Accipitriform

Er, "The war began on 25 June 1950 when North Korea invaded South Korea following a series of clashes along the border."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_War

Perhaps NK shouldn't have been the aggressor and gotten a bunch of citizens killed... How many South Koreans do you suppose would rather NK had won?

'At least six J-20s are in active service, with tail numbers 78271-78276 identified. Another six were believed ready to be delivered by end of Dec 2016.[86] On 9 March 2017, Chinese officials confirmed that the J-20 had entered service in the Chinese air force.

In September 2017, the J-20 officially entered military service with PLAAF, making China the second country in the world after United States wielding fifth-generation stealth aircraft, and the first in Asia.[87][87][88][16]

In January 2018, Chinese media reports that J-20 is in full operation-ready deployment.'

Yeah, that all sounds great as propaganda. It's clear to any knowledgeable observer that the J-20 likely still has significant issues. As I mentioned before, it's also not at all clear how stealthy it is as well. There's a reason no other stealth aircraft has canards...

"in two years’ time, if not before, America is likely to lose its monopoly of radar-beating stealth combat aircraft with the introduction into service of China’s Chengdu J-20. This has a much longer range than America’s new F-35 fighter and will be a serious threat to American warships in the Pacific."

Carrier based F-35s will be in service soon (or already are in the case of the F-35B), countering the range advantage. All that said, the F-22 is the true counterpart to the J-20 and will likely mop the floor with it if necessary.

It's worth noting that for strike aircraft like the F-35, the main goal is avoiding detection to bomb targets. Stealth aircraft have no advantage over any other aircraft at detecting other stealth aircraft - making the J-20 no more of a threat than any Gen 4 aircraft.

"Another system, yet to be named, would provide China with an ability to knock out targets as far away as 400km, a far greater range than any other air-to-air weapon in service. It would threaten aircraft that currently operate safely from a considerable distance, such as tankers and planes used for airborne surveillance and control. "

Yep, that's interesting. I wonder how our jammers, anti-missile missiles, and directed energy weapons will fare against it...

We certainly have done that in North Korea. We've given NK billions in aid in the expectation that the quest for nuclear weapons would end and NK would turn towards prosperity.

No one said, "we'll just kill them". The good thing is that NK is unlikely to kill us, since if it tries it won't survive as a political entity.

That is called "deterrence".

"For the cost of a single death machine, the will for war could be bought: you just use it to deliver books and medicine and food, instead of death and mayhem and misery."

We've done that for decades with North Korea, and you see the result: North Korea armed with thermonuclear weapons and delivery systems that can reach most of the world.

Human nature, and competition for resources, guarantee war for the foreseeable future. Sorry to say, a strong deterrent is the only way to preserve the peace.

Japan is also considering a F-35B purchase according to the article.

The claim is that the Chinese J-20 is "ready for mass production" and "combat ready", but the reality is likely different. It's also not at all clear how good are the stealth characteristics of the J-20.

From the Wikipedia article on the J-20:

"In October 2017, Chinese state media reported that the designs of J-20 had been finalized, and is ready for mass production as well as combat-ready."

...however...

"As of March 2017 there are still a series of technical problems that need to be tackled, including the reliability of its WS-15 engines, [the aircraft's flight] control system, stealth coatings and hull materials, and infrared sensor."

The Russian Su-57 is equally questionable:

"In December 2014, the Russian Air Force planned to receive 55 fighters by 2020.[41] Yuri Borisov, Russia's deputy minister of defence for armaments stated in 2015 that the Air Force would slow production and reduce its initial order to 12 fighters and retain large fleets of fourth-generation fighters due to the nation's economy."

Both China and Russia are almost entirely dependent on their 4th Gen fighters at this point, and I expect the F-22 and F-35 will easily handle the J-20 if necessary. Regardless, 99.99% of potential adversaries are 4th Gen.

I have very little doubt the F-35s will excel in combat, largely based on this article:

https://theaviationist.com/2016/12/08/four-of-the-most-exper...

I think this quote from a Marine F-35B pilot regarding an exercise pretty well says it all:

"I was leading a four ship of F-35s on a strike against 4th Gen adversaries, F-16s and F/A-18s. We fought our way in, we mapped the target, found the target, dropped JDAMs on the target and turned around and fought our way out. All the targets got hit, nobody got detected, and all the adversaries died. I thought, yes, this works, very, very, very well. Never detected, nobody had any idea we were out there."

The F-35B in particular is an amazing piece of engineering, and a vast improvement over any other STOVL aircraft.

I agree except I might swap macOS with Linux, because there's a lot of helpful macOS-only software, a good selection of proprietary software, and I think macOS is generally easier to deal with.

I recently moved to a job where my development laptop is Windows-based, after having a Macbook Pro at the last gig (I'm told we're working on getting Macs for developers). Windows 10 is still pretty bad in a lot of ways, large and small. Not having homebrew, apt, or yum to manage packages is a pain. I'm using elementaryOS running in VMware Workstation as my primary dev environment for the time being...

"What's realistic about calling for a large-scale rollout of something which has never been built, in an industry where cost-overruns are typical? Shouldn't you build at least one before betting the farm on it?"

(Sorry for the delay in responding, busy times...)

If you read the ThorCon material, you'll find that there's nothing controversial about its design. It's all based on the solid ORNL molten salt work. ThorCon is in the process of building a first reactor, which will likely be in Indonesia due to the broken nuclear approach in the US.

"Meanwhile, coal is already on the way out in the US, replaced by... unrealistic? ... power sources."

Most of the true replacement (reliable) power is natural gas, which still produces very significant CO2. Wind and solar will never really be effective replacements without reliable backup power, even with grid storage. The problem is there will eventually be an outlier event where there is too much calm air, and too much overcast, to supply enough electricity. At that point lots of people will die, if it's very hot or very cold. Reliable power is very important.

Actually one of the only realistic things you can do is advocate a large scale rollout of nuclear power to replace coal, primarily in the US, China and India.

I'm not advocating dinosaur approaches like the AP-1000, but instead new, innovative designs like that championed by ThorCon Power.

http://thorconpower.com/thorcons-green-nuclear-power-gains-m...

"A comparison of all offered sources of nuclear found ThorCon’s power to be 4 to 5 cents per kWh lower than the competition and the only clean source of non-intermittent power that was competitive with coal."

"Does the average f2p shovelware author really have the resources to implement a system like the one contemplated in this presentation? I doubt it."

It doesn't matter. Take a look at Summoner's War, the top revenue MMO game right now. I could easily see COM2US (the developers) taking advantage of a lot of those things.

SW has a business model where you can certainly spend thousands a month if you have the money to throw away. I'd be very curious to know what it brings in from the average player per year.

It's not happening much at all in NFL football, since it's a major penalty if caught, and it's hard to hide.

I do hope helmet technology improves to handle inadvertent contact.

One claim is the near instant factoring of large integers...breaking a class of encryption that's widely used currently.

Hobbes put it best:

"No arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death: and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short."