Grrl Power #612 – Thunderbirds are go!
When I started the comic, I kind of scattered the ranks around the characters because I didn’t really understand what all that stuff meant. To me, military ranks always seemed like leveling up at your job like you’re playing Call of Duty. I was genuinely blown away when learned the difference between commissioned and non-commissioned. Like, why does anyone not want to be an officer? I know you have to meet certain requirements like some higher level education, but being a Lieutenant has to be better than being a private, right? If for no other reason than there’s like 10,000 fewer people than can boss you around on your base. I’ve always had a pathological aversion to authority, so maybe it’s just me.
Sure, I’ve seen movies and TV with people of different ranks doing stuff, but usually it’s all in service of a larger plot and it’s just one guy barking orders down the chain. They rarely show the stuff that each rank actually does, (at least never in the shows I’ve ever watched) because 90% of what you do in the military is probably super boring. Stargate SG-1 didn’t exactly focus on what a Lance Corporal or a 2nd Lieutenant spends all day doing.
Anyway, since I made Anvil a sergeant, I figure she ought to be seen bossing the troops around a little bit. I’ve definitely seen that in shows, so I’m sure I’m right on the money with that.
I don’t know why I named the teams Alpha and Delta instead of Alpha and Beta. I guess mostly because Delta sounds cooler than Beta, plus, Alpha and Beta sounds like sociological categorization instead of military squads. You got to call them something, and Maxima vetoed Alpha and Kumquat.
Unrelated side rant: I need to make a 3D model of Maxima’s gun, because I’m no good at drawing them, and I idiotically designed hers a little too complicated for me to draw from a lot of different angles. I started doing it once, but like a dummy, the first thing I tried to do was the rifling inside the barrel. That was not in my 3D modeling 101 skillset. I could make a barrel with little fins running along the inside, but as soon as I tried twisting one end, the middle part pinched in like I was twisting up a towel. The problem with 3D programs is there might be one checkbox that fixes that problem, but if you don’t know the exact solution, you could spend 20 hours experimenting and googling for answers and watching youtube tutorials before figuring it out. Even then, if you do find the answer, the version of the program you’re using might be different from the guy who made the tutorial, and the checkbox is in a different place now, and there’s another 20 minutes of figuring it out.
The long and the short of it is that 3D programs are completely unintuitive as far as I’m concerned. I think part of the problem with them is their UI is made by programmers and not people who are actually good at UI. The other problem is there’s so much crap you can do in a 3D program that a layer, and brush palette and a color picker like in a 2D paint program isn’t going to cut it. There are probably better solutions than what’s in most 3D programs, but there’s probably not any great ones.
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Sydney could save a little time if she grabbed her fly-ball and used that to head to the location of her “field dress” (why does that sound like something ladies participating in an outdoor square dance might wear?).
She is, isn’t she?
She did grab her flight ball, she was just exited about being in Alpha Flight and leant back to tell the wrong person :D
The com ball would probably be even faster since walls and floors are involved.
Last we saw though Sydney was contemplating if she should keep her teleportation secret, in case she needs an edge in fighting Evil Maxima (or her evil twin etc). We did not find out what she concluded, or if it would even be possible to pull that off.
However it may be the case that Sydney is keeping it secret, from everyone. However, even if not, the orb is still classified and should not be used casually when there may be people below her pay grade around.
Mere princesses of salt or princes of pepper are not in the loop.
The comm ball can not pass through solid objects, and Sydney is effectively blind while using it until she stops and pops out HoloHalo
“I’m going out her to track her visually”
Maybe you meant “out there”
Hah, whoops, probably.
Fixed!
Technically, it would be Alpha and Bravo, since the military uses the phonetic alphabet. So Delta Team would be a thing, but it would probably be Kilo Team instead of Kumquat Team.
Oh, good point! That means too bad we won’t have a cool Team Lambda, because it’s Lima.
I wanna be on Team Whiskey, since there’s no Team Cognac
Oh, heh, that does sound better.
If they have a Beta team to do testing (Archon probably does a lot of testing) and Charlie team has some other specialization (or there is someone named Charlie in charge of Beta, which would make that confusing) the next team in alphabetical order would be Delta….
Alpha-Bravo is generally used for military squads, as its part of the NATO phonetic alphabet, but alpha-beta could be used by arc-light or whatever division Leon is in, (I can’t tell because the cast page doesn’t appear to exist anymore, hint hint.) because it is Greek, and is used by tech domains quite often.
Archon is a Greek word, in its own right. Even though the organisation is not applicable to the meaning of the name.
Leon is either just a straight civilian IT person, and thereby probably under Arianna (being the only representative of that side of things we know, but being in on the heads of department meetings) or possibly part of Arc-Light, given his hacking capabilities being used for military/police covert actions.
His status is not listed on the cast list. But there is more than one way to skin a cat.
Hint
And in the Military we break sub-sections of units up using Alpha-numeric-numeric-alpha-numeric sequencing to keep from having the alphas run into each other.
Hence I was in Team Bravo, 2nd Squad, 3rd Platoon, Delta Company, 29th Signal Battalion, 201st Military Intelligence Brigade at one point in my career.
Yes but this is also a quick assembly and perhaps not predesignated permanet teams. That is also a thing a swell when a unit need sto split up to get a job done. Then its up the leader doing the orginization to designate team names and they do not always have to follow the alphabet. Heck max could have gone with animal names. Team Tiger and Team Zebra. One of the batteries I was in was designated as Steel Rain.
it could be they are permanent teams though, but specialized by role/composition..
Alpha Team is probably the heavy hitters.. Maxima, Anvil, Dabbler, at least one of the Harem’s, Sydney.
Delta team could be either lower powered individuals like Achilles, Math, and Mr. Amorphous, used to form a perimeter and get the area cleared to minimize collateral damage.. or might be the Intel team from ARCLight we saw here: https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/1303
Im sure we will find out.
As for Sydney’s place on Alpha … as potentially useful as she is proving to be; that girl still needs supervision. She makes for a great Force Multplier and her skillful application of Genre savy is thus far matched only by Deus. Less a glass cannon and more a glass minigun (with bayonets a-fixed)
So when she is on she is on.
And when she is off her game/meds(?) she has died. But got better(!) thanks to some one off ablative plot armor. That FNG didnt even make two weeks.
So there you go. Supervision Still Required
And just like that Chekov minigun the only one that can wield it with any efficiency thus far is The CO , the LT and (thankfully) Sgt Kenya
In addition to Anvil and Maxima there are several others (one of whom is indeed a lieutenant) who could easily use the mini-gun. Namely Mr Amorphous, Stalwart (who is stronger than everyone else other than Maxima), Super Hiro and Harem.
Harem may only be able to barely carry Peggy’s sniper rifle, when teleporting, but that does not represent her strength under other circumstances. Her super strength increases exponentially for every body that she puts into storage. So can easily boost it to the point where the minigun would be manageable.
Possibly even Achilles would be able to use the weapon, as he has 150% normal strength. Sydney failed because she is not a burly guy, with a build like a brick outhouse. But there are miniguns that can be fired from the hip, even by normal folks.
Although the bayonet one looked significantly chunkier than that, it is not gigantic (there was a trick of perspective which made it look way bigger when it was first shown). So I think Achilles would likely be able to use it. If properly rated for it. Of all the team he is also the one in most need of it. Being all defence and no offence means he is under utilising his power. A powerful gun like that would make him a much more useful asset.
Had Sydney thought to use it, she too could easily lift the weight of the minigun with her tentacle. Possibly it may also be able to pull the trigger (but if not Sydney would have a hand free so could do that manually), and it is easily flexible enough to aim it precisely (if Halo is positioned with a suitable line of sight along it).
No arguments on still needing supervision though.
I think that your forgetting two things Yorp, the ammunition and the batteries. For a ‘truly’ man-portable mini-gun I’m thinking that Stalwart and Hiro would be the only ones who could carry one. Oh, and one doesn’t ‘aim’ precisely with a mini-gun; it’s more a point over there, in that direction kinda thing.
Yea, good point. Achilles would be limited to a static location, or have a very limited firing capacity.
There is a big leap up to the next batch though, as the others were at least three star super strength (ignoring Harem as she can be whatever she chooses, up to 32 times normal strength). Bearing in mind that each star is a ‘ball park’ leap in capabilities.
And three star is what you need to destroy a tank (e.g. the PPO is 3 star strength, and had no difficulty doing that). So if they are strong enough to tear a tank apart I am pretty sure they can pick up minigun, batteries and shed loads of ammo.
Likewise the tentacle can carry sixteen tons. So Halo could heft a pallet load of ammo and batteries with her.
It’s a good thing that you didn’t use Beta, because the US military uses Bravo for the Phonetic Alphabet.
For Future use…
Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, Echo, Foxtrot, Gulf, Hotel, India, Juliet, Kilo, Lima, Mike, November, Oscar, Papa, Quebec, Romeo, Sierra, Tango, Uniform, Victor, Whiskey, X-Ray, Yankee, Zulu
been decades since comm school, but it stays with you
Minor nitpick: US/NATO spells Alpha as Alfa, because the “ph” sound is not recognized internationally.
But just to confuse things, many US police departments use a competing phonetic alphabet (blame the LAPD).
Adam, Boy, Charles, David, Edward, Frank, George, Henry, Ida, John, King, Lincoln, Mary, Nora, Ocean, Paul, Queen, Robert, Sam, Tom, Union, Victor, William, X-Ray, Young, Zebra.
I have one of my own I prefer to use:
Aye, Bdellium, Cue, Djinni, Eye, Faro, Gneiss, Hour, I, Jung, Knot, Llano*, Mnemonic, Not, Our, Psi, Quay, Right, See, Tsar, Urn, Via*, Wright, Xylem, You, Zero
* Spanish/Latin pronunciations, respectively
Heh, one I just saw today was: “Aisle, Bdellium, Czar, Djinn, Exact, File, Gin, Hour, Isle, Jalapeno, Knight, Llama, Mnemonic, Night, Our, Phial, Quetzalcoatl, Right, Sea, Tsunami, Uber, Vial, Write, Xylophone, You, Zoroastrianism”
I never can remember official lists of names. So I just use whatever word springs to mind. e.g. “S for sugar”. Although I do remember a few of them, so could differentiate that from “F for foxtrot”.
That’s C as in “Czar”, and T as in “Tsar”. G, of course, is for either “gnome”, or “gnu”. I always tell people “R, as in ‘I’m a pirate'”.
Xylophone’s not good; it’s basically the go-to ‘X’ word. “Xylem” both starts with the ‘Z’-sound, and is unusual enough that people probably won’t recognize it. Another good one is “X as in Xmas” (pronounced “Christmas”).
Also fun for any alphanumeric sequences is using the names of numbers, like, “T as in three.” Particularly good are, “E as in eight, A as in ate, O as in one, W as in won…”
Also, the names of other letters, like, “A as in aitch, E as in ex, D as in double-u…”
What? Since when does ‘ph’ not sound like ‘f’?
The only place you find ‘Alfa’ is in the name of a crappy car company
You are missing the point. It is because the two sound the same, that many languages do not use “ph” to represent that. It is rather redundant to have two different ways of spelling the same basic sound, so those languages have not adopted the English way of doing that. Well not enough for it to overcome common sense in using the version that is more widely recognised, going by
Bad Penguin‘s information.
Even Bulgarian, with a completely different alphabet, just uses the one character “ф” to represent that sound. “Phonetic” translates interestingly in that regard given that it becomes ”
фонетичен” (fonetichen). With the “ф” as the “ph” and the “ch” sound their word uses likewise just being a single character, namely “ч”.
Its actually funny that the letter F still exists in English when it keeps the Ph.
Its weird because there were also symbols at one point for *th*, *sh*, and *ch* sounds but those symbols were discarded and used the double letter method (which honestly feels backwards, but English was never one to go simple on linguistics).
Yeah, AR, Alfa Romeo.
Which—I just looked it up—have that name entirely coincidentally. Whaddaya know?
Oh, so THAT’s what Charlie Foxtrot means….
Well, it’s not what Charlie Foxtrot MEANS. It just explains why it’s used. It represents CF, used as an abbreviation for cluster-fuck. Which, if you’re unfamiliar with it, is used to describe a situation that is unorganized and confusing (basically, no one knows what’s happening or has a plan.)
“Which, if you’re unfamiliar with it, is used to describe a situation that is unorganized and confusing (basically, no one knows what’s happening or has a plan.”
You mean like the Tr*mp administration?
Charlie Foxtrot is military slang for “Cluster F*ck”,
I used Sierra Hotel or Tango Uniform to let others on the flightline know if an aircraft was ready to sortie or not
Sierra Hotel = Shit Hot (ready to fly)
Tango Uniform = Tits Up (broken)
Papa Whisky = C.O. is drunk, fly evasively
Still need an upvoter button on this thang. Charlie Foxtrot goes along with SNAFU and SSDD, or for the Australians DILLIGAFF
How could you not include FUBAR here is a great place to see a lot of fun acronyms and what they mean
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_military_slang_terms
Don’t forget KMAYOYO.
Nobody wants to be the November Foxtrot Gulf, but there’s always got to be somebody who fills the spot.
N(ew) F(rikkin’) G(uy)
And right now, that’s where Sydney is…
Actually, Jabberwokky (Jazmine Ng) is the new girl.
Not quite yet I think. She hasn’t gotten various aspects done yet I think… Honestly if it wasn’t for the fact taht Sydney’s orbs of flight, shield and vision was so bloody useful. I doubt she’d be in field or on the team yet either. Much less the whole….. still affected by the spell bit.
I doubt Jabberwokky will be on active for a while. Baring emergency “get everyone” fights again
In my unit, it was always the FNG, not the NFG.
JAFO Just Another F@#$ Observer the two guys in the back of the Bradley in a scout team. FUBAR F@#$ Up Beyond All Recognition the name of one of our units tanks we were Fox Company all the vehicle had names that started with F the Bradley I was on was Flatline kind of proud of that one myself I have a decent habit for figuring out good names. Personal it was how much time it didn’t spend in the field.
One on a field excersize for 2 weeks, one of our tracks was unofficially redesignated Charly 3 5 Tango. Hint, a T suffix in vehicle number indicates a trailor. Fortunatly, it wasn’t my vehicle. It was a loner we borrowed from out shit battery to be the intel track. I was in the Ops track and 35 was our FDC track.
Outside of that we never really named our vehicles.
What, you didn’t have a FUN Guy? (F*’n Useless New). Plus, Syd is far from being the FUN Girl, as she is the second fastest flyer, can transport the rest of Alpha team (Probably Anvil, Hiro and Dabbler – Two heavy hitters and two JoaT’s), has shown her abilities for creative solutions…
Because FNG’s have this annoying tendency to die within a month of getting stationed at a combat billet.
Nothing fun about that. :/
My personal favorite is Whiskey Tango Foxtrot (I’ll leave it up to you what that means)
Lima beans! :D
Also, tempted to say Team Tampon.
Small correction, it’s Golf not Gulf.
And for numbers you just use the regular number but for the number nine. In the tables you will often read that it is Nine, but digging a bit further you will find that it should be pronounced Niner.
All number are said as a series of individual digits: Zero, One, Two, Tree, Fower, Fife, Six, Seven, Ait, Niner.
Exceptions are Decimal, to represent a decimal point, and Tousand, for when the number is less than a million and the integer part is an exact multiple of a thousand.
TH is replaced by T, for the same linguistic reasons as “Alfa not Alpha.”
I was always willing to pronounce “kilo” as “key-lo” because it’s pretty close anyway. But I just said “nine” because fuck them anyway.
I thank you kindly for knoweledge
I’m happy to see they’re pulling out the big guns… And Maxima’s weapon also.
Can you do something a little different when she shoots it?
I’ll be disappointed if it merely used conventional ammunition.
(Micro Missilles!! (would need a Special launcher to select and IFF targets))
Maxima’s gun is more for intimidation than doing anything special (aside firing large caliber bullets). She herself can do more damage with a finger-flick than a gun could ever hope to do.
Depends on who made the gun. Some of Dabblers designs are pretty powerful.
Please, please tell me the armorer went to the Walter C. Dornez school of gunsmithing… *evil-like grin behind shades*
Maxima can shoot energy beams out of her hands. She put an enormous hole in her house as teen because of that ability. She actively demonstrated her finger laser to Sydney to show WHY she has a gun when she can do that.
It’s basically safety equipment at this point, because you’re a lot safer when she’s using it.
Yes Maxima and Anvil sure have some impressive cannons.
The ammo look like shotgun shells. That makes sense if you are going for intimidation. The sound of a shotgun will scare almost anyone who is not bulletproof.
Maxima’s hand cannon is single shot, so she can select various ammo for the situation on the fly. It would be just like Max to have a bean bag round for knocking down some fleshy goober with an inflated sense of his own awesomeness right in the middle of his evil rant/gloat. A gas round would be useful in a lot of situations, too. But for Sciona, I’d select the high velocity depleted uranium sabot round. Even if she’s super tough, one of those through her skull would probably at least slow her down.
Since Maxima have super eardrums she could use some kind of hi ex to scare the crap out of enemies.
Single shot works for her since with her speed, she could open, reload, close and shoot again in very short order to the point where most people would probably think she had a semi or full autoi weapon with a magazine if they did not see the weapon before she started shooting.
YES!! Totally want to see her shoot SmugD in his X :D
I’m not even sure you can fire a depleted uranium round from a barrel that size without damaging the sidearm. The DU might be heavier than the whole weapon. Is the barrel a tungsten alloy?
Oh, wait, you said “sabot.”
It kinda reminds me of the Vin Diesel’s gun from the first XXX movie.
To be fair, no one is truly bulletproof.
Problem: Small arms fire is useless!
Solution: We need bigger bullets!
-We need bigger guns! Big fucking guns!
[Supply sergeant holds up a battle rifle]
-To fucking small.
(from the movie Split Second)
“Fully Automatic. Because I’ve got a bullet with your name on it, and I’m gonna keep shooting until I figure out which one it is.”
I’m more concerned about the bullets labeled “To whom it may concern.”
“Friendly Fire” isn’t.
Especially when its artillery fire.
“Dear Grid Square…”
Be more concerned with the ones marked “Return to sender”
That is not for bullets. That is for grenades …
I would be sure to inscribe this on every bullet I had:
See, I would be safe, but it would be the nemesis of every foe I faced!
*swishes tail profoundly*
Unless you have a foe named Yorp.
I is unique. Like XKCD. Well, except for its twin XKCD Explained.
“To be fair, no one is truly bulletproof.”
Achilles?
Vale may or may not be able to block them but does she care?
Achilles is not “bullet-proof”. Sure, bullets bounce off of him, but we have seen that the laws of conservation of momentum are kept – he gets knocked backwards. So, bullets DO have an effect on him, just not what normally happens.
Although Mythbusters have busted that people get thrown back, when hit by bullets. If that were true, then, per “equal and opposite reaction”, the person firing a gun should end up on their back too.
in the real world you’re right. In this world… you remember that minigun in the armory? I bet that would send him flying, obviously you’d need powers to fire the damn thing but still.
Heh. Not bad points.
The minigun is not as big as it appeared by the way. It was mostly a perspective trick, being not dissimilar to actual minigun sizes. The initial shot had it in the foreground, so it appeared gigantic. Then when Sydney was using it, her small frame made it still look oversized.
If Maxima or Arnold Schwarzenegger picked it up though then you would see that it was big, but not huge. The biggest difference actually just being those bayonets.
Nope, Valeur is not bulletproof, she’s not even stab-proof
That really depends upon your definition of “stab-proof.” Vale seems to be about as stab-proof as a swimming pool. As in, feel free to stab a swimming pool. Just don’t be terribly disappointed if it doesn’t take much notice of being stabbed.
:-D
Well, the only thing we’ve seen stab her are light wings, light wings that sliced through a marble column like cheese mind you.
so how well more conventional blades would do is unknown.
With this team you get into questions of what is or isn’t a bullet.
If you have a cloud of protons accelerated to relativistic speeds is it still a bullet?
The military is very good at defining things like munitions. So that would not classify as a bullet.
Still classifies as ‘Woah. Cooooool’
Have they figured out already how Sydney can ferry a group of people quickly like that? She’ll still has to juggle 3 orbs just like their underwater adventure and there she had Maxima to keep them in place when she needed to recycle their air supply.
(Maybe Hiro is in team Alpha to keep them in the air while she does that?)
One of the team could carry extra oxygen. We also don’t know how robust Deus’ rebreather is.
If Sydney has the Flight & Shield orbs to get the group moving, she could gain sufficient altitude to give her a few seconds for switching Flight for Air. Once the air in the shield is refreshed, she can switch back to Flight before everybody goes *bounce* on the ground. Doesn’t seem graceful or have any finesse, but it would work.
They have done a ferry test before so they do have an idea how longe she can go with X number of people within her shield. So with that knowledge plus appropriate equipment they are probably good.
Yeah, it’s at least been a week since the ferry test, wonder if they have had built the seats, which hopefully would include snacks and a couple oxygen tanks :D
As someone who is currently in the US Army, and has ten years on the enlisted side, let me tell you the only reason I ever consider sometimes making the leap to commissioning is the pay. I’ve been an NCO for three quarters my career and love doing MY JOB, the one I joined the Army to do beyond being a simple Soldier.
97% of what I see even LTs doing is directly related to administrative paperwork and counting equipment and planning. And it never really seems to get better. Plus they tend to get yelled out more by officers who are orders of magnitude over them (an LT getting yelled at by a battalion commander, a jump from O-1 to O-5) when they screw up, even when both are good officers and people. When I screw up, or get my orders, it’s usually only my immediate NCO or two above me, and his corresponding officer. Officers also tend to have more mandatory gatherings and homework, partially for leadership development, partially for enforced camaraderie and “fun,” outside or after the duty day. Which is the best kind, obviously.
But mostly it’s about doing MY JOB and being in closer leadership proximity to MY SOLDIERS.
The way it was often put back when I was in was “NCO’s train soldiers. Officers train units.”
Us commissioned officers get to worry more, mostly about the stupid politics coming down from above. We get to sign for everything, and are held responsible for same. When I had payroll escort duty, I had to sign for hundreds of millions of dollars on several occasions. And, yes, if any of it went missing, I was held responsible. I had to either find out who did it, or suffer the consequences (up to and including a few years of unpaid vacation in Ft. Leavenworth). Then there was all of the lovely planning. I had to plan for the training of my entire unit for one month, three months, six months, one year, and two years; then I had to tear it all apart to include company, battalion, and brigade level training. Then I had to tear it apart to include soldiers going on leave, transferring out, transferring in, retiring, new recruits, etc… Plus I had to ensure that all of the gear was present and field ready (I could delegate most of that, but I still had to do the inspections and sign for the gear and readiness levels); then I also would be assigned additional duties, like company security officer, payroll officer, ordinance officer, supply officer, etc…
So, say a private under my command does something really stupid and really noticeable, then I get my ass chewed by the highest ranking officer that noticed, but I also get my ass chewed all the way down the chain to my commander, and I probably have to file a report and a follow-up report. If it is bad enough, I get the joy (sarcasm) of disciplining the subordinate (which is even more joyless if it is a good NCO), otherwise I give the private over to the tender mercies of my platoon sergeant.
In field operations, as the platoon leader, I got the suck job of sending men off to die. On top of that, while all my men are hugging dirt and taking cover, I get to pop up, generally with the binoculars, to have a look around, so I can decide how to deal with the chaos of battle while losing as few men as possible and not breaking morale and not running out of ammo and not interfering with company, battalion, brigade, and division operations while maintaining contact, and complying with same.
On top of all of this, I had to prove, constantly, to my men that I would never ask anything of them that I wouldn’t do myself. When I didn’t know what the Hell was going on, I still had to act decisively, or morale could fail.
Loved/hated every second of it.
Oh, and as far as the better pay goes, it goes away, quickly. Officers are expected to maintain certain standards, more so as rank increases. At the higher ranks one also becomes a politician, which is why I never aspired to the higher ranks. A competent general is also a competent politician, especially as such are constantly dealing with senate sub-committees and the military corporate support system, etc…
Then there were additional costs, like the Widows and Orphans fund. I was not married, or had any kids, but I always contributed a couple of hundred from each paycheck. Then there were the de-stresser parties that I would throw for my men once or twice a year. When my men did well, I liked to show them my appreciation. It kept morale high, kept them focused, and less of them would die. Worth every penny.
Love the breakdown. Knew there was a lot to being an officer, never fully sure of everything.
Movies never show all of the nuances that goes on when the commander isn’t on screen directly addressing the field unit or team or whatever giving the mission brief.
There is so much more that I did not include, like dealing with personal issues brought to you by your men. Having to work extra hard, on my own, to avoid swivel-butt, so that I can make sure that I not only keep up with my men physically, but excel, so I can lead them. Personal time spent studying, researching, training to improve myself as an officer.
Those officers that make it in the news because they do stupid stuff on their personal or professional time? They are not good officers. A good officer does not have time to waste doing things that reflect poorly on his unit.
Remembering that the majority of enlisted are still teenagers, and junior NCO’s aren’t much older.
Aw hell, just read Starship Troopers.
Ah, this is good specifics. What rank(s) were you for all this?
I went to Basic in 1980 as a Private E-1, the lowest enlisted rank. Upon passing Basic I received a promotion to Private E-2. When I went to AIT (Advanced Individual Training) a year later (I had to finish my last year of high school, dontchaknow), I was promoted to Private E-3, also known as Private First Class. The next year I went to college, enrolled in ROTC, and became an anomalous rank known as “Cadet”, wherein one has much responsibility and no authority. Mostly you get yelled at a lot, or lots of looks of pity/disgust. To add to my further confusion, I was pulled into Special Operations as I possessed “…significant ability at causing the enemies of the United States of America to suffer grave discomfort and unrest… …best aimed outwards than allowed to freely choose his own targets…”, so my PMS (Professor of Military Science) was often annoyed with me as I would disappear from school for several weeks at a time, but he did not have the clearance to inquire as to my absences. On June 6th, 1983, I received the honor and privilege of becoming an O-1 Second Lieutenant (also known as a butter bar due to the golden bar used as rank insignia) in the USArmy National Guard/ USArmy Active (depending on my current orders). I ran my first Rifle Platoon (Go Infantry!) and loved it, when I was not away on missions or training. A year later I was promoted to an O-2 First Lieutenant due to the simple expedient of not having effed up too badly. Three years later I was offered a promotion to O-3 Captain, which I refused, but that is a completely different story.
Now, pay rate-wise, things can get hinky, because many factors come into play. When I was promoted to 2nd LT., I was making double that of my peers due to missions completed. In 1990, when I was pulled back on active duty as a 1st LT. over 10 years, I made more that the O-4 Major who ran my IOBC (Infantry Officer Basic Course – wherein they taught me how to run my Rifle Platoon that I had had five years previous) company, much to his consternation.
Now, let us talk of command structure in combat situations. Max was correct in letting Sydney take the reins briefly, back in the restaurant battle, due to the nature of Sydney’s special skills (serious nerd/geek powers of observation and deduction). These are situations that the military acknowledges as “command shift due to special circumstances” wherein a lower rank, or even a civilian can take command simply because that person has skills and knowledge necessary to complete the mission, that no one else possesses.
Also, because someone outranks you, does not necessarily mean that they have the authority to give you orders, especially in line units (like the Infantry). Chain of Command is of extreme importance in combat situations to prevent confusion at inopportune moments. I have gone toe-to-toe (respectfully) with an O-6 full-bird Colonel for interfering with my defensive line without going through the proper Chain of Command. I would have respected his “advice” if he hadn’t left a huge hole in my defenses by moving one of my M-60 positions. If we had come under attack, and lost the position, I, the O-1 2nd Lt., would have been held responsible and probably court martialed for disobeying my Company Commander’s (O-2 Captain) direct orders for setting up my defensive line. Of course, the Colonel’s career would probably be screwed if the truth got out as to what he did.
You see? Lots to worry about.
Sorry about the rambling nature of this last. Burning the candle at both ends at my new job.
Crier, forgot one thing: Butterbars have to salute everyone/thing!
On a serious note, If you where watching out for your troops as well as it sounds, thank you. An Officer that the troops can count on is a beautiful thing, and one that listens to those common troops (and sometimes acts on those suggestions) can be a rare thing.
Truly the best rank to be is, The Full Bird Private! Spec 4 baby! All the privilege of rank/ time is service, none of the responsibility! Behold the power of the SHAM SHIELD!
Is a “mud duck” an eagle which has fallen in the mud?
*eyes up the suspected colonel suspiciously*
Thanks! Good info all!
I know that’s how things work on paper. And I also know that it can and does work that way in practice. I just don’t recall there ever being any stories about officers (or even enlisted) being cashiered or court martialed for the literally millions of dollars in US bills which were shipped to Iraq and mysteriously went missing.
From what I understood, if you wanted to stay in your field, best bet would be Warrent Officer.
There could be dozens of reasons why it’d be Alpha and Delta teams instead of alpha and beta(bravo) so I wouldn’t worry too much about it. For example in SG1 the various SG teams had different specialties. Some SG teams were science teams, other engineer teams and other fire support teams so it would depend on what the role of each team is and why they would or wouldn’t be going along or heck, if they’re even available. Bravo and Charlie team might be on site where Cooter was turned into beef strogonof.
pretty much what i said up above.
IMO they are probably specialized by both role and power..
Alpha Team is probably the heavy hitters.. Maxima, Anvil, Dabbler, at least one of the Harem’s, Sydney.
Delta team could be either lower powered individuals like Achilles, Math, and Mr. Amorphous, used to form a perimeter and get the area cleared to minimize collateral damage.. or might be the Intel team from ARCLight we saw here: https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/1303
either way, you have one team meant to confront Sciona once they’ve figured out where she’s going or she stops, and another that can make sure that the area is cleared or provide support.
Yeah, those speech bubbles in the last panel? Not too obvious in which order to read them.
Yeah, that threw me too.
More of an issue, IMO, is that it’s not clear who’s speaking. Positioning of the bubbles and character both say Anvil but the lack of tail and continuation of previous discussion both say Maxima.
Would only be Maxi if Maxi can throw her voice as she flew out in panel four
you realize they have comms gear? proximity isn’t required for conversation. It took me a little while to figure out the order of speaking.
Oh, whoops, I forgot to put the tail on Anvil’s bubbles. The way the bubbles cross over is a little unfortunate, but I couldn’t figure out how to get them to fit in a more sensible way without cutting the “bullet resistant” callback.
Was understandable to some, just most readers don’t bother reading the comments, that’s why there are a dozen posts pointing out ‘Bravo’ should be used rather than ‘Beta’ (unless you are a fish)
Well, you could argue that the other 2 teams between Alpha and Delta are just normally used temporarily for an emergency where you need additional taskforces (what alpha normally is). While Delta on the normal state, ist the less direct power but a more versatile team for not direct emergency and more a standby team with useful skillsets.
Well ok, this would make Sydney more a Delta team member since she often feels more useful to have then powerful in the most situations. But since she is the main person in addition to direct under Maxima it would explain why she is on the Alpha team.
2nd Lieutenant is probably the worst job in the Army. The ones we worked with had the sole purpose to take the blame for any failure. I was in air defense. The LT was there only to take the blame if we shot down a civilian plane instead of an enemy aircraft. In Infantry, they are the ones out in the field fighting (Lieutenant Dan? Remember?) They are expected to win or die.
To quote from Specialist Skippy’s List:
“The difference between a First Lieutenant and a Staff Sergeant is not, ‘I’ve been promoted three more times than you have’ ”.
.
Halo really means to step up her game if she wants to really prove that she’s worth her pay grade.
Im not sure how. She has already proven vital in a half dozen scenarios and they have still only scratched the surface of her potential.
Agreed. Vehemence would have killed Maxima and wiped out Arc-SWAT as an effective unit, were it not for her heroism. You can’t really ask more of a recruit, than saving your C.O., winning the battle and protecting the whole unit.
Folks sometimes wonder why Maxima cuts Sydney so much slack. Not being dead counts bigtime. And, as a commander, makes her continue to remember how important a part Halo plays on the team. Even if she is still learning.
So, like 3 orb at a time?
The bubble one, the flying one and the ‘ air ‘ one ?
She doesn’t need the air one unless she is traveling long distance. She can take breaks on building tops and reset.
Then there is the possibility of breathing equipment for her and her passangers as well. They have done the drill once already so they know what to expect and how long the air in her shield lasts with X number of people. They can prepair for it this time.
Typo in panel 3: “out her” should be “out there”. Also, Maxima seems to be implying that NORAD can track any object that moves faster than the speed of sound, but will immediately lose the object when it slows down below that. That’s… not how it works. At all. I mean, seriously.
A human sized object doesn’t actually have much of a radar signature, so it would drop in and out as it passed through areas with lower coverage. If it’s supersonic however, it leaves a much more noticeable acoustic signature.
I thought about that too. However Norads general tracking systems would depend on thermal and radar sensors. Neither is good for tracking a body temperature body. However the shockwave from going ultrasonic would also be detectable. I think that is how it works but I’m no expert so if somebody want to correct me, feel free.
Acoustic tracking? Some of the alleged sightings of ‘Aurora’ were based on detections by USGS earthquake sensors. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Aurora_(aircraft)&action=edit§ion=4
But in general, radar is dependent on bouncing a radio-frequency pulse off the target and picking it up again. Usually that requires direct line of sight to the target, but speed is irrelevant. Because Sciona isn’t fitted with a transponder, most radars (‘secondary radar’) won’t be capable of detecting her as they rely on the target’s transponder responding when pinged. It’s the primary radars of the Joint Surveillance System, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Surveillance_System plus any airborne E-3 (AWACS) that could spot her.
Size is an issue, but not a decisive one. Even the earliest radars could spot quite small bodies. I was just reading about battleship fire control radar operators being distracted by outgoing 14″ shells. The signatures for modern stealth aircraft are down into the ball-bearing range, and they can still be tracked (stealth is a function of range as well as signature).
There is another acoustic system present in America. Ears. Sonic booms can be heard. Norad could just be using software to monitor reports from personnel, public complaint calls, social media posts and using other ways of collating such information. All credible as we can see from the map that she is flying over heavily populated areas.
I had an Uncle who went Navy in the late 70s to early 80s time frame. He was a fire control technician, which deals with the radars for the weapons turrets. He said that they could track seagulls. A seagull has a cross-sectional density just above that of the atmosphere… And that was ~40 years ago.
Thanks to stealth aircraft being a thing nowdays the DoD, DARPA, has been working for years on spotting missiles by using doplar radar to detect turbulence.
Never mind that anything supersonic heats up air, along with the exhaust, which is why Russia and before that the Soviet Union invested heavily in IR Sensors.
What I meant was that if Scionas body is like a human body (a big if I know) then radio frequency waves will pass straight through and thus radar tracking her will be quite difficult. Although… I just realized her armor might have a signature even if she doesn’t.
So, regarding the 3d modeling- if you want to model rifling in a barrel, you can’t just grab it halfway and rotate it. You’ll have to grab every vertex except the last row and rotate a low degree. Then every vertext except the last row and the row you just rotated, and then rotate that such that the twist is correct. You’ll have to do that all the way to the end. Then, you’ll have to go through and select every set of vertices where a band of rifling crosses a row of polygons, look at it such that it is centered and you are looking at it from a true perpendicular angle, and then rotate that set of vertices to be in line with the angle of the rotation.
Alternately, you could NOT model the rifling, make a texture file with alternating white and black vertical bands, and map it to the polys inside the barrel as a normal map, as well as a burn mask. Then twist those rows of vertices in the barrel as described earlier to make the texture twist as well, as if it were rifling corkscrewing around the barrel. The burn mask will make the rifling look dark, and the normal map will make it look three dimensional from most angles.
Alternatively, depending on the modeling program used, you could use the “Thread” command (or something like it) to create a spiraling profile. Just make sure the profile touches or intersects the barrel.
Sometimes it’s easier just to build it with simple primitives; make a 2d cross section of the barrel. Extrude it into a 3d shape. Cut it into sections and rotate each section by the required amount. When you have one rotation that can be cloned as many times as you want to make the full barrel length. I just did it like that and it didn’t take more than 10 minutes including a few minutes spent looking for pictures of rifling.
Couldn’t you just use a texture with diagonal black and white bands? Then when you applied that texture it should spiral around the inside. Only issue will be getting the edges of the texture to match up.
It depends on how close you want the eyepoint to be able to get. A texture would work fine except if the artist wanted to a full on ‘down the barrel’ picture.
I’ve used a few 3D modelers in my day and here are a few tips that might help:
1) Approach any modeling task from simple toward complex objects, as a complex is just a series of simple ones.
2) Even if a shape appears complex (and is a real world thing) then there is a way to build it, so approach it as a person would build it in real life.
3) Typically, the more complex the 3D tool or procedure (like LOFT or BLENDS or such) the more prerequisites and limitations it has. Try simple tools first, then the more advanced.
I’ve used AutoCAD, 3D Max, Blender, FormZ, SketchUp, and a few others and they all have good and bay aspects.
My suggestion to the riffled gun barrel is to just model the hollow cylinder. Then model the groves of the riffling and apply the twist to the groves, then “subtract” the groves from the interior of the barrel.
Don’t try and model a helical twist to a profile and make the computer work out the removal of the material for the interior of the cylinder. See it as a series of steps not a single profile manipulated.
Sometimes the old school solutions work better, like subtract, combine, intersect… and not extrude, loft, or blend.
As I recall, my first version was just a circle with a gear shape stamped in it, which I extruded the full length of the barrel. That obviously had problems. In my next attempt I shortened the segments, I think to maybe 6 parts, and made each one rotate maybe 10 or 15% (which may be too much over the length of the barrel, but I was trying to emphasize the rifling for visual effect.) That worked pretty well, but I assumed there was some trick I was missing that could apply the effect over the whole thing.
Your theory is right, you just need more subdivisions and probably less rotation per segment.
That said, I agree with another persons comment. The chances some is going to see the rotation is remote. Unless you are planning a James Bond view and at that point it may be easier for you to just draw it.
Orrrr, Maxima’s maximum gun is a smoothbore firing fin stablised DS rounds.
Tank penetrating / armour piercing rounds (even in handgun size) are probably not that politically correct, in the hands of a police officer. Killing innocent civilians on the other side of the wall, beyond her target criminal, would not look good.
Take your extruded gear and create a bounding box around it, then rotate that. should give you a nice even twist on the barrel.
If you (DaveB) want a 3D model of it, I’m sure there are people out there who can make a good model of it for you if you can provide good 2D images of it for them to work off.
I am one of those people.
Me too, but I didn’t want to inhibit anyone else from volunteering :)
I focus more on character art, but that is something that is in my skillset to do. If you need a hand with blender poke me on discord @Big Meanie#6215
Dave have a good 2D reference here on his DA page: https://davebarrack.deviantart.com/art/Rex-Machina-254074351
You both can and should make 3D models if you think it would be fun.
I have trouble with using drawings with no sense of depth for an object I am unfamiliar with. As I have no gun and haven’t seen this too often, this might be a bit much for my skills. (Contrast with the Pokemon I made for my avatar.)
I want to give it a shot myself, because it would certainly behoove me to learn, but I wouldn’t say no to a good .obj or .blend file.
Couldn’t she hold three more orbs, one, under each arm pit, and one between her legs? Granted they probably need to be against bare skin, but something could be figured out.
She tried but they are strictly hands only.
Which makes you wonder how many hands the aliens who designed them have. Even Dabbler only has four. Sure you could have different people at different stations but that gets boring and mundane too quickly. Also, just realized Sydney is Marvels The Mandarin (the old Iron Man enemy). Using alien spaceship parts to get superpowers.
Or, they were always designed as to not be used all at once
>Even Dabbler
I don’t think Dabbler is a benchmark for how weird intelligent alien’s bodies can be.
Although it is fair for audiences used to latex foreheads being the mainstay of distinguishing humans from aliens.
I strongly suspect that the cross linking we see further up the skill tree is to allow accessing things like air, shielding, etc even if the primary focus is on flight and communications.
Theory – the training tree is just that: at low levels the trainee learns to use the basic functions at relatively low levels, so they have them under control before moving up to handle them in operational mode when they’re cross linked. Sophisticated training mode rather than video game.
Yea training and certification is a strong contender for what the ‘skill tree’ is all about. As opposed to some game progression system.
Well, they could always see if Dabbler could somehow genetically modify her and clone more arms..
Dabbler has made it very clear that she does not share her technology with humans. And Sydney has already tried getting a cybernetic arm from her, with no joy.
To be fair she tried to get her to chop off her arm which would have limmited her to one ball at a time.
Heh. True. Although I was using it as a point to illustrate that Sydney has already asked to use augmentation technology and been turned down.
Plus do we know that a cybernetic hand would not be able to hold an orb? In the past folks have suggested that Dabbler could use four orbs. Likewise I would not be surprised if someone had suggested Halo could have a couple of extra arms added.
If cybernetic limbs did work, she may as well get an extra six. That way she could use all her orbs and still have a hand spare to open doors or fire her gun.
Not likely to happen mind. Unless it is only temporary and non-replicable.
“Sorry Sydney the circuitry was putting too much stress on your nervous system, if you try to use it again it will kill you!”
Otherwise Halo would become overwhelmingly powerful, cease to have any challenges short of Alien invasions or pissed off gods, and the story would become boring.
Ironically that question has just been asked, on the comic page in question.
Awwwwwwww, I wanted to be on Team Kumquat.
They’re… a bit of a fruit salad.
Better that than a bunch of vegetables.
She said, it has to be held in her hands.
Now, if Dabbler could figure out how to give Sydney two more arms…
That sounds like a good emergency plot point.
I’m willing to speculate that maybe Varia (the Boston/Aztec lady) could safely handle/use Sydney’s orbs. The one time she tested her talent with Sydney, Sydney was not holding any of the orbs.
I also think that maybe Krona (the reality manipulator) could also safely handle/use Sydney’s orbs. Before she tries, that, though, I’d like to see what she “pulls up” when she uses her talent to analyze one of the orbs (the way she could analyze/disarm those grenades that were part of the attack on the Twilight Council). For all we know, she might be able to actually displace Sydney as the official user of any or all the orbs! Even though she actually only needs temporary control of a couple of them.
The orbs like Varia, so that is more than likely.
Your comments about Krona could be right.
Regarding Varia, we saw in #324 (archive #1751) that when she held Sydney’s hand, the orbs started orbiting the two of them, implying that either could use the orbs. However, if the two girls are holding hands, that still leaves only 2 hands free to hold/use orbs! Not a net gain! What might matter more is, after they stop holding hands, does Varia retain the power to use an orb (like she sometimes retains power from others)? This was not displayed in the comic; on the next page (#325) the focus changes because of Maxima’s arrival, and in that situation the orbs are all orbiting Sydney only. If Varia had touched someone else, then that could explain it….
Another possibility is, what sort of physical contact does Varia actually require? For example, suppose the back of her right hand was placed against the back of Sydney’s left hand, and their wrists were taped together (mildly)? All four hands would be available, with the only drawback being that those two hands needed to be moved in sync. But would Varia actually have access to using the orbs in that situation? To Be Determined!
I suspect that Varia currently needs to hold hands/keep touching with her hand. Perhaps only because she is new enough to the game and too busy testing all the gestalts she can form with Archon personnel to explore other aspects. Certainly every instance has shown her keeping hand contact.
But for her to be useful in the field she needs to find some way to break that dependency. It is too inconvenient on the battlefield. Especially for getalts with non-frontline personnel. If she gains an awesome battle set, putting her on a par with Vale, but has to risk the janitor’s life to use it, then it becomes worthless.
However if she can keep the power going by (for instance) concentrating on that, even when she has let go, then her versatility leaps up. And if Varia learns how to do that with her gestalts in general, then she should be able to do something similar with the orbs. As in break the dependency on keeping in contact with Sydney, so that she can hold two orbs instead.
Then we get to the interesting questions like will those orbs then form a tether with Varia? If that is done, whilst still keeping the old one with Sydney, then Varia and Halo will become inseparable, whilst the gestalt is maintained. But hopefully still having the ability to get some distance from each other (the few paces that Sydney could get away from Tubey).
Alternatively the new tether may replace the old. In which case Varia could take a couple of orbs off to one objective, whilst Sydney split up, with the remaining five, to deal with another. Giving them an interesting tactical choice about who gets what. Because, presumably, if the tether has changed masters and they have moved beyond the orbs normal limits, then Sydney would not be able to summon Varia’s orbs to her (and vice versa).
Varia could take the Shield and the PPO, to give her good all round combat capability. But leaving Sydney with just the tentacle to keep opponents at bay, and the flyball and lightbee to evade enemies.
I submitted that other comment too soon. Another thing I was wondering about, regarding Krona, is, if she pulls her-style analysis of an orb, just how much information about it will she be able to access? Could she access that orb’s skill tree, for example? Could she discover the specific capabilities of an orb? Remember that when she pulled up the grenade-analysis (#481 / archive#2343), there was an “ARMED” label –it would be really handy if orb-capabilities were labeled, too, on Krona’s analysis-view!
Back to Varia –I just remembered that in #406 (archive #2029), it shows Jigawatt holding Varia, but not Varia’s hands, and Varia is exercising power. So it is at least reasonable to think that if Varia uses one hand to hold Sydney’s wrist, or perhaps a bare shoulder (assuming her talent doesn’t work through clothing), her other hand can operate an orb (3 orbs in use total).
One important point with Krona is that, whilst she could recognise the significance of the language the orbs use, it was operating at a more fundamental level than her own power. The significance being that she would not be able to understand that language, even though she could see its beauty.
So, at the very least, Krona will need to learn that language. At the worst (from her point of view) or best (from preventing her stealing Halo’s orbs) is that it may simply be beyond her ability to ever achieve that.
If she can learn it though, there is also the possibility of her teaching Halo. There do seem to be big similarities in their powers, so that may be the case. And it could be that such is necessary for Halo to access her greatest powers.
Plus there is that suspicious ‘next level’ skill in the middle of Halo’s skill tree. Perhaps that is the ‘enlightenment’ skill that Sydney can pick one day, or unlock via training with Krona?
What if Krona simply enabled ALL the nodes in every orb’s skill tree? Technically, it shouldn’t be different from changing a grenade from “armed” to “disarmed”. So, why wait for the orbs to decide when another node could be enabled?
Of course, Sydney being Sydney, the results could be possibly humorous, and almost certainly as disastrous as when she discovered teleportation. She has enough trouble already just mastering the currently-available set of orb-capabilities. If the maximum-power weapon-zap was a planetary annihilator….
All presupposing that picking a ‘skill’ grants a power. Whereas it may simply be an indicator of the things the user has unlocked. So making the pretty lights glow would just make it harder for Sydney to tell how many of her power set she has actually unlocked.
And we need to see 3 orbs in use (flight, shield, air-supply) for efficient use of Sydney’s bubble bus.
Yup.
When I wrote that about the bubble bus, I neglected to remember that Sydney, at least, has a human-made rebreather. If everyone else on the bus had one, also, then only 2 orbs are needed. Also, I wondered a bit about the bubble-bus scene going underwater toward the dark reliquary (#552 / archive #2600), but then I figured that if Sydney was holding the shield and air-supply orbs, Maxima could have been doing the flying. Looking at the page again, though, I see it seems to show that the blue flyball is not part of the halo around Sydney’s head (so we can assume she’s holding it). Maybe I should study the comments on that page, to find out if some explanation had been offered (maybe they are all using rebreathers).
The author’s blog, on that page, explains it:
Don’t forget that the orbs are translucent, so backgrounds can influence what colour they appear to be.
Yes, I did go to that page and saw that. She simply swapped fly-ball and air-ball every few minutes, with Maxima helping as I guessed. But it would have been even simpler if Maxima had done *all* the flying.
Simpler, but mentally tougher on Sydney, having to concentrate on flying all the time. It is not something she is used to, and the darkness of deep ocean would be highly disconcerting and disorienting.
As it was previously, even flying over regular countryside, and having had a nap before starting, Sydney found herself fatigued enough, upon reaching New York, that she was unsurprised at hallucinating a Muppet Maxima!
Doh, never mind, tis I who am mentally fatigued, and got it the wrong way round. Yea, Maxima could have eased the burden on Sydney by doing that.
Although, as with most things, it is a matter of moderation. Sydney does need to practice such skills. But must just monitor her fatigue level and take a break before it becomes problematic. Whilst Maxima needs to keep an eye on her, as fatigue and ADHD can combine badly to impact her judgement.
I’m still calling it that one day she gets gloves forced on to her, ones which lock. It has to happen. It’s obligatory seeing she called it out in earlier comics.
Just so, kl,kmnybtrfcx. And commiserations on your cat walking on your keyboard, when picking your name. I know that feeling well.
I thought Anvil was a 2nd Lieutenant, not a Sergeant?
Also good to see her in army mode. She’s a great character, but we haven’t seen enough of her army duty so far, I think.
1st Lieutenant per Grrl Power Wiki (which duplicates the old cast page information). Dave apparently forgot.
But it’s just as likely for a Lieutenant to take charge and keep things moving to meet an assigned schedule as a sergeant (or more likely an Army Sergeant First Class/ USAF Master Sergeant), so it’s all fine.
1st Lieutenant, thanks. Couldn’t remember who was 1st and who was 2nd.
As far as I can tell the Wiki faithfully copied the cast list. But a word of warning. The cast list was out of date. Various of the ranks got changed. Maxima for instance got corrected from a full colonel to a Lt. Colonel, on the advice of various military personnel who indicated that several of the ranks appeared to be inappropriate for the stated experience/age/role of the individuals.
Elsewhere in these comments I actually refer to Anvil as being a sergeant. Mainly because she is behaving like one above, rather than because I remembered it as being one of the corrections. It may have been mind, as I cannot remember the list of changes.
The safest way to check is to find a page where Anvil’s rank insignia is visible (ignoring the early part of the comic). Dave has been fairly consistent in showing such correctly since the retcon. Where visible (unlike today’s comic).
Regardless of Anvil’s rank, there appears to be a visual error in the last panel, because while it looks like Anvil is addressing Sydney (character’s positions), no speech balloon is pointing at Anvil as the source of speech –and thus when I read it I assumed Maxima was still talking(off-panel), but wondered why Anvil appeared to be haranguing Sydney.
The bubble directly connected to Anvil didn’t register? And Maxi had already flown off by that stage, Maxi is not hanging around for the rest of the team
I can clearly see a speech bubble next to Anvil, but there is no pointy thing, part of the speech bubble, that indicates Anvil is the one speaking the words in the speech bubble. There IS a pointy thing that is part of a speech bubble near Sydney.
Yea you are not the only one who had problems from that omission. If it requires figuring out then something has gone wrong.
Phonetic, I prefer the Syrian Alphabet myself. Xaa’ H’aa’ Jiim Th!aa’
Phoenetic, not Phoenician!
Ever notice how phonetic isn’t spelled with an “F”?
you can spell ‘fish’ as GHOTI, so, hey.
That’s because it’s how the ancient Greeks spelt phonos – meaning voice.
Yea, which itself derived from the proto-European ‘mobile phone’.
Um… I think we are dealling more with hystorical phonies.
Ahh, you subscribe to the Neanderthal phone network theory?
Actually they did have attributes which may well have made them far more accomplished at music than Homo Sapiens. So it is not inconceivable that they might actually have used signal horns. We have seen that they were tool users, artists and musicians. And are close enough to humans to have interbred.
All of which makes me comfortable assuming that they would have similar inventiveness. Perhaps with some limitations, but I suspect it would be better phrased as ‘having different strengths and weaknesses’.
Note: small, supersonic objects over US airspace will get a lot of attention from the military. If said objects happen to be near, say, New York or Washington DC (or even Egg Harbor, NJ)… they tend to draw fighters with orders to shoot the bogey down.
Makes loads of sense, as i can think of no situation where an unauthorized object going at such speeds means a good thing….
And about rising in rank, it’s as others have commented i guess – theoretically less people to boss you around, but in reality more hassle with paperwork, greater concentrations of bossy people as you go up and requirement bossiness that goes with rank. Believe me, those things can be even more of a bother than actually being bossed around.
Even subsonic targets can be difficult. See this for a recent incident: https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/16079/airliners-and-f-15s-involved-in-bizzare-encounter-with-mystery-aircraft-over-oregon
Aw yeah, time to lock ‘n’ load.
It wouldn’t be Alpha and Beta. If you’re using the US military code, it would be Alpha and Bravo. However Bravo could a team back on base or in the field so they went to Delta.
Yeah, 5 people have pointed that out already, so I feel dumb. :/
In your defense, Max could have gone with Pixi and Unicorn squards since I got the impression she was designating them on the fly and not predefined squad names. Yes typically when using the phonetic alphabet as a base for designation thier done in order. But to my knowledge ther eis no hard rule on that. But basically when choosing temporary squard names for a mission, it is up to the one designating the squards to pick the names using whatever they feel like realy. There might be some guidelines used to picking names but it still basically up to the team leader.
Ac.tu.all.lee… sometimes the military does mix it up a bit. Confusion to the enemy and all that.
Back when we were newlyweds, my man was in the Navy. The equivalent of “private” is “seaman”, the rate (not “rank”) of Petty Officer Second Class is approximately “sergeant”, and “Chief Petty Officer” is about Sergeant First Class. “Master Chief” is about Command Sergeant Major — still a sergeant.
Midshipmen are the lowest of the officers proper, and are nobody. They technically outrank Master Chiefs and can give them orders, but nobody respects midshipmen. Then there’s Ensign, which is the same pay grade as the Army’s 2nd Lieutenant. (A Navy 2nd Lieutenant is a higher pay grade than the Army’s 2nd Loo — go figure.)
I sayl this to explain the story: while at a training school, my man saw an ensign, one of the instructors, adjusting the blinds in a classroom, when a Master Chief glanced in and barked an order — to the ensign! — to get those blinds straight ASAP! The kid — the ensign — jumped and obeyed, and then later grumbled that he was going to put in the paperwork for “meritorious advancement” to Master Chief . . .
Well, should be noted that Staff Sargeants (or their analogs) tend to be put with low-ranking officers because they have far more battlefield experience.
really good example of this is in the movie Battle: Los Angeles, when the fresh Lt. of the unit starts freaking out, and the Staff Sgt. verbally slaps some sense into him, or he’ll get the rest of the unit killed.
Norad HAS to be good at tracking things the size of a human body, when they go super-sonic, because incoming nuclear missiles, as shown by Russia’s latest prototype, can be human sized and go at super-sonic speeds.
(Russia has recently demonstrated super-sonic sub-launched missiles that fly very close to the surface and “pop up” when they close to their intended targets, making missile defense a bitch to implement.)
It’s not just the size and speed, but the composition and shape.
The human body is bad at reflecting radar compared to say a traditional missile that is a large metal tube.
By changing the body shape you can decrease the radar signature significantly. Some modern jet fighters has a heads on radar signature the size of a bird.
To improve on this the body can be coated with a radar absorbent paint and the radar signature is almost gone.
Seen the Chinese J-20 yet? US isn’t the only one with fifth-gen fighters now, and it actually outperforms the F-22 for flight stamina (plus it just looks badass).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chengdu_J-20
My thought is basically you have three combat teams ‘Alpha’, ‘Beta’, ‘Charlie’ and then the next three are their dedicated support squads. Each of the three teams has a slightly different specialization, and so the supports are different. Alpha seems to be the extreme heavy hitters, so they’re less well equipped for say hordes of mind controlled but largely innocent minions. Just a thought.
https://goo.gl/images/Q4BCMC
It’s Bravo, not Beta for B. The above link is for the current armed forces phonetic alphabet.
On a side note not only is finding a way to say Bravo Foxtrot fun in normal conversation. But Sciona is one so hard (Buddy Fker … Aka someone who kills / screws over their teammates.)
Best description I’ve seen of the responsibility difference between a field grade officer(0-1 to O-3) and NCOs is, the officers need to be thinking about “what next” while the NCOs need to be thinking about the “right now”.
whoops, that’s company grade, not field grade. Hey, I was a Squid, not a ground pounder! :-p
Not a worry, shipmate, our ranks dont make anymore sense to them then theirs do to us. I work with an Army E-4 and even he has trouble explaining the difference between specialists and corporals/sergeants to me. XD
My brother was a Specialist. The difference is simple:
A Corporal or Sergeant is an NCO (Non-Commissioned Officer). They have to have training, and have certain duties and responsibilities. They have to take the NCO’s Oath or something, I take it. They are in the chain of command, and when one gives a Private an order, that Private is expected to obey it.
Specialists, while around the same pay grade, are not in the official chain of command. They are not leaders, they use specialized equipment which requires high levels of training from ATC. My brother, for instance, was Signal Corps, albeit with his wings (in fact, he bought his medical discharge with the First Air Cav). He could run the commo shack no problem. He could diagnose malfunctions with the equipment and in most cases could provide a field expediency repair to get the commo gear up ASAP as well as request parts for a more permanent fix. He could NOT order others to do things unless an NCO explicitly assigned them to him.
Unfortunately for him, he was also stationed out at FOB Warhorse back in ’03, and one of his tasks was to go out and fix broken relay towers. Typically, those were sabotaged deliberately and had ambushes waiting for the repair crews, so he ended up with more combat time than you’d think from his MOS.
There is an exception to the ‘they cannot give orders’. Which is when their speciality requires it. If a bomb disposal technician tells you to clear a room, it does not matter if you are a four star general, you bug out!
Is that giving an order, or just giving REALLY good advice?
Well presumably the general could pull rank. There could be some overriding strategic need. But barring such, I’m pretty sure it is an order.
The emergency services need the authority to forcibly remove anyone who is not co-operating, in a life-or-death situation. I daresay the rules work the same for the military. However am happy to be corrected by those in the know. We have plenty enough folks who are in the military, or have served, in this community.
Maxim 3: An ordnance technician at a dead run outranks everybody.
ohshit!ohshit!ohshit!ohshit!ohshit!ohshit!ohshit!ohshit!ohshit!ohshit!ohshit!ohshit!ohshit!ohshit!
Just add doppler effect.
Hey Dave, I’ve got some engineering based 3d modeling software, if you can give me a standard four view (1 for each side, 1 isometric) with general sizes, I can see about sending you an stp.
I loved that bit with Anvil and Halo. She’s not pulling rank exactly, she’s using the parameters of her job to keep Sydney’s natural tendencies from interfering with the mission.
Honestly, for the most part you’ve been handling rank okay, in that in the vast majority of everyday work and life, it just doesn’t really come up all that much. Theoretically, when they’re on-base but outdoors, the non-commissioned troops should be saluting the commissioned ones when they encounter each other, but you’ve basically only shown them in big group activities where the salute either doesn’t apply or would reasonably have already been taken care of.
Rank is maybe best thought of as a sort of fallback social order, break glass in case of shit getting rill. In everyday military doin’ stuff, it’s a lot more organic. Like, technically, an O-1 butterbar in charge of a section outranks the E-8 who’s the First Sergeant of the entire squadron. But you’ll never see the O-1 giving the E-8 orders (on his own authority, though he might relay orders from a superior), because if he did that, the O-6 who is in direct command of the E-8 would shit down the O-1’s neck. And in any case, it doesn’t really come up, because the O-1 has his hands full dealing with his own responsibilities.
If shit does get rill, you can see the rank structure a bit more clearly. In the middle of a battle, if nobody else is around to command, the O-1 will give the E-8 orders. Though in that case, if he’s worthy of his commission at all, O-1 will mostly be giving the orders that the E-8 recommends.
But in less stressful times, an O-1 is really only nominally in command of his own section sergeant (E-7 or E-6, most likely). Yeah, he gives them orders, but it’s mostly passing on the wishes of higher command, perhaps with his own embellishments appropriate to the specific situation. And again, if he’s worthy of his commission, he spends a heck of a lot of time consulting with his sergeants, so the resulting orders would be comprised largely of their ideas anyway.
If Anvil was in the Marines(like Gung Ho and Leatherneck of G.I.Joe fame),she probably would not have rose beyond the rank of Gunnery Sergeant?!?
Anvil should say on occasions:”We have a saying in the Marines,the most dangerous thing in the world is a green officer in the dark with a book of matches!”
there are other words for thous people. like “live fire accident”, or “sniper victim”.
Having seen it happen for real, that last panel is no less hilarious every time i see it.
Something that has not been said yet: calling the teams Alpha and Delta on the field might be a good way to make people think teams Bravo and Charlie are around.
You asked “why does anyone not want to be an officer?” As a professional career Noncommissioned Officer my answer is “Common sense” It is seriously a pain in the ass to be an officer. Maybe Maverick and Goose get a little pampering being airplane drivers, but imagine this:
Here you are, a 90 day wonder just out of OTS (Officer Training School) with your bachelors degree in Dental History or some damn thing like that and you are suddenly put in charge of a maintenance unit on B2 bombers. You step out for the first time to meet your troops and you suddenly realize that the very youngest member of your unit is maybe 2 years younger than you, the rest are much older and have been doing their jobs, on average, for a decade. Your job now is to make sure that they do their job better than the way they were doing their jobs before you arrived, and you haven’t found out what they do yet.
You see a very comely female NCO eyeing you up and down like you were a well grilled steak and she’s ready for dinner. You know that if you touch her (and vice versa) it will be a court martial for you – and regardless of verdict your career is over. (Any verdict that even smells like guilty, even with no punishment, is a felony conviction) The rest of your unit is looking at you like they’d rather be anywhere else than right there to listen to you. Like in hell for instance.
You turn to your top NCO for guidance and notice that he’s a Chief Master Sergeant (Highest NCO rank in the USAF). His uniform has a Master pocket rocket (he knows missiles inside and out) a Master aircraft maintenance badge (he knows aircraft inside and out) and to top it off he’s wearing two sets of wings, jump wings and air crew wings. He’s been there, he’s done that, he wrote the book. Oh and by the way, he’s finishing up his doctoral thesis for aerospace engineering. He looks at you with a mixture of hatred and pity. He quietly growls “Loo-tenit, we need to talk” and turns to go to his office. Your career now depends on whether you follow or not
I have a policy of frankly telling my NCO’s to be truthful when they think I’ve made a bad call because I know my job, but I don’t know military as well as them. Getting there slowly.
and that’s why you’re a good officer.
I’m going to assume that you meant that figuratively, as it relates to career advancement. Yes, not only is any bad mark just about the end of an officer’s career, but if their evaluations don’t make them look like they literally walk on water and stand right next to God Himself, it can also be the mark of death. Because every other officer is getting that kind of evaluation, so if yours isn’t similarly gushing praise and over the top hyperbole you will fall short in comparison. And with far more officers looking to be promoted than there are positions for them to be promoted into, you’ll be left behind in this round. And the policy is “up or out” so being passed over for promotion more than once when you are eligible is also a form of career death.
I’m a Captain and I still have more than 10,000 bosses.
Well the Royal Navy has more admirals than ships, so I can see how that works.
As far as the list from wikipedia goes, the RN has five of them, including Prince Charles and princess Anne.
The Navy rank of captain is equivalent to Colonel in other branches. He is most likely not in the Navy.
Wikipedia is a great resource. But you must always read, and take note of, the warnings:
The figure the press have managed to obtain is 33 admirals.
Which does extend further down the ranks too, as per this headline:
I figured that Delta was specifically the human squad.
alpha being the primo team of folks.
beta (..is there a C word? don’t think so) likely being used when you need to break up Alpha in to two smaller groups. or its the folks we see less/the newly recruited former sorta bad supers.
CHARLIE! not sure why that slipped my mind..
Beta and Charlie could be the broken up form of alpha when in multi pursuit or in a defense + offense or investigation defense+patrol sort of deal
also.. what kind of firearm is her gun? I can’t remember/not sure if it was mentioned.
large rounds.. guessign either slug/shotgun 10guage, or a hand cannon .50style?
This might help.
Woman portable artillery.
Max: “…but it’s not looking good for Cooter.”
Yeah, it’s so bad, he has to go underground…
{Ghostbusters}
She slimed me!
{/Ghostbusters}