Size Matters How Big Should A Military Design Team Be: Fill & Download for Free

The US. Easily. Now, to be clear, I love the concept of Wakanda but militarily its completely trumped. Long story short, the US has a military built for real warfare, and Wakanda has a military built for a movie. It’s just not a fair comparison but in any case let’s go to the “whys”. So, so many whys:Overrated Technology:The basic premise of Wakanda is that they look like a third-world country but are actually so advanced they actually make the US look like a third-world country.However, the MCU hasn’t exactly translated this super-well to the big screen. There are only about 3 technologies that really stand out to me that the MCU Wakanda has, all of which are ultimately overrated.Their energy shields.Their aircraftThe Black Panther suit.Firstly, the shields. The city itself has a shield and this technology is shown to be downsized with infantry shields. The shields would be a great asset infantry, but unfortunately they’re actually not.In military science there is a progressive level of protection from the enemy. The first and best defense is if the enemy doesn’t expect and even know of you’re presence.In short, if you don’t want to get killed, remain undetected. If they’re aware of your presence, at least don’t be seen. If you’re seen, at least don’t get hit. If you’re hit, at least don’t get penetrated. If you’re penetrated, at least don’t get killed.What armor and shields try to do (stop penetration) is step 4 of a 5-step process. The Wakandan shield is built for a scenario which you have already been detected, seen, and hit. I don’t care if that shield is completely impenetrable: if there’s a scenario in which those three things are happening, something has gone wrong.Getting hit and surviving is great, but situational awareness is far better than any amount of armor: see first, shoot first, hit first, penetrate first, and kill first is the ideal combat scenario, not get hit, don’t get penetrated, then fire back.Also worth considering is that modern infantry almost never use bulletproof shields in combat, and when they do it’s in very specialized roles such as the point of a building-clearing team. Even still, they’re not used to the awkwardness and bulk of a shield in modern combat, as well as the fact that it leaves only one hand for your weapon, requiring you to use either an inferior one-handed weapon (i.e pistol instead of assault rifle) or use only one hand for a weapon that’s better handled with two.While the energy shields are doubtlessly lighter than SWAT-style entry shields used by modern police and militaries, the basic threat management flaw still holds: not only are advanced shields meant for a scenario in which you’ve been detected, seen, and hit before you could do it to the enemy: the shields actually make being detected, seen, and hit more likely by virtue of lighting up in a whitish-blue light.This is like anti-camouflage.A far better approach would be to work on making soldiers invisible or having some sort of active, hologram based camouflage technology, something which Wakanda clearly has the tech for given their whole city is hidden by a hologram. If they can downsize the energy shield for personal use, why not invisibility. I’d be far more terrified fighting an army of invisible soldiers than ones with shields.Secondly, we have their aircraft, which fire lasers. All I can say is “Oh boy, another sci-fi aircraft that seems super-advanced but depends completely on Within Visual Range weaponry”. Even if we assume their shields make them invincible they don’t seem to have too many of them, given we only see a handful in the background in Infinity War and how they only seem to have one “airport” and a small one at that.In short, there will be no Independence Day style aerial massacres. Best case scenario is turns out they’re immune to our air-to-air missiles and our jets are far away enough to retreat safely to base (seeing as we can engage them from dozens of miles away with missiles but they can’t). Worst case we get cocky and lose a few dozen aircraft in close-range dogfights before adjusting our tactics and mission loadouts i.e we’d focus more on missiles than bombs, or use cheaper aircraft and drones piloted by AI we’re not afraid to lose.Lastly, we have the BP suit. The BP suit is an infantryman’s dream, making the wearer almost invincible. Unfortunately, it’s main weapons are claws and I don’t think it can be mass-produced. I don’t think there’d be more than enough for a platoon of soldiers. That’s certainly enough to cause trouble on the ground for maybe a few hundred or a few thousand US soldiers, or strike at a key unit or facility, but ultimately any special forces equipped with the BP suit are going to be a force multiplier, not a force (i.e. they can’t win the war on their own, just make it easier for others) and as we’ll explore, they don’t have much of that either.Organization:Here’s what a modern infnatry division looks like.Google Image Result for http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/69/24th_US_Infantry_Division_1989.pngWe also have an experienced and large corps of NCOs and other kinds of officers to streamline command and control, or take intiative on their own.Wakandan organization, on the other hand, is basically just a medieval levy system where each tribe contributes some troops to supplement the king and his bodyguards. It’s literally a centuries-outdated method of raising an army, and there’s a reason why professional armies have replaced them: they’re unstandardized.Levies aren’t just simply your vassal giving you a few hundred guys to do whatever you want with. You’re basically building your army from a bunch of other armies, leaving you with a mixed force where weapons, training, unit size, tactics and doctrine can vary wildly.This can be seen in the Jabari Tribe, who brought sticks to the battle for the universe. While their dedication to low-tech tradition is an understandable trademark of their particular culture (I have no problem with off-grid living in and of itself), it seems that no one bothered thinking that maybe the trillions of sentient lifeforms at stake merited a break from their cultural norms. If this kind of nonsense is allowed when the universe is at stake, it seems clear that in no circumstances will Wakanda ever force its soldiers to equip, train, or fight a certain way.Lack of layered defenses:Wakanda has very little strategic depth. It’s just one city with one contingent of soldiers. There are no strategic-level fallback positions and no reserve if they fail. It’s greatest asset is the energy shield, but once you get through that they’re basically screwed since it’s their best and pretty much only line of defense.Total lack of CRBN defenses:The Black Panther suit probably comes with a filtration system and the shield may be able to protect Wakanda from disease, poison, and radiation, but what about the soldiers themselves?Once you get past that shield a single chemical or biological warhead could wipe their entire army out. I’m sure they have some magic cure-all antidote, but having thousands of dying troops that are revived easily is not as good as having them all be fine because they had gas masks.Meanwhile, modern soldiers have been trained and equipped to deal with chemical weapons since the First World War.Lack of WMDs:I’m pretty sure Shuri could create a Vibranium Nuke that’d make Tsar Bomba look like a firecracker, and of course the comics version of Wakanda has things that make nukes look like conventional weapons, but ultimately any idea that MCU Wakanda has WMDs is speculation.In fact, I’d almost say we can guarantee they don’t have them. The stakes in Infinity War were so high that it means that everyone is not holding back. If there was a time to reveal or use a skill/ability/weapon/whatever, IW would be the event to use it for.Seeing as a battle for the fate of the universe would more than justify a nuke or chemical weapon, we can safely say MCU Wakanda does not have them. The country is isolated so it’s not like collateral damage would be a problem.This lack of WMDs means not only does Wakanda have limited ability to wage war on a strategic scale, but also that the US is completely undeterred in using their nukes, chemicals, and pathogens.No logistical or medical support:Wakanda has great medical care, but the military apparently has no medics to administer treatments on the field, and the hovercraft that carried troops to the battlefield wasnt seem carrying any wounded back.Also, soldiers carry extra of everything. Extra weapons, extra parts, food, ammo, a sidearm entrneching tools, bandages. EVERYTHING.As far as I’mconcerned each Wakandan soldier only carries one spear and one shield. If either fails to operate 100% as expected you’re screwed.No body armor or helmets:I’ve already explained why shields are a bad idea in the overrated technology section, but that being said if you’re trying to not be penetrated, you might as well have armor if you’re also going to have a shield. It makes sense to wear armor but no shield (i.e. to free both hands) but not the other way around.Wakanda by all rights should be able to outfit everyone with at least some sort of full-body suit of some kind. Maybe the Black Panther suit can’t be mass-produced, but at a bare minimum every Wakandan soldier should have something like the Mark I Iron Man Suit.In fact, it doesn’t even have to be power armor. A modern-style vest but with Vibranium instead of Kevlar and ceramic would be more than acceptable. Or how about medieval plate armor or the kind of scale patterns used by Roman Legionaries or samurai? Some sort of modernized chain-mail would be far more practical (and cooler) than what we saw.This isn’t even a tactical concern: it’s a missed opportunity from a thematic and storytelling standpoint. Given how Black Panther is inspired by African culture, are you going to tell me that there isn’t a single noteworthy armor pattern of African origin? In fact, this has already been answered: Did ancient Africans wear armor if so pictures?The costume department could have had a killer day crafting some badass Vibranium armor designs that would pay homage to Africa’s military history, and yet we just get somewhat generic tribal garb that as far as I can tell doesn’t incorporate the material that Wakanda A. has a lot of and B. can refine and use pretty much any way they want. The failure to use any kind of body armor (or indeed, any kind of uniform for that matter) is a failure of fashion, worldbuilding, tactics, resource management, and common sense on all levels.If nothing else, go grab a bowl from your kitchen and duct tape it to your head. Everyone from athletes to soldiers and cops know the value of head protection. It contains 4 of your 5 sensory organs and your brain, the absolute most vital organ. If for some reason you must wear no armor (stealth, flexibility, weight, mobility, etc) at least wear a helmet.If nothing else Captain America of all people would know the value of having helmet on during combat. You know, from fighting WWII and being a supposed tactical genius, he probably saw a lot of this happen:Extremely Low Manpower:Wakanda, in its most desperate hour, with the entire fate of all life in the universe at stake, can barely muster a few thousand combat troops. High school reunions have mobilized more people.On the other hand, the US maintains a military of around 2,000,000 with only volunteers. If it ever came to it, conscription could push this number an entire order of magnitude higher, considering the US military had over 10,000,000 soldiers by the end of WWII with a total population of about half what we have today.Even if they inflict a 1,000:1 casualty ratio the US if nothing else will destroy them through sheer attrition.Little Heavy Ordnance and Almost No Weapon Variety:The Wakandans have energy spears than can supposedly take out a main battle tank. Even if this is true, so? Even the first anti-rank rockets had ranges several times that of a thrown spear (let alone modern anti-tank missiles with ranges of several miles) but this is barely scratching the surface. Where’s their mortars? Artillery guns? Rockets, missiles, close air support aircraft and strategic bombers? The heavy machineguns? The armored personnel carriers, the tanks? Their drones and smart bombs? Cruise missiles? Gatling guns?It doesn’t matter how powerful your small arms are. Even if they can take out a tank (something we never see), a military still needs a wide variety of capabilities to cope with all kinds of battlefield needs and situations. Even something as simple as “a gun” can still have plenty of variety: shotguns, pistols, submachine guns and carbines for tight CQC, sniper rifles for long range shots, assault rifles for general usage, machineguns for laying down suppressive fire, and so on.Even if we were to assume that the Wakandan spear was the ultimate ground combat weapon (it’s actually so bad it gets its own separate bolded point below), let me just ask one question: if Wakandan infantry weapons can take out a tank, what about a jet aircraft miles above you traveling several times the speed of sound? Can they shoot down a missile? Certainly those laser bolts, however powerful, have no guidance capabilities, not that the soldiers would be able to see let alone aim at a target so fast and far away with their bare eyes anyway. They also seem to fly pretty straight: what if a target is over the horizon or not in direct line of sight? All these concerns can be addressed by surface-to-air missiles and artillery respectively, nothing we see the Wakandans have. It doesn’t even necessarily have to be a weapon in order to be necessary on the battlefield. Sometimes you need to use smoke to conceal your movements, mark targets or medivac locations, or confuse the enemy. This is where smoke grenades and smoke rounds come in.The Wakandan army is nothing more than a few thousand infantry with no protection except for a location-signaling shield and armed with a single type of a firearm, transported to the battlefield by unarmed, open-top hovercraft that leave everyone exposed. That’s just atrocious, with the rest of their inventory consisting of a small number of jet aircraft restricted to line-of-sight targeting (a limitation which was lifted in the 60s; while plenty of close-range dogfights have happened since then, this is no longer technologically required) and a small number of supersuits so that their head of state can run around the battlefield and claw enemies to death instead of…you know, shooting them at a safe distance, and maybe having someone else do it while they’re at it.Infantry are the backbone of the military but not the punching arm. Most casualties in warfare are inflicted by artillery and airstrikes, and having only footsoldiers essentially limits the Wakandans to small arms, and as we’ve seen only one small arm at that. Needless to say this puts their overall flexibility and firepower at several orders of magnitude below a real-life military. Even guerillas or third-world militaries at least have some kind of light artillery.Viet Cong with 81mm mortar. It’s also worth noting that the Battle of Khe Sanh, one of the most infamous battles of the Vietnam War, involved a months-long artillery duel between American artillery and aircraft vs. the NVA and Viet-Cong mortars and howitzers.Atrocious Small Arm (singular because of no weapon variety):TL;DR you can turn a gun into a spear, but not the other way around.See this?This is a socket bayonet, the invention that spelled the end of melee weapons as a primary tool in battle. Before the socket bayonet, soldiers with firearms either had to rely on melee infantry for protection or affix “plug bayonets” whose base went into the barrel, preventing them from firing.Melee combat would of course persist for centuries, but with every gunman now a spearman pure spearmen were outdated. Despite being originally a gun, the basic principle of “long shaft with pointy end” still applied, and thus guns were now just as effective as the spears of old were with nothing more than a simple attachment.See this?This is a Wakandan energy spear. It fires energy bolts that, so we are told, can take out a tank. However, there are no sights on that spear, making the aiming difficult. There is no butt or padding to make the spear easy to mount against your shoulder, hindering accuracy. The spear itself shoots bolts of energy that seem slow compared to bullets, light up the battlefield making them easily traceable to your location (as if your blue flashlight shields weren’t enough), and don’t fire as fast as a regular assault rifle even under the assumption they have infinite ammunition, which limits their ability to suppress the enemy with continuous fire like a machinegun can. There is no strap or sling to make it easier to carry for long journeys or if you need to free up both your hands (i.e. carrying something around your base), and the length of the spear itself compromises the user in some situations like urban combat where space is tight. There don’t seem to be any rails or any spaces for attachments, meaning that thermal sights, scopes, night vision lenses, etc or even just a simple flashlight are impossible to utilize. Presumably Wakanda knows the secrets of duct tape, but that is no excuse for lacking what is a standard feature on the vast majority of modern firearms from all us “less advanced” real-life people.Little (that is to say no) Support Equipment:This is what your average modern soldier looks like:This is what a couple average Wakandan soldiers look like:Wakanda is the world’s most technologically advanced civilization, but they make very poor utilization of that technology. Sure, their warriors have energy spears that aren’t as good as a JAVELIN anti-tank missile (or even just a regular M-16) and shields that reveal their location, but none of this compares to the utter travesty of what’s not there.I could honestly go on and on and on and on and on about the literally dozens of items the no Wakandan soldier has that pretty much every American one does, going in length about how they don’t have everything from proper camouflage uniforms (a basic concept universally implemented since the early 1900s) to first aid kids, or even just shovels (which have been standard kit for soldiers since the ancient Romans) , but I’m just going to focus on just one thing, one word.Radio.Every modern soldier should have a radio. No excuses. I don’t care if it’s a child’s walkie-talkie that has only 2 channels and a distance of only a few miles. I do not care if it’s a literal toy radio. Coordination is key in military operations, and the base of this is good communication. In modern times, every soldier who can’t transmit and receive information at literal lightspeed is at a significant, even crippling disadvantage.Granted, Black Panther apparently has some sort of earpiece comms system with fellow superheroes and Shuri, and yes, I suppose the Wakandan army was small enough and packed close enough that one person could be heard clearly by all of them, but two wrongs don’t make a right.“My army is small enough for me to talk to every soldier at once!” is not any sort of excuse the most technologically advanced country should have for not having every single soldier equipped with radios.It’s honestly embarrassing that a nation of Wakanda’s advancement is reduced to yelling verbal commands to the entire army at once like they’re Romans or something.Oh, and even the Romans have them beat, because at least the Romans would have things like horns that can carry an auditory signal farther and more clearly than a single unamplified human voice that’s just going to get lost in the chaos, not to mention standard-bearers which would allow commanders to readily find and distinguish different units on the battlefield.While the Wakandans are unable to fortify their positions for want of shovels, American soldiers’ biggest concerns will be about whether or not the government will help them with their chronic back pain after deployment from lugging around too many useful things.Horrible Doctrine:Wakanda has survived human history by trying to not be noticed. This in itself it not bad since you can observe and learn from others, but we can figure out how Wakanda wants to wage war by focusing on how they do it.When Killmonger aims to make the whole world burn, his plan is essentially this:Use cadres of “War Dogs” that are apparently in every world government to assassinate key military and political officials.Send out shipments of Wakandan weapons to arm black people to rise up.Granted, one could say that this is just Killmonger’s plan, and one could also make the argument that his ideas have no bearing on what Wakanda “would” do. That being said, the infrastructure for his style of warfare was already in place, implying that Wakandan “military” doctrine is based upon spec-ops and espionage instead of conventional forces.Having assassins ready to kill every head of state at a moment’s notice but not more than a few thousand actual soldiers in your actual army seems like a strategic choice and not a limitation. If you can destabilize the globe on a whim, you can field a military larger than your average high school. That just makes sense.This emphasis on special operations is confirmed in the movie’s opening scene wherein a Wakandan hovercraft infiltrates an American neighborhood as well as the Black Panther himself, a highly-capable soldier who takes part in at least two special ops missions in the film (ambushing the convoy and trying to get the guy who stole vibranium).Having expertise in espionage and SF is nice, but they’re the icing on the cake. If 10,000 soldiers attack a village and a covert team manages to assassinate the defending commander in the midst of battle, then victory is more likely. If a SF team just assassinates a commander with no concurrent operations or follow-up, they just ensure someone else gets a promotion.Seal Team Six took out Bin Laden in a historic raid, but the War on Terror also needs Marines and Army soldiers to do the everyday patrols, garrison duties, and humanitarian work.Ideally you should have both, but at the end of the day countries can win with conventional forces without SF, but not the other way around.Little history of combat:As said before Wakanda’s basic survival strategy is to hide from the world. This again is not automatically bad, given that you can observe and study the wars and conflict in other countries.That being said, there is no replacement for the real thing. Outside of minor infighting and a few skirmishes, it seems Wakanda has pretty much never faced a single major war against an outside power in its entire history. It’s people, leaders, weapons, and ideas on waging war have never been tested on a large scale. Even the battle in Infinity War was just a melee involving a few thousand people and lasted about an hour. Objectively speaking, there have been real-life riots larger and more destructive than that “battle”.The US, on the other hand…List of wars involving the United StatesWhile some people may gripe about the win rate of the United States, bringing up Vietnam and the War on Terror, those are terrible arguments. Firstly, the nature of these wars is entirely different. These are guerilla wars fought in vast expanses of rough terrain. Fighting Wakanda is mostly a conventional war over one city. Yes, I know cities are a nightmare to fight over, but as said before attrition favors the US by several orders of magnitude, and there aren’t hundreds of thousands of square miles to worry about.Secondly, they ignore political considerations that make these wars “unwinnable” and thus not really a point against the US’s win record. The United States didn’t pull out of Vietnam because of some horrible military disaster that no amount of technology or manpower could ever fix. We pulled out of Vietnam because of the antiwar movement and because the war could only ever be won by invading North Vietnam, which wouldn’t happen because it could have brought China and USSR into direct conflict with us. In the War on Terror, the US military needs to exercise extreme caution and care due to fear of civilian casualties since terrorists blend into the population. We also have to consider that terrorism is an idea, not a country, and terrorists are transnational networks of extremists who can flee across borders where the US is not legally allowed to strike at them. Wakanda is a country with a fixed location, and this is a conventional war, something which the US has traditionally always succeeded in.One last thing is that regardless of how you think the US is doing in current or past wars, the important thing is that we’ve fought them. We can argue about this or that war, but the fact is that the US has the most experienced military in the world, with everyone from the politicians and generals to privates having seen action. While of course not every soldier gets deployed or every commander get a commission in a combat zone, as an institution the US knows what war is like while the Wakanda doesn’t. Even if you think the US is terrible at wars, at the very least failures are things you can learn from, whereas the Wakandans have no frame of reference whatsoever.Horrible Tactics:Nobody ever claimed the Wakandans had better tactics, only better technology. Unfortunately, without the knowledge and experience to use it properly you’ll fail. Let’s take the performance of their leader during the Battle of Wakanda as an example:You are fighting a defensive operation on a hill. Your forces are equipped with spears that fire lasers, in tight formation behind a wall of energy shields held by the front ranks. The enemy is a far larger force of superstrong monsters, but they have no weapons and are mindlessly charging in a dense, unorganized mob. In addition, a huge energy field surrounding your whole position is killing the monsters as they try to come through, though a few slip inside. As your troops manage to hold them off at a distance you notice a few dozen of the creatures (out of thousands upon thousands) going around your flank, though still on the other side of your energy shield. What do you do?A. Redirect a small portion of your force to match the diversion.B. Redirect a larger portion of your forces to overwhelm and destroy the diversion.C. Carefully but quickly withdraw so your enemy can’t get behind you.D. Reorient your battle line so both threats are on the same side. (i.e. if someone is in front of you and another to your side, turning 45 degrees means you can see both of them in “front”).E. Shut down your shield, break formation, and charge down from the high ground so that your outnumbered human soldiers with ranged weapons can engage the swarm of superstrong monsters in hand-to-hand combat.If you picked E, you are not only the leader of the world’s most technologically advanced nation, but also a colossal moron.I respect Black Panther as a superhero, but as a general, he made literally one of the worst tactical decisions I’ve ever seen made by a military commander, either real life or fictional. Throwing away all of his advantages and playing to all of his enemy’s strengths is…I almost have to call it a work of anti-genius.In fact, he’s so bad of a commander here’s a writing exercise I want everyone to try: if you wrote Black Panther as being secretly on Thanos’ side and actively trying to lose, what more would you do than what he already did? His mission was to protect Vision, and his tactics involved tying up the entirety of his military in a pointless, risky battle in the open field far away, leaving his own family to be almost killed when enemy spec-ops effortlessly infiltrate their position. It really is that bad.With that kind of leadership, all arguments become invalid. Any potential tech advantage the Wakandans have would be immediately squandered by their commander. We all saw it onscreen for ourselves.You asked about the US but you know what could defeat Wakanda?A single artillery battery.No, not even that. A single Soviet rocket truck could conquer all of Wakanda. They’d line up in their Greek-style shield wall and Stalin’s Organ would just play away, destroying all of Wakanda’s 2,000 soldiers with just a few dozen rockets.In fact, you know who could conquer Wakanda? Pretty much any real-life African country.Rocket launchers, or spears? You decide.Fun fact: the world record for a javelin throw is about 105 meters. The JAVELIN anti-tank missile, for contrast, can take out targets at 4,750 meters.

Here are some of the famous logos.While some of these are easy to recognize some really leave your heart in the danger of missing a beat.And each of them has a story to tell.AndroidHow android design really came to beThe image given above are the actual drafts of the design of the android logo.Irina Blok,the designer of the android logo, says that the original Android design objective was to generate a representation that completely captured the product (including the open source angle), as well as a strategy for forming an emotional connection with the brand. Initially, the logo was aimed squarely at developers, and was intended to have the same weighting as the Linux Penguin.As it turns out, the logo resonated strongly with both consumers and developers. Blok says as Google considers “…anything that resembles traditional marketing [as] cheesy and unworthy of attention…”, a typical officious presentation just wouldn’t cut it, so Blok and her team came up with a mischievous display method to ensure the logo made its covert way into the right hands.This guerrilla scheme involved leaving a sheet of paper containing the logo on a particular table in the Google offices, where they knew it would get noticed and leave Google boffins positively foaming at the mouth. Sure enough, it did: so much so that Blok says the logo went viral. She knew it had hit critical success when she spied a huge Android statue whilst driving to work, thinking: “…This is cool, how something you create has a life on its own.”The next step in the Android logo evolution was the release of the source design within Google, so engineers could sit and waste their precious grey matter and time doodling cartoony fat stick figures modify and adapt the design to create their own versions like those below. These versions produced by assorted Google engineers seem a tad clumsy, especially the grey-blue versions that looks a little like an unfortunate blind and catatonic stumpy-legged-nightshirt-wearing granny with a mixing bowl stuck upside down on her head.The many versions created by the Google engineers themselves.NASANASA’s meatballIn the “meatball” design, the sphere represents a planet, the stars represent space, the red chevron is a wing representing aeronautics (the latest design in hypersonic wings at the time the logo was developed), and then there is an orbiting spacecraft going around the wing.Known officially as the insignia, NASA’s round logo was not called the “meatball” until 1975. That’s when NASA decided a more modern logo was in order.Richard Danne and Bruce Blackburn were hired to replace the complex meatball with a stripped-down, modernist interpretation where even the cross stroke of the A’s were removed. During the first design presentation, the proposed system was met with some resistance.Danne remembers NASA’s administrator, Dr James Fletcher, and deputy administrator, Dr George Low, having the following exchange:Fletcher: “I’m simply not comfortable with those letters, something is missing.”Low: “Well, yes, the cross stroke is gone from the letter A.”Fletcher: “Yes, and that bothers me.”Low: “Why?”Fletcher: (long pause) “I just don’t feel we are getting our money’s worth!”Still, the new program was approved and implemented.AppleTruly smells of Art in every sense.Every logo has a story behind it.The apple logo has always been amid speculations. Some people think that the shift to the apple design was to make it more appropriate for the company name. Others think of it as a more fitting tribute to Newton and his discovery of the colors and gravity. The rainbow colored apple may have been an advertisement for the color capabilities of the second computer produced by the company, Apple II. There are also people who think that the apple symbolizes Alan Turning – the father of modern computing – who took a bite out of an apple poisoned with cyanide that ultimately took his life.Here is another story-The apple is a reference from the Bible story of Adam and Eve, where the apple represents the fruit of Tree of Knowledge, with a pun on ” byte/bite”. Rob Janoff, said in an interview that though he was mindful of the “byte/bite” pun (Apple’s slogan back then: “Byte into an Apple”), he designed the logo as such to “prevent the apple from looking like a cherry tomato.”LacosteThe company name derived from the surname of its founder, Rene Lacoste, a world renowned tennis player then.Rene Lacoste was nicknamed the “crocodile” by the press after he made a bet with the captain of the French Davis Cup team. Apparently, Rene was promised a crocodile skin suitcase, something that was very important to the team, should he win the match.Though he lost the match, the public stuck with the nickname “crocodile” and Rene then decided to have a crocodile embroidered on his blazer, which he wore to the court.Fast forward to the time Rene had to get an identity for his business.The crocodile was made part of Lacoste’s brand identity.YahooThe website started as "Jerry and David's Guide to the World Wide Web" taking after the name of founders David Filo and Jerry Yang but soon changed it to ‘Yahoo’ which stands for "Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle," but Jerry and David insist they selected the name because of its definition: "rude, unsophisticated, uncouth."NikeAccording to legends, a Greek would say, “When we go to battle and win, we say it is Nike.” Originally, the mark was referred to as ‘the strip’ but was later changed to ‘Swoosh’ to describe the fibers used in Nike shoes. In the spring of 1972, the first shoe with the Nike SWOOSH Logo was introduced.AdidasThe shapes of the 3 stripes on the logo represents a mountain,pointing out towards the challenges that are seen ahead and goals that can be achieved.AudiThe four rings, which make up the Audi logo, represent the four companies that were part of the Auto-Union Consortium in 1932. They were DKW, Horch, Wanderer and Audi.BMWThe BMW medallion represents a propeller of a plane in motion, and the blue represents the sky. This is because BMW has built engines for the German military planes in World War II. The colors are the national colors of Bavaria, which now forms a part of Germany.IBMIf observed closely, the IBM logo, also known as “Big Blue”, generates a message of “Equality”. The Big Blue IBM logo, with its lower right parallel lines, highlights in the shape of an “equals” sign. Furthermore, the term “BIG” in the Big Blue IBM logo refers to the company’s size in the market share, whereas, the “BLUE” is the official color of the eight-bar IBM logo.McDonaldsThe idea of ‘arches’ was first introduced by Dick and Mac McDonald as arch shaped signs on the sides of their then ‘walk-up hamburger stand’. From an angle, those arches looked like the letter “M” and thus, were incorporated in the McDonalds logo as a merger of the two golden arches together.Mercedes-BenzThe star in three corners represents the Mercedes-Benz dominance on land, sea and air.MobilA simple typeface was used to attain exuberance and vitality. Red, being the intense color, evokes the strength and blue builds up a feeling of faithfulness and security for the company.VolkswagenThe simple logo icon contains the letters V and W: “volks” means “people” and “wagen” means “car”.ToyotaThe Toyota logo contains three ellipses, which represent the heart of the customer, the heart of the product and the heart of technological progress and limitless opportunities of the future. In Japanese, “Toyo” signifies abundance, and “ta” means rice. In some Asian cultures, the rice represents wealth.Tour de FranceThere is a biker in there somewhere. Can you see him? He is literally on Tour. Notice how the “o”, “u”, and “R” all come together along with the yellow dot to form the image.MammothThe brilliant logo for the popular ski resort located in California not only looks like a big “M” but it can also be interpreted as mammoth, a mountain, and a ski trail.Pittsburgh ZooThe white space in this logo pops out a whole lot more than in some of the others so it shouldn’t be that hard to spot the monkey and lion staring each other down.Source : 25 Famous Logos With Hidden ImagesThe meaning behind 12+ Famous logo designs you will see todayLogo Design LoveAndroid, Apple, Starbucks & NASA: What inspired these four world-famous logos?

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. —George SantayanaThe nascent Indian aviation industry is poised to be hit by the same hurricane as its British counterpart: with its cheap politics and JNU-educated bureaucrats (“African Studies” is a priority for India today? And yet that is Kanhaiyya Kumar’s Ph.D. dissertation, which you and I are paying for!)To understand how our bureaucracy strangulates all development, France's aircraft industry offers a striking example—of which others are to be found nearby in England—of the superior performance of free enterprise operations compared to those controlled by governments.Precisely why government operations are less efficient is a matter for debate—debate that easily becomes clouded with purely ideological rhetoric—but if the French example is typical, one important factor is the absence, in government-run enterprises, of decisive central leadership. The French complained that at Aerospatiale, once a program has been conceived, no matter how brilliantly, it is ultimately subject to the involvement of bureaucrats who are not specialists in aviation. French bureaucrats are trained to be bureaucrats in schools intended solely for that malign purpose; just like our Indian ones. They are different in that way from other countries’ bureaucrats, who may come from anywhere, often from the very industry whose regulation is entrusted to them.The French are thanking God that Aérospatiale is dead. The former assets of Aérospatiale are now part of Airbus.French aviation is looking up again.Oh, but the IAS does not want anyone from outside heir own cabal. They want everything for themselves. There are too many privileges attached, too much to lose.And the politicians, pathetic in their ignorance, are quite happy with the system.The demise of the British aircraft industry is due to the UK Government's truly awful policy decisions on aviation in the '60s and '70s.No one would seriously advance the thesis that Britain’s morale in the last sixty-odd years has been pegged to the peak and fall of its aircraft industry.Yet in 1945 it was the UK’s largest and most productive; and its decline has not been accidental but the result of economic forces and political decisions that have deeply affected all aspects of national life over the same time span.One could suggest that the story’s riches-to-rags trajectory has faithfully kept pace with a good deal else in Britain that has scarcely been a cause for national pride.By the late 1960s, the US dominated the production of airline aircraft globally. While the first two commercial jets to enter service both emanated from Europe, essentially, in the form of the British Comet, and the Tu-104 from the Soviet Union, the US had seized the market share lead by this time.There were several reasons for the US dominance in this field. A significant difficulty was that British airliner production, and to a lesser extent that of France, tended to cater to the needs of the flag carriers of each country. This produced designs that worked well for these carriers, but didn’t necessarily cater to global demand requirements. The US, with its many airlines, both domestic, and following the war, also for international service, was more market-oriented, which aided its airliner manufacturers, particularly Boeing, Douglas, Convair and Lockheed, to fare well in the global marketplace.Some British-built aircraft were acquired by US carriers, including the Vickers Viscount and BAC One-Eleven. On the other hand, the de Havilland Trident, the first tri-jet, and the Vickers VC-10 did not obtain any US customers. While the latter was well-liked by passengers, and had excellent hot and high performance due to the requirements of its primary customer BOAC, it was bested handily in terms of sales by the Boeing 707 and Douglas DC-8.Attacking the US commercial juggernaut required a careful strategy, so that the nascent enterprise would not be overwhelmed initially. Accordingly, the A300 was developed as the first widebody aircraft with only two engines, in a size/range category below that of the 747, DC-10 and L-1011. Initial sales were slow, but eventually even the bellwether US market was penetrated, via an order from Eastern Airlines, one of the historic US Big Four airlines.From this springboard sprang multiple offspring, including the A310 and the single-aisle A320 (and its subsequent A318, 319 and 321 family members), followed by the larger/longer-haul A330 and 340, and more recently the A380, the largest airliner in the world, giving Airbus, now a truly global competitor, a full product line. With the demise of Convair, Lockheed and Douglas, Airbus is now one component of what amounts to a duopoly in large commercial aircraft, with 8,749 aircraft delivered by the end of October 2014, and almost 6,000 aircraft in its order book.UK companies no longer have any direct involvement in the commercial aircraft manufacturing business. Well, that is not strictly true — EADS's "Airbus UK" plants at Broughton and Filton (which have a combined workforce of 13,000 — many ex-BAE employees) say they rely on 400 suppliers in the UK.The UK has the second largest aerospace industry in the world after the United States including a large supply chain in Northern Ireland supporting Bombardier. This success is built on fully integrated, pan-European supply chains that currently operate with unfettered access to the single market.But the fact remains that, with the sale of BAE's Airbus stake to EADS in October 2006, those 13,000 Airbus UK employees now work for a Franco-German-Spanish group. And the nation that was the pioneer of jet transport (with the de Havilland Comet of 1949) and the producer of Europe's most successful pre-Airbus airliner (the Vickers Viscount) is now on the sidelines of the business.▲A brand-new Comet, by gad. When the Beatles arrived in New York in February 1964, they stepped off Pan Am's 707-320 Clipper Defiance, a first-generation pure-jet aircraft that was less than five years old. The classic 707—the longer-range, turbofan-powered 707-320B—was then quite new. A week before the Fab Four's US debut, Hawker Siddeley handed over a brand-new Comet 4 to Kuwait Airways.The only civil aircraft that remains in production in the UK is the tiny Britten-Norman Islander, which, although technically built in Romania, is the last bastion of a nation that has produced more than 6,000 civil aircraft.Between the end of the Second World War and the closure of the BAE Avro RJ line in 2003, the UK built 6,033 civil aircraft (including the BAe 125 business jet, which is still being fabricated in the UK). These range from the Handley Page Hermes and Vickers Viking that appeared as the war ended in 1945, to Concorde (half of the 20 built were assembled in the UK) and the BAe 146/Avro RJ, which, despite more than 20 years of production, failed to beat the 444 sales record set by the Viscount in the 1960s.Final landing: A history of the UK aircraft industry (or 'Why Britain botched building airliners')With the UK leaving the EU, the aerospace industry would be worse off because of a reduction in access to the single market. Bombardier's boss in Belfast, in Northern Ireland, told workers the firm would be better off in the EU.And now there are serious complications with the UK leaving the EU.Why is Brussels fighting Trump's America on Britain's behalf in Bombardier trade dispute?Bombardier exposes post-Brexit realitiesBombardier employs about 4,000 people in Northern Ireland (which is part of UK). Now the UK government is in danger of appearing unable to prevent US trade policy from throwing people in the province out of work.Does this show the folly of Brexit?As for the military aircraft tragedy, you just have to read the TSR-2 story.▲The consequences of the cancellation of the TSR2 are being felt in Britain even today.The BAC TSR2 was a revolutionary low-level strike aircraft, built to a demanding RAF requirement that called for an aircraft able to deliver a tactical nuclear weapon onto the battlefield or far into enemy territory, while flying at supersonic speed and low altitude to evade enemy radar and missile cover. The aircraft had to be able to hit a target up to 1,000 nautical miles from its base, or operate from rough strips with minimal support to provide near-real-time reconnaissance information in support of ground forces.For high-altitude reconnaissance tasks, the aircraft had to be capable of sustained flight at speeds beyond Mach 2.This was a requirement drawn up little more than a decade after the end of World War II, in a world that would soon be brought to the very brink of nuclear annihilation during the Cuban Missile Crisis.Work began on 1 January 1959. Just over six years later the first aircraft had completed the first phase of its flight test programme and a second was ready to fly when the project was dramatically cancelled, along with just about every other major new aircraft for the British armed forces.The TSR2, like Canada's Avro Arrow, has since attained near-mythical status as a wonder jet without equal, cruelly destroyed just months after its first flight by a newly elected government on purely political grounds, despite supposedly meeting every aspect of its requirement.Why? Why? Why?Want to add salt to the wounds? Read about the fate of the Miles M.52 — what should have been for Britain a supreme triumph in the annals of aviation: the breaking of the sound barrier to attain supersonic speed in a piloted aircraft, but it was not to be.The standard bearer for this venture was the Miles M.52 research aircraft, arising from an exceptionally brief specification issued in 1943 by the Ministry of Aircraft Production, and assigned, to the astonishment of many, to one of Britain’s smaller aircraft manufacturers, but one with a reputation for innovatory thinking. However, as a safeguard the project was to be monitored by the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough (RAE), which would also provide a test pilot with wide jet flying and transonic flight testing experience.▲The 6.1 to 1.0 steel model of the M.52, with an adjustable all-moving tail. This underwent an extensive series of tests in the 11ft wind tunnel at RAE Farnborough.The project was classified TOP SECRET, and although the majority of the very senior figures in British aviation and politics showed strong support for the project, there was a hard core who had genuine concerns about the high risks associated with it.However, a new factor cast its shadow over the project – the intrusive interest of the Americans, with the full support of the British Government. The American interest was understandable, because the M.52 had some very innovatory features – a bi-convex wing, an all-moving tailplane (flying tail), a pilot escape capsule and a revolutionary jet engine designed by Frank Whittle. From this point the M.52 story began to assume the nature of a conspiracy, and indeed one that today remains unsolved.The denouement was the tragic cancellation of the M.52. This drastic action was totally unheralded, caught everyone absolutely by surprise, particularly as the aircraft was over 90 % completed to flight status.For a proud Britain it meant betrayal of their leading position in high-speed flight technology.The aircraft industry itself, though, was all too aware of the harsh realities that were steadily turning it into a dire mess.Yet those of us who went to air shows like Farnborough in the fifties contrived to keep our ignorance blessedly intact by means of a schoolboy patriotism.No matter how shaky the economic foundations may have been beneath the shows of glittering machinery, it was undeniably all ours.Every last rivet, every instrument, the brains behind the vision, the design, the manufacturing skills, the occasional gruesome mishap, the spate of world records — all were British to the core. In the next decade the English Electric Lightning scribbling its contrails across the sky within ninety seconds from brakes-off became an expression of British technology at its apogee.We could never have guessed how swift was to be the fall from that summit, nor to what degree the plunge would coincide with a diminishing of the nation’s expectations, of confidence in its polity, of its technical abilities, even of its own self-esteem.Empire of the Clouds: When Britain's Aircraft Ruled the WorldBy James Hamilton-PatersonI will leave you with some heartbreaking pictures of that cancelled British TSR2.Make sure your next generation does not have to bemoan, “Cry, My Beloved Country!”▲You can wait till the cows come home, but until the government decides to invest in its own people for aircraft development and purchase, the sun will never shine on India’s aerospace industry. It will mean deep disappointment, total frustration, burning anger, and heartfelt sympathy for members of teams of fellow Indians working on these projects. For our proud nation it will mean betrayal in our quest to master flight technology.It’s a sad story, and a warning to us in India.