When I was taking physics at the University 20 years ago, one of my professors said that the closest we have ever come to predicting an asteroid impact was "whoa that was close" as it zipped by.
This does cost money, but if you are serious about learning vim, this is an excellent game, and reasonably priced. One benefit I found is that the game creates a curriculum that exposes you to things you wouldn't otherwise try in your day to day, simply because you don't know them.
It helped improve my vim muscle memory substantially. Well done imo.
It's reasonably priced if you consider it both a game and a learning resource. If you already know vim fluently and just want it as a clever puzzle game, $25 is a reasonable purchase price but steep for a 6 month license. I have bounced off it several times over the years, after initially clicking the card icon intending to pay.
In the introduction to the study they include this statement, which I think agrees with your comment:
"This study systematically searched two databases and included six cohort studies included with limited types of digestive system cancers. Therefore, the evidence is not sufficiently strong to evaluate the relationship between digestive system cancers and plant-based diets. Comprehensive evaluations are scarce, especially for various digestive system cancers and multiple dietary patterns."
One of the features in go that makes it workable is you can assign it away via:
_ = somevar
That eliminates the unused chain problem. Not sure if zig included that part of the feature as well.
Generally I agree though. The main problem with forcing unused variables, imo, is that it forces you to think a certain way. When I'm exploring the solution space on something, those constraints feel inhibiting.
If one suggested this in any other language to suppress "unused variable" warnings it would be considered a lazy way to avoid fixing the issue.
Meanwhile the developer of Zig himself recommended doing this[0] which only shows what a bad idea it is to make this a compiler error imho. It encourages workarounds and enforces something we automated long ago in the form of dead code elimination.
A/B testing is a tool, and as Deming said, the aim defines the system. In your definition of Good, you are defining the aim.
I've been in a similar situation, where I created a relatively sophisticated A/* testing and control system. My idea of good use of the system ended up being very different from how the team employing the system thought about it.
I believe that is part of the point of the post, that unintended, and even unimagined side effects plague even the best of ideas.
I saw this when the Palisade Crest was the farthest point. Now there is a line almost straight down. It's been almost 15 minutes since an update, I hope that wasn't a tragic accident.
Can someone confirm if there is some type of speed descent down from the Palisade Crest?
Update: it rerendered, now it looks like a rendering artifact (I hope).
Probably just a GPS error. It's not uncommon to see large velocities and position shifts, particularly up in the mountains where multipath issues are common.
Yeah, unfortunately this comes with the territory, especially with this Garmin inReach data. We are running in "expedition mode" which gives us updates about every five minutes but still, you will occasionally get badly spurious points. This is in contrast to the GPS track data you see in the activity viewer. That is collected from their watches which tend to not be quite as bad (although they have their issues too).
They are now on a narrow, somewhat technical ridgeline, so a few things will accumulate into some annoying errors:
- the quality of the digital elevation model (DEM) isn't great in the Sierra Nevada (new data is slated to be captured this year, though!)
- the overheard imagery is okay (0.6m), but not amazing
- they will likely be hopping from side to side on the ridge, blocking sky view and making GPS quality decrease and frequency of updates decrease
All of this combines into what you see now: jumpiness, not registering with the ridgeline, and the summit points (where they are manually indicating they are on top) not lining up with the labeled points.
I hadn't even considered the DEM error. I can totally see it now that you've pointed it out though. The data is impressive either way.
I've had luck in the past with simply averaging the positions from multiple receivers, since horizontal multipath error on its own is typically under a couple tens of meters and it's so hyperlocalized that multiple receivers can experience totally different conditions.
On an unrelated note, do you know if they plan to continue with the half palisade traverse after they complete the rest of the crest?
Assuming everything goes to plan[1] for Nathan's list finish:
Today, Wed, July 6: A five-peak, north-to-south traverse of the southern Palisades: Palisade Crest, Norman Clyde, Middle Palisade, Disappointment, and Thumb.
Tomorrow, Thurs, July 7: A seven-peak south-to-north traverse of the northern Palisades: Temple Crag, Gayley, Sill, North Palisade, Thunderbolt, Winchell, and Agassiz.
The Garmin devices that they're using have built in GNSS receivers. There's no practical way to average the positions from multiple receivers for real-time tracking updates. Once the climb is finished, though, someone could download the recorded tracks from multiple devices and average them together.
Did you read the article? The entire discussion was on the tension between immutable data structures and cognitive complexity on one side, and machine performance and mutability on the other side.
First, if I sounded snarky I apologize. I assure you it was not my intention.
Secondly, I did read the article. If they are allocating a big chunk of memory and copying it over every single time they are making a change, they are not using immutable data structures. Ok, technically speaking, they might be. But they are using the worst implementation possible as a base to make conclusions from. That'd be like looking at the C language and concluding that strong types are not good, because of all the limitations C has.
So the anomaly that the carrier group tracked, then scrambled fighter jets for. The object that four different pilots saw visually, and was confirmed on multiple different sensors. That was camera glare?
The video is only one piece of the evidence. The pilots are trained, and other sensor systems confirmed what the camera was showing. This analysis is pretty flimsy.
The "saucer" shape and its rotation were IR glare, that's the point of the video. He's very clear that he's NOT debunking the existence of an object. The exhaust of a jet engine, or another high-heat signature, could cause such glare.
AFAICT no pilots saw this shape with their naked eye. They were miles away from the target and relying on what they saw via their sensors.
So actually Commander Fravor saw the object with his own eyes, he is one of the pilots who was sent in to engage the craft after it appeared on radar from the carrier group, here is a detailed video of him talking about the incident with Lex Fridman(AI reasearcher - MIT) on his podcast - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aB8zcAttP1E
I'm literally learning about this "gimball video" from this video, so I don't have all the background, but the video we're looking at wasn't taken by David Fravor; it was taken by Chad Underwood? In the video we're looking at, we don't so much have to guess how far away the object was; the camera video itself indicates it. It's too far away to discern shape and rotation accurately with a naked eye. The video goes into detail about this, and the details aren't complicated.
yeah I made a mistake and can't edit my comment. You are right the gimball video(OP's link) was from 2014 and was not related to David Fravor. Its confusing as there were three videos released at the same time in 2017 and they all came from the Pentagon(and were all black and white). David Fravor's incident(2004) was an eyewitness of him seeing the unidentified craft and there was a video taken by Chad Underwood in FLIR of the object. This same object was also seen on radar multiple times by the carrier group he was a part of and was the reason he was sent to investigate it. A link to all three videos and their details:
Spoken like a true none believer. I shun thee. Even the pentagon said they can't explain the UFOs, clearly they are preparing society for a big reveal. ;)
Edit: I'm betting half the downvotes are from people not picking up on my sarcasm, and the other half is from people picking up on my sarcasm.
Exactly. Zero of the GPs objections are inconsistent with this explanation. The carrier group tracked an unknown object and scrambled fighters to investigate. The pilots may have visually observed the object, but it would have been too far away to really ascertain any visual detail. Instead they relied on infrared sensors which… suffered from glare, and so rendered incorrect visuals for the object. Its strange shape and rotational behavior are now explained.
What remains is still an unidentified flying object, but one whose behavior is reasonably mundane and doesn't require advanced technology to explain.
We also need to be really honest about what we want this to be, and how that desire influences what we believe about it. I personally want this to be an alien spacecraft, because that's super interesting and exciting. I think the same is true of lots of other people. Unfortunately, there are much more mundane explanations which fit the evidence much better.
Given how horribly interactions between more technologically advanced and lesser technologically advanced societies seem to harm the lesser ones I'm not sure it would turn out well for humanity.
A civilization capable of interstellar space travel has probably overcome "The Great Filter". I like to think there's a decent chance they're enlightened; instead of conquerors. But even if they are here to conquer, we may be better off for it. I mean, it doesn't really look like humanity is going to make it past the filter on their own.
Any civilization sophisticated enough to make a boat that can cross the Atlantic Ocean has got to have its stuff together or else they would have just mutinied on the journey over, right?
Any civilization just sophisticated enough to make a boat that can cross the Atlantic Ocean... does not yet have the technology necessary to destroy themselves. Hence, the great filter.
To play on earthboundkid’s comment, some “enlightened” explorers traveled in advanced craft from the Old World to the New World. They brought genocide and near total devastation on every society they encountered. 1492. Columbus. But the literal and figurative descendants of those aliens put up a statue of him in New York and called him a hero.
I don't know why you would call the conquistadors "enlightened". I'm talking about a civilization that's developed planet ending technology...and yet managed to not end their planet.
Well, what he did was pretty damn amazing and consequential, even if not all the consequences were positive or amazing. It was inevitable that the New World would eventually be contacted by the Old World, whether by Asia or Europe or perhaps Africa, and inevitable that when that happened, the isolated peoples of the new world would be devastated by pathogens they’d never been exposed to. Anyway, I see no issue making a statue to the guy. I kinda like statues in principle. At the end of the day that’s all they are. The world was bigger than the Americas, and still is.
>It was inevitable that the New World would eventually be contacted by the Old World, whether by Asia or Europe or perhaps Africa, and inevitable that when that happened, the isolated peoples of the new world would be devastated by pathogens they’d never been exposed to.
It's not the pathogens people object to, so much as the slavery and genocide. Particularly, celebrating the originator and perpetrator of those crimes on the land where they were perpetrated.
By all means, write about Christopher Columbus in the history books (after Leif Erikson, who unlike Columbus actually set foot in America) but let's stop normalizing erecting statues to villains.
Have you read the plaque on the statue ? Do you know the text? You can put up a statue to say someone did something meaningful or historical, not that they were a good or noble person.
>You can put up a statue to say someone did something meaningful or historical, not that they were a good or noble person.
Yes, but we don't. We don't create statues of Christopher Columbus to place his actions in their proper historical context, or to memorialize his victims, any more than we do the Holocaust with statues of Hitler. We erect statues of Columbus because until relatively recently the entirely Eurocentric narrative about him considered him a heroic figure, and the subjugation of indigenous peoples a righteous and noble cause.
You abuse the pronoun “we” - I consider him a heroic figure, highly flawed, plus - for better and worse - symbolic of the opening of the new world, totally acknowledging the negative impacts. ..And have zero problem with statues of the guy.
I think that’s more the norm with people, if they even think about Columbus at all.
The problem with contemporary dialogue is the refusal to allow for grey zones, for nuanced and balanced viewpoints. Who is this “we” that you project upon? Do you consider that this presumption and projection may by symptomatic of a neuroticism unique to a overly loud illiberal subculture in the US? I do, it’s all that gives me faith in the survival of the greater whole.
>Do you consider that this presumption and projection may by symptomatic of a neuroticism unique to a overly loud illiberal subculture in the US?
No. I consider that not everyone in the US is completely culturally detached from the legacy of colonialism, and that some people have perfectly valid reasons to object to statues of people like Columbus.
You seem to understand the negative impacts of colonialism on an intellectual level, as a simple fact of history, but you also seem perplexed as to why anyone would care. Perhaps you should consider why someone would object to a statue of Columbus. Engage with the nuance you're referring to, by not dismissing those with views other than yours as being carriers of a social disease. Examine your own views and ask yourself why you consider it valid to keep a Columbus statue up to celebrate some of his accomplishments, but not to remove it as a statement of opposition to his other accomplishments.
Indeed. It could be something simple as a gas bubble.
It is now understood that all those weird stories about the Bermuda Triangle are caused by gas. But still people want to believe in other, more exciting stories because that is what we want it to be.
Edit: even the gas theory of the Bermuda Triangle is just that: a theory. The best explanation is probably nothing much is going on there.
And in the realm of mundane objects that may create very strange radar and visual patterns, we have our choice.
Space Data Corporation was operating as early as 1997. Their product is radio communications provided by balloon. IIUC, normally those balloons are tethered, but if a tether snapped and one got away and was caught in a high-altitude crosswind, you'd have a mostly-metal object catching sunlight and throwing it in weird ways as it tumbled.
I’d be floored if the radar data didn’t back this up. A carrier group would have scrambled fighters well before anything unidentified got within a hundred miles, much less ten.
Visual confirmation I don’t find remotely compelling. Besides the notorious general unreliability of human observers, humans simply cannot distinguish between small, nearby objects traveling slowly and large, far objects traveling quickly without additional contextual clues (e.g., a tiny plane-shaped object in the sky is probably the latter). Factor in that they were validating their observations against a sensor displaying a misleading image—in other words, providing incorrect contextual clues—and I think it’s not hard to call into question the accuracy of any visual claims.
It was picked up on radar over several different days and a training mission was scrubbed so that they could go investigate what they saw on radar.
You don't think humans could get better at judging distance of objects with practice? It seems like if any humans on earth could reliably do it, it would be seasoned fighter pilots that have thousands of hours of experience doing that exact thing.
I didn't think the radar track was at the same time was it? I thought the Tico's tracked it with the SPY-1 and they sent F-18s to investigate who then tracked it with the FLIR and visually.
Without a reference point you are unlikely to be able to guess the distance of an aircraft, especially an unknown one.
Here's a 4 hour interview with the pilot, David Fravor, on Lex Fridman's show where he goes into much more detail than you'll probably read elsewhere: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aB8zcAttP1E
This wasn't just a single radar. It was an AEGIS system compromised of multiple ships with state of the art radars, multiple plane radars, and visual confirmation by several pilots. They were tracking it for multiple days.
I think part of the problem here is that there are multiple incidents being conflated. For instance, people are saying that the pilots visually confirmed the incident with their own eyes, but (according to the article) that would not have been possible given the distance between the plane and the object.
Is there a source to indicate that in the specific incident being covered by this article, that there is any evidence beyond the video itself?
There are actually lots of different UAP incidents. In some there are supposedly objects that get really close to carriers, which are tracked by many different radar systems etc. The gimbal video one wasn't one of those, IIUC, it was just what you see in the video.
I'm quite confident that most people here are going to find a calm, measured, and thorough explanation of the observed phenomenon more credible than a snarky and instinctive dismissal that doesn't even bother to address a single one of the clearly demonstrated points in the analysis.
It's not the pilots job to theorize on whether the object is glare or not, just to describe what he's seeing. This is one plausible explanation, not THE explanation. There is still a UFO there, the video is just saying it probably doesn't look like what we see on screen.
If you're unwilling to even entertain that this might be a possibility because you want to believe... I guess do what you want.
> So the claim is...these highly trained pilots and the other sensor systems didn't realize that objects cause IR glare, but this guy did. Case closed.
And frankly the "this guy" appears to be someone with no expertise and who is strongly biased towards particular investigatory outcomes:
> Mick West is a British science writer, skeptical investigator, and retired video game programmer. He is the creator of the websites Contrail Science and Metabunk, and he investigates and debunks pseudoscientific claims and conspiracy theories such as chemtrails and UFOs.
Not to say he isn't right in this case, but I'm equality unenthusiastic about "skeptics" like that as I am about conspiracy theorists.
Edit: on second thought, I'm somewhat more unenthusiastic "skeptics" like that. Conspiracy theorists can at least be entertaining sometimes, while "skeptics" tend to just bore you with self-assured arrogance while they take pot shots at low-hanging fruit.
>Not to say he isn't right in this case, but I'm equality unenthusiastic about "skeptics" like that as I am about conspiracy theorists.
My working theory for what creates the lowest common denominator of internet comments, is that you have to believe whatever is necessary to believe to keep the conversation going.
If a skeptic debunks something by appeals to mundane facts relating to camera angles and physics principles, that closes the conversation. And for internet comment sections that is a problem. But, if them being right means they are arrogant, then we can talk about how arrogant they are, the nothing gets turned back into a something and the conversation can keep going.
The problem with both conspiracy theorists and non-expert "skeptics" is they both approach a phenomenon with their results already decided. It's just the conspiracy theorist has decided it's must be a conspiracy, and the "skeptic" has decided it must be some mundane thing with camera angles, and they both produce explanations to confirm their biases. They (especially the "skeptic") are just performing their identities.
And note the quotes around "skeptic," I'm not talking about people with real expertise in some area who show some crazy theory to be implausible or impossible.
> Conspiracy theorists can at least be entertaining sometimes, while "skeptics" tend to just bore you with self-assured arrogance while they take pot shots at low-hanging fruit.
I don't know about skeptics in general, but I found Mr. West's video to be pretty entertaining. He built some pretty impressive-looking simulations to support his claims.
I think conspiracy theories can be interesting and entertaining, but a lot of their theorists are kinda pathetic.
> Conspiracy theorists can at least be entertaining sometimes
Right up until they're sure that there's a child molestation ring in the basement of a pizza parlor that doesn't have a basement, and someone goes and shoots up the place because the conspiracy theory was so damn entertaining.
That's exactly why I said "sometimes." It might have been more precise to mean occasionally, but the clear intended meaning was that it was a minority of the time.
> Not to say he isn't right in this case, but I'm equality unenthusiastic about "skeptics" like that as I am about conspiracy theorists.
Yeah, it can be interesting to hear a dubunking from someone with an actual background in the field, but someone who's whole schtick is debunking is just as motivated to prove things wrong as the conspiracy theorists are to prove things right.
The object might of existed for a millisecond. Test of a new stealth tech - quick directional laser burst to temporarily damage/blind IR camera. After that Jet was flying in circles trying to track its own camera glitch.
I don't know much about this whole story (I'm not a UFO person) and am learning most of what I know about it from this video and this thread, but: the people saying that this video depicts an actual object rotating in the sky appear to be making the extraordinary claim here: the connection between the rotation and the camera system seems compelling. The horizon is moving as the camera/plane moves; the object is not moving. You can't refute that with "these are highly trained fighter pilots": the horizon is moving with the camera, the object isn't. Training's got nothing to do with it. The shape we're looking at is, in part, an artifact of the camera, unless the aliens are somehow reprogramming the camera to fuck with us.
> The shape we're looking at is, in part, an artifact of the camera, unless the aliens are somehow reprogramming the camera to fuck with us.
It's possible the IR glare is an intentional countermeasure produced by the craft. It might sound far-fetched, but the military can already jam some cameras already, and they apparently license this technology too:
The first time these craft were spotted on radar was during a Navy exercise where they were testing new radar equipment, and the craft were coming from the direction of San Clemente island (an island that is a Navy base). Here's a short video that talks about the radar sighting:
Sightings of these UFOs have only ever been mentioned by US forces.
Who knows what is going on, but if I had to make a guess and I considered all of this information, it seems likely that the "UFOs" are experimental US aircraft.
It would have to be a countermeasure that not only produces glare, but does so in a way that precisely tracks the orientation of the rotating camera on the F18. Again: an extraordinary claim; it's not impossible, but you'd need evidence to make it persuasive.
Just to be clear, I'm saying the object may be producing the IR as a countermeasure, I'm not suggesting that the countermeasure produces the rotation captured in the video -- the linked article suggests the rotation is an artifact of the tracking system. From the submitted article:
> what is being seen in the video is actually infrared glare that hides a hot object behind it and only rotates in the way it does because the camera rotates when tracking the target from left to right
Fraver (not sure he was one of the ones in this incident) has a history of UFO pranks, shutting down engines and gliding over campfires then lighting up after burners when right over them, explicitly to give a UFO experience, and someone found a contemporaneous report of him doing it, so it wasn't just a story.
As a former member of USMC Aviation, it's valid to point out that skilled navy pilots can have some of the same range of differences in belief, action and motivation that the general populace does. I flew with a pilot on a transport helicopter that was blasting Eye of the Tiger and taking every turn at maximum bank, constantly looking for AA to get to fire at us so he could call in F-18s and watch the fireworks. Some of them are cranks.
BUT... I don't think any US military pilot expects their cockpit recordings or FLIR video to be public at some later time, I'm not sure what the motivation would be to lie about this stuff. The harm to you as a respected pilot would be fairly severe, and you'd have to get your co-pilot to go along with it.
"Three may keep a secret if two of them are dead." - Benjamin Franklin
I'm sure it was idle or just heavily lowered, but people dug around and found reports on old internet boards about time frame seeing him do it from the same timeframe and location.
If he never did it he pranked/lied about doing the prank and that is no better for credibility.
There is enough videos of F-18s doing 'push the throttle and bank' in a level flight on YouTube. It's fast, but it's not instantenious. And as an arm-chair pilot I can say what a multiton plane doesn't stay at the altitude with the engines at idle.
Have you listened to the joe rogan episode where he talks about it?
It seems a little ridiculous to compare the one where he turned his engine off and on one time at night over a couple campers to the episode where multiple pilots see it, with multiple sensors seeing it from planes and from ships. He engaged in horseplay once, therefor anything he ever says should not be believed seems lame.
Jets do this regularly over the Colorado River and various, otherwise desolate gathering places around AZ. I've witnessed such shenanigans a dozen or so times over the last 3 decades. One jet distracts onlookers while another sneaks up to buzz low over the deck(or, perhaps it's just incidental to their training Ops, IDK). These maneuvers are tests of skill, technology & amusement.
That "four different pilots" stuff has not been confirmed as far as I know. All people involved in these stories are hustlers, including that one ex-pilot who peddles the story.
You must look at every statement they make separately. They give one fact that can be verified and then they tie lies or unverified stuff on that.
> btw. Luis Elizondo is has not been charge of any UFO stuff
I have no conviction on the UFO phenomenon other than it would be cool if aliens exist, and even cooler if they were already on Earth. Still, I can't get enough of it – I especially love thinking about the most epistemically offensive conspiracy theories, like "the moon is a spaceship" or "Antarctica is an alien base." I sometimes fall asleep to Ancient Aliens.
But, fact is, the only government agents with any "authority" in this "movement" – which became especially fervent around the dissolution of Q-Anon, btw – are people who worked for DIA in Information Operations. That is, their specialty is in manipulating the public, not alien technology.
The "Lue anon" moniker about sums it up. My theory is the recent reinvigoration of the UFO movement is an attempt by US intel agencies to pre-emptively herd the most impressionable people with their own controlled conspiracy, rather than allow a hostile actor to manipulate them during the next election.
Also, I predicted this 10 months ago, the last time "disclosure" was imminent, in a comment [0] that I think has aged well so far.
I did think it was amusing that everyone said the government is covering up UFOs, but it turns out you can just ask Harry Reid about them and he didn't even put it in the classified budget.
> According to SEC filings, as of October 2018 only $1 million of those shares had been sold and the company had a $37.4 million deficit, largely from a stock incentive plan for its employees, prompting Ars Technica and Vice to question its financial sustainability.[4][5]
I happened to read the SEC filings when they were doing this and am certain it's fine and Vice reporters just don't know how startup finances work.
What I did notice is that the perfectly normal looking and very detailed Form C didn't say the company owned any IP from alien spaceships or was going to acquire it. Their website definitely suggested it though, so if you're lying you could sue for securities fraud.
I'm quite surprised to see this community be so on board with the "Oh really, the obvious saucer was lens glare and not aliens?" train.
USAF and reitred officals have gone on record to say that they actively release doctored footage and/or false narratives, sometimes via pop culture figures, to muddy waters on current technology or to sow discourse among enemies. This reeks of n example of that, and not aliens.
The gimbal video is not a video of the object from the Nimitz incident. There is a video of that but it’s less compelling in terms of evidence, but also afaik not cleanly debunked. (I think it’s called FLIR?)
They're all ATFLIR videos. It's basically the same thing - a far away hot object, likely another aircraft, turns into an IR cylinder-shaped blog on screen which is then incorrectly interpreted as being an actual cylinder. The apparent movement at the end is just the ATFLIR losing lock as the guy constantly zooms in and out.
Naive question: If a carrier group cannot, in essentially real-time, document three dimensional trajectories at this point (four if you include speed), what possible defense can they claim to have against evasive incoming missiles, etc.
To actually answer your question, they probably can sometimes track four dimensional trajectories, however not always, and they are not going to give you that data because that would reveal how good their tracking algorithms and sensors are. Sensor fusion is a thing:
Even with fusion, the fewer the sensors the less accurate the tracking will be. In these videos there may only be one or two sensors actually tracking the object.
Hitting a target with a missile is a somewhat different problem, you just have to get the missile there based on whatever data you have (which might be from the carriers sensor data, the missiles own sensors, or both). For example an IR missile doesn't know the location of its target, it just knows how far off center the IR light from the target is from the missiles current flight path and it can correct course based on that simple angular offset to eventually hit the target (with some additional math since the missile has to go to where the target will be when it gets there.) Similarly stopping an evasive incoming missile does not require that you know its exact location. Also as a defensive missile gets closer to the incoming missile it may be able to get better data on where its target actually is and how it is moving. Missiles move very fast so on the final approach there is not much ability to change direction at all, it would require too many g's to turn the missile, so you can model the final approach as a straight line. When it's close your own tracking systems probably work better as well because the targets cross section takes up more of the sky.
Carriers are most likely partly obsoleted by hypersonic missiles that travel and maneuver at mach 20 (which Russia and China have), in addition to 100 megaton nuclear torpedoes that travel at 120mph (which Russia has).
Its a common assumption made by layman that the existence of a weapon that can kill a system means its now obsolete. That is incorrect.
Systems do not become obsolete because they can be killed. They become obsolete when they no longer serve utility. Either something else does the job better, more efficiently or effectively or the nature of war has changed to the degree that its now irrelevant.
This mistake is most often made with Tanks and Carriers for some reason. The existence of Javelin ATGMs does not mean tanks are obsolete. And the existence of hypersonic AshMs does not make carriers obsolete. Those weapons do not replace the functionality of tanks and carriers.
Its like the common pop history myth that machineguns made horse cavalry obsolete in the first world war. It did not. Cavalry lasted through the war. Their tactics definitely had to change and adapt. And they were certainly used far more sparingly due to their low survivability but offensive cavalry weren't rendered obsolete until tanks came around. And horses in general weren't obsolete until armies became fully mechanized and replaced them with trucks. Some armies didn't manage that until after WW2.
Likewise the Battleship was not obsoleted because carrier aircraft could kill it easily. It was obsoleted because carrier aircraft and later smart weapons meant combat now happened over the horizon and those big guns weren't contributing to fleet actions anymore
Its been possible to kill a tank since literally the first battle they were employed. Ballsy German artillerymen learned that British tanks were not immune to a direct hit from a field gun fired over open sights. And Carriers have always been vulnerable to antiship weapons. Be it torpedoes from a sub, dumb bombs from an aircraft or fancy high tech missiles today.
I hope you'll excuse some pushback from another layperson--isn't the situation with Aircraft Carriers categorically different? In the examples you provided above (Cavalry, Tanks, and Battleships), there has never been a push-button solution to eliminating every single unit in the service of the enemy. Given the technology mentioned by GP, the small number of Carriers in service and the utter impossibility of hiding them, it would appear that such a solution does exist for Carriers.
So while it seems to be true that Aircraft Carriers are not obsolete in peacetime or in a conflict with minor powers, aren't they obsolete in the context for which they were created--namely, war with another great power?
Weapons on their own are dumb, stupid devices. Weapons in a system can be dangerous when deployed appropriately. For ASBM or hypersonic missiles, there are several steps in a successful engagement:
1. Detect the carrier. Sounds easy but they can move at 30+ knots, and can be quite difficult to detect when they want to hide.
2. Provide targeting data. This is needs to be much more accurate than just detecting that a carrier is operating "near" this point. Most weapons will require relatively precise data for this.
3. Transmit this data rapidly to the launch systems. Every minute counts as old targeting data is relatively useless.
4. Launch the weapon. This means keeping aircraft or missile batteries safe from attack, and getting the weapons in range of the carrier.
5. Have the weapon reach the target area. This means a reliable weapon with a low failure rate.
6. Have the weapon avoid any ECM or other countermeasures that might affect its targeting.
7. Have the weapon avoid any defenses, either the layered defenses (SAMS, point defence guns), fighters, etc.
8. Have the weapon detonate properly, in the best spot.
Lots of things to go wrong in this "kill-chain." Lots of places to interrupt, disrupt or out-right kill the weapon.
And sure we hear a lot about Russian super weapons like Zircon and the silly torpedoes. But as the Ukraine war is showing, a lot of Russian stuff sounds great until you see it in action. Or it's a Potemkin weapon, or too expensive.
Look at all the burning Russian tanks. These aren't monkey models sent to client states like Iraq. These are top of the line, with ERA etc. Yet most don't have Arena/Trophy, and are getting killed by a weapon designed 30 years ago.
Now perhaps the DF-21 deployed by the PLAN is more reliable than the Russian crap. But unless things get hot in the South China Sea we'll never know.
They have taken nearly the entire Black Sea coastline and most major cities east of the Dnieper River. That entire eastern part of Ukraine will collapse imminently under Russian advances.
And meanwhile none of the aforementioned weapons systems have been engaged.
Detecting a carrier is trivial. They are large above surface vessels that leave a huge wake. 30 knots is nothing. And once locked its trivial for satellites or spy planes to track. We even publish the location of our carriers: https://www.marinevesseltraffic.com/vessels/USS-Enterprise-(...
Russia is a spacefaring, highly advanced military. They have all of the targeting capabilities you describe.
100 megaton nuclear torpedoes aren't silly. They're extremely dangerous. They can trigger tsunamis, and destroy anything within tens of miles and cause third degree burns out to hundreds of miles.
I'm not sure you understand the scale of what you're dismissing.
You mean 95% of the ones on that list, which was made by an external observer. It's also a military engagement each time one of their vehicles gets exploded by a TB2 drone strike.
Most of these aren't in battle, it's because their equipment breaks on its own because they didn't maintain the tires for years, or runs out of fuel because everyone in the supply chain sold it for food money.
The Wikipedia map is good, but it's also out of date on that page, and the positions haven't moved much since then.
I'm skeptical of any list of equipment losses being comprehensive on both sides. We are very much in a fog of war situation.
The map you linked looks fairly dire to me. The Russians control the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea at this point, and all of Ukraine's eastern border. With Belarus to the north, it leaves Ukraine landlocked with only its western border for imports and exports (mainly via Poland). There's a cauldron
Russia has already captured many of the major cities east of the Dnieper, and it will be harder and harder for Ukraine to supply the eastern front, particularly across that river.
The aforementioned weapons systems only exist in labs if that. Hypersonics are expensive and Russia is poor. Look at their GDP.
And you do realize that satellites don't "lock" onto anything. They orbit around the earth. Geosynchronous orbits aren't used by RORSATs. Spyplanes? What spy planes? Russian maritime surveillance aircraft have limited range, (as do the PLANs) and can't see an infinite distance. Google the earth's curvature and you'll be able to find out how radar is limited.
Russia's military is a Potemkin village. Has been for decades if not longer. The only thing they have that's a threat is their nuclear weapons, and I'm even starting to wonder how reliable those are.
You keep talking about how dangerous Poseidon is. But Status-6 hasn't even been deployed, and probably never will. Why not talk about how dangerous Tsar Bomba is? And it's estimated speed is closer to 60mph.
I grew up when the Soviets were all 10 feet tall, with super T-80 tanks, with SS-20 missiles, nuclear powered cruisers and all sorts of scary stuff. Most of it turned out to be junk or too expensive for the USSR to afford. Same with Russia.
"The missile can be armed with a nuclear or conventional warhead and has been tested several times over the last few years in the Barents Sea and White Sea regions, both from surface warships and the latest class of multi-purpose submarine."
Sometimes it matters what a country spends its budget on rather than how much.
"U.S. efforts to reduce the roles and numbers of nuclear weapons, and convince other states to do the same, have included reducing the U.S. nuclear stockpile by over 85 percent since its Cold War high. Potential adversaries, however, have expanded and modernized their nuclear forces."
"Russia possesses significant advantages in its nuclear weapons production capacity and in
non-strategic nuclear forces over the U.S. and allies. It is also building a large, diverse, and
modern set of non-strategic systems that are dual-capable (may be armed with nuclear or
conventional weapons). These theater- and tactical-range systems are not accountable
under the New START Treaty and Russia’s non-strategic nuclear weapons modernization
is increasing the total number of such
weapons in its arsenal, while
significantly improving its delivery
capabilities. This includes the
production, possession, and flight
testing of a ground-launched cruise
missile in violation of the INF Treaty.
Moscow believes these systems may
provide useful options for escalation
advantage. Finally, despite Moscow’s
frequent criticism of U.S. missile
defense, Russia is also modernizing its
long-standing nuclear-armed ballistic
missile defense system and designing a
new ballistic missile defense
interceptor."
Oh and I forgot to address your ridiculous comment about winning every engagement in the Ukraine. Tell that to the 7K dead Russians. How about the 400+ destroyed MBTs, and 4K IFVs? If you think that Russia is winning this conflict currently, you've been listening to Tucker Carlson too much. Russia lost this war on D Day, when they failed to establish an air bridge at Hostomel when the VDV got smoked.
How many Russians are dead? Who counted the bodies and how did they do so during an active engagement? How many Ukrainians have died by comparison? Do you have complete information or do you have incomplete information during a literal fog of war situation?
Russia says they've lost 400 men, USINT says 7K. Who's telling the truth? They're both known to lie.
We can be relatively sure, based on the numerous maps of Russian advances that eastern Ukraine will fall in the next couple of weeks. You let me know if that's a win or a loss. I'm not sure. It's certainly a thing.
That map (nor most of the unbiased non-Russian ones) doesn't show an imminent collapse in the next two weeks. According to the UK MoD the invasion has reached a standstill. Hope you'll be back in two weeks with more accurate information...
As long as its useful to have a self propelled airbase that can launch strike aircraft from anywhere it goes air craft carriers will be relevant.
Emerging threats may change tactics, operations and spur development of countermeasures but they wont make an entire weapons system obsolete unless the change the nature of war.
>Given the technology mentioned by GP, the small number of Carriers in service and the utter impossibility of hiding them, it would appear that such a solution does exist for Carriers.
Carriers are not impossible to hide. A CSG that doesn't want to be found can do so. The ocean is a very big place. There are also grades to knowing "where" something is. Just knowing there is a carrier in the South China sea is valid for strategic planning but not much else. Knowing its somewhere to the south west of Taiwan can help plan operations but wont put warheads on foreheads.
A complete kill chain involves getting very precise and timely targeting information. This is something that needs to be done with some kind of sensor, RADAR, Thermal, Sonar etc. It must be timely because carriers are moving targets. A mere set of GPS coordinates is not good enough. By the time your missile gets there they will be wrong. So that means you need something nearby with a datalink and proper sensors to give targeting data. This could be a sub listening with sonar, a strike aircraft painting the carrier with radar or using an IRST to pick up its heat signature. It could be a warship of your own.
Point is, these kill chains are long and complicated and if you break it at any point your attack will fail or wont happen at all. Hypersonic missiles have very long kill chains, some of the longest. And they haven't been proven out in combat. "Finding" a CSG is much easier said than done.
> Given the technology mentioned by GP, the small number of Carriers in service and the utter impossibility of hiding them, it would appear that such a solution does exist for Carriers.
Strategic nuclear weapons, which one of the items you are referencing is, have been the “make it all go away” button for lots of things since they were created, but…MAD.
As for conventional anti-shipping missiles, people have been arguing that about carriers since weapons like the Exocet were available, but today, as then, remain at best highly speculative.
> So while it seems to be true that Aircraft Carriers are not obsolete in peacetime or in a conflict with minor powers, aren't they obsolete in the context for which they were created--namely, war with another great power?
Maybe, but so what? MAD has made war between great powers even more the exception among wars involving great powers than it was in the past, and it's almost always been the exception.
1. Current or future means of intercepting hypersonic missiles.
2. The ability to disable or reduce the enemy’s ability of launching hypersonic missiles, or of pinpointing and accurately tracking the exact location of aircraft carriers.
We don't have the capability currently to intercept Russia's hypersonic missiles.
We also have no defenses against 100 megaton underwater torpedo nukes that can be detonated miles from a carrier group and still wipe it out.
In an all out war with Russia, our carriers would be big, slow, sitting ducks against Mach 20 missiles with variable speed and high maneuverability as well.
"The missile flies with an advanced fuel that the Russians say gives it a range of up to 1,000 kilometers. And it's so fast that the air pressure in front of the weapon forms a plasma cloud as it moves, absorbing radio waves and making it practically invisible to active radar systems.
U.S. Aegis missile interceptor systems require 8-10 seconds of reaction time to intercept incoming attacks. In those 8-10 seconds, the Russian Zircon missiles will already have traveled 20 kilometers, and the interceptor missiles do not fly fast enough to catch up."
>We don't have the capability currently to intercept Russia's hypersonic missiles.
Say hello to SM-3. It has successfully intercepted hypersonic RVs in testing. Is it perfect? No. But if it done anything, the last month has made me feel more confident in what the US claims their weapons can do and dismissive for the Russians.
>We also have no defenses against 100 megaton underwater torpedo nukes that can be detonated miles from a carrier group and still wipe it out.
No such weapon exists. And if it did it would be wildly impractical. The largest nuke ever made was the Tsar Bomba and it was only 50 megatons and too large to be practical.
And we do have a counter to nuclear torpedoes. Its called the West's nuclear deterrence. Using a nuke on a carrier means nuclear war and nobody wants that.
I mean... assuming the Russians have anything that works is probably not a great assumption based on their performance in Ukraine.
But I think they provide overlapping, but different, roles. But missiles and torpedoes is why aircraft carriers travel in carrier groups that have defensive capabilities against torpedoes and missiles.
It wouldn’t make much sense for Russia to show their cards and use modern war tech on Ukraine, a country with a (relatively) primitive military. They’re barely even using fighter jets.
Maybe because they've barely been training those pilots and know the planes would likely be lost if used above Ukraine? Pilots in the Russian Air Force have supposedly been averaging less than 100 flight hours a year, which is next to nothing.
That number supposedly comes from official Russian sources. I say supposedly because I don't understand Russian and have to trust western sources about this, but these numbers have been widely disseminated for years and seem to be broadly treated as credible.
They are using modern tech, and it's getting wiped out. Their tanks are modern, their artillery is modern, their fighters are modern. And they're all getting wiped out.
Tanks being used by Russia in Ukraine:
T-72A
T-72B3 OBR.2016
T-80BV
T-80U
T-80BVM
T-90A
IFVs:
BMP2
BMP3
BMD4M
SAMs:
Tor
Buk
Pantsir
Fighters and Helos:
SU-25
SU-30/35
Su-34
Mi-24/35
KA-52
Mi-28
None of this is "monkey model" stuff like the the USSR sent to client states. These are all top of the line. Same with the artillery and missiles used. All the best the Russians have in any decent numbers.
Yes, Russia has the largest nuclear stockpile in the world, they absolutely work and it's unwise to base your opinions on their nuclear and tactical capabilities based on their slow advance into Ukraine.
The Poseidon is a 100 megaton nuclear torpedo.
It doesn't need to get anywhere near a carrier group to knock out the entire group. It is twice as powerful as the largest nuke ever detonated (at 57megatons) and a Russian sub can carry four of these torpedoes:
“All buildings in the village of Severny (both wooden and brick), located 55 km (34 mi) from ground zero within the Sukhoy Nos test range, were destroyed. In districts hundreds of kilometers from ground zero wooden houses were destroyed, stone ones lost their roofs, windows, doors, and radio communications were interrupted for almost one hour. One participant in the test saw a bright flash through dark goggles and felt the effects of a thermal pulse even at a distance of 270 kilometres (170 mi). The heat from the explosion could have caused third degree burns 100 km (62 mi) away from ground zero. A shock wave was observed in the air at Dikson settlement 700 km (430 mi) away; windowpanes were partially broken to distances of 900 kilometres (560 mi)."
I'm a tenth generation American. Pointing out facts is called being a realist. And I'm not impressed with a bunch of armchair generals that think that war with Russia would be easy because their Tik Tok feed told them so.
> Carriers are most likely partly obsoleted by hypersonic missiles that travel and maneuver at mach 20
That's assuming they can actually hit and inflict sufficient damage.
Also, you need to re-read your own sources.
> 100 megaton nuclear torpedoes that travel at 120mph (which Russia has).
The article is estimating that it's at most 2 megatons (still a lot, but 50x smaller) and that it's NOT supercavitating, so it would not travel at 120mph.
The other article does not support the conclusion that carriers are obsolete, at all. It poses the question, but does not answer it.
Why is china building carriers then? Hypersonic weapons still need to know where to go. Theres a reason an ICBM which flies upwards of mach 20 is ineffective against carriers
They are good at projecting power against lesser foes in a sub-nuclear confrontation. I think if we went to all out war against Russia and/or China our carriers would be some of the first casualties.
Hypersonic missiles apart from df-zf only exist in a lab. They are one of the biggest hype out there along with killer robots. When you hear about tests, it is mostly about work done at a university, which means the tech is still 5 to 10 years away.
I have heard that, in case of all-out war, the life expectancy of a carrier in the middle of a battle group was 21 minutes. (This was decades ago - it may be less with hypersonic missiles.) But they could launch all the planes in 19 minutes, so it could launch its entire attack before being killed. That was considered to be good enough.
And thus the old quote about sticks and stones being used to fight world war 4.
I'm not sure about Russia's or China's anti ballistic technology. I know their hypersonic tech is superior to our own currently.
But what if a country could deploy nuclear weapons against another nation and defend themselves against incoming missiles, due to a temporary technological advantage? It changes the game. I'm not sure if that's where we're at currently, but I know that the hypersonic and nuclear tech is why we are so hesitant to enter the Ukrainian war outright.
You know this? You have intel (that's probably classified NOFORN) or you've just read about Zircon? The Russians can hype their wunderwaffen til the cows come home, but they haven't demonstrated reliable, deployable systems.
If you think hypersonic weapons are any deterrent to the US involvement in Ukraine, you're just being silly. The Russians don't even have enough Kalibr cruise missiles to take out a 3rd rate military. They don't have enough money (or perhaps just too much corruption) to install active defenses for their MBTs (no Arena/Trophy).
The only reason we don't have US troops in Ukraine is because of the SS-18 Satan and Bulava SLBM.
And no one has an effective defense against the number of ICBMs/SLBMs on each side. The ABM systems around Moscow are too few to counter the number of warheads assigned, and the US missile defense is too raw (and also out of position) to defend against Russian missiles.
Extant American ballistic missile defenses don't seem sufficient to repel a committed ICBM/SLBM attack from Russia, or even China. THAAD and Patriot can only protect a relatively small area around each installation, not even remotely enough to protect the whole country in a war like that. GMD can intercept ballistic missiles mid course and has substantial range, but no more than a few dozen interceptors total for the entire country. Aegis is formidable and numerous, but the SM-3 interceptors used by those ships have substantially less range compared to GMD interceptors, and only some of the missiles carried by Aegis ships will be those SM-3s.
Do you have links to reading more about this? The video saying it was glare made it seem like the object was very far from the jet, much farther then the naked eye could see. Was it closer at some point?
> So the anomaly that the carrier group tracked, then scrambled fighter jets for. The object that four different pilots saw visually, and was confirmed on multiple different sensors. That was camera glare?
I don't think we can trust the accounts of anyone in the employ of the government, past or present, when it comes to this kind of thing.
For all we know to misinform is the mission, propaganda if you will.
Consider how much of what you said above is practically verbatim regurgitation of their vernacular. Jargon is often abused to sound qualified, smart, and authoritative. AKA B.S. alert.
This just seems to be a way that the government can point to an “expert” and say it was nothing, thereby alleviating the need for the government to comment on the “nothing”.
I’m guessing the classified file on this is very interesting.
Flimsy is an extremely generous and flattering word if you know anything about the details of this case or the testimony of the Navy's top pilots who witnessed and tracked this object from different vantage points both visually and with instruments.
^This is the key point. These objects have been tracked on radar, FLIR, and multiple pilot witness testimony off both coasts for decades now. Attempting to debunk a single one of these three leaked videos is pointless because they do not show the entire context of the events happening.
I implore everyone to watch these two interviews with Christopher Melon, the former Deputy Secretary of Defense for Intelligence. And to read the DNI report on UAPs It will change your entire perception of these incidents and show you to view them as true national security issues.
There are unknown objects flying with impunity in our restricted military airspace, some that exhibit characteristics that nothing of human origin can accomplish. This should terrify you.
Edit: Why the downvotes? Please explain to me your logic. I'm just listing things that people with credibility in our government said, including the Department of National Intelligence.
I agree that there's something in these videos - at least in Gimbal. I don't think it's a saucer-shaped thing or necessarily of extraterrestrial origin. It could be a drone (either ours - another branch of DoD/govt - or another nation's) etc. Still an interesting mystery, but no proof of anything extraordinary IMHO.
In the case of relying on Christopher Mellon's credentials, I'd point out that he has a commercial interest of some kind with To The Stars Academy, the production company which seems to be behind all of these videos' presence on the History channel.
In their 2021 annual meeting notes [https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5b5a458fe749405f83225...], To the Stars Academy notes that "Christopher Mellon, a member of TTSA’s advisory board, [is] no longer with the company" implying he was employed by them in some fashion. Thus prior to 2021, he likely stood to benefit commercially from these films' distribution, particularly when he was quoted alongside them.
>It could be a drone (either ours - another branch of DoD/govt - or another nation's) etc
Pilot Chad Underwood gave private testimony to the senate congressional committee on this gimbal video stating the object did rotate without changing direction or altitude - a feat which is impossible by our current understanding of physics. So assuming the "drone" in gimbal belongs to something of terrestrial origin, either our government his hiding ground breaking physics capabilities or some other country on this planet has - both of which are terrifying.
>In the case of relying on Christopher Mellon's credentials, I'd point out that he has a commercial interest of some kind with To The Stars Academy, the production company which seems to be behind all of these videos' presence on the History channel.
I agree TTSA has sketchy origins, I've looked quite a bit into it. Chris Mellon comes from one of the wealthiest families in America, so I would have to assume that this venture could not have netted him enough money to make it worth while for him to lie to congress about this. He was the major architect to the Gillibrand amendment in last year's NDAA creating the new UAP office, and he and Lue Elizondo been regularly meeting with the Senate Intelligence committee to further pursue this topic. And to go on that, Lue Elizondo (former head of AATIP) made no money from his time at TTSA or the Unidentified TV show. If someone needed money, it would have been him imo.
If Underwood is responsible for the video we're looking at here today, we don't need to be terrified: the physics-defying motion is pretty clearly a camera artifact. The horizon is moving, the object isn't; the "object" we're looking at is the camera, and whatever the pilot is following is occluded by it.
Why should a peaceful demonstration of technical superiority terrify anyone?
It's clear whomever, or whatever, possesses this superior technology could fly circles around and/or obliterate us on a whim, but has expressly decided not to, and instead simply announced: "Hey, I have this."
If they/it perceived us as a threat, we'd surely be gone already. That leaves only our hopefully sane response, to influence what happens next.
If you look into Lue Elizondo's, former head of AATIP, comments on this, you will come to find that he believes these things are testing are doing reconnaissance to test our military capabilities - which is scary to me.
The technology they are displaying is awesome, but it is something we should be very wary of.
Assuming this is an advanced civilisation, this seems highly unlikely.
Our capabilities can be well enough assessed from the comfortable safety of billions of kilometres away simply from watching our relentless broadcasting of them in all directions for decades if not centuries now.
We even sent out devices at the limits of our sphere of physical influence, introducing ourselves and with instructions on how to understand what we say.
Certainly, by simple initial analysis of even our most basic technology they could then monitor our own satellite networks on a whim and see all of the same things about ourselves that we do, in realtime and in totality.
Ingesting our transmissions and emissions and assessing our capabilities would be something they could do far more thoroughly than we can ourselves. They'd likely also be able to project what we'll have ten or twenty years from now in detail.
Sending a craft in can only reasonably be interpreted as "hi" given a context of technological dominance, which by necessity is founded on informational dominance.
“Christopher Mellon served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for intelligence in the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations. He is a private equity investor and an adviser to the To the Stars Academy for Arts and Science”
Equity investor. No conflicts there!
“in our restricted military airspace”
In fact, they’re actually the most heavily instrumented research, development, test and training areas on the planet. Let me repeat that: research, development and test.
> Let me repeat that: research, development and test.
>What an incredible coincidence. Alien trolls or Occam’s razor?
The ODNI specifically stated in the 144 cases of UAP they were not able to identify that exactly none of them were from testing US Special Access Programs technology. This is in the official report http://dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/Prelimary-As...
>“Christopher Mellon served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for intelligence in the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations. He is a private equity investor and an adviser to the To the Stars Academy for Arts and Science”
> Equity investor. No conflicts there!
He left TTSA in 2021 and he's still a national security advisor to the Senate Intelligence Committee. He's also from one of the wealthiest families in the world, being a direct line from Carnegie Mellon. Typically when you are born wealthy you are naturally an investor in things you believe in.
“The ODNI specifically stated in the 144 cases of UAP they were not able to identify that exactly none of them were from testing US Special Access Programs technology. This is in the official report”
I’m going to be extremely generous and assume you have actually not read the report you state says exactly none of them were SAPs.
What your source actually says:
“USG or Industry Developmental Programs: Some UAP observations could be attributable to developments and classified programs by U.S. entities. We were unable to confirm, however, that these systems accounted for any of the UAP reports we collected”
Apologies. I couldn’t remember the wording. I did read the report but it was last June.
With that said, I have watched more recent interviews with Lue Elizondo where he states that the UAPs being shown are not the result of SAPs, and that he would know as he had access to the SAPs since it was his job to investigate the occurrences.
I think infinitesimals are more like the partitions in a Riemann Sum. The limit is where you are heading, whereas infinitesimals are how you get there.
In the finite Riemann sum written as a limit the partition is just the limit of (x1 - x2)/m. I'd say it's the reverse, you use the limit to resolve an equation of two infinitesimals.
Sounds like that's still state of the art.