Cannot star this enough times.

Depends on the country.

Just a small nitpick in an otherwise very informative article; are ground crews at risk of fire if there are sparks while fueling a jet? Jet Fuel isn't gasoline; you can literally toss a match into a bucket of it without it igniting.

There are other variables at play there. For the Russians, I don’t see why a carrier is a high priority item. They’re really expensive and wouldn’t play a key role in defending Russia or attacking Europe, which is their basic military posture.

Didn’t the new GOP congress in 1996 abrogate the agreement?

Behold, Obama derangement syndrome! Wherein first term Senator Obama convinced such notable Democrats as Rumsfeld, McCain and England to oppose the F22 (even before he was elected!) and in a feat never reproduced in his Presidency, to prevail upon a Republican congress, also presumably against their will, to cut…

Agreed! Although it’s been explained to me more than once that they're that way for ejection: you don't want to be compressing some plush seat and all the solid part of the seat to slam into you or something along those lines.

So out of curiosity, how many engagements have the US navy been in when it needed something heavier than a corvette since the end of WWII?

Please let us know who wants to get into a war with Russia, over Syria no less, so we can take great effors to keep them far away from the WH.

Man, that Obama has powers others can only dream of.

Sorry, why does the use of C or C++ (or any other compiled language) make the software more vulnerable to (also compiled) Ada?

So, you’re both a single issue vote and support the legality of ritualized murder?

Right. However, given the money involved I can’t really imagine that even training new Ada programmers from scratch would be that difficult. And it’s not like there aren’t lots of people who don’t know both Pascal and more OO languages who could pick up Ada quickly (or who already know Ada!)

I think he’s saying that the use of Ada makes it difficult to secure through a re-write, not that Ada’s compiled code is inherently insecure (compared to the alternatives).

Please, do enlighten us how it was ‘won’ if it all fell to bits when we left, on the timeline negotiated by ‘this crew’.

Doesn’t the inclusion of ulterior motives give the game away? They wanted to invade Iraq. So when the opportunity arose, they did. Someone who didn’t want to Iraq may not have done so, especially as they didn’t attack us on 9/11. Or perhaps they would have decided to do the job properly. Any number of variables.

Er, the Russians have bombed plenty of hospitals.

The DPRK still seems to be around, so not sure what your point is?

Er, when the last line was drawn in the sand, Syria suddenly reached an agreement with Russia over it’s chemical weapons stockpile. Looks a lot like ‘mission accomplished’, except the mission was actually accomplished.

Tyler - you’re missing my favorite stat about the SR-71. While I guess I don’t have the exact number (someone neccessary for a ‘by the numbers’ list I guess), wasn’t most of the titatnium purchased from Russia?