As I pointed out in the Snow Goose article, it’s only a matter of time before individual ground units get their own combat drones to go out on missions with. The drone controller won’t be sitting in a trailer in Nevada, he/she will be embedded within the unit. The drone itself will fly itself with additional guidance…

If you fly 4 of them in formation, are they as loud as a Bear bomber?

OK, Counter-force second strike then. Again, I must point out that we are talking about DF, a weapon that would be used IN THEATER. It’s not like they are launching a DF to sink a carrier in San Diego. You know what kind of a warhead a DF has within minutes - like 4 minutes tops. It’s only travelling a few hundred…

If you look over on the right side, above where the Publish button is, you will see a down pointing arrow this will pull down a list that will allow you to edit.

I think that is really the important question here: Are the carriers designed for force projections at 400 miles off their coast, or 1200 miles? At 1200+ they need to be doing ALOT more than air defense, so they would need CATOBAR. Closer to the mainland, all their strike aircraft can launch off long, long airstrips -…

China would lose faster than the US:

I’m with you! I’m actually kind of surprised that the reaction to downing a Russian airliner WASN’T to drop a small nuke on an ISIS controlled city. From a standpoint of “Don’t fuck with us”, nothing would speak louder.

Looking at those target maps made me question the Nuclear Winter theory, the more I thought about it, the more I called BS on it. Like Freeman in your quote, if it helped prevent an exchange - GREAT! But otherwise it’s really only good for the basis of a scary story.

It all starts with little steps - here is one. Roomba recovery of airborne vehicle using sensors and automation for capture:

You are right, there are so many variables to figure out, very fast... it would be like attaching a robotic arm to a dancer and expecting it not to spill.

It adds another immensely complex system to a ship already filled to the brim with complex operations.

They are not hitting a wall - they are being decelerated at a pre-determined rated over a predetermined area. The difference is that the deceleration happens by a robot, not a snagging wire and hook. The robot can use the whole length of the deck if needed, or just let the jet pass by if the landing isn’t within…

It would be! Since it only operates in a very small area, it actually only has to hold it’s charge for a few moments, perfect for high discharge capacitors. Also, it’s no like there is no way to launch multi-ton objects on a carrier deck or anything - it’s not like hey do this all the time or something :)

You missed the part where the deck reaches up to take the plane, the plane doesn’t land. All the jet does is come in at the appropriate glidepath. All the brains figuringing out the microsecond variations in pitch, yaw, wind, sea state, the direction of the ship for the next few tenths of a second - all processed on…

Now that we have autonomous vehicles, I’m not sure why airplanes will need landing gear in the future.

I wouldn’t want it to have the mind of a thinking soldier, I want it to have the mind of a berzerker.

A human pilot can’t be jammed, a human pilot doesn’t overwhelm a datalink with fast motion high def 360 degree video required to dogfight, a human pilot doesn’t have latency issues over a long connection.

You would think a mirror would be effective, but it’s not. The most reflective surfaces only reflect like 80% of the energy, the rest is absorbed as heat. With laser weapons, even absorbing only 20% of the energy at best will burn or explode the reflective medium nearly instantly.

Actually, this is something I’m not so worried about. Could China, Iran, or Russia develop gound or air based lasers? Sure! But they won’t have the power, reach, accuracy, or refire capacity that our system will have.

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