My local police department recently

[sammythecat]

purchased three A-130 gunships and a tactical nuclear weapon. There are some suspected criminals in my neighborhood. Should I be concerned?

[MindPilot]

1. Dear Concerned:

If you have nothing to hide, then you have nothing to worry about. Remember, your government knows what's best for you, so let them do their jobs. Questioning authority is so 9/10 and it emboldens the enemy.
Abby

[sammythecat]

6. You're probably right, it's just that

the action today in Somalia got me thinking and I started to worry.

[vincent_vega_lives]

9. The further left one goes...

The closer one gets to the far right ;)

http://zapatopi.net/blackhelicopters/

[Vidar]

12. LOL

[Norquist Nemesis]

2. Don't you feel safer?

*wink*

[itsmesgd]

3. holy crap, my local pd still uses horses downtown...

I am so jealous of you.

[baldguy]

19. Don't be fooled.

Those are new Northrup-Grumman "Tonto" gen-mod cybernetic horses.

[Ikonoklast]

4. They must have been low on the list for grants

My local PD scored a nuclear submarine, two B-1 bombers, and a whole Infantry Division.

Got to keep those vandals on their toes.

[mnhtnbb]

5. Guess you don't live in Mr. Rogers' neighborhood!

[Turbineguy]

7. Let's hope they keep

quiet about that. Everybody will want some.

[H2O Man]

8. Legalize Lonnie Anderson's hair. n/t

[TahitiNut]

17. Now, that's a cause I can support! WKRP Rulez!

:silly:

[sammythecat]

18. Ok, I didn't understand

your reply before and almost asked what you meant. Now I see someone has seconded your comment. I can't take it anymore. I am totally confused.
What in the world is the connection between AC-130 gunships, tactical nuclear weapons, and Loni Anderson? I know I'm missing something here. I just don't get it.

I tried. I even googled Loni to see if there was something about her that I was unaware. I googled "loni anderson" with "ac-130 gunship" and, to my amazement, came up with nothing.

[Buzz Clik]

10. Do what the Libertarians do: counter with your personal arms.

Buy yourself a tactical nuke and some heat-seeking missiles.

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

11. Don't be so narrow. Try to see the big picture.

There might be bad guys in the neighborhood. It can be very inefficient to try to separate the wheat from the bath water, as we say in the biz. A bear can't shit in the woods without breaking a few eggs.

I hope that clarifies your situation.

Regards.

[sammythecat]

15. It does, and thanks.

I feel so foolish now. After all, I can't expect to break any babies without making some dishes.

[specimenfred1984]

13. Your local protestor-beaters didn't get a sonic weapon?

They better set up a lot more radar traps/income producers.

[shance]

14. Where are you Sammy?

nt

[sammythecat]

16. Well, I'm glad I wasn't living on that island

that got blasted today. So some civilians got wasted, at least we probably got some bad guys. They're all brown people anyhow and they live far away.

I live in a small town in central Pa. We still have muskets in the armory.

[shance]

20. How did you find out about this?

This would be a thing citizens would rally around. '

Maybe you can lead the charge***

Keep us posted.

[midnight]

21. What is a tactical nuclear weapon, and what are

A-130 gunships?

[sammythecat]

22. In order to answer your questions

can I refer you to a post in GD by SanCrisobal entitled "US bombs Somalia". Scroll down to post #14 by ShortnFiery. She gives a very good explanation, with photos, of the AC-130 aerial gunship. I misnamed it the A-130 instead of the AC-130. The word "awesome" gets way overused but, this airplane can legitimately be called awesome with the amount of firepower it can bring to bear.

Tactical nuclear weapons are supposedly small enough to use on the battlefield. That's what they say anyway. They range in yield from about 10 kilotons to around 100 kilotons. The bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki were in the 30-50 kiloton range. If that's what they mean by a "battlefield" weapon, I wouldn't want to be anywhere near that battlefield!

Since WWII we've developed much more powerful nuclear weapons that dwarf those used on Japan. These little items are usually referred to as strategic nuclear weapons and we have many thousands of them. My guess, no research on this, is that most of these are in the 1-10 megaton range. The largest(worst) ever was a bomb tested by USSR that had a yield of 50 megatons.

1 kiloton = 1,000 TONS of tnt. 1 megaton = 1,000,000 TONS of tnt.

I didn't make it clear, but this post was just my response to the recent attack, by AC-130 gunships, on a suspected terrorist camp in Somalia. Of course innocents were killed along with any suspected bad guys. It seemed indiscriminate to me.

BTW, these gunships aren't just guys flying around in an airplane firing out the window. They are the most expensively equipped airplanes in the world. Everything is controlled electronically. The plane will fly in a circle over the target and rain a continuous and highly accurate firestorm on the target. They are absolutely devastating in the true sense of the word. Superlatives really do apply to this airplane.