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That is a big one

· Military affairs

Since we are talking about South Africans (see my post below about cricket), ex-South African-now-American Kim du Toit, occasional commenter in these parts, says he dreams about getting one of these.

Kim’s dreams are pretty scary.

August 8th, 2008 |

11 comments to That is a big one

  • Laird
    August 8, 2008 at 4:58 pm

    Hasn’t everyone had that fantasy?

  • Nick M
    August 8, 2008 at 5:19 pm

    Not me Laird,

    I want to napalm the fuckers.

    With a vic of F-100s.

    But that’s just me.

  • Laird
    August 8, 2008 at 6:28 pm

    Clearly Kim and I are more subtle than you, Nick!

  • Resident_Alien
    August 8, 2008 at 6:48 pm

    What’s the carbon footprint like on that thing?

  • Dale Amon
    August 8, 2008 at 9:31 pm

    Actually your run of South Africans is even longer than that! Elon Musk was born South African… and moved to the US where he founded, among other things, the SpaceX of which I have been writing!

    Oh, and the File Server I use here runs with the South African based Ubuntu Linux distribution.

    Must be something in the water down there!

  • permanentexpat
    August 9, 2008 at 12:14 am

    Overkill…or, rather, overeffort. OK for a few special occasions which come readily to mind.
    Are they thinking about legalizing these things?
    I’d be content with a legal Glock, I reckon.

  • Soupmonkey
    August 9, 2008 at 1:29 am

    Will not work
    Every time he gets angry enough to yank the cord they will have gone on another vacation.

  • Brother J
    August 9, 2008 at 5:26 pm

    It may be the only effective way to ever dislodge the assholes, given how they’ve rigged the system to protect incumbents through gerrymandering, McCain-Feingold and similar campaign finance laws.

    Kim; “PULL!”

  • Midwesterner
    August 10, 2008 at 2:36 am

    Kim’s fantasy got me thinking about the place of big guns on a modern battlefield. Defending against 9 incoming hunks of ballistic ordinance weighing 1000s of pounds each and approaching at almost three times the speed of sound is not something that can be done with lasers, balloons trailing nets and wires, anti-aircraft fire, missiles or anything else I can think of. Anything that can intercept can’t provide that ‘equal and opposite reaction’ that is needed to overcome the massive kinetic energy, and anything that can provide it can’t intercept (and would probably itself destroy what it was intended to protect). That is why I really am not comfortable with the retirement of the battleships Iowa and Wisconsin (or for the matter, Missouri and New Jersey). I suspect that smart weapons stealthy enough to hit targets will be more difficult to attain and speed will be less effective for defense avoidance and sheer brute horsepower weaponry will always have some place on a battlefield.

    Iraqi troops on the ground heard the Pioneer’s distinctive buzzing sound, and having witnessed the effects of Missouri’s artillery strike on their trenchline the Iraqi troops decided to signal their willingness to surrender by waving makeshift white flags, an action dutifully noted aboard Wisconsin. Amused at this sudden development the men assigned to the drone’s aircrew called Wisconsin’s commanding officer, Captain David S. Bill III, and asked, “Sir, they want to surrender, what should I do with them?”[15] This surrender to Wisconsin’s Pioneer has since become one of the most remembered moments of the Gulf War; the incident was also the first-ever surrender of enemy troops to an unmanned aircraft controlled by a ship.[17][18]

    If you browse through battleship firing pictures, you will occasionally see a sideways wake from the force of the guns firing. These are not devices that can be retrofitted to anything. They can only be installed in a purpose built vessel. As a side note, knowing that the turrets on the Iowa class ships are designed to withstand firing three 16in guns in unison, could one or more turrets be replaced with a turret containing a single gun of far greater projectile weight and range? Something approaching the specs of Kim’s fantasy piece?

    Refitting both Iowa and Wisconsin for deployment would cost about 3-1/2 Raptors (out of the 183 planned). Certainly worthy of some very serious consideration.

    Jus’ thinkin’.

  • otpu
    August 10, 2008 at 2:46 am

    It looks like the ghost of Guy Fawkes has emigrated to Plano, Texas.

    otpu

  • Kristopher
    August 11, 2008 at 10:23 pm

    They are legal in the US in many states…

    Federal tax on the gun is $200, and another $200 per shell.

    There was a bit of a panic in Sacramento CA when someone learned that Dangerous Dave at Old Western Scrounger had bought a WWI German artillery piece that could reach them from his back 40.

    He sold the gun to a museum, and the legislature over-reacted after the fact by banning anything over .60 in CA.

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