History AwesomeButImpractical / Military

** Another reason the B1-B was reverted to a conventional bomber was because the "language" that was spoken by the internals of a nuclear bomb was somehow never recognized by the instruments in a B1-B. Therefore, the jet would never have been able to arm a nuclear package before dropping it. An unarmed nuclear bomb may as well be a rather large paperweight.

* The King of Siam tried to give Abe Lincoln a herd of war elephants as a gift. He turned it down, obviously.

* [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tessarakonteres The Tessarakonteres]] is an [[OlderThanFeudalism ancient]] example. It was a ship with 4,000 rowers and the maneuverability of building.

*** To add to the impracticality, imagine if this thing was sent into battle and could fight against the enemy. One, you'd need a lot of fuel to move the tank-plane, its ammo, and the fuel itself into the air and keep it there (the latter most is the reason why rockets can't use rocket fuel as a constant source of propulsion for more than reaching orbit). Two, the enemy could see the thing coming a mile away and start firing before it even got there. Three, if the wind shifted suddenly, the tank-plane would be sent crashing down. Four, aiming would be ''VERY'' difficult. Finally, if the cannon fires, the recoil could be powerful enough to sent the tank-plane crashing to the ground.

**** This troper can't believe it didn't occur to anybody to make a railgun design with expendable rails included in the ammunition magazine; the warped rails are ejected after each firing, similar to shell casings.
***** It's not an otherworldly idea, but an educated guess says that it would be HIDEOUSLY expensive, considering how the rails need to be made out of superconductive materials.
***** Probably because it's also the fact that you'd have to CARRY EXTRA RAILS increasing the number of parts that you'd have to lug around everywhere you went with the thing.

** The F-35, whose capabilities and supposed cost effectiveness played a large part in the F-22's limited production, will cost more per-unit than the F-22 and won't have all the capabilities it was expected to have. An analysis based on what data is publically available, done by a think tank in Australia, suggests that it won't even be able to go head-to-head with Russia's (projected) primary export, the Sukhoi Su-35 and will be no match at all for the PAK FA and J-20. Lockheed estimates that they will be able to produce 1-2 F-35s each month. An early estimate says Sukhoi will be able to make 4-5 Su-35s in the same time. NATO forces in Libya may have dodged a bullet as the Libyan Air Force had 12 Flanker-E's on order.

** This is mainly because Germany was pushing the envelope in tank design, and the designs were incomplete and very, very new. Normally designs get prototyped and tested and bugfixed more thoroughly, but when there's a war on, corners get cut. Had the Panther been a more mature design and were more factories specially tooled to produce it earlier it would have mitigated the above problems somewhat. The Tiger, though, was practically CompensatingForSomething, the tank version. (The Tiger II was even worse.)

* [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_elephant War Elephants]] tend to panic in battle, trampling friend or foe with indifference. Impracticality is [[OlderThanDirt older than dirt]]. [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_elephant White Elephant]] has become an idiom for impractical & burdensome.

** The F-35, whose capabilities and supposed cost effectiveness played a large part in the F-22's limited production, will cost more per-unit than the F-22 and hasn't even entered production yet. In addition, the F-35B STOVL variant has experienced considerable issues and will likely be cancelled before production.

*** Actually, you're only prohibitted from putting WMDs in orbit, kinetic weaponry - [[KineticWeaponsAreJustBetter which is arguably the most attractive and most practical]] candidate for a strategic orbital weapon - is technically fair game

* [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_elephant War Elephants]] tend to panic in battle, trampling friend or foe with indifference. Impracticality is [[OlderThanDirt older than dirt]].

* [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_elephant War Elephants]] tend panic in battle, trampling friend or foe with indifference. Impracticality is [[OlderThanDirt older than dirt]].

* [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tessarakonteres The Tessarakonteres]] is an [[OlderThenFeudalism ancient]] example. It was a ship with 4,000 rowers and the maneuverability of building.

** Actually it was Cost Effectiveness that drove the early retirement of the F-14. The Navy wanted to deal with only one powerplant, therefore lowering cost. But more importantly, it took a whole day to change out the engines on a F-14, it only takes a couple of hours to change out the engine on a F-18. Man-hours is money. In fact if the Navy wanted, they could have upgraded the F-14 for attack roles.

* Unlike in Call of Duty and the like, Shotguns have no place in a real world battlefield, due to them only being useful only up close and assault rifles and the like working from far and medium range, while knives and handguns are used for rare close quarters scenarios. Shotguns also have much longer reloads and hold less ammo than standard weapons.
** The US has always issued combat shotguns, either for close quarters warfare or breeching. This has been the case since WWI. It was such an issue that the German high command claimed that their use in combat was akin to a war crime.