Long Live the Peoples' Site!

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(Editor's Note: The Peoples' Site! is a new DT feature where periodically (when we feel like it) we will highlight the best comments from our discussion forums.)


In response to "That Deaf, Dumb, and Blind Jet," Dr. Curiosity writes: "It may be apocryphal, but I once heard from an electronic engineering friend of a similar bug in a guidance system, developed in the eastern part of the Southern Hemisphere, that didn't work quite so well for the North American customers.


"The problem was one of coordinate systems: When you're used to getting positive numbers for South and East coords, and sudden you're getting everything in North and West, things don't work so well. To get things resolved quickly, they effectively installed it back to front - i.e. inverting all the numbers. No-one's going to notice if a missile's flying upside down, right? :-)"


John Diuno offered this in response to Stephen Trimble's provocative post on the Marine Corps' obsession with VSTOL: "One interesting statistic came out of the first Gulf War. Approx 15 percent of conventional aircraft struck by missiles were shot down. (my numbers might be slightly off, but not by far). The percentage of Harriers shot down when struck by a missile? 100 percent! The basic reason is that most missiles are heat-seaking, which head to the hottest parts, namely the nozzles. Where are the nozzles on each? F-18/F-15/F-14/F-16...they're many feet behind the critical components of the engines and even the aircraft. Where are the nozzles on a Harrier? Directly below the wings, directly astride the engines, fuel lines, control systems...the heart of the beast."


And in response to another Trimble post that got many of you fired up, Freefallingbomb writes: "If you blunt the pointed tip of a bullet with a Dremel then you also make the bullet lighter. But light objects dont travel as far ( through any medium, not in a vacuum ) as heavy objects do with the same speed . . .


"Therefore, the only way to avoid weight loss of the bullet is not to ask soldiers to perform their own basic ballistic experiments before a fire-fight ( thats what they were sent into combat for. I only hope that they get paid enough... ), but simply to produce a new, spoon-point-tipped bullet that simply weighs the entire original 62 grams!"


Defense Tech -- the (really smart) peoples' site. So keep the comments coming, comrades. The peace-loving staff of the republic of Defense Tech thanks you.


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