The fact of the matter is, a carrier battle group embarks a fixed amount of ordnance. Replenishment at sea is time consuming. If you throw enough stuff at a carrier battle group, at some point it will run out of ammunition. It is simply a numbers game. There is also no reason a drone needs to cost $275,000. About 8 years ago some hobbyists built a balsa wood model aircraft that flew autonomously across the Atlantic with an on-board auto pilot and telemetry for less than $500. That's a 2500-3000nm range, with simple electronics (which are even less expensive and more powerful today) with the ability to receive data and track the location of said drone for less than $500. Scale that up a little, and a VERY cheap, albeit slow and vulnerable cruise missile is entirely possible. A small drone like this doesn't need a dedicated launch facility. I can be produced in a large number of fairly basic distributed shops. There are no obvious fixed targets to hit with tomahawks or laser-guided bombs. No fixed runways to bomb, nothing to take out with a preemptive strike. Put enough of them into the air, and you simply aren't going to shoot them all down. Radar guidance is probably too expensive, so it would be limited to cameras. The carrier group could certainly put up a smoke screen, but how long can it maintain that? It certainly can't launch or recover aircraft while emitting a smoke screen, so at some point it will have to stop before any aircraft already in the air run out of fuel. With a 2500mn range, the drones can simply loiter until any aircraft in the air are out of weapons and out fuel and the carrier has to stop the smoke screen to recover aircraft. At that point any remaining drones can attack. Phalanx weapons have a limited ammunition capacity, and take time to reload. Yes, they would wipe out large numbers of drones easily, but at some point they will be empty and will become useless.

A plan like this probably was not economically or technically feasible 15 years ago. Only with the miniaturization and drastic cost reduction in electronics needed to build the control/guidance system could you even contemplate something like this. I'm not saying it is simple. You'd need thousands, probably tens of thousands of drones or more, costing many millions of dollars, but that's still cheaper than a squadron of 4th generation fighter planes. I don't care how good your defenses are. If I can cause you to expend ammunition, and you have a fixed amount of ammunition at your disposal, and I can build weapons cheaply enough and deploy them fast enough, I can overwhelm you every time.

The Japanese tried this tactic in WWII with the kamikaze attacks. That tactic had some (although limited) success mainly because they could not train enough pilots well enough or fast enough, and you lost your trained pilot with every attack. At the end of the war they still had airplanes, and even fuel (although it was alcohol based because we had long since cut off their supplies of oil.) Remove the pilot from that equation, and you remove the main limitation on the numbers of drones you can produce and field at one time.

So, don't product them all in one place. Cheap wooden airframes could be built in a garage. Engine production would be a bit more difficult to decentralize, but again, a machine shop in the basement of a house is sufficient to built engines. Unless you carpet bomb EVERYTHING, it is going to be hard to shut down production. The Germans did this in WWII with aircraft production, and were able to still build aircraft right up through 1945 in the face of massive bombing. The V1 and V2 were different, because they required fixed launch sites, and unusual materials for the fuel.

The trouble is, the CIWS fires those 1500 rounds at 4,500 rounds per minute, so it can only fire for 20 SECONDS. How many targets can a single CIWS take out before it is out of ammo? 10? If I have 100 cruise missiles flying at your ship, I don't care if you shoot down 10 of them.

It's all a numbers game. Okay, so 3,000 cheap cruise missiles isn't enough? build more. An F-15 carries what, 8 air to air missiles max? Plus the gun, so best case, an F-15 can shoot down, say 12 cruise missiles, assuming they can launch, get to the the intercept, and have enough time to expend all of their stores. An F-22 carries 8 missiles as well, plus a gun (but with less ammunition than an F-15). F-18 can carry maybe 6 missiles, and the same goes for the F-16. So, how many of these do you have in-theater and can get airborne with the fuel, range, and armaments to do the job? So, let's say you have maybe 100 F-15, 50 F-22's, 250 F-16's, and maybe 60 F-18's available. Let's assume you could get a maximum of ~80% of those in the air in time (some would be down for maintenance, others might not be fueled and armed yet, etc.) so, maximum best-case theoretical anti-missile kills would be:
80 F-15's x 12 = 960
40 F-22's x 10 = 400
200 F-16's x 10 = 2000
50 F-18's x 10 = 500
Total: 3860

Now, add in a carrier battle group with maybe 8 AEGIS cruisers/destroyers, each with roughly 70 interceptors. That's another 560 potential kills, plus CIWS, the carrier's sea sparrows, Marines shooting MANPAD's machine guns, whatever. Figure maybe another 100 kills, max.

Final total: about 4500.

Okay, fine. So what if I build 10,000 cheap cruise missiles? Maybe 30% of them fail for some reason (hey, I said they were cheap, we've got to expect some failures.) The US shoots down 4500 of them. That still leaves 2500 you can't shoot down. Maybe their accuracy is pretty bad, and only 5% of those actually hit anything. That's 125 hits with 500 pound war heads on your carrier battle group. I think that would safely take care of it.

So even while the strike is being executed, the US counter-attacks with cruise missiles. At, what, exactly? The cheap cruise missiles I have in mind have wheels and can take off from a road, or any reasonable flat piece of ground. Distribute the cruise missiles to 500 hundred locations around the country, and scatter paper decoy's to another 500 sites. What are you going to target? When you hit a launch site, what have you done? Put a hole in a road? Collapsed an empty building? Big deal. I just blew up a carrier battle group.

If the airframes were simple wood construction, you could have relatively unskilled labor build them in hundreds of small shops distributed throughout the country. The engines would be a little more complicated, but no more complicated than an air-cooled motorcycle engine, and some Asian and Latin American countries produce many thousands of engines a year without the technical advances of a super power. A decent motorcycle might cost $1000 US to manufacture. Let's say my "cruise missile" costs 10 times that: $10,000.

Okay, let's build 10,000 of them: $100 million, in U.S. dollars. That's less than a single F-22, less than four F-15's. With $100 million dollars worth of cheap ordinance, I've taken out an entire carrier battle group, costing BILLIONS of dollars. Let's not stop there. How about we build another 10,000 cruise missiles, and target the airfields where all of your expensive planes (now out of fuel and out of weapons) have to land. Those get launched right after the first wave, so your tomahawks haven't arrived yet to take out the launch sites. The returning fighter planes return to wrecked air fields, the patriot batteries have all been expended, and there are still another 1000 cruise missiles loitering around waiting for your F-22's and F-15's to land on roadways so that they can be destroyed on the ground. Many more billions lost.

Granted, any prolonged fight with the US is generally not a good idea. The US has such a vast military and such massive manufacturing capability that a prolonged war would not be winnable unless you also have vast resources. However, if you are a nation (like North Korea) that doesn't always act rationally, and has far fewer resources, I still think there are reasonable strategies that could produce some pretty impressive results comparatively cheaply. Unless you employ weapons of mass destruction, I think a quantity vs. quality approach is nearly always a viable strategy if you can produce enough quantity cheaply enough.

I've always thought several thousand simple, relatively stupid, cheap "cruise missiles" could pretty easily defeat a carrier battle group. When I say "cruise missiles" I'm talking about pilot-less drones that are really small air craft (could even be built of wood) with a warhead aboard. You wouldn't even need them to be completely autonomous, though a auto-pilot would probably be a good idea. You'd need a satellite up-link to control them (and to diminish the possibility of someone jamming your control signals) but it seems like it wouldn't be very expensive to build a cheap small aircraft (again, wood would be okay) with a simple air-cooled piston engine and a propeller, a remote control system with a simple auto pilot, and, say, a 500-pound free-fall bomb attached. Build many thousands of these for the same cost of a few modern fighter planes, and then fly them en-mass at a target. Sure, the combination of defensive aircraft and anti-missile systems would knock-down the vast majority of your "cruise missiles", but it would only take a small number getting through and dive-bombing the target with a few well-placed bombs to destroy the target. This seems so much less expensive than building a modern air force/navy/etc. I don't understand why other nations haven't tried it.

Why run the cars off the road?
I'd rather have a system that tells the other cars they are about to be rammed from behind and causes them to move over.
OUT OF MY WAY.

OOO! ...and something that prevents people from jumping the gun when they should be yielding right of way. No one seems to understand the rules at 4-way stops anymore.

Go in the order you arrived
Yield to the person on your right in the case of a tie. (At least in the U.S.)
Take turns.
SIMPLE!

Nope -- too many mouth breathers can't figure that out.

What about Fringe? It isn't spaceships and aliens, but I'd call it sci-fi a la X-Files. It's a decent show, and seems to be doing okay in the ratings. There are a number of special effects (again, not spaceships) but it certainly must be more expensive to produce than some reality TV crap. I agree that higher budgets make it harder to make sci fi shows profitable, but it CAN be done. BSG did it, Babylon 5 mostly did it (the 5th season was in doubt, so they kind of wrapped things up in season 4, so that season 5 felt like an afterthought.) X-Files had a long run, and look how long all the Star Trek spin-offs lasted. SG1 went 10 seasons, which is longer than a lot of sitcoms.

Anyway, I think it is certainly possible to make decent, well scripted sci fi programs, even these days. However, very few networks are trying it, and I don't think any network could pull off a full line up of expensive-to-produce sci fi shows and remain profitable as a network. Maybe if syfy turned into a virtual channel, that only released for-pay content on-line (via netflix, hulu, or direct) and just did one or two shows a season, and/or licensed their shows to other networks they could produce some decent sci fi. Will they? Probably not. I expect the "new" model to be what netflix is doing. My guess is that in 20 years there will be very few actual networks anymore. Instead, you'll have a collection of TV studios producing a handful of shows and licensing them individually to online distribution channels. A few TV channels will probably remain, but the only content they will produce is live national/local news programs. Everything else they'll license from some other production company. My 2 cents, anyway... I would hope will result in better quality programing, but in truth we'll still probably have a lot of crap, simply because it is cheap to produce and there is a willing low-brow audience willing to pay for it.

Well, probably that would run afoul of anti-trust as well. However...

If Google did a hostile take over of, say, two of the major labels, and then immediately offered favorable licensing terms to apple, amazon, and microsoft; then apple, amazon, and microsoft might get a clue as to what google was doing, and each of them might buy up a few labels themselves, and reciprocate the licensing deals with google. End result: everyone except the RIAA and the top music execs win, and no anti-trust. As long as there is no collusion or under the table agreement between any of the parties, it could work... I think it would just take someone to set the example of the new business model.

I also liked SGU and will be sorry to see it go. I initially didn't like SG1. Hated the theatrical movie that started it all. I thought the concept of aliens running around with Egyptian head gear was irredeemably stupid. However, it got better, and I started to like it. SGA started out pretty stupidly, too, IMHO. However, it got better for a few seasons, and then things seemed to escalate to such a degree it all became preposterous. Every week the crew was able to accomplish some seriously unbelievable feats with systems and technology that was far more advanced than anyone could comprehend and wrap everything up with a little bow at the end. What I liked about SGU is that humans were back to where things were at the beginning of SG1 -- nothing is easy, they aren't the top dog, nothing makes sense, and progress came through a lot of effort rather than pushing the button on the twinkly machine and presto! problem (galactic race of vampires, race of super powerful god like creatures, unstoppable sentient machines, impending destruction by natural forces of unbelievable power) was solved. Yeah, SGU started slow. Just like SG1 and SGA did, but it was getting really good. I liked the messiness of it all -- the grasp on leadership, survival, the ship, the unknown, peace among the crew, etc. were all tenuous, and added tension to the story. What was it Hitchcock said? Something about suspense isn't having a bomb under the table, but KNOWING there is a bomb under the table? In SGU, everything was a bomb -- the ship, the social order, the ability to survive stranded far from home, any of it could come apart with a moment's notice. The writers could have done more with that, but it is still an important and interesting part of the show, unlike SG1 or SGA. With SGU gone, there is nothing to watch on SyFy anymore. I don't have cable or a dish, and now I'm glad. I think SyFy and Hulu shot themselves in the foot by releasing some episodes the day after they aired on TV, and others 30 days later. It was so inconsistent I gave up and watched several episodes on you tube. I guess with nothing else to watch, I won't need to worry about that anymore. SyFy used to have some really good shows. Farscape? FireFly? BSG? Even the Dune remake was pretty good. (Yeah, I know, some people hated it, but it was more faithful to the book than the version from the 80's.) What has SyFy got left? Wrestling? Ghost Hunter? Really??? Goodbye SyFy. You have nothing to contribute.

Maybe this needs to happen. With the move and more internet-based TV viewing, I think the profit is going to fall out of a lot of shows, and they will get canned. With the reduced number of shows, people will realize they are paying too much for TV, and drop some of the higher-priced cable/dish offerings. This could lead to networks failing, reducing the number of networks. Hopefully that will concentrate viewership on the networks that are left, allowing them to charge more for advertising, and regaining enough income to do high-budget interesting shows again. We can hope....

A friend in college had to do the "egg drop" as a 101 physics class assignment. He lived in a dorm that was 80% engineering students (including me) so he came to ask us for help. We decided the best design was to core halfway to the center of a watermelon, place the egg inside, remove enough material from the core we had extracted to account for the egg, replace the cored section, and tape it shut. Of course we had to test it first. So, at 1 am one frosty January night in Moscow, ID, we dropped the watermelon from the third floor of a building. Upon impact, the watermelon exploding on the sidewalk dissipated most of the energy. The egg came through in one piece, but had a small crack in it. We decided it would have been better to let the watermelon dry out a bit more the next time, to allow the flesh of fruit to compact a little more on impact. We had also failed to account for the little bits of melon that quickly froze to the sidewalk and were immovable for three weeks until we got a day above freezing.

So, the next time you want to ship something UPS, put it inside a watermelon. No ShockWatch sticker needed. If they are too rough on your package, they will get sprayed by watermelon chunks, and it will be obvious something bad happened when your package arrives.

The terrorists need to put their next bomb in a laptop so that the TSA will ban all laptops. This will cause business travelers to stop flying, which will force all of the airlines to go bankrupt. (A high percentage of airline revenue comes from First/Business class seats, which are filled primarily with laptop-toting business travelers.)

Terrorists: 1
Sanity: 0

IIRC the Pan Am Lockerbie bomb was inside a radio in the cargo hold. Why haven't the TSA banned radios yet? At least that bomb WORKED.
I'm still amazed we can wear shoes and underwear on flights...

Better yet, park your car outside a government building and then call the police saying there is a suspicious device attached to your car. Hey, you did the right, thing, right? How can they fault you? You didn't put it there, don't know what it is or what it does, so you called the police. I mean really, the thing looks like a transmitter attached to a pipe bomb, what would you think? The resulting traffic jam and media coverage of shutting down part of town while the city's bomb squad recovers an FBI tracking device (or, possibly blows up your car just to be safe) would be pretty embarrassing for the FBI. Would kinda suck to loose the car though.

Ah, yes, well... I guess you'll just have to wait until next year when the Human Homing Emergency Life-Preserver Munition Emitter (HHELP-ME) is available. Until then, I guess you can sink 'em or save 'em (or both) with the same weapon, er, um, life saving bazooka...

I wonder when someone will build a mod to put one of these in a first person shooter? BFG? Naw, give me the LPB!

Um, what??

McDonnell (now part of Boeing) built the Mercury and Gemini capsules (sent many people to orbit)
Convair (parts of which are now General Dynamics and Lockheed Martin) built the Atlas rocket that launched Mercury
Martin (now part of Lockheed Martin) build the Titan rockets that launched the Gemini capsules
North American (now part of Boeing) build the Apollo command module
Grumman built the Apollo Lunar Module
Boeing, North American (now part of Boeing), and Douglas (now part of Boeing) contributed to building the Saturn V rocket that was used in the Apollo missions
Rockwell (now part of Boeing) build the Space Shuttle Orbiter
Martin (now part of Lockheed) built the Shuttle's External Tank
Thiokol built the Solid Rocket Boosters for the Shuttle

Private companies have built every vehicle ever used to send Americans (and citizens from many other countries) into space since NASA starting doing that. In fact NASA has NEVER sent anyone into space without a vehicle built by a private company.

Boeing and Lockheed Martin are still very much involved in launching things into space, and do so much more often than NASA does. All they need is a financial reason to send humans up there, and they'll do it -- with or without NASA.

...and remember: DEC had a class A block. Compaq bought DEC, and then HP bought Compaq, so HP now owns TWO Class A blocks.