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Comment Re:"More Guns" is flawed (Score 1) 1165

There are several, except they usually aren't classified as mass shootings because they are stopped before that magic number of four required is reached. One I remember from a research project years ago was Clackamas Center.

One thing of note, rarely do police officers actually shoot the suspect. Just the threat of armed resistance showing up is enough for the shooter to turn the firearm on themselves. The same happens with citizen carriers.

Gun control advocates love screaming that citizens never stop a mass shooting. That is because they prevent them from reaching that threshold. It makes it hard to show how many have been stopped.

Comment Re:One you forgot (Score 1) 210

They can take more than 1 bullet easily. I have seen deer that were taken that had old bullet wounds that healed up and one even had an arrow head and shank inside it that healed and had a fiberous mass around it.

And I'm sure that deer stuck around and listened to it's handler after it was shot or hit with the arrow also.

Comment Re:You can't secure it; don't give it away (Score 1) 279

There's nothing special about "modern platforms" that makes them immune to Stingers and the like. In fact they still date from the same time period other than the stealth craft. the difference is we have the capability maintain ours, they did not.
And you did you really just say (further down) the RPG is more useful than a SAM? Wow. I wish people would stop talking about military kit who have no clue.

Yes, I did. Look at the list of aircraft shootdowns in the sandbox, look at the weapons they used to achieve those kills. You will notice an abrupt change after certain equipment was introduced in theater. Just because a platform is introduced doesn't mean additional capability isn't added to it later (look at the difference between the M1A1, M1A2 and M1A2 SEP). Platforms are retrofitted when they need to be to address a need. Thinking the platforms are the same as when they were designed and introduced is just ignorant.

The fact that you don't know the difference between RPGs and 1st generation MANPADs doesn't mean others don't either. Trust me, 1st gen stuff is useless against the platforms over there.

Comment Re:You can't secure it; don't give it away (Score 1) 279

I was wondering this myself, but if it is trivial then why hasn't the Taliban done it to shoot down Apaches/Chinooks in Afghanistan left right and centre?

This to me suggests it's not that trivial, as from what I've heard it's not that there aren't still a decent number of stingers in Afghanistan. I have read reports of the odd one being fired which may suggest the odd battery has been found that just about has enough charge to work perhaps but they seem to be few and far between - certainly not frequent enough that the Taliban has figured out how to power them consistently enough to be a threat.

It is trivial to rig up a battery pack for Stingers (and SA-7s). The problem with those systems is that they are ancient (as in technology wise) and fairly useless against modern combat platforms.

However, giving anybody new systems is just asking form them to be copied and manufacturing licenses provided to whoever will pay for them. Sadly, the articles in Wikipedia that I want to use as an example are woefully inaccurate. Suffice it to say, if certain groups (state and non-state actors) obtain some hardware, they can and will duplicate it and they don't care who they sell it to as long as they get paid.

Comment Re:Did I miss something? (Score 1) 317

The FAA required a few tests specific to the 787 and its structure. I seem to recall a test where they took a fuselage and dropped it from a particular height to see how well it would deal with such a drop.

Drop tests are fairly common, you do them on fuel bladders, you do them on airframes. A new airframe requiring a drop test isn't anything special at all.

Comment Re:Did I miss something? (Score 1) 317

American Airlines used fork lifts to perform routine maintenance on DC-10 engines despite being told not to by McDonnell Douglas. Well, they did until one of 'em fell off during takeoff.

The issue wasn't that they used forklifts for the engine repair. The problem was that against policy the driver left the forklift holding the engine with it only partially attached because of a shift change. The forklift lost a bit of hydraulic pressure causing the engine to shift and put strain on the pylon. MD didn't care about using a forklift, they cared about leaving an engine partially attached if an unattended forklift lost some pressure.

Comment Re:Did I miss something? (Score 1) 317

I think Airbus has been including CF on their tail fins for a while (with some failures) and the technology is supposedly mature... but it's hard to ignore Aluminum's nearly 100 year reputation. Maybe I'm just getting old.

That concern came up ages ago when the 787 being mostly Carbon-Fiber was announced, people were worried about Boeing's 'lack of experience' with it. Boeing revealed that it had at least one aircraft with a US carrier that had a carbon fiber vertical on it so they could get experience.

Comment Re:Electric landing gear? (Score 2) 590

What the hell is electric landing gear? The wheels on the plan are unpowered and spin freely. All of the propulsion for moving around is provided by the engines. You can't keep the engines off until you're on the runway unless you're being towed. Also the engines need to be started using an external device so you'd need to drag that along so that it could spin up the engine and then start it.

The fact that the wheels are unpowered and free spinning is the issue, the only propulsion comes from the engines. They've been working on electric nose wheels that drive the aircraft as opposed to using the engines: http://www.theengineer.co.uk/news/electric-nose-wheel-could-reduce-aircraft-emissions/1007378.article

You don't need an external device to start the engines, aircraft have their own APU.

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