Posted on 10/14/2017 4:10:09 PM PDT by oxcart
I probably need to fix the paraphrasing on my FreeRepublic Homepage.
I am not very knowledgeable in some of these technical aspects.
However, in the I did meet Grace Hopper. She was a Commander at that time, and I assume she had her PhD. She retired a Rear Admiral, as I recall.
I worked on an important aspect of a new system integrated into DDG51 class. I had a relative at the commissioning and the retired Admiral Arleigh A Burke was there.
He had an interesting US Navy record.
should be christened in state it is named after..*grin*
“...I did meet Grace Hopper. She was a Commander at that time, and I assume she had her PhD. She retired a Rear Admiral, as I recall.
I worked on an important aspect of a new system integrated into DDG51 class. ...”
topher’s courtesy ranks well above average. The more typical response from forum members is “I know what I know and that’s that.” Even when they don’t know.
When it comes to the military-industrial complex, topher has the advantage in celebrity meetings. RADM Hopper looms large in the heritage of computer development and data processing. Without her, and her more obscure colleagues, the nation would have gone under years ago.
topher’s system integration experience is more important than most citizens imagine. Since technological advance began to become more important in providing for the common defense (about 1807), maximizing individual weapon performance has become less important. Optimizing system performance assumes greater importance every day; meshing the operation of all systems matters more and more, improving their capabilities to operate with each other. Battlefields are complicated enough without one of our weapons negating another.
The late I.B. Holley Jr (MajGen, USAFR) coined this maxim: “Better weapons favor victory.”
No sentence does a better job of summarizing the logic of modern armed conflict. We can mass-produce weaponry of amazing capabilities at dizzying rates, but we cannot do the same with heroes: they appear only unpredictably, and in small numbers.
Better to arm the hero with superior systems. Better still to reduce the requirement for heroes, by building and issuing better weapons. The nation will be better served if heroes live and remain unknown, than if they die and become famous.
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