I think your friend went from bad to worse.
I think that can be forgiven. Gore had spent the last eight years as VP.
It would be more shameful to quit before the Florida election than to lose Florida. Rubio can always blame a zillion dollars of Trump money spent on lying ads on the loss – even if the ads are actually true. But either way, I’m afraid that Little Marco’s days on the national stage are coming to an end. Not sad.
Gore lost in the primaries in his home state? I don’t recall that. The general is a whole different thing.
But to blame another man for your loss? That’s unmanly, no?
Timex
6508
Actually, the THEL systems that currently exist can actually shoot down many simultaneously fired artillery shells with a single unit.
I think the notion is that if he quits before he loses the state, he can maintain a lobbying myth that he represents Florida’s interests. You lose there to Trump even after Jeb! cleared the runway for you, and I don’t know how you can say that and still get folks to take you seriously.
Laser weapons will change the cost balance. We’re not there yet though.
The race has really diminished him.
Timex
6511
Laser weapons will change the cost balance. We’re not there yet though.
I believe that perhaps your knowledge of the current state of US ABM systems is outdated. But hey, hopefully we won’t need to find out who’s right.
Tman
6512
I think he’s grasping at straws.
I was wondering the other day why this hasn’t happened more now that people are attacking Trump. I guess name and brand recognition matters a lot. Trump still dominates the conversation.
I did see on Google News that Cruz took some votes this weekend at the expense of Rubio. Perhaps he will take most of them when Rubio quits.
Cruz-Clinton would be deliciously awkward for the Goldman Sachs effect. I wonder if Cruz’s wife was there to listen to Clinton’s speech. Haha!
I don’t think so. We have promising directed energy weapon prototypes but not deployable systems. Those are still seven to ten years out. I am excited about BAE’s railgun. We should see that by 2019.
The best writer in Dallas (although this is not one of his stronger pieces) echoes what many of us Texans have been saying for awhile - Cruz is scarier than Trump because he’s twice the racist, twice the fascist as Trump but couches it all as “religious freedom.” Trump just throws xenophobic, racist shit at the wall for votes, Cruz really believes it.
http://www.dallasobserver.com/news/letter-from-texas-listen-america-trump-is-just-embarrassing-cruz-is-scary-8095715
Rockets and missiles are not the same as artillery shells. Even mortar shells aren’t the same as actual heavy artillery. Missiles, rockets, and mortar shells have relatively low velocities in these cases (non-ballistic, non-hypersonic strike missiles stuff) and as importantly are soft targets; their casings are thin and easily damaged. Regular arty, which travels very fast, has really thick shell walls to withstand the pressure of being fired from a ginourmous rifled barrel and all. It would be like shooting down a bullet, really, and even if you could hit it–which you probably could with some systems–imparting enough energy on contact to actually destroy the shell would be, to say the least, problematic. And diverting the shell–like some of the Patriots “diverted” SCUDS way back when–only means the shell hits that apartment building over there rather than that school over here.
There are zero good ways to prevent an artillery barrage of any magnitude. Except killing the arty.
I thought lobbying was about being part of the old boys network and getting access more than anything else? As a former Senator turned lobbyist it’s easier to get the ear of a Congressman or Senator, isn’t it? It’s not so much about representing Florida as a lobbyist as it is about being able to represent the gun lobby, the tobacco lobby, the coal industry lobby, and various other right-wing interests, etc.
Rubio’s dilemma is he seemingly entered the race to build his national exposure and possibly be a VP candidate, and he ended up being the mainstream GOP choice after all the other options failed, and now he’s failing at that. That makes him, as Trump either would say or has said, “a loser.”
Timex
6518
Israel’s iron beam system is being deployed this year.
Rockets and missiles are not the same as artillery shells. Even mortar shells aren’t the same as actual heavy artillery. Missiles, rockets, and mortar shells have relatively low velocities in these cases (non-ballistic, non-hypersonic strike missiles stuff) and as importantly are soft targets; their casings are thin and easily damaged. Regular arty, which travels very fast, has really thick shell walls to withstand the pressure of being fired from a ginourmous rifled barrel and all. It would be like shooting down a bullet, really, and even if you could hit it–which you probably could with some systems–imparting enough energy on contact to actually destroy the shell would be, to say the least, problematic.
Iron dome, a deployed system, already counters 155mm artillery shells fitted from up to 70km away. The high energy laser additions being deployed this year are going to make it even more effective, and have already successfully destroyed artillery shells in flight.
This isn’t some kind of theoretical thing. It already exists, and it works.
schurem
6519
wtf are we talking antiballistic defence systems now?! Even if you ‘destroy’ an incoming 155mm shell, its mass has not gone away, it just hits over a larger area.
Even the best of abm systems in a best case scenario only lessens the impact, but never entirely mitigates it. Its dumb to call em domes because they are nothing of the sort.
Also fuck republicans and hillary. If those were mu choices i’d make for the northern border. At least in canada people are still talking sense.
True, but beside the point. Despite the fact that it’s in vogue to call these things “kinetic weapons”, the vast majority of artillery shells still rely on explosive force rather than momentum. The projectiles have either a fuse or a proximity trigger that detonates the explosives at some stand-off distance and spreads concussive force as well as shrapnel or secondary explosive projectiles across a relatively wide area.
The purpose of these anti-artillery defenses is to either prematurely detonate the warhead or else to disable the trigger (or knock it off course I guess). Either way, the damage that the raining shrapnel (now limited to thrown-rock velocities) or the single inert shell might inflict on unlucky people below is trivial compared to the original intent.
Iron Dome has potential. It’s not being used on anything even remotely approaching the scale of what would be necessary in Korea. Hell, there’s nothing in the entire history of the IDF that compares to the intensity of a war on the Korean peninsula. That, and the IDF is not above stretching things to sell their stuff or for domestic consumption. Hey, I think Iron Dome and the like is cool beans, but for a lot of reasons, I stick to my point that there is no way to stop massed artillery fires short of blowing up the tubes themselves.
