Comment Re:Speaking of Board games... (Score 1) 155
It was called The Landlord's Game and was invented by Elizabeth Magie.
Do you know this history of Monopoly? No, it wasn't invented by Charles Darrow.
It was a woman. Whose credit for the game is still widely ignored. What was her name? Apparently nobody cares!
It was also originally much more complicated than what was released as Monopoly.
There is zero chance that we'll take out even a significant fraction of the enemy boats right away. I have more respect for the Russians than that.
Agreed. Though I still reminisce about the times prior to John Walker when we had an attack sub trailing almost every Soviet sub.
Very true. But I would guess that if the US gets into a shooting war with Russia P-8's will be dropping active sonobuoys all over the place.
Unless the Sea Wolf and Virginia class attack subs manage to take out every Russian sub right away. Or happen to be in the area and are already tracking them.
By using active sonar you tell the enemy where you are. A dumb decision. Necessary maybe but incredibly dumb.
That depends. The P-3 Orion, P-8 Poseidon use active sonar buoys. And when the MQ-4C Triton goes into service, the P-8 will focus more on sub hunting.
i have more in common with some random dudes on the internet, than with some of my neighbours
I've found that to be the case most of my life. Well, at least after the internet came along. But then I live in the US. It tends to work that way here. We're a nation of immigrants, except for the extremely small fraction of a percentage of the indigenous population that our ancestors and/or predecessors didn't kill.
I am amazed at how different this is in most other countries though. If you go to the EU there are all these little countries that do a great job of maintaining their national identity. In the US we tend to assimilate just about everything.
At some point, we will all just disconnect and call it a day.. Then what will they do?
Send an MQ-9 Reaper to "deliver" a Hellfire missile to your residence. Obviously if you are offline you have something to hide. And if you have something to hide, you must be a terrorist.
Why make up new words when there are perfectly good ones that better describe what you're saying anyway?
It embiggens the English vocabulary. Do you have any idea how many words William Shakespeare made up? Language evolves. If you don't like it, then start speaking Latin.
"It is powerful because it depicts Kim Jong-un as a vain, buffoonish despot, alternating between threats and weeping that he's been misunderstood. The people around him have all the signs of fear you might expect with a despot â" they second-guess his likes and dislikes. Maybe he â" and they â" were right to fear the film. North Korean defectors sometimes smuggle USB sticks with films and soaps into the closed-off country, and there is a view in the south that these are a particularly powerful means of undermining the regime in Pyongyang. If that's so, The Interview might be a good candidate for inclusion."
If nothing else, it's rather sad that Seth Rogen and James Franco are able to have a bigger impact on North Korea than sanctions and every diplomat and US president since the end of the Korean War.
This sounds like Nobel Peace Prize buzz to me.
Hell, one Ohio class submarine has more destructive capacity than the entire Navy from 1945.
Which means absolutely nothing because you can't actually use any of that firepower in any conflict short of "Civilization as we know it is coming to an end." That's not to dispute the rest of your points, which are mostly valid, but let us leave the SSBN out of the calculation of modern naval firepower. They have a specific mission: deterrence. The day they are called upon to loft their birds is the day that mission has failed.
Yes, by today's standards. But you made a comparison to a time when the US actually was willing to, and did use atomic bombs in anger. Do you think the US would have shown the same restraint in January of 1945 if they had an Ohio class sub? My guess is that all 24 Trident II SLBMs would have been MIRVed and every one would have had 8 physics packages. They would have been willing to launch every single one at that point in time. Just as they nuked Nagasaki three days after Hiroshima because the Japanese asked for four conditions to surrender rather than unconditionally.
On August 14 1945, the Navy had in active service 23 battleships, 28 fleet carriers, 71 escort carriers, 72 cruisers, 377 destroyers, 361 frigates, and 232 subs: a total of 6786 ships, including auxiliaries. The total personnel strength was 3.4 million.
Imagine that, we had a shitload of active warships and manpower in the US Navy fourteen days prior to the surrender of Japan during WWII. That was almost 4 years after Pearl Harbor. What was the US Navy looking like in 1939? Nowhere near what it was at the end of the Pacific campaign.
On September 30 2006, the Navy had 0 battleships, 12 carriers, 27 cruisers, 54 destroyers, 35 frigates, and 74 subs: a total of 318 ships including auxiliaries. The total personnel strength was 0.35 million.
And what was the destructive capacity of the Navy in 2006 compared to August 1945? Hell, one Ohio class submarine has more destructive capacity than the entire Navy from 1945. As cool as battleships are, they are a relic and have no real function in the current military. A single carrier group from the current Nimitz class could obliterate all 28 fleet carriers and support ships before they even knew what had happened. Technology has made the requirement for massive amounts of ships meaningless. The amount of manpower is also significantly reduced. You also can't compare the necessary number of ships during a massive multi-year war to post cold war times. Iraq, Afghanistan, etc are regional conflicts at best and not even against the country itself. Massive amounts of firepower are generally not wise when fighting insurgents. You don't carpet bomb an entire village when there are only 4 hostiles in it.
The size has shrunk considerably since 2006. This despite having twice the national population to draw upon. The Navy can barely man its ships, let alone sparing "manpower" for non-essential tasks. And just like the merchant marine, knowledge, specialties, and capabilities have been cut way back. There are no more hundreds of sailors manning the engine rooms in large ships. The engines are automated.
The cold war is over and the US is not at war with any large governments any longer. Why would you want more men when the ships have become more efficient and have so much more firepower? Look at the number of men in the Iraqi military compared to the US. How did those superior numbers work out for them? In the case of carriers they are also nuclear. You don't need men to shovel coal into boilers any longer either.
Biology is the only science in which multiplication means the same thing as division.
