Lynx7725

Man, those things are still flying?

Uhm, personally, I won't be so quick to write off the event. Like you said, this demonstration -- if true -- makes the PRC the third nation to have an ASAT capability. That makes it the third out of 192 nations in the UN. That's a significant achievement, and lays the groundwork for who can actually partipant significantly in a space war. Not to mention, in a conventional land war, having an ASAT capability is a big deal. The Western forces are used to having high technology to help command, control and communicate -- a large part of which is through satelite. Take away that capability, or even threaten the capability, and the western forces suddenly end up with less of a force multiplier effect. Can you imagine all those GPS-based precision weapons working accurately.. without enough GPS satelites to guide them? So, just a demonstration, even a failure, is a big sign that a nation is ready to move over a certain technological divide. As with any political balance of power, those with the power tends to want to keep those without from gaining that power. As for the stability of the PRC political entity, I would be very careful before making sweeping assertions. The PRC has huge economic and human reserves, either exploited or waiting for exploitation. Certainly a war against a Western entity would hurt PRC's progress, but the reverse is also true -- the Western nations would also be badly hit by a war. Just consider how much of Western manufacturing is actually being done in China. All in all, the Western nations are more likely to lose more than the PRC would in a shooting war.

Talk about freak accident. That's got to go into the books under some category.. Latest is that the sea search found something that looked like the nose underwater, so they are going to go down to take a look-see. They are ruling out mid-air explosion though, citing lack of large debris spread or charring on what little they recover, though I think that's a hasty conclusion.

Err, meh... What's the basic Patriot's actual kill rate? I'm not sure whether this would actually do anything meaningful. Let's talk about airliners. Anything new on the GOL flight that went down in the middle of nowhere late last year? Or the disappearing Adamair flight in Indonesia, any idea what happened?

Hmm.. From the pics, it's a substantial build up from the CoolGirl Midori Protect Gear. Noticably different in terms of face mask, artillery Luger hoster, chest armour, shin armour and of course the backpack. Hands look to be the same, but boots looks to be different (Midori Black, IIRC, had steel-capped boots.. or was that GITS Mokoto?). Looks to be quite good, but a bit pricey for me. The MG, I'm not sure. Is it really any different from a Dragon MG-34? The Dragon MG has a removable inner barrel (under the cooling shroud) and a spring loaded cocking mechanism, so your description sounds to be roughly the same. I've already got two Midori blacks (one is a kitbash from parts..) and I've outfitted one with a MG34 with metal rounds (heavy buggers!) and both with Panzerfausts (overkill...), so I'm not sure whether I want to pick this up. It'll be nice, of course.

Nothing should happen. I do it from time to time on my laptop, and there doesn't seem to be much of a difference. It's harder to determine which connection the OS is choosing to use for comparison purposes though.

Y'know, we probably have way too many computer "gurus" on these boards. Less than 2 hours and so many responses already?

If it's not even in the device manager, there are two possibilities that I can think of. One is that the LAN card is hosed, two is that the OS does not recognize it for whatever reason. You can try adding a hardware and get it to auto-detect again, to see if it pops up. Alternatively, you can try manually adding it.. is it an on-mobo LAN socket or separate? Personally, I've always used a landline to my router, even after I swapped to a laptop (after a PC meltdown). The difference is speed of a 802.11g and a landline connected to a 512KB ADSL is appreciable.

Huh, strikes me that if you need white paint to keep the composites cool, they are probably on the edge with regards to heat dissipation capabilities. I wonder if we will see an increase in airliners that are grounded because of heat problems.

Towards the north of SG, quite urbanized for about 10 KM. Yes, immediately adjacent. Direct fire would be quite useful in those situations. Towards the northwest and beyond the 10KM mark, more open but low-lying, and can be flooded during bad weather (like now). Excellent ground for air strikes. Not to mention, to move heavy equipment over the Straits would bottle the forces at two points (unless they want to build their own bridges, which tends to attract attention), which makes it even more obvious. At its widest, the Straits is 2KM wide. If the hypotheatical enemy is going to come across on small craft, basically those would be sampans -- anything larger would draw fire before you even drop it into the water. I am not going to suggest wasting an airborne 250lb iron bomb on a tiny little sampan... To answer an earlier question: we are producing our own SP artillery. Generally speaking, M'sia armed forces aren't held in high esteem but I suppose they are generally ok; equipment appears to be soviet-bloc, with some MiGs and T-series tanks. I expect them to fight, and to be able to use their equipment well. The other side, from Indonesia, is a bit more positive. SG navy should be able to put a dent into any invasion forces, and even with Harpoons, air strikes should put add to the dent. Better, it's harder to get to our airbases from the seaward side, so we should be able to get off more sorties. Speaking of which, the major problem with air superiority here (and to keep it connected to this thread) is that there are few and mostly well-known airbases in SG to operate from. Those are priority targets, and even though the RSAF does practice highway landings and takeoffs, the sad fact is that a determined attacker from the north can almost certainly take out the air bases AND the backup runways, either through artillery strikes or air strikes. It would then fall back to the attack choppers to support the ground forces, as they have a smaller footprint and can operate from other locations more easily.

None taken. We can read a map like everyone else. All that hardware and deathware and training, are really to bleed any invaders white and to buy time. The real defense of Singapore lies in the political arena. Anyway, to get back to the thread. RSAF is buying F-15s; I've always wondered why. The F-15 isn't exactly cutting edge and might in fact suffer from a technological gap from the more recent European offerings. I'm sure the logistics of supporting an F-15 arm is a consideration, but how does the F-15 stack up against its competitors?

Longbows IIRC. Aren't those D models? Oh, we got a locally built/ modified APC with a 25mm Bushmaster IIRC. It doesn't look like much, but for what you are thinking, mobility is more important than armour. So we got that aspect covered.. I think. At any rate, there's really only 66 Leopard 2s; that is roughly only a over-strength battalion's worth of tanks. It's not really a lot of military might. If we are talking about 200+ Leopards, then yeah, it doesn't make sense. A single battalion of heavy armour though, isn't that astonishing, and IMO, it's great for covering a few well-known choke points that have clear line of sights. I'll contest the geography though. The natural geography isn't that good -- a lot of swampy land and hilly terrain -- but we've since rebuilt most of those and covered it with asphalt and concrete. While it's true tanks don't function well in urban settings, the mobility afforded by an excellent road system coupled with local knowledge makes a MBT unit quite an interesting thought. Who knows how effective they would be..

Err, don't they already say it like every other episode already? C'mon, stop beating us over the head with that already... Watched a good portion of Gundam Seed and Destiny. Got to say, Seed is interesting, but Destiny went downhill (and too super-robotic-sentai) for me.

I live in SG. Heck, I served in the army under the conscription, though not in a combat arm (logistics). We're 42KM wide and 21KM deep. That's distances easily reached on foot in, at most, 2 days of marching. There is little of such thing such as rolling hills or forests. Those are either in army training grounds, or have been bulldozed and replaced. We do have rainforests though, but mechanization suck there. We got a decent amount of mechanized infantry and heliborne infantry, but truth to be told, if we are really only interested in defense, there isn't much great need for it; the area's highly urbanized, with the few rural areas either being on islands offshore or relatively small and flat, and better served with basic foot infantry. We generally have enough truck mobility that we can move sufficient of our active infantry at any time; the reserves walk if they have to. Maritime capabilities we have. Our navy is quite good (at least in terms of hardware), though I'm not really an expert in the area. The crux of the issue here is this. Our previous tanks, the SM-1, is a local derivative of the AMX-13 (IIRC). These are nearly 40 years old, and are really obsolete, especially with the neighbours buying Soviet Bloc hardware. The problem here is that there are very few MBT types nowadays -- the market is dominated by M1s (overkill), Challengers (overkill and not sure how the production would be like), Leopard 2 (overkill, but at least it's cheap), and Soviet Bloc tanks (which creates logistical problems because of our ties with Western nations). There are few other choices available, including light vehicles mounting heavy weaponry, but most of them are built for hit-and-run engagements which is difficult to pull off in our urban canyons. And talking about urban canyons.. if an enemy ever gets into our residential or our commercial districts, woah, defensive tanks rule there; the sight lines there are arrow straight and funnels movement into predictable lines. From a purely defensive point of view, a tank unit with infantry support would be very hard to dig out from the area.

Try fighting enemy tanks without tanks of your own? As good as infantry AT weaponry has became (even with the benefit of urban terrain), MBTs are still best engaged with MBTs, IMO.

Refurbished Leopard 2A4s, 66 of them with 30 more as parts IIRC. I think it's more a case of "what else can we buy?" rather than "what do we want to buy?"...

It's just a definitions thing. People like to keep their definitions constant, with a frame of reference to the real world. When you consider how the Star Destroyers are used in the films, they aren't really the escort vessels the nomenclenture "destroyers" imply. It's rather silly to continue to try to hammer these ships-of-the-line into that particular pigeonhole.

Well, the RX-78 is to Gundam what the VF-1 is to Macross... I'd say the treatment is similar in both cases.

Siiigh.. more money down that particular drain.. Well, at least it's the flying version. Never did like the aqua version.

Got my Kampfer the other day too. It's typical Zenography/ GFF: good to look at, not so good to play with. The hand for the MG is really bad, can't hold the MG on its own and the joints on the elbows are too stiff/ limited to go for a cross-body pose. Otherwise quite a beautiful piece of work. I'm breaking out my camera later tonight for an event tomorrow, I'll shoot some pics. Prom: Sorry to hear about the 'Zabi, I'll shoot some pics of mine to tide you over a bit.

Hmm, you trying to make it two in a week?

Yeah well, but for things like Interdictors and smaller frigates, you got little to no choice at all elsewhere. The model makers tend to concentrate on the SDs and SSDs.

I think so too, but it's really the most readily available miniature at the current moment. It's really a bit hard when you are a Star Wars fleet fan, and would like to see a proper fleet in action. Outside of the usual ImpStar and SSDs, you don't get to see much models/ miniatures of the extended universe. At least, Starships Battles give you the option, even if currently it's an expensive option...

And the good news about the Executor is that it's a fixed piece in the starter. A bit expensive to pay for a single ship, but at least you are sure you will get the SSD.

My two cents! I do not reside in US (or even the same continent), but do plenty of purchases on eBay and of course, HLJ. My experiences are as such: I usually use SAL with HLJ, and I never really had a problem; from Japan to where I am, it's a bit slowish but I'm more or less assured the parcel will get to me. (Touch wood, I got a Zeongraphy Kampfer in the pipe now.) I bought stuff on eBay from US, Canada, China (HK) and UK. So far, my experiences are that UK shipping takes the longest (distance), but may not be too bad in that it tends to get here. HK, dubious; could be the sender's fault, but I got one parcel that was overdue by nearly a month. Once I had the tracking number, it seems that it was received by the HK post one month after the auction ended -- so it either was the sender lying through his teeth, or that the post office really did misplace the parcel. US, usually I get stuff by USPS. Never had a problem, hopefully that would continue. I don't deal with USPS counter staff, but I don't remember seeing squashed packets/ parcels.. for the main, I think USPS is fairly ok. You should still insure parcels though, it's fairly cheap and worth the peace of mind. Canada though, can be really slow, easily 50% again the USPS timing. What's of interest here though, is that I have a TNT parcel being delivered to me, so let's see their performance! 04 Dec 2006 19:20 Consignment Received At Transit Point 04 Dec 2006 21:21 Shipped From Originating Depot 05 Dec 2006 08:55 Import Received 05 Dec 2006 16:12 Arrived At Sending Depot 05 Dec 2006 17:38 Consignment Received At Transit Point Hmm. I received an email notification from TNT late on the 4th, telling me that about 2 hours after colllection, it should be in the system. But it wasn't till about 12 hrs later that the item showed up in their system.. Took most of the night to get from the originating depot to the main processing depot, which is fair enough; it's two cities apart, nearly on two different sides of the country, so some lag is expected. What's odd is that the item was stuck in processing for about 8 hours before it got to the Sending Depot. Seems to be just stuff going around in circles. That's so far the movement. If you guys are interested, I can keep this updated.