Venting the heat offboard only raises the aircraft’s visibility to heat-sealing sensors. Another option is to develop a thermal accumulator...

My first thought looking at these pictures was, “Wow, that is an amazing rendering! Wait a minute...” which I think plays into what 52ndstate said.

Yep. At the time I posted that I thought the rocket was liquid fueled, which would have a very high probability of exploding on impact. I am told that most of these are actually solid fueled, which are much more stable if not ignited.

The US has never been in such a position.

Loaded down with fuel tanks and bombs, no, not very. But when you clean her up a bit...

Better not tell him about this guy!

Make sure invite Tyler to write up the AAR!

You misunderstand- my example of the French strikes was a counter to saying that Daesh wouldn’t miss the propaganda opportunity. I would agree with that, so not hearing anything at all stikes me as odd. Which brings me to my next point: The ‘hand-wringing’ is justified in that terrorist groups use civilian casualties…

I have a hard time believing that the French bombings in Raqqa didn’t cause civilian casualties, but we haven’t heard much about that either. I guess my previous comment boils down to the concern that there are no reliable sources of information there, only propaganda outlets (be them Daesh, Russian, or Western).

We’ve already seen Russian helicopters firing unguided rockets in wide arcs into populations centers. There is no reliable journalism coming out of the region to call them out on it. Would you really put it past them?

During WWII the Russians attached bombs to dogs that were trained to run under tanks. And blew them up. Maybe you should go protest them.

Beautiful scenery, and the disappearing gun mount is awesome. Thanks for sharing.

This is pretty near the exact opposite situation as the Bundy’s. The Bundy’s decided to stop paying the government (because fuck them, they’re the government) to use government owned land. People went out of their way to defend them because the government going to take stuff from a rancher over a monetary dispute…

For what its worth, it looks like a prop rifle. The vent holes in the handguard look like they are filled in, as a solid rubber dummy would be.

If he did that, when he lost control of it he would have had 8 pounds flying around his face with the possibility of striking him. I’m not sure any of this was smart, but that would be worse.

When I read that we were sending a special forces contingent to Syria, the first thing I thought was how we would defend them from the possibility of Russian air strikes. It seems like the Kurdish region they are deploying to is untouched by Russia as of yet, but F-15C’s nearby are a good insurance policy.

With the LLC deal, its probably easier to get parts for this than it is for my 1995 900SE...

You’ll note that I said most threats. A battleship is armored to protect against very specific seaborne threats. At the time, that meant shells and torpedoes. Even then, it was well known that shells from a long range would begin dropping from higher angles. The wikipedia page even notes the actual size gun and firing…

Yeah, the Lead Pilot sounded pretty stressed through the last 30 miles. I had always thought the MiG’s locked them up on their targeting radars first, but that didn’t seem to be the case and he was really bothered that they were shooting first. Also weird that it took him so long to select and fire his AIM-9 once they…

Thanks for the article, really helped piece together what was happening in the audio.