Posts by Steve 151

Winamp is still a thing? NOPE: It'll be silenced forever in December

Shame

I wrote my (dreadful) final year dissertation on the relative merits of Winamp vs WMP this makes me feel old

Asteroid mining and a post-scarcity economy

Re: Phosphorous

World reserves of phospate rock are more than 300 billion tons.

At the 190 million tonne per year usage, a 1,500 years supply

Adobe demands 7,000 years a day from humankind

tl;dr

New nuclear fuel source would power human race until 5000AD

Re: 5000 years... Hmmm... ...numbers.

i think they'll just use the pumps that they use for changing the sea level at the beach

Global warming much less serious than thought - new science

Boffinry

I take it you don't read Mr Page's stuff all that often?

I seem to recall 'Boffinry' is actually rather complimentary in Lewis-speak

Got a few minutes to help LOHAN suck?

£40 Pond Pump?

how about connecting the test chamber to a sealed reservoir and then pumping out the water?

You'll have to work out the proper ratio of chamber to reservoir, but it should be cheap and easy to reset.

Britain's Harrier jump-jets reprieved to fly and fight again

OK, well what about the points in this article? Is this guy wrong?

http://www.channel4.com/news/libya-axed-harriers-could-have-saved-lives

Well, let's just agree to disagree.

The fact that USMC are buying ours suggests that they are better than you think. But whatever... Life's too short.

I'm saying that a Harrier, being STOVL, is more flexible than Tornado or Typhoon, those being CTOL. Like a swiss army knife is more flexible than a machete.

The UK armed forces, having lost the Harrier, are now less flexible than they were.

That's all. Am I wrong?

And to be fair, at least I've tried to answer your arguments, even though they are mostly besides the point. You've stonewalled and plucked out strawmen in response.

OK, AC, I just think you're trolling now.

You aren't grasping anything that people are saying to you, and you are using every logical fallacy in the book to make it look like you have a valid point of view.

You appear in fact to be arguing that 10 - 1 = 11.

(With less options we have become more flexible.)

OK, fine. But everyone else thinks its 9.

Fatuous? Nice one

I did specifically address the range issue, in the bit where I said "Specifically addressing the range issue" in my post above.

As others have said, the 'on-paper' combat range is a red herring. Your 300 miles figure (I assume from wiki?) is underpinned by a million and one assumptions. In flight refuelling is entirely possible with the Harrier, extending the range indefinitely.

Even assuming 300 miles is a hard limit, a carrier sitting over the horizon (say for arguments sake 20 miles) would put the Harrier within range of a hell of a lot of Libya - I suspect 90%+ of the population live within 200 miles of the coast.

Your argument about FOBs makes no sense - Harriers can sail all the way to theatre in their own floating FOB...

@AC

OK, you've clearly spent a long time on Wikipedia researching this (your use of TLAs and other jargon has jumped several notches, assuming this is the same anonymous coward as before), so I'll reply as nicely as I can, despite your snarky remarks...

Your narrow definition of 'flexibility' appears to be 'has longer range' - I'll concede that Tornado and Typhoon both have longer range than the Harrier.

In terms of the wider definition of operational flexibility, which includes elements of strategic mobility, logistical footprint, maintenance, infrastructure, training, sortie generation, FE@R, response time, interoperability and more - not least of which is value for money - Harrier compares extremely well.

Specifically addressing the range issue: (which is a strawman argument, but anyway...)

A Harrier with 4 drop tanks can ferry 3000NM. With 2 drop tanks, its combat radius is probably around 1000NM, with plenty of room left for ordnance.

The point with carrier groups is that they are mobile, and even pocket carriers with Harriers can support amphibious landings - which is why USMC are buying our unwanted fleet.

How would you provide CAS to a hypothetical landing in say, Somalia?

You are thinking like an airman, which you profess to be, so it is no wonder you are wedded to the strategic bombing paradigm, but think of the poor bloody infantry who are relying on you for quick response... Would you rather have a fresh pilot sitting in a fully-fuelled, armed and ready to go Harrier 200 miles away (i.e. <30 mins) or a Typhoon sitting on the pan at Coningsby with a 6 hour ferry between them and you? What about if the intervening countries decide to deny you passage?

From a capability management perspective, the SDSR has blown gaping holes in our 'portfolio' of capabilities - capabilities that Harrier + Carrier uniquely provided. To argue that we are not more inflexible as a result is simply wrong.

Surely better to have a single underpowered carrier group than none at all?

With attendant fleet auxiliaries and escorts, they at least project a serious capability.

You said it yourself that the Black Buck operations were a joke, yet you propose this as our only option. Bizarro logic.

Using carrier-borne Harriers in Afghanistan would be insane - and no-one has proposed this but you...

Bravo

I agree entirely with John's masterful fisking

Sense?

AC thinks that using tankers to conduct extreme range bombing is more logistically sound than deploying a carrier group...!

Yeah, whatever...

???

"No it isn't." what?

Variants of Harrier were used in all the conflicts you're mentioned, so I don't really see your point.

We've got a squadron of Typhoons operating out of the purpose built Mount Pleasant, so having Tornadoes out of Port Stanley is a little irrelevant. Also, Tornadoes were in service during the Falklands, and we didn't actually do that, did we now...

A Harrier which can fly from airfields, motorways, marginally prepared dirt strips, and aircraft carriers is certainly more flexible than a Tornado or Typhoon. Although you theoretically could transit a Tornado / Typhoon half way around the world with tanker support AND conduct a strike operation, you simply wouldn't do it. Think how long that pilot would have to fly for! Also, combat Typhoon aircraft are single seaters.

We had three pocket carriers (+ Ocean which could carry Harriers if not operate them). With three, I believe one would always be ready, one in refit, one on standby. I doubt we've sent carriers to the pacific in the last 50 years.

As for the length of time taken to arrive in the Falklands - a reaction time of a around month is actually very quick in terms of Strategic Mobility, when you consider you end up with a self-sustaining capability in theatre. What realistic alternatives are there anyway? Flying CAP from Coningsby to protect the expeditionary fleet isn't really an option you know...?

LOHAN checks into REHAB

Yay!

I finally made a contribution to something! My wife will be so proud!

LOHAN to suck mighty thruster as it goes off, in a shed

REHAB

Rocket Environment Hypobaric Assessment Bunker

struggled with the 'B' - maybe Battery, Bid or Building instead

It's non-stop fun in Zero Carbon Britain, 2030

As Einstein pointed out about a century ago...

E=MC^2

(Energy = Mass x speed of light^2)

All we need to do is keep figuring out ways to initiate the reaction that converts M to lots and lots of E.

Nuclear fission works great, nuclear fusion will probably work better - who knows what comes after that...

We are at the very beginning of an age of wonder and plenty, and green weenies want to derail the whole thing.

Because they are stupid.

Bloody George's Budget: How bad is it really?

OK then

point me to one field in which progress has been made in the absence of economic growth...

Resources don't tend to run out, they become uneconomic to recover until the price rises high enough to make it profitable. Take oil for instance - it is perfectly possible to manufacture oil from coal; the Germans relied upon this method during WW2. I seem to recall that is costs around $100 a barrel to do this, which is uneconomic when it can be drilled for for less than $60 a barrel. If the oil price was consistently higher than $100 a barrel, it would be profitable to manufacture it rather than drill it. We aren't going to run out of coal any time soon (think thousands of years).

Nuclear powered desalination plants could provide unlimited water; I suspect that there are many other, cheaper options that could be explored before that were necessary though.

Economic growth creates resources rather than destroying them. I recommend reading Julian Simon to anyone who doubts this.

If eternal growth is so bad, explain...

at what time in the last thousand years would you rather have lived then?

Growth is not dependent on increased consumption, it is rather a case of increasing productivity i.e. doing more with less - year after year after year. Entirely desirable.

Inflation

Your inflation would indeed be predictable - Weimar Republic predictable

The money supply would increased by £690 Billion a year (based on 2009 spending)!!

Greenpeace: Apple ain't so brown anymore

dear oh dear

ok, lots to fisk in that post!

1) entirely green energy has several drawbacks, the main one being that it doesn't work

2) job creation is a cost, not a benefit

3) The most damaging thing to the environment is a zero tech subsistence existence - if we all switched to hunter-gatherer we'd strip the entire planet of life and available resources in a few months. Modern technology (esp agriculture) allows us to live at arm's length to nature, with the ability to feed untold billions. Greenpeace et al would sterilise, euthanase and starve the third world back to 'sustainable' population limits. No thanks.

4) Greenpeace classify all human development as damaging and will not stop until they achieve a complete halt, and then a return to subsistence farming - i.e. Stone Age.

5) Oil age? I'd go with nukes personally, but then I believe in the advancement of the species, rather than a return to serfdom and hairshirt lifestyles

thanks for playing though

no seriously...

Greenpeace hate people, I like people (regardless of wealth, colour or location thanks)

therefore Greenpeace = Misanthropic, I = Anthropic (which may not be a word, but hey...)

If Greenpeace spent some of their income tackling the problems on the ground rather than hectoring and lobbying I might have some appreciation for them, but as it is they are death-cult stone-agers who can go f*** themselves

I've had about enough

Why don't these misanthropic eco-loons just f*** off?

The planet is fine. Enough. End.