Agiel

I'm more partial to the "Love and Krieg" stories, to be honest.

Sort of why the A2/AD dilemma and the "AirSea Battle" concept has taken primacy in today's military: http://youtu.be/5Pu_PKpEhqU I don't think the US should have them either, for both moral and practical reasons (practical ones being that nuclear weapons are sure destructive, but everything they do *is* destructive, and by that very nature are extremely inflexible weapons). General Chuck Horner, lead planner of Operation Desert Storm agrees:

Mesa encourages you to be 'Murkin'. Couldn't resist with a cowgirl-themed suit.

For the second book, my cat definitely thinks it's the latter. If I leave a room he's in I have to have either a spray bottle with water or a rolled up newspaper to ward him away from attacking my leg.

I keep visiting the DA: I Nexus in the hope that someone finally made something worthwhile. So far the only thing that seems to be worth downloading amongst the sheer amount of "PJ retexture" mods is a cheatengine app that helps eliminate the RNG of getting armour blueprints.

I suspect Hollande hopes the recent truce gives him the excuse to complete the Mistral-carrier delivery, even if it doesn't hold. A Russian military watcher (meaning, someone who is both actually Russian and is an enthusiast of military affairs) confided in me he half hoped the Russian navy never got the Mistral. Reasons being two-fold: 1. Lack of BVR-capable, fixed wing complement means against a peer or near-peer adversary makes it, what US naval aviators like to call "a Navy Cross waiting to happen". 2. The Russian Navy had plans of constructing their own license built versions of the vessel upon delivery. If the Mistral never comes, then the funds and rather limited dry-dock space would (hopefully) go towards the proposed "Leader-class" destroyers, which would be among the first surface combatants of that tonnage to be produced since the Cold War and would actually be useful against the aforementioned peer or near-pear adversary.

I think it best not to argue with the man with General Buck Turgidson as his avatar

It's not going to last... like the other half-dozen before it... Apparently with the arrival of Russian troops on vacation with their T-72s and SA-22 Greyhound "rental vehicles" (I suppose for the latter some are incapable of learning lessons), there has been a crackdown of on rebel militias that were wont to act on their own, particularly the ones who were most active during the previous "cease fire", with a number of the leaders being captured or killed. Some were also killed by pro-Kiev artillery, with them blaming the Russian leadership for deliberately pushing them into "firetraps" in an effort to put the kibosh on their efforts to act independently in the future (not entirely dissimilar to when the Red Army on entering Ukraine in 1944 leaving the anti-German partisans to the devices of the NKVD or using them as cannon fodder). The reason is obvious. Putin wants a deal that lasts. He expected Donbass to go the way of Crimea, but in this he gravely miscalculated and he got a conflict lasting the better part of a year and thousands killed (including nearly 300 innocent people on a Triple Seven) instead. Putin may enjoy record approval ratings now in spite of the onset of a severe recession, but even that may prove fleeting without any effort to change gears (recall the fever pitch support behind Bush in the aftermath of 9/11). And as Rostere has said so many times before, the economic penalties would severely compromise Russia's ability to modernise its conventional military forces. Sure Russia has a credible nuclear deterrent (and spends ample effort in reminding the world of that fact, most notably the recent Tu-95 transit to the English Channel), but nuclear weapons are politically inflexible weapons, and there's zero evidence out there that suggests there are things outside of Russia's borders that Putin is willing to blow up the whole world up for.

The flight path of the bombers were even in cases of live exercises, unlike reconnaissance flights that have the potential to yield useful intelligence, totally unnecessary for the purpose of practicing nuclear bombing runs given that the Russian Air Force already has a myriad of ways of delivering "instant sunshine" from well outside of the area they had flown through (to say nothing of the Delta SSBNs holed up in strategic bastions in Kola and the Sea of Japan or the land-based missiles in silos and on mobile TELs hidden from satellites in "the Lungs of Europe"). It was a flight merely for the purpose of strutting their stuff, and in doing so for the reasons I mentioned put themselves, their country, and thousands of people who are likely totally disinterested or even ignorant to the travails in Ukraine.

Difference being this is through among the world's busiest airspace, not responding to civilian ATC, transponders off so they wouldn't have shown up on TCAS, with aircraft probably equipped with nuclear warheads, flown by pilots and aircrew who meet the bare minimum flight hours to qualified aviators, and the airframes not being the most well-maintained in the world. A recipe for a disaster with casualties potentially in the thousands.

"Oh, I feel pretty! Oh, so pretty!" My consolation after they nerfed Nova hard. Then there's my 3 Forma'd death machine:

The current Flaming Cliffs 3 modules for DCS have more simplified controls and avionics than the full-on "study sims" like the A-10C and the upcoming F/A-18C, making them substantially easier to learn. A third-party developer for DCS: World are investigating the possibility of bringing the F-15C to the study sim level (meaning near 1:1 fidelity "to the switch").

Quite obviously it is Shai-Hulud, the Great Maker, the Grandfather of the Desert, the Worm Who Is God.

Steven Wright is great too: But Mitch's "Saved by the Buoyancy of Citrus" is a classic: http://youtu.be/ZC-4tWx5Gv4

For once oby says something almost sensible. People can think *their* side to be in the right all they like. That shouldn't give *their* side license to indulge in unnecessary barbarity.

Same. I met Alex Grey once, long ago at the MCA La Jolla, hosting an exhibition. During a brief speech to those gathered, Alex acknowledged a beneficial influence to his work from LSD. I clapped appreciatively until I realized I was the only one. To the original topic. If how realistic a game looked really mattered to me, then one of my most played games of recent times wouldn't be one that looked like a Google Maps app. Hell. I put a ton of hours into Mount and Blade, which has looks only a mother could love on payday. At the time Battlefield 3 came out, I said I didn't care if the best looking game for the next five years looked as good as it did (and could still run well on the same hardware). But all in all, yes, for most games (that aren't high-fidelity simulators) *artistic vision* matters infinitely more than graphical fidelity. I mean, this... ...evokes more pathos out of me than this:

One's skull must be as thick as an Ogryn's if he hasn't stopped to think what the Imperium's attitudes towards Xenos and mutants was inspired by. Why do you think the Imperium has been called "Catholic Space Nazis"?

Yeah, absolutely nothing in that word choice that does not in any way, shape, or form evokes a sense of racial superiority over a group of supposed subhumans. In other news: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-31067977 This has Ryugyong Hotel written all over it.

I think in my playthrough I made Artyom out to be the Metro's most prolific mugger rather than badass Ranger of Sparta, knocking out every single commie, fascist, and bandit with the brass knuckles of the trench knife. I hope they managed to save enough MRI machines from the nuclear apocalypse because those poor f***ers are going to need them.

Visitin' Nellis and goin' down the "Long 15" of the Mojave... ...in an F-15C Eagle: Pre-release footage showcasing the new Nevada Test and Training Range environment and EDGE 2.0 terrain rendering for Digital Combat Simulator.