How does this differ from the F4 being retrofitted with a cannon in a centerline pod? It was designed for BVR, but that (politically) didn't work out so well.
>the F4 being retrofitted with a cannon in a centerline pod
The Air Force and Navy had different solutions to the early trouble with the performance of the F4. The Air Force attached a cannon in a centerline pod, the Navy did not, and invested in more training and the development of new tactics (notably the Top Gun program).
The Air Force's gun pod did improve kill ratios a little bit, but the Navy's training programs improved kill ratios by a lot, using the same fighters and the same missiles as before. The Air Force later copied the Navy's training programs. I'm sure improvements were made to the missiles over the course of the war as well.
So even at the time (in the earliest days of missile technology) it's not clear that BVR focus was the wrong decision, only that you can't expect pilots to automatically understand how to fight in a new paradigm. But today it's 50 years later, almost as big a gap as between Vietnam and the Wright brothers - BVR combat is very well understood and missile technology is vastly better.
I'm just an armchair nerd but I think it's safe to say that BVR was really in its infancy back then in terms of radar, stealth, missiles, etc. The technology simply was not there for an effective BVR fighter.
"The Air Force didn’t realize those early missiles
were terrible.
Studies showed that 45 percent of Vietnam-era
AIM-7s and 37 percent of AIM-9s failed to either
launch or lock on, and after evasive maneuvers,
the probability of achieving a kill fell to eight
percent and 15 percent for the two types,
respectively"
Missiles are ridiculously lethal and maneuverable now. They can thrust vector, be fired from crazy angles, etc.
I have been raising pastured free range egg chicks for years. If I don't see the color of the yolk, I can't tell the difference between mine and store bought.
Oddly enough, others can and cooks say the whites are much easier to whip.
I think this was a case of playing vote chicken. There were a tiny number of democrats who were never going to vote for those bills. There are a larger group that didn't want to vote for those bills but didn't want to go against party lines. So they voted for bills knowing that they wouldn't pass. They risked nothing and still got the outcome they desired.
Primaries are a unique situation. Very few people vote in primaries. In fact the people who vote in primaries care a great deal about their candidates. The people who care the most about their candidates tend to the far left/right. The end result is one of two outcomes: 1.) the voters in the main election have to pick from a list (two in the U.S.) candidates that are much more left/right wing than
the actual voter considers themselves. Or 2.) the party realizes that the candidate that is leading is not generally electable and ignores votes to find someone more appropriate.
I think that the republicans in 2020 followed (1) and the democrates followed (2). This is how we get biden. If a more progressive democrat was the candidate, would trump have won? That was the fear of the democratic party.
(I just made this up so take it for what its worth)
I wrote an infinite loop in postscript and sent it to all the printers. This was when postscript printers cost a fortune so there were not many of them. Fun days were those.
I don't think you can get past that the 6502 was meant to be programmed in assembly. Some of the tricks needed to optimally use memory just don't lend themselves to higher level languages. I started with a lot of basic and then moved to assembler because it was the easiest path.
Adding to the recommended books: 'Bats at the Beach' by Brian Lies.
My kids never got tired of me reading it and I never got tired of reading it. They loved that book. The illustrations are extremely well done. Who would draw bats wearing floaties?
