kalvasflam

The Russians are our friends; they're providing the US with future target drones. remember, practice makes perfect.

The biggest vulnerability to stealth aircraft is typically during the weapons release. During that time frame, as someone said, the RCS is dramatically increased. But the window of vulnerability is fairly brief, since the time it takes to drop a weapon is probably measured in seconds. Not enough time for a missile to reach the plane unless it's flying very low; which is something that stealth aircraft don't do. So, even if there is a lock on, it most likely gets broken the second the bomb bay door closes.

Meet the new boss.... same as the old boss.... what a waste of time. But still, they could've done with BA did about a decade ago, and paint their aircraft all different colors.

http://www.flightglobal.com/articles/2007/...er-economy.html And I command thee to sleep.... (gotta handed to the Germans, efficiency and ... uh... well, not exactly comfort) What an interesting idea. wonder how they might handle carry ons...

Saw it yesterday, definitely a good movie, better than Cars from last year. With this one, it was easier to relate as an adult. Definitely one of the better movies I've seen all summer so far, one of the few I thought worthy of my money.

Really, when did Revan stop the Ebon Hawk from lifting off... for the life of me, I can't remember it, and KOTOR is one of my favorites. Yeah, this guy was way too powerful, i mean, apprentice, how about Vader calling him MASTER. The funny thing though, why was this guy killing storm troopers... should he be on the same side as them?

One additional thought about the composite material for the 787, I wonder what test protocols it has gone through at this point. Knowing the amount of stress it'll go through in a life time, that's going to be very interesting to see what type of accelerated age testing they did for the plane. I wonder how much of this learning can from other composite aircraft, and looking at their airworthiness over time.

Well, Boeing has just had its A380 moment; the show off. They better do a good job, and not emulate the next A380 moment, the DELAY, if they do, it really is gonna hurt the company like they wouldn't believe. Supposedly, Qatar airlines has put in an order with the 787 as well. It's the rumor at least, although no solid confirmations from anyone yet. It's really bad that the A350XWB launch customer decided to go with the competitor as an interim.

Well, the 787 is really going to make or break Boeing in a lot of ways. If they execute well, a lot of the airlines still sitting on the sidelines are going to jump in on their bandwagon. If they screw it up, Airbus gets a huge breather.

Rolling out is one thing... how hard could that be... but flying in late August, now that's a totally different story, remember, the A380 flew too, and then what happened, they discovered some minor errors which didn't really compromise the flight characteristics of the plane but forced it to wait two more years anyway.

Oh I know what they meant, but let's face it; if a minor thing like this is getting under the allies skin; then may be they aren't allies at all. Same difference right? You got a guy that is an enemy to both, why the hell would something silly like nose art take precedence over the death of the enemy in the mind of the ally? Sorry, delving too much into a philosophical argument on this. Apollo Leader, In terms of the B-2; the peace dividend that came out of the end of the cold war has been in many cases a disaster. Look at the armed forces today, it's a farcry from what it was at the end of the 80s. And I beg to differ, it is management that caused the problem, in this case, management is at a higher level, called the politicians in Congress and the White House. Somebody once said the price of peace is eternal vigilance, to the politicians eternal means about the time it takes a sound byte to get out to cable news.

On the RAF paintjobs... If it offends people, so be it, everyone is offended by something in this world, be it the oil sheiks in the mid east or the fat kid next door. Who cares if the paintjob is offensive, the thing it's painted on is meant to be a weapon, and weapons in general are offensive. If the paintjob in question happens to offend your enemy, so much the better I say.

I wonder how much money Bandai makes every year with their models...

B-2.... But unfortunately, it's not a bad plane, but just poorly managed, and of course, if they actually bought 200 planes, the cost might have been better.

Airbus can actually fall back a little on EADS, and not to mention the French and German governments who don't want massive unemployment, so no matter how badly things might look, they'll never go away. But realistically, that would never happen, unless A380s fall out of the sky left and right, people will stay with Airbus, they don't have a choice. In terms of Boeing, the next year will tell how good or bad things will be. There are concerns that the 787 is going to be delayed because of Vought, and then there is always the possibility that they run out of fastners. The order battle is kind of interesting to see, Airbus may have held back their announcments, but so far, they've had a couple of good ones, including US Air. Now, the military side of the house really needs to be cleaned up... the CSAR contract must be a joke for someone. Then there is FCS, if you read Business Week at all, that is another nightmare in the making. I actually hope they do better there, because quite simply put, the Lockheed designs are too recycled, and Lockheed needs the competition.

Heh heh, robots in disguise eh? Must be one hell of an ugly disguise.

Amen to that; let's see which regime has lots of tanks that are old 70s vintage that can be killed and then resold to the new govt that we put in place. Moving on from there. The Paris Air Show is open, it looks like Airbus is starting to score big with the A350XWB; the Qatar order was already known before hand, but they managed to land US Air finally. There was some danger of US Air not going with them until recently, but given that EADS backed US Air during the hard times, and that US Air owns an all Airbus fleet, it would've been impressive if Boeing won there. And Emirates is ordering yet more A380, and supposed the decision will be for either 100 787 or 100 A350; something like that. Now that would be impressive. Finally, it looks like Boeing might be in trouble, according to JP Morgan, they think Boeing is four months behind schedule on the 787.

Exactly, compare it to the cost of a Maverick, then think about the cost of a MBT (even then, you probably just need 200 to 300 rounds to kill the MBT). well, you get the idea. It's frigging cheap.

SO the new gundams are: Gundam Anorexic Gundam I have a Gun Gundam Pokey and uhhhh... Gundam Fatboy.... yeah, being fat is a virtue Yes, very impressive Oh... and are we sure the pilot of the Fatboy is a guy?

Wouldn't be surprising, I think the 787 queue now has delivery dates up to 2014; that's about the time that the A350 is going to enter service. The big question now is whether or not Boeing will fall on its face with the delivery schedules. The next year will be really interesting. Because it could potentially break the bank for Boeing if they screw things up operationally. Far worse than Airbus's A380 debacle

According to Boeing, they see need for up to 28,000 new planes (commercial both pax and cargo) over the next 20 years. Holy smoke. That's a lot of planes, granted nearly half are going to be replacements, but that's a couple of trillion dollars. Then, there is the Paris airshow, that starts up next week. It'll be interesting to see if Boeing lands any more 787 orders during that week.

Exactly, that's just stupid. Why don't they kill the entire genere, I hope the bad guy is interesting this time. I liked Hans and Simon, but the colonel is the second movie was a bit subpar. I hope the villian this time is a little better. Although in all fairness, Live Free or Die Hard shouldn't have been made. But let's face it, Hollywood for the most part is devoid of any creativity or new ideas. That's why the summer blockbusters are things with #s behind them, how many frigging sequels are there? Shrek, Spiderman, Pirates, Die Hard, and so on.... Next year, there is Indiana Jones 4... at this rate, they need to start making things like ET2, and drag old stars out of retirement to do one more movie. I swear Pixar is the only studio that seem to be a little more original these days. Even they have Toy Story 3 on the books. In that way, they're a lot like the Gundam series that is essentially the billionth rehash of the same old thing.

no you idiot... that's Thundercracker... recolored of course.

Neat.... Centauris rule... heh heh.

I would like one of the following two characters: Kira or Athrun to die a horrible death within the first five minutes of the film. The have the rest of the movie on flashbacks about the dead character. Ha ha, that'll make it both a fairly dramatic departure from the usual, and the same 'ol thing as far as Seed is concerned. But oddly enough, done under the right circumstances, it can work very well.