Ghost Train

I think Ah My Goddess is better than today's generic moe yuri fanservice anime.

I LOL'd hard at this: The Predator pilots, who flew their planes from an Air Force base outside Las Vegas, received a thank-you note from a three-star general based in the Middle East. Senior Air Force officials concluded that even though the Predator crews were flying combat missions, they weren't actually in combat.

EVEN A MYSTERIOUS OPPONENT QUITE FAMILIAR WITH HIM .... Hmm... I wonder who that could be? Who is very familiar with "spiderman."

Well, I highly doubt we have 80 forum members who also play the game . Gentlemen ... I believe we have encountered a case of "Tribble Exponentiation"

Yeah... I got a /tell from a member saying that he was recruiting non-stop and he was asking to be promoted. within fleet. Wasn't sure what to do, so I made him a Junior Officer Edit: Wasn't sure whether to congratulate or slap.

Right, in the ideal world, leadership has no pressure, is not subject to corruption or lobbying, knows everything there is to know, and can see the future ... yes. Unfortunately, that is not the way the world works. A general/admiral or any corporate CEO's performance is hardly based on foresight but on actual performance in present situations. You need to find a reason to say "this man/woman is doing a great job, and we should increase the pay, give him/her a promotion, etc." The only way you can do this is with present facts & figures. Since you cannot find "future facts," foresight will always be an afterthought in decision-making. You can disagree with this (I do to some extent), but that's how it is. Oh, and I think Pearl Harbor is not the best example here, it was more of a failure of intelligence (or acting upon it). If the IJN were using Gundams, then yes. I'm not making an anti-raptor or an anti-F-35 case at all. The problem is that given the crushing government deficits + 1.5 foreign wars, for policymakers the short term will always be more dire than the long term. Also... my answer would change if by now we had zero raptors, which is not the case. We have 140 F-22's. I can't think of many Air Forces in the world with that many shiny and new dedicated Air Superiority fighters. Since there is also only 1 AF in the world with more than 1 operational 5G fighter, I doubt that a few years of slack is going to have disastrous effects. Ooooh yeah.

Tomas Vergis combines Tauron badassery with Caprican charm, he will most certainly make for an interesting opponent for Graystone. The only way for Graystone to get the upper hand is to work together with Adama.

Right, I was thinking more of a "good solid tested" award winning Sedan like the Ford Fusion, and not the "self-propelled" Toyota Camry. As I'm a software engineer I can't argue the intricacies of each plane as well as the real aerospace guys here - just saying that not everyone that makes these decisions are out to torpedo our national security like some people imply (no one from this board), and there was a rational decision-making process involved. Perhaps I'm naive to think that some of our decision makers in the current administration earned their positions (the contrast would be "heck of a job Brownie"). I most certainly think that Robert Gates is 150% qualified to do the job. But back on topic, other than getting off the ground, the F-22 has not been in actual combat yet (to my knowledge) in any role. I don't think that saying that 1 plane that has not seen combat is more useful than another plane that's being developed (and dur has not seen combat either) is a very strong argument. If all the bad things about the F-35 were true, I'd can the program as well, and go buy some Block-60 F-16's and whatever variant of the F-15E that is being sold to Singapore/S.Korea, and just make a nice little fund to keep the few raptors that the USAF has in optimal condition and training.

I'm quite sure that there are a lot of intelligent cross-functional teams in the DoD that looked at the F-22/F-35 problem like this. Please bear with the silly example. The New Year's has just rolled around, you have 3 big financial goals - one of which is to buy a new car. You really need a new car, because well A) your current vehicle won't last the year, it's about to literally fall apart and B) in this fictitious Universe, a really expensive car boosts the owner's attractiveness towards the opposite sex by 1000%. But then disaster strikes, you loose your job. However, you must still find a way to achieve your 3 goals. You must also still get a new car, because a car is a necessity to live your life. So what's the best option? Don't buy the Beamer you were hoping for, but buy a cheaper family sedan. In this path, you will have met your objective that now you have a safe vehicle that is not falling apart, but you will not get the prestige bonus of driving a beamer. Also, I agree with what Bri said. The current major missions in the military involve hunting down irregular militias who do not posses an Air Force to challenge us in a conventional way, but rely an asymmetric warfare to challenge the US military. The marginal benefit derived from spending an extra $1 on the F-22 program is less than: 1) Spending it on drones, which have been one of the most successful weapons in the current mission. 2) Training & Recruiting human intelligence assets 3) Bribing insurgents to make them play nice Of course there is going to be some fictitious future war more reliant on Air Superiority, but military and civilian leadership cannot make decisions based on hypothetical future scenarios in the face of clear threats and missions that exist now and the limited availability of money.

Anyone going to try FFXIV (Online II)? I had wasted a lot of time on XI from 2005-2007, but got a somewhat pimped out character at the end. Maxed out Samurai, Ninja, and Ranger to 75. It was good while it lasted, but the grind & pray mechanics of XI just felt horribly out of date... though recently I heard they're planning to raise the cap to 99, which would be interesting. I might just check out XIV.... on the fence about going back to XI.

I think this is difficult to discuss without bringing in "external factors" not related to the military, namely that the Federal government is not exactly in the best financial shape right now. But yes, in a bubble where there are no constraints we should over 9000 F-22's!11!!!

Time Travel, when all else fails or has been done.

omg, I can't stop watching/listening to . >_>

Natsuru[Girl-Type] made me question my heterosexuality.

Tillikum the killer whale speaks the language of the streets yo. Now back on topic, talking about Indy reminded me of that TV series about "Young Indy" from a while ago, I really enjoyed watching it. I think the "Beating the Nazis to get Artifact X" angle has pretty much been done to death.

I am surprised Indy has not gone through the reboot/retcon/fabulous remake machine. Though it's only a matter of time imo. ... Uwe Boll needs to hurry up and do his Uncharted movie!

I'm generally ok with some sort of DP (doesn't have to be exp-based, my preference would be financial like repair costs), but they should really fix some of the patrols so that the "Flagship Armada" is not hovering out the entry point for the zones, and pretty much ready to raep anything that happens to fly in.

I find this discussion more and more fruitless given that the series/movies are retelling of fictitious events that happened in a fictitious Universe. For all we know Isamu could have really just descended into Earth with substantially less defenses, Guld one shotted Ghost-X9, and Myung was actually hideously fat ... but for the Macross Plus Movie/Series it was overdramatized with lots of lasers going pew pew.

More info on Spring Lineup . LOL @ 4th one down.

Quite surprised Harrison Ford can keep it up, dude's pushing 70.

Video Games = serious business.

... I totally forgot about this one. Any movie where the main attraction (I presume the Gundam) flies out in the first few seconds and shoots at its own title forebodes disaster.

So many people already crying about DP. I suspect much /ragequit if it gets implemented. Ensign set course to Azeroth system, maximum quit. I'm a bit intrigued about the ability to trade officers. As an Engineer Commander who likes to fly Escorts, I would love to have a Tac BOFF with HYT & Rapid Fire III . Though the tier II for those skills are more than sufficient for my needs at the moment. I doubt that they'd implement it in a way that would allow for the scenario I just described.

Please use proper XML notation. <Doug Henning Voice></Doug Henning Voice> Thank you.

Don't be so sure. What about an alien invasion? Though F-18's (pre Super Bug) with some clever "electronic warfare" will do just fine even for that purpose.