trevorishere

The machinery, ingenuity, and eventual incorporation of some of that technology into civilian life is important and possibly the only way to get funding for new technologies by the (US) government.

The NRO offered two spy satellites (I believe rumored to be Keyhole family satellites) to NASA back in 2011/2012 -- neither have launched yet, but they have the same sized mirror as the Hubble, but with a better focal length giving the satellites a 100 times wider field of view. The now-named Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is scheduled to launch by Nov 2026 on a Falcon Heavy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_National_Reconnaissance_O...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Grace_Roman_Space_Telesc...

The NRO also donated Keyhole satellite mirrors to create the Multiple Mirror Telescope.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MMT_Observatory#Multiple_Mirro...

NASA was the last to fly the SR-71 as a research platform.

Unfortunately, the military is often what pushes technology forward.

Comment · 4 years ago

B-52 was the last USAF bomber to have a rear-ward facing guns. During the Gulf War, one of two theories that a rear-ward facing gunner turned on his defensive fire control system and was hit by friendly fire after an F4 released anti-radiation (HARM) missile in the blind. The AGM-88 locked on to the DFCS and blew off the rear section of the BUFF -- which was then nicknamed "In HARM's Way".

https://theaviationgeekclub.com/exclusive-former-buff-gunner...

Comment · 4 years ago

Last air-to-air cannon kill I'm aware of was an F-16 vs. OV-10 in Venezuela in 1992. You can watch the kill at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDASW6X0XoU.

If you look closely at the moment of shoot down, you'll see the F-16 has its air breaks fully deployed (and I'd assume both leading and trailing edge flaps almost fully down) to slow down enough.

Comment · 4 years ago

It's an airshow maneuver. Speed is life. USAF (and presumably other AF's) send out 2 to 4 ship (or if we look at Desert Storm, over 70 ships). If you "stall" or perform this maneuver, whomever is behind you might overshoot, but his or her buddy will nab you.

Check out Stroke 3. This is an F-16 strike on an oil facility in Iraq. Stroke 3 avoided six Iraq (Russian-made) SAMs /without/ deploying any counter measures. Simply amazing to listen to.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2uh4yMAx2UA

And here's a visual illustration of the entire strike package that went out. 76 aircraft as part of Package Q.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxRgfBXn6Mg

Fun (?) fact -- the first strike in Desert Storm was performed by eight Apache attack helicopters with two Pave Low helicopters leading them at NAP of the earth level at nighttime.

Comment · 4 years ago

AIM-9X (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIM-9_Sidewinder#AIM-9X) has 90 degree off-boresight capabilities with helmet mounted displays, being able to pull 60Gs.

So not quite "backwards", but dang close. With that being said, beyond visual range (BVR) engagements for gen 4 and higher fighters (gen 4 would be F-16 (the best plane ever produced, and everyone here knows it ;), F-18, MiG-29, Su-27; gen 5 would be F-22, F-35... and somewhat arguably Su-57) should be the norm. The USAF/US Navy is a bit behind on this with the AIM-120C/D being a medium-range missile where as some of the Russian-produced missiles have a longer reach. The USAF currently has a program to produce a long-range variant of the AIM-120C/D (our last long range missile was the AIM-54 Phoenix, exclusively carried by the retired F-14) with the designation of AIM-260 -- the AIM-260 is expected to replace the AIM-120.

AIM-120C/D "maddog" call -- now that'd be an interesting air-to-air engagement -- "maddog" is the call for firing the AIM-120 without the aircraft having radar lock and whatever the missile picks up on it's terminal guidance radar is likely doomed.

Ahhh I played way too much Falcon 4.0 and the DCS F-16 module.

Comment · 4 years ago

They can find connected apps for their consumer account on https://account.live.com/consent/manage.

Comment · 4 years ago

> not Kerberos

Well... https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/azure-storage-blog/pu... :-)

Comment · 4 years ago

I've actually created this setup (in order to ditch Okta as it is far more expensive than AAD P1 if you want MFA).

You federate AAD and Okta. Sign in to Okta and it's smooth sailing into AAD-based resources like M365.

Okta puts on a good dog and pony show for execs. From a technical perspective, they're no better for corps (at least in first party auth or B2B -- I don't get into the B2C space). We found, for the apps we used, AAD as of ~4 years ago had better SCIM support (!) than Okta.

On top of getting O365 E5 + Ent Sec (I think they're just now called M365 E5) which gave us AAD P2 licenses, overall it was much cheaper than Okta. The goal was to just get MFA, which Microsoft gives away for free (with limited toggles) or in P1 licenses (with more toggles) where-as Okta wanted $6/user/month _just for_ MFA.

Microsoft puts on a terrible sales pitch, though. We were fortunate enough to have an _awesome_ Principal Program Manager spend days with us in-person answering all of our questions and explaining AAD to our IT management.

Comment · 4 years ago

> we don't need Microsoft to make it even worse.

Microsoft made it better by preventing the scenario from occurring beginning 3 - 5 years ago.

Comment · 4 years ago

This is a legacy setup that can no longer be created. Microsoft removed the option to use a custom domain for Microsoft accounts many years ago, but hasn't forced people to change.

However, your friend can get out of this scenario by following the instructions on this site:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/account-billing/change-t...

They'll end up with <whatever_they_can_find>@outlook.com for their Microsoft account. When using Org services via a browser, you'll automatically use your Org account. When using consumer services, you'll automatically use your Microsoft account (assuming you've selected stay sign-in for both).