Re: Current vehicle production/use (was [VV] Vectorverse)

Mike blasphemed:

>The Canadians work so closely with the US, we essentially have the same
>Military.

Sacrilige!  Draw and quarter the man immediately.

;-)

>  Shared C&C facilities and a few combined commands (the old
>NORAD - I forget what it's called now).   

It's still called NORAD.

http://www.norad.mil/index.cfm?fuseaction=home.welcome

Very OT, but anecdote away:

A million years back (well, during the summer of 1987) when I was in the
Cadets, I did a flight training course at the airforce base in North
Bay.
We got a tour of the NORAD facilities there.  CFB North Bay (which used
to
be a firing point for nuke-armed BOMARC missiles, among other things,
back
in the day when Canada had nukes...) had a back-up command facility
buried
deep underground.  They gave us a tour, and it was fascinating - very
cold
war-esque.  The tour was conducted by a very impressive USAF senior NCO
with what seemed like a hundred stripes, and we got to see the great big
steel door (like something out of a movie...), the cave containing and
office building on shock absorbers, etc.  They let us sit at the
consoles
with great big radar screens, and I remember moving (using a big
trackball
controller - shades of "Missile Command" for those who remember) the
cursor
over a blip off the East Coast.  The computers told me it was a
Concorde,
gave altitude and speed info, etc.  Anyway, the whole trip was
fascinating,
but possibly the most memorable part was the ride down into the complex
in
a bus (entry was via a one-lane "road").  The drivers, obviously very
very
bored people apparently saw visitors as an opportunity for fun, and ours
drove the damned bus at what seemed like a hundred kph down this long
tunnel, in which the rock walls were only about 8 inches or so off the
side
mirrors.  It was rather terrifying (though as a bunch of rather macho
teenagers - we were all 17 or 18 on that course - no one would dare to
*show* it).  We all expected something really dramatic to happen (other
than crashing...), but the trip into the complex ended very
undramatically
in a parking lot.

Anyway... NORAD is still going good and strong.  (I have no idea if the
North Bay facility is still open, but it was really interesting)