I wonder how they would recover a modern aircraft to another aircraft. Would you grab it by the wings? Coast onto a pad and close the air stream to it?

While there may be some call for a front line railgun, I think for the bombardment aspect we need to think bigger than a BB based gun. Instead, I think we need an Inter Continental Rail Gun, or ICRG

Not to mention the air rifles in the pile!

I was waiting for someone to bring that up!

No, I mean Verhoeven shot it like it was a propaganda movie. You are rooting for the Nazis throughout the movie. You never want the bugs to win, you want the Fascistic Earth Force to win, putting the audience squarely on the side of the Nazis. Verhoeven is a mad genius!

Um, let me field this one.

You fool - “Florida Man” will be loosed upon the world if you sink is sanctuary!

Reasonable discussion... Haaah, wouldn’t that be nice. I point out to people on the left and right that the gun debate is exactly the same as the abortion debate, with Right and Left switching sides on banning.

Starship Troopers was the best Nazi Propaganda film ever!

You know, that would be an interesting procurement strategy. Instead of buying a plane, they buy a fully robotic assembly line. All future revisions of the aircraft are made first on the assembly line, then retrofitted to existing fleet. And by fully robotic, I mean including the parts sub-assemblies. They don’t all…

He’d be like “Where are the front wings?” “Where is the propeller?” “I would sue them for infringment, but this will obviously not fly!”

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: