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kalvasflam

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Everything posted by kalvasflam

  1. kalvasflam
    Oh yeah, just looked at an image of Klan, you're right, I just never noticed until now, seems like Mirage's ears are more pointy than Klan's... may be it's evolution.
  2. kalvasflam
    I like the idea of different branches of General Galaxy, that actually makes sense, each Macross fleet has their own dedicated manufacturing. So, if General Galaxy provides a base system and send it out to its different branches, those branches might be able to make smaller quantities of those crafts for specific situation, and if it turns out one of those variants had exceptional performance, they could simply pull the data back to Earth, and they could start dedicated line, and in theory, those VFs would've been already considered proven in combat situations. It would be as if Boeing opened up a plant on each continent, sent them all designs for the F-18 E/F and let them go wild with their own local variants.
  3. kalvasflam
    I think in some ways, Frontier already did a fairly decent job of showing the disadvantages of culture. Well, at least in terms of how Grace was able to manipulate both Ranka and Sheryl for her own needs. But this is different in that there is a different faction in the open doing this work. I wonder if there will be some weird conspiracy along the way, I actually hope not, but that would add intrigue to the situation. Now that the war is on, hopefully there will be snippets of details of other actions, unlike Frontier, where the action was surrounding the ship, in Delta, there are multiple fixed locations. And there is opportunity to show a more expansive macross universe. Finally, what's with Mirage's ears? Did she have them surgically altered or was her father a blood elf?
  4. kalvasflam
    The super robot aspect of Macross bothers me; it goes all the way back to Basara, why did he have a custom VF-19; I mean, how the hell did that even happen, he wasn't in the military. Now, the rationale for VF-22 I can kind of see, special limited run to keep General Galaxy Happy. For Frontier, they at least had a plausible excuse of having VF-25 as next generation, but not in mass production yet, but all of those variations have got to be a killer for the manufacturers. Can you imagine the engineers at General Galaxy going, what the hell, another one of these things, how many variation of the same plane can we do?
  5. kalvasflam
    Yes, I noticed that they covered that recording very nicely. So, it has to be a live performance. I do have to wonder what the actual range of that performance need to be though. You know part of me wishes that Kawamori would build more extensively on his universe in terms of the anime; kind of like how Disney is milking Marvel and Star Wars for all its worth, and there is still plenty of source material. Sure, lots of source materials, but here Kawamori has made it so that even the background on Windermere would be interesting, and there is plenty of things that could be revisited, if you take Frontier for example, there are various facets of Galaxy we never got, how cool would it be to do that without having a new Valk every show. I personally liked the Lucifer and the Messiah sufficiently to think they didn't need to introduce a -31 or a -30; Besides, it's got to be awfully expensive to have limited runs of these fighters. Hell, the fleet hasn't even graduated to VF-19s yet.
  6. kalvasflam
    I am wondering about the Windermere fleet. Do they even have one? Because if everything is about using VAR to control someone else's military, then they are not going to get very far. The little boy who keep singing is going to keel over at some point, and all of a sudden, no more VAR controlled puppets. And speaking of VAR, I'm still trying to get an understanding of the VAR, what does it actually do? it makes people nuts for a little while, they can be controlled for a while, but is that effect permanent, until the Walkure undoes the damage... if so, they better assassinate the Walkure just as soon as humanly possible. I really liked this episode because of the backstory, wish actually there was more of that than Hayate's showboating... having the mercat would smack him around a little more would do him a world of good. As for the Aerial Knights, well, the Draken are cool, but too many hero units, I'd like to see more of the Windemere military in action. So, as far as I can tell, Delta squad is under another company like another SMS. They clearly aren't military, so basically we have a mercenary group fighting a bunch of separatists (or terrorists); both of whom happen to have access to some heavy weapons.
  7. kalvasflam
    A very interesting tidbit... and probably a bit of a pipe dream: more F-22? If only there is a snowball's chance in hell.
  8. kalvasflam
  9. kalvasflam
    No Shia, that's already an improvement over Crystal Skull in my opinion. I'm curious to see where they take the story, is it going to be another transition where they try to keep the franchise rolling by using Ford to boost a new star? Or is it a whole new story, cause, you know, at this point, Indy is pushing 70.
  10. kalvasflam
    I remember Die Hard in 1998, up until then, Germans were the bad guys personified by Hilter in WWII. Hans Gruber was for me the new definition of Germans after the movie, smart, hip, full of witty one liners, and utterly evil. And imagine, I didn't realize he was British until years later. (ha, I still thought it was odd choice to have a German being the Sheriff of Nottingham) Rickman was truly a great actor. RIP
  11. kalvasflam
    Is it too late to hope for Jar Jar Snoke? It would redeem the at least episode I in part... or drag down episode VIII an IX. Nah, I guess it's not possible to get over his horrible voice.
  12. kalvasflam
    Just curious, I thought the F-18s can carry ordinance on the centerline. I wonder if someone hadn't thought of a stealth shaped version of the JDAM or JSM, that's another way to bring some fire power without having to lug around the weapons pod. The first four configuration made sense though... but really, why have just four SBD when you can have six.
  13. kalvasflam
    Call me silly, but I like how they set up the villian in the story. It was quite refreshing to see a little bit of depth to the villian, and oh, speaking of princesses, did anyone notice the cameo?
  14. kalvasflam
    arrrgh, I forgot the date... this sucks. I'm going to go cry now
  15. kalvasflam
    Kelly Johnson is probably rolling over in his grave. This is such a sad state for the F-22
  16. kalvasflam
    94087
  17. kalvasflam
    Pan Am... the second airline I ever flew on when I first came to the US. The first was a turboprop deathtrap in China, but as an 8 year old, I was fascinated. I think the US airlines in general suck. My mileage is with United, and I'm not impressed with them. Heard good things about Virgin America, and have flown Jetblue in the early 2000s, back then, their service was pretty good. I love flying on Asiana, Thai, and Singapore. Too bad, it's not that often any more.
  18. kalvasflam
    I don't know about that, AWACS is definitely important, but if you consider China's geography, and the likely mission of its air force, compounded with the relative difficulty involved in approaching such a big radar platform without being spotted, then it's a much more challenging target than say, tankers. If I were in charge of the missions, that's what I would target after. The strategy for China is anti-access, from that point of view, it means area denial for carriers (anti carrier ballistic missiles), anti US air force. In the case of the US air force, the damage multiplier comes from the tankers, take those away, there are still B-2s, B-1s, B-52s with stand off weapons, but you reduce the number of F-15s, F-16s, and F-22s. If I had to bet, not even the F-22 or the B-2 could approach within 60 miles of the AWACS without triggering something, and those are more stealthy platforms.
  19. kalvasflam
    what? No Jet Li? And who's the chick?
  20. kalvasflam
    http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/f-22-redesign-considered-as-oxygen-system-concerns-linger-368988/ You know I like the F-22, I think the air force should've bought it in greater numbers, and I even think the strike version might make sense. But if anything, it just shouldn't be Lockheed Martin doing the job. I mean talk about screw ups. I don't remember that the F-15, or the F-16, or even the F-18 had this many problems. Now I know the oxygen system is probably not something Lockheed built, but as the integrator, ultimately, I think it's their fault if it doesn't work. A whole redesign is a big fat WTF were you bozos doing in the first place kind of a question.
  21. kalvasflam
    http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/usaf-re-assessing-5th-generation-fighter-numbers-368889/ Sounds like the beginning... or is it the middle of the process to start reducing the number of F-35. Lockheed seem to be really doing a poor job in the last two decades managing costs of their fighters. Does anyone know if the original F-15 or F-16 development was like this? I know that F-15 numbers actually expanded from the 729 originally required to more than 1,000
  22. kalvasflam
    You could always position a rearward camera for that one, and have it up as a part of the HUD. The BVR comment is part of the reason why there is such a long kill chain involved in weapons release for drones. Supposedly, there are now private contractors involved in the decisions to launch a missile from a drone for example. Not enough people to analyze the constant streams of video data. But then, this is another reason why manned systems will never go away entirely. If only they could slave drones to a manned fighter, a la VF-27 and drones in the second MF movie. That would be very nice, oh wait... I think that would be called funnels.
  23. kalvasflam
    Here is a link, this is an old article; almost 18 months. But it is still valid: http://articles.latimes.com/2010/jul/06/world/la-fg-drone-crashes-20100706 38 crashes of predators and reapers in the middle east alone. That's an awful lot of crashes. I do agree that drones have their place. But they are very far from ready to replace manned systems, and it might not be as cost effective as we think if the drone truly has a larger logistical tail than a manned system. You could argue these are still teething pains, but combat drones are not ready (at least not for the next 10 years IMO) to replace manned systems.
  24. kalvasflam
    Not so sure about drones. The loss rate in Afghanistan is quite high, and from what I've heard (can't remember the source), the # of people involved in staging drones far outnumber those involved with conventional combat aircraft. Now, that said, drones don't need CSAR. I think air superiority is still going to be important, the only question is how much of that is going to be manned elements.
  25. kalvasflam
    Hmmm, you know the obvious thing to do with the F-22 replacement, is have the competition between Northrop, Boeing, and Lockheed. Then just pick the Northrop version and call it the seventh generation, and we will save ourselves a full cycle of development cost. I wonder what the starting numbers are going to be; the #s on the F-22 changes a few times before they settled on 183. I may be biased here, but I truly hope Lockheed doesn't win this one. The crap they put up called the F-35 should already disqualify them from the race. Ah well, wonder what the cost of R&D will be for this one.
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