At any distance of significance, like the distance between any two major cities in the United States, a 747 will easily outrun an F-16. The 747 is designed to cruise around mach 0.85, but it can cruise much faster - Col. Tillman’s account of ferrying Bush around the country on 9/11 said he was flying at 45k feet at…

In a topic like this, it might be worth remembering how connected the US and Canada are both economically, and particular their nuclear industries (including civil scientific research, mining and processing, and military applications). The majority of the US uranium supply is mined in Canada; Canada exports a billion…

One foreign-policy issue is that Canada considers the arctic archipelago internal waters, whereas the United States considers it an international strait. The ability of the United States to conduct freedom-of-navigation missions may, frankly, sway consensus into Canada’s favor. However, I’m pretty confident that a…

My current only-driver is a V6 Ranger that averages around 10 mpg. It’ll do ~25mpg on the highway, but I rarely leave the city, and so I would say close to 100% of its current use is under 30mph, with traffic lights dropping that average speed probably closer to 10.

I’d probably find this unacceptable if I commuted…

The Rockies are just this magical stretch of three thousand miles of libertarians, wind storms, and buffalo art. I miss it.

An aside: I’ve seen a few videos of people taking their Hummers to auto-x events and track days. They are universally hilarious.

And people have a right to non-violently fuck with other people. You know, when they’re not on duty and representing a nominally politically-independent agency of the federal government.

I mean, that doesn’t look fascist. It looks communist. Although, to be fair, both ideologies love the the authoritarian cult-of-personality lunacy.

The idea that it would be suicidal to launch a second-strike on the United States is a non-sequitur, as the state must still exist in the first place to be capable of suicide at all; second-strikes are by definition from the grave. This is the whole principle of no-first-use; if you take first-use off the table, what…

China’s official policy is against nuclear first use, and while you should never take a nation-state at their word, this is corroborated by the size and design of their arsenal. They do not have anything approaching a first strike capability, but they have a sophisticated and sufficient second-strike deterrent.

The…

I’ll just put this ... over here ... with the rest ... of the fire

Might have been some editing issues there. Although neither Sweden nor Finland have waterfront property up there, they are arctic nations with arctic icebreakers (with much larger baltic icebreaker fleets that aren’t so relevant here).

The Canadian government would actually be ecstatic to hear that news from the US. Unfortunately, for both you and Canada, this is a major departure from current US policy, and is unlikely to change any time soon. Canada considers the Northwest Passage to be internal waters, whereas the United States considers it to be…

Depending on the source, some will include the US LHD and LHA ships as aircraft carriers. They are often larger than the Harrier-Carriers of other nations, and can operate fixed-wing aircraft. However, in terms of doctrine, the US Navy does not use them in the same way as their carrier fleet and therefore do not…

You have to remember, this proposition only asks for congressional approval for a first-strike. A launch of an attack on the United States would, at least within Cold War doctrine, constitute a de facto state of war, giving the President authority to retaliate without congressional approval.

The Secretary of Defense is the 2nd man in that rule for the President, however the SecDef does not have a veto and cannot initiate a ‘vote’. He exists to verify that the President indeed made the order in sound state of mind. Even with a massive first strike inbound, the SecDef would need to authorize a retaliation…

Theories regarding limited nuclear engagements are certainly very rational and keeping the option available isn’t a bad thing (eg: the tactical nuclear weapons kept in Europe, or the UK’s “sub-strategic” Trident option). However, all nuclear engagements risk total nuclear war. That much is certain.

Not the only ones. The Canadian Coast Guard is considering leasing icebreakers...

I suspect you’re thinking of the Mars Climate Orbiter, which entered martian atmosphere shallow (and was therefore destroyed by atmospheric forces) because Lockheed-supplied software returned force data in pounds, while NASA software expected newtons.

Zero to sixty has been extremely important to sports cars. They haven’t been extremely important for executive sedans or for crossovers. As desireable electric cars move out of the sports segment, you’d expect the importance of the number to decrease, but it doesn’t.