kalvasflam

You mean with Empress Lacus ascend to her throne while her apprentices (the moronic Kira and the confused Athrun) both standing behind her... Yes, evil can come in all manner of shapes and sizes, and the most evil are usually the most cute.

So, they are starting up Seed 3, having seen episode 51, I think the start of Seed 3 should go something like this. Antagonist: Saburo Fuchida: Newtype human pilot (age 26) Minoru Sakai: Coordinator pilot (age 35) Raizo Tanaka: Human captain (age 43) of Musashi (follow-on battleship class to AA) Isoroku Genda: Human newtype (age 58) the chief antagonist. (Yes, for anyone who follows WWII, I’ve been mixing and matching names of some of the best Japanese military had to offer from that era, with exception of Tanaka, who in my opinion is good enough that he deserves to have his name unblended) Episode I: Year is CE76, Cagalli arrives at PLANT on the AA, he meets with Lacus for another peace conference. They talk about the dismantling of the situation on Earth and how things haven’t turned out the way they wanted two years after the last war. Athrun and Kira are there jabbering on with each other. A usual bunch of crap about peace and love and all that BS, and the usual Athrun/Kira bitch about how people of Earth are not following the ideal of their lovely goddess Lacus. There is talk about sending down the DOMs along with a large crew of ZAFT troops to help enforce the peace. They talk about how Shinn is already on Earth at Carpenteria trying to "help." While Andy pays a visit to Mwu and Murrue aboard the AA. Elsewhere, a small fleet of 15 ships approaches the PLANTs. They are immediately detected. Yzak and Deakka goes out to identify the incoming ships. The ships come closer, they look like old EA class MS carriers, and the scout team of ZAKUs that fly near the ships are shot down. And the ships start launching Windams. Yzak orders and immediate sortie and calls PLANT for help. The lead Windam is piloted by Sakai, and he tells his fellow pilots to make a good show of it and kill as many ZAKUs as they can. Kira and Athrun hears Yzak calling, and they out along with the DOM trio and a supporting cast of Goufs and ZAKUs. Meanwhile the fight doesn't go well for Yzak and his crew. The mobile suits they're fighting are being well led, and even though Yzak and Deakka are managing not to get killed, the same can't be said about those under their command. Yzak shouts some obscenities as the EA ships launch a second wave, Windams carrying nukes. AA and crew are sortied along with a lot of ZAFT troops because thankfully those Windams launched from very far out. Thanks to the efforts of their escorts, they manage to bypass Yzak and Deakka. Sakai continues to blast their way through ZAFT troops although they're suffering losses. Then, the Windams get in range, and launch their nukes at the PLANTs. ZAFT forces can't get them all because they're busy with the Windam's escorts. The fleet of 15 now launches another wave of nuclear armed windams. Just as the nukes are about to hit the PLANT, here comes the METEOR beam spams, and every one of the nukes are blown up, and here comes Kira and Athrun to save the day. End of episode one. Episode two: Kira and Athrun now starts to move in and hit the nuke armed Windams. They dispatch the DOM trio and a lot of the other ZAFT troops to go help Yzak, and to deal with Sakai and his Windams. But Sakai is too good, Yzak and Deakka goes against him, and they are killed in rapid and gory succession. The DOM trio and the other ZAFT forces fight evenly against the other Windams, but Sakai is moving quickly in to escort the second wave of nuke armed Windams. Kira does the usual DRAGOON beam spam, and kills most of the nuke Windams. But now they have to fight the Sakai. Sakai’s MS isn’t anything special, just a normal colored Windam, but he dodges the shots from Kira and friends. While he doesn’t seem to be able to get at Kira or Athrun with his puny beam rifles, he is holding his own, and killing a Gouf here, or a ZAKU there. Elsewhere, Lacus and Cagalli orders the Eternal to move out in support, and they lament on how people just don't understand, and want to keep fighting. Eternal moves out with several other ZAFT ships while AA gets ready to launch Now we switch view to the Musashi, and it’s obvious most of ZAFT forces that are alerted are trying to kill the remaining nuclear Windams. Raizo Tanaka smiles and says: “Children should be in school learning, not leading nations and fighting wars. And adults led by children deserve what they get.†He then orders phase 2 to begin. Simultaneously on Eternal and AA, they start to detect small numbers of Windams coming in from every direction, they all seem to be nuclear armed. Although there are less than 50, they are spread out all over the place. They call out to Kira and Athrun to have them return. Episode 3: Quick recap, Kira and Athrun now start to split up, Athrun continues to fight Sakai who is escorting the last couple of nuclear armed Windams in, and Kira charges toward the newly detected nuclear Windams. Mwu and company are shouting for Murasames and Zakus to launch so they can intercept the nuclear armed Windams. Mwu launches in Akatsuki. Meaning, on board Musashi, Tanaka calls Fuchida and tells him it’s time to launch, and orders the other ships in his squadron to start attacking their assigned targets. Then he orders his own ship to attack the ZAFT military headquarters. Fuchida is riding in a black gundam, it too had a mirage colloid, so it cloaks right before it launches. (We’ll call this one Silence Gundam, it carries two anti ship swords, two beam sabers (hidden in the fold of the arms, think Sazabi), a chest cannon like SF, two head vulcans, and under each arm is a large cannon that shoots armor piercing rounds… think ALEX from 0080) Meanwhile, Musashi is right next to ZAFT military HQ and its main base. It launches several nukes at each target from very close. ZAFT has no time to react, and kaboom goes ZAFT military HQ. Musashi continues to attack close by target with nuclear weapons, while six other cloaked ships (think 250 m types but different designs) attack Eternal and their complement of warships. Fuchida follows in the attack with his black gundam. He is forced to decloak before striking, as he kills several Zakus and Goufs, but Mwu senses Fuchida and comes charging in to save the Eternal. The six smaller ships are able to destroy most of the ZAFT ships near Eternal, but are unable to touch the Eternal due to the fanatical dedication of Eternal’s escorts. Mwu and Fuchida duel, but clearly Fuchida is winning as he easily dodges Mwu’s DRAGOONs, and Mwu knows he is in trouble. He calls Kira to help. Kira makes a tough choice, he can’t stop all the nuked armed Windams because in reality, METEOR just flies too slowly to be able to get to all of those ships in time. And he wants to save Lacus, so he heads to Eternal. The fight between Mwu and Fucida is drawn out compared to the other fights, but Fuchida is better, and in the end he skewers Mwu. We have a gory image of anti-ship beam sword slicing Mwu in half. The Musashi meanwhile is being attacked by AA, but because it remains cloaked, the AA is having a difficult time finding it. Tanaka smiles, and orders Musashi to continue firing a few nukes at a time against the PLANTs, so far, Musashi with its nukes has accounted for ZAFT military HQ, the Gondwana, and a couple of PLANTs as well. AA tries to intercept some of the nukes and is only somewhat successful. Meanwhile, Fuchida after dispatching Mwu is attacking Eternal. He gets in close and aims a beam rifle he picked up from Mwu at Eternal’s bridge, and then a beam comes in and destroys his beam rifle. Kira has arrived on scene. End episode 3. Episode 4. Quick recap, Kira and Fuchida square off, while Sakai and Athrun face one another. Both Kira and Athruns goes seed mode. ZAFT military is responding very slowly after their HQ and some of their forces are destroyed, most are trying to hunt down the cloaked Musashi or trying to stop the nuclear Windams. Here we’ll get extended scenes of Kira dueling with Fuchida, and Sakai fighting Athrun. In due time, both the METEORs are destroyed. Sakai fights a great battle, and he ends up crippling Justice (cut off both arms and the head), and then he laughs at Athrun on an open channel telling him how he had so many chances to put things right, that this is his reward for screwing it up. But before he can conduct the finishing blow, the DOM trio comes in to help Athrun. In the interim, Fuchida is dodging all of Kira’s DRAGOON beam spam, he shoots down all of the DRAGOONs over time. Finally, he charges in against Kira with his anti-ship sword, he swings it, but Kira catches it overhead like he did with Shinn, but Fuchida lets the sword go, ejects the beam sabers hidden under his arms, and slices off Freedom’s arms. Then he fires his chest cannon and wrecks Freedom’s chest beam cannon. He uses his second anti-ship sword and carves up Freedom. He then responds to Kira after ignoring him all this time. Saying that Kira is a mistake that needs to disappear from the world, but in case he is wondering, he isn’t Rau. He drags SF and charges Eternal with it, using SF as a shield. Lacus doesn’t want to fire. Fuchida opens his channel and tell Lacus to look around, and see the PLANTs, most of them have been nuked. Lacus gets in Seed mode, and orders Eternal to fire on Fuchida. Meanwhile, Sakai is fighting the three DOMs, and he kills them all over a span of a few minutes. But from behind, Athrun charges in, and uses his leg beam saber, Sakai is unable to avoid it, and both the legs on his Windam are cut off, but not before he puts his beam saber into Athrun, killing him. The Windam now useless, but Sakai is out of enemies, so he opens the cockpit on the Windam and waits. Fuchida dodges the shot from Eternal, and then gets in front of the bridge again, he uses his arm cannon and says over the radio (scene from Dodgeball): Joanie loves Chachi… and blows away Lacus and Cagalli and the Eternal bridge. Kira watches and is enraged, but can’t do anything because SF is crippled, he starts to overload the SF, but for some reason sets a timer. Fuchida feels this, and he laughs, saying that it’s good that Kira is willing to die to take down and enemy. He plants SF on the wrecked bridge of Eternal, and says that Kira should die with Lacus and his sister, and that he should be proud that from his ashes, the nation of Yamato will be born. Fuchida then leaves, the SF goes nuclear, and destroys Eternal. The AA meanwhile sees this, but cannot help as the six cloaked 250 m are coming in to help Musashi, even though she hates the idea, Murrue orders AA to disengage. Musashi cannot catch up, but it doesn’t matter. Most of the PLANTs have been destroyed by nuclear armed Windams. Now Tanaka orders the Windams to return and reload, while he and his ships wipe out the remaining ZAFT forces. Fuchida reports that Eternal has been destroyed and that he will pick up Sakai. Tanaka smiles and calls Genda, and tells him that his mission is successful, and the PLANT has been destroyed. Genda tells him that he’s done good work, and the main obstacle to their nation of Yamato has been removed. He pushes a button, and we see Orb getting nuked. The next shot says 4 years later, and we focus in on a desert road on Earth somewhere. Episode 4 ends. So, this is my idea of how seed 3 ought to begin. Whew… what a long post.

It's harder to compare the aftermath of Munich with Blackhawk Down. With Blackhawk Down, the movie was in fact rife with inaccuracies, you would think why would they send in two snipers just to save a pilot, the numbers don't add up. But in real life, all four of the crew survived. The characters were in the wrong places, and the Delta guys were a mishmash of people. With all the information they had in real life, the movie was still wrong. Imagine, how much more fictitious the events after Munich would've been since the Israelis aren't the most talkative, and the other side are all dead. But even after saying that, I will watch the movie, no movie will ever be as compelling as real life, it should be fun to watch though. Just like Blackhawk Down was fun to watch.

Hmmm, a lot of nice flak going on here. Moving into the movie, my understanding is that it's a fiction of what happened in reality. In terms of the terrorist and other stuff.... my two cents: How wonderful, it's society's fault that we have serial rapists, mass murderers, or "freedom fighters" I agree that they might be sane and even think there is good justification for what they do. But then, you could come up with a good reason to convince little kiddies to strap on some plastic and blow up other little kiddies in their neighborhood. Why? Because the person involved thinks there is no other way to solve his problem. It's wonderful to understand your enemy, but in the end, it works just as well if they're simply all dead.

From what little I saw of the spoilers, this seems like the same crappy story with redone animation, and toss in a few pieces of extras. I'm sorry, it would've been better if the ending is like Anubis suggested... death to Kira, Lacus, Athrun, and if we can manage it, Cagalli too. I'll have to see the thing, but it sounds like they're still pumping up Kira, Lacus and company. And that is sad.

Heh, only if they start off with Kira, Lacus, Athrun, and Cagalli dying horribly. I'd like to see Athrun's head cut off, Lacus being blown apart, etc, etc, etc. Then, we have a massive holocaust of PLANTs. Blowing 90% of the hourglasses away would be nice. Heh heh. No new gundams, no Freedom, no Justice, no Destiny, only Impulse, and definitely no new Gundams.

AC-130U had the 20mms replace with a single 25mm rotary cannon. 353344[/snapback] Well, it's not as if they had less ammo all of a sudden. I believe the gunship was originally developed to take on the Ho Chi Minh trail, but it obviously has other uses, one thing I can think of is to use it against unarmored infantry that does not have the necessary anti-air capabilities. Places like Mogadishu would've been perfect, and I believe AC-130s have been quite instrumental over both Afghanistan and Iraq once SEAD had been completed.

Wonder if they could redeem some of GSD.

AC-130 do have the FCS to precision snipe at any target unfortunate enough to draw it's ire, since Vietnam. Mog like ODS and OIF, the AC crews would've needed precise coordinates on where the friendlies are and the targets are. 353174[/snapback] Sniping is not that easy, granted, the AC-130 is better at it than a plane dropping PGMs, I still would not want to be in the vicinity when a shell from an 130 hit. It'll cause collateral. In Mog, the AC crew would've have exact coordinates I think. Because the little birds that provided airsupport had pretty good comms to the ground troops who gave them targeting information. But in case of Durant's chopper, no info would've been needed, just plaster the entire area around the chopper. I mean, literally, if it moved, it died. And don't send in the two Deltas until that part was done. Speaking of YF-23, didn't they move the one out of Wright Patterson? Hope they're turning it into something.

Imagine how they would do a movie on naval surface battles in modern times with SSM (surface to surface missiles). Not even a confined space like submarines to add to tension. How sad.

Ah, thanks, I see, ok, it says after initial support. The October incident happened toward the end of the U.S. involvement. Most of the heavier firepower were pulled out after the first few months there, I think that started in late 1992. No AC-130 were in Somolia at the time when the "incident" occurred, if they were there, general Garrison would've been grossly negligent in not using one to cut a swath through those pathetic militia.

The Gunship history page specifically mentions that some of them were deployed to Somalia. 353034[/snapback] Never saw that page before, so don't know... link? All I know was that they did not participate in the actual raid. But I understand they were deployed in numbers along with an aircraft carrier after the event.

Very very true. A lot of these space battles I don't really like since they just consist of two battleships approaching to point blank distance and firing away. Its stupid, its like watching Revolutionary War tactics where the armies would line up face to face and just shoot and reload and shoot again. There's no talk or execution of fleet configuration, manuevering, etc. I like it when there is some element of tactics involved like in LOGH, Macross, Yamato 2520, original Yamato, which all incidentally had Ishiguro involved. 352942[/snapback] A point that's very well made is that space combat is likely to be BVR anyway. I guess the idea of laser is just too attractive. Because I expect missiles to rule the day, although it would be a little more like long lance duels in WWII. You'd shot missiles at each other, and wait for the minutes between when missiles reached their target. And let's fact it, targeting at 300,000 km might be a real pain. But then again, anime would be kind of boring, if it consisted of guys shooting missiles and never seeing each other. Not very personal.

Agreed with the other points above on using AC-130Us alone. But even with other assets, the AC-130 is a bit too slow, and in that kind of AA intensive environment, it would get in trouble. Now, my recollection is that they did not have a Spectre gunship on hand. This is mostly out of the book Blackhawk Down, which was as comprehensive a study as anyone did. But they also made a point that the little birds were already effective. By the way, I disagree with the part about randomly blowing up people. In a combat zone, you have three types, friends, enemies, neutrals. You'd like to avoid hitting the neutrals, but under no circumstances do they ever take priority over friendlies. Having combat data in that situation was impossible. The priority was not positive target ID, that didn't happen much with neutrals anyway, the priority would've been to extract the troops. In that situation, I'd have order the Spectre to literally mow down the entire crowd around Durant's chopper. Idiot Hollywood movie not withstanding, the entire crew was alive when that chopper went down, and they were subsequently all killed with exception of Durant. You know what, as a CO, at that point, I wouldn't have cared about what CNN thought, I would've saved my men, if it meant mowing down a bunch of people, so be it. After all, if they were running in the direction of that chopper, I'm pretty sure they weren't bringing roses. And war is a Darwainian process, the stupid generally died. And you can't do a precision sniping job against a single target anyway in the air. People seem to always misunderstand the value of terror in war. That's something a gunship like that would bring. In Mogadishu, it would've been like Zeus sitting up in the clouds dropping thunderbolts. I dislike the fact that the armed forces decided to put everything in one basket, the marines, the air force, the navy all wanted JSF. Different variants. I remember once upon a time there was this program called FX, it was slated to be the tactical fighter for both the Navy and the Air Force, and it ended badly, although it did give the USAF the F-111. The only successful interservice fighters were the A-4 and the F-4 in my opinion. The requirements are just too different. And those requirements continue to diverge in many cases. Now, if they had a VF-1, then things would be different. :-)

I think it was a shame they decided not to reanimate everything. I know budget constraints and all, but I was disappointed at the fact that so many of the mech scenes were not redone. I like some of the flow with the characters as well. I hope that the next two movies show more reanimation. Because honestly, for a movie, some of the scenes they used on the attack on jaburo was pretty poor quality.

No doubt it's an idiotic list. No Saving Private Ryan, no Two Towers (yeah I liked that one too), how about an old movie, Midway.... I think these guys didn't have a clue what a battle scene is. Heck, arguably, Rocky vs Mr T is also a battle scene.

Think European theater where you have literally a dozen mobile AA guns, 10s of SAM sites... it makes survivability difficult. Too much mass. But otherwise, I agree, if they put in Mogadishu a couple of AC-130U, it would've carved a clear path.

I would think not. Harriers are total hell on wheels when it comes to supporting troops on the ground and for coastal defense, but really I can think of a handful of fighters that can do every other job much better. 352846[/snapback] Harriers had a rocky start in the U.S. marines, used to be known as the widowmaker due to the number of test pilot deaths. It's usefulness to the Brits and others were because of the ability to deploy from their baby carriers. Marines liked it because it gave them the ability to have very front line air support. But it seems to sacrifice a bit too much in terms of bomb loads, and range. I'd take a loaded A-6 any day. The real question is also logistics. Supporting Harriers or any jump jets in such close proximity to the battle field risks the loggies who are there to support the planes, i.e. load it with bombs, put fuel in it, etc. The best thing about VTOL is the ability to disperse, and not be caught on a conventional field. But as luck would have it, the weakness of any warplane is the ability of their loggies to support them. Kill them, and survivability of airplanes don't mean jack. BTW, AC-130s rock. I'd love to have one of those overhead in a low threat environment, i.e. Mogadishu. But unfortunately, in real battlefields with lots of SAMs and anti-air guns (thinking a potential Europe battle field in the 80s), AC-130s could get in trouble in an awful hurry. But it would destroy any unguarded target.

The problem though is that most of the Yamato based space battles were too one sided. Bad guys show up, wipes out gallant earth defense forces.... Yamato arrives with their black tiger fighter squadron and proceed to wipe out the enemy. There are may be two exceptions to this rule. Series 2, there was one battle not involving Yamato that EDF won, of course, the comet killed the EDF soon there after. Final Yamato had a battle with Yamato centered task force that fought essentially an anti carrier battle. One theme that is very recurring and very funny is the fact that Yamato series always concentrated on the bad guys having carrier centered task groups cowardly attacking the proud battleship Yamato with their little insect of fighters and bombers. Then Yamato always triumphs over those cowardly user of attrition units. (The theme here seem to be Yamato/Japan is finally having its revenge against the evil carriers/US 5th or 3rd fleet) Funny considering historically, the Japanese were the pioneer of carrier warfare and were the masters before the Americans knocked them off the top of the hill. Never even thought of that until I started reading history and looking carefully at the Yamato series as a whole. Gamilon: destroyers, poor battle ships, main threat: carriers Comet empire: carrier centric Black Nebula: carrier centric, some battle ships Bolar: not carrier centric, but their enemies Galmons were The last bad guys: carrier centered ships

I know it's been a while, approaching 20 years now. But that was definitely true in the late 80s. It's sad to see that happening, I believe carrier air wings are mostly F-18s now. And it bugs me a little because the -18s had a light designation on them when they were first put up. As in light attack aircraft. They couldn't haul the same load as an A-6, didn't have the range either. But that has changed a little over time. As for the JSF, it's just an example of how screwy things have become. I remember when the original proposal to replace the A-6 was the A-12 Avenger (that was in the early 90s), then it was the F-18 E/F which ended up replacing the F-14s, and now it's the JSF. Now that may be cancelled. Whoever is in charge of these projects should be led out into the woods and just shot. One would think that the logic is replacement of classes, and with number. For the airforce: An air superiority fighter: F-22 (replacing F-15) A long range strategic bomber: B-2 A theater attack aircraft: F-117 or replacement (may be something to replace the F-111F) A close range support aircraft: (in the mold of an A-10) A tactical attack aircraft: JSF type (replacing F-16) capable of tactical ground strikes and SEAD missions. A tanker type project: Think that's the Boeing 767 variant An AEW aircraft: AWACS replacement/upgrade I think a replacement for B-52 is a great idea too, nothing like a weapon that can loiter for hours dropping massive tons of bombs on targets. Also, somebody need to buy more AC-130Us.

Someone should've told Scirroco that then. The O is definitely saddled with tons of armor. 352613[/snapback] Remember though, in space, mass is fairly irrelevant. The O was quite manueverable since it had a large number of verniers. An oh by the way, part of the skirt on the O had two extra arms, each holding a beam saber. So, not all is as it seemed.

I think the pacing has to do with the fact that the movies probably wanted to focus more heavily on some of the key plot points, for example, when Amuro meets Char again, and later on, the Four situation, her ultimate demise, and the fight vs Scirroco. I think there is a good chance (correct me if I'm wrong) that they don't even bother to show the second drop to Earth.

Did that include units for both Navy and the USAF? If so, then it's absolutely sad. Because at some point, the USN had on average, 2 squadron of 12 each F-14, and 2 more of 12 each F-18 on station per carrier. At a minimum with 6 carriers cruising around every day, that was essentially 144 Tomcats and 144 Hornets at sea on a daily basis.

You can pretty much equate having Congress making buy decisions on military hardware to have a bunch of drunk self absorbed jerks trying to show how big they can be by pushing for every little scrap they can get. On the same side, the cost of weapon systems have gone dramatically up, you can equate the capabilities as greater or equaling to those of a decade ago due to the leaps in technology. But the U.S. military seem to be slowly putting more and more eggs in the same tiny small basket. Quick examples, at the height of the cold war, there were more than 1000 F-15s, I think the exact number were 1300 or so, more than 1800 F-16s in the U.S. inventory alone. To replace this, they are going to end up with something like 200+ F-22s, and I don't recall how many JSFs. Sure, those are more capable, but they will be like an overstretched work force in the long run.

There is a lot of value in stealth and precision munitions, but I would not so easily dismiss the B-52. I honestly think there should be a true replacement for that type of strategic bomber. The B-2 is not quite capable of carrying that bomb load, the B-1 is better, but let's face it, if you want someone carpet bombed, you go with B-52s. Although this is the age of precision munitions, you can never forget that raw firepower will always have its place. Remember how they brought the Iowas back in the 80s. Sure, those were 40 year old ships at that point, but who could forget the effect of 16 inch gunfire support off shore.