Agiel

The Last Castoff actually finds that being a Castoff is a relatively mundane thing, , you find one unceremoniously killed in a building collapse as a result of freak circumstance (without anyone batting an eye on top of that), and you learn that though there are probably a few hundred in the Ninth World, given that it's established that it's possible to cross over parallel realities, traverse interstellar distances fairly trivially, and even travel to different dimensions they might number in the millions. I think that serves as a driving force for the Last Castoff to make his or her legacy and answer the question of "What does one life matter?"

From what the pre-release materiel of the companions, it seems as if Tybir is about the most "normal" companion thus far (apart from having a colourful get-up and being a dead ringer for Lando Calrissian). However, in spite of being pleasantly surprised when meeting Matkina and learning her background, the prize of most straightforward and succinct descriptor goes to her: <<Stealthy Jack who Murders.>>

Post stories of brilliant victories and (or even your unfortunate demises) here. To start things off I decided to play the <<Shamal*>> Gulf War scenario in Command: Modern Air/Naval Operations in order to commemorate the 25th anniversary of Operation Desert Storm. The scenario takes place on the 4th day of the air war on January 20th, 1991 (25 years to the day of this post, in fact), wherein Coalition forces of the US Navy and Air Force and the British Royal Air Force must conduct strikes against three targets: The hangar and munitions storage facilities at the H2 airbase in the western part of Iraq, the runways at the H3 airbase close by, and the C-7 Chemical Production Facilities in the heart of Baghdad itself. Though over the past few days the Iraqi command and control, IADS network, and air force have been battered by hard fighting and punishing airstrikes, Saddam's forces, blooded by years of hard fighting against Iran, are highly experienced and remain dangerous, and given the complexity of coordinating the combined Coalition forces, plenty of opportunities exist for them to toss a wrench into today's sorties. <<"This aggression will not stand, man.">> *Arabic for "North," referring to periodic wind storms that blow over Iraq and other Gulf states. To support the day's operations, E-3 Sentries and E-8 JSTARS would fly a racetrack pattern at edge of the Saudi border with Iraq, providing real-time threat updates and targeting information with their powerful radars. As many of the airframes for today's strikes are positioned a long ways away from their targets, tankers would fly some distance behind Sentries and JSTARS to top off the tanks of strike craft on their way to their targets and back to their airbases. Friendly forces and their assigned airfields were as follows: In order to sanitise the airspace for the "mud movers", US Navy F-14s would fly combat air patrols on the western air corridor into Iraq, USAF F-15s in the center, and RAF Tornado ADVs in the east. Though Iraq's air force has been heavily attrited both in combat in the air and on the ground by strikes against their airfields, some resistance was expected from a hodge-podge of Mirage F1s, MiG-21s, MiG-25s, and the vaunted MiG-29 and would almost certainly try and engage Coalition strike packages if the opportunity presented itself. However Iraq's remaining fighters are not the Coalition's chief concern today... Meet the SA-2 <<Guideline>>: Otherwise known as the S-75 <<Dvina>> or colloquially <<the Flying Telephone Pole>>, the Iraqis still has hundreds of these missiles at their disposal, survivors of relentless SEAD strikes in the opening days of the war. In fact, the previous day a large package of F-16s on a hastily planned mission on their way to strike targets in Baghdad had come under intense fire from SAMs, resulting in the loss of two airframes and some being forced to jettison their ordinance in order to gain speed and energy to evade the missiles: Coalition planners resolved that the debacle would not happen again, and today preceding the main strikes F-4G <<Wild Weasels>> with AGM-88 anti-radiation missiles and F-16s armed with AGM-65 air-to-ground missiles and CBU-87 cluster bombs would neutralise SAM sites in Baghdad and both high and low-level defences at the H2 and H3 Airbases. The operation commenced 2245 local/1945 Zulu under cover of night. The Stinkbugs* had done their part throwing the Iraqi command and control network into disarray, now it's up to us to finish what they started. The tankers (callsigns Texaco, Mobil, and Shell), E-3 and E-8 (callsigns Disco and Star, respectively), and combat air patrol fighters take up their positions near and at the Saudi/Iraqi border in preparation for the SEAD and main airstrikes. *Colloquial name for the F-117A Nighthawk F-16s from Al Dhafra AB in the UAE and F-4Gs from Sheik Isa link up with their Tornado ADV escorts. Most of the F-4Gs would strike at SAM sites in and around Baghdad, concerning themselves with only the high-altitude threats, while the rest of the F-4Gs along with the F-16s would search and destroy both SAMs and low-level anti-aircraft artillery in the vicinity of the H2 and H3 airbases in the western part of Iraq. To make the journey, they gas up with the tankers just outside of Iraqi airspace. As the larger flight of F-4Gs approach Baghdad, they immediately come under fire from a combination of SA-2s and the shorter range SA-3s. The Wild Weasels respond in kind with their AGM-88 HARMs. The AGM-88 HARM (in this image mounted on an F-16) was tailor made for SAM threats like the SA-2 Guideline and SA-10 Grumble. It works by homing in on the radiating energy of enemy radars (ideally that of the fire control radars, such as <<Fan Song>> for the SA-2 and <<Flap Lid>> of the SA-10) and destroying the arrays. Intelligent SAM crews may try to shut off their radars in order to fool the passive seekers of anti-radiation missiles, but the HARM's party piece is a memory unit pioneered in its Vietnam-era predecessor, the AGM-78 Standard, allowing it to "remember" where the emitter was so that it can airburst over the powered down radar and shower it and its crews with shrapnel. As the Weasels let loose their missiles, one by one the enemy radars are destroyed. Though the actual missile complexes escape relatively unscathed, with their fire control radars that provide guidance for them out of commission they are nothing more than very expensive bottle rockets. Here we illustrate the danger of SEAD operations; while engaging an SA-3 site another SAM has opened up on this flight of F-4Gs. Many times the actual aircraft must actively expose themselves to enemy fire before they can shoot back. At the start of Desert Storm coalition forces employed tactical air launched decoys to provoke Iraqi air defences into firing at them, exposing themselves to a HARM shot, but those had long since been expended. Making themselves out to be the decoys and dodging SAMs has earned the Wild Weasels the unofficial motto of <<YGBSM>>: "You gotta be s****** me". After having expended their HARMs and the SAM threat largely neutralised, the SEAD package over Baghdad egresses south east to RTB to Sheik Isa airbase. Tomorrow we'll see how the SEAD strikes on the Iraqi airbases go.

I love the idle chatter between units. Given that BBI has a lot of Relic alumni, I expect this to be a holdover from the Company of Heroes games that had unit banter out the ass (apparently 67,000 unique lines in Company of Heroes 1 alone):

<<Doorkickers 2: Task Force North>> announced. Transitioning from D Platoon to the 1st SFOD-Delta. http://inthekillhouse.com/door-kickers-2-announced/

This day 25 years ago, Operation Desert Storm: MIM-104 Patriots in Saudi Arabia lifting off to meet the Scuds.

Not my normal wheelhouse, but...

Well... f***,,, Pre-ordered Dragon's Dogma yesterday and am in the middle of pre-loading it. I come home from work today and check my email and lo and below, GMG sent me a 25% off coupon on it.

Starting with all the Meld stuff in EW, I kind of don't get Firaxis' efforts to take out the "thinking tactically" portion of the game. There's a time and place for acting quickly and decisively (hostage situation or a flanking maneuver, for instance), but the whole making _everything_ time sensitive seems to me like persuading players to act recklessly so they can get on with losing people.

Naval Strike Missile is, for my money, the most terrifying ASM to be on the receiving end of. Imaging infra-red guidance (no active radar to trip RWRs to warn you that it's coming, not to mention it won't accidentally guide towards rock formations a la the Finnmark coast), complex flight routing, very low radar cross section and infrared signature, very low flight profile, and high-g random spin terminal maneuvers to evade point defense missiles/CIWS = get f***ed. http://www.dtic.mil/ndia/2014PSAR/albright.pdf

I don't know. It was a hologram in-universe, and it might turn out to be a "Wizard of Oz"-situation and he's actually six inches tall.

The pre-eminent Alex Wellerstein's take on North Korea's latest test, and on splitting hairs on what qualifies as an "H-Bomb":

Initiatial seismic readings make it out to be around the same yield as the previous device (10 kt, which is less than the first Trinity test). So the most generous thing you can say about this was it was an attempt at a Teller-Ulam device that fizzled.

A Dangerous Waters-level push-button sim of a Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruiser or Arleigh Burke-class DDG. From what I heard, SCS was working on just that, until they took a closer look at the subject material and realised it might be too complex for even the most hardcore simmers.

I tend not to pay too much attention to that whole "cis-gendered," internet-head-up-its-own-ass malarkey, but I thought this was a riot:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ON-6vyQugw4&feature=youtu.be The handshake at the end was a nice cap-off.

US Army researchers will pay volunteers $200 to eat nothing but MREs for three weeks: http://www.armytimes.com/story/military/2015/12/30/army-needs-volunteers-eat-only-mres-21-days-straight/78011512/ I'd be almost tempted to give this a try if only so I could not only get a cool $200 but save that amount again in groceries and eating out in that time period were it not for the fact that: 1.) I would have to submit stool samples. 2.) I live on the opposite side of CONUS from Natick, Massachusetts.

It would appear that the FAA's fears that this Christmas would result in a horde of civilian RPVs being a menace to civil aviation have been greatly exaggerated:

Explanation of Steam's clusterf*** yesterday:

The NSA (No, not the one you're thinking of) has managed to uncover strategic weapons doctrine and targeting lists... from the 1950s: http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/nukevault/ebb538-Cold-War-Nuclear-Target-List-Declassified-First-Ever/ A key takeaway for me: That kind of comically fantastical thinking makes me recall these words from McNamara:

Gold drop (Yaaaaayyy)! But it's only a single sword (Boooooo)! As you can tell, I'm a twin blade type of guy:

Mark Bowden of Black Hawk Down fame on his weekend with Trump while doing a piece for Playboy back in 1997: http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2015/12/donald-trump-mark-bowden-playboy-profile The story of Trump making like Chief in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is just too goddamn great:

Apollo 17 mission live: http://apollo17.org