This calls up 2 moments for me:

Sounds like the type of the decision made by wealthy board members that take trains or get chauffer driven to work.

From a submariner (not I): “there are two kinds of ships- Submarines and targets...”.

My bro in the Navy said it’s called "Aquaflage" and is made to guaranty no one finds you if you fall overboard. If you go ashore, you're guaranteed to blend in with standing pools of water.

Exterior styling looks very concept-ish and distinctly Japanese.

Ha. I like the phrase “brochure comparison” Tyler. People get too caught up in the “this system can detect aircraft out to a range of 300mi” stuff. Yes, that assumes the enemy is stupid enough to fly a non-stealth aircraft at med-high altitude and fly right at the system etc.

When you spin tires hard like that the rear goes one way, then swings back. the other way and if you stay in it for the 3rd swing it usually builds up enough momentum to not be recoverable so it’s time to get out of it before that.

One thing that doesn’t really come across in videos and pictures is how the aircraft really don’t look at all shiny and perfect like Hollywood movies.

The carriers are used because they work for reasons of logistics. As others mentioned, parking off the coast of what you are bombing and having the F18 which requires a ton less maintenance than bombers means you can still drop quite a few bombs.

That’s not R2D2, that’s a Dalek!

That’s not R

Uh, they were nicknamed the flying coffins and the widowmaker, at least in Indian service, not because of fear they struck into the heart of the enemy.

The reason the US typically uses smaller guns is they typically have a higher muzzle velocity and firing rate. The point being that you don’t need always monster bullets to bring down an airplane and multiple hits with smaller caliber vs 1 or none at all has proven more effective since the 1950s.

I’m no fan of Putin but Russia is just protecting one of its clients which is in deep doo-doo with ISIS. So it’s not surprising they will likely start bombing the heck out of ISIS and probably anyone else threating Assad.

I’ll admit the NA Porsche engines were cool, but really, if the base model 911 gets a 3L twin-turbo engine, this is huge. This engine when tuned is going to make silly amounts of power (see tuned M4).

The iron triangle loves money going into NEW weapons as that greases the wheels and that’s probably reason enough. The other thought is the Predator and Reaper use the same “everything else”- command modules, data links, support facilities and personnel etc. So the new Reapers are likely just inheriting all of the old…

I’m sure one could come up with scenarios in which the US would have a lot of trouble holding our own vs a lot of different opponents. The more important question is why/how we’d ever fight another nuclear armed state directly, something which has never happened in history for a very good reason (all wars escalate…

Helicopters in general have a significantly higher accident rate than fixed-wing aircraft for a variety of reasons. Years ago it was reported that about 1/3 of the Harrier fleet was lost to accidents because it operates in the vertical flight regime and is complex beast too.

This. Any time you add complexity reliability tends to go down. The Japanese aren’t stupid and a lot of their brand value has always been related to reliability and turbos aren’t going to add to that.

ISIS has TOWs. The fact that they’re shooting them at unsuspecting small naval boats is a new though.