Andy Rucker

IMHO: I still think the so called ‘Aztec’ hull plating used by many modellers, physical or digital, is over done. Seems an increasingly failure to understand relationship between distance & scale. The distances from a model or camera to a model means it should be subtle..

Classic Star Trek visuals, now in a cinematic aspect ratio! It's a relatively small thing in the grand scheme but seeing these sets as if it was a motion picture, brings them to life in a whole new. From TOS, TNG, VOY and DS9 each show is given that love and it is very cool!

in powerful fiction by Stephen Crane ("The Little Regiment") & Tim O'Brien ("The Things They Carried") it is depicted with much sympathy, & irony, that the soldiers not only had little idea why they were fighting but had little curiosity about it. in both stories, the young soldiers followed orders; were intensely loyal to their comrades; sublimated personal fears by identifying with their platoon. Crane narrates his story from the perspective of a neutral observer--(Crane was a reporter); O'Brien, from the perspective of a soldier in Vietnam with no political awareness of why he was there.

For those who haven't yet heard about that person whose name shall not be mentioned. Or who read my bio - People always ask me, "Mikey, why do you hate that motherless whore Tom Clancy so much?" and I always answer, I'm glad you asked that question. You see, when we were both at Penguin Putnam and had the same editor, a conversation with Editor Boy Douggy went like this – Douggy: I got called in to see Michael-UHH (the editor-in-chief, a very icy woman who didn't like me). You'll never guess who we talked about. Me: Let me guess. Douggy: Yup. You. Specifically how Tom Clancy wants us to terminate your contract. Me: Terminate my fookin contract? Why would that motherless whore Tom Clancy want my contract terminated? Douggy (snickering): He says you're, quote, stealing his readers, unquote. Me: Oh, for fuck's sake. Like he owns the readers? Douggy: Well, he owns everything else. But look at the bright side. You're a very big blip on Tom Clancy's radar. And he hates when your book covers announce in block letters that Publishers Weekly quote, "A MASTER RIVALING TOM CLANCY!" Me: That motherless whore. A few years later, someone brought to my attention that the motherless whore Tom Clancy stole my title - THREAT VECTOR. He published a book WITH THE EXACT SAME TITLE. Furious, I call up Douggy. Me: Douggy, what the fuck? A novel named THREAT VECTOR by that motherless whore Tom Clancy? You told me I couldn't use the title VORTEX because Larry Bond already used it. If I can't recycle a title, how come that motherless whore Tom Clancy can? Douggy (laughing): Because he's Tom Clancy. Me (mumbling): That motherless whore. Years later, I'm opening the fridge and my daughter walked into the kitchen just as I'm muttering out loud, "that motherless whore." She just starts laughing. "You're thinking about Tom Clancy again, aren't you?"

Clearly she has never been in a position where restrictive rules of engagement cost the lives of the very people she was trying to protect. Waiting twenty minutes for permission from a politician and a lawyer to engage an active threat is impossible in a dynamic fight where seconds matter.

I keep seeing people here insist that the answer to the Navy’s problems is more shipyard capacity. I get the sentiment. We all want more ships. We haven’t delivered a major shipbuilding program on time and in budget in decades. But the part that gets missed is that extra capacity will not produce much if the programs feeding that capacity are broken at the requirement level. The Navy rarely has a firm idea of what it wants to build, and the requirement set drifts until the design becomes unmanageable. Take the Constellation class as a recent example. The original promise was to base it on the existing FREMM design with around 85 % commonality; fewer changes, faster build, lower risk. Let me emphasize once more that the baseline ship was already a real ship in service with the Italia navy. As of recent reports, the commonality has dropped to about 15 % because of added propulsion, sensor, survivability, hull, and combat-system requirements. The shipyard isn’t the root cause of the delay; the design evolution is. Other programs are the same story. The Littoral Combat Ship collapsed under a lack of clear mission definition. The Zumwalt became a tech-showcase instead of a combatant. The Ford class carrier stacked first-of-kind systems together and absorbed every new requirement. In each case, yards couldn’t build fast because the target kept shifting. Shipbuilders only gain rhythm and scale when design is fixed, repetition begins, and there’s a stable baseline.

Hegseth: "You should not pay for an earnest mistake for your entire career. That's why today, at my direction, we're making changes to the retention of adverse information on personnel records."

Just in: Naval Support Activity Annapolis, in coordination with local law enforcement, is currently responding to reports of threats made to the Naval Academy. The base is on lockdown out of an abundance of caution. This is a developing situation.

This is bad. Note that no one of Kirk's stature on the left is now spreading conspiracy theories about his death. The Paul Pelosi thing woke me up to the right. The guy wasn't even a politician. They were absolutely gleeful about it. What they pretend Democrats are like now.