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Nox wrote:
@AlexCage: "Awesome! Still makes them liars." Sorry but that kind of unfounded statement is just what I was talking about. Trolling plain and simple.

Actually, I was referring specifically to their slogan, "Fair and Balanced Reporting". Which, according to what you posted, is a lie. I wouldn't be qualified to comment any further than that, since I don't get my news from Fox.

Completely founded trolling, thank you.

Sidstyler wrote:But if you choose to believe and support the Left you're just a sheep buying into their talking points...

That wasn't what I meant Sid, but then you knew that. The point was inform yourself about the various points of view then make your own decisions, sheep come from all sides. Anyways, Voodoo Boyz is correct we shouldn't hijack the thread.

---------------------------------------------------------

On to battle armor. The problem is that it isn't practical, it's much cheaper and easier to have lightly armored troops hop into an armored transport and be driven where they are needed. As long as battle armor has to compete with armored transports it isn't going to be well received by the troops. The active duty people I know would much rather leave the heavy crap behind.

To quote a very wise man, "what I said was true, from a certain point of view".

By arguing about the source and not the coolness (despite it potentially being useless) of the exo-skeleton, you're all simply proving the age-old adage about "arguing on the internet" (google image it). I think Leonardo da Vinci said it.

As for the Almighty Japanese doing this first, I believe the point of this thread was "another step on the road..." Plus, don't they usually just use this sort of thing to build cissy robots that love, laugh, live and then enslave humanity?

*sigh*

Perhaps, though, in order to placate the commies, sorry liberals, this sort of totally unbiased and highly credible source could have been used: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/02/27/lockheed_exoskeleton/

The REMF has the normal number of chins.

Long live El Reg.

Hate to feed the flame but...

Nox wrote:Why is it that you can’t read a thread like this without some kind of “Fox News is the Devil” crap? Fox wasn’t even the topic of the tread. But if you insist on randomly flaming with no facts to back you up I guess I’ll take the bait and toss out a few facts for the trolls that.

First in defense of Fox let me sight the 2008 election coverage. This quote comes from a study done by the Center for Media and Public Affairs at George Mason University.

The “FOX difference” lay not in what they covered but in how they covered the campaign. It will come as no surprise to learn that FOX carried the most positive portrayal of McCain and Palin and the most negative portrayals of Obama and Biden. By the same token, however, the tone of FOX’s coverage of the candidates was, if not the fairest, at least the most balanced of the four networks we monitored.

Full Report

Several other university studies also noted Fox as the most balanced coverage of the election cycle.

I would also like to site the study done by Tim Groseclose Department of Political Science of UCLA and Jeff Milyo Department of Economics University of Missouri called “A Measure of Media Bias”. This particular study was considered groundbreaking when released and is still considered an excellent example of how to measure bias in the media. I really think you all should take the time to read it.

UCLA Report

Highlight:

Fox News’ Special Report is approximately one point more centrist than ABC’s World News Tonight or NBC’s Nightly News. In neither case is the difference statistically significant. Given that Special Report is one hour long and the other two shows are a half-hour long, our measure implies that if a viewer watched all three shows each night, he or she would receive a nearly perfectly balanced version of the news. (In fact, it would be slanted slightly left by 0.4 ADA points.)

In closing guys at least think for yourselves. Stop buying into the left’s talking points. If you only listen to one side of the story you never get the truth. And just for those of you about to flame me as a Fox News nut. I will list the places I get my news from: CNN, Fox, USAToday and NPR.

Anyone that tells you not to listen to the people that disagree with him is trying to make you a sheep.

*Steps off soapbox* All zealots may now begin throwing rotten food.

Try not to quote sources which the point is of trying to prove "Do the major media outlets in the U.S. have a liberal bias?"

And just cause some university Graduate Writes a report and shoves some stats doesnt mean its true. Statistics can be biased very easily, Ex 100% of people are abnormal because on average we all have 1 breast and 1 testicle

You should really go and look up the Mule thing that they mentioned there, the videos for it are absolutely hilarious.

I don't recall ever meeting a soldier with a double-chin...

then you haven't seen many reservists or nasty guard lately. swear that half of them around here are overweight.

H.B.M.C. wrote:TERRORIST FIST BUMP!

I rest my case.

BYE

I thought it was terrorist fist jab? No network with sean hannity has credibility. The mans simply an idiot. The right wing bent of fox news is so prevalent that they have no left wing anything. Anywhere. Even when they had combs he was a professed "independant" and was little more than a short stuttering glasses man for hannity to call idiotic.

Add to that O'rielly and the new insane guy (can't remember his name, but he cries on camera and has a history of mental issues) and you have a network with less journalistic credibility then comedy central. Which should be a joke.

Also hackers on steroids, swift boat, decade old disarmed bio weapons being WMDs Found etc. Its a yellow news agency.

:edit: Oh, I also forgot. Secret muslim?

You can close now, please.

Deadshane1 wrote:...this sort of high tech garbage is just that...garbage. Simply something else to break down or get in the way of the fight at hand....

Maintenance would definitely be an issue. I see this technology being more useful for SWAT teams. They have short logistics tails, engage in far shorter missions in far better environments (downtown LA won't wear out gear quite like Anbar province would) and if the exoskeleton is uparmored, they could breach buildings armed with non-lethal weapons to reduce the danger to non-combatants, but without significant risk to themselves.

JD21290 wrote:kind of shane, maybe now they can blame the lack of decent gear on this thing lol
ok, it may help a bit, but to be honest i rather have an upgraded gun or armour to a lifting aid any day.


with all this fancy junk, we still use a basic cheapo model SA80.

*shrugs* Most of our weapons are more than adequate. Our armor is already so heavy the Marines are ditching it for lighter kit. However, anything that makes humping 200+ lbs. of kit up the mountains of Afghanistan easier would surely be welcome (assuming it's decently reliable and easy to use, which, knowing the gov't, it won't be).

AlexCage wrote:The first thing that came to mind when I read this article (And I realize I'm terrible for this)

"Boy, the nerds that work at Lockheed will use any excuse they can find to wear their 'Army Costume' and play soldier"

I don't recall ever meeting a soldier with a double-chin...

Clearly you haven't met enough Soldiers.

MadDocGrotsnik wrote:Sad thing is, until effective body armour, powered or otherwise is cheaper than training and equipping new blood, the Military won't be interested.

Depressing huh?

P.S. this is based on fairly old stuff I read on the Internet. Apparently there is supremely good body armour out there which would reduce casualties considerably, and possibly more importantly, fatalities as well. But it's sufficiently pricey that military budgets are 'better' spent training more troops. Now I do see the wisdom in this, after all, 100 lightly armoured troops, compared to 20 well armoured troops otherwise identically equipped, will get the job done a heck of a lot faster, and as long as training is sufficient, casualties can be kept to minimum. Take Iraq and Afghanistan. Despite being theatres of War, casualties are surprisingly light all things considered.

So, yeah, kind of bashing the military, but from a fairly understanding point of view. I think.

This is totally wrong.
1. The "supremely good armour" you are thinking of is probably Dragonskin, which was massively overhyped by the manufacturer and largely discredited since.

2. Personnel are by far the largest budget expense of the Army and Marine Corps. Let's take an Army Infantryman. IIRC Infantry OSUT (i.e. combined Basic Training + Infantry School) = 13 weeks. Then he gets sent to a unit that trains up for ~3 months before doing a 12-month deployment in a combat zone, so let's use this year and a half snapshot. Wages alone for 18 months, even for a Private E-1, come to $25,200. Support costs (barracks, food, medical) and training cost nearly as much, EACH. You're looking at $75,000 in costs easily. If PVT Snuffy eats an EFP on his deployment you're also paying out $400,000 in SGLI (Serviceman's Group Life Insurance) to his folks. Even suits of $20,000 armor become cheaper than sending someone home in a box.

3. Any realistically applicable, industrial-scale armor technology is going to be heavy, bulky, or both. This leads to rapid exhaustion and slow movements, which are just as deadly, if not more so, than wearing comparatively "light" armor. I haven't deployed but I've done a decent number of squad/platoon attack drills in training. Assaulting across 50-100 meter distances in 3-5 second intervals, repeatedly diving into the prone position, tends to wear you out completely by the 2nd training iteration, if not the first. That's in 80F weather, without SAPI plates (Small Arms Protective Insert, the slabs of boron carbide that stop rifle rounds) or a full combat load (6 magazines, 30 rounds each). Tack on all the gear you're SUPPOSED to carry, and do it in 140F weather (Iraq), or worse, at elevations of 6,000ft (Afghanistan), and you're rendered combat ineffective in no time, which makes you dead weight to anyone still capable of moving, shooting, and communicating.

4. The balance between offensive firepower and defensive technology is firmly on the side of "offense". In 2004 we used to get IED briefings based on the knowledge coming out of Iraq. There were pictures of IEDs hidden in things like Pepsi cans and cinder blocks. In other words, stuff so small that most of the blasts resulted in minimal damage or casualties unless you were right on top of it, or in something with no armor. Still, there was enough concern over the losses, since most troops were riding around in soft-skinned Humvees, that we tried to pile on enough armor to result in reduced casualties. First we uparmored the Humvees, and then (years later) introduced Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles. Ya know what the bad guys did? Make bigger bombs. Bombs so huge that *nothing* on the road survives in decent shape, not even the 65-ton Abrams. And if a triple-stack of 155mm artillery rounds in a drain culvert will wreck an Abrams, it will obliterate a Humvee. So now NOTHING on the road is safe and we STILL take casualties.

Likewise, the same thing would happen if you tried to cover your grunts from head to toe in Unobtainium armor. The bad guys would stop using AKs, start using (more) .50 cal anti-material rifles (good luck protecting a man against THAT), and we'd STILL be taking casualties. Oh, and the SAPI plates that used to save lives? Now totally useless.


So yeah, there's a lot of reasons why we have the armor protection that we do, but the idea that feeding cannon fodder into the grinder is somehow better than issuing "superb" kit certainly isn't one of 'em.

robertsjf wrote:People are cheaper to make. couple of fertile kids, some booze, no birth control, done.

People are *not* cheaper to make. It takes 17 years, and hundreds of thousands of dollars to "manufacture" the input for a grunt (i.e a 17 year old male, in decent health/physical condition, with at least a partial secondary school education). An Interceptor vest with SAPI plates is about $1,500-$2000.

Eh, maybe they should just nuke the place? Or at least just level all the cities and then leave. It would seem simpler to me and since I don't really think many americans really care about the people in them anyways.... You wouldn't take any more casualties, but you might just start WW III.