Agiel

If by Somalia you mean the Battle of Mogadishu, that was primarily fought with air-mobile infantry dropped into the heart of enemy territory (JSOC commanders had their reservations conducting the operation in broad daylight when the Habr Gidr militiamen were hopped up on Khat, but believed the opportunity was too much to pass up). The only actual armoured incursion was by a joint force of 10th Mountain Division and Malaysian troops under the UN Mandate sent to retrieve the Rangers and Delta Operators, of which the actual convoy suffered only one casualty. An extremely impressive feat considering how disastrously the _other_ time armoured forces were deployed into an urban environment in the 90s went. And airpower has come a long way since Vietnam, in both technology and doctrine. Take for instance the B-2 raids over Belgrade where with the advent of GPS guided ordinance a sortie with a similar target set to Operation El Dorado Canyon comprising of nearly 50 aircraft (much more than that when counting support craft like tankers, AWACS, and EA-6 Prowler jamming support) was accomplished with a mere three bombers.

I'd wager sometime around '94 (the year the F-14D was introduced) to 2000 when a lot of Tomcat pilots were converting to multi-role pilots. Might I ask what you were laughing about in 2006?

The story behind this image:

Somewhat annoyed that there aren't any hi-res versions of the portraits Justin Sweet made for Icewind Dale II. I usually use this image (in conjunction with the HOW1 Female voice set) when playing the Icewind Dale and Baldur's Gate games: Have half a mind to break out the oils and do my best to "wing it" for my personal use.

Keep in mind that he said this back when the conventional balance in Europe was decidedly in the Warsaw Pact's favour and when the NATO powers had "strategic superiority" over the Soviet Union. And Herman Kahn's "Ladder of Escalation": The last rung was the origin of the term "Wargasm". All I know is if the news has verifiable reports of shots fired between any superpower and Russia, I'm picking up my parents and taking them for a "short vacation" to Ukiah ("Yes, mom, that's a real place.") Re: Land Invasion of Russia There was an old joke in the Soviet Union in the time of the Sino-Soviet Split: Q: What are the two languages citizens of the Soviet Union should learn? A: Hebrew and Chinese. Hebrew for those who are leaving, and Chinese for those who are staying. In other words, an invasion of Russia is far more likely to come from the _other direction_, as only China has the economic fortitude matching the US on top of the logistical acumen to wage a war between great powers (as opposed to the US, China is _right there_). The theater is sparsely populated (with some ethnicities probably being more amiable to a Chinese presence), so they don't have to invest nearly as much into subjecting the local populace to their will, and as a result of technology transfers with the West and the other Asian powers, are set to gain qualitative superiority on top of their quantitative superiority over the Russians.

A friend of mine made this gif of something that happened in Skylines:

If you're willing to put the human race at stake on the assumption that either a.) The other superpowers would play by the same rules, especially so if fallout happens to fall on countries that have nothing to do with whatever quarrel Russia happens to find itself involved in b.) Russia could keep a nuclear war "limited" once a coalition force arrayed against them begins taking out "counterforce" (military) targets necessary to wage it, leaving Russia with only more survivable and less accurate weapons (thus are only good for one thing, "countervalue targets") at their disposal Then I'm afraid that your head, in the words of General William Smith, "left the world of reality." "The only winning move is not to play."

Baldur's Gate II: Enhanced Edition to tide me over till PoE comes. I think I'd rather that Beamdog compressed the audio files for the new characters so they don't sound so out of place.

Kind of the beauty of remote piloted vehicles is that the military that employs them will hardly care if they are shot down. No pilot was killed, they primarily use OTS equipment so no particularly sensitive technologies can be retrieved from them, and most of all, they're very cheap. The loss of a $4 million UAV (which mind you since it has an engine from a lawnmower and no ECM or LO properties is only slightly harder to shoot down than a blimp) is a drop in the bucket for the USAF, which is more than you could say about the ~$25 million Syrian Su-24 shot down by that IDF MIM-104 Patriot a few months back. As for SS-26es in Kaliningrad, I believe Pavel Podvig's quote is worth repeating:

Yeah, and "American money" also pays for your F-35s, MIM-104 Patriot PAC-3, THAAD, and a whole host of other military hardware, Bibi.

https://youtu.be/vefhZp-d_uw Like the real CnC Generals sequel.

Dr. Dala?

Homeworld rights have passed to Gearbox, who subsequently handed out the name to Blackbird Interactive. which includes alumni from Relic, for their project, "Shipbreakers" (which will function as a game in the Homeworld universe). I still think very, very highly of Relic, and I hope to see another Dawn of War soon.

Speaking of CVs, looks like that Chinese homegrown one is coming along: http://www.defenseone.com/technology/2013/08/those-chinese-aircraft-carrier-pics-what-we-know-what-we-can-guess-and-what-we-cant/68114/

"Armoured combat toe-to-toe with the Rooskies... in Ukraine*." Beasts on the prowl... Mechanised infantry assault... The thing I miss from Steel Beasts? T-72s brewing and their turrets flying 50 feet into the air (BMPs blow up with the power of a one ton unitary warhead though, potentially lethal for an infantry squad that took it out with an AT-4 at close range!) Infantry squad scans for targets with the Javelin CLU. *The devs swear up and down they've been making the game since 2009.

https://youtu.be/qOIhKtvWQYU The US Navy repaid the favour by hosting carrier qualifications for French Rafale Ms aboard the Carl Vinson as well.

I've never one-hundred percent understood how to play Caravan, in spite of the fact that nearly every playthrough I have done I try to roleplay as a card shark and pick up all the cards I can buy whenever I hit a shop. It might be a brilliant, brilliant little card game, but I never had the energy to figure it out.

Scandinavia has caught the bug:

As it has not been mentioned yet, Syndicate (you know, the good one) is now "On the House" on Origin, if you're not loathe to use the service.

"Praise the sun."

I'm reminded of a passage from The War that Never Was that explains why this didn't happen, according to a character who was a former KGB analyst: Because it hadn't gone "hot," no one really considered the idea that the result of the political and economic collapse of the Soviet Union had about the same effect had it lost a conventional shooting war with the First World and its coalition partners.

Studying at UCSB, every year during Palestine Awareness Week there's some Palestine solidarity display on the lawn in front of Storke Tower where some stakes with the colours of the Palestine flag are put up. That's usually vandalised in one form or another (the stakes knocked down, thrown in the trash, or the green, black and red stakes replaced with blue ones). A couple of times I saw some vilely anti-semitic graffiti on the inside of Pardall Tunnel, though it's occasionally balanced out by the odd anarcho anti-globalisation scrawling. In Isla Vista the Bear Flag is a very popular livery on the apartments there. I guess it's for this reason we're probably the "generic" college in the UC system (its party scene notwithstanding). As far as political leanings, UC Irvine is probably the big GOP campus (being in Orange County), though there are a ton of Asian students there ("University of Chinese Immigrants") who are usually ambivalent to such matters. UC Berkeley is usually thought to be the big hotbed of "pinko commies," but honestly, UC Santa Cruz frightens me a lot more.