Agiel

Real-time Apollo 11 on this 45th anniversary of the mission, if you're reading this just now: http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html#.U8yLkrFZCME Replica of the lunar plaque from the Apollo 11 mission. Humanity has yet to live up to its words, and we may not for a very long time, but it doesn't make it any less worthy to aspire to.

John Schindler, aka 20committee on Twitter: https://twitter.com/20committee/status/490876305488224258

I actually am quite partial to Al Jazeera America. It may have its slant against Israel (though in spite of it, I think they're at least more on target than most US media is), but that's why I also read tons of other sources: Reuters, Associated Press, The Atlantic, Le Monde, Stratfor, and so forth. As long as the writing staff isn't filled with total kooks, then at the very least they serve as good sources to triangulate a reasoned point of view. Oh, and before anyone says anything, Fox News and Free Republic are about as worthy of my contempt as RT is.

Let's be real honest here, the Soviet Union and its successor state has also been given to bouts of gross negligence: http://youtu.be/_glEQuvurFQ?t=1m44s Then there was the West German pilot who penetrated the Soviet Union's layered air defense network to land in Red Square... in a Cessna: Postscript: The Alexandar Zuyev video also describes what is possibly the best defection plan in the history of mankind.

I couldn't help but think that every other line in Max Payne 3, whether in monologue or no, was "Class struggle! Class struggle! Class struggle! Substance abuse!" It's not necessarily and\ inaccurate assessment on the state of affairs in Brazil (far from it), but the whole game stunk of the writers imposing their own, Flanderised narrative onto another franchise (like people on this forum or No Mutants Allowed don't know what that's like).

I found it entertaining up to GTA IV. However it was when Rockstar's brand of satire began to infect Max Payne that it got tiresome, fast, for me.

Of course the end goal is to improve automation of unmanned vehicles so as to remove the possibility of the enemy gaining control of hacking into them, as embodied by the US Navy's efforts with the X-47B UCAV, which would be able to autonomously detect, track, and engage hostiles with the only input from human operators being the "Master Arm" switch. Also, as the greatest strength of un-piloted combat craft is the lack of putting a human operator at risk, a great deal of effort has been put into reducing their costs as well as producing them with off-the-shelf technologies so no truly sensitive materials are compromised as a result of a shootdown. A fellow armchair military enthusiast even relayed to me an idea based somewhat on the ALARM anti-radiation missile of autonomous airborne anti-aircraft missiles with a turbofan first stage so that it can loiter a given airspace for a time, then once it detects a hostile aircraft, uses a second-stage rocket booster to guide to the target. We're closer to this concept than you might think with two-way data-link weapons like the TACTOM Tomahawk, JSOW-C1, Naval Strike Missile, and the LRASM: http://youtu.be/LvHlW1h_0XQ Ultimately, whether for better or for worse, I think Total Annihilation and Supreme Commander were on the money with their idea on what the warfighter of the far-flung future is: A single man in the field with a legion of networked robotic warfighters at his fingertips.

Up to the Immaculate initiation now... Jesus Christ, can we have a moratorium on Myst-like puzzles in games? I thought PC gaming finally got Roberta Williams and and Jane Jensen out of its system.

Happy 45th anniversary of the launch of Apollo 11. Why not celebrate with the best feature-length film made about it... that was made, and set, in Australia:

Funny you should say that. On the recommendation of a fellow Harpoon enthusiast and C:MANO developer, I picked up War Games by Thomas B. Allen. One of the most interesting things I picked up from it was in spite of the myth that the notional World War III would very quickly escalate into tactical and strategic nuclear exchanges, in simulated war games players showed a great deal of hesitation in using the nuclear option, such that they made sub-optimal decisions to avoid that scenario and continued to refuse to use nukes even when the situation screamed for it. In fact, the situation got so bad that eventually the moderators replaced human players with computers who were more than willing to press the big red button. This suddenly puts Ogarkov's theories on the automation of the C2 and reconnaissance-strike complexes in his "Revolution in Military Affairs" in harsher light.

At the moment I'm seriously miffed that you can't swing a dead cat without hitting an enemy that will either a.) Poison, burn, or electrocute you if you hit it with melee or b.) kills you because it explodes when it dies. Current combat seems massively favoured towards mages and ranged since they can have expendable summons that can tank the enemies while the damage output of melee characters are simply not worth the resurrect scrolls.

Level eight and completed most of the Cyseal area yet I've yet to find a two-handed crushing weapon that I would have imagined would have been extremely useful against this encounter with undead skeletons past the most obnoxiously trapped house I have ever seen in an RPG.

Apparently, the South will rise again... in Eastern Ukraine:

Guy has to pay off student loans somehow In all seriousness, though the F-35 objectively speaking is perhaps the most expensive procurement program for a single platform in the history of arms production and has had its share of cost overruns, overruns have been so endemic of the field such that it would be easier to count the programs that did not experience them. If this was indicative of the success of eventual success of the F-35, then we could almost as easily say the Buluva ballistic missile was as big of a boondoggle for the Russian Navy. I 'm just sick of uninformed pundits (or even informed ones whose ideas have long since been rendered irrelevant) claiming it to be a $100 million jalopy against the claims of actual pilots, engineers, and planners. I cannot speak for the RCAF's needs. Canada has little in the way of foreign commitments and is unlikely to face air forces with even half of their current capabilities, short of a large-scale conventional war breaking out between NATO and coalition partners and the likes of China and Russia in the near future, eventualities that remain unlikely to the extreme (however that does not exclude proxy states purchasing more modern systems, though if they could buy them in operationally significant numbers is a different matter altogether). However, if Boeing doesn't catch a break with the Superhornet and the Growler it's probable that the RCAF would be compelled to buy a greater proportion of F-35s as a result of the potential loss of F/A-18 parts production capabilities.

I love Divinity and I'll be the first to admit to admit that the Codex has some frankly brilliant stuff by their staff buried under a pile of racist ramblings. So if I were Larian I don't know if I would so proudly wear their seal of approval on the splash screen for the game.

On the bright side, unlike the North Koreans the Brazilians don't have to look forward to a fun-filled field trip to Yodok for them and their family members up to twice removed for losing that badly.

Trying to find my way in the graphic design and illustration industry at the moment, that made my day.

This is just too f***ing great: http://youtu.be/oVk18BJdHgM Adapted from this, excuse the earsplitting audio bugs:

Boeing (the losers of the JSF selection program with their X-32) was at one point invited by LockMart to participate in improving upon the X-35. They less than kindly declined and are currently working on their own not necessarily competitors but certainly parallels in the form of upgraded F-15Cs and F/A-18E/F Superhornets with AESA radars (actually more powerful than the one on the F-22, having been developed later) and the E/A-18G Growler electronic attack aircraft. Part of why the F-35 project seems so bloated is due to how the program is attempting to replace three different airframes in service (the AV-8 Harrier, the F-16, and the F/A-18) and to satisfy the requirements of three different services in the US military alone as well as the militaries of over a dozen partner nations, however in the end due to economies of scale I believe down the line ~10-20 years parts commonality and service interoperability is eventually going to vindicate the cost (adjusted for inflation and held up to the combined development costs of the above, the F-35 might seem like the deal of the century). Besides, there's stuff on the F-35 that even F-22 pilots* can only dream of like a superior AESA radar, EOTS targeting pod, SEAD/DEAD and electronic attack capability, and the EODAS (actually made by Northrop Grumman) that has the potential to revolutionise air to air combat as we know it. Combined, Marine Corps test pilots have said that they've only scratched the surface of what this all means for how they will do their jobs. As for Russian military hardware virtually all of their military aircraft design and production has been consolidated into a single company (Sukhoi) as well as their armoured vehicle production into Uralvagonzavod (since the Omsk factory that was slated to upgrade T-80s went bust, and the former Soviet Union's other big tank producer being in Ukraine). In fact development of variants of the MiG-29 and the MiG-31 now fall under Sukhoi's purview following the collapse of the Soviet Union. As for what that all means, I think it leaves them trying to do too much with too little, upgrading existing airframes, ensuring the ones that are already in service are airworthy, and producing 5th-generation aircraft with a fraction of the budget they had in the Cold War. I've been of the opinion were it not for the Indians, the Russian Air Force would have been flying Saab JAS-39 Gripens and Dassault Rafales alongside their Su-27s (in fact they're closer to that than some might think with the Mistral helicopter carrier sale from France going ahead, thermal imagers license-built from Thales, and training simulators from Rheinmetall). *These are planned to be implemented on the F-22 as part of mid-service life upgrades.

It largely depends. In the case of a modern Leopard 2A6, the working hull, turret, and engine is produced by KMW, though the gun is made by Rheinmetall AG, with the IVIS, optronics, and fire control system made by Thales. Since the end of the Cold War I think there's greater willingness to accept outside technologies into platforms (definitely a far cry from the cutthroat espionage affairs between companies to be sure). Right now there's competition between Northrop Grumman and Raytheon for the new AESA radar suite for the F-16 (made by Lockheed Martin).

In other news, KMW and Nexter announce plans to merge, with encapsulates just about all of western continental Europe's armour production capacity. http://online.wsj.com/articles/nexter-systems-krauss-maffei-wegman-plan-to-merge-1404238891 Guess we're looking at the "Eurokampfpanzer Leo-clerc."

But in real terms, the insurgents accomplish very little with a "mission kill". A trained crew is not so easily replaced as compared to a tank (of which many western tanks are very good at preserving). Hell, during the 1982 war the Israelis lost somewhere to the order of 300 tanks, of which only about 75 were deemed complete write-offs. From what I've seen in spite of the Iraqis lack of combined arms warfare nous, they've proven quite able to recover their armour, as I haven't even seen propagandist claims that ISIL has been able to take one for a spin.

One of five PAK-FA prototypes has had its own bout with extensive fire damage and the Indians have expressed extreme dissatisfaction with its underpowered engines, large radar cross section (for a supposed 5th generation fighter), and outdated sensors, armaments, and avionics. If the F-35 even close to the lemon that some pundits are claiming, then it doesn't explain why some of the most storied (and informed) air forces in the world like the IAF and the ROKAF have expressed a desire to buy it despite not being original partners in the program in the first place.