Agiel

While there has been much speculation on the airframe's potential performance and capabilities based on its outward appearance (mind that about 5% of total R&D time and costs for today's fighters are the airframe, with 40% going to engines and the other 55% in sensors and avionics), my outlook thus far is that most have missed asking the correct question about the program: Who's going to buy a pig in a poke? Fifteen years ago with Russia's civil aviation going the way of the Dodo in the face of Airbus and Boeing and military aviation kept on life support by the then still relevant Su-27/30 series the entirety of Russian aerospace was merged into a single state-owned, centrally-controlled monstrosity only Lenin could love, the UAC (OAK in Russian). Management of the different sectors in this new concern were subsequently delegated to various loyal cronies of Putin, almost to a man none had any background in engineering, military aviation, or industrial management (think Jen Barber from the IT Crowd), the last person with anything like this was fired from RAC MIG in 2015-2016). As a result subsequent aerospace products have had an ever widening gulf between what customers specified and what UAC design bureaus, and most importantly Putin, had in mind. This effect was most beautifully illustrated by India's involvement in the PAK-FA. When the Indians helped keep the lights on for Sukhoi they had requested a two-seat strike version (the VVS possibly wanted this too) all the while Sukhoi insisted on a single seat F-22 analogue. Thus when the Indians got a non-compliant craft which might as well have had "Sorry" stenciled on one of the wings and critical capabilities missing and likely not forthcoming (specifically an integrated targeting pod with a rotating head) the Indians unceremoniously pulled the plug on their involvement in the project. Today to hear Putin tell it the Felon has managed to wheeze into the finish line of beginning "serial production" but with further orders only coming after the delivery of the first 75 airframes, its final engine design stuck in development hell, and its low numbers and largely single-role nature making it a rather disproportionate drain on VVS resources (for this reason the F-22 was slated for retirement sometime in the 2030s) future prospects for the type continue to look bleak. Then there comes the matter of current competition in the market today. If we have at the very top end (or what the Swiss have called "the Ferrari option") is the F-35, the current "Checkmate" seems to target the segment currently occupied by Eurocanard fighters (Eurofighter, Rafale, Gripen), but even with stealth such is an uphill battle (especially so when Sukhoi flat-out admitted that the stealth capabilities of the Su-57 do not compare well with the F-22 and F-35). Many air force's given the choice between exotic capabilities but poor integration with Western systems (LITENING targeting pod, Paveway laser-guided kit, even MICA missiles) and more established systems with very good integration with said systems will almost always go with the latter every time. This is demonstrated by the fact that the Su-30 with French avionics and compatibility with LITENING and Damocles targeting pods enjoys far more export success than the Su-35 which has almost entirely domestic content. As Joseph Trevithick put it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrfhmDtGPrk Playable pre-alpha demo available as well, though folks are having problems getting it downloaded at the moment due to traffic.

The narrator forgot the most important thing for a modern trailer in 2021: A minor-key cover of an old classic song.

And they will also be fighting against a combined arms force utilising not just stealth aircraft, but also highly sophisticated offensive ECM craft equipped with top-of-the-line jammers further augmenting LO aircrafts' ability to remain undetected and untargetable, hordes of air-launched decoys (some of them also having OECM capability), support assets in numbers and sophistication they can only dream of, HARM shooters on the prowl for enemy emitters which at the minimum forces early warning and fire control radars to have to switch off and reposition, and swarms of air and sea-launched cruise missiles flying below the horizon on top of LO stand-off glide bombs. Unlike fanboys, serious people do not consider the A2/AD problem even remotely insurmountable. Predicated on the use of long-wavelength radars that at best give a big area of uncertainty for an airborne CAP to do its best to sniff out and are extraordinarily easy to deceive with ECM to begin with. If anything, rough terrain confers a bigger advantage to an attacking force due to terrain masking. See Operation Mole Cricket 19.

In the summer before I went off to college I started looking for a summer job, my parents hoping that the funds would go towards paying off the eventual student loan debt but actually went to a new graphics card. I got a job working for the night crew for the local supermarket. In spite of my high school career running cross-country and track my feet ached to the point that I couldn't have a lie-down fast enough once I clocked out, and I got the worst case of eczema on my hands in my life opening a ton of cardboard boxes. One family dinner I plaintively confessed to my parents that I couldn't imagine myself doing that line of work for the rest of my life, to which they simply told me that I should have an idea why they were constantly on my case about taking my studies seriously. I suppose I ought to be thankful. After a brief stint working in a copy and print store after graduation to supplement my freelance income I managed to land a relatively cushy white-collar job, which was just as well since with the onset of the pandemic my position transitioned relatively painlessly to a work-from-home arrangement. I guess what I'm trying to say is I'm a milquetoast softy.

For the benefit of those few who were still on the fence on this game: He seemed to enjoy it.

If the country having a "masculine military" means being conscripted into a force that is cosmically corrupt, its equipment constantly facing readiness issues and modernisations deferred, and myself getting the stuffing beaten out of me on a daily basis, honestly, I think the US military is in an alright place.

I love this band's look:

This comes two months late, but with these two videos from Raytheon, one of the top 5 defence primes and now top supplier for turbofan engines for jetliners, released immediately after the inauguration of Biden and Harris I can't help but think there's a theme behind them.

As Ricky Ramirez is all the rage now:

For all those who are outraged that Trump's account has been suspended from Twitter I have to wonder if it has occurred to them that this is the ultimate expression of Milton Friedman's mantra of "the only moral obligation a corporation has is returning value to its shareholders".

With you on this. The voice actress for V is great and those moments immediately after she gets a bullet in the head after the heist gone wrong and up to when she leaves the apartment are probably the first instances in which I've heard something resembling genuine despair from a video game protagonist.

Before the pitchforks come out, it's an RTX _3070_. Had I known on September 17th that signing up for EVGA's auto-notify wasn't going to be an exercise in futility I would probably be sitting pretty on a 3080 right now. Though given that it's an EVGA card I do have the option of stepping up to a 3080 and receiving it when stock presumably stabilises next year, or to a 3080 ti if it gets announced in the next ~90 days for a sane price.

Glad to see one of my favourite models from the tabletop (and the pride of my Wood Elf army) getting represented in the game:

I still have some fondness for the Duke, so I consider Obama's take pretty spot-on: Why Obama Fears for Our Democracy

Fox News host Tucker Carlson says Biden and Harris want Americans 'drinking Starbucks every day from now until forever' in a baseless monologue about uniformity My dad was a Reagan conservative and even in his years of retirement it wasn't a day until he got his triple-shot espresso from the Starbucks a block away from his house.

Probably my favourite election celebration flag:

From what I’ve heard about Trump’s speech earlier my biggest fear isn’t far-right militias trying to live out their Turner Diary fantasies, but rather the fact that unless the 25th Amendment is invoked Trump will still have the Biscuit for two and a half months. https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/12/01/no-one-can-stop-president-trump-from-using-nuclear-weapons-thats-by-design/

Thoughts: -With Arizona (a state targeted, arguably misguidedly, by the Clinton campaign in 2016) going to Biden if I were in the Trump camp I'd be pouring three fingers of whisky. Near as I can tell Biden/Harris did not spend nearly as much converting the state as they did bringing PA/MI/WI back into the fold, states Trump won in 2016 by razor-thin margins as they were (to say nothing of Georgia now, which bodes ill for Republican aspirations for Texas in 15-20 years if the GOP insists on continuing on its current track). -As GOP-strategist-turned-Never-Trumper Rick Wilson noted, Florida and Ohio were solid red states masquerading as toss-ups that required generational candidates like Kennedy, Carter, and Obama to turn Blue (i.e. you needed +10 Democrat to even consider them in the conventional sense "lean Democrat"). -That the EC vote remains tight as it is now is still cause for alarm for progressives. For those of us whose single-issue concern for the Presidency was "Who is least likely to order the men and women at Malmstrom and Minot to turn their keys" all a Biden presidency does is buy the world four more years of time for Donald Trump to die from heart disease or has a health event that renders him a drooling invalid (and in my view the latter situation still gives him a ghost of a chance). For as horrible as the past four years have been, progressives should count themselves lucky that a nincompoop such as Trump was the best the GOP could offer in 2016. On that last point it's a terrible shame. If on November 4th the US had a solid repudiation of Trump I was looking forward to posting this as my reaction to the election results:

Lithuanian, you mean.