1 I guess in the second picture she's only one "tsun" instead of two...

2 Her untsun getup... way too busy.  I much prefer the first costume.  Even with the glowing eyes.

3 I get why it's like that, though - they're going for a neo-traditional look. To do that, they've incorporated a lot of the traditional (and not much neo-, to be frank...)

4 She's a ninja. How did you expect her to look?

1 Truly sad...but she got Kuroko too so it's not a total loss. 

2 Kuroko was probably the intended target; the others were collateral damage.

3

Heh, considering that Mikoto is always emitting electricity, she would be unpleasant to swim with even under normal circumstances.  I wonder if she could produce that low frequency "hum" that is associated with causing feelings of fear and anxiety in humans. I could picture her terrorizing evildoers so that they're filled with panic and dread the minute she gets close.

4 The scene implies that Kuroko tried to do something to Misaka, who responded (like normal), and then killed all of her friends.  

5 Watch Anime Subbed is my hobbie to watch every day

1

No one, eh?

Nobody likes me, everybody hates me, I think I'll go eat worms...

2 My Japanese isn't strong enough to help really.

3 I can tell you that it starts out as a berating for the fight being either unreasonable" or "absurd", but I can't really follow much of it after that.
Once "penitence" shows up, I'm just lost.

4

"Criticizing her for overdoing it" makes sense. There's a point in the fight between Vivio and Einhart where Nove has Jet Edge out and is considering activating it, clearly with the intention of stepping in to stop the fight. Nove didn't do that, but it's obvious she was thinking of doing so.

5 And... this is one of the purest examples of "befriending" to be found in the entire canon.

6 Will give it a shot; translation's loose. Out of practice.
Sure looks like a pep-talk to me.
144: N: your fight today was unreasonable. It's not fine just because you won. Where the areas you should reflect on end, I don't even know. 
V: Even though it was a sparring bell win, it was sort of a penance for relying on Defender.
145: N: Did (I?) teach you to try and take an attack that way? Still more, (one) from a higher ranked 'hard hitter' opponent? For such an engagement from straight on, what kind of penance did I teach? Eh?
V: That... what you taught (me), I didn't think deeply about it.
?: Umm, Coach... that's about enough scolding...
N: Shut up, kiddy! Y'all listen!
146: N: I taught you techniques for use in competition matches. What crowns those, the foundations of my style (store?) is to adopt your own spring-light-game (springtime technique?). From here on, Einhart too.
V: Yes!
N: For you, who (took) what I taught and ripped up the right teachings! Melee-hitting-school's debut!
147: N: Speed! Sense! Anti-nerve-attacks! With techniques, make sport of your opponents power and toughness!
148:  (become a) 'Hit without being hit' counter-hitter... that is what best suits your nature, what is closest to your dream.
V: Yes!
149: N: Even though you won with things you've learned and memorized and a wrongly reckless fighting style, that kind of victory doesn't lead to a tomorrow. You, with your body and your weakness, wanting the short term victory, if you continue with that kind of thing... well, at best, you'll have a breakdown in middle-school that will be the end of your life as a player. That's probably painful, (hearing) that. 
V: Yes...
150: N: Even so, I watched in silence, considering your and Einhart's special circumstances. After now, I won't permit it, understand?
V: Y - yes!
V: Without Coach's permission, I won't fight today's way again!
N: Really?
V: Yes!
151: N: Y'all fine?
?: Yes!
N: Good! Then, this matter ends here. From tomorrow, compete as a reborn four-man team.
V: Yes!

7

 

Thank you very much. To explain a few things, "Sacred Defender" is a technique that Vivio learned to use with her magical device, which is called "Sacred Heart" or "Chris". (It's that floating bunny.)

Sacred Defender is effectively magical armor. It's something she developed a long time ago but when she's in her Sankt Kaiser mode it apparently is particularly strong. In her fight with Einhart, several times Einhart landed powerful blows without Vivio blocking them, and they bounced doing no damage. One of the things Nove appears to be angry about is that Vivio was relying on that for defense instead of more traditional blocking moves.

The fighting style that Nove has been teaching Vivio usually gets translated as "Counter-hitter". She blocks and then ripostes, often doing great damage. But during her fight with Einhart she wasn't doing that because she was relying on Sacred Defender to protect her.

Rio (the one with dark hair) uses her family's style called "Fist of the Spring Sunlight" which has unusual characteristics. The third loli is Corona and her thing is called "Meist Arts" which allows her to create and operate a giant golem made of stone. Plus other capabilities.

8 Thanks. That makes more sense - the bit about crowning things makes enormously more sense with Corona as a name instead of a loanword.
146: N: I taught you techniques for use in competition matches. For those, Corona does Meist Arts' foundation, and Rio brings out her Fist of the of the Spring Sunlight.
Still very loose, but good to stretch that side of things for a change.
Also clarifies that the penance for relying so thoroughly (頼り !きり!) on Defender is in the future, rather than the fight about which she's being scolded.  

9 "Counter-hitter"

Counter-strike?  Counter-punch?

10 Sorry, but they actually use the English words "counter hitter". For instance in episode 8, time offset 14:06.

1

If the Apocalypse Now references could not be blatant enough, the lieutenant general commanding the JSDF garrison at Arnus Hill specifically mentions Robert Duvall's Lieutenant Colonel Kilgore by name during the briefing sequence.

The only thing that could have been more devastating for the bandits was if an AC-130 was providing the close air support.  Even the slicks had door machineguns, and we even saw an air assault sequence at the end.

Yeah, we get to see other members of the princess' order of knights.  Unfortunately, Itami will not enjoy the experience too much.  

2 Having a Black Ships moment will do that to your morale, yeah.

The interesting bit, for me? The shiner that Rory hung on Itami is hanging around. The show's not beyond a bit of comedy violence, but even there the consequences are "real" for the people involved.

3 That was interesting because it didn't happen in the manga.

4

Heh, we have Itami doing an otaku/pervert/smart intelligence move when he apparently choses all the ladies among the captured bandits to be transferred to the JSDF.  Even better was what Kuribayashi and Kurokawa evidently thought was Itami's reason for doing so.

There were two things that felt wrong.  First, usually it would Itami as the officer on the scene calling for the gunships to hit the bandits inside the perimeter, not the gunships announcing they were going get the bandits inside the wall within ten seconds and please be nice enough to move.  Second, what kind of soldier would mistake a dust cloud for smoke?

5

The commander of the air cav was ranking; I think it was him that ordered the Cobra to finish the job.

As to "dust" versus "smoke" I bet that's a translation issue.

6

The look between Kuribayashi and Rory was priceless!  I wager ten quatloos that before all of this is over, Kuribayashi goes native and becomes an Apostle.

Like you, Steven, I thought that the bruise to Itami's eye was from leaning in too close to his rifle sight.  Given that Rory could have decapitated him for groping her, he should think of it as a love-tap.

This series continues to amaze me.  There's a small animecon nearby next weekend in Columbus; if they've anything GATE related, I'm buying it.

7 I was wrong. The word he uses is kemuri which means "smoke", not "dust". I agree that it should have been obvious that it was dust.

8

During the GATE discussion thread at the Fandom Post, I had wrote down why the gunship clearing the bandits from inside the city walls seemed wrong.  The comment actually came from a discussion about Episode 6 on whether the JSDF should have used all the firepower they did.

"...it was the way the gunship opened fire on the bandits inside the city walls with nothing more than a warning for Itami and any other friendlies to get out of the area of effect in ten seconds. That was an extremely risky and dangerous use of firepower since it appears to have not given proper consideration to avoiding placing fire on local civilians and defenders, as well as any members of the recon group. Itami, as the commanding officer on the ground, should have been the one who called for, gave targeting info, and permitted the gunship to attack inside the wall, because he would have a better grasp of whether there was any friendlies in the area and whether they could retreat before the gunship attacked."

Watching the episode again, it sounded like the gunship pilot radioing Itami about his impending action, and not the lieutenant colonel.  From Itami's reaction it did not appear he was told about the decision beforehand.

9

Though it wasn't stated, part of why the pilot of the Cobra radioed Itami was to give Itami a chance to veto the decision if there was a reason why.

We didn't hear it but the commander of the squadron must have ordered the Cobra to finish the battle. Itami was called not just to warn him to move but to give him a chance to stop it.

Itami didn't need to stop it, and didn't.

10

That still strikes as wrong.  The radio call might have not have gone through, or Itami's radio might have stopped functioning.  Or Itami might not have been able to hear the message over the din of the fighting.  Or even if Itami had heard it but his order not to fire had not gotten through.  If any of those possibilities had happened, the gunship would have been shooting at friendlies.

It would have made more sense if the gunship pilot had radioed 'Do you want me to place fire on the bandits inside the wall?' and waited for a reply.  Even then, I would still be very hesitant for the gunships to fire on targets inside the wall unless it appears the city was being overrun.

11 IMHO you're thinking too hard. I would say that this falls under the Rule of Funny, since it sets up the scene with Rory punching Itami.

12 Not to put too fine a point on it, we're talking about an air cav commander who went into battle with Wagner blaring out the speakers. Do we have reason to believe this guy (and the crazies under his command) are always careful and by the book? ;p

1 By the way, we seem to be having intermittent server problems this evening. In particular, sometimes images aren't loading and sometimes the CSS file doesn't load. I'm sure it will be fixed soon, but in the mean time it means that site formatting will be rather eccentric.

1 If you open this post on its own page you can see the full pictures. On the main page they're seriously cut off on the right.

2

At least for the anime, the weapon used by the squaddie against the flame dragon appears to be the Panzerfaust 3 (And not the Carl Gustav that I initially thought.), which the JGSDF uses a licensed-made Japanese version of.

The fan translator may or may not have known it, but the production studio did depict it pretty well....And the link button does not seem to be working for me....

3

Re links, see this.

Re "Panzerfaust 3", I stand corrected. I think you're right about that.

4 I might have to track down the manga.  I'm looking forward to seeing where these characters go.

5 I've been reading it here.

6 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_modern_equipment_of_the_Japan_Ground_Self-Defense_Force

If you compare the pictures and follow their links, you can see that the expeditionary force really is using older gear from the '60s-'80s, rather than the newer stuff from this century.

Still, I think that they should have sent some Type 01 LMAT ATGMs over, their rough equivalent to the Javelin or Spike; we've used lots of javelins against unarmored targets for their range and accuracy. One of those might have hit the flame dragon dead on rather than just tearing off an arm.

I would also be shocked if they *didn't* send any Type 96 AGLs through--AGLs were more or less first put into service as a result of Chinese human-wave attacks, and 100K medieval troops certainly counts as that.

7 Err, sorry, I was being lazy and just pasted the link without thinking like this was a message board.

8

Thanks.

I notice that the scene in the manga where they constructed the refugee camp had a larger variety of equipment and personnel (including surveyors), and looked like they were clearing and grubbing, instead of digging random holes.  I suppose it helps that the artist didn't need to animate a variety of equipment.

9

The backhoe in the anime is rendered. If they found an existing model (likely) then animating it cost virtually nothing. I'm sure they could have found models of other kinds of construction equipment.

I suspect the reason they only used the backhoe is because there wasn't really any need for the scene to be any more complex than that. It got the message across, and that's good enough.

10

Yeah, I'm noticing a lot of things where the manga artist both knows his business and takes care to show it.

I note they did have a dry moat around the fort in the manga, and the size and layout of the facility is much more realistic--including K-spans they're using for hangars.  The star shape is probably still more rule of cool than realistic, but you've got to show some cool stuff from time to time in fiction.  The scale of the walls and ECPs is probably bigger than you could reasonably contract for in the time provided, but again, rule of cool.

11

I've been trying to figure out what aircraft they're flying in the manga, since they haven't shown up yet in the anime.

I'm pretty sure they're Phantoms. The JASDF does fly Phantoms. In fact, they're listed as current inventory for the 5th and 7th Air Wings.

Which is really strange; I didn't think anyone flew those any more. That design is more than 50 years old. (Of course, the US is still flying B-52's, which are more than 60 years old, so...)

12 Japan, Turkey, and Iran are the last remaining users. Turkey is formally in indefinite safety stand-down, IIRC, so they are pretty much finished this year. They were racking up losses recently. Germany retired the last F-4s they had just recently, possibly within the time frame of the manga.

13

When did South Korea and Greece retire their F-4s?

And I was trying to follow the explanatory page regarding putting links when I commented about the Panzerfaust 3, but the box that appeared to insert links, was remarkably non-responsive for me.

14 If you have a javascript blocker, that may be the problem.

15

Pretty sure it was not JavaScript blocker - JavaScript works in other circumstances.

Re: F-4: I am reminded of two pieces, supposedly by a professor at West Point, who declared that 1) the F-4 was one of the worst 5 combat aircraft in history, and 2) the MiG-21 was one of the best 5 combat aircraft in history, specifically citing Indian's usage of the -21 as part of the proof for his hypothesis.  The Indians seem to disagree with that...

The fact that the professor put the F-35 into his '5 worst' article should say volumes about his criteria...

16 Javascript blockers are usually not all-or-nothing. Usually they are set to block "dangerous" javascript commands only. I have one in Proxomitron which doesn't interfere with most things (for instance, it doesn't affect this comment entry box) but which makes it so I can't look at news articles on the NBC News web site. So when I want to read one of those I have to disable it temporarily.

17 The JASDF does fly Phantoms. In fact, they're listed as current inventory for the 5th and 7th Air Wings.

A good chunk of those Phantoms are the RF-4EJ variant, recon birds.  They've made an appearance in anime before... specifically, Ep04 of High School of the Dead.  At the time, they would have been based at Okinawa, part of the Southwestern Composite Air Division.

18 After having read Clashes: Air Combat over North Vietnam, 1965-1972 by Marshall L. Michell III I think the good professor's comments need to be taken with a particularly large grain of salt.
 
First thing to note is that the MiG-21's utility cannot be separated from the whole system it was built for, specifically total control over its missions from the ground, which the North Vietnamese had for the north.  The plane has terrible visibility restrictions, and is intended for one pass hit and run attacks vs. dogfighting, in which it was often successful against fighter-bombers (F-105 and F-4) because they had to be clumped together to successfully jam AAA and SA-2 radars.  Also, in Operation Linebacker "I" they needed to leverage a very small number of the laser designater pods they had available.

Not sure about the F-4 being among the "worst".  It certainly had a big problem of smokey engines, which didn't get solved for a long time.  It originally had no gun, and it took a while for that to get properly solved; this was particularly bad over North Vietnam because visual identification was all but required, since almost all the planes in the air were ours.  Early missiles, especially in the field, were not very reliable, but the Navy's were better and after they realized the rough handling issue they were much more careful with them.

It's also hard to separate the history of the Phantom in air combat from the then brain dead Air Force bomber centric bureaucracy, which supplied the Vietnam forces with inadequately trained replacement pilots (the Navy had a mandatory floor of being able to land on a carrier, but they also set up their Top Gun school to address this), a WWII era flying formation that resulted in 1/4 the combat power of the modern Navy one, the noted much worse missile issues, and a general unwillingness to institutionally learn from hard experience.

With these various problems addressed and a good relationship between the pilot and guy in back (the Air Force also might have had a problem there as well) I gather it was pretty good.  It certainly had enough to deal with adversaries like the Mig-17, -19 and -21, if properly employed, e.g. using boom and zoom, a tactic which goes back to WWII and how we dealt with planes like the Zero.

19 Hmmm, as for the F-35, the analogous TFX '60s development program is worth examining, especially in how it resulted in the much less modern F-4 Phantom being used for so long.

Ah, I forgot that the early models of the Phantom had an adverse yaw issue, where turning at high speed required non-standard, non-"intuitive" use of the controls.  That was deadly when combined with inadequately trained (Air Force replacement) pilots and air combat, and was fixed in late series versions of the Air Force F-4E model, and the Navy F-4J.  As I recall these weren't available for Rolling Thunder.

Back to the TFX/F-35: essentially the same thing, a multi-mission jack of all trades and master of none devised in quasi-peacetime, with the F-35 trading off air superiority for S/VTOL.  Similarly, the '50s M14 Rifle was supposed to replace the M3 "Grease Gun" submachine gun, the M1 Carbine, the M1 (battle) Rifle, and the BAR light machine gun, and failed in every role but the battle rifle, and for that it was bad compared to contemporary alternatives, and many argue the M1 Rifle.  The complete failure of the TFX in all of its roles but one, as the FB-111, meant the Air Force and the Navy had to keep using the previous generation F-4 much longer than they should have, until replaced by the F-14/F-15 and F-16/F-18.  So, yeah, I'm sure it was subpar when long in the tooth, although the Mig-21 was a contemporaneous plane.

The best treatment of the TFX debacle I've come across is in The Strategy of Technology by Possny, Pournelle and Kane, now available as shareware.

20

Oh yes, I agree about the F-4's worth versus what the good professor is arguing.  And even some of the technical problems took a long time to fix because of bureaucracy more than anything else - the smoking problem from the F-4's engines was something the USAF both knew about, and also knew how to fix, years before they actually did so.

It also was not only the US that had technical problems with the F-4 - the 'Speyed' version used by the British would have been a very nice improvement over the vanilla F-4s they started as.  The problems and issues the British faced, however, meant that while ultimately the Speys were a capable aircraft, they never meant any of the specifications they were suppose to.

It is also funny that one of the professor's points regarding the MiG-21 is that the Indians have found it to be a reliable and safe aircraft - right before the Indians suffered so many fatal accidents in type, that they grounded their fleet.

I am no admirer of the F-35.  But it is clear a lot of the opposition is based on nonsense and emotion (Especially coming from the Fighter Mafia gang.) and less on facts.  The key fact being that since O-bummer canceled the F-22, the US does not have a choice if it does not want to buy the Eurofighter.

Second about Marshall L. Michel - if you ever get a copy of his The Eleven Days of Christmas, it is well worth reading.  One of the guys he interviewed for the book was a regular of UseNet at the time I was reading it.  RIP Ed Rasimus.

21 cxt217: Yeah, The Eleven Days of Christmas: America's Last Vietnam Battle (about Linebacker II) is on my list, even tried to buy a used copy but the Amazon Merchant flaked out.  Not in too much of a hurry since its such a depressing story, and also the first specific battle in the Vietnam war that I remember from when it happened.  It was very obvious from the losses how badly the first missions were directed (we now know from Omaha: the wrong models of the B-52, with insane flight tracks, and no doubt a lot more).

Hmmm, prior to some quality time on the net just now, the most I knew about U.K. Phantoms was that Prince Charles flew them, evidently not operationally due at least in part to how totally screwed up U.K. military procurement was during the relative period, where somewhat like in the US they adopted the F-4 (with of course major $$$ changes) due to cancellations of what they originally planned on.  And very few flew on the Ark Royal, which was the only carrier modified to fly them.

The F-35 ... I'm getting too old to really want to follow such anymore.  On general principles (e.g. TFX) and the raw specs (e.g. they will at best carry very very few cannon rounds; granted, compared to the 20 mm Vulcan they're larger at 25 mm and fired at half the rate, but...) it looks iffy, but you are of course right that much of the whining is by the usual suspects, many of whom I'll note are always willing to trash the plane currently in production in favor of the next one, in this case canceling the F-22 ludicrously early in favor of the F-35.

I'd be a bit surprised if it works out well, and not at all surprised if we don't end up buying a bunch of Super Hornets, assuming production doesn't get shut down before that decision might be made.

22 One of the saddest impressions from the F-35 treatment in the MSM&SM for me is the unholy union between the old retirees and armchair experts pushing for the endless extensions of A-10. It's hideous. The worthless Internet people are the masses of it, sharing all the junk on the Facebook, but the oldtimers give it credibility who suffered a danger, survived, and think that everyone serving now and in the future ought to suffer too, or else it's unfair.

The funniest story of F-35 that I made not about was the landing hook of the C version. When it failed initial trials, all the mighty priests of Internet aerospace priesthood rushed to explain how the whole design was fatally flawed and can never, never, never be made to work. You see, the boom is too short and attaches at an angle not seen in previous designs etc. etc. Then in 3 months Lockheed turned the design around by reprofiling the hook's claw a little bit and replacing the hydraulic damper. The problem has disappeared and the haters slinked away, only to return with another fatal flaw (like the fuel leaks -- the "can't dogfight" meme was still a year ahead). It was hi-la-ri-ous.

23

Yes, one of the more predictable things was how the critics would call any problems with a developmental system like the F-35 to render it complete and total failure for all time, no matter what the version.  So when problems appeared for the USMC version, it immediately rendered both the USAF and USN versions 'total failures' as well, despite both of those proceeding to schedule.

Keep in the mind that the Fighter Mafia critics who cite how inferior the F-35 is to the F-16, would be horrified with the current version of the F-16 compared to what it was originally proposed as (Hint: The original proposal did NOT have a radar.).  We also heard the same thing from the same people against the F-22.

Getting back to Gate, the JSDF was actually being nice in the lead-up to the Second Battle of Arnus Hill.  It would have been entirely within their capabilities to bombard the allied armies' line of march with proximity fused airburst HE rounds (Destroying the allied armies before they even got to camp.) or hit the camp with a barrage,.  Or if you want to be REALLY evil, bring in a few M270 MLRS units...

24

My objection to the F-22 is the same as my objection to the Seawolf: I don't care how good it is; it's too damned expensive. Not even the United States can afford to spend that much on individual weapons. Sometimes you have to make compromises with reality.

The projected cost for 12 Seawolfs was going to be $33.6 billion, but those programs always overrun. So after 3 had been built, Congress told the Navy to go design something less expensive, and the Navy came up with the Virginias, which cost $1.8 billion each instead of $2.8 billion.

That's still astounding but probably the best deal we're going to get, so I'm glad they made the switch. The Virginias are good boats and I'm sure we won't regret it.

Likewise, the F-22 program was cancelled after 195 airframes because the damned things cost $150 million each. An F-16 costs about $15 million. Which would you rather have, 10 F-22's or 100 F-16's? It simply wasn't going to be possible to buy an adequate number of F-22's at that kind of price (especially with the inevitable cost overruns), so Congress said, "Do it again. Do it cheaper."

The main problems with the F-35 program has been the insistence that a single design be used by all the services (and that's Congress's blame), combined with the Air Force's insane infatuation with "stealth". There are times when stealth is valuable, even times when it's essential, but most of the time it's just dead weight. A "stealthy" airframe has to make all kinds of concessions which damage its performance in other ways.

For instance, you have to stow all missiles and bombs inside a closed bomb bay. You can't hang them from the wings. That means you can't carry very many.

And the F-35 is cheaper than the F-22 but not all that damned much: the projected cost is $85 million.

The problem here is one that's been identified long since: when the unit cost is stratospheric there's a tendency to invest in survivability, which increases the cost and means you can't acquire as many, so you become even more concerned with survivability. It's a vicious spiral which leads to drastic increases in cost and drastic reductions in numbers.

As Uncle Joe Stalin is reputed to have said, "Quantity has a quality all its own." Sometimes the important thing is to have lots of airframes in the air -- and you can only do that if you own lots of airframes.

With this kind of prices, we won't. And someday that's going to come back and bite us.

The F-16 is a very fine jet, even by modern standards, and it's still in production. In addition to all this other stuff we're buying, why aren't we acquiring more of them as well? The cost of acquiring 30 F-16's per year for the next few years is in the noise compared to the total Air Force budget.

Why not? Because it isn't stealthy and the Air Force refuses to acquire anything that isn't stealthy, that's why. Bah.

25

Likewise, the F-22 program was cancelled after 195 airframes because the damned things cost $150 million each. An F-16 costs about $15 million.

The F-16 is a very fine jet, even by modern standards, and it's still in production. In addition to all this other stuff we're buying, why aren't we acquiring more of them as well? The cost of acquiring 30 F-16's per year for the next few years is in the noise compared to the total Air Force budget.

It may be a fine jet, but the basic design is arguably approaching obsolescence and while there are things you do to improve the basic designs and keep it competitive (For example, just look at some of the redesign concepts that the F-15 had, when Boeing was shopping it to the South Koreans.), at some point you have to go do a new design, otherwise you will be outmatched.  That is especially true of the likely opposition is introducing better aircraft than the F-16 - which given the European proclivity to flog the Eurofighter to anyone with cash, is likely.  The F-16 does have some potential to grow and improve more, but not a lot, not without redesigning the thing until you get a completely different plane with the same name.

That is not say that the F-22 was not overly expensive, but that was not the main reason why Rumsfeld disliked it, nor why Obama killed it, nor exclusively the fault of the program itself (The whole US military procurement system is broken, but that is a whole different can of worms.).  The problem with killing the F-22 is that that left the F-35 as the only game in town, unless we buy the Eurofighter - which I actually would not have a problem with that - to compete with the latest generation fighters.

Given what the likely oppositions will be flying within the immediate future, I would not want to be a pilot in a F-16 facing them unless I had no choice.

26 Unfortunately, you can't buy a F-16 for $15M anymore, even one with no radar, AIM-9+dumb bombs only.  With the timeframes that we're dealing with these days, inflation becomes a *major* headache when trying to compare platforms.  Add in modern technology, and UAE just bought 80 F-16s for $80M apiece (counting some level of spare parts that isn't split out from the base price).

And, Pierre Sprey aside, a complete inability to carry smart bombs today is pretty much a waste of logistics and training money (which is where the worst costs are--the F-35A is below $100M flyaway now, which equates to <$300B for the entire fleet... against an estimated $1.5T "best guess" for total costs over 50 years of service, which is a number that critics love to mistake for just the procurement price).

I was a big opponent of the F-35 in the early days, because of all of the obvious mismanagement and messed-up procurement process (something we've seen with the scout helicopter fiasco, FCS, LCS, DDG-1000, EFV, Netfires, etc.).  But, at this point, that disaster is all sunk costs that we can't get back, and going ahead, buying a couple thousand F-35s, with their currently-expected price and performance (the hardest, slowest part is actually the sensor fusion software, since it didn't have years of existing R&D like the stealth or engine to draw from), is not just the best choice, but really the only one that makes sense.

I wish we had bought twice as many F-22s, but at this point, we're better off waiting for the next-gen design than trying to re-open the line.  I do get a chuckle out of the thought of F-22s escorting F-15 *bombers* to target...

cxt, back to your MLRS comment--do you know if the JGSDF still uses M-26 (cluster) rockets, or if they've converted them over to unitary warheads as a result of all the cluster bomb brouhaha?  I couldn't find anything on the subject.  I know that we caved on the issue, in part because GPS guidance made the unitary warhead useful given what we needed after 2003.

27

Given what the likely oppositions will be flying within the immediate future, I would not want to be a pilot in a F-16 facing them unless I had no choice.

That's exactly the point. The likely opposition isn't going to be flying anything at all. Or at least many of the likely oppositions.

You're fighting the last war! We shouldn't be putting all our preparation into fighting Russia and China. We should be putting a lot of our preparation into fighting ISIS and Somalia. That's why the Air Force's obsession with stealth is so misguided: a lot of the time it simply isn't needed.

Sometimes it is, and some of your aircraft need to be stealthy. But a lot of the time it isn't, and making everything stealthy just makes your airforce too small and too expensive.

28

You're fighting the last war! We shouldn't be putting all our preparation into fighting Russia and China. We should be putting a lot of our preparation into fighting ISIS and Somalia. That's why the Air Force's obsession with stealth is so misguided: a lot of the time it simply isn't needed.

Given the PRC's increasing aggressiveness, this is not a 'last' war, it is 'quite possible' war, especially for an Air Force and Navy.  Given the time frame we are talking about, concentrating solely on ISIS and the like is not a good idea for those two services, and especially so if you crippling other parts of the service to do so (ASW, anyone?).

In addition, good radar and air defense systems are readily available for anyone with the cash.  Are we going to assume that even ISIS or Shahaab or the Taliban are just going to stay guerilla armies forever?  At some point, even ISIS will wise up and realize the best way to protect themselves against air strikes is a good air defense system.  Given how Turkey is acting, they can get it when they decide too.

Air superiority and air supremacy are not mere Cold War concept that disappeared with the Soviet Union.  And while the benefits of stealth can be overstated, neither are insubstantial.

29 I didn't say we should solely concentrate on ISIS et. al. What I'm saying is that we shouldn't solely concentrate on the Chinese.

30

What I'm saying is that we shouldn't solely concentrate on the Chinese.

Which was not my point either.  Rather (And this is one thing I dislike Ace of Spades, whenever they mention it.), we do not have the ability to forego air superiority/air supremacy and the force of capable fighters to maintain it, simply because one enemy that we are fighting or oppose to will or can not dispute it.  The expeditionary nature of the post-Cold War conflicts means that instead of One Big Leviathan and its' satellites, our enemies will run the gamut of capabilities, from guerilla fighters in the bush, to full size militaries with capable air forces of their own equipped with the latest fighters.  Trying to obtain the latest gen fighter is not a waste of resources, it is dealing with how warfare and the threat of warfare is right now.  And that is assuming things remain static - which is unlikely, to say the least.

Likewise, some of the potential enemies will not require the benefits of stealth, while others will.  That too, will not remain static.  What will remain static is that the American way of war will depend heavily on air superiority as part of the formula, if for no other reason than to keep the opposition away from our shores.

31 If you're going for quantity as quality, go all the way. Why put a person in the thing in the first place? For the cost of one super-expensive air superiority fighter, how many drones can you put up? You wouldn't have to have each one of them as a full-capability platform. A couple radar platforms, a few dumb bomb-luggers, a couple target designation platforms, some with nothing but ECM, a couple lugging anti-radiation homers for those unfortunate bastards who light up their SAM radar, and a few lugging an AMRAAM or equivalent.

Aerial combat is not mostly about dogfighting these days, it's about putting a missile up the other guy's pipe. A distributed drone "cloud" has a lot of advantages in such a fight, most importantly resilience; you can't kill the drone cloud with one missile, assuming you've got redundant command/control capability. One missile into a drone cloud only degrades its capabilities slightly (and costs bloody less to replace too). And even if things get into close quarters, a cloud can scatter and come around; the other guy has to point his butt SOMEWHERE, meaning one or another drone can run right up his six.

Of course, the real fun happens when you get drone cloud versus drone cloud - you'd need an entirely different sort of anti-air platform to handle that kind of threat. And thus the race would begin again, but at least it would be plenty favorable to us.

That said, the big problem with that approach is political; the Air Force can't buy in to that and still insist that everything that flies needs an officer at the controls...

32

UAVs have some key applications where they can currently replace human crews, like maritime patrol and airborne ASW, but I just do not see them replacing manned aircraft in all applications, especially air combat.  The critical factor being remotely controlled, which requires nearly totally reliable and secured communications and control all the time.  Even assuming that can be done (Which I doubt.), there is the delay factor in time sensitive situations - you might not be dogfighting, but more often then not, you will not be conducting BVR air combats.  I rather have a pilot at the controls who can react immediately, rather than someone on ground station.

Also, you do not need to be a full capability platform before the UAV starts getting into the size and weight and expense of a manned aircraft.  If you need an UAV to go both fast and have long legs AND carried a decent weapons load and fire control and radar too (Because unlike Aegis, we are not at the point of the one fighter shooting at a target being designated by another.) - you are at the point where you almost completely replicated a manned aircraft.  Not much savings in cost there, as oppose to putting an UAV as your replacement for a maritime patrol aircraft...

33 But they do have a pretty strong motive for going to UAV fighter craft; The present performance of fighter craft is limited by the acceleration the pilot can survive, even with a G suit. An unmanned fighter could perform much more extreme maneuvers.
Unmanned doesn't necessarily mean remotely piloted. If a computer can drive a car on a busy road, it can probably fly a fighter.

34 Brett Bellmore: True, but that human computer still might do better unless you make the UAV autonomous in dog fighting.

But if you find yourself in a dog fight, you and the whole system behind you has already failed twice over, first in not attacking from afar with long range missiles, second in not using boom and zoom tactics to quickly engage the target and then leave, at least for the moment.  This is not to say that you shouldn't be good in dog fights, "failures" of this sort will happen, just that they're not the end all and be all of ACM.

And then there's the issue that we've fielded very few pure air superiority fighters; maybe lots of differently specialized UAVs is an option, but even if we're willing to make the bombing process autonomous, like a whole bunch of our missiles, it's hard to imagine our not keeping a man in the loop of target selection.

35 Eh, new doctrine is tough. It's hard to tell what the best method might be. Maybe it's a single manned vehicle and an entourage. Maybe it's a few manned vehicles and a small army of drones. Maybe it's a bunch of drones operating semi-independently. But it probably isn't a small number of manned vehicles, each one worth the GDP of a small African nation, where every one lost in training accidents or mechanical failures is a disaster on the scale of the Enron bankruptcy.

It's also probably worth noting that the only difference between "autonomous drone with a bomb" and "Tomahawk cruise missile", when it comes to "human decision-making in the loop", is that the drone will come back and land afterward. That Rubicon is in our rear-view mirror...

1 The Princess specifically expressed surprise at them having both an elf and a mage. She mentioned that the two of them together could be exceedingly powerful...

True magecraft and spirit magic can make for a nasty combination.

Then Rory got out and Princes Pina died a little inside.  

2

Italica was one of the nations who sent out their military at the Emperor's call and got it annihilated in the second battle with the JSDF. The Count (the ruler) was one of the dead. The current ruler is 11 years old; she's the youngest daughter of three left behind, but her sisters had been married off.

Not quite.  The count died before the Empire launched its' invasion through the gate (Note that the conversation confirms the Empire committed to an invasion through the gate before they had scouted out what might lie on the other side.).  The families that the older sisters married into were struggling for influence and guardianship of the youngest sister during her minority.

I also would not say that the knightly order commanded by Princess Pina is a toy or not particularly useful.  They were trained by an experienced officer (Grey, who is with the princess.).  That biggest problem they have is actual combat experience as well as for Pina, actual combat experience in combat.  That is obvious problem that you simply can not train your way out of, although you can train to handle it better.

Itami is interesting because while he was the subject of humor several times, his otaku nature is notable in the episode for being completely absent.  He is a capable and canny commanding officer when he wants to be - the trick is making him want to be most of the time (Although, a good but lazy officer might arguably be best at commanding in difficult situations.).  Note that aside from intervening with the recon group, he has already made arrangements for support, which the gunship in the preview and Episode 6's title of 'Ride of the Valkyries' is a complete give-away. 

3 Have they changed the word they use for Itami's rank?  They've promoted him to captain in dialog, but what he's wearing on his collar hasn't changed, AFAICT.

4

Wow...Two typos in one sentence.

That biggest problem they have is actual combat experience as well as for Pina, actual combat experience in combat. 

...Should read:

That biggest problem they have is lack of actual combat experience as well as for Pina, lack of command experience in actual combat. 

5

Have they changed the word they use for Itami's rank? They've promoted him to captain in dialog, but what he's wearing on his collar hasn't changed, AFAICT.

The word they've been using is "taichou" 隊長, which means "commanding officer". It's like "skipper" in the Navy; it doesn't imply any rank. It's an acceptable way to refer to your ranking officer, no matter who he is.

6 Pina's a good person at heart, one of the seemingly relative few in the upper crust of the Empire (that surely added to her gender and mother to sideline her in Imperial politics).  I suspect that she has the best chance in the not-a-harem-war, either as Empress or by being married off to cement a treaty.

As for the next episode, I guess I don't have to spoiler it, because they've already given it away--the air cav commander is quite a character.  CMoAs abound!

7

Re Taichou the problem the translator is having is that in English there's no Army term equivalent to "Skipper" in the Navy. In the US Army and the British Army and all English speaking forces derived from those traditions, soldiers refer to officers by actual rank plus sometimes their name. The translator could be using "lieutenant", Itagami's actual rank, but for some reason has decided to go with "captain", which is two ranks higher.

Equivalent naval terms in Japanese are senchou (a ship's captain) and kanchou (captain of a warship). Marika's crew uses "kanchou" for her in Mouretsu Pirates because the Bentenmaru is heavily armed, even though it isn't formally part of any military service.

8 In the US Navy both the captains of my ship (over the years) held the rank of commander, but were always addressed as Captain. I think it's something similar here.
Princess Pina is acknowledged by the emperor, so she is part of the royal family, and 10th in line to the throne, so she has no realistic shot at as things stand.
Looking forward to next episode, seeing Rory the Reaper do her thing. I just hope Kurabayashi meets expectations. I was rather disappointed in how the anime redesigned her character.

9

I was intrigued by the exchange between Leili and Itami about his improved grasp of trans-Gate language.  He offhandedly attributes it to being hit in the head when the Princess flung the door open.  However, just after that, as he regained consciousness, Rory leaned over him very closely, staring into his eyes.  Makes me wonder if she did something to his mind at that moment.

Pure speculation on my part, but I've seen similar actions in other works turn out to mean something.

And, of course, now I've got that awful song from the 70's stuck in my head....

10

I suppose a better translation would be "commander," but that could create confusion with the Navy rank, and also carries specific connotations of authority in English.  "Captain" probably answers the mail best of all.

I think Itami's only one promotion from the actual grade of captain--he's been promoted again since the first episode.  When they commissioned him, he had one star in his rank insignia, and now he's got two.

11

I have to admit: I just read the manga up through ep 37. There's no hint at all that Rory did anything strange to him, and the whole question of how he picked up the language never comes up.

The good news: This isn't going to do the Gasaraki Tango. That whole business ended up being settled with a sequence that was almost comedic.

The bad news: for a long time Itami fades into the background. There's a lot going on and Itami isn't involved in very much of it. But there's a new arc starting in maybe chapter 38 and Itami will be in the middle of it.

The best scene? Tuka shouting at a member of the Diet, "Are you an idiot?"

12

There's no hint at all that Rory did anything strange to him, and the whole question of how he picked up the language never comes up.

As I said, it was speculation.  We've seen Lelei use overt magic, and heard implications about Tuka's abilities.  That Rory effortlessly carries that silly pole-arm and fights so well indicates that she may not use magic, but is magic, befitting her as-yet undefined 'demi-god' status.

Speaking of whom:  everyone seems to know who she is.  I've seen nothing in the backgrounds to indicate that trans-Gate has printing presses, so are there Emloy temples that have her image in them throughout the Empire?  In talking with Grey, Pena seemed to indicate that the Empire has its own orthodox religion; perhaps it is pantheistic, with Emloy one god amongst several?

13 Genetic memory? People who can't instantly identify one of Emroy's oracles don't live to pass on their genes...

Pina came up with a plan. Wasn't a terrible plan, as they go, considering that before Itami and the gang showed up, they were already in pretty dire straits. However, to work, the plan required the enemy to cooperate... and they didn't, of course.

A plan that might have worked would have been to use Itami's team as a central reserve, but to be fair, she's got no idea just how good the JSDF soldiers are, she can't be sure that they're friendly forces, and she doesn't trust Rory any further than Pina can throw Rory's axe. And further, if she grew up in court as an illegitimate daughter, she's probably used to thinking in terms of being in a poltical snakepit - if she holds Itami back, he can just let her get chewed up by the bandits, and if he can win, he holds the town. Pina's decision wasn't wise from the viewpoint of the viewer, but it wasn't out of character at all. Assuming that other people will react to a situation in the same way you would is a fault of many real-world leaders as well.

What's really interesting is that Itami knows that Pina's screwing up by the numbers, but doesn't insist on changing the plan. Of course he's in a completely different tactical situation - he can hold the gate until morning against the entire enemy force, withdraw just about any time he might want to, and has overwhelming reinforcements on the way. So even if he shuts up and soldiers, his force isn't particularly threatened. But to get his way, he'd have to push her out of command, and there's one thing his troop can't do... and that's hold the town. Split them up to cover everything and they can get defeated in detail. Hold them together and they'll hold their position, but the rest of the town gets chewed up and spit out without other troops to hold it. If he's really trying to protect the town, he has to have the other defenders defending it, even if that means they're not protecting it well.

(And it was a good gamble - the bandits might not have attacked at night at all, or they might have come in with only a few people and not broken through, or they might have come in at the gate he was covering. Heads he wins, tails he still doesn't lose...)

It'll be interesting to see how they bail out of this one. Rory's the wild card here. We know that she's powerful enough that a dozen men are absolutely no threat to her; can she take a hundred? Or enough to hold the gate, at any rate? More to the point, she's a threat that the men attacking would immediately understand... and, quite possibly, constitutes a fate worse than death. We don't know how much of her speech from ep 3 is intimidation, but if we take her talk about hating lies at face value, and put it together with that, then there might be spiritual consequences that go beyond just dying.

14 As to Rory, it isn't anything so complex. This comes out in the manga. She's 961 years old, and has been an apostle since she was about 12. Once she became an apostle she stopped aging. She's also unkillable; she states that even if she was chopped in half, then if the body parts were placed next to each other they'd fuse and she'd heal. She also serves the God of War, who doesn't condemn killing (obviously) but does condemn killing in a wrong cause. So she's spent nearly the last millenium wandering around the countryside in the garb of a priestess of Emroy (i.e. that black and red thing she's wearing) getting involved in fights and slaughtering people. It's hardly any wonder that Pina knows who she is and recognizes her, even if Pina had never seen her before. It's also hardly any wonder that PIna was terrified.

15

Regarding Rory's notability (And I actually have no idea why this part of Gate need to be spoiler-proofed, since it was mentioned in Episode 5 and shown before.):

Pina mentioned that she has seen Rory once at a national religious ceremony before.  We do have proof that Rory has traveled around the lands enough that even children from rural villages (Like from Coda.) know who she is by sight.

It occurred to me that the recon group and Rory alone might be enough to stop the bandits cold, if the bandits had any sense - but some of the bandits seemed to be controlled by bloodlust more than anything else.

Anyone else noticed that one of the major roads Italica is on is named 'Appia'?

16 Sorry, the genetic memory line was along the way of a joke. ;p

Rory's powerful, she's unaging, she's... unkillable to a certain degree. But there's still probably some kind of limit of what she's capable of; likely she couldn't charge Arnus Hill and take the gate alone. (And of course, having sussed out the moderately-benign motives of the troops there, it's probable she wouldn't want to.) Can she stop a small local army cold on her own? Presumably we will find out.

17 The Empire is strongly reminiscent of Rome, what with having a Senate and an Emperor, plus the kind of clothing they wear on formal occasions. Naming that road "Appia" certainly wasn't an accident.

18

...some of the bandits seemed to be controlled by bloodlust more than anything else.

I don't think that's what it was. I think it was desperation. They have no where else to go, no other way of surviving. They can't go back to the Empire; the emperor would order them all executed. No one else would hire them because no one else would trust them. There aren't any other towns nearby besides this one they might plunder, that would yield enough plunder to survive.

They win here or they die. If they don't win, all they have is a choice of deaths. A clean quick death in combat is better than a slow painful death by starvation or disease..

19

I have to say, I'm impressed with Itami's grasp of the politics he finds himself in.  It's rare to find a junior officer who can grasp the bigger picture, and Itami seems to be one of those.

He's realized that the vast gulf between the JSDF and local forces is discounted, and is using this as an opportunity to show an Empire leader how overmatched she is while nominally "on her side."  Giving them a reason for détente will save a lot of money; artillery shells are expensive.

I wonder if the reason the bandits didn't attack the south gate is because the JSDF forces silhouetted themselves when those three scouts were checking things out.  If some of the bandits were survivors of the daylight attack, they may have recognized them guarding that gate and decided to seek success on one of the other gates.

Of course, if they knew that the JSDF was assisting in the town's defense, they probably would have decided discretion is the better part of valor.  Maybe they thought the gate with few guards and no lookout fires was an obvious trap and declined the gambit.

20 There are a couple of big reveals about Itami coming up.

21 The allied armies tried a night attack on Arnus - it's unlikely they saw the JSDF forces in sufficient detail to have been able to recognize them later. They may, however, have heard about the men in green and seen green on the wall. Likewise, they probably did spot the incoming convoy, and may have put two and two together from that. Surely they had the roads under observation if they had the town under siege already.

22

The night attack was the second attack by the allied armies.  The first was made in daylight, and its failure is what drove the lord (his name escapes me) to try a night attack.

23

The night attack was the second attack by the allied armies.

The allied armies staged three attacks in total.  The last attack was the night attack, when King Duran tried the wiser course of action, only to discover the JSDF was prepared for that as well.

1 A sarashi.

2 Thank you! (And they listed Erza as one of the examples.)