Posts by I ain't Spartacus

Re: Clarkson?

He also punched Piers Morgan at an awards show. Sadly I don't think it was filmed though. But does prove he's not all bad...

Re: Unexpected input..... to the human

Mast1,

There is an upside to the current explosion of tech gadgets. Stuff that was expensive is now ubiquitous. 15 years ago you could buy a smartphone sized unit that was a screen with camera attached to magnify text for users with very poor eyesight. They were £800 each. Nowadays you can do the same with a £50 smartphone.

The difference is the expensive device also had the camera on a little wheeled pod with a light, so you could run it over a page without moving the screen. And had software to change the colours to improve contrast - though the magnifier app on my phone has that software. Fifteen years ago I didn't buy that magnifier, because it wasn't worth it, and I had various much cheaper hand magnifying glasses - nowadays my smartphone isn't quite as good at the job, but is also effectively free because I'd have had one anyway. I don't know if you can still buy the low vision aid kit - given it's being competed with by something that's cheap but mostly good enough.

If your Mum found the voice assistant helpful the answer is to get her one activated by a button. So it only talks to her when she expects it. But I don't know if Alexa devices could be made to only work that way. Siri can be, on an iPhone - Google Assistant could also be set up to respond if the button was pressed. But that presumes she could find a convenient way to use the phone.

Re: Don't know.

Speech isn't a great interface. It's fine for simple on-off commands. But then we don't have much home automation. Also what's the point of telling the washing machine or dishwasher to turn on by voice, when you're already standing right next to it to press the button, having just loaded it. Plus you need to select which program to use (probably only 1 of 2 of the 30 on offer...)

Asking Alexa for the weather is dead easy. But what about the answer? If you're in LA the answer might be hot and blue skies all day plus peak temperature. But if you're in Britain you need to know that it will rain this morning and be sunny this afternoon, with a chance of showers, and a tiny chance of snow overnight. That's much easier to see as a little graph. So you could buy the Amazon Alexa Show (or whatever it's now called) which is a home speaker with a little screen. But why not just get your phone out.

Again, "Alexa turn on the heating" - easy. Alexa, program the heating to come on at 6am week days, 7am weekends with the thermostat set to 21°. On week days turn it off again at 8, at weekends lower it to 18° after 9 then...

Re: "... they serve their makers more than they help users"

The idea that a middle man exists for the end user's benefit is patent nonsense.

No it isn't.

Amazon specifically won their massive market share by being very, very good for consumers. They were often a bit cheaper than shops, but not the cheapest prices on the internet. But they beat the shops because you don't have to go out to get your stuff, and they beat the cheaper websites because they had a vast range all in one place and really good customer service.

They've become bigger, and their site more user-hostile in my opinion. Search on the site seems designed to show you lots of stuff you probably didn't want in order to merge the original excellent Amazon giant web store with some sort of ebay/Etsy type thing - but the customer service remains good.

Amazon as a middle man are providing a service to several different sets of clients. Running a web shop at scale isn't that easy, so if you're a manufacturer you may prefer to just concentrate on making stuff. Rather than also doing the messy bits of retail. Customer service is expensive.

It's a bit like the aritcle author's dig at "late capitalism". Who says it's ending anytime soon? Captitalism isn't how the economy works anyway - it's a description of who owns stuff. The economy is a mixed market economy with varying levels of government intervention in different sectors - and so far nothing better has come along.

Perhaps voice assistants have so-far failed because of evil capitalist running-dogs? Or perhaps it's just because voice isn't a very good interface for anything at all complex.

Plus its an integration issue. The makers of the voice kit are all internet companies. But the stuff we want to control is all made by industrial conglomerates - and it takes time for the two to get together and get organised. Which is a similar reason why few of us have home-automation - a lot of the tech has been around for decades - and became very cheap in the last one but that doesn't solve all the practical issues of getting it installed and integrated. Or even just getting people used to the idea.

Re: Perspective

Under the pensions act 2008 in the UK your employer is required to deduct money from your salary and put it into a private pension scheme. If you don't have a pension scheme they are required to enroll you in one.

Yes. And if you don't want them to, they are also required by the same law to stop doing it. It is a scheme you are automatically opted in to, but can opt out of, in order to harness people's natural laziness to get them to save.

So no dancing on the head of any pins required. If you don't want it, don't sign up to it.

Also not a ponzi scheme by the way, because private pensions hold actual assets.

Re: Perspective

You have literally described a Ponzi scheme.

No I haven't.

From the OED: Ponzi Scheme - a form of fraud in which belief in the success of a non-existent enterprise is fostered by the payment of quick returns to the first investors from money invested by later investors.

Origin

named after Charles Ponzi (died 1949), who carried out such a fraud (1919–20).

I don't pay my taxes as an investment. I do it in order to fund the government. And, of course, becuase they can lock me up if I don't. That funding pays for the stuff the government spends today.

So long as there are still people in the country in twenty years time, I hope that I'll get to draw a pension. The system's been working for the last 110 years. I'm forced to hope it'll continue to work for another forty.

But it's not a Ponzi scheme because it's not a fake investment. Ponzi IIRC claimed that he had a scheme to make money from foreign postal orders. And needed investors' money to make it work. There was no such scheme and he just paid a few people out of the next lot of people's money to "prove" it worked, while keeping the rest.

Government pensions work because the state is a continuously existing entity, expected to outlive its individual citizens. Government pensions are also not a scam, because nobody is lying to you about this. Governments openly admit this is how it works all the time.

Private pensions are a genuine investment where I entrust my money to a heavily regulated company, and they take a profit for holding it in various bonds and shares. It has risks, but hopefully in twenty years I'll have a big chunk of cash to spend on my retirement. Plus a governmetn pension to keep me in cat food and Werther's Originals.

Re: Perspective

elsergiovolador,

You don't understand pensions.

In the UK we pay taxes. National insurance (though not exclusively) is there to cover our pensions. It's not an investment. I've paid national insurance for over thirty years in order to pay the pensions of the people already receiving them. My pension will be covered by younger people, some of them not yet born - if I can manage to survive at least another 18 years... This is how governments cover their spending. We're living longer and having fewer children, so this is being corrected in richer countries by allowing more immigration and raising retirement ages.

We then have private pension schemes. Which we aren't forced to pay into. Which are regulated. They invest on the stock market, but they also have significant holdings of safer bonds. They are heavily regulated. In the UK we now opt people into these schemes by default, in order to nudge them into saving more, but nobody is forced to join.

Re: Ban on what?

Just occurred to me: what if we simply ban /bailouts?

Banking is useful. OK, stop laughing at the back there!

Banking does several socially useful things. It gives us a relatively safe place to keep our money, rather than under the mattress. It gives us relatively safe ways to move money around, and manage it.

It also allows liquidity transformation. This is the act of turning lots of people's amounts of short-to-medium-term savings into large blocks of long term money that can be loaned-out in the form or mortgages or loans for business investment.

The risk of this is that panics can cause everyone to try and withdraw their savings at once from a bank, and they can't get the mortgages paid back in the few days they have to meet that demand. Hence we have Central Bank guarantees to stop solvent but illiqid banks from going bust, and allow this socially and economically useful business to continue. It's very hard (to impossible) to get economic growth without investment.

In order to be worthy of being trusted with this bail-out facility, our banks need to be heavily regulated and as boring as possible. Lending sensibly and usefully. Leaving the much riskier loans to the financial markets and investors who hopefully better understand the risks, and can cope with the inevitable losses.

Me no expert on fusion.

The British based research you remember was the reactor at Culham. Which I think was the final experiment from the progam. Theirs is an old project to make a scale model (one third scale?) of a big magnetically confined fusion reactor design that might eventually hopefully be used for generating electricity.

They achieved a huge amount of power, but didn't achieve more than was put in. However their unit isn't supposed to. It's part of an international test program. The new reactor to replace it is the ITER reactor, that's been building in France for the last decade or so. The last test at Culham was to test concepts for that. ITER has billions in funding from Japan, USA, Canada and various European countries.

This US experiment is about firing lasers at small capsules of fuel that give you tiny bursts of fusion. I don't know if it would be even feasible to build an electricity generating system round this concept, or if it's more about basic research. But I've been seeing lots of stories from various places about the idea, so it's clearly an area where a lot of research is happening. It has the advantage that you can do your testing at a much smaller scale than having to build a full size fusion plant, without even knowing if it's going to work. I make no pretence to understand the area of fusion research.

Potemkine,

Developing a parallel program to an already existing European one is a mistake. Italy should know better.

Perhaps Italy have learned from dealing with France before? Typhoon and Tornado were both successful European programs that didn't involve France. So perhaps it's Germany that's got it wrong?

Also of course it was a joint European program that split, with Sweden, Italy and the UK going one way and Germany, France and Spain the other. Though Sweden seem to have dropped out of both now. I'm presuming both sides had good reasons for this.

Obviously some of it is politics and industrial policy. Got to win enough work for "national champions". But there are also military requirements. Like the French want one suitable to fly from their carriers. Everyone else in Europe with carriers is transitioning from Harrier to F35.

Re: So how many years late

I reckon they'll get the demonstrator flying near enough to the planned 2030.

The idea that the first models will be in service by 2035 seems a bit... Optimistic? Unlikely? Delusional?

On the other hand F35 has been built now - as the first high production rate stealth aircraft. And a lot of the problems with that program are now software related. So if this can be less ambitious with the software - maybe it won't be as horribly delayed?

But the defence-industrial relationship with Japan is also quite new. So there could always be a massive falling-out there, to make things more fun.

Re: 'Meddling ministers'

cryptopants,

This is why getting Japan on board is such a God-send. One of the big problems with Typhoon is that Germany, Italy and Spain wouldn't spend money on many of the upgrades. Not that our MoD are paragons of virtue or anything, but it's a problem with many European partners. Obviously not helped by the end of the Cold War slowing the whole program down. Eurofighter is a damned good aircraft now, with lots of shiny upgrades to the radars just coming on stream - which ought to have happened 5-10 years ago.

France do spend better on keeping things up to date, but are terrible industrial partners - who've a history of joining European aircraft programs only to bugger-off in a hissy-fit halfway through. Germany and Spain are currently suffering from this in the FCAS program, where Dassault are trying to get them to ponly up half the money in a joint program, while Dassault keep all the IP to themselves. I suspect the project will go ahead for political reasons - but Typhoon and Tornado were the two big European successes - both of which France abandoned halfway through and were taken to success by the UK, Germany and Italy (with Spain also in Typhoon).

Japan do have a habit of spending well on defence. And hopefully, having a partner willing to open their chequebooks for updates will keep our government honest about regular spending on regular updates. If we could persuade Germany to jump ship and join us that would also be great for getting a decent chunk of initial orders. But I think FCAS have recently patched up their differences sufficiently that it'll last another few years - at which point it'll be too late to jump ship and still be a major industrial partner.

Re: Old hat?

Jellied Eel,

What in the last 10 months of clusterfuck convinces you that Russia is going to win the war in Ukraine?

I mean it's possible they might win. Wars are uncertain after all. And being able to outlast Ukraine is clearly the thing Russia are trying - after the failure of multiple offensives and destruction of a large part of their peacetime army.

But Ukraine aren't going to run out of ammo, unless the Western powers abandon them. Which, again, is possible but looks unlikely. Ukraine aren't even out of Soviet calibre artillery ammo, because having exhausted their own, and Eastern Europe's stocks there are factories in Poland and elsewhere churning out new shells. Plus countries like Britain have been buying old stock from all sorts of places (like Pakistan) and shipping them in. Not that it looks like either side can keep up previous rates of fire. Even for Ukraine who've now been given NATO calibre artillery, which there are still stocks for, and orders have been placed for more.

The two big worries I think are tank shells, and air defence. I don't know if we can start building Soviet era tank ammo for Ukraine or if the long-term answer will be to re-equip them with Leopard or the US Marine Corps' old Abrams. Leopard would be better (it's lighter) but Germany are a porblem.

Air defence is the opposite problem. We're now equipping Ukraine with NASAMS and IRIS-T which use exisiting air-to-air missiles as ammo, of which NATO has large stocks. But we don't have many launchers to give - and are having to resort to buying new ones and shipping them to Ukraine off the production lines. Which is slow. A stop-gap might be to dump old stuff from storage on them, like Hawk.

Re: A Quantitative Easing Program in Military Guise?

Your point is taken w.r.t. military preparedness - but not necessarily piloted aircraft. From that battlefield, counter attacking drones and missiles would seem to be the equalizer.

Russia and Ukraine are artillery armies. Russia does have a decently sized well-funded air force as well, but it's not been terribly effective because they've not been able to fly safely over most of the battlefield. Due to failiures in electronic warfare and SEAD/DEAD (suppression / destruction of enemy air defences).

NATO forces are generally much more reliant on air power, and do train for dealing with enemy air defences. Which we'd need as we're not as heavy on artillery as the Russians - though ours is probably more accurate. We also have much better precision weapons for hitting air defences.

Compare the beginning of Desert Storm to Russia's invasion of Ukriane. Both Iraq and Ukraine had large, integrated air defence networks with lots of ex Soviet kit. Though Iraq's was older than Ukraine's but on the other hand it was 30 years ago and so were the coalition weapons. In 1991 we saw a couple of days where something like 1,500 aircraft did almost nothing but attack enemy air defences for 2 days (with the odd strike on command and control nodes). Russia didn't bother with any of that and just invaded with no preparation - which went about as well as you'd expect.

Re: Control Input / Drone-Response Lagginess

The numerical superiority is supposed to be somewhat solved by the various "loyal wingmen" programs. The idea is that you'll have some manned aircraft to do command and control, and a bunch of drones with them. Although nobody's quite sure of what types.

Plus, modern smart missiles, which are already drones in one sense. Take the Meteor air-to-air missile. It's being updated to have a whole bunch of electronic warfare abilities. It's already got a throttlable motor, so it can be set to cruise along slowly in order to get a longer range, or allow an aircraft to fire two at an opponent, one that goes in at full speed, and one that follows to maybe finish the job. The new version that the UK and Japan are cooperating on will be able to act as an anti-radar missile - so it can be fired at enemy airbourne or ground jammers or radars. But also will be able to do jamming itself, so can act as a decoy for its own aircraft. As well as still being one of the best air-to-air missiles out there.

Or the Spear 3 system, based on the already existing Brimstone missile. Where you can fire say 8 from one Typhoon and tell them to go to a particular gridsquare and kill any artillery pieces they find - and if they can't find any try and kill tanks or surface to air missile systems - or whatever you prioritise from their targe database. Brimstone can already do that (though at shorter ranges), but the next generation ones will be able to talk to each other (swarm) and so share information and effectively act as their own target finders. It's being called a missile, not a drone, but really it's both.

The three big Western projects all involve a large element of drones. From what I've read the Franco-German-Spanish FCAS is perhaps prioritising the drones to fly with current aircraft and the new aircraft itself is supposed to be with us at the end of the next decade. Whereas the British-Italian-Japanese program that also used to be called FCAS (fortunately isn't any more) is trying to get a prototype flying by 2030 - so it can start coming into service in 2035. Both the Japanese and British have been doing design work for the last few years (not sure about Italy) and Sweden seem to have dropped out, but I've seen speculation they're just getting a new bunch of Gripens delievered and so are more interested in the drone side than the new aircraft side at the moment.

I don't think anyone knows what's going to work. So air forces are going to try everything.

Re: Modern War: Electronics, Electronics, Electronics

Very good homework. Now add the French exploits.

Don't know nuffink about no froggy stuff guv! 'S all Greek to me. I've not read much about WWI in decades, though I keep meaning to. I went to the school of "Lions Led by Donkeys", which I believe is more-or-less bollocks, so ought to read some more modern history about it.

I'm thinking of going on one of those battlefield tours to WWI/II sites in France and/or Germany next year, taking Mum. So that might be an incentive to read up beforehand. There's a cool tour that does guided visits in Northern France and Belgium of battlefields and breweries, so you do one of each a day. Very tempting, but I doubt I can sell that to Mum. Which is a shame, that sounds like real homework.

Also need to see if there's any information out there now about where her Grandad was fighting - I think there's a lot online nowadays. Mum lived at his place after their house got bombed in 1940.

Re: Modern War: Electronics, Electronics, Electronics

Potemkine,

Not that I go along with the OPs thesis. But I can give you a few examples from WW1 off the top of my head. Radio was new and had interesting effects. Electronic warfare wasn't much of a thing (as far as I've read) but there were serious battlefield effects from either failing to use tech, or using it badly so the other side could exploit it.

The German High Seas Fleet did most of their communications by radio when in port. Rather than using runners or phone lines. Thus the British were able to track that they were in port without recon and when they were planning something (by the increased chatter). Hence Beatty's battlecruiser squadron were mostly in the right place at the right time to foil their plans (when he wasn't being incompetent and fucking everything up). I don't think we broke their naval codes and were reading the actual messages - so it was just traffic analysis.

Conversely the Royal Navy hadn't really got the hang of tactical radio comms yet, and were still using signal flags! Beatty (again) nearly fucked up the battle of Jutland with pisspoor use of radio, but Jellicoe guessed what was going on and got there in time to save him anyway.

The Russian 1914 offensive in Poland vastly outnumbered the Germans. But due to having to split their army due to terrain, and the commanders hating each other, a much smaller German force were able to defeat them in detail. Aided massively by the Russian HQs communicating by radio, without using code. Battles of Tannenberg / Masurian Lakes.

I've not read about it, only seen it mentioned on a documentary on the battle of the Somme, so don't know how long it lasted or how widespread amongst other armies. But the British army in 1916 were using unshielded cables for field telephones in their trench systems. The Germans had a handy box that could pick up the electronic signals transmitted through the soil and so listen into their frontline communications. Trench lines were often very close, plus underground tunnelling under no-man's land.

Oh and the Zimmerman Telegram of course. Britain having cut Germany's telegraph cables, they were forced to use the British cables to send their messages to try and persuade Mexico to invade Texas. Admittedly that was sent via US diplomatic cable (rude!) as President Wilson had allowed the Germans to use US facilities in order to help peace initiatives. But US cables went through the UK too, and we'd broken the German diplomatic ciphers. Then there was just the dilemma of how to tell the US that Germany were planning to invade them, but oh by the way we're reading your diplomatic cables sorry about that old chap. Still trust us! We only want you to join our little war, we've no motive to lie...

Re: Shades of TV detector vans ?

Geez Money,

I get the impression that the F22 is still absolutely head and shoulders over everything in the pure air superiority role. Even the F35.

I wasn't aware that they had problems updating it though.

However I guess a pure air superiority fighter is almost like nuclear weapons, in that you never want to use it. Because if you're forced to use it, you've fucked up and got yourself into a full scale war with a nuclear power with an advanced air force. For everything else, your multirole aircraft are going to be more than good enough. Having it is a nice deterrent though, given the stories you sometimes here from other NATO fighter pilots of doing practice engagements with F22.

Also F22 doesn't have Link 16. Which is one of the things that makes the F35 so useful. Because even a few F35s mixed in with other forces give you a powerful command & control advantage. As well as intel gathering and electronic warfare. I doubt it's close to being as powerful as the US Navy's EF18 Growlers, but does a lot more than the mostly defensive EW pods that NATO's air forces have tended to field.

So I can see why they might feel that F35 is good enough. Particularly if the F35 is so good at working with other planes in the strike package, that also ought to make it work really well as a drone commander. Once we've got semi-autonomous combat drones flying around.

Also once the wankers at Lockheed Martin pull their fingers out so the RAF can get Meteor integrated onto F35 as well. Especially the next version of it, which is going to be able to act as an anti-radiation missile for SEAD/DEAD, but also be an electronic warfare decoy. Added to the extremely long range and throttleable motor it'll be able to play all sorts of silly games. Put Spear 3 on as well, and you've got an aircraft that can do air-to-air or air-to-ground without having to use radar at all. Sneaky-beaky.

Re: Shades of TV detector vans ?

Jou,

I was talking about a "standard" squadron of 12. But nowadays it could probably be any number. It's the air force equivalent of an army company, which could be anything from 150 infantry down to 10-11 tanks each with a crew of 3.

I think you can get a new F35A for under $80m now - although I say "now", if you pay the cheapest price you probably won't get your first delivery for another 5 years at least. Sales volume has gone up, so price has come down, but waiting times are also up.

I believe that's less than you'd pay for a new Typhoon, Rafale or Gripen - though I think the flight and maintenance costs of F35 might be higher.

But even if they get a bit cheaper, 2 x B21 is going to get you 15-20 F35As. The F35 can only carry a limited payload and remain stealthy, and will need to use tanker aircraft closer to the target, so it's a lot less suitable for some missions. They do carry a lot of bombs a long way and are very stealthy though - but they really are the luxury item of the multi-million dollar shiny military aircraft market.

Re: Shades of TV detector vans ?

Define cheap enough, I guess.

Volume lowers prices. But the difference between ordering 100 and 150 isn't all that much. Although if you've amortized the cost of the R&D over the first hundred, then that's maybe $50m less on the price of the 101st. Other costs, like tooling, are also already accounted for. But even $600m a pop seems awfully expensive, given that would get you three quarters of a squadron of F35s. Although the operating costs of multiple aircraft are going to be higher than those for just one, even if the B21 has the same issues with coatings the B2 does. But at least the option will exist, while the production lines are open - and ordering a small number of extras can keep those lines open for a while if the production rate isn't too high. I don't know if there's too much regret they didn't make more B2s - but I'm sure the Air Force wish they had a few more F22s.

Re: How many more manned warplanes will there be?

Ken G,

How many more manned warplanes will there be?

I don't think anybody knows. That's why you hear about stuff being "optionally manned". So you can have it pilotless on very easy, or very dangerous, missions - if that tech pans out. But fly it when you have to. Which might be all the time. Seeing as we don't yet have the capability to fly such complex systems reliably autonomously - and neither do we want to give full firing authority to the computers.

If the enemy can block your communications, for example, then your autopilot is completely on its own, and you can't update mission parameters after its taken off.

One of the things we've learnt about drone-use in Ukraine is that electronic warfare is extemely effective. It's just that it's very patchy. Russia keeps finding that their own EW is screwing up their own systems, just as much as it buggers up Ukraine's. Worse, in the early days of the war they found that their own electronic warfare once turned on, couldn't be turned off. Because unless commanders were physically able to reach the EW units, they couldn't get through to them, to tell them to turn it all off. This speaks to a lack of practice.

Since even NATO rarely train using our full spectrum of EW, I doubt we're sure how we'd fight under those conditions. One thing that's worked when the EW is turned on is to use cheap drones in dumb mode, where they just fly a pre-planned route, and bring back their footage for analysis. Rather than directing artillery strikes live, which is the much sexier footage the Ukrainians like to post online.

Plus an aircraft that's expected to last for 30-40 years is going to undergo a lot of changes in use, due to changes in circumstances.

The next generation of Western fighters are all being designed in tandem with unmanned aircraft. These will fly with them, and act as force-multipliers (and/or sacrificial victims) for the manned fighters. Thus the fighter crew will direct them tactically, but they'll fly themselves. I doubt even these programs know what will come out the other end of them.

The UK-Italian-Swedish (soon to have Japan joining by the looks of it) Tempest is supposed to be flying by 2030 and replacing Typhoon by the middle of that decade. But Tempest is only a part of the FCAS program, which should be include unmanned aircraft.

I get the impression the Franco-German-Spanish FCAS program is prioritising the unmanned stuff first, with the idea that some of it might fly with current jets and then the main aircraft will be their replacement for the Rafale and the Typhoon. That's if the French don't sabotage yet another joint European aircraft project, and the Germans and Spanish don't end up fleeing and joining ours. Although both programs may have some drone tech in service first.

The US future fighter project is doing the same things.

Of course in reality we already have autonomous firing. The Brimstone missile (some of which we've given to Ukraine) can be targetted with lasers or on coordinates. But can also be told to go and hunt in such and such an area until it sees a tank, then kill it. It has a database of enemy combat vehicles, so you can even select it to only kill artillery pieces. At the moment, in the presence of multiple missiles, later fired ones will delay their attack until they see whether previous shots have destroyed their targets, so they don't all hit the same thing. But the next generation will have full swarming capability, where they can communicate with each other in real time.

Strangely enough, you've got to finish building it, before you can test fly it. And 2023 is less than a month away.

Re: Shades of TV detector vans ?

Geez Money,

The B1 got used because they had it. But I'm not sure how suitable it was for its eventual role. They're keeping the B52s for the job of carrying unfeasibly large numbers of bombs and being an overhead intelligence asset (with modern comms forward air controllers can actually watch footage from the aircraft above on a tablet so they can designate the correct targets).

The B21 is way more expensive, but also way more capable in a contested environment. But I think the general idea is that you use a few waves of attacks by stealth aircraft to degrade enemy air defences sufficiently that you can then use your other stuff in relative safety. So while I'm sure they'd always like more, even the USAF have limits to their budget.

I think the B1 was on the way out anyway due to age. But Congress get upset if a capability is retired, without being replaced. So why not say this replaces it, when really it's a replacement for the B2?

Re: Shades of TV detector vans ?

And I wonder if each plane will have big enough fuel tanks to get to (and fly back from) Moscow, Beijing or anywhere else?

The B2s almost exclusively live in the USA and get to their targets by using mid-air refueling. The USA has an awful lot of tanker assets scattered around the world.

I don't know what the range is on internal tanks alone, but modern jets are pretty efficient at high altitudes, and that's where this is probably intented to fly. That is assuming it's still subsonic, like the B2. It's quite a big aircraft, so should have thousands of miles of range. Which is extended yet further, if it's launching missiles with the actual nukes on.

As one of your downvoters I'll try to answer. It's only fair, after all.

Firstly, Google and Facebook aren't just sharing links. They're cutting snippets from articles as well. In a lot of cases with news you don't need more than a couple of sentences summary of a story, unless you're particularly interested. So the premise of your comment is incorrect anyway.

But ignoring the rights and wrongs of this case, society has a problem. If you want to operate a democracy bigger than a city state you need some sort of independent media. If that's going to happen, you need journalists. To get journalists, you have to pay them. Historically this has been done by a mix of subscriptions and using the content to sell advertising. If Google and Facebook manage to break that model by hoovering up all the advertising revenue on the internet - then who's going to pay for journalism? I've heard estimates from recent years that they were capturing over 90% of all the extra online ad spend in the UK for the last few years.

Now admittedly the media were stupid, and gave their content away free online at the beginning, and set expectations - making it harder to sell. But they weren't expecting to lose the advertising war so badly. Also their response to falling revenenues has been to cut quality, rather than to raise prices - because they've felt that would be suicidal in the current market.

But society needs a broad-based and mostly independent media to function properly. Google and Facebook appear to be doing most to fuck that up. Both are monopolies. Both are therefore an easy target to try and keep the current model limping along, rather than trying to solve the problem in other ways.