Comments by "William Cox" (@WildBillCox13) on "Destiny" channel.

  1. "Get there fustest with the mostest." -Attributed to several different Federal and Confederate generals. The idea of a tank is to get a gun to where it's needed as quick as you can. If it has a little armor, to protect ammo and crew from small arms fire, that's a plus. Wheels are a bad idea, because, if you only have wheels, the enemy knows right where you'll be: on a road. That simplifies his job considerably. Ultimately we consider first the Hovertank, and, second, the Gundam. Hovertanks are a great idea, and we have the power density to drive one, but an aerial vehicle (which a hovertank is) can't be well armored. And maneuverability/inertia is a problematic issue. Gundams, as pointed out by Nick Moran (who's got considerable "tankee" experience irl AND in armored warefare gaming), have a ground pressure problem. A 60 ton tank with wide tracks might have a 13-17lb/sf contact pressure, allowing it to both drive and turn without digging in too deep. A Gundam, on the other hand, might have a contact pressure in the 100lb/sf range, which means it would be easily caught in soft ground, muck, or water hazard. For a pure aircraft to operate like a tank, it would need hovering+loitering ability, something unlikely to achieve, considering other weight fraction needs (such as guns, missiles, and armor). Plus, it would be more visible to both naked eye and RaDAR/LASER illumination. Combining regimes is also a bust, because a flying, walking, cannon and missile armed Gundam gives up on every need in order to accommodate its other specialized capabilities. And then there's the whole ground pressure thing. And moving parts. What dooms the Gundam is that more moving parts equals more down time (more parts wearing out, needing replaced, and a nightmare for logistics). My Sci-Fi supersoldiers wear what I call A.C.I.K. (Augmented Capability Infantry Kit)*, based on cloned muscles, carbolith (carbon epoxy poured over graphite rod carapace segments), and Maity-Kondrite biological power units. It runs on a thick, sugary, combo of Sugar, Water, Caramel Coloring, and Caffeine, plus electrolytes, I call "Pepsi Smart". It's small (about 7' tall and 500lb), maneuverable, well protected, and heavily armed with a weapon that needs no ammunition. This ACIK is the focus of my various "Red Platoon" short stories. *Copyright 2003 WBC
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  2. DARPA has taken submissions for a supersonic submarine project. Like the Rossiyan Shkval Torpedo, it will be a jet or rocket, traveling at incredible speed through a bubble of . . . steam. Having watched the Shkval explanations, I can only predict it will be too bumpy a ride for humans to endure. This does not rule out drone or autonomous submarine bots. My thought is that, if you can do that-move a 10,000 ton submarine at supersonic speed by means of rocket propulsion through seawater, you could move it faster and cheaper through the air. Flying sub ahoy! <Runway attendant> No! It's coming in . . . for a landing!?!?!"
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  3. "Caviation" is "Cavitation" as in "Cavity". When the prop blades revolve at certain speed settings (in RPM), or during specific maneuvers, such as high speed turns, they create bubbles. This formation of bubbles wastes propulsive energy and, worse, is noisy, the one thing no submarine wants to be.
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  4. And the front of a ship is a "Bow" as in "Bow wow", not "Bow" as in "Tie a bow around it".
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  5. It's a miss. Alien civilizations are using mass drivers to accelerate "planet killer" projectiles. Like other projectiles, however, some miss their targets. Others are shattered into various fragments by antimissile defenses. Our visitor could be either state. Alternately, consider how many supernova fragments are spinning through the universe. After 14 billion years of short-lived giant stars exploding, there's a whopping great lot of supernova garbage out there.
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  6. US tons, also called Short tons, are 2000 pounds each. The Metric ton is 2200 pounds. The British Long ton is a bit more, 2240 pounds.
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  7. The Seaview! Admiral Nelson! Captain Crane! Chief Sharkey. The body harvesting scandal. The giant seaweed monster the crew later twisted up and got flogged on . . . it was a simpler time, nothin' on our minds except Raquel Welch's floatation devices . . . well, those and alien invasions, supermicrobes, mad scientist blunders, and the terrible whiplash we flight crewmen got every time the Flying Sub hit the water!
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  8. China spends only 5/16 of our budget on arms. The question is: how much cheaper is a Chinese Destroyer, or J-20, compared to its USA equivalent? The technological edge goes to the USAF and USN, but can the Chinese build enough cheaper units to outlast, or overwhelm, us? We can intercept one missile with great surety. Even a dozen at a time, if everything is working correctly and the sensory environment isn't too cluttered with debris, explosions, and chaff. But 100? A thousand? How much of the price of, say, an F-35A goes to worker wages and healthcare and unemployment? How much of a J-20's cost is so subsumed? How much is kickbacks to influential advocates, or outright bribery, like Bofors, Lockheed, Vickers, and others have been caught at? China exists in a Culture of bribery, a fact which does not really make her any worse than anyone else, despite all the high falutin rhetoric. The thing is, that doubles the cost of any system that smacks of profit. And that culture-and its beneficiaries, is/are the real enemy of the people. "We can't build enough to defend ourselves, because the Congress and House are too greedy for those succulent under-the-table goodies we use to get their votes." Or the Party. Or the Minister of Transportation's third undersecretary and, if HE'S getting some, so should his boss-right? That's how graft, and campaign contributions, work. It all travels uphill, soi, you can bet that, if a lower level man in the procurement process is making a li'l somethin' somthin'; on the side, so his his every superior.
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