Posted on 12/31/2014 7:19:35 PM PST by thetallguy24
Desert Eagle works for me...
You are forgetting the dozens of spec changes and funding burps during the development period, and the best efforts of engineers who’ve never been in the field and think that new & different is better than appropriate.
No good place to put the ejection port where the empties won’t cause problems. Remember, the F-16 is the plastic fantastic fighter. Also, the empties are used to help keep the plane’s weight and balance in line.
The Battle off Samar - where the Imperial Japanese Navy finally learned that the Americans of the time were more ferocious and crazy than they were.
Our WW2 MK 14 torpedoes were not garbage. They were 95% functional engineering successes that met all design specifications except three:
1. There were a small fraction of circular runs, which produced glancing blows to the launching submarine and sunk (if I remember correctly) two of our subs,
2. The depth setting was off by four feet, but only for warshot torpedoes and only because the explosives were heavier than the buoyant dummies used to retrieve practice shots in certification, causing torpedoes to pass too far under the targets to explode, and
3. The MK 14 magnetic exploders worked reliably at high latitudes, just not near the equator where most Pacific battles were fought. The contact exploders reused from the MK 13 torpedo were perfect and reliable at the slower relative speeds before the MK 14 torpedo. It was only at high speed and nearly 90-degree impact (the firing geometry submariners were told to use) that the contact exploders failed.
The sort of person who worships Obama as 95% successful would give the MK 14 the same high marks they give to socialism.
“seems like the F22 worked just fine but we had to scrap that... so we could have MRAPs... which we’re giving away to local police departments now.”
All part of the plan, get us to spend wildly on boondoggles that don’t work while shelving reasonable replacements, gridlock.
Over reliance on software. They have numerous guns fighters now that work. Some contractor is making a mint on something we most likely already have that works.
If a big war comes along and we have conservatives running it, then all this goes out the window and we would see that gun work the next day and new aircraft flying in a years time while building a thousand more F-22’s
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