?

quote:

In 2020, Boeing had a historically bad year, reporting a $12 billion loss and laying off 30,000 workers. At the same time, Calhoun earned $21.1 million in compensation.

Frosted Flake posted:

The Rube Goldberg knock on effects of our increasingly large and heavy lightweight guns are obscene, is the thing. It's only a matter of time before we have a Chinook crash or some other major accident on the airmobile artillery course, for example. Sling loading the 777 was all fine and good in theory, but more and more poo poo keeps getting added onto them. There's no way to sling load the gigantic gun tractors required to tow them, even without the armour kits.

So at the end of the day, at enormous risk, you have successfully transported a gun by helicopter that is too large for the crews to manhandle.

On paper, however, it is as airmobile as the guns a fraction of its size and weight it replaced, so the doctrine is unchanged, and I guess you might see orders for a battery to move by sling loading, to support an airmobile lift of a brigade, and the whole thing will end in tears. That's one of a dozen examples of this sort of thing happening as our capabilities on paper collide with the MIC grift.

cat botherer posted:

drat it's too bad nobody told Rudyard Kipling that people sometimes die in wars

Slavvy posted:

Some people calls it a kaiser load but I calls it a sling load

Frosted Flake posted:

That's one of a dozen examples of this sort of thing happening as our capabilities on paper collide with the MIC grift.

poisonpill posted:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Calhoun

Frosted Flake posted:

Nobody has produced a gun as light and cheap as the OTO-Melara Mod 56 (L5 ) in literally a generation. I feel like I'm slowly going crazy watching "gun" and "thing that tows gun" become projects that balloon to F-35 proportions.

Military Today posted:

Chinese Military manufacturer NORINCO produces an indigenous version of the Mod. 56 of the same caliber.

Frosted Flake posted:

Is that a physics deep cut?

Pomeroy posted:

Pomeroy posted:

Frosted Flake posted:

lol incredible

Pomeroy posted:

It fits that the PLA would have an appreciation for mountain guns, considering they beat a ROC destroyer flotilla with 76mm M1909 mountain guns mounted on fishing boats when taking Hainan.