Shadow

Ground zeroes found a slightly annoying middle ground between PW and PO. Running 7 people to a drop point got a bit repetitive but hey at least you could sprint while holding them. PW system was ok but I agree with Shadow that it should have more risk involved. Maybe the soldiers should look up every now and again at the choppers picking up all their people.

I was hoping to go a step further with active vehicles. If you're in Afghanistan during the Soviet war, it wouldn't be pleasant for your recovery helicopter to get laid into by an active nearby BTR or a Shilka but that might be alittle too Arma.

I'm glad the Fulton Recovery system will be in the Phantom Pain but I hope the system is improved and there is a greater deal of risk. ie: You can't use it indoors like in Peacewalker. I also hope you can't just hoist enemy troops into the air in the eyes of other enemy troops without them going on alert. It just takes something away from the stealth of the game and I hope the developers try to make the player consider the consequences of using the Fulton in a hot area. Not only should surrounding guards go on high alert but you run a high risk of having the recovery aircraft being shot down and thus losing a valuable asset. One of the items I liked from Ground Zeroes was that you had to take people to a safe zone to have them recovered. There should be dangerous consequences for not clearing an area out of guards or taking something to a safer point before having it hoisted back to your base.

I think the problem is that HDCP-compliance is, IIRC, a moving target. That's why you'll see revisions in HDMI (1.2, 1.3, etc). DVI, I think, has remained rather static. I agree with Az, you're probably better off getting a new TV.

I use DVI. My speakers are separate from my monitor, so the audio is moot, and I don't have a Blu-ray drive so HDCP compliance isn't a huge deal for me. Plus, I've run into issues with HDMI handshakes (at least, I did on an older computer hooked up to an older receiver to my old TV... things have probably improved). Basically, if the computer went to sleep and I switched to another input, when I switched back I wouldn't have any video, even after waking the computer. Again, this is likely to not be a problem with newer monitors and newer graphics cards, especially without a receiver between them. In theory, though, HDMI doesn't offer any quality advantage over DVI, so I went with DVI just in case. If you have a Blu-ray drive and plan on watching movies on your computer, or if you're using your monitor's built-in speakers, HDMI has its advantages, but otherwise it's six of one half a dozen of the other, if you ask me.

Definitely not bad, but it doesn't look like it comes with a graphics card.

Looking at the list, I was probably going throw in a GTX 660 Sig 2 FTW and an 120GB SSD. I've been planning a build for awhile and this came along as cheaper overall. Not sure about the PSU though as I was looking at a Corsair or EVGA.

Oh my this is tempting.

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/searchtools/item-Details.asp?EdpNo=9094086&sku=B69-10117&SRCCODE=WEM4126C&cm_mmc=email-_-Main-_-WEM4126-_-tigeremail4126&utm_source=EML&utm_medium=main&utm_campaign=WEM4126&cm_lm=clucas006@gmail.com

Intel Core i7-4790

MSI Z97-G55 SLI ATX Motherboard

Patriot Viper Xtreme 8GB Desktop Memory Module

WD Black 1 TB Desktop Hard Drive

SolidGear 650W Power Supply

Cougar Solution Black Steel Gaming ATX Mid Tower Computer Case

Kingwin CFY-012LB Advanced Series 120mm Yellow LED Case Fan

$669. With rebate, comes down to $519.

MGS3 and Peacewalker put alot of things together. I recommend MGS3 just because I consider it to be the best game thus far in the series plot wise.

Give them props on the music they've chosen for each of these trailers. They're good. So many interpretations of the 1984 release. Clever Kojima.

The MGSV trailer kept me content but I saw the early leak. Still nothing on The Last Guardian though.

Looks like the copy of a copy of an F-22. Nice YF-21/X-31 vector nozzles by the way.

Between the end of First Class and DoFP, Mystique has been through alot. Azazel is already dead, yet he's Nightcrawler's father. So by the beginning of the flick, she's already carried and given birth to Kurt Wagner. Something pretty major, yet there's no mention-not even a hint-of it. If she had a personal motivation, that should be it.

I always saw the movies and comics as two very seperate stories and therefore, never considered what happen in the comics to be factual for the movies.

Just went to go see this yesterday and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

I didn't think Western Maine was that populated.

http://boston.cbslocal.com/2014/05/29/guard-no-low-altitude-training-for-noisy-f-35-fighter-jets-in-maine/

PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — The newest fighter jets that have been the subject of noise complaints across the country won’t be flying low over the hills of western Maine under the National Guard’s proposal to increase the amount of training area for ground-hugging flights, official said Thursday.

The National Guard’s request to double the amount of airspace for low-level training over western Maine has dragged on for so long that the Vermont National Guard has received approval for cutting-edge aircraft that weren’t contemplated when the process began eight years ago.

But the stealthy F-35 fighters, which are noisier than the jets they’re replacing, won’t train at low altitudes in Maine. When they arrive in 2020, Vermont’s F-35s will be restricted to higher altitudes — no lower than 7,000 feet above sea level — where noise is less of an issue, said Landon Jones, a National Guard airspace manager who’s working on the proposal.

The F-35′s engine produces more noise than F-15 and F-16 fighters from National Guard units in Massachusetts and Vermont, which currently fly as low as 500 feet in narrow corridors within the 4,000-square-mile Condor Military Operation Area over western Maine and a sliver of northern New Hampshire.

The Massachusetts National Guard, whose fighters were first on the scene in New York after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, wants to increase the amount of area for low-level flights for more realistic homeland defense training.

The Massachusetts-based, twin-engine F-15 fighters need more space than the smaller, single-engine F-16s from Vermont, which usually train over upstate New York but sometimes travel to Maine.

The Maine National Guard is continuing to reach out to various groups, including the Penobscot Indian Nation, which owns 20,000 acres of land in the region, and hopes to complete a final environmental impact statement this fall, Jones said. After that, the Federal Aviation Administration will get the final say, and that process could take several more years, he said.

The National Guard had a similar proposal in 1992, but it was withdrawn under pressure from local residents and then-Gov. John McKernan.

The current effort has again faced gubernatorial objections, first from Democratic Gov. John Baldacci and then from Republican Gov. Paul LePage. LePage told the National Guard and the Federal Aviation Administration in 2011 that the expanded training area is a “want, not a need.”

Jones, a former pilot, disagreed with the governor’s assessment, saying the F-15 fighters need more airspace for maneuvering.

By spreading the maneuvers over a wider area, the noise will be dispersed instead of limited to existing corridors, or lanes, that are used for low-level flights. And the number of low-level sorties will be reduced once the Vermont National Guard switches from F-16s to F-35s, he said.

___

You mean something like the J-20?

Thought the J-20 is being developed to be a fighter/interceptor.

Does everything... but still need a -A, -B, -C variant in order to do everything.

Technically the A, B and C are there to distinguish the specific type and launch platform they're meant for. A = standard aircraft, B = STOVL capability, more complex, C = Carrier capable. They all perform the same roles rather than a specific varient being made to take on a special role such as SEAD (F-4G, F-16CJ)

I still feel they went in the wrong direction with trying to have one aircraft take on the role of several. What there aiming for is for the F-22 to be the air superiority fighter with its small numbers and the F-35 to do everything else Along with a small army of drone aircraft. Nothing really inbetween. It would have been nice to see an interdiction aircraft developed along the lines of a stealthy F-111 to fill that gap where the F-35 lacks range and payload, and the B-1/B-2 are too costly to risk losing.

YES! was my first line of thought when I saw this appear on GOG finally.

http://www.gog.com/game/f117a_nighthawk_stealth_fighter_20

Wait, what?

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303417104579542212039334946

U-2 Spy Plane Triggered Air-Traffic Outage

By

Andy Pasztor and

Susan Carey

connect

Updated May 5, 2014 9:06 a.m. ET

An air-traffic control outage last week across parts of four Western states stemmed from a software glitch sparked by the flight of a single, high-altitude U-2 Pentagon reconnaissance plane in the region, according to two people familiar with the details.

Preliminary information indicates that the problem—affecting roughly 500 flights in and out of Los Angeles International Airport alone—resulted from the temporary shutdown of a key element of the Federal Aviation Administration's ongoing, $40 billion traffic-control modernization effort, these people said.

The chain of events started with a flight plan that resulted in an improper computer code for the U-2's flight, according to one person, apparently prompting malfunctions that overwhelmed the computer system.

The system ultimately went into overload and shut itself down as a precautionary measure.

The FAA implemented a fix quickly after the incident, but on Sunday an FAA spokeswoman didn't have any comment about the specific cause.

Last Wednesday's incident illustrates the vulnerability of the core portion of the modernized traffic-control network, a component dubbed ERAM, or En Route Automation Modernization, which already has faced a variety of budget and performance setbacks. Both primary and backup ERAM computer systems were affected.

The role of the U-2, a 1950's-vintage spy plane able to fly as high as 70,000 feet, was reported earlier by NBC News.

The temporary ERAM shutdown at an FAA facility in Palmdale, Calif., disrupted travel plans for tens of thousands of travelers, at its height prompting a nationwide halt to takeoffs of all flights headed to the region.

It took several hours to sort out the problem and resume normal air traffic to and from the busy hub at Los Angeles, as well as fields throughout southern and central California, southern Nevada, southwest Utah and western Arizona.

At the time, FAA officials didn't elaborate on the technical problems associated with the delays except to say that for about an hour the Palmdale center couldn't accept flights traversing its coverage area.

Considered the backbone of the nationwide traffic-control upgrade, ERAM replaces a 1970s-era hardware and software system written in now-obsolete programming language and used at many of the 20 "en route" control centers that generally handle air traffic at altitudes over 10,000 feet.

ERAM began in 2002 as a $2.1 billion contract awarded to Lockheed Martin Corp.

But it already is three years late—the FAA now expects it to be installed in all the centers by late this year—and the cost has ballooned by $330 million.

Congressional investigators have criticized the FAA for seemingly focusing only on getting ERAM operational with its "core functionality," while leaving important and complex safety and capacity "enhancements" for later.

Those enhancements include a flight plan "trajectory modeler" designed to project aircraft flight paths, help planes avoid colliding and help controllers ensure accurate handoffs when planes move from one section of airspace to the next. Another enhancement is a "fusion" function that allows for the integration of multiple radars and satellite-based information for controllers. ERAM also will require adjustments once the FAA activates the bulk of its so-called for NextGen initiative, a satellite-based navigation and traffic-control network eventually intended to give pilots greater responsibility for determining routes and maintaining safe distances from nearby traffic.

Nevertheless, ERAM is seen as a big improvement by those air-traffic controllers who now use it. It has fully redundant backups, so it shouldn't lose functions when the main system conks out or needs maintenance. The system can process data from more ground-based radars. It offers a tool called "conflict probe," which looks ahead 20 minutes in time and calculates—based on two planes' altitude, speed and direction—if they are going to get too close. But that function is less sophisticated than the "trajectory modeler," which does the same thing more broadly and has had mixed results on rollout.

The ERAM system hasn't suffered exactly this type of malfunction before, according to people familiar with its history. As part of their investigation, FAA officials are expected, among other things, to examine if the level of traffic contributed to exceeding system's computing capacity.

The Air Force currently operates a fleet of more than 30 U-2S models, all delivered in the 1980s, which can take up to one hour to reach maximum cruising altitude. When flying over U.S. airspace, crews typically file flight plans with the FAA to ensure the spy planes maintain safe separation from each other and all other aircraft.

Nice find.

Not exactly new news but interesting still.

It only took us 40 years to develop an equivelent to the Hind. Still, the Battlehawk looks quite beastly.

Ah, so Ukraine still has a number of Mig-29s left.

So Iran is going to film its own version of Top Gun with IRIAF F-14s and we have a fake carrier prop piece/target.

Like to see some fake VF-1s thrown on aswell.

After the Iranian A300 incident, I assume nothing short of being fired upon would have actually gotten a response from a US destroyer.

Plus the Fencer (maybe an Su-24MR) wasn't carrying anything on it apparently. Read a story somewhere of a Tu-95 buzzing the mast of an aircraft carrier once also.

An Su-24 crew got bored apparently.

http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2014/04/15/russia-fighter-jet-buzzed-us-destroyer

The Pentagon says a Russian fighter jet made several passes at low altitude near a US destroyer on the weekend in the Black Sea.

Source

AAP

UPDATED 36 MINS AGO

A Russian fighter jet made several passes at low altitude near a US destroyer cruising in international waters in the Black Sea at the weekend, the Pentagon says, branding it "provocative and unprofessional".

The incident comes amid the most serious rupture in relations between Moscow and the West since the Cold War over Russia's actions in Ukraine.

Colonel Steven Warren, a Pentagon spokesman, said: "On April 12, a Russian Su-24 made numerous close-range, low-altitude passes in the vicinity of the USS Donald Cook, while the Cook was conducting operations in international waters in the western Black Sea.

"The aircraft did not respond to multiple queries and warnings from Donald Cook. The event ended without incident after approximately 90 minutes."

He added: "This provocative and unprofessional Russian action is inconsistent with international protocols and previous agreements on a professional interaction between our militaries."

The plane "appeared to be unarmed", Warren said.

It looks interesting but I'll stay reserved until I finally see it. Luc Besson films tend to intrigue me. Loved Leon:The Professional and The Fifth Element.

With the exception of older school stuff at times, my anime watching has sort of fallen off the map due to RL. Been trying to complete Attack on Titan and Maoyu.

Hmm dat Black Widow.

Not certain if this was posted already but Russia appears to be working on a successor to the Foxhound.

http://theaviationist.com/2014/03/05/mig-41-mig-31-replacement/

By Jacek Siminski

The Russian Armed Forces are working on the Mig-41, a new supersonic fighter based on the Mig-31 Foxhound.

According to the famous experimental pilot Anatoliy Kvochur, the MiG-41 is to be capable of reaching speeds above Mach 4, even Mach 4,3. That would make the plane faster than the (now retired) American SR-71 Blackbird. Currently, the Foxhound is capable of flying at speeds of Mach 2.8.

Nevertheless, while developing a Mach 4+ replacement for the Foxhound, the Russians will to continue the modernization program of the Foxhounds, overhauling over 100 aircraft.

MiG-31 is an interceptor based on MiG-25 Foxbat, with a combat radius of 720 km. A group of four Foxhounds is able to control an area that is 1000km wide; 190 MiG-31s are currently in service within the Russian Air Force, 100 of those are still flyable.

Jacek Siminski for TheAviationist

I didn't want to throw $30 on a demo so I just watched a playthrough. Kojima's release date trolling continues but I'm going to bank on a December release at the VERY earliest and that's still wishful thinking on my part.

Another interesting question is can a Generation 5 aircraft be non-stealthy? It seems among many that if it isn't stealth, it can't be considered 5th gen but a 4++.

My concern with the F-35 is that in most combat scenarios where it would be called into action, it may likely have to carry external stores.

Well, there is a kind of technological battle going on in terms of how different countries approach aircraft defense.. The US likes stealth, and hiding in plain sight. In comparison, Russian planes don't seem to be that worried about passive stealth, but tend to throw more money into jamming techniques, and other assorted types of ECM and ECCM.

Stealth only gets you so far, really, and there are always going to be methods to see through it. If stealth and radar jamming techniques get good enough? We're going to be right back to IR missiles, because until someone develops a total cloaking device that covers the entire EM spectrum, no amount of fancy ductwork and cooling camoflage is going to mask the heat of a jet engine.

The Russians really lacked the sophisticated radar technology of the West so they put more emphasis on IR detection. It's probably why they still emphasis agility in their aircraft. With systems like the SA-21 and future S-500, stealth won't be nearly as effective as it was 15 years ago.