The Military Thread

Beards save lives? Hmmm, smells fishy, like a stale 01APR12 joke or something.

Happiness is zero-gee with a sinus cold.

Lol. The tone and content of the article makes it pretty obvious.

Who watches the watchmen?

Kino, the video they're talking about is the Veteran Inner Monologue one that Teufel posted a few pages back

All your safe space are belong to Trump

Ok for those who have played the Sniper Elite game. They made a sequel. It looks a lot more slick.

Our thread here The game still has the realistic shooting mechanics like wind, stance, gravity, heart beat, breathing etc.

Who watches the watchmen?

My roommate told me about it. I haven't played video games in a long time due to training and school, but I'm looking forward to it. I had the original game, but it was stolen a while back.

You still have the custom difficulty and the higher enemies are decent shots and will corner your ass if linger around. Was messing around with the demo today to see how much it has changed.

The new kill shots are way better. The xray kill cam is pretty wicked/neat and sometimes makes you oooh ouch. Supposedly your position you shoot from has additional affects on your overall accuracy.

edited 13th Apr '12 4:49:32 PM by TuefelHundenIV

Who watches the watchmen?

It reminds me of Operation Flashpoint in the sense that you are actually fearing for your life, wondering from where those shots keep coming. A friend of mine did the co-op on the original game, and despite our teamwork, spotting and bounding overwatch, the gameplay was still very intense. This is not a game for people who like to spray and pray.

edited 13th Apr '12 7:45:29 PM by Aprilla

Definetly not. Even more so if you turn the reality and enemy ai up.

Who watches the watchmen?

Operation Flashpoint was one of the first shooter games I ever played. Good times.

Its always hilarious when you play with the Co D guys; some people seem to.think that a picket fence will stop Dshk rounds.

Kino: >:3 That is such a great thing to exploit.

Cranked the difficulty and realism up on the Sniper Elite V2 Demo. Carlessness and stupidity is punished by bullets to the face and the enemy will hunt your happy ass down. Firing more then one shot from any location is usually a bad idea.

Who watches the watchmen?

Operation Flashpoint is brilliant. But the enemy AI cheats like the worst casino croupiers in New Vegas. It routinely pulls off shots looking through iron sights and dense undergrowth that are impossible for human players to match with optical sights and an elevated firing position.

edited to add:

Seen this? http://www.cracked.com/article_19750_the-5-most-impossible-sniper-shots-ever-made.html

edited 15th Apr '12 2:36:52 AM by TamH70

So I'm at the gate today... Good ol blues monday, where we wear class B's at the gate.

I hate these things, they are super uncomfortable. However, I do look shit-hot.

Given the existence of "Crackerjacks", I think it's safe to say that things can be worse.

Try undoing 13 buttons when you're more than a little buzzed and really need to use the can...

(Not personal experience, fortunately.)

All your safe space are belong to Trump

I just hate these shoes, low quarters hurt my feet like a mofo.

I've found that dress shoes are pretty uncomfortable in general.

Happiness is zero-gee with a sinus cold.

I wish we all wore dress boots instead of shoes for the blues. I know the Airborne units do the polished jump boots, but apparently in reality they rarely wear them. I used to be in a "cav" unit (2SCR isn't really cav, it's an SBCT) and we wore spurs but I wish we had also worn some sort of dress cavalry boots to go with the spurs and Stetsons. Of course, I really wish I had just been in a regular infantry unit. Thank God I'm in 10th Mountain now.

"Did anybody invent this stuff on purpose?" - Phillip Marlowe on tequila, Finger Man by Raymond Chandler.

I never found any of the Navy's uniform footwear problematic, myself, but the dress shoes were the least comfortable of the lot, I felt.

And as much shit as I've given the enlisted Dress Blues over the years, here and elsewhere, they're still better than the summer variant that has just about none of the tradition of the blues, and the summer working uniform (since retired, I believe) that looked like those uniforms that ice cream vendors are depicted as wearing back in The '50s.

The working dress blues ("Johnny Cashes") were fucking awesome, though, at least as long as you were at a duty station where you could wear the unit ballcap with them instead of the "dixie cup" hat (which is dorky no matter what uniform it's paired with, IMO).

edited 16th Apr '12 10:16:45 AM by Nohbody

All your safe space are belong to Trump

We make blues look pretty good in the AF, mostly because a navy blue beret fits with all of our dress uniform combinations very nicely.

Found an old picture on my phone wearing blues. Looks good yo.

edited 16th Apr '12 2:09:11 PM by Barkey

Britain is apparently reverting to the F-35B.

* Sigh *

edited 16th Apr '12 2:42:46 PM by Greenmantle

Keep Rolling On

FFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

I was all excited that they'd be back to CATOBAR Flat tops again...

I mean Really, They may cost more to build, but they would have the choice of any Carrier Aircraft built in the Future, rather than only STOV Ls.

Plus, a CATOBAR can operate STOV Ls anyway!

edited 16th Apr '12 2:54:37 PM by Joesolo

I'm baaaaaaack

CATOBAR! CATOBAR!

Fearless prediction: one of these days a bunch of angry airmen will storm the new carriers and forcibly install a trebuchet on the flight deck.

In other news, awesome analysis on Kabul.

Charlie Stross's cheerful, optimistic predictions for 2017, part one of three.

Or they'll just walk away in Despair...

Keep Rolling On

Aaand more military analysis—this time on everyone's boogieman, the PLA.

Interesting thing about China: even in the Maoist days, it was pretty corrupt; local officials embezzling for power was not unknown. But, the key difference was, tolerance for corruption was much lower. It was understood that bumming a few bottles of maotai was a perquisite of manning the local factory, but mass stealing and selling and conspicuous consumption was just not done—mainly because if you did it, the Party apparatus would crack down on your arse for flaunting ideology too openly.

These days, it's a different dynamic. Corruption is more legitimate and legitimized; just listening to my relatives in China talk shop makes for very interesting conversation. A shiny BMW is a status symbol.*

Thus, there's a dangerous balance: on the one hand, further development and further corruption. On the other hand, emphasis of ideology and regression to the old days of Mao—and all the backwardness and repression that implies. (Chinese Internet culture revolves around satirizing the Communist Party and its attempts at censorshi—er, harmonizing the Internet. If that's indicative of anything, it's that trying to stuff the cat back into the bag is going to be impossible.)

Just my two cents' worth.

Charlie Stross's cheerful, optimistic predictions for 2017, part one of three.

Historically, the PLA has been very closely linked with the politics of the Communist Party, and it still lingers today.

Yep, the book Chen Village shows many examples of that kind of corruption in villages. The village party secretary of the 1980s was accepting "private donations", but this acceptable as party secretaries in other villages were *more* corrupt!