Toxn

The US is the ultimate exemplar of modern industrial propaganda, and learned from the old master (the UK). This is easy to demonstrate (if filled with tedious quotations and references), because where else is the narrative of "giant, technologically-advanced country rolls over smaller country and dominates them for twenty years for no good reason, only to leave in shame as the local lads make it too hard for them to stay" Full Metal Jacket and not Red Dawn: Kabul edition. Who else could even think of pulling of the move of "these guys fought the Reds and so we armed them and helped radicalize them, then they sat around for twenty years and did more or less nothing, then someone completely different hurt us and so we decided that they were evil monsters and had to go". That's some Eastasia-level shit right there, and that's without even looking at the sequel where they go "so we just left, but never lost, but are going to punish these guys forever about it, but the real fight were the lessons we learned along the way".

Agreed. I'm getting real "Baghdad Bob but now we're all Iraqis" vibes from all of this.

Dude, no. Just... I mean, did you fall into a coma in 2004 and only just wake up? Are you an amnesiac or something? Knocking over other countries is a terrible idea if your purposes are to safeguard liberal democracy. Even if you grant someone the right to get rid of "dictators" and "terrorists" that run places in a way you don't like (and that's a planet-sized "if"), it never works. The locals never turn around, look at all the foreign troops lording it over them and go "you know what, we like these guys so much that we're going to vote for someone who aligns perfectly with their interests and never cause trouble again". If you actually believe in the concept of a liberal, rules-based international order, then the US declaring a bunch of countries guilty of a crime they didn't commit and invading them was one of the crimes of the new century. And even if you don't; it's results have been an unmitigated disaster by the very justifications that they themselves provided. No democracy flowered, no peace was achieved. The only beneficiaries were a bunch of defence contractors and an even more virulent crop of terrorists that the US effectively manufactured and spread around a quarter of the globe. So if you are going to blame Russia for unprovoked aggression and breaking international norms, then you have to blame the US for showing them how it's done: never once apologizing for the act, and never facing any consequences except the inevitable blow-back that comes with some of the stupidest policy decisions in history. That's just basic mental consistency. And if you really think that simply being able to paint your enemies as illiberal is all you need to justify any heinous act, then how is a democratically-elected Russian government, who sees the government in the Ukraine as the illegitimate result of a soft coup by the US, not also going to be able to use that to argue their case? Learn to use your head, or get off this forum.

As am I. You guys have always been incredible at propaganda.

The propaganda out there right now is insane...

I'm not sure what you're responding to here tbh.

I think this is a bit of a misnomer - wind turbines without any bird-scaring features (such as painting one blade black) kill plenty of birds. But far, far less than an equivalent coal power plant does. I'd expect tidal power to kill plenty of fish and crabs and such, but again far, far less than, say any form of technology which involves jetting a huge plume of heated or briny water into the sea (ie: nuclear power or desalination plants). Really, the biggest issue with tidal is just that it's damn hard to make anything with moving parts that doesn't degrade or get encrusted with sea life after a few years. The sea is not a happy environment for anything with moving bits that's also supposed to sit in one spot for years on end without maintenance.

So, Sherman vs Panther is a topic that has been chewed over on this forum until only gristle remains. I accordingly have very little to add except to urge the newer members to dig into some of our older threads. In terms of chronological progression vs what hindsight tells us - as @Sturgeon has stated, a T-44/T-54 was entirely within the state of the art in 1939. If aircraft seem to have more quickly arrived at a local optimum, it's partly a function of more resources being poured into them than tanks*, partly a function of the relative utility of outdated models^, and partly a function of different operational and strategic tradeoffs. Tanks are rigidly constrained by fuel supply lines, bridge sizing, tunnel width and train gauges. The result is that you want to get along with the smallest, lightest, most mobile vehicle you can until such time as it isn't tenable any more. With aircraft, the major limitation of runways only kicks in at the very frontline, and accordingly puts hard constraints only on shorter-ranged types such as interceptors and tactical support aircraft. Even then, this mostly bites around the point where jet aircraft become common and landing speeds start to balloon. *Resources put into tank vs. aircraft production in WW2 are uniformly almost impossible to directly quantify given wildly fluctuating budgets, the different strategic resources needed by each, the inaccuracies of stated prices, and the fact that all the services kept their own accounts. On the Nazi side of things, wild swings in allocation were frequent but the luftwaffe nearly always ended up with the lion's share of resources (especially scarce resources such as aluminium). As for the Army, only around 20% of their budget went into tanks. The production figures of all combatant nations reflect this: around two aircraft were produced for every tank. ^An outdated tank can still provide valuable frontline service, while an outdated fighter or bomber is dead weight.

There were many more fighter programs than tank programs, many of them producing dogs that never went into service. Of the ones that went into service, most were a disappointment in some way. Of the few that weren't, only one or two were outstanding. This gives you a good idea of the numbers involved: around 240 types used or tested, including foreign types, trainers, utility aircraft etc. Of those, maybe half were used in any great numbers in service. Of that 100-ish aircraft, perhaps two dozen rose above the level of mediocre. And of that two dozen, a handful are considered superlative in their class. Aircraft design is very fiddly, and requires a mix of easily-ascertained factors (power-to-weight ratio, wing loading, armament etc.), hard-to-ascertain factors (top speed, turn times in various configurations, landing speeds) and factors which defied empirical modelling and could only be found by experiment (stability, stall characteristics, maintenance and service niggles, random engine/landing gear/aerodynamic bugs etc). Making a good aircraft in WW2 was as much alchemy as science, and resulted in a lot of dead test pilots. Tanks were actually comparatively easier to design, and accordingly got designed by lesser talents on lower budgets (see, again, the example of British tank building in WW2, which was the product of a bare handful of second-tier engineers). Even today, the best mechanical engineers are mostly doing aviation and aerospace.

More that it confirms what I've heard (from a former actor) about Hollywood being a closed shop dominated by a remarkably small population of locals.

{McCarthyism intensifies}

Late to this party, but... you're telling us that not only can Americans not do English, Scottish, Australian or South African accents, they can't even do American accents?

Random question: would it be possible to knapp a brittle alloy? I had a half thought-out idea of quenching a high carbon steel, then shaping it by knapping before tempering.

Perhaps move the conversation to an appropriate thread in the bio section?

I'm on the discord and quizzed them about it a few months ago. I couldn't get a straight answer out of them on how they wanted to implement the cartridge/shell designer. We'll just have to see how it plays out I guess.

So here's a question that touches on the whole A-10 issue in a more philosophical way: should a force/service be determined by role, or by battlespace? In other words: is the main point of the navy to attain sea superiority (however that's defined), or to act as a repository for sea-going assets? I know that in the real world these considerations are usually secondary to contingent, historical factors (and in any case all the actors involved here pick and choose the framing they want to suit their real purpose - which is to get a bigger share of the budget). But it helps me to think about this when engaging with the whole debate about the to CAS role. If the main role of the air force is to dominate an airspace, then it having organic CAS assets is more or less a sideshow. If, however, its main role is to house air assets, then having CAS aircraft is essential.

True, but this is a plane design from the 70s struggling against aircraft from the late 30s. Put an A-36 up against a flight of Gothas and Fokkers and it won't struggle on any front except running out of ammunition.

It's obviously a bit of a joke, but yeah. More or less. Enough Ju-88s survived to get over the target and bomb it. Even with 4 sidewinders each and respawns, the A-10s were just too slow (and slow-climbing) to get up to the formation and take the prop bombers down in time. And if they'd had escorts then the A-10s would have been sitting ducks - they were barely hanging on at that altitude.

A-10s go back in time, lose the battle of Britain to un-escorted Ju-88s

Presumably step in as replacement marines, same as their last go-around in the pacific.

For all the people who want to reward the creator of this video: go get in on the comment dogpile and drive that engagement metric. It's classic YouTube tier and therefore very much good for light entertainment.

Yeah, inter-service stuff is generally crazy when seen from the outside, but perfectly sensible and in line with incentives from the inside. And it gets worse the more politically powerful each branch is (witness Imperial Japan).

Another thing to note (apologies for all the combo posting): isn't there an argument that the biggest success of the A-10 as a program was in allowing the USAF to keep denying the army fixed-wing assets on the basis that it was providing CAS? By that metric it was stellar - the army got beaten back all the way to only being allowed rotary-wing aircraft and has never managed to successfully bring up the issue again.