I posted a question in aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/66595/… about how are Flyboards expected to be used by military. I'm trying to clarify the question, but in comments I was addressed do the chat. Am I in the right place?
Well, yes, insofar as this is the chat they told you about. You're welcome to ask off-topic questions in chat, but I don't think you're more likely to get an answer that isn't just speculation
Since the flyboard has been included in a military parade, I suppose that it is somehow related to the military, that there is some project on acquiring or developing it for military use, that something about this project has been made public, and that experts on military aviation are aware of it.
That is what makes me think that aviation.se is a good place to ask.
Asking on politics.se could work, too, although the question could be phrased to ask why was the flyboard included in the parade.
@Pere Not necessarily. It may just mean that the inventor managed to talk someone into letting him in the parade as an example of French innovation, so that he can build credibility to try to sell or get more development funding for his invention.
It's possible. It's hard to prove a negative, but anybody knowledgeable could answer if flyboards are mentioned by the sources that usually mention other ongoing projects of French military.
Yes, I'm sure people who read a lot of coverage about military projects could answer that. We just don't have a lot of that expertise on our site, which is mainly civil aviators. When there are questions and answers about military aircraft, they tend to be things that are not military-specific: aircraft design, aerodynamics, procedures, etc.
If there is such a project, I think there's a risk that people who follow air force news won't know about it because it turns out to be an army project, about mobilising individual soldiers, and isn't in the usual air force channels.
A lot of questions that are on topic get no answers, in any SE site. But we have a few very specific questions about the use of present and past weapons that got good answers.
Furthermore, we can have experts interested in flyboards that may know what are they supposed to be used for. Some of their expected military uses may be very similar to some of their civilian military uses.
Well, I'm open to the idea of re-examining our attitude to military questions. There's no reason we couldn't have a community of military aviators too, if we chose to increase the site's scope
I would imagine sensors that pick up the wavelength/PRF and a couple of emitters trying to flood the seeker. Or could chaff be sufficiently reflective?
Are combat flight and military aircraft questions on-scope? has been asked, but the consensus appears to have been 'wait and see with specific questions.' So, here's a specific one that I saw in the first question review queue: Why do Air Forces still use bombers?
To me, this question seems off-...
Perhaps this isn't on-topic, but is the A-10 effective against tanks (tank armour)?
For example, this page claims:
Using the cannon, the A-10 is capable of disabling a main battle tank from a range of over 6,500 m.
Is that true?
If that were so, why does a "main battle tank" (e.g. an M1 A...
Don't forget you're taking a biased sample, because you're not seeing the military questions that were considered off-topic and closed: any on a score of less than 1 with no answers would get roomba'd eventually
Yes, I know my sample is biased because I can't see deleted questions. Furthermore, I'm biasing my sample even more because I'm just copying questions that got answers.
Would it be OK if I asked about the practical use of flyboards?
I'm going to change the question - in fact, my curiosity got broadened during this conversation - but I can't see how asking about the practical use of a kind of aircraft is on topic while asking for the practical use of the same kind of aircraft in a given field is not on topic.
@Dave -- I deleted the question but just thought I would answer your comment-- re"If its a charter that small you likely hired it and they are doing what you want, you could always just tell them you don't want to go anymore... On any note if the pilots is getting his runway condition reports from passengers, there are likely other issues... " --the language barrier and the pilots angry disposition prevented me from just saying "I don't want to go".
This question is due to this question and the subsequent discussion in chat.
It looks like we have a few questions that are not really on topic, but rather are about military stuff and they are not closed only because an aircraft is involved.
Examples:
What exactly was the American WW2 smokeb...
@quietflyer sadly they won't see this, Dave is not pingable. your best bet is to undelete your question, answer to their comment, and wait for them to see the comment/come to chat
@Dave - and others -- I started a new chat room to chat more about the question about the situation where the passenger perhaps SHOULD interfere with the controls and prevent the flight from starting. Here it is chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/96210/… . I agree it's not a great question for ASE and may delete it soon.
@Pere To be fair in my eyes the edit has moved the question from "off-topic" to "primarily opinion-based". Especially the line about the expected applications of hoverboards is only inviting speculation. Contrast this with other questions about experimental hardware that specifically ask for pros and cons when compared to specific existing technology, and are thus regarded as on-topic and not too subjective.
I don't ask people their opinion - that's not Wordbuilding.SE. I'm asking what they know. If Flyboards are being marketed and purchased - and maybe purchased by a branch of government - or at least their developing is being supported, somebody in charge should have make public some statements about what are they supposed to be good for.
@Pere Then the question should be "Has the French MoD given any reasoning for its support of the Hoverboard?", rather than asking the community to speculate on it. I must warn you that the reasons given by MoDs worldwide range from none at all to propagandistic grandstanding, so you may get better results via the comparison route I suggested.
Then my options are to include the French MoD in the answer and get the question closed for being about military aviation (as Federico argued) and not including the French MoD in the question to get the question closed as speculative (as you say).
In fact, I would be happy with somebody answering the uses expected by the French MoD, the potential uses stated by the marketing department of the Flyboard maker, or by any expert on any field who could give a well grounded answer about how a Flyboard can or can't be useful in their field.
So, I've noticed that there are quite a lot of questions of the form, "Why don't we make commercial aviation safer by doing X?"
The answer is usually "Commercial aviation is already very safe; X would increase costs while not significantly improving safety."
I wonder if we should have a tag for all these questions.
[safety-improvement-suggestion] or something.
Anyone have any thoughts? Would this tag be useful to have or not?
Whatever the tag name is, the description I'd suggest would be: "An idea for making aviation safer, such as by changing aircraft design or enacting a new policy."
@TannerSwett What kind of testing did they do? When I was diagnosed with ADHD back in the 90's they did a computer test with flashing squares and a button I had to push.
@TannerSwett That sounds similar to the one I took. They did it once before and once after a dose of Ritalin and compared the two. Those seem so sketchy to me. How in the world is that supposed to determine whether you'd be unsafe as a pilot? I think the whole thing is crap. Especially for a plain old PPL.
@TomMcW It prevents a bunch of new users from posting low-quality responses to popular questions. Mods can protect any question, 15k users can on some questions, and the system ("Community") will automatically sometimes. More details on meta.
I would imagine sensors that pick up the wavelength/PRF and a couple of emitters trying to flood the seeker. Or could chaff be sufficiently reflective?
Perhaps this isn't on-topic, but is the A-10 effective against tanks (tank armour)?
For example, this page claims:
Using the cannon, the A-10 is capable of disabling a main battle tank from a range of over 6,500 m.
Is that true?
If that were so, why does a "main battle tank" (e.g. an M1 A...
This question is due to this question and the subsequent discussion in chat.
It looks like we have a few questions that are not really on topic, but rather are about military stuff and they are not closed only because an aircraft is involved.
Examples:
What exactly was the American WW2 smokeb...
The Hangar
The Hangar