Nied

First official look at Russia's PAK-FA.

Well this is more pre-apocalyptic than post (that's the sequel), although it's very heavy on the dystopia. Essentially it's the story (a surprising coherent one) about how humanity's own hubris dooms itself. You might want to check out the websites I linked at the beginning of the thread although honestly so many new sites have been posted I'm having trouble keeping up. And of course now a select few got to go to a very special NIN concert that got interrupted in the middle by a police "raid." The Ninwiki is probably the best clearinghouse for info on what's going on now.

It's out! Listened to the whole album with my wife last night. Much like WT I think it's going to take a couple of listens before I can decide weather I like it or not. The story is definitely interesting, we do get a better idea of what the Presence is and what is going on. The CD itself has it's artwork printed in thermal sensitive paint, which I thought sounded lame when I read about it last month but it's actually pretty cool. I had forgotten about that when I opened it for the first time and put the all black disc in our CD player to listen to it. I was surprised when the album was over and I hit the eject button to get an all white disc with bits of binary code on it (fitting since the last words on the album are "just zeros and ones"). Also if any of you buy the album make sure you call the Bureau of Morality number on the back, it's a treat.

I'm for it as long as the thread title is "War: Good God Y'all!" (a no-prize for the person who gets the reference).

I forgot to reply to this last night but it stood out in my mind. You do realize the problem with using the Soviet Union's repression of East Germany and Poland as examples of how to build a democracy don't you? What made the USSR successful was setting up two of the most brutal and repressive regimes of the Warsaw Pact in those countries after their counter insurgency. They would have been right back at square one if they tried to install a liberal democracy in the aftermath.

Well David gave it the OK so I'll wade in. Frankly all this talk of the "coming confrontation with China" reminds me of all the "Japan the next world hyperpower" talk of 20 years ago, and it's complete BS for the same reason. China is demographically constrained, flat birthrates are going to lead to the same greying population problems that Japan is having, only made worse by China's growing imbalance between men and women (IIRC the split in the newest generation is getting close to 60 - 40). In a few more decades China wont have the economic muscle or even the population to sustain a world threatening army. What worries me more is a conflict between India and Pakistan spiraling into a world war.

I heard about this. Absolute stupidity, it's like if I gave you a car and then Chevy sued you for not paying for it.

Actually the first thing I thought of was the xenomorph from Alien.

A certain MW moderator who shall remain nameless posted this over at ARC and failed to share it with us here. Vaguely appropriate considering Easter is coming up.

Yeah I saw Trigger's schemes right after I finished mine. Funnilly enough it looks like we used the exact same F-5 line drawing (which is inacurate, it's an F-5A instead of an F-5E). Interestingly enough he's having the same problem I had in trying to integrate the tailcode. He covered it by painting the right side of the plane instead of the left like I did, but I don't know if he'll be able to get something consistent on the left side (I'll be mighty impressed if he does). I tired to do something like that but finally threw in the towel and just superimposed it F-14 style (hardly a bad thing, the F-14 scheme and the rainbow tailed F-4 scheme are tied for my favorite Sundowners scheme). You can re-post my scheme at ARC if you want.

That's not always the case. I seem to remember reading on f-16.net that Vipers try to avoid firing their gun in peacetime because the vibration wreaks havoc on the bulkheads and structural supports around it. And they've never found a decent gun gas purge system for the A-10 that doesn't shake the plane to pieces.

All right I whipped this up over a few hours tonight. Basically a few touch ups to the VFC-11 scheme to make it look like a proper sundowners aircraft. The changes I made are actually pretty minimal but I think it really makes the aircraft look several times better. There's some minor changes to the geometry of the sundown pattern and it's wreathed in gold now (similar to the F-14 scheme). The red fin cap is back along with much bigger tailcodes in red. The sharkmouth and eyes are a little larger. All modex's and squadron markings are slightly larger and written in a more fitting font (AmarilloUSAF, I'm not sure if that's the exact font the Navy uses but it's close enough to look much better). Finally the blue sections of the US roundels are now much darker, the original looked far too faded.

You're right, that helps immensely. I think another factor is the lack of tailcodes, it just seems wrong to see the sunburst without a big NL overlaid on top (and yes I know the Sundowners have used other tailcodes, but for me their quintessential scheme will always be their F-14 one). Also, the "core" of the sun sits too high up, it should be further down so that it forms more of a half circle.

You beat me to it. This gets a resounding "meh" from me. I was worried about how a Sundowners tail would look on an F-5, and apparently I was right to do so. The sun just looks off.

Granted I don't have much experience in this particular area (my wife didn't turn me down), but it's my understanding that it depends on who calls off the wedding. It the bride calls it off it's proper etiquette to return the ring, if the groom calls it off it's up to the bride weather or not to return the ring (now that's a tangent I'd never thought I'd go down in the Aircraft vs thread). It's certainly crass for Goodall to rip those instruments out, but I can't really blame him for it. They're his instruments and if the CIA is going to ruin the airplane by putting it on a pole with the canopy opaqued over why shouldn't he take them back? It's not going to be a pristine condition A-12 anymore anyway.

The whole situation sucks, however legally if Goodall never actually officially donated those gauges they are his to take out of the cockpit when the CIA took the plane back. It sucks that 128 is no longer complete, but as I understand it the CIA was planning on putting it on a pole in a courtyard somewhere, a complete cockpit doesn't really matter then does it?

My parents are in Maryland, and I already have trip planned there during the airshow. What's really fun is I shouldn't have too much trouble getting out to Sacramento two weeks later.

Looks like three of them to me.

Pretty far. While I have no doubt that ground based radars will eventually make stealth less of an advantage, it's going to be even longer before we see fighter radars that can draw a bead on even a F-35. So while in a decade or two we might see Flankers getting pointed to intercepts on a F-35 by ground based radars, the F-35 will have already locked those Flankers up and be preparing to let loose some AMRAAMs in their faces.

Well now you know at least one person. I find that song downright addictive, I think people will like it more in concert. It just sounds like one of those songs that was meant to be played live. I haven't really like a NiN video since "Closer." Although it's a pretty tough act to follow (IIRC VH1 voted it the best video of all time), maybe Trent just decided to rest on his laurels after that.

New USB pens found! Featuring the video for the first single Survivalism (NSFW). Look! It's the "Hand that Feeds" video but on those monitors from the Matrix! With boobies and gay sex (take that MTV)! But of course there's more to this than there seems, hidden within the timecodes shown on the screens are letters which spell out "The water turned to blood" which leads to www.thewaterturnedtoblood.net (click the red car). Which leads to www.judsonogram.net which then leads to cedocore.com. The first two sites actually have passwords for them embedded in the other (I'll post them later if you can't figure them out) which is interesting. While the Cedocore site is simultaneously hilarious and frightening (take the quiz, and pay attention to the side affects at the end).

On the other hand Lockheed doesn't want to queer sales of their other big money project by making the F-35 look too good in the A2A arena, lest DoD decides to buy more of cheap F-35s than expensive F-22s. LM is walking a tightrope right now between selling it's product, OPSEC, and selling it's other products (F-22 and upgraded F-16s). That would at least partially explain why they haven't talked up the F-35's maneuverability.

The version of the story I had heard is that the Red Air that got the kill had already been killed itself, but the general running the exercise "respawned" him. The Raptor pilot missed that radio message and thus didn't realize the previously dead aircraft was alive and well and setting up for a kill on him. It's still an unfair situation since generally speaking enemy aircraft don't come back from the dead after they've been shot down.

Oh I didn't mean to try to drive you away, I just didn't want to stray to far out of the box on an already borderline topic (though stupid me I forgot you were a Mod). I see your point about "entermarketing" (the Burger King X-Box game is actually a really good comparison), but personally I just can't get too worked up about something that ends up entertaining me. Besides, like I said, all this stuff makes for great supplemental materials for the album. ::edit:: I should add that it I am jumping the gun a little in assuming that all of this will tie into the album pretty tightly. If it does than I think it makes for an awesome bit of supplementary material that also happens to build buzz for the release. If it only loosely ties in then I think you've got more of a point since it really wouldn't be anything more than a cleaver marketing campaign. I guess we'll see in April.