They were part of the original F-14 deal before the Shah shit the pot. Every Tomcat came with Phoenix missiles and a Kenny Logins CD.

Big Dog needs those packs dismounted, and a chainsaw put on its front. The back needs to be covered with smoke and grenade dispensers. It needs a semi-auto AP weapon to knock down vehicals.

He was really inspired by the song “Deck the halls”

I think the A-10 successor needs to be drone based - and it needs to be smaller and much cheaper. It should be controllable from a forward drone controller as well as from back at base. The way I envision it would be more like a circling AC-130, miniaturized and essentially disposable, providing a machine gun nest in…

Exactly, that’s my point. It’s a 5th gen (or 4.95 gen) for the rest of the world. I would be the Philippines would be interested in something like this... How about Viet Nam? Pakistan? Georgia? All sorts of markets for this, depending on how it’s outfitted.

What I find interesting is there might be an export competitor to the F-35, and for that matter the PAK-50. Being the third or fourth out of the gate means you get to learn the lessons cheaply that everyone else paid dearly for. Besides the advantage of NOT locking yourself into having a single LM computer system run…

That’s not going to happen, because the other states can MAD each other out. Russia bombing non-state actors, especially ISIS... it’s not like anyone will put up more that a feeble sniffle of protest. And they would be protesting use of a nuke, not the target.

Really, Russia dropping a few tactical nukes would not surprise me at all, especially if it looked like Russian forces were being directly imperiled. I’m VERY surprised they didn’t drop a nuke in retaliation for the airliner.

ISIS is no friend, ISIS is a tool. ISIS is a tool to fight the Kurds, both inside Syria AND inside Turkey proper. The Erdogan regime can say honesty that the government took no part in bombings and massacres of terrorists (or what we would call Kurds) inside Turkey - it was just terrorist groups fighting each other.

I once watched a Keith Haring figure float out of my hood and float over my roof.

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

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!”