| From: | Mach <mach@****.CALTECH.EDU> |
|---|---|
| Subject: | Re: Another Dead Judge |
| Date: | Tue, 4 Aug 1998 01:58:06 -0700 |
I'm a bit overburdened in RL, so I'll just toss in a few comments. First,
a general one, I'm going to have to concur mostly with Paul here. This
may be contrary to Hephaestus' reasoning, but hey, he's on the inside of
the matter, and has his own perspective to cling to. I figured there
should be someone to vote for the Status Quo.
On Tue, 4 Aug 1998, Paul J. Adam wrote:
> Now, few if any megacorps will buy critical assets from each other
> (Saeder-Krupp buying Ares tanks/aircraft/missiles? Not exactly
> likely...) so the _only_ customer for this stuff is national militaries.
> Yet, how many can afford to consider purchasing state-of-the-art
> fighters? How many air forces, even today, fly the 25-year-old F-15?
> (Not many - the US, Japan, Israel, Saudi Arabia).
Pst....Paul, then why'd you have Blade pulling an _Ares_Alpha off a dead
_Aztlan_ guard? I didn't think "the government that is the corporation"
of Aztlan/Aztechnology would be too happy about buying a rival's product.
Mostly a joke here, but you should be careful about your continuity. =)
> And selling such an aircraft is not like selling a car: it's a package
> deal involving support and maintenance for twenty or thirty years.
>
> We're supposed to believe that the UCAS is going to buy the sinews of
> its national defence from a foreign power that says "By the way, we can
> crush you tomorrow if we feel like it"?
>
> If Ares maintains an aggressive, confrontational attitude towards
> national governments, then the billions ploughed into development of
> advanced weapon systems will have no buyers and represent money flushed
> down the drain. Sure, Ares may be a world leader with the best air-
> superiority fighter available, but if nobody who can afford it is
> willing to buy from them, what was the point? Even megacorps can't
> afford to flush billions away with no return, without serious
> consequence.
Another side comment here: The Valkyrie is my brain-child, for the simple
reason that all other mentioned fighters stunk. Honestly, I don't know
what the real Ares (according ot FASA) has been up to. Given the
financial risk, I don't even know if they would try somehting like the
Valkryie Project. That is why I foisted off on another of my creations:
Ares Special Projects which, in my view operates more like a "Skunkworks"
thinktank, and can afford to be a funding black hole.
> Ares can make no profit without sales, and yet to make sales of major
> military equipment it _must_ present as a stable, long-term ally. Or,
> they make a "sale" that includes transfer of all IPR and design data on
> the aircraft / missile / tank / whatever, because they are not trusted:
> and so they lose out on the lucrative PDS contract, and the data they
> spent billions developing is in the hands of their customers, to be
> passed on to their competitors if necessary.
Honestly they probably wouldn't make the sale if it meant they had to
transfer over all the data. With extraterritoriality, they cannot afford
to have the close friendly relationships that American aerospace firms
have with the millitary today. Certain things would effectively be "black
boxes." Especially some of the more critical avionics and structural
components. They probably would be very silent on the matter of
manufacturing as well. For instance, they would hardly be willing to
advertise the intricacies of how to forge a wing box out of a
metalic-glass alloy.
(BTW, that doesn't mean that they mix in sand with the metal, but rather
by recent 1998 metallurgical developments, they have discovered a way to
forge materials with no crystaline structure making them no less strong
but _fantastically_ more fatigue resistant since they have no prefered
vibrational or fracture modes that a normal crystaline-structure metal
would. Also make awesome golf clubs, or so I've heard, since there is
almost no energy absorbed into the vibration of the club when you hit the
ball. But, from what I hear, they are also a bit unnerving because while
looking metal, they don't *ring* when struck.) -- Dr. Science
> If FASA claim that black is white then FASA's full of it.
I seem to have thrown in my two yen behind this sentiment before....
--My two yen
Jeff
P.S. Anybody care to enlighten the list on the new squad rifle to be
fielded by the US? Saw it in July's _Popular Science_. Made by HK, 20-30
shot standard NATO squad rifle round and an overbarrel 6-shot 20mm
explosive shell with a microchip timed fuse so that you can airburst it
around corners. Built in 6x day/night-scope and link to a helmet-cam (can
you say, SmarkGun Level 0?). Scary stuff.
