Affentitten

Well of course the RN was more concerned with the Indian Ocean and the protection of the trade routes around the Asian littoral. Plus their WW1 experience was largely more of a defensive / blocking / checkmating role, again fairly close to home. Apart from the odd chase of a commerce raider in the Indian Ocean or round South America. It's no surprise that things like battle readiness played second fiddle to pink gin tea parties in the wardroom.

I hadn't realised things were that bad. But the idea of lower deckers fighting a vain battle against the established order of things is certainly not unbelievable. The Pacific would certainly have been a hard AO for the RN given their historical tendency to steam back to port after a couple of days work off the European coast somewhere.

As I expect 99% of unmanned missions would as well. My point being that a human pilot is not proof against mistakes. And in some cases may actually be more prone to them. If you're worried about a threat in 10 years time you're already too late to start designing your next manned fighter!

We've already got autonomous trigger happy pilots flying over hot spots. As any number of Afghan wedding guests, Reuters journalists and British squaddies will testify. Besides which, low level conflicts and air-to-air dominance are not congruent. To the best of my knowledge, not a single fixed wing aircraft has been lost in the air to enemy fire during the 8 years now of Afghanistan. Too high. Too fast. No competition.

Not saying you're wrong, but I'm curious as to what reaction times have to do with it these days? At least the millisecond sort of reaction times you're implying. There are no dogfights any more. You're launching AAMs from over the horizon or trying to defeat them with countermeasures. Not dodging a stream of tracers from an Me-109.

Afghanistan was in the stone age long before the coalition showed up. But being in the stone age doesn't matter. In a way it's even an advantage because there's nothing obvious for your F-22s to target. But you can't win just by cruising around at 30,000 feet with your JDAMs. Once it comes to boots on ground things even up a bit. And on the battle of Omdurman, one shouldn't forget that it was a case of the Empire Strikes Back after the Khartoum garrison was wiped out.

He's an Aussie. Of course he does. But when I see these guys I always think that I would never want to play poker with them.

Oh definitely. There's no implication that they wanted him to do it. Remember that he was kind of the good guy as fas as the USA was concerned compared to Iran. But what ripples that stone in the pond has had.... Saddam Hussein was the political theorists' nightmare because of his irrationality. Of course, some would say that his invasion of Kuwait was perfectly rational at the time, given that it answered a lot of his problems.

Glaspie later said words along the lines of "Yeah, but I didn't think they'd actually be crazy enough to invade for real."

"We have no opinion on your Arab-Arab conflicts, such as your dispute with Kuwait. Secretary Baker has directed me to emphasize the instruction, first given to Iraq in the 1960s, that the Kuwait issue is not associated with America." - April Glaspie, US Ambassador to Iraq in a meeting with Saddam Hussein and Tariq Azziz, 25 July 1990.

Happy Saint Crispin's Day to all the longbow freaks out there. Or the Balaclava wearers.

And the fact that you are eating your own body. You can't retain troops in your state forces because the corporations are headhunting them away to fill your own contracts. So you end up paying twice.

It could be. But if you run aground on purpose, that implies some control. Fly-by-wire......reminds me of those early days with the Airbus and the pilots fighting against the computer that was trying to save them.

Shot out from under him is one thing. That's part of the Nelsonian tradition of engaging the enemy more closely. But running them aground in a calm loch is rather poor form. Wicky, the HMS Nottingham captain only received a low grade reprimand because he was off the ship at the time. Or rather he had just set foot on the ship after returning from shore. The course that ran her aground had been set by his subordinates. The captain was therefore disciplined for improper delegation. ie. leaving idiots in command. Bit harsh because he didn't exactly have a choice at who he left in command. He could hardly bring up a couple of stokers to be in charge.

Great until he pukes over the plexiglass!

Turnaround time for a Buff is huge too. I know that yes, it makes up for it by carrying loads more stuff, but if you're flying from Diego Garcia or Beale, you ain't going to be there in a timely fashion. This is especially the case when something malfunctions and you have to fly back to base to get it fixed.

Amazing that it landed so relatively close to where it took off. I wonder what the aviation regs are on doing that sort of thing??

Not to mention that the fixed wing craft aren't exactly in a high threat environment. They're not mixing it up with Fulcrums or anything. So you don't need the latest, greatest and most expensive. Bring back the Skyraider!

On the othe hand, you can probably remember military systems that were being considered for retirement when you were a kid that are still being patched together today.

We had a 'scandal' here a few weeks ago when a digger in Afghanistan sent an expletive filled email back to a mate saying that in a recent firefight there wasn't enough arty and CAS. This issue of a front line soldier saying he wanted more fire support, surely unprecedented in the history of warfare, was beaten up by the media into the government and ADF "letting our boys down".

Some of the cuts make sense and are really just preventing good money being thrown after bad. The Nimrod refurb, as the BBC article notes is already 8 years late and was a kludge on an antique airframe anyway. And the Ark Royal is also a relic and pointless if you're not going to keep the Harriers. The arty stuff is interesting. Not sure I want to argue with JonS on this, but maybe it's a recognition that broad application of arty is not as important in future warfare scenarios.

I do have some knowledge and experience of the French system and it's a very mixed beast. The level of prescription by doctors is phenomenal because medications are pretty much subsidised to peppercorn levels. Your doctor will even prescribe you paracetamol and stuff so you don't have to pay for it yourself. So if you do need medication, you'll get it. On the other hand, this breeds the "when you have the biggest hammer, every problem looks like a nail" syndrome. So pharmaceuticals are the answer to everything. I personally know people with psychiatric problems who are just dosed up with everything under the sun, rather than being treated with counselling and other therapy as a complement. Because the latter are not so well reimbursed. It even means that straight after giving birth mothers are almost universally shot up with lactation supressants (free) because there is no funding for the sort of breast-feeding / mothercare nursing that you get elsewhere. Plus formula can be subsidised. So the French breastfeeding rate is one of the lowest in the developed world, depsite the weight of literature supporting breastfeeding. The level of technology is also quite primitive compared to the US or Australia. MRI and other diagnostics are not as commonly used because of the amount of budget that is subk into pharmaceuticals.

If only they could feed themselves and pump enough oil....

It doesn't say that the American didn't swear, Blackhorse!! (Plus the Flight engineer, if he survived, would have a story to tell. "Yeah, I got hit in the head by an RPG round. But I'm OK.") (Not to mention how bummed the Taliban RPG guy must have been. He's fired the perfect shot, watched it hit the front windscreen and then had that split second waiting for the Hollywood explosion....)

Yes it is strange that the UK still operates on that basis. It was the case in Australia even up into the Vietnam War that anything that flew was RAAF. But finally the Army said enough was enough.