Got a Real-World Weapon, Armor or Tactics Question? Mk. XXI

[Garimeth]

While looking up the meaning of MOUT (Military Operations in Urban Terrain), I discovered it's been largely replaced by the term UO (Urban Operations). I also discovered that the British equivalent is OBUA (Operations in Built-Up Areas) or FIBUA (Fighting In Built-Up Areas).
The British being British have also the informal terms FISH (Fighting In Someone's House) and FISH and CHIPS (Fighting In Someone's House and Causing Havoc In People's Streets).



Further to Martin Greywolf's post, there was often intense competition to be part of the forlorn hope since survival often guaranteed glory and promotion, something extremely coveted by officers who didn't have a patron or were otherwise too poor to buy promotion.
There's a number of mentions of this in accounts from the Peninsular War (mostly because of the British Army system at the time) and is also a plot point in the book Sharpe’s Company.

Modern day soldiers can qualify for additional pay for particularly dangerous or objectionable jobs; for example, the US Army has Hazardous Duty Incentive Pay and the British Army has Unpleasant Work Allowance.
I'm sure the serving and former-serving here can fill in the actual details.

Hmm, I've never heard UO, but my experience is mostly USMC - UO might be an Army or joint thing. I feel like MOUT rolls off the tongue better though!

As far as the pay, there are a large number of special pays that one could qualify for - to include HDIP as Brother Oni mentioned. Off the top of my head:

Hazardous Duty/ Imminent Danger Pay
Sea Pay
Jump Pay
Flight Pay
Diving Pay
Sub Pay
Hardship duty Pay
Family Separation Allowance
Service in a "combat area" is tax free.

And then many officers of various varieties earn annual bonuses for being doctors, nurses, pilots, etc.

[Galloglaich]

So build an improved F-18, and improved A-10 and an improved Harrier, rather than a huge, expensive boondogle that won't do any of those jobs as well.

We don't have a Navy of one model of all purpose carrier/cruiser/destroyers. We don't have an infantry company where every man has a rifle, LMG, ATGM, mortar and sniper rifle. Why the hell do we think we can make one fighter that can do everything?

Here here. The DoD, and especially the Air Force, has a long history of trying to make procurement "quantum leaps" which end up as total disasters. Going back far enough in the past that it shouldn't be a (current) political issue, look at B-70 Valkyrie, F-104 / 102 et al,

the over-reliance on super-tech to fix everything in these quantum leaps sometimes works but sometimes fails spectacularly. At one point the big wonder-feature was supersonic, mach 2 mach 3 etc.

Another good example was their over-emphasis on air-to-air missiles during the Vietnam era, which they had to back away from when the missiles proved to be not quite as good as hoped, and they had to go back to guns and to dogfight training (hence the Top Gun school for the Navy and equivalent for the Air Force). Another problem was the (arguably too early) mass-introduction of the M-16 and the use of defoliants.

Problems of this type go back all the way to WW II, the Norden Bomb sight for example. But some of these big gambles do turn out to be effective, like radar (which made our navy in particular much more effective) and the atomic bombs which certainly worked, for better or worse in the long run remains to be seen of course.

I'm not going to speak about todays issues, but historically a lot of times the servicemen suffered, the taxpayers suffered, the military as a whole suffered, and the only beneficiary was the defense contractors.




G

[Garimeth]

historically a lot of times the servicemen suffered, the taxpayers suffered, the military as a whole suffered, and the only beneficiary was the defense contractors.

G

This is so true.

[Galloglaich]

I remember reading an article that pointed out that people in the Middle Ages did drink water -- they just didn't write about it often as it was normal and boring. I think it went on to mention that from time to time city and town records show concern for accessing clean and healthy water. Having said that, they may have considered beer and wine to be safer if the water supply was questionable.

This is definitely true. Beer started getting really popular in the 12th century and was a major industry by the 15th, but all these stories about medieval people drinking filthy water and eating rotten food as explanation for why they drank so much beer and had such a high demand for spices are nonsense. They actually had far stricter regulations than we do on food (and threw away a lot more than we would under normal circumstances) and had very good clean water systems in most towns, similar to the Romans but actually better in many cases. They had very strict laws on protecting the water supply, contaminating it was one of the few crimes punishable by death under several forms of German Town Law.

Cities that got really dirty in the 17th -18th Century due to outgrowing their sewer and water systems, notably London and (especially) Paris, tend to be used as examples projecting backward to the medieval period but that is a myth.

I think they drank a lot of beer because they liked beer and they though it helped relieved pain and was generally healthy for you. Which became especially true after they started putting hops in it I think the 13th or 14th Century.

G

[Galloglaich]

While this is true, the case is that:



Is unrealistic either way. I do not think the entire UK will have to shut down all wind mills for a week do to heavy wind either.... (at least even in small Denmark it have never happened for more than a day or two). Especially as heavy wind usually comes with periods of good strong wind for windmills in neighbouring regions (storms in Scotland might mean strong wind in Wales/Southern England etc). Also bad weather also include rain and thus continues new supplies for any hydro plants (which usually gathers up water through rivers which can include a large area).

Now, I do agree that most countries shouldn't be relying on wind energy alone (Denmark is I believe one of the only countries were wind have made up 100% of the needed electricity, and that is only for a couple of days).

But a combination of renewable energy sources might be realistic. At the moment they are focusing on improving the grid in order to connect countires, making sure that when the wind is too strong or too weak in Denmark you can either get power from German wind (or sun), or Norwegian/Swedish waterfalls.

Water can in some countries be the sole energy source.

The main reason that Iceland have aluminium smelters is that they have a lot of cheap renewable energy (hydro plants 70% and geothermal energy 30%). The geothermal also gives 92% of the heating (and they use a lot of heat and never thinks of saving it - heating important streets etc with underground heating systems). Thus in some cases renewable energy does supply the was majority of power needed (only 0.2% is fuels based (oil)).

Of course Iceland is a small country (300.000 inhapitants), but it is also a major aluminium "producer: Wikipedia have that "The aluminum industry in Iceland used 71% of produced electricity in 2011." And Iceland smelts something like 2% of the worlds aluminium (and also a few other metals is smelted). USA is at 4%. Thus if USA had an Iceland within the borders, it could increase the aluminium production capacity with at least 50% of the current one (or apply the energy toe steel or other industries).

Creating large scale hydro plants and geothermal energy stations is of course something that takes times, but not unrealistic in a war economy.

Geothermal energy is mostly used for heating (apart from in Iceland) but could be applied for electricity in many countries, also many with much less activity than Iceland (geothermal energy is viable in most of Europe, just more expensive).

Fascinating thanks for posting! Iceland continues to amaze.

Also impressive how much wind energy Denmark is using.

At some point, these renewable energy methods seem inefficient, pie in the sky, but at some point they do become efficient and really start to make sense. Energy storage is tricky but as you noted, when you have multiple sources, thanks to computers it's quite possible to reroute energy through the grid - especially if combined with partly off-grid co-generation systems in individual homes and businesses.


Anybody know what the verdict is on the Tesla powerwall type lithium storage now days? I'm just wondering how effective it is now realistically. Has it panned out? Can you power the air conditioner in a house on it? Could you power a military vehicle this way? I assume you could at least for short trips. I know the Army already uses solar panels to charge communications gear. I wonder about drones, both flying, swimming \ sailing and crawling \ rolling types.

[Max_Killjoy]

This is definitely true. Beer started getting really popular in the 12th century and was a major industry by the 15th, but all these stories about medieval people drinking filthy water and eating rotten food as explanation for why they drank so much beer and had such a high demand for spices are nonsense. They actually had far stricter regulations than we do on food (and threw away a lot more than we would under normal circumstances) and had very good clean water systems in most towns, similar to the Romans but actually better in many cases. They had very strict laws on protecting the water supply, contaminating it was one of the few crimes punishable by death under several forms of German Town Law.

Cities that got really dirty in the 17th -18th Century due to outgrowing their sewer and water systems, notably London and (especially) Paris, tend to be used as examples projecting backward to the medieval period but that is a myth.

I think they drank a lot of beer because they liked beer and they though it helped relieved pain and was generally healthy for you. Which became especially true after they started putting hops in it I think the 13th or 14th Century.

G

"Medieval filth" / "The Dung Ages" is a one of the most popular, unshakable, and pernicious historical myths still clinging to history.

I wonder, however, if your post might not go too far in the other direction.

Also, the discussion of drinking things other than water to avoid issues with the water also covers a lot more than "medieval Europe" -- beer as a beverage goes all the way back at least to the very very earliest civilizations, for example.

[Galloglaich]

"Medieval filth" / "The Dung Ages" is a one of the most popular, unshakable, and pernicious historical myths still clinging to history.

I wonder, however, if your post might not go too far in the other direction.

I can't say how universal it was, but what I was saying about regulations on food and drinking water are true for many Late Medieval towns, I can provide evidence if needed. Butchers regulations tended to be very strict. As one example, cows, sheep or pigs that died on their own (i.e without being slaughtered) could not be processed for food, nor could calves \ kids etc. that were below a certain age, or animals that showed certain signs of illness. They couldn't even be fed to animals in some cases but had to be buried or burned (in other cases they could be fed to chickens, dogs or pigs). Sadly a lot of this has gone away in modern times. They slaughtered the animals in the open where the public could see, and only in certain (what they thought were) humane ways, for example by cutting the vein in the throat but they were not allowed to smother them. Same as most of the workshops for any kind of artisan, and they (both town authorities and guilds) had regular inspections of all kinds of food processing which were quite strict. Added fillers like wax, straw, sawdust etc. could not be added to food or drinks (unlike today) at risk of losing your license as a baker, brewer, butcher whatever.
Throwing trash, sewerage or animal parts into the potable water source (usually a spring) was punishable by death according to several versions of German town law that applied to hundreds of cities, not just in German-speaking areas but also in Slavic, French, Baltic, Flemish and Scandinavian towns. They actually had water systems made of hollowed out wooden logs that distributed clean, potable water through the cities. This went on in some places well into the 19th Century (including in some towns in the US).


They would deliver the water through pipes like this






..to fountains like this, which you still see in nearly every old city, town and village in Europe, hiding in plain sight so to speak.

Or even gigantic, aqueduct fed ones like this one in Croatia




This is how they would hollow out the logs

Medieval towns also had public workers cart the trash out of the city limits every day and had strict rules on privies or sewerage systems.

Generally these rules were all put in place over fears of disease. Just like the similar strict ones they had in place related to fire codes. Regarding public health, in general they had strict regulations on anything that smelled bad, because they thought bad smells caused disease. Of course that isn't directly true but being careful about things that smelled badly could roughly correlate to what was dangerous. They also seemed to have some idea of what caused parasites as well and how to kill them. We have direct evidence of that going surprisingly far back.

Of course they didn't have refrigeration, or much more limited at least in the warmer months (though they did have ice houses) and they didn't have things like cellophane to keep bugs away and so on. And they didn't know nearly what we do today about microbiology needless to say. They had no antibiotics but ours are fading in efficacy today aren't they? Partly due to their use in conjunction with questionable livestock raising and slaughtering practices.

It's hard to know precisely how widespread such rules were but they seem to have been in effect in hundreds of towns and villages.

Also, the discussion of drinking things other than water to avoid issues with the water also covers a lot more than "medieval Europe" -- beer as a beverage goes all the way back at least to the very very earliest civilizations, for example.

It's true generally speaking, and I can't say for other times and places, but in Central and Northern Europe in the medieval period, and I think in Italy as well, wine or beer consumption (or cider etc.) was basically a function of wealth. The wealthier you were the more you could afford to drink alcoholic beverages (including the weak 'small beer' and equivalent watered wine and so on). Once you ran out of money or reached your budget limits you drank water, or in some cases and in certain areas (like in Frisia and parts of Holland), milk.

G

[cobaltstarfire]

They had no antibiotics but ours are fading in efficacy today aren't they?

Yeah, I wonder how that's going to go for us, we've been using older antibiotics to deal with resistant bacteria, but recently a strain of E coli showed up in several places with a mutation that makes it resistant to those older antibiotics too (leaving us with nothing left that isn't resisted in some way or another). The worry about that is the mutation is on a part of the bacteria that is easy to "break off" and transfer to other bacteria.

I expect if that mutation does start spreading around it's going to have very unpleasant implications for people on the battle field, as well as anyone that needs to go to the hospital even for minor surgery...

[Max_Killjoy]

Yeah, I wonder how that's going to go for us, we've been using older antibiotics to deal with resistant bacteria, but recently a strain of E coli showed up in several places with a mutation that makes it resistant to those older antibiotics too (leaving us with nothing left that isn't resisted in some way or another). The worry about that is the mutation is on a part of the bacteria that is easy to "break off" and transfer to other bacteria.

I expect if that mutation does start spreading around it's going to have very unpleasant implications for people on the battle field, as well as anyone that needs to go to the hospital even for minor surgery...

* BAN any and all "growth agent" uses of antibiotics in livestock.

* start enforcing prescription restrictions -- no antibiotics to placate patients when they don't have a bacterial infection.

* re-emphasize sterilization and sanitation in health care, as opposed to the belief "we'll just give the patients antibiotics".

* broad public education on the effects of misusing antibiotics.

* more research for novel drugs unrelated to current antibiotics.

[Mike_G]

Couple of points.

1. Outright banning of all growth or antibiotics on livestock would greatly increase the cost of production, and reduce the output. So, food becomes scarcer and more expensive. This is like the "No GMO" stance, which is madness. We can certainly look at tighter regulation, but blanket bans will really hurt our ability to feed ourselves.

2. Sanitation in the medical setting has never been de-emphasized. And we no longer reuse equipment, which was common in the days before antibiotics. Everybody wears gloves for every procedure now, which was not the standard back in the day, and we have more "clean" rooms, positive pressure rooms, and so on. There is no attitude of not worrying about cleanliness because we have drugs.

Now, hospitals do administer prophylactic antibiotics to "cover" patients, which probably contributes to the problem. And doctors do over prescribe antibiotics to every kid with a sore throat.

Yes there's a problem, but these are not the easy answers you are looking for.

* BAN any and all "growth agent" uses of antibiotics in livestock.

* start enforcing prescription restrictions -- no antibiotics to placate patients when they don't have a bacterial infection.

* re-emphasize sterilization and sanitation in health care, as opposed to the belief "we'll just give the patients antibiotics".

* broad public education on the effects of misusing antibiotics.

* more research for novel drugs unrelated to current antibiotics.

[Galloglaich]

Couple of points.

1. Outright banning of all growth or antibiotics on livestock would greatly increase the cost of production, and reduce the output. So, food becomes scarcer and more expensive. This is like the "No GMO" stance, which is madness. We can certainly look at tighter regulation, but blanket bans will really hurt our ability to feed ourselves.

2. Sanitation in the medical setting has never been de-emphasized. And we no longer reuse equipment, which was common in the days before antibiotics. Everybody wears gloves for every procedure now, which was not the standard back in the day, and we have more "clean" rooms, positive pressure rooms, and so on. There is no attitude of not worrying about cleanliness because we have drugs.

Now, hospitals do administer prophylactic antibiotics to "cover" patients, which probably contributes to the problem. And doctors do over prescribe antibiotics to every kid with a sore throat.

Yes there's a problem, but these are not the easy answers you are looking for.

I'm not sure we actually need 99 cent hamburgers to be honest. A lot of our food industry is incredibly wasteful. A little bit of grass fed beef apparently has more nutrition than a lot of factory farmed ... that is one reason why we have so many people today who are obese but also suffer the effects of malnutrition simultaneously.

And sometimes simple changes can make major differences. One thing they figured out is that the old tradition of using brass and other copper (or silver) alloys for touchable surfaces like door knobs and bed rails actually has extremely beneficial effects in preventing spread of disease. Aluminum or stainless steel is very cheap but doesn't have the same effect.

http://health.usnews.com/health-news...rsa-at-a-touch

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antimi...touch_surfaces

From the Wiki:

Antimicrobial copper-alloy touch surfaces can prevent frequently touched surfaces from serving as reservoirs for the spread of pathogenic microbes. This is especially true in healthcare facilities, where harmful viruses, bacteria, and fungi colonize and persist on doorknobs, push plates, railings, tray tables, tap (faucet) handles, IV poles, HVAC systems, and other equipment. These microbes can often survive on surfaces for surprisingly long periods of time (sometimes more than 30 days).

The surfaces of copper and its alloys, such as brass and bronze, are antimicrobial. They have an inherent ability to kill a wide range of harmful microbes relatively rapidly – often within two hours or less – and with a high degree of efficiency. These antimicrobial properties have been demonstrated by an extensive body of research. The research also suggests that if touch surfaces are made with copper alloys, the reduced transmission of disease-causing organisms can reduce patient infections in hospital intensive care units (ICU) by as much as 58%.[1][2]



We replaced this stuff because we thought, it's only there for looks, but we didn't realize there were other benefits that the ancestors had laboriously figured out over many generations.

I suspect it's actually similar with spices - they were definitely not using them to hide the taste and smell of rotten food, it doesn't work that way. I think they were medicine.


Some of the old traditions of centuries or even millennia ago, even though not based on nearly as advanced of a grasp of the underlying science, actually had remarkable benefits that we haven't always recognized until very recently. Conversely, some of our innovations haven't turned out to be as great as we expected.

Maybe it's because I work in a high tech field, I'm a bit suspicious of innovation. I love my smart phone, don't get me wrong, and this computer we can communicate on so wonderfully here. But newer isn't always automatically better.

G

[Max_Killjoy]

Couple of points.

1. Outright banning of all growth or antibiotics on livestock would greatly increase the cost of production, and reduce the output. So, food becomes scarcer and more expensive. This is like the "No GMO" stance, which is madness. We can certainly look at tighter regulation, but blanket bans will really hurt our ability to feed ourselves.

Yeah, 5 cents extra per pound of hamburger is really going to bring us to starvation.

For the record, my stance on GMO is "be very careful" and "you shouldn't be able to patent naturally occurring genes", not "ban them all cause it's evil".

2. Sanitation in the medical setting has never been de-emphasized. And we no longer reuse equipment, which was common in the days before antibiotics. Everybody wears gloves for every procedure now, which was not the standard back in the day, and we have more "clean" rooms, positive pressure rooms, and so on. There is no attitude of not worrying about cleanliness because we have drugs.

You'd be shocked by what goes on at some facilities.

And then there's what goes on outside the "first world".

Now, hospitals do administer prophylactic antibiotics to "cover" patients, which probably contributes to the problem. And doctors do over prescribe antibiotics to every kid with a sore throat.

Very much so. Those uses need to stop.

[warty goblin]

Couple of points.

1. Outright banning of all growth or antibiotics on livestock would greatly increase the cost of production, and reduce the output. So, food becomes scarcer and more expensive. This is like the "No GMO" stance, which is madness. We can certainly look at tighter regulation, but blanket bans will really hurt our ability to feed ourselves.

It would increase the cost of meat, not food in general. It's perfectly possible to eat a very nutritious diet that's mostly to entirely meat-free, and cheap meat is an ecological catastrophe of global proportions.

[Max_Killjoy]

It would increase the cost of meat, not food in general. It's perfectly possible to eat a very nutritious diet that's mostly to entirely meat-free, and cheap meat is an ecological catastrophe of global proportions.

Well, that might be overstating it a bit...

[warty goblin]

Well, that might be overstating it a bit...

Unfortunately it really isn't. This is why I've cut my meat consumption drastically over the last year, because I don't need it, and a hamburger is, by a lot of measures, extremely damaging in a lot of ways.

[Gnoman]

Here here. The DoD, and especially the Air Force, has a long history of trying to make procurement "quantum leaps" which end up as total disasters. Going back far enough in the past that it shouldn't be a (current) political issue, look at B-70 Valkyrie, F-104 / 102 et al,

the over-reliance on super-tech to fix everything in these quantum leaps sometimes works but sometimes fails spectacularly. At one point the big wonder-feature was supersonic, mach 2 mach 3 etc.

Another good example was their over-emphasis on air-to-air missiles during the Vietnam era, which they had to back away from when the missiles proved to be not quite as good as hoped, and they had to go back to guns and to dogfight training (hence the Top Gun school for the Navy and equivalent for the Air Force). Another problem was the (arguably too early) mass-introduction of the M-16 and the use of defoliants.

Problems of this type go back all the way to WW II, the Norden Bomb sight for example. But some of these big gambles do turn out to be effective, like radar (which made our navy in particular much more effective) and the atomic bombs which certainly worked, for better or worse in the long run remains to be seen of course.

I'm not going to speak about todays issues, but historically a lot of times the servicemen suffered, the taxpayers suffered, the military as a whole suffered, and the only beneficiary was the defense contractors.




G

I'd hesitate to classify either the XB-70 or the Norden as such. Both were simply evolutionary developments of existing concepts -the XB-70 was conceptually a merging of the B-52 Stratofortress with the B-58 Hustler, while everyone on the planet was trying to come up with a better bombsight. The Valkyrie was canceled due to obsolescence of concept in the face of then-modern SAMs and interceptors (accidentally creating the F-15 in the process), and while the Norden didn't live up to expectations (not least due to the fact that nobody was shooting back when they tested it) it genuinely was more accurate than previous methods. Whether it was accurate enough to justify throwing bombers right into the teeth of Axis air defenses in broad daylight is a different question.

[Galloglaich]

But wine, on the other hand, is good for the soul

[Max_Killjoy]

Unfortunately it really isn't. This is why I've cut my meat consumption drastically over the last year, because I don't need it, and a hamburger is, by a lot of measures, extremely damaging in a lot of ways.

I'll read over it... but it's a decade old, and from the UN, which means the risk of gross overstatement is high (see also, RED MEAT WILL MAKE YOU DIE FROM CANCER!)

[Galloglaich]

I'd hesitate to classify either the XB-70 or the Norden as such. Both were simply evolutionary developments of existing concepts -the XB-70 was conceptually a merging of the B-52 Stratofortress with the B-58 Hustler, while everyone on the planet was trying to come up with a better bombsight. The Valkyrie was canceled due to obsolescence of concept in the face of then-modern SAMs and interceptors (accidentally creating the F-15 in the process), and while the Norden didn't live up to expectations (not least due to the fact that nobody was shooting back when they tested it) it genuinely was more accurate than previous methods. Whether it was accurate enough to justify throwing bombers right into the teeth of Axis air defenses in broad daylight is a different question.

Well I guess you could of course argue that there was some kind of logical context for them in the evolution of weaponry or technology, but in both cases it was also a matter of cost relative to outcome. The Norden sight cost 1.5 billion (in 1945 dollars) to develop, which is half the cost of the Manhattan project (!), and considering that not only did the device not prove to really work in field conditions, and the bombers often couldn't even navigate to the right place to begin with, it was clearly money that could have been better spent elsewhere at the time. But at least the Norden sight was used in combat, however rarely it was ever effective. The B-70, so far as I know, never flew a combat mission.

And yet those cost 750 million a piece, (in 1960's money) which would be the equivalent of almost 200 A-4 Skyhawks, or 50 F-16a's, or 57 A-10's.

That makes the cost really painful, especially when you see one crash. (Considerable irony here since the culprit in the crash, an F-104, was also a hugely expensive, virtually useless boondoggle which had virtually no use in combat... and notoriously hard to control)

https://youtu.be/fCORwUxlNQo?t=90

G

[Mike_G]

I'm not sure we actually need 99 cent hamburgers to be honest. A lot of our food industry is incredibly wasteful. A little bit of grass fed beef apparently has more nutrition than a lot of factory farmed ... that is one reason why we have so many people today who are obese but also suffer the effects of malnutrition simultaneously.

Well, Americans don't need 99 cent hamburgers, but plenty of starving people in the world need cheap food, and GMO and modern agricultural methods make that more possible. Feeding 7 billion people is a challenge that our ancestors simply never faced.

But newer isn't always automatically better.

G

I agree. I'm a dinosaur who misses the M 14. I just finished railing against the F 35, because I'd rather the Marines brought back the F4U Corsair for CAS and rolled the savings into yeterans benefits.

But I object to the idea that we need to "re-emphasize" sanitation when it never went out of style.

The Good Old Days were never as good as people like to remember. Adnaces in tech can fail to live up to promises, and we do hit dead ends and wrong turns, but when I have my heart attack, I want a 2016 style cardiac catheterization and stent through my radial artery, not a 1930's "crack my chest open and spread my ribs" operation, even if the OR doorknobs aren't copper anymore.

[Gnoman]

Well I guess you could of course argue that there was some kind of logical context for them in the evolution of weaponry or technology, but in both cases it was also a matter of cost relative to outcome. The Norden sight cost 1.5 billion (in 1945 dollars) to develop, which is half the cost of the Manhattan project (!), and considering that not only did the device not prove to really work in field conditions, and the bombers often couldn't even navigate to the right place to begin with, it was clearly money that could have been better spent elsewhere at the time. But at least the Norden sight was used in combat, however rarely it was ever effective. The B-70, so far as I know, never flew a combat mission.

And yet those cost 750 million a piece, (in 1960's money) which would be the equivalent of almost 200 A-4 Skyhawks, or 50 F-16a's, or 57 A-10's.

That makes the cost really painful, especially when you see one crash. (Considerable irony here since the culprit in the crash, an F-104, was also a hugely expensive, virtually useless boondoggle which had virtually no use in combat... and notoriously hard to control)

https://youtu.be/fCORwUxlNQo?t=90

G

I was not disputing that the XB-70 was a failure, but objecting to your classification of it as an attempt at a "quantum leap" - the biggest problem with it was that they should have known that the service lifespan of a high-altitude bomber relying on supersonic speed was going to be very short.

As for the Norden, it certainly didn't live up to the money spend on it, although how much that is attributable to no bombsight being much good under the conditions that the day bombers faced is impossible to tell.

The really bizarre thing is that the US could have entered into WWII with what was essentially Paveway had more resources been given to RCA, who had begun work on TV bomb guidance in January of 41, but fears of spending too much on an unproven concept such as television led to a less-accurate radar guidance system to be used instead.

[warty goblin]

I'll read over it... but it's a decade old, and from the UN, which means the risk of gross overstatement is high (see also, RED MEAT WILL MAKE YOU DIE FROM CANCER!)

There's plenty of other sources over the last decade saying the same thing. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas, and cows make a lot of it. This paper suggests about 14 - 15% of greenhouse emissions are due to livestock, or more than the combined total output of the world's cars, plains and trains. The EPA has a couple of results that say basically the same thing, although their estimates are a bit lower.

This is ignoring other sources of environmental and ecological harm caused by meat production. There's an argument to be made for grazing livestock on land unsuited for agriculture, and indeed this is less damaging to an ecosystem than tillage. Cows, sheep, etc damage the ecosystem, tilling it is near total annihilation. However a lot of meat, particularly in western agriculture, is fed up on corn, which totally negates that benefit, and consumes enormous amounts of fresh water in the bargain. You also have to deal with lots of animal excrement, which tends to do things like leak into the groundwater.

[Max_Killjoy]

There's plenty of other sources over the last decade saying the same thing. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas, and cows make a lot of it. This paper suggests about 14 - 15% of greenhouse emissions are due to livestock, or more than the combined total output of the world's cars, plains and trains. The EPA has a couple of results that say basically the same thing, although their estimates are a bit lower.

This is ignoring other sources of environmental and ecological harm caused by meat production. There's an argument to be made for grazing livestock on land unsuited for agriculture, and indeed this is less damaging to an ecosystem than tillage. Cows, sheep, etc damage the ecosystem, tilling it is near total annihilation. However a lot of meat, particularly in western agriculture, is fed up on corn, which totally negates that benefit, and consumes enormous amounts of fresh water in the bargain. You also have to deal with lots of animal excrement, which tends to do things like leak into the groundwater.

You'll note I said that your first statement was "overstating things a bit", not "wrong".

You have a valid point, but "cheap meat is an ecological catastrophe of global proportions" is an overstatement.

[Galloglaich]

Well, Americans don't need 99 cent hamburgers, but plenty of starving people in the world need cheap food, and GMO and modern agricultural methods make that more possible. Feeding 7 billion people is a challenge that our ancestors simply never faced.

True, I guess I just don't trust the current industry and their methods to solve this problem in our interests, or anyone's other than short term profit motive. And I think we actually could learn from some much older methods, we are seeing a trend that way now. High skilled labor responses to technological improvements have been around a long time.

I agree. I'm a dinosaur who misses the M 14. I just finished railing against the F 35, because I'd rather the Marines brought back the F4U Corsair for CAS and rolled the savings into yeterans benefits.

But I object to the idea that we need to "re-emphasize" sanitation when it never went out of style.

The Good Old Days were never as good as people like to remember. Adnaces in tech can fail to live up to promises, and we do hit dead ends and wrong turns, but when I have my heart attack, I want a 2016 style cardiac catheterization and stent through my radial artery, not a 1930's "crack my chest open and spread my ribs" operation, even if the OR doorknobs aren't copper anymore.

Good point! I am similarly a big fan of air-conditioning and lets face it, for all it's (many serious) flaws, the internet. Which allows me to talk to smart people like yourself among other things. But I think we can all get a bit hypnotized by new toys and fall into the simplistic delusion that progress is inevitable and linear, rather than chaotic and complex. Things don't always get better and better in a steady line.

The notion of the inevitable march of progress is a specific historical trope, and no more or less delusional than those of the ancient Greeks or whomever.

G

[warty goblin]

You'll note I said that your first statement was "overstating things a bit", not "wrong".

You have a valid point, but "cheap meat is an ecological catastrophe of global proportions" is an overstatement.

I'm failing to see what isn't A) catastrophic and B) global about it. It's not my most moderate turn of phrase, I'll grant that, but I can't see anything particularly inaccurate about it.

[Max_Killjoy]

I don't know if I'd call the XB-70 a failure.

First, it started before the realization that "higher and faster to avoid defenses" wasn't going to work much longer had really sunk in.

Second, technological advances (aerodynamics, materials, etc) that came out of the program are still important today.

Third, misunderstanding of the XB-70 program contributed to the Soviets fielding the MiG-25. In turn, Western intelligence grossly overshooting the real abilities of the MiG-25 lead to the program that gave us the F-15, which is still at this point the most dominant fighter ever built (over 100 kills for 0 losses in air combat).

[BayardSPSR]

And yet those cost 750 million a piece, (in 1960's money) which would be the equivalent of almost 200 A-4 Skyhawks, or 50 F-16a's, or 57 A-10's.

That makes the cost really painful, especially when you see one crash. (Considerable irony here since the culprit in the crash, an F-104, was also a hugely expensive, virtually useless boondoggle which had virtually no use in combat... and notoriously hard to control)

For context, how much does it cost to train a pilot, and to keep that pilot trained over the course of a career?

Same question for the cost of protected hangers per plane, and the logistical burden of getting personnel and materiél to forward bases (and keeping them there).

[Galloglaich]

I don't know if I'd call the XB-70 a failure.

First, it started before the realization that "higher and faster to avoid defenses" wasn't going to work much longer had really sunk in.

Just because they had a reason to make a mistake, doesn't mean they didn't make a mistake. I wonder if the same thing is happening right now with stealth. It seems like it's often easier to adjust missiles and sensors and software than it is expensive aircraft, ships and so on.

Second, technological advances (aerodynamics, materials, etc) that came out of the program are still important today.

Questionable, certainly in terms of cost-effectiveness.

Third, misunderstanding of the XB-70 program contributed to the Soviets fielding the MiG-25. In turn, Western intelligence grossly overshooting the real abilities of the MiG-25 lead to the program that gave us the F-15, which is still at this point the most dominant fighter ever built (over 100 kills for 0 losses in air combat).

So it made us spend too much on something which made them spend too much... don't you think they could have developed the F-15 without the B-70?

What constitutes failure is up for debate, but in my book when you spend billions on something that never gets used and quickly gets cancelled, it's probably a screw up. Maybe they could have better spent the money on a DARPA challenge type thing.

G

[cobaltstarfire]

* BAN any and all "growth agent" uses of antibiotics in livestock.

* start enforcing prescription restrictions -- no antibiotics to placate patients when they don't have a bacterial infection.

* re-emphasize sterilization and sanitation in health care, as opposed to the belief "we'll just give the patients antibiotics".

* broad public education on the effects of misusing antibiotics.

* more research for novel drugs unrelated to current antibiotics.

Well it would have been nice for that stuff to have happened to some degree before drug resistance became such a big problem. The damage is already done and can't be retroactively fixed, only slowed down.

And what little I've read/heard there hasn't been any new antibiotic discoveries since around when I was born (+-30 years). I mean part of that is likely because there is little incentive to research antibiotics, but even setting that aside it's a nonstop arms race with bacteria, one where they iterate much faster than we can probably discover and test new things.

I did hear about a pretty neat anti-bacterial surface found on the wings of a particular species of cicada which is pretty cool. I have no idea if stuff that has anti-microbial properties is something that bacteria can evolve past, but bringing back stuff like what G mentioned does sound like it could be a good start?

Either way, I expect we're soon going to be in a future where even minor injuries or surgeries could become more deadly than we are used to, simply because currently bacteria is winning that arms race.

[Max_Killjoy]

Well it would have been nice for that stuff to have happened to some degree before drug resistance became such a big problem. The damage is already done and can't be retroactively fixed, only slowed down.

And what little I've read/heard there hasn't been any new antibiotic discoveries since around when I was born (+-30 years). I mean part of that is likely because there is little incentive to research antibiotics, but even setting that aside it's a nonstop arms race with bacteria, one where they iterate much faster than we can probably discover and test new things.

I did hear about a pretty neat anti-bacterial surface found on the wings of a particular species of cicada which is pretty cool. I have no idea if stuff that has anti-microbial properties is something that bacteria can evolve past, but bringing back stuff like what G mentioned does sound like it could be a good start?

Either way, I expect we're soon going to be in a future where even minor injuries or surgeries could become more deadly than we are used to, simply because currently bacteria is winning that arms race.

You say that like now that some bacteria are resistant to some drugs, there's no going back and all drugs will be useless against all bacteria in less than a decade. That's not how it works.

Many types of bacteria also LOSE resistance once a drug is taken out of usage for a sufficient period of time -- the resistance loses its competitive advantage.

Continued increases in resistance occur because of continued human errors in the usage of antibiotics, not as an inevitable process that cannot be stopped or mitigated.

There are other types of drugs that were somewhat effective against bacteria before modern antibiotics, so we know that there are other options both discovered and undiscovered.