JW Collins

Have any of the Republican Guard armored divisions been pulled back from the border with Israel? How likely is that to occur?

Has any work been done in the way of scaling up LSAT to 7.62x51mm? I haven't read much about that program since they prototyped a carbine firing the cased telescoping ammo, but has there been anything in the way of calibers other than the 5.56x45mm analogue?

While I do wish we had something more akin to a proper frigate, I'm not against the idea of the LCS as something of a support ship that would operate alongside said frigates. But the price is insane for what we're getting.

Something along the lines of several of the newer European frigate designs? In that case we'd still need something to replace old minesweepers and the other "secondary" roles the LCS was supposed to fill. The large helicopter deck and hanger is one nice thing at least.

What's the pod on the wing there? ECM or some sort of decoy? Personally I think an "EF-15" to operate alone the lines of the EA-18G would have been a nice development of the F-15 series. I have read that the F-15E isn't as smooth a flier as the F-111 at low altitude however.

To the best of my knowledge the program emerged from US Navy's "Streetfighter" concept, but it became much larger with the goal of also replacing our remaining frigates, minesweepers, etc. Not a bad concept in theory, but things like crew size, armament, and all of the important stuff didn't seem to keep pace with this growth. I'm not certain why exactly the cost is so high however. Beyond LCS it seems like our shipbuilding industry has been having all sorts of problems. The latest LPDs suffer from all kinds of quality issues. Meanwhile the Navy and idiots in Washington can't seem to decide what they want out of our next cruiser/destroyer. The Flight III Burkes don't seem like the best option to many.

Isn't Sparky a big fan of seaplanes? Maybe he planned to make an amphibious F/A-18 and fit a large crane somewhere on that poor Iowa.

Is Sparky a rabid V-22 Osprey hater? He seems the type, and it would be most amuzing when you consider the above proposal. Edit: He must hate it, being a product of narcissistic egomaniacal marine trucktards.

Are M249s ever used with 30 round STANAG magazines in real world operations?

I thought Putin and most of Russia's current leadership made a point of supporting their own defense industry? This seems this goes against that to some degree. What was wrong with the BTR-90 or other developments of that series?

I don't imagine Sparky would look that calm. Needs more ranting in all caps about narccisitic marine trucktards rigging tests. But I do find this news rather surprising, especially the part about joint French-Russian designs.

A bit off topic but related the Bradley regardless. When the TOW launcher is deployed, is the Bradley mechanically limited to a certain speed? Or is it up the driver to ensure that if he does move, he does so slowly enough to avoid causing any damage to the launcher? When used as something akin to a replacement for the ITV, how did the Bradley stack up? The biggest problem I see is that bringing up infantry to a spot where they can be effective doesn't translate into providing a lot of stand-off distance to use TOWs.

I'm guessing they just wanted to keep the nicer tanks around for if WWIII broke out in Europe.

completely idiotitic article. T-72 is the gratest shame of Soviet tank industry. What do you mean? I thought the T-72 met its objective as a "mobilization" tank design? So much so that the Russians choose to develop it further (T-90) rather than further developments of the T-80.

The translation I used was kinda off, but interesting article regardless. How would the T-72AV have stacked up?

It does indeed seem like the F-20 would be the ideal trainer these days. I'm guessing this program won't get too far however. Its a really bad time for it with everything else going on in the USAF.

Never read anything about Soviet flares designed with the AIM-9L in mind. In fact wasn't ECCM one of the strong points of the 9L/M series Sidewinders?

http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/farnborough-terma-displays-f-35-multimission-pod-374017/ Maybe it's possible to fit a SKS armed infantryman and his bicycle in one of these. Or a battery of recoilless rifles. One rumor I've heard about the F-35 is that there is space for, and that it is wired for side arrays which could be used as part of a future internal ECM suite.

Has anyone here gotten into the beta? I would be interested in hearing any feedback. Still not horribly optimistic about the whole thing, but I hope I'm wrong.

I'm guessing this has already been discussed but the search function didn't find anything. How much commonality was there between T-64 and T-80 turrets. I've heard in the past that the T-80B and T-64B share the same turret design but I'm guessing this is false.