Earlier quoted context omitted.
Let us not forget: before this war, Russians went on holiday in Odesa. Ukrainians went on holiday in St. Petersburg. It's not a genocidal war of annihilation. It's not WW2 redux. It's not Holodomor 2.0. I do not think everybody realises how low the stakes of this conflict really are.
That’s a very cavalier way of looking at things. Tens if not hundreds of thousands of people have died already, and millions of people live now as refugees. What does it take to make something high stakes in your view?
F-35 Program Achieves Full Rate Production
101–109 of 109 posts
Re: F-35 Program Achieves Full Rate Production
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
That’s a very cavalier way of looking at things. Tens if not hundreds of thousands of people have died already, and millions of people live now as refugees. What does it take to make something high stakes in your view?
Most of the people who have died in this conflict are Russian soldiers aren't they?
Re: F-35 Program Achieves Full Rate Production
#103> “Earlier today, the Milestone Decision Authority, Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment, Dr. William A. LaPlante, approved the Milestone C / Full Rate Production (MSC/FRP) of the F-35 Lightning II aircraft with the signing of an Acquisition Decision Memorandum (ADM) after a meeting with the Defense Acquisition Board (DAB).” The language could very well be from some dark humor novel making fun o…
Re: F-35 Program Achieves Full Rate Production
#104Re: F-35 Program Achieves Full Rate Production
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
That is normal and the acronym comes second: Boaty McBoat Face (BMcBF) Now I can use BMcBF and you have all the information you need to work out what I'm on about. I'm pretty sure that "Usage and abusage" encourages that format. The only slightly controversial aspect of my example is M vs Mc. Mc is already an abbreviation, so should it be repeated intact? For me, Mc is complicated enough as a contraction and abbrevia…
> That is normal sadly, as time goes by, this is becoming less of a norm. people just spit out acronyms because they are so used to, but fail to take a second that someone less familiar might actually be reading it. in previous discussions, this receives some support as "it's targeted a like minded readers" or "they're not professional writers" or "it's just a blog" blah blah. for tweets, i'm surprised we still you v…
I note that, sadly: grammar, punctuation and basic prose construction seem to be wandering off into the mist and getting lost.
Re: F-35 Program Achieves Full Rate Production
#106Re: F-35 Program Achieves Full Rate Production
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
It has made a huge difference. Loss rates and survivability of western hardware in Ukraine are vastly better than the Soviet equipment, and the Ukrainians will say as much. There are caveats, like: a tank that hits a mine is going to be disabled one way or another, and a disabled tank won't survive too long if it's anywhere near the front. The problem isn't the quantity of equipment, it's the quantity of munitions. F…
The crux of it is that the weapons have improved very fast (range and energy density and targeting and rate of fire and other functionality all improving very fast) but protective systems like armour are not nearly keeping pace. It's looking a bit like the struggle between armoured knights and guns. The place where the rubber really meets the road on this, the Big Problem, is surface navy: what's the lifespan of a fl…
Re: F-35 Program Achieves Full Rate Production
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
getting pulled into a war that we can’t afford to fight and losing many American lives comes to mind
Isn't that like the whole point of NATO?
Re: F-35 Program Achieves Full Rate Production
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm most interested in what the unit economics here are. Inefficiencies in Western manufacturing are seem like they could be significant since the big threat in the short term seems to be a WWI style blow up by UN security council countries. The US is basically broke and seems to be struggling industrially. It won't be able to ignore economics if it has to conduct a war against an industrial power.
It’s always amazing to consider what people think about the economy vs how it’s actually doing. Japan has a Debt to GDP ratio of 255%, relatively few natural resources, and a rapidly aging population, yet it is still doing reasonably well. America by comparison is in a vastly better position economically.
Money spent on the economy stimulates growth even if it comes from loans.
I'm not an economist but probably I would probably define the ideal amount of debt a country should have is when the amount of economic growth coming from the extra money is equalled by the costs of financing said debt.