Agiel

Maybe this will allow you to rest a little easier tonight: Granted by this measurement we have about 5 more hours from time of this post when this might change.

It's quoting from a Russian source, the former deputy-CINC of the RuAF. You might object to this particular source, but DW used the same roughly the same quote (with slightly different wording, so in all likelihood it was a differing translation of a Russian-language source). And if the 50%+ Tomahawk failure rate story is only treated as gospel by RT which is Russia's own propaganda arm? Errr... well... Or, you know, Occam's Razor works too. Per a post from Sean O'Connor* on the matter a year ago: This is seriously the reason Tomahawk was invented. By its very nature GPS is a _LINE OF SIGHT_-based system. Receivers look at the position of satellites in geo-stationary orbit, compute the time it takes for them to be transmitted from the origin points to the receiver, then determines its location from that information, so to jam the missiles effectively the Russians would need continuous LOS on the missiles up until the moment of impact, which requires full knowledge of the flight path, assuming the platform doesn't have the kind of processing power to discern the jamming signal from the false ones (or any number of other means of defeating it), as no matter how powerful it is compared to GPS signals it does not magically destroy them. As I've banged on this before this is the main reason Russia's own jamming measures are on cell-phone towers: it maximises the range the jammers can "see" over the horizon. In fact the goal is not to cause the missiles to fall harmlessly out of the sky but to cause them to incur enough mistakes to miss by only a few meters: If indeed an aerial platform was used to overcome the horizon problem, then surely the Russian MoD would also release the radar track data it had on them so they knew where to place those aircraft. Also... I'm going to let you think for a moment on just how well that goes with this:

Since an Arleigh Burke-destroyer has an antenna mast height taller than all but two vessels in the entire Russian Navy (let alone the Black Sea Fleet), its surface search radar would detect any potential vessel at a greater distance than the jammer would be effective, so a flight path could simply be plotted well out of range of it. As a former deputy CINC of the RuAF said himself in response to why the SA-21 did not intercept the missiles, "[t]he Americans are [...] not idiots." So next time I have hint of back pain I should look up my symptoms on WebMD? Then when I go to my doctor I should tell him "Spare me your expertise; I want you to give me a corticosteroid injection for my lumbar herniated disc"? Yes, experts do sometimes come up short. That's because they are human beings and are fallible, and the scientific method exists to shore up theories when there are mistakes. You're a human being, as am I. Similar sources have confirmed this only for RQ-11 Ravens and not for anything in the class of the MQ-1. Not totally unsurprising, or even unexpected for such a small RPV when there's room for a rudimentary datalink and sensors and little else such as specifically hardened anti-jamming measures (and the cost is such that there is an assumption that it _will_ be neutralised by a peer or near-peer adversary, or at least disrupted, in one way or another) that's also flying fairly high and within LOS of any jamming measures. Your arguments also fail to reconcile with what's perhaps the biggest hole in the Russian MoD story: If the missiles were jammed, where are the dozens of airframes littered across the Syrian/Lebanese countryside? Plenty of photo evidence exists of cruise missiles laying in a field due to mechanical faults mid-flight from past campaigns. Given that if nothing else the Russian bombing campaign serves as a country-sized advertisement for the latest and greatest of Russian military hardware, surely parading a big piece of the airframe on RT would be a great propaganda coup.

I'll go to bat for Far Cry 2. There were definite strands of Chaos Theory DNA in it (unsurprising, given that it was directed by Clint Hocking as well) and I think the repetitiveness it got criticised for probably had more to do with lack of time if anything, something that also seems to be reflected by much of the voice acting that just screams "placeholder" to me. Plus, if I ever decided to pick up Far Cry 5 at some point, I'm going to miss all the gross healing animations Far Cry 2 had: Let's also hear it for this post in the comments for that video:

So a private company that stakes its reputation on its analysis (and would likely provide further proof to potential clients that are not convinced by their publicly available content) gets picked apart, yet one can take on faith a claim made almost purely for domestic consumption to placate the most misinformed hardliners and is corroborated by zero evidence? Pretending as if FHSS and ECCM doesn't exist; a Hollywood actress figured it out in the 1940s for the purpose of defeating jamming efforts against radio-guided torpedoes after all. The placement of GPS jammers on cell-phone towers is also critically useful against cruise missiles that have some form of GPS guidance due to the elevation giving it maximum line of sight against a low-flying target. Thus if a missile were to pass through a "communications denied environment" the INS guidance kicks in until it passes through, the GPS guidance kicks back on, and it continues as normal.

I think with Deathspell Omega, Antaeus, Blut Aus Nord, and this I'm more likely to associate Black Metal with France than Scandinavia.

Wonder if the "You look great" gag was a dig at people who maligned Chewbacca's CGI in the new trilogy.

Yeah, they didn't show 44 hits though, they showed some hits at high resolution, and a low res set of circles on a zoomed out image covering 2-3 km that you can't tell anything about, because it's too low res. If they provided the high res images they (supposedly) had for all 44, then there would be no argument, but they provide proof for a number consistent with the Russian version, consistency with the US version is solely on their say so, not on the evidence they provide. I suppose this is what Tom Nichols meant when he bemoaned "the death of expertise". Perhaps with that thing in your car, but whether or not they can jam a hardened signal is up for debate. It's telling that for the purposes of defending their own airspace Russia is resorting to planting jammers on 250,000 cell-phone towers just for the hope of making potential cruise missile strikes less accurate, which suggests that such measures are likely limited by LOS against cruise missile targets and are perhaps wanting in overall technical sophistication (the sheer number seems to indicate that in its current form an individual jammer does not account for frequency hopping). I find it doubtful that: a.) They've installed such devices for what is supposed to be a fairly limited involvement in such short a time. b.) They had any more than a vague idea of the flight paths (because it's fairly standard practice to plan approaches from multiple axis). c.) They could re-position their own jammers quickly enough to make a significant dent in a potential attack, particularly when it was out of their neck of the woods.

Yeah, had that out last time. The satellite images released showed nowhere near 59 hits, and were a mix of decent resolution images showing definite hits and a zoomed out master image with circles drawn where you can't tell what is circled let alone whether it was damaged at the resolution supplied. The US military itself only cited those pics as proof, and they actually show ~23 hits on ~17 structures, consistent with the Russian claim. It was easy to prove the right number of hits by showing hi res images of the other claimed areas of damage instead of just three (one of which was a single building), but we never got them. It also didn't help that other US claims around it were inconsistent; Mattis claimed 20% of an air wing destroyed, then 20% of the whole Syrian airforce; the first was likely accurate, the second literally impossible- 20% of the SyAF ain't even stationed there- unless they counted derelict MiG17s, of which there are a lot around Shayrat. Plus of course the base was back in action literally the next day. GPS spoofing or other ECM while over water could easily take out one destroyer's tomahawk quota, they have a known weakness when they cannot use terrain mapping. Did you not read the part in that link that said this? Double targeting is very much common practice, particularly if one target is high priority, such as an ammo storage bunker that may or may not contain chemical weapons, in which case even more munitions may be allocated to guarantee total destruction. As for the inconclusive battle damage assessment as I've said before it was all a Kabuki dance; Trump wanted to appear decisive where Obama wasn't, but it would seems he doesn't want entangling the US much more in Syria, particularly if it could escalate into a full-scale shooting war that could turn ugly (uglier for some, but ugly for both parties nonetheless). Overall damage to the Syrians was mitigated because of the advance warning provided to the Russians. As for GPS spoofing (which I highly doubt came into play, even if they were powerful enough to spoof them), you are aware that many GPS-guided munitions have back-up INS systems that come into play, right?

It seems to have been for the most part a geopolitical Kabuki dance. The damage had largely been mitigated by giving the Russians advanced warning, who subsequently passed this to the Syrians so they could move anything of value from the pre-planned aimpoints, while giving the larger public the impression that Trump would be firm where Obama would not. The Russian MoD's claims of a 50%+ failure rate for the Tomahawks seem to have largely been for domestic consumption to further downplay the strike and give justification for not being particularly reciprocal to the US-led coalition (and not just because the balance of combat power in Syria is far less in Russia's favour than they'd like to admit). We saw the same effect when those Vagner mercenaries got beaten back by the coalition a few months ago (there was even whispers that their decision not to interfere with strikes against them may have been the top brass' way of taking the PMCs down a notch).

I don't think it's weird at all. It's difficult to imagine that when the dust starts to settle that the Assad regime will be any less repressive than it was prior to 2011, and plenty of reasons to believe it will be even more. Particularly when the response from the international community is fairly muted, the messaging of Assad's outward denials are not mutually exclusive to the implicit message for domestic consumption, that being something to the effect of: "In the future I will resort to overwhelming force to suppress anything that even begins to resemble a revolt. And if you think anyone will come to stop me, then you need only look to the international response thus far to dispel that notion."

A Ghost Recon DLC announcement heralds the return of Michael Ironside to the role of Sam Fisher: Now they have me 50% onboard for a new Splinter Cell game. If it turns out it was what Clint Hocking was brought on to do when he rejoined Ubisoft then they got me for the other 50%.

Mom gave me a call that she got laid off this Friday, on top of a hyperthyroidism diagnosis from her doctor. She's never been one to be a layabout, seeing as she was the type who always kept busy on the weekends doing freelance stuff, so here's hoping that she won't have any trouble finding work of her caliber at her age.

A theory that's been stewing in my head for the premise of Stranger Things Season 3:

Near as I can tell to play Ubisoft games past a certain year running it through Uplay is _required_. In fact, if you wish to play Ubisoft games from now on it would make more sense to simply purchase it from their own service, maligned as it is, as getting it through Steam would seem to just add an unnecessary hoop to jump through just to play the game.

Bravo Zulu, Finland.

Watched <<The Death of Stalin>>, some idle observations: 1. While the casting was strong already, Michael Palin (whom every Python fan worth his or her salt knows is the best in the group) was what really brought me on board. Of course one can't watch something with Palin involving the Soviet Union without thinking of a certain Monty Python sketch: 2. Thanks to this movie, I now can't picture Georgy Zhukov speaking _without_ a Yorkshire accent. On that note... 3. In spite of rather positive reactions from Russian film critics the movie nonetheless got banned in Russia with one of the reasons stated being "Marshal Zhukov is portrayed as an idiot," which gives me the impression that the censors didn't even bother watching the flick, as he's probably the most likable, competent, and morally upright character in the film (participation in ostensible coup d'etat notwithstanding, though nobody is going to lose sleep over the victim).

Vermintide 2: We finally get polearms in this game! The Elf can also now be a High-Elf Handmaiden or a Dark Elf Shade, but would much rather have preferred a Wardancer, speaking of which... The game calls the two-handed sword the "Wardancer's Blade," which is a bit of an odd choice; Wardancer in the tabletop could only carry either two hand weapons or a spear, though granted one of the models in the kit only carried one hand weapon. My Witch Hunter alt. He can also be a Bounty Hunter, which in the current meta is a better choice, but I think I'll stick with him as is, because goddamn _hat_.

I want to see Klovis and the Redemptionists.

Valve are “going to start shipping games again,” were jealous of Nintendo So are they going to re-hire Marc Laidlaw, Erik Wolpaw, Chet Faliszek, and Clint Hocking (whom I presume left Valve after briefly working with them because of the lack of focus on single-player games)?

Sorry to bring this conversation back up but I felt the game could have benefited from bigger player counts in a game as well as dedicated servers, bringing it in line with TF2 and made a game that I would have totally been on board with. Servers would go a long way towards building communities that regulars could come back to, and the bigger player counts would have had the effect of reducing the effect a sub-par or mediocre player would have had on the overall effectiveness of a team.

As I warned since 2015 and in the last iteration of this thread, those expecting consistency or loyalty from Trump are bound to be disappointed.

That seems to have happened, more or less, and at least one prototype has the new engines fitted already. So it is possible, just very unlikely. I wouldn't be quick to jump the gun to say that we'll see those airframes involved in actual combat ops, or even weapons release, so the blog's assertion makes sense if those Su-57s are in-country for a short stint for further testing and trials. Keep in mind that it's only been 8 years since the PAK-FA's first flight, where it took 14 years from first flight of the F-22 to introduction and 12 for the F-35.

New engines are not set to be implemented for quite a while.