Thanks

so the only good news then, is that, pending the outcome of the shock test, the USS Ford is better at doing it's job than any of the LCS'?

what does COTD stand for, please?

I went into the Army right out of college. Stayed for eight years. When I got out of the Army and went to work in civilian life, I ended up changing jobs about every two years because I was so accustomed to doing something different in the Army every 12 months or so. It took me ten years go "grow out" of that feeling.

Nice to see the Israeli’s and Jordanians cooperating.

looking at Google Earth, lots of large chemical handling docks all over the harbor. The explosion looks like the WP explosions we used to see in Nam, except bigger.

bourgeoisie, let me offer a different perspective. There wasn't scope creep because the Skunk Works was NOT trying to build one airplane to play three roles. The U2 and the SR-71 were designed to do one thing very well. If, in its infinite wisdom, the DoD had said, hey let's build a new VTOL/STOL high performance…

Kelly Johnson and the Skunkworks sure was a talented group. Clearly no scope creep allowed in designing the U-2 and SR-71.

In Russia, Spooky is an old twin engine airplane with many little guns. Three rounds per square meter if we fly low.

yeah, there is a forestmeister going through the trees counting every nick, scrape and piece of bent foliage. When I was deployed to Germany in the '70s, we move into an overnight position in the woods and before we could get the perimeter guards out, the forestmeister would be walking through checking for damage.

good, and you?

there you go destroying all of the good plotlines for my book.

Dogon, yep understand your point. And, you’re right about crossing the open ocean. It'd be a challenge.

Son, I was thinking that you get the sub into the harbor but the target isn't the container ship that you followed in, its the harbor infrastructure itself. If you can buy a tactical nuke, you could make the bang really big.

you are correct, my mistake. Clancy’s Ticonderoga had 96 SM2 which were fired from launchers, not a VLS config.

Dogon, yep, you’re talking about the Glomar Explorer raising parts of the K129.

Clancy always gave the good guys the benefit of the doubt. But I think that his assessment of the tactics used by the Russians is probably accurate. And I think that the Russians would be willing to bet the farm on the first strike.

Fuel, you don't have to steal a sub, all it takes are resources. And a couple of million dollars is small change to the backers of jihad. If you've got deep pockets, you build a better sub than the wood and fiberglass narco tubs. There are countries friendly to jihad who would train your crew in a real submarine. And,…

Skychismo, I think you minimize the goal here. No disrespect to the Cole and its crew, that's a small bang for the buck. These jihadist would be looking to have a really big bang. So they're going to blow up the container port, or a refinery complex or something like that. I'd be willing to bet that if you had a…

If the jihadist wanted to do this, they’d build a better sub - not a wood and fiberglass tub like the narco’s use - capable of submersible operation. I’m willing to bet that you could, under the cover of darkness, follow a container ship into any port and get away with it.