actually most of the Uranium for the US bombs (whether Fat Man or Little Boy and later and later) came out of Canada

Actually the uranium ore story is quite interesting, complex and worth reading. The Einstein and Szilard letters, the MAUD committee, the S-1 commitee, the trace of the material, &c. There are many (surprisingly) conflicting sources about how it really was, but let’s try to patch it together:

The ore:
— Around 2100 tons of Uranium ore from the Union Miniere du Haut Katanga mine of Shinkolobwe (which was actually a Radium mine, with the Uranium a byproduct – actually there is far less Radium than Uranium in the ore) in Belgian Congo. The material is shipped to New York in mid/late 1940, but owned still by Union Miniere du Haut Katanga. The U.S. purchases the material in summer of 1942.
— Around 1250 tons of Uranium ore from the same mine, but stockpiled in a milled form at the Société Générale Métallurgique de Hoboken refinement plant at Olen, Belgium. This material is captured by the Germans, but it’s not enough for a bomb with the German process technology.
Now, these 1250 tons are the base for the story of “German” material for the U.S. bombs, as at the end of the war in Europe German Uranium stemming from those 1250 tons at Olen was shipped to the U.S. pronto, and mixed (in St. Louis, as far as I’m aware) with the other stuff from Congo and Canada.
However, most of the higher enriched German Uranium ended up with the Soviets, who used it together with material from their occupied German areas and stuff from Czechoslovakia to build their own atom bomb.
— Shinkolobwe was re-opened in 1942 and provided roughly another 30.000 tons of ore for the U.S. efforts (that amount was just ore, not milled, refined or anything).
— Another source for Uranium ore was the Eldorado mines complex (on the Great Bear Lake, also a Radium mine) in Canada. Fermi’s original lab material also came from here. Around 1000 tons came out of the Eldorado mines for the Manhattan project.
— And finally there was the Carrizo mines on the Colorado Plateau, which are actually Vanadium mines, but which contained a good deal of Uranium, and contributed roughly 15 percent of all Uranium ore for the Manhattan project.

Milling took place in Canada, Washington State, Colorado (maybe a couple of places more).
Refinement took place at Ames, IA, and St.Louis, MO.
Isotope separation, resp Pu production took place at Oakridge and Hanford.

Trinity Device & Fat Man:
In early/mid 1941 Pu239 is isolated and identified for the first time (at Berkley, then work continues at Chicago), giving access to a second fissile material (besides U235). Pu239 enrichment then took place in the reactors at Hanford, WA (though most of the Pu239 material for lab tests came from Oak Ridge), contracted out to DuPont. It took till April/June 1945 till enough Pu239 had been refined at Hanford for two bombs. Oak Ridge Plutonium had a higher concentration of Pu240 (due to the method), and was too “hot” for the initial Pu-based bomb design (Thin Man).
And not to forget the 185 kilogramm (not litre! :D) of heavy water from the Norwegian Norsk Hyrdo, which made their way from Norway to France to the U.K. and finally to the U.S., to be used as moderator and vital for Plutonium production. But most of the heavy water came from Canada (from Trail, BC).

Little Boy:
U235/238 separation took place at Oak Ridge and was slow going. Little Boy used all the U235 available (plus possible German stockpiles), so that’s one of the reasons why no test was done before the drop on Hiroshima.

No guarantee that the above is 100% correct, but it is how I understand the matrial sourcing for the Manhattan Project.
In any case the U.S. used “da bomb” as early as possible.

Besides these technicalities: There was a fundamental difference how the U.S. saw the war against Japan, and the war against Germany. And the word – not to a small part – was race, and also revenge. And also, maybe, the Allied insecurity about the status of the German nuclear programme, and having missiles there might have been an Allied thinking that the Germans might be able to shot a bomb at London or New York.

In mid 1945 the Soviet-Western alliance was still up and running. Also because of a lack of exposure to the reality of Sovietism. There were certainly people, like Patton, who warned against the Soviets already before VE day and then in the weeks and month after, but that was an absolute minority position (see the protocols of his meeting with SecWar Patterson at Arco Castle in Upper Austria). And too many common interests still. Like the British-Soviet occupation of Iran, the desire of the U.S. to have the Soviets threaten Manchuria, &c.

Patton’s assessment of the Soviets is interesting, btw. Well worth reading! A full year before Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” speech in Missouri he pretty much predicted the future of Soviet conquered contintal Europe. – Defeated the Germans, but failed to liberate Europe, we lost the war …

The cartridge is a 37x190mm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COW_37_mm_gun
The Home Guards used them a bit. 1918 is one early piece!

http://www.quarry.nildram.co.uk/37-40mm.htm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rz1MSHglGP4

Seen this?
http://www.williamsugghistory.co.uk/

I think what you have here doesn’t belong together. Possible?
What features a the projectile might be part of one of Mr. Sugg’s burners.

Task profile of Tornado IDS in German services: low level deep strike penetration against known (= back then (semi-)stationary targets); warload would have been partially tactical nuclear, partially dispensers. Already during the Gulf War 1990 low level penetration proved unhealthy (ok, very flat terrain in the Euphrates valley, makes it especially difficult.

A pure technical replacement of Tornado will be Eurofighter armed with some stand-off LO cruise missiles, paired with STA (the more real time the better) UAVs. There is no need to introduce another platform for that mission.

However, doing a purely technical replacement ignores the bigger question. What for would Germany need such a system? Well, it does not need it but the U.S. orders its vassals to be hostile against Russia. And the vassals, ruled by a traitorous fifth column obliges and pisses away its people’s future. The U.S. strategy to force Continental Europe into dispute with Russia, and to create chaos in the South, thus building a ring of instability around Europe is what should be talked about and should be the basis for decisions concerning Tornado replacement.

If anyone in Germany would really have German interests in mind – ROFL at that thought – a nuclear armed long range VLO cruise missile in the fashion of Kh-102 would be built. And it sure as hell would not be aimed at Moscow!!!

A war U.S. vs. NKorea is very unlikely. That said, things might still spiral out of control. And NKorea is now officially part of the thermonuclear club which means it is also a “legitimate” target for a nuclear attack. In which case – the worst case scenario – I’d say the U.S. go in with 20 to 30 nuclear weapons, most likely B83 dropped by B-2 and B61 dropped by F-22, all within a few minutes of a moonless night with easterly winds, targeting most likely both counter-value (B83 – political HQs) and counter-force (B61 – mil HQs, those known and suspected nuclear sites). Followed immediately by a massive all-out SKorean and U.S. air campaign, rolling from the DMZ northwards, and at the same time by an armored push north to get Seoul out of range of NKorean artillery. Should such a scenario happen it also means de-facto war with China. So the same scenario as 1951, Chinese troops racing south, and SKorean troops pushing north. Both trying to keep from hot fallout areas. Russia will keep out but go to their equivalent of DefCon 2 because with another use of nuclear weapons all bets are off and all treaties are dead. But lets not orgasm over doomsday scenarios …

Most likely outcome of all of this: no direct kinetic action will happen. The Kim Dynasty has reached a critical step. It is not in their interest to really start a war, they just had to keep the U.S. from attacking until they reached that weaponized thermonuclear warhead + ICBM capability. They won.

But there will be fallout: This is the final proof that a sovereign country needs nuclear weapons. Turkey, Saudi Arabia, … and counter-proliferation is officially dead.

LOL. Sounds like somebody receives kickbacks to keep the 747 out of the game.

Is there any news on the CAS on demand concept where the JTAC controls drones?

It seems to me the XQ-222 could be a good drone for that, with possibly additional external payload when stealth is not required.

That is one of the most critical points in the whole complex. The question what are the Combat Controllers allowed to do. And that is much more a cultural / tribal question than a technical question. You don’t need the whole fancy C2 structure if the CC teams are running the show on their own.

Aside from that: Precision Fires is not CAS. CAS has a psychological component (I’m being watched …) that precision fires can’t match. And Afghanistan overall is a dangerous to bad example for CAS. For one it was / is a static war (up a mountain, up a valley a few meters, often within walking distance). So precision fires (can) work(s) here. For two it was a services tribal effort to be part of the game, a way to make each weapon system relevant (see using B-2 from out of theatre instead of flooding the country with A-10). A P-47 could do the CAS job in Afghanistan! And it would be right perfect. Real CAS against infantry hasn’t changed since ’45.

Actually Xena’s remarks are spot on. Before larger screens and especially somewhat capable digital signal processing (at some point in the 1980’s) there was no realistic way for a system operator (i.e. pilot or shipboard operator) to utilize SARH missiles against multiple targets simultaneously. There was a reason why heavy fighters had RIOs. Against longer range targets the CW return against a formation was (and to a good degree still is) just a single blob – that’s why close formation flying was popular. And the track-while-scan and lock/illuminate logical was based on certain assumptions, like that the target does not change speed and vector too radical too fast (if it did the next “track” didn’t look at the expected location and no track happened – the lock was broken and it was back to scan). And that problem became much worse if the radar platform itself maneuvered and the angle between tracked returns became wider. With lighter and faster antennas and more powerful computers that problem became less, but only AESA really solved it. And for shipboard operations it was and still is all timing. The old systems only had a chance when they knew precisely where the anti-ship missile would come from – classical scripted excercise scenario. With only a few ten seconds max between poping up on the search radar, establishing a track amongst the heavily cluttered radar returns, have the operator confirm it really is an incoming missile (don’t want to use automatic even if available as it might shoot at friendlies or that random wave formation), activating the missile (charging batteries, spooling up giros, etc), handing over data from search to fire control (perhaps even manually still!) and firing the missile it would have been too late. As said above somewhere, there was a reason they slaved the fire control radar to optical seekers. But try an optical seeker in crappy weather or at night … The only consolation would have been that the incoming missile’s seeker also had a hard time to find and home on that ship in higher sea states with the target popping around and waves giving fake returns. Much of the Cold War stuff was big boy’s gadets and wishful thinking, and in the end not terribly important, since everyone knew that a major power confrontation would have been nuclear from the first moment on.