My Rant (Military-esque)

Hehe, ImagiNe, I have nothing to say. I'll have to admit that you completely "schooled" me there, per se. However, you mentioned the M-16A3, I never said much about that gun ^_^ I think that's a great concept and gun as far as I can see.

It may just be my personal preferance, but in a war I'd rather have durability/stability than high tech.

 

Haha frus! I just thought I'd share my experience with it. I'm no weapons expert so bleh... Anyway I mentioned the A3 because it has the same characteristics as the A2 with the exception of the selector lever. The A3 fires full automatic.

Of course! There is a reason why the AK-47 is #1 and has been for a looooooooooong time. The 7.62 round is amazing. Just firing blank NATO 7.62x51 mm rounds is a loud as small concussion grenades.

 

Yeah

And to other posters, it -is- the fact of how it destroys missles. Yes, I give you that they don't wan impenetrable countries. However it's a double edged sword, why should we even need these defenses if we have these massive weapons of destruction? Take away the cataclysmic weapons and we won't need to make ourselves impenetrable, it's a simple case of them wanting to be able to hit us back (or hit us first).

Back to the original point. Let us say for the sake of argument we have a missle defense system in Germany, and someone sends a nuke to Poland. Now, they can shoot out that nuke but many people have this fallacy that the nuke will implode upon them over their country. Which again, is irrational. Not many missle-strike nukes are remote detonated, they're on some form of timer or go off at a certain destination radius (correct me if I'm wrong).

Like I said, if even ONE of the dozens of detonators if but a fraction of a milisecond off, the uranium/plutonium will almost never go off correctly unless you're just absolutely lucky. While it still poses a real threat, it can be much less severe than it going off over some random country.

And in the process of shooting it down, I have one thing to say: Lasers. Yes, it may sound rubbish and too sci-fi but we have (the US) something like this almost out of prototype stage already. Basically what it does, when a missle (or whatever) is shooting through the air, it auto-tracks it and shoots a laser at it; destroying the propulsion system (or the entire missle, but again it most likely won't cause a nuclear implosion either way).

You can't say the missle can outrun this, this laser is going the speed of light. So unless this thing is matching that or something close to it, the laser will definitely get it a good majority of the time. Just a quick fact, we have a plane (and more on the way) that has a giant ball in front of it. It shoots a laser at either ground or air targets up to I -think- 15 kilometers away; a jet at max range has but a fraction of a second to respond to a strike from this plane.

Pretty darn cool

 

I'm skeptical of any laser system which says it can shoot down ballistic missiles. It’s been tossed around for so long and our lasers just haven’t developed to a point where they can do this efficiently or reliably. A common counter to most laser ideas is the ability to make the missiles spin while in flight which reduces the damage done to any one area. But if you've read about any recent breakthroughs I’d be interested to see them.

Then again I’m skeptical of the Missile defense system in general being very effective in the unlikely event of an attack especially since any country which is capable of a coordinated missile attack would be able to field countermeasures. However i admit there's probally alot the military hasn't revealed about this

 

Trust me, the military has some pretty advanced systems that the general public doesn't know about and throughout history military technology has been many years ahead of what is available to the civilian population. I'm really not at liberty to say more.

 

Simple question assuming the technology to track a missle is a given, who is going to launch a missle that can be tracked whether or not it can be destroyed? Even if the missle hits its target the counter strike is going to be so devestating that nobody is going to launch a missle in the first place.

I tend to think of missle defense as a waste of money simply because it is focused on something that has an extremely low chance of happening. I would much rather the money be put into intelligence and special ops too prevent the situation from ever getting far enough in the first place.

 

In the logical sense, I see little point for it as well for personal defense (in terms of the US). It think we should have means to protect ourselves from nukes and missles in the case that our military/spec ops/foreign forces can not stop them; however an entire network of missle defenses I find not necessary.

Back to the first point I said though, it doesnt logically make sense to make a network of missle defense for ourselves. We know, despite what crazy theorists say that India, Russia, China and so forth will not send nukes at us. A few reasons...

-If Russia/China/India/Whatever send nukes at us (or an ally) we (and allies) will send so many back that we will just destroy each other completely. AKA Mutually Assured Destruction (M.A.D.) No nation leader with half a brain will launch nukes at us or other nuclear-infested countries. Iran an exception.

-If China tries to nuke us, they'd shatter their own economy. We make up well over 75% of China's economy, I think past 85% if I'm not mistaken. By destroying us, whether invasion or missle bombardment (nuclear or not) they destroy their personal economy.

-Russia has little reason to anyways.

So, like I said previously. I think we should make means to defend our mainland (and Hawaii xP) from Nuclear/Missle strikes. However an entire network across our nation / Europe is hardly necessary.

 

Principles of MAD no longer apply I'm sorry to say Kerwyn.

They applied before satellite imagery. The only thing keeping us from nuclear war at this very moment is the fact that there's third party nuclear...er...parties.

 

As for the laser your talking about what they don't tell you is that it needs so much power that they have to fit it inside a C-5 galaxy (i think i might i gotten that wrong.) along with several generators... Its not full proof by any means and its still in the testing phases.

 

Well, Jshep power supply is the biggest problem for advancing our technology to some of the stuff you see in like sci-fi and stuff. We just either don't have anything that can generate enough power or make a compact enough power supply. If we did there are a lot of things we would probably be capable of doing.

 

Yeah I mean I've seen the laser hes talking about and it takes up two entire buildings just to power it up. There is no way they are going to get that thing up and running any time soon.

 

Link or it doesn't exist.
Largest I've seen on discovery was about 15 meters long. Also: who cares how large the generators are? They don't have any weight in space. As for ground based versions: plenty of room. Further, why put one in a plane? Those can't even keep up with a missile.

 

there is still mass in space and if your generators are too large steering can be a very big pain in the buttocks

 

At least those buttocks will be weightless. And isn't the ISS even larger then a few buildings by now? :/

 

You also have to consider actually escaping the earths atmosphere and gravity to get into space in the first place and the more weight you have the more expensive and harder it is to do.

I mean we could probably colonize Mars and the Moon but the problem is getting all that stuff up there and the amount it costs to do so.

 

Well the plane wouldn't have to keep up with it persay it would just have to be able to see it and direct the laser towards it. I'm not exactly sure what their intending on putting the laser in would be able to do that fast enough, but then again who knows.

 

Here is a video from Discovery that compares the AK-47 and M16.

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The consensus is basically that both are good rifles but have their strengths and weaknesses. The M16 is far more accurate but the rounds aren't as powerful as the Ak-47's. The AK-47 on the other hand has a little bit more powerful rounds but is very inaccurate compared to the M-16.

 

They don't go over the fact that the M16 also has a bad habit of jamming up and not working as it should. While the AK-47 has the habit of always working and being very reliable. The reason why a lot of soldiers like the AK47 is because its more durable. If its rusted down to the firing mechanism it will still shoot accurately. Where the M16 is going to jam a lot.

 

I've already explained this Jshep89, I got a opinion from a a friend of mine that is a real soldier currently serving that has had tons of combat experience with the M16 and he says it rarely jams at all and that he loves the rifle.

 

Well, I have had some opinions thrown my way from several Iraqi and Afghanistan veterans, and they say the opposite. They tell me often that in combat it's hard to keep clean when on the move, and that the AK-47 is much more reliable. Not only that but even the process of cleaning the AK-47 is easier. The M-16 you gotta pull that pin out and take the gun apart. With the AK-47 you don't need to go through the same hassle. I own a semi-automatic version of the AK-47 and its pretty easy to keep clean, and I can always rely on it to shoot. If you want I can pull up the history of the gun, and you'll see for your self that the M-16 has always had a reputation for jamming up and being unreliable.