Burncycle360

I wish, we can probably even improve performance with the technology improvements since then

Big fan of Vivek, Elon, Ron Paul etc. I just want a Government that spends less than it earns, and that will never happen so long as the fed exists. Trump doesn't appear interested in pushing for cuts in entitlements, so nothing meaningful will change unfortunately even if he has congress. A 50% cut in federal jobs and improving efficiency is great but it won't stop the direction we're heading in on its own. Someone has to bite the bullet and cut entitlements.

Still primitive but it won't be long. Smaller, faster, folding, offboard cueing, and you will start seeing dispensers on vehicles. This is necessary; eventually inbound threats will be autonomous and in swarms rather than streams.

You're going to need to, in order to compensate for poor kinematic performance if you plan on using them for anything beyond self defense IIRC USAF apparently also wants a penetrating counter air capability

We're broke AF. Just build more Chinooks.

Contract awards have always been like that, but in this case I think they came out ahead.

I'd love to see what skunk works or phantom works could do with some of these. A tech demonstrator, if you will. Bushmaster makes a 40x180 round, which is 30x173 necked up to 40mm which just needs a barrel / chamber swap and light modifications to the feed guides, it should be pretty straightforward to modify a GAU-8 to shoot this ammunition. Add to that a small, small, conformal, MMW AESA radar for continuous ranging data, a 3P like multi-mode fuze, and an inductive fuze setter hard mounted ahead of the firing barrel position, then the GAU-8 could theoretically fire ammunition that reliably airbusts about 3-6 feet off the ground, detonates on impact, or penetrates concrete, light armor, structures and other non-MBT targets (or a combination of the above settings) with the flick of a switch from the cockpit, all at 3,900 RPM. Less useful against MBT, but more useful against everything else. Triple MMW brimstone adoption would be a useful upgrade too, along with laser guided APKWS... it would be impressive and useful IMO for anything besides near-peer conventional conflict which historically makes up about 99% of what we do. https://www.twz.com/26529/behold-these-awesome-images-of-a-10-warthogs-training-with-mv-22-ospreys-over-hawaii

Oof. Did the study correlate this phenomenon with suicides or lean muscle mass gain?

If it's not a GPS denied environment you can create a V1 capable of building size accuracy in a garage

Interesting, I posted a comprehensive analysis a couple of times regarding drone / counter drone considerations on other threads and the responses they're coming up with mirror that analysis pretty closely. (A summary over on navweaps) https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/warships1discussionboards/viewtopic.php?p=1115189#p1115189

Combat radius 50 miles with buddy tanking 😅

In the civilian sector a market economy provides critical indicators regarding demand, and in capitalism this is ostensibly value added such that it benefits everyone involved. Given that defense contractors are civilian by design and employ hundreds of thousands of people defense procurement treats it like any other corporation that has a business with the Government to include private manufacturing and handling of nuclear weapons. As a result such items are not produced at cost, nor are costs driven down through competition, and ultimately the taxpayer tends to pay significantly more for a product than they would if said product was otherwise a commercial item because they know the Government will pay if it's something they need and print money if necessary. Further, this paradigm tends to use just in time logistics and struggles to scale up without significant capital investment and (more importantly) a time delay. So inefficient procurement processes (such as subcontractors distributed across all 50 states to appeal to congressmen for funding, and cost plus contracts even in areas they arguably are not needed) is common. On the military side of things, for items that we know are necessary and last a long time (empty artillery shells, bomb bodies, ammunition, etc) is there utility in a sandboxed, vertically integrated command micro economy where government employees are paid fixed salary (comparable to public safety) to continuously churn out these products, treating them almost as ingots, a way to store the raw materials? Such items would not be produced based on just in time logistics but would instead result in a stockpile of billions of rounds, at cost. They would, as tightly as possible centralize production of these items from metal extraction, refinement into intermediate products, processing into finished products all at the same location. I understand why this isn't desirable for tanks or aircraft which may change more rapidly over time, but for things we know we will need it's difficult to understand why it wouldn't be win win for the taxpayers and the soldiers.

The bear offends me far less than the 1994 crime bill and the harris prisoner thing, tbh. He and Tulsi were the next best choice for president behind Vivek, I hope Trump unleashes him upon captured institutions, but everything is predicated on having congress.

I cannot express how much I want an American 180 and Tippmann scale M1919 and scale Lakeside M2 Now to abolish the ATF...

Ah, so your takeaway from my warnings about collectivism is that clearly I must be a collectivist on the opposite ideological team. Gotcha.