kalvasflam

Ouch... FOD sucks, but in this case, it seem like one of those more avoidable incidents. Not a surprise though given maintanence will also need time to get familiar with new gear. Fortunately no one was injured.

I kind of think the whole problem with Lucas is he is stuck on the Ep I to Ep VI time frame. It gets really annoying. I kind of hope he gets over the Skywalkers and just move on. heh, but if he is insistent, why doesn't he do a show on young Leia. We can show her as a little girl, growing up into an angsty teenager with boy problems, experimenting with little girl love, and then moving to the mature adult that gets chased down by and bitchslapped by daddy.

Looks like this guy did fine: 382606[/snapback] Dumb question, where is the rest of his cockpit? Never mind, I understand, he punched out his RIO....

I can see it now, the theme of the show, Tattooine 90210.... We get to see Luke growing up, the trauma of his girl friends rejecting his dumb ass, what he and Biggs really did in those canyons... poping womp rats.... yeah, sure, (brokeback tatooine anyone?) and learn about the long road it took from young skywalker in a canyon with Biggs to french kissing his sister. All courtesy of Lucas. What I wouldn't mind them doing is a series in the knights of old republic. Liked that one a lot.

Awwww... how cute, they all dressed up.

Impressive, this blows away the LEGO stardestroyer. Absolutely amazing.

What is the current operational status of the Typhoon? I'm kind of curious about the European defense requirements, since the Typhoon is supposed to be for both the Brits and the Germans, I wonder how many units they'll be buying eventually.

To update to LGBs would be easy. All you need the aircaft to do is get the bomb to the target, once there the target can be designated from the ground, or I've read accounts of Phantom backseaters designating with hand sets from the air, one aircraft would orbit and designate while the others bombed. 379340[/snapback] That's not necessarily true, you'll need the proper ejector racks for the bombs. There are aerodynamic considerations or so I've heard on putting bombs onto planes. Then there are updates in software so you can properly drop these weapons. It's not that easy. Remember for LGB need to be launched in the proper direction in the proper way. It's not that easy. Skull leader... So, they use the Sea Eagle. Good ASM. Anti-radiation missiles don't make that much sense anyway. For Japan, most of their offensive would be based on maritime requirements. Anti-ship missiles fits better than LGB. LGB means you'd have to get close, and these days, SAMs preclude attack aircraft from getting that close. I wonder though if they have weapons like Maverick and equivalents like SLAMs. Those would be useful, especially consider SLAM is based on the Harpoon airframe.

Thanks for the detailed information. Very nice to read about some of this stuff. This of course lead too other questions. The anti-ship missile the F-2 carries, is it the Harpoon? That would be neat. As for the smart ordinance, I wonder how much alterations will be needed to use those. From what you've said, it doesn't seem like too much changes will be required. Would it be mainly software or are we talking lots of hardware changes. The information on the F-4EJs were also very interesting. I almost thought they would be used in a WW function much as the USAF converted a majority of its Phantoms to that role after the introduction of -15s and -16s. But then it occurred to me that over the water, any HARM type missiles would just be supplanted by anti-ship missiles anyway. The smart weapons part is pretty interesting because given the geography, I think Japan has two primary needs. Air defence, and maritime capabilities. Air defence is nicely filled by the -15s, and from our information, it sounds like F-2s are great anti-ship types. It would match the role their constitution provides, which is primarily defensive. Besides, in this day and age, no one really has any ability to invade an island country. There isn't nearly enough amphibious type ships to do the job. Thanks for the interesting update.

I wonder where that was taken.... such a nice picture. As for the superbug vs F2 argument. What does the superbug bring that the F2 doesn't already offer in terms of capabilities.

Amen, brother... but the three 15 minute OVAs kind of make that kind of quality show unlikely. Pretty boys should fight with each other, but they'd probably be fighting over other pretty boys at the rate GS was going. In the end of GSD, it started to look like Kira and Athrun was gonna get married, now that would've been a first for a Gundam series. And it would have ensured that the producers get burned at the stakes.

You should listen to the podcasts.....I think Moore has cited the budget once every other episode. Just last week, (as noted previously), they were planning on using the Cylon Heavy Raider for the jumping sequence but they didn't have money to build a set for it. He even responded to a question about the Marines equipment they use on his blog. Why do the Marines use the same equipment each time we see them? Because of the budget. They can't afford to rent or buy new equipment so they reuse stuff every time. Why not more shots of the Centurions? Can't afford it. They try to fit in more shots but I don't think they have the money for it. I'm sure there would be more shots of various ships...if they could afford it. 379098[/snapback] It's sad that BSG is so limited on budget. Reminds me of how Babylon 5 had to fight for funding, one reason why I thought season 5 truly sucked was that they had to wait until the last minute for TNT to jump in. And of course TNT killed the show. You would think that NBC has learned the lesson about sci fi by now given the examples like star trek, the old BSG, and even watching through the struggles that B5 went thru. It's truly sad. The new BSG had a good storyline, and definitely worthy of more attention, but I bet if the makers of the original mindless sitcoms had anything to say about it, BSG will eventually get moved over to NBC and get killed. Which is too bad. I almost hoped that BSG could've been funded like the stargate shows.

Stargazer.... hmmm sounds an awful lot like starblazer.... Anyway, as far as the MS is concerned, I don't really care if it's a gundam or if it's fancy looking. In fact, I would've rather had the MS be a Windam instead. It's the story that counts, although one wonders how good a story might be told in 3xOVA of 15 minutes each.

The boyfriend cracked me up. He is like one of those guys who has been spending too much time in his office and never stuck his head out into the real world. A Jack Bauer pummeling I think would've been a nice introduction to reality for this guy. And jeez, talk about not knowing when to bud out. He probably is pissed at Kim for sending him out, not knowing how much a favor Kim did him by telling him to go. I think he and the shrieking hobbit needs to go together.

That was SEED Destiny. Everything went according to plan. Hail Chairman Lacus. 377778[/snapback] One modest alteration, barely noticeable. Iron fist in a soft velvet glove.

"but Mr. Frodo, sum times things just happen cause they happen... ain't nothin the good folks can do about it." So says the shrieking hobbit.

Oh well, I guess that means this is it for GS. Too bad, it had promise too. 3x15 minute OVAs... I wonder why they even bothered and didn't just send that thing off to the Gundam Evolve series.... it would've been better that way.

No offense, but somewhere I read that you were 18. I guess it's a part of the maturing process that you'd be able to take criticisms on rather stupid ideas and then recognize that in fact those are stupid ideas. Or better yet, see that some people are trying to give you some reasonable opinions on why the idea doesn't work at all... just off the top of my head, there were a few like on this thread: - not aerodynamically feasible - not in the interest of Japan as a country - not financially judicious Again, all these are reasons that the average 18 year old don't tend to grasp. Heck, there are 40 year olds out there who still think all their real life problems will magically vanish if they just wished hard enough. It's not wrong... per se... it's just that their beliefs tend not to coincide with reality. On the other hand, may be we're all wrong, and may be Japan should be building a fighter based on anime design. Hey, you're young, feel free to prove everyone who disagreed with you wrong. Show that it makes sense economically, politically, militarily, and of course in engineering terms too. You know, it's just like that Apple commercial a few years ago: "THINK DIFFERENT" and may be you'll succeed like Steve Jobs.

Oh I remember those... Breast missiles... woot.... And there was an endless supply of those too.

Well, there isn't a good reason why the F-15J couldn't be more capable than the American variant. In fact, there is no reason at all why Japanese heavy industries could manufacture a state of the art fighter that more than rivals the Americans. Take WWII for example, when they started WWII, the IJN had the best carrier borne fighter around. The Zero could fly circles around the Wildcats, and laughed at anything the British had at the time. It did have serious deficiencies still, for example, it was a flying death trap that couldn't take a hit, didn't have much of a punch either. But all things aside, until the Hellcats and the Corsairs came along, the Zeros pretty much dominated the air in the Pacific. The only reason is that Japan has chosen (very intelligently I might add) not to piss off the rest of Asia again. Why bother building up a gigantic military when you have the world's largest military allied with you and protecting you by having some bases on your soil. Besides, there was this little thing called WWII where Japan ran rampant and made enemies out of just about every Asian country at the time. No Asian country (especially China) would tolerate the Japanese arming themselves again to that extent. Finally, I'm betting Japanese weapons engineers aren't paid nearly as well as PS3 engineers. So, guess where the best engineers are going to.

Sad, I wished JMS could've gotten a couple more stand alones from B5 verse going. Between Andreas and Peter (the guy who played Londo), they brought a good level of dramatic acting to scifi I think. They played off of each other well. It's too bad that there could never be another G'Kar in the series if they ever decide to start up that universe again.

Bauer's bag? I say about 22 at the end of the day. So far, I think he has accounted for about 5. But he has been relatively tame in a couple of episodes. Heh heh.

Interesting note, I think the information so far shows the Basestar more along the line of an aircraft carrier type ship than a ship of the line. The Battlestars on the other hand seem to be a gigantic hybrid. But not nearly as many fighters as a basestar. Too bad we'll never fully appreciate the various types that the colonial navy had. After all, the concept of just having a battlestar doesn't make much sense. There has to be smaller type military vessels out there beyond Raptor and Vipers.

Wow, Jack must know all the shortcuts given the LA commute. I think he essentially went from downtown LA (?) to Ontario airport in less than 30 minutes. How he managed that without a speeding ticket is just a mystery... But I like the fact that after "18 months" Jack is still ruthless, but I suppose he was being nice taking out Palmer's assassin, he could've let the guy bleed out through a gut wound, that would've really hurt. Although I wished the whole thing was a little more personal in that someone is after Jack again like in Season 1. Whatever they do, I hope they don't pull a Marwan style multiple plot thing again this season. But the brutal axing of the original cast was pretty interesting. I think this pretty much accounts for all the characters in season 1 and 2. Just need to put down Kim, Chloe, and Chloe's boyfriend, and that'll take care of season 3 too. And speaking of Chloe, someone has been taking lessons with pistols. She shot the poor guy in the gut.

Nice episode. I was disappointed with the poor battle sequence, but I suppose that was too much to expect. But it did put Cain and Adama both in better light. I would rather think better light on Cain than Adama, Adama had to have his son and Sharon to help him realize that he wasn't just an animal and out for survival. We don't know what Cain's thought process is, but it seems she thought things through mostly on her on. She doesn't seem like the type to talk to others about things. And she gave Starbuck good advice more than anything else. I rather think having Six kill Cain was a poor way out for the creators. Had Cain lived, things would've been interesting, because I rather think they would've worked things out in the end rather than go through with extreme measures. Oh well.... Wished there was more actually fighting than what little we saw. But I did find the last part with Roslyn annoying as hell. There she goes: "I'm cementing my power base.... my only other rival is dead... woohoo." Love those politicians... anything for power.