War Is Boring

To the contrary, the strategic importance of trains specifically caused the Great War, and basically plunged Europe into 40 years of total war conflict. https://medium.com/war-is-boring/massive-rail-networks-made-world-war-…

Here is Mark Shuttleworth training using one: https://miro.medium.com/max/3300/1*81CK-yP7BzV8pJHDa9QtLw.jpeg Source: https://medium.com/war-is-boring/soviet-cosmonauts-carried-a-shotgun-i…

"A few of the big brands are working on the systems, so I don't see why we won't see it on the roads in the next 5 years." Already here in the Australian outback: - https://medium.com/war-is-boring/giant-robotic-mining-trucks-love-the-… - http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-04-25/computer-controlled-trucks-takin… - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-30098772

David Axe has a great, thorough writeup on how F-35 became the worst, most expensive, plane in our arsenal and will probably just get our pilots killed. https://medium.com/war-is-boring/fd-how-the-u-s-and-its-allies-got-stu… I was extra mad that they're moving to get rid of the A-10's in favor of this garbage. Originally learned about them with the A-10 Tank Killer games on PC. Later read how they shredded the opponents' vehicles in one campaign after another, even recent ones, despite being highly exposed to enemy fire. They're beasts. And that's just one example of something that does its job more effectively and at better cost than F-35... which is also being decommissioned to support F-35 program. There's quite a few more that each could've been updated with less money than F-35 took.

Outside of military technology? Clearly, you have not been following the the JSF (Joint Strike Fighter) program. Stealth, multi-purpose, VTOL fighter-jet, able to replace most combat aircraft for all three branches of service. Oops... https://medium.com/war-is-boring/for-america-s-f-35-stealth-fighter-th…

If you stopped before this line, you really should go back and read the rest: > That’s the story, but the story is mostly myth. I also really recommend this related post on Medium, about Valiant Hearts, a really great game from last year: https://medium.com/war-is-boring/valiant-hearts-is-a-fantastic-world-w…

The F-35's issues have been ascribed to the Marine Corps' demand for VTOL. https://medium.com/war-is-boring/fd-how-the-u-s-and-its-allies-got-stu… The best thing you can say about the F-35 is that it's a perfect example of design-by-committee.

A lot of what's made the F-35 such a disaster is the Marines' obsession with VTOL/STOVL capability. That requirement and the desire for commonality between the A/B/C models meant that all F-35s had to be designed around a fuselage wide enough to accommodate the lifting fan of the F-35B. That had a direct impact on the reduced maneuverability of the aircraft, pilot visibility, etc. War is Boring over at Medium has a lot of great coverage of the F-35 program and all the huge missteps and disasters along the way. https://medium.com/war-is-boring (When I've recommended them before, I've had someone point out that their coverage is quite biased against the F-35. This is true. That bias does not mean, however, that they're wrong).

It was probably this one: https://medium.com/war-is-boring/5c95d45f86a5 A truly excellent article for everyone interested in fighter jets, military procurement, government contracts, national security, whether the US could win a war with China, or just really good yarns about really stupid decisions.

Following up on the Medium article[1], as there seemed to be a bit of interest on these autonomous trucks. [1] - https://medium.com/war-is-boring/bed4b2b5a70a

>>>>Dude, I'm Ukrainian Well, your country being invaded by an incompetent horde of brutal assholes surely influences your ability to dispassionately assess the strategic situation, and the motivations of said assholes. I can understand it's hard to hear that the people slaughtering your countrymen aren't 100% at fault...more like 95% at fault, with the other 5% being sustained multi-decade provocation from....the country that is giving you every weapon imaginable to repulse the murderers. But Ukrainians are dying due to fallout from a chain of events initiated 15+ years ago, by DC think tankers with an irrational willingness to antagonize a Great Power on the opposite side of the planet. >>>>They were discussing who would they have preferred to work with in future Ukrainian government. What exactly is so scandalous here in your opinion? I would argue it wasn't a conversation of "wouldn't it be nice if" but them making decisions about who would be the leadership of Ukraine, which isn't something that should be decided by US State Department officials. >>>With your background you should understand better than most how modern propaganda works. These days we call it "information operations" and "psychological operations". >>>> People who participated still waiting for they paycheck, where do they apply? Don't be naive. The bottom-rank locals in any revolution don't get a paper trail directly back to the US government. Most people who are getting suitcases of US dollars…

Rational, civilized, allowed, even demanded and encouraged form of a rite of passage, without risking his life. And, not always, but mostly without ruining one's health. In the past, it would have been war. Back in 1914, during the Battle of the Fronts, they were gladly mowed down by the thousands. https://medium.com/war-is-boring/sebastian-junger-knows-why-young-men-… Of course, you can't keep wasting countless workers, often trained at great expense. Nor do you have to. Modern wars don't need armies of millions. Oh, and it's profitable. Just as it always has been. Be it in business or in war. The demand of youth to prove themselves meets an offer to do so. "War is rich old men protecting their property by sending middle and lower class young men to die. It's always been that way." George Carlin In peacetime, it is simply more economically rational to win glory on the battlefield called The Office. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0386676/ Sure, they make you do it, but you want it too, right?

Over time the majority of the best militaries will be shooting F35s out of the sky with 40-year-old fighters. That's assuming the F35s can even take off, given how they need an ALIS download before they can fly, and that's dependent on a working Internet, and assuming they don't break up in flight due to excessive G-forces, and assuming the pilot doesn't have to eject, because lightweight pilots have a 23% chance of dying during ejection because of the heavy helmet. And assuming the F35 didn't run out of fuel before the battle, because it doesn't have enough range for real missions. So yeah, I'm saying all those militaries buying F35s are either stupid or desperate. Turkey won't be buying F35s because they bought missiles from the Russians. This is going to be a very good thing for Turkey's national security in the long run; they just don't know it yet. If the following reports are to be believed, the F35 is overdesigned, overpriced, doesn't work, and cannot be made to work. It's a piece of absolute crap. Are all these reports…

The frightening thing about an intelligence officer pitching you is the moment that it happens and feelings of fear, being overwhelmed (Is this really happening? Who are they? Where are they from? I thought they were X but really they are Y? Why me? Why now? What do they want? Will they hurt me or my loved ones if I don't agree? Are they recording this? Who else can I not trust? What do they know about me? How much do they know about me? How did they find out about XYZ? Do they know about my other thing? How can I stop this? Do I want to stop this? Can I trust them? Etc etc etc) If the person being pitched can compose themselves and buy time to think there is nearly always a way out. Despite what people think intelligence pitching usually has an element of bluff. A handler making a pitch deep down knows this. If the person being leveraged can find a way to call the bluff (and fight the fear of blackmail) usually the handler will back off - despite what they may say they might do ("We will expose you"). It's generally too risky for the handler to get involved in games and threats of exposing the blackmail evidence. Afterall, they want to continue in their job and aren't gonna risk damaging their own cover, career etc by trying to burn a source who rejected them. Most pitches fail. Plus a person willing to fight their fear and run the risk of the blackmail compromise being exposed isn't likely to be someone who you are going to easily be able to control. The KGB trying to…

No, no, no, the comedy tank of the era was the Sherman Tank. https://medium.com/war-is-boring/the-m-4-sherman-tank-was-hell-on-whee… Favourite quote: Hence, the Sherman’s grim nickname—Ronson, like the cigarette lighter, because “it lights up the first time, every time.” Everything was wrong about it and the Russians that got given these on Lend Lease knew that they had been given a death sentence. Aforementioned article just touches the surface, the barrel was too short, the 'tech' for being able to shoot on the move did not work and you needed five of the things to take out one German tank, four as cannon fodder (complete with the guys inside) and one to sneak around the back to get that German tank whilst it was busy taking out the other four. The 5 Shermans vs 1 Panzer myth is much disputed however where there is smoke there is fire and I would not want to be in one. Plus, by the time that the Americans rocked up to fight WW2 - which was late to the party - the Germans had run out of oil so their tanks were running on recycled coal dust extract rather than the diesel fuel required. The shoddy design of the Sherman Tank was no matter though, the 'allies' were expected to pay for these useless behemoths after the war so this was the military-industrial-complex and built-in-obsolescence at its finest. Meanwhile the Soviets had a much more serious war on their hands so their hardware wasn't about making a quick buck. It had to be fit for…

There's a definition nuance I don't follow. When https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_of_Costa_Rica says "Costa Rica does not officially have a military" and "abolished the military of Costa Rica", that makes me think it has no military. When http://www.coha.org/costa-rica-an-army-less-nation-in-a-problem-prone-… says "Without a formal military force, Costa Rica had no need to regularly invest in naval vessels, warplanes, or tanks, which typically make up the heavy equipment of any traditional armed forces." and "It is important to consider that a state that has no military is by nature nonviolent.", that makes me think it has no military. The same with http://articles.latimes.com/2013/dec/15/opinion/la-oe-barash-costa-ric… which says "Henceforth, Costa Rica would take the almost unheard-of step of renouncing its military." I don't understand why I should believe it has a military. At best we have different ideas of what a "military" means. You mention "gendarmarie and other paramilitary forces" as a type of military. SWAT team are paramilitary forces, no? Would it be fair to say that Los Angeles has its own military? What about paramilitary support for anti-poaching and other conservation efforts? The essay at https://medium.com/war-is-boring/costa-rica-doesnt-have-a-military-not… attempts to convince me that the UEI is a "small military force in all but name", and that "the distinction between police and military…

The technology to make quiet helicopters has been around for a long time.[0] Unfortunately its military utility seems to have prevented it from being apllied in commercial aviation until recently. That said, the commercial sector is making progress.[1] If NYC implemented some sort of noise reduction regime and/or retrofit program it would help. Whatever they have now probably isn't aggressive enough. >Each day, hundreds of tourists are recruited off the street, whisked past a light security “wanding,” with no X-ray machine or background check, and loaded onto an idling helicopter with no barrier between passenger and pilot. The author must have taken that scene in The Dictator to heart.[2] Seriously though, doing some invasive TSA-style searches won't help; all bad actors need in that situation is their bodies. The best defense in this case is the instincts of the pilots. [0] https://medium.com/war-is-boring/the-cia-built-a-special-helicopter-to… [1] http://www.wired.com/2010/02/eurocopter-moves-one-step-closer-to-whisp… [2] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JnszgkE3O8g

So ignoring the transparent featured-posts/content model (ie: used by CSS Tricks) which AdBlockers don't have a way to block, there's also the donation model (doesn't scale well, usually). I've donated to many sites that use donations as their primary means of staying afloat and many of these sites have lasted years with this as their model of revenue. The users of the site understand that the site might live on a month-to-month basis (although surplus from one month is generally put into savings in case a month falls short) and if they wish for the site to stick up, someone's gotta be forking over some money. My favorite local FM radio station also runs off of donations/sponsorships and does not play ads between songs. They've been in the radio business for well over 40 years. It can work if enough value is provided that people are willing to donate money. Quite frankly - there isn't a strong business in presenting information, because on the internet, everyone has the means to present information with many being specialists in their field and doing it for free because they enjoy educating others about what they do. Sure, I can pay for some write up on the recent CERN study from a journalist from some well-known publisher with at least some level of professional journalism. Or I can get it from one of the CERN scientists who wrote about the impacts of their findings for the "general layman" in one of their personal blogs for free. I have a pretty high level of respect…

Disclaimer: I was a Shadow 200 TUAV pilot in the US Army from 2001-2005, and yes, I spent a year in Iraq (OIF II circa 2003-2004) where I got 480+ combat flight hours. You basically wrote the exact same comment I was about to write with striking similarity. For reference, this is a 18 year old me in the back of a Shadow GCS at Ft Huachuca, AZ, where all Shadow pilots are trained: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground_control_station The military never uses the word "drone", but prefers UAV aka Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, just as you mentioned. For what it is worth, this new navy thing isn't really that novel. The latest generation of Tomahawk cruise missiles do something very similar. You launch several of them into a battle theater and they circle around sending / receiving target information and telemetry between each other and the control stations. See: https://medium.com/war-is-boring/u-s-marines-can-now-call-in-tomahawk-…

> Lockheed’s F-117 stealth fighter was developed in a breakneck 30 months by a close-knit team of 50 engineers led by an experienced fighter designer named Alan Brown and overseen by seven government employees. Brown said he exercised strict control over the design effort, nixing any proposed feature of the plane that might add cost or delay or detract from its main mission. > The F-35, by contrast, is being designed by some 6,000 engineers led by a rotating contingent of short-tenure managers, with no fewer than 2,000 government workers providing oversight. The sprawling JSF staff, partially a product of the design’s complexity, has also added to that complexity like a bureaucratic feedback loop, as every engineer or manager scrambles to add his or her specialty widget, subsystem or specification to the plane’s already complicated blueprints … and inexperienced leaders allow it. For those interested in a deeper look at why the F-35 is so, well, F'd, this is a great read: https://medium.com/war-is-boring/fd-how-the-u-s-and-its-allies-got-stu… It basically comes down to stupid design considerations forced upon the program by the various branches(mainly the Marine Corps) and how easily blinded Congress was by the notion of a (supposedly cheaper) one-size-fits-all solution.

For me, that was a moment when I realized that the received wisdom about military things can be just completely wrong. I had considered myself to be reasonably informed about the F-35, and how "everyone knows" it's a boondoggle. I think this started with a long-form article I read in 2013, "How the U.S. and Its Allies Got Stuck with the World’s Worst New Warplane": https://medium.com/war-is-boring/fd-how-the-u-s-and-its-allies-got-stu… Here is the HN discussion at the time, full of confident assertions that the F-35 is useless: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6211029 Fast forward to this year, when Israel's F-35s operated over Iran with total impunity. Not a single plane lost AFAIK.

Sukarno (no last name), first president of Indonesia. https://medium.com/war-is-boring/the-cia-and-kgb-tried-to-blackmail-th…

It might be a bad look on the athletes country if they were to find nudes or something, for lack of a better example. Blackmail in general. Sometimes that doesn’t matter though, such as the Sukarno sextape. https://medium.com/war-is-boring/the-cia-and-kgb-tried-to-blackmail-th…

Apparently the CIA also got in on the action, producing a fake sex tape of Sukarno, in order to kick off a revolution (to oust Sukarno). More details here (along with the KBG story): https://medium.com/war-is-boring/the-cia-and-kgb-tried-to-blackmail-th…

40 years ago, The US Coast Guard used to have a pigeon powered sensor to detect sailors lost at sea. https://medium.com/war-is-boring/that-time-the-u-s-coast-guard-had-a-p…

Well the original plan would have put it as the first one in against a peer adversary [0]. The rate of attrition against '70s/'80s vintage air defence would have been horrific, can you imagine what it would be like now? [0] https://medium.com/war-is-boring/an-a-10-pilot-could-hope-to-last-two-…

this seems like one of those things where it's just ubiquitous, so of course Terrorists would use it. like Toyota trucks [1] [1] https://medium.com/war-is-boring/the-toyota-pickup-truck-is-the-war-ch…

An interesting foot note of history, the FAL was nearly the US battle rifle: https://medium.com/war-is-boring/the-fn-fal-was-almost-americas-battle…

A lot of nutritional deficiency doesn't "come" from the plant, rather, the processing/refining of the plant before consumption Example https://medium.com/war-is-boring/eating-too-much-rice-almost-sank-the-…

they didn't even make the content. The original article is https://medium.com/war-is-boring/eating-too-much-rice-almost-sank-the-…