Note to NG: in the 80s and early 90s, defense engineers were paid high wages and given excellent perks - subsequently you had some of the best and brightest designing and developing your systems. Since the mid 90s, defense engineer salaries and perks have been decreasing on an almost yearly basis. Now the best and brightest are working at Apple, Microsoft, Silicon Valley or Wall st. It will be interesting to see if such a weapon system can be built to specifications the military needs within a 10 year time span by engineers who were second or third tier students, and if such an expensive system will, at that time still be at least 10 years ahead of the competition. Frankly, I wouldn't bet on it.
= F-35
It's not just the specific system mass. When you have a nudet package, the satellite itself becomes a larger more valuable and therefore a more expensive asset. So you need a larger bus, structure, more redundancy in things like clocks and boxes, larger power system/solar panels etc etc etc.
It's possible to build a much smaller GPS satellite if it just carries the nav payload. This is a concept that has been seriously studied in the last few years. It would save money on the build but also the launch as more than one satellite could be put into orbit at a time. I would also hazzard a guess that if an enemy took out the present navsats constellation replenishment would be quicker and cheaper using a small GPS.
Wow indeed. Which "wealthy" are you referring to? General Dynamics or Lockheed stock holders? Ever note that when there's a defense downturn that defense stocks tend to go UP? Take a look at the last couple of years of their stock. As far as the CEOs of those companies are concerned, Obama's "defense cuts" put 10s of millions in their pockets. And if you have a problem with the products defense companies turn out, I suggest you take it up with the Pentagon, who puts out the specifications, picks the winners and oversees the entire process in detail. Oh yeah, they also accept the risk that the new super duper high tech, must beat anyone else, bleeding edge of technology wonder weapon they demand might take longer to develop and be more expensive than a weapon system that's behind the technology curve when it comes into service.
= Jeffrey Immelt
Computational celestial mechanics is a mature field well validated by experiment. So I doubt very much that the results of the comet mission will divert from earthborn analysis enough to add any significant new knowledge about asteroid diversion via gravity tractors. OTOH, it's a good subject to impress the politicians with who hold the grant money so it's all good.
Tell it to the HMS Sheffield.
Skynet will be pleased with the design
If you have a 4G receiver with a high gain antenna and low noise amp you can receive it at rather large distances. What this could do, if not propertly protected, is allow an enemy to know which ships, for example, are short on air defense missiles and plan their attack direction accordingly. The battle of the atlantic was won via German submarine transmissions.
Could it be that's why the US has invested in small super stealthy drones? To loiter waiting for the anti-stealth radars to turn on in order to take them out first? Nah, the defense establishment are all just big stupids.
About a year after the Obama administration came into office, virtually all the engineers associated with missile defense improvements and upgrades at the aerospace facility where I worked were laid off or had to change jobs to different programs due to funding cuts. Reducing missile defense spending was one of the priorities of candidate Obama and there was a youtube video where he makes that statement.
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