Belesarius

There are several good reasons to think that tanks will continue to have the best protection restricted to the frontal arc:
 
 
-The front of a tank has a lot less surface area than the sides, so improving armor protection to a given standard weighs less and costs less if it is restricted to the front only.
 
-Top of the line armor provides far better protection pound for pound than does steel, but it is much bulkier.  Width constraints mean that tanks cannot have the same protection on the sides as they do on the front and still have adequate accommodations inside for the crew.
 
-Post-combat studies show that more than 50% of hits occur from the frontal sixty degree arc on tanks.
 
 
The idea that urban combat will force better side protection is rather dubious in the long run.  Thermal sights, which are standard for new tank designs and becoming common as retrofits for T-72s and the like, make it much harder for infantry to hide in ambush positions.
 
 
 
Edit:

This equation could change somewhat if active protection systems become very good, since an APS that protects the front is basically the same weight as one that protects the sides.
 
 
 
The long-term trend, IMO, will be towards having good protection against all threats on the front, but having the sides protected only against HEAT threats.  With current technology, armor is more efficient at defending against shaped charges than it is at defending against long-rod penetrators.  Until someone invents some sort of uber-APS that's actually fast enough to swat long-rod penetrators out of they sky (which would be hard, considering they move at mach 5 or so), APS will just add to this.
 
Top-attack is a bit of a wildcard.

Well I guess if I had to design a Destroyer, it would likely appear as some abomination of god frankenvessel mix of the USNs, the PLANs, and the VMF Rossii's different ideas and technologies for ship design.
 
First thing to note is that, Future destroyers are actually getting significantly heavier then previous generations, The next generation Russian (possibly built with the help of the PLAN) Leader class is not only expected to be nuclear powered, a rarity in military vessels that aren't submarines or fleet carriers, but is expected to weigh in at 10,000 tonnes empty, China's new Type 055 class, of which 2 are believed to be under construction at this point, is expected to weigh 10,000-13,000 tonnes, and the USN's Zumwalt class takes the cake in this regard and weighs in at 15,000 tonnes. For reference, Treaty cruisers post WW1 were restricted to 10,000 tonnes, and even ship classes such as the Mogami which was well over that weighed in at 13,500.
 
Details of vessel to come shortly.

The obvious thing to do is to just accept you're authoring a book and find a publisher.

Hmmm, ok this thing has gotten so long; it won’t fit in one post. How should I handle this?
 
I'm up to 16,853 words, and added sections about the crew, and 11 different factories that produced the Sherman. I also expanded and cleaned up the opponents section and went through the whole thing tweaking several times. 
 

Getting out of character for a bit:
 
Anyone who wants to can enter. I will talk to management about advertising the contest in other forums, but for now that hasn't happened. The prize hasn't been decided yet, so suggestions are welcome. Mods for KSP include: Ferram Aerospace or similar (non-negotiable, as the baseline flight mechanics are waaay too easy to exploit), B9 aerospace (optional) and BD armory (optional, but recommended for that loaded-plane look). Other mod suggestions are welcome, but I'd advise against dicking around too much with fantasy engines as that's against the spirit of the contest. Similarly against the spirit of the competition: invisible or sneakily stacked surfaces, stacked or hidden engines, and other tricks which rely too much on min-maxing the game at the expense of a realistic design. I can send over the file for the K-21 upon request, so that people can test it against their aircraft directly. I can't get the multiplayer mod to work, but if people want to use that to test things directly then that would be sweet. Edit: A couple bunch of other things I forgot/need to be added for clarity:
The competition will run till May 15, with the winner announced after comparison of the entries (probably early to mid June). Planes can have any sort of crew setup (including unmanned), but would have to justify accordingly. Unmanned planes would also have to include something (comms, extra sensors, space for a super-computer) on the model itself to show how it will do its thing. The Republic of Kerbalia is basically Chimerica; with a large central landmass, lots of coastline and a few neighbouring countries that it has uneasy relationships with. Accordingly, the K-21 was made as a do-it-all fighter: great manoeuvre and climb capability for short-ranged interception, great range for long-distance strikes and great carrying capacity (at the expense of manoeuvre, climb and range) for bomb-truck duties. Unfortunately, it's slow, non-stealthy and has an outdated avionics suite. The honchos at RoK think they simply want an updated version, capable of meeting or exceeding the K-21's specifications while providing improved speed, stealth and avionics. The kicker, however, is that they've provided a fairly limited budget (less than double that of the basic K-21 model) and are committed to having a fly-off between the K-21 and the competitor aircraft. Entrants can thus opt to simply provide an improved aircraft, bust the budget and then justify, or do something clever at own risk. A big part of what will get accepted will come down to arguments provided, as well as performance versus K-21 and the competition.

Some photos from Yemen.
 

 

 

 

 

 
Shia militia. Not their cheeks - this is "footprint" of some kind of chewing narcotic/drug.

 

 
 
Saudi borderguards. 

 

 

It was roughly a scaled down version of Frank Marquardt's 20mm Mk 11 cannon design that was also produced by Hughes Tool Company.

http://www.google.com/patents/US2972286
 
http://www.germanmanuals.com/images/TheMGV3b.pdf

http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/278412.pdf

http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/601655.pdf

Stielgranate 41 + 37mm Flak 37

It's professional if - at times - optimistic stuff. The Tellermines seemed to be a favorite of the Krauts at the early stages of the Eastern Front.
 
I find it interesting that they advocate using captured enemy automatic weapons which seems a rather blatant admission of the inadequate nature of German weaponry, particularly small arms.
 
 "incendiary bottles and Tellermines, TNT, automatic weapons (our own or captured), submachine guns, Very pistols, hand grenades, smoke bottles, and camouflage material, as well as hatchets, crowbars, etc."
 
The bit with "Very pistols" which I'm guessing to be flare guns is also innovative.
 
Also they are advocating using and redistributing any large number of captured Soviet Molotov cocktails with the self-igniting fuse which seem superior to the German variants.
 
Which, if the plan is "Alright lads, make sure you capture enough enemy kit because it is better than ours", I'm not sure how enthusiastic that would make me feel as a grunt shivering in the mud and snow in some miserable huddle of huts in a town I can't pronounce.

Ignition! An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants

Designations of US Aircraft
Italian F-104 UCAV Proposal
Generalized Performance Comparison of Large Conventional, Tail Boom, and Tailless Aircraft (NACA, 1947)
A Ram-Jet Engine For Fighters (NACA, 1947, Translation of German Paper)

Swedish Military Aircraft Reference Sheet
Swedish Air Force Squadron Composition

http://www.scribd.com/doc/261173525/CSBA-Trends-in-Air-To-Air-Report
 
Pretty interesting piece.

This might be as good of time as any to have a repository for interesting photos and news about naval vessels which are retired, about to be scrapped, are museums or are residing in one of the many so-called Ghost Fleets across the world.
 
Living near Bremerton Naval Shipyard, I've had the pleasure since I was a kid of gawking at the pale grey figures of retired US Navy ships anchored in Puget Sound.
 
As for an interesting article, one of our state legislators in Washington state is proposing a study on whether two to three retired aircraft carriers at Bremerton, the USS Independence, The USS Constellation and the USS Kitty Hawk can be tethered together in order to create a floating bridge.
 
At first blush the proposal seems far-fetched. Although it would be an innovative way to quickly create a long floating bridge, a process in my state that can take a decade and cost billions of dollars.
 
Per the article.
 
"I know that people from around the world would come to drive across the deck of an aircraft carrier bridge, number one,” Young said. “Number two, it's the right thing to do from my standpoint because this is giving a testimony and a legacy memorial to our greatest generation."
 
The local NPR station article is here.
 
http://kuow.org/post/puget-sound-lawmaker-pitches-new-bridge-built-old-aircraft-carriers
 
The Washington Post article is here.
 
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2015/04/10/a-washington-state-representative-wants-to-build-a-bridge-out-of-retired-aircraft-carriers/
 

Stolen from Tied's pictures thread on the WOT forums:
 

 
Iranian tomcats at high speed.
 
Note that the glove vanes (little folding canard thingies) are deployed.  It's rare to see pictures of tomcats with the wing gloves out, since they only deploy at high speeds and the USN wired them shut to reduce maintenance requirements.

Have at. Duplicating in the repository, too.

I'm with Xthetenth on this one.  The Civil War was more important than the American Revolution.  As long as slavery was part of the Constitution it was a pretty meaningless document.  
 
If you really want a dramatic way to put it, I would recommend reading what William LLoyd Garrison had to say about the Constitution.  
 

If it were true that they were the same species, something very weird would have to be going on, certainly. I mean, look at the skulls:
 

Here are a couple I found today while searching for something else.
 
Development of 105mm HEAT round T-384 (US)
 
TRIALS TO ASSESS THE LETHALITY OF A 76 MM HESH SHELL AGAINST ARMOURED PERSONNEL CARRIERS (UK)

Oh, right.

I dunno; if people want cool movie monsters, there are all sorts of those.

The way dinosaurs actually were, on the other hand, is not a matter of our preference.

Even when I try to sympathize to this sentiment on the level of "yeah, but scary, scaly dinosaurs that ROAR were cool because they were supposed to be real", I can't help but think... Sure, but eagles are cool, so are hornbills, lammergeiers, kestrels, falcons, moas, hell, even ducks have giant hellish screw-shaped rape-tentacle penises.

All of those are dinosaurs that live right now! Isn't that inspiring, just like the idea that one day in the past packs of scaly, hunched-over man-sized demons stalked the earth? Besides the fact that nature doesn't serve our taste of what's awesome or not, isn't there even more now that dinosaurs are birds and birds are dinosaurs to see as "awesome" and inspiring?

Sure, Spielberg's T. rex was cool, but isn't Conway's elephant-sized hell-gorilla up there also fucking cool? Isn't that also inspiring? Isn't this fucking inspiring?




And that's not just an eagle, it's a dinosaur.

For that matter, Pluto's not a planet anymore, sure, but Pluto's not a planet not because scientists wanted to be mean and make the universe more boring, but because they discovered that the Solar System was full of other things like Pluto. Not hundreds, but thousands of them. Isn't this Solar System: 


with its thousand, million separate worlds, each waiting for magnificent discovery by man, perhaps in your lifetime(!) more compelling and enriching than this one?



If one can't get inspired, if one can't be so moved as to hold back tears and whisper awesome under his breath at the thought of all that, then their soul is a dead stone that weighs them down, rather than lifts them up.

I feel this way, and that's why I don't think that video is funny.