New efforts!

[ivanhedgehog]

read The Road Not Taken" It is a short story by Harry Turtledove. the aliens invented anti gravity and star drive early in their age of sail. It was easy and we missed it. their invasion fleet meets a humanity that has been developing advanced weapon systems.

[eabrace]

what ultimately doomed Boeing was not the looks of the aircraft, but they couldn't fill the Marine Corps' checkbox by preforming a STOVL take off properly.

The X-32 might have been able to do a STO with the cowl in place (don't know, really, since we never got to see them try that.)  But it definitely couldn't properly hover or land vertically (VL) with that in place.  The airflow was too restricted without forward motion and they had all kinds of problems with it on the hover pit.  Eventually, they removed the cowl for testing at the hover pit so that they could get through that.  (Pretty sure the cowl being removed contributed to hot gas ingestion, but that's another story.)  And that probably would have been OK if they didn't actually have to put it back on the the aircraft to complete up and away wingborne testing.  Without the cowl in place, the X-32 couldn't get into the supersonic corners of the flight envelope.

Still, that probably didn't entirely sink them (even if it should have, Druyun was still involved in the project at the time).  But having a flying qualities demonstrator that can't be put through all of its paces without landing and being modified between tests certainly doesn't help you win a contract.

Just to drive the point home, Lockheed decided that even though they'd completed all of their testing, they wanted one more flight - "Mission-X".  Turbo taxied the X-35B out, performed a short take-off, went up to altitude, broke the sound barrier, came back, and landed vertically.  I distinctly recall the words, "Let's see Boeing do that!"

[Remaugen]

Biggest GAU I seen so far is a CIWS. Interesting enough the A-10 fires a larger caliber than the CIWS, but then again the CIWS is a defense weapon. Too bad they are slowly being replaced with the RAM.

I saw video once of a British naval ship testing the Dutch Goalkeeper radar operated PDS shooting down incoming drones. I was impressed! I am sure that state of the art is several generations newer by now and must be pretty serious indeed!

[Remaugen]

I was on vacation in England in 2005 and riding a bus in the countryside when I saw two British Tornados apparently doing drills.

The interesting part was that I saw them looking out of my window.

The really interesting part was that I was looking *down* at them.

I've heard stories that Tornado drivers love to flirt with the deck.  But when you can see the insignia painted on the *top* of the wings from a tour bus, that's just bananas.  Granted we were driving on a hillside road and there was a gentle valley to our right, but that's still bananas.  I'm pretty sure someone "accidentally" forgot to carry a two that day when executing the flight parameters.

I know that feeling! It's pretty awesome, once in the Bear Tooth Mountains in Montana I got to look down on F-16s flying through the canyons below. I suspect they were flying NoE on TFR as they were hugging the terrain pretty tight.

[Vee]

Y'all should be careful you don't get mod slapped for too many acronyms.

[MM3squints]

I saw video once of a British naval ship testing the Dutch Goalkeeper radar operated PDS shooting down incoming drones. I was impressed! I am sure that state of the art is several generations newer by now and must be pretty serious indeed!

Well that is what in theory what the RAM is for. Honestly I feel more conferrable with a wall of lead than a heat seeking interceptor

Y'all should be careful you don't get mod slapped for too many acronyms.

No such thing. Acronyms makes stuff easier. Like an instructors at Nuclear Power School in Charleston SC unofficially are called a "Direct Input Limited Duty Officer." So much easier just to call them by their acronyms.

[blacksly]

PS: Since I'm on the subject, does anyone else think that on the alien homeworld, the movie Independence Day is actually their version of Jurassic Park?

No?  Only me?

No. Aliens.
Maybe including the "nuke it from orbit" line.

[blacksly]

Y'all should be careful you don't get mod slapped for too many acronyms.

Don't you mean MS'd for TMA?

[Remaugen]

NoE or NOE = Nap of (the) Earth (Close to the ground, below stationary radar) TFR = Terrain Following Radar (A guidance assist system to help pilots fly real low)

The newest generation of combat aircraft use a combined system that incorporates TFR with GPS and lidar generated terrain model data to create a very realistic virtual terrain image so they can avoid pesky things like power lines and tall antennas. Pilots have been known to joke that the virtual system is so complete that it even puts numbers on street corners and mailboxes.

[MM3squints]

NoE or NOE = Nap of (the) Earth (Close to the ground, below stationary radar) TFR = Terrain Following Radar (A guidance assist system to help pilots fly real low)

The newest generation of combat aircraft use a combined system that incorporates TFR with GPS and lidar generated terrain model data to create a very realistic virtual terrain image so they can avoid pesky things like power lines and tall antennas. Pilots have been known to joke that the virtual system is so complete that it even puts numbers on street corners and mailboxes.

The joke with the Aegis System is when we launch a Tomahawk, the operator will say, "which window do you want it to go in? Doesn't matter, we will just clear the land to give them a football field"

[Arcana]

NoE or NOE = Nap of (the) Earth (Close to the ground, below stationary radar) TFR = Terrain Following Radar (A guidance assist system to help pilots fly real low)

The newest generation of combat aircraft use a combined system that incorporates TFR with GPS and lidar generated terrain model data to create a very realistic virtual terrain image so they can avoid pesky things like power lines and tall antennas. Pilots have been known to joke that the virtual system is so complete that it even puts numbers on street corners and mailboxes.

I may be wrong here, but to my knowledge "newest" combat aircraft typically don't have terrain following radar.  It is actually older aircraft that tend to have TFR because a number of factors make TFR less interesting to place in current generation combat aircraft.  For one thing, there's the preoccupation with passive stealth.  Passive stealth is partially incompatible with TFR and TFR flight profiles because stealth presumes low signature and low emissions from the aircraft to hide it from radar.  TFR presumes very low altitude to decrease observability but requires very strong active radar systems which are themselves generally detectable (if sometimes difficult to localize).

Also, increasingly modern combat aircraft designs have tended to focus less on the low altitude combat mission and more on the all-purpose fighter or fighter/bomber role, and many of the aerodynamic decisions you make to balance the performance of an aircraft in that envelope make it unsuitable to fly extremely low altitude effectively (for example, I think most modern aircraft would be operating close to stall speed in a nape of the earth mission).

Where you see terrain following radar is in specialty aircraft explicitly designed to fly very low altitude missions specifically (for example the GR4 Tornado or the old USAF F-111) or sometimes in combat helicopters which are almost all essentially de facto NAP aircraft, and sometimes in specialty aircraft like transport helicopters and scout aircraft).

Correct me if I'm wrong military air-experts, but I think the only "modern" current generation fighter with a genuine TFR is the French Rafale.

[eabrace]

Y'all should be careful you don't get mod slapped for too many acronyms.

[eabrace]

Correct me if I'm wrong military air-experts, but I think the only "modern" current generation fighter with a genuine TFR is the French Rafale.

I know Raytheon still makes them (and as far as I know, the Silent Knight system is due in 2018), but other than special ops C-130s, V-22s, and helicopters, I'm hard pressed to think of what else they'd be going in.  Not really sure whether or not AutoGCAS was much more than an experiment on the F-16.

[MM3squints]

I know Raytheon still makes them (and as far as I know, the Silent Knight system is due in 2018), but other than special ops C-130s, V-22s, and helicopters, I'm hard pressed to think of what else they'd be going in.  Not really sure whether or not AutoGCAS was much more than an experiment on the F-16.

To be fair the C-130s, V-22s are technically transport not much of a fighter (well I guess AC-130 is). From my knowledge, the B-1 Lancers still use them.

Note: Bombers are not technically F/As either xD, but they do put warheads onto foreheads

2nd Note: I guess they did put ordinance onto the V-22 too

http://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/the-v-22-osprey-finally-gets-the-missiles-and-rockets-i-1668338371

[Zombie Hustler]

After I saw the first movie, I came up with a theory that others independently came up with as well that the aliens in ID4 were actually a relatively primitive race, perhaps only slightly more advanced than humanity was intrinsically, that happened upon the technology they were using in ID4.  Because their own technology was so radically different (think the bioengineered body suits) they appropriated the technology rather than integrated it into their industrial-technological systems.

So they were the Kree? 

[LaughingAlex]

After I saw the first movie, I came up with a theory that others independently came up with as well that the aliens in ID4 were actually a relatively primitive race, perhaps only slightly more advanced than humanity was intrinsically, that happened upon the technology they were using in ID4.  Because their own technology was so radically different (think the bioengineered body suits) they appropriated the technology rather than integrated it into their industrial-technological systems.  As a result, they were far more vulnerable to the kinds of strategies that the humans employed on them than the true masters of the technology would likely have been.  There are pockets of evidence that the aliens were extremely trusting and reliant on their technology without fully understanding its limitations.  Why would they deliberately chase Will Smith into the hull of their own mothership at the end when their shields were down, as if the pilots of those craft simply were not fully appreciating the fact that their primary life-saving defense wasn't operative.  Why deploy their vulnerable primary weapon under those same circumstances, whereas if they had just hovered around for a couple of hours alien IT would have restored their shields and they could have proceeded to destroy the Earth?

And perhaps most important, why is their technology relatively unchanged in decades?  The crashed craft from Roswell appears to be fundamentally identical to the fighter craft the aliens invade with forty years later.  That difference can't just be cosmetic either, because they seem to have the same speed, roughly the same maneuverability, exactly the same broadcast power systems, and exactly precisely the same network communications systems.  That seems odd, unless you assume the aliens are just maintaining the technology but aren't really developing it.

In other words, they are like Klackons.  Uncreative, and unable to come up with anything on there own.  Feudal, klackons at that.  So they cannot even research anything(Feudalism in Moo2 cuts research in half, so you just as well try to steal it from everyone instead and try to win early, uncreative makes the game pick your technologies for you, and often rather bad choices).  If I were to make the Independence day race in Moo2, I'd have to pick both uncreative and feudal.  It'd still be possible to win with such a crappy race, it'd be a game of rushing everyone and stomping them with stolen technology rather than through advanced economics and superior technology.  But it'd then be left with exactly what everyone ELSE researched, rather than anything it actually researched.

Actually elerians would describe them well:
They were telepathic.
They were feudal.
Very war driven.

The only thing they didn't have was mind controlling entire planets, they had to prepare a manual ground invasion force :/.  Nore did they have very good pilots(elerian pilots in the standard game had 20 bonus defense and attack).  Nore did they have omniscience, I guess.

[Remaugen]

Correct me if I'm wrong military air-experts, but I think the only "modern" current generation fighter with a genuine TFR is the French Rafale.

You are very likely correct, I have been out of the loop for a long while.

I have heard vague rumors about something called "Passive Emissive Reflections" which is supposed to be the radar-ish equivalent of passive sonar, it supposedly reads reflected radiation from things like TV, radio, cell signals, local EMR sources and such to build a forward terrain model. But I don't have a clue if this is something actually being deployed or is just dreamware. It would certainly be a logical successor to TFR.

TFR is certainly a dated technology, forgive me for dating myself, but I was a retread, my first tour of service was in the USAF 79-83 (Security Police) and I spent two years in England at RAF Upper Heyford (20th SPS) with the F-111s of the 20th TFW. We lost several aircraft while I was there, and the prevailing opinion at that time was that the accidents were TFR related, though I never did hear an official statement as to cause.

[Nyx Nought Nothing]

You are very likely correct, I have been out of the loop for a long while.

I have heard vague rumors about something called "Passive Emissive Reflections" which is supposed to be the radar-ish equivalent of passive sonar, it supposedly reads reflected radiation from things like TV, radio, cell signals, local EMR sources and such to build a forward terrain model. But I don't have a clue if this is something actually being deployed or is just dreamware. It would certainly be a logical successor to TFR.

TFR is certainly a dated technology, forgive me for dating myself, but I was a retread, my first tour of service was in the USAF 79-83 (Security Police) and I spent two years in England at RAF Upper Heyford (20th SPS) with the F-111s of the 20th TFW. We lost several aircraft while I was there, and the prevailing opinion at that time was that the accidents were TFR related, though I never did hear an official statement as to cause.

Of course the downside is that shortly after fighting started in an area the amount of PER in the region would probably drop precipitously as power grids and cellular networks went offline.

[Shibboleth]

read The Road Not Taken" It is a short story by Harry Turtledove. the aliens invented anti gravity and star drive early in their age of sail. It was easy and we missed it. their invasion fleet meets a humanity that has been developing advanced weapon systems.

Not aliens as in singular race, most. The prequel, "Herbig Haro" deals with another race like mankind which took the road less travelled.

[Paragon Avenger]

Weekly Update ---

Help!  There are bunny rabbits everywhere!