Gouge…some who read this know the inestimable value of such a commodity….
A recently opened blog, Information Dissemination, is becoming a good resource to keep tabs on developments in naval equipment and navies, not only the US stuff, but some detailed articles on China, Saudi Arabia and India have shown up as well.
Interspersed are deployed orders of battles of the US Fleets, and lots of discussion on current and projected shipbuilding.
Wander on over, I think you’ll find it a resource worth bookmarking and returning to regularly.
Yep, it was a historic day, the pinnacle of our space program, put together with men using pencils, notepads and slide rules. They got three men all the way to the surface of the moon, with few casualties along the way.
To me, I was on the other side of the date line, so this all happened on 7/21/1969 for me. Oh, yeah, the Guam Daily News didn’t mention it until page 4. You see, it was the 25th Anniversary of the Liberation of Guam, so they were a little preoccupied with celebrating a special day for those who lived through the Japanese occupation.
Get over and read what SJS has to say about this day so many years ago.
The BlendTec guy was on the phone with MJ and said the YouTube videos all started when one employed said “let’s grind something up” and they videoed it. Put it on YouTube just for giggles and it got lots and lots of hits….So, yep, you guessed it, they made lots more, blending you all sorts of stuff: Golf balls, clubs, light bulbs, etc…
So, if you have a food processing task, or have an errant significant other/soon to be former spouse with stuff, this just may be the blender for you!
12 new principles of warfare
BY LT. CMDR. CHRISTOPHER E. VAN AVERY
Now that dramatic improvements in weaponry, communications, sensors and even the utility of individual combatants have been demonstrated in Afghanistan and Iraq, it is clear that America must revise and expand its principles of war to effectively plan and execute the more expansive and complex warfare of the future battlefield.
Before redefining the principles of war for future conflicts, three questions must be answered. First, how has the revolution in military affairs (RMA) affected military capability, and how will it affect capability in the future? Second, what types of conflicts and enemies should America expect to confront over the next quarter-century? And third, who will be cooperating with America in military operations of the future? Even these seemingly simple questions have complex answers and significant caveats that must be recognized.
With regard to the effects of the RMA, some historical perspective is necessary. The current principles of war have remained essentially unchanged since at least 1921, when in the wake of World War I, there was a push in the U.S. military to codify doctrine based on the lessons of that conflict. Going into the future, great benefits for, and changes to, conventional military power are expected from the RMA. The Global Information Grid promises to be a leap forward for communications and the collection, analysis and distribution of information. Developing systems will allow a commander on one platform to electronically execute offensive or defensive action using the sensor data from a second platform and weapons from a third. The net-centric battle space will allow for seamless interservice communication, information-sharing, and the rapid fulfillment of support requests. A mistake can be made, though, in assuming that the RMA has an endpoint and the military will return to a static structure following transformation. Therefore, the first assumption when drafting new principles of war is: A new set of principles of war must be broad enough to readily accommodate the fast pace of development in military doctrine, technology and capabilities.
[…]
Fuel for the synapses. I often heard the discussion of the AEGIS Combat System being able to assign and fire weapons from other platforms back in the early ’90s, and the possibilities of equipping “lesser ships,” at the time the SPRUANCE Class DDs with vertical launch cells full of SM-2s for the cruiser to shoot. I also heard a lot of ship captains bristle at the thought of a seaman out on the foc’sle with a knuckle buster chipping up the bad non-skid being summarily fried by the rocket exhaust when a CG-47 Tactical Action Officer said “SHOOT!” It was hear enough to get most of them to actually use systems in automated modes, the only ones effective against current threat profiles of cruise missiles.
The weaponeering and sensor capabilities are well past what I was trained to integrate into my mind for war fighting, so it’s time for this discussion among the war fighters.
Anyhow, go, read, consider, or, if you like, collect, evaluate/analyze and then, if you have a comment, disseminate!
Paint dot Net. Not only is it freeware, it nags you not, it does layers, varied “opacity,” has shapes, brushes, fonts, erasers, and not only does it have some useful effects loaded in, you can download a raft of free plugins to do things like make a picture on a spherical background, inject clouds, align objects, etc, etc, etc, via the Paint.Net user forum.
I do my headers with it, because it’s quick, simple and has plenty enough features to drop the SWO pin and lettering on top of a cropped pic to header dimensions.
High quality AND free (with a PayPal button if you feel inclined to use it)!
The article I read in the St Petersburg Times (can’t find it there, but here is the original New York Times article) says the scam baiters won’t identify themselves, but did grant interviews over the phone.
St Pete Times article “Cunning ‘victms’ turn tables on Internet scams” 7/6/2007 says:
[…]
Their motives may seem altruistic, but not all law enforcement officials approve of their tactics, which can include entrapment and humiliation.
[…]
Gee, am I missing something? Humiliation in return for trying to commit international identify theft, wire fraud, and then abscond with the big $$$? Oh, well, some police person (in Lyons, France) said this:
They are fraudsters and they are not good people, but they have their human rights.
Leave it to the MSM to tell us how these wanna be, or maybe already, crooks have human rights.
Anyhow, news from the “front” in another kind of war. Just thought you’d like to know…
Category: Public Service, Technology |
Comments Off on Some Fight Terrorists, Some Go After Scammers
Solar Challenger in flight (Click the pic for more of the story)
Maybe everyone flying to “We have to make carbon to reduce it” Live Earth Concerts should consider investing in this type of aircraft, before they foul my breathing air anymore.Oh, and Solar Challenger successfully crossed the English Channel this day in 1981 (5 hours 23 Minutes)….
Al Gore, please call NASA flight schedule and ticketing office!
I grew up not far from the Boeing Plant in Renton, WA. My parents worked and met there. My uncle worked there. He once took me on a tour of a 707 being built for the King of Saudi Arabia….(a “dual seat” side by side gold plated set of “thrones” were present in the head)…He also showed me the very simple “DB Cooper” lock installed on B-727s to keep jumpers from leaving before arriving at the jet way at the planned destination.
But…the big news is the B-52A made it’s first flight 53 years ago today. 3 were made, and Boeing used them for flight testing.The story of the genesis of this aircraft, from the initial design with propellers, to a radical new idea, hatched out of the requirements placed by the USAF, overnight, in a hotel room by the Boeing design team, to install 8 jet engines instead, brought this country a flexible, solid aircraft that will serve almost a full century in the military.Over the years, my path in life crossed that of the B-52. Living on Guam from ’67 to ’71, I watched the D models, bellies painted shiny black, take off and land at Anderson AFB, wing tips flapping up and down. One time, while on that base for a swim meet, a B-52 lost a wing just after lifting off the very long runway. It barrel rolled to it’s death on the reef at the north end of the island, taking it’s crew to a watery grave.
My uncle was a navigator in the C-5A Galaxy. One of his friend was a B-52 Bombardier. Jim bombed out of Thailand, and later Guam. One night, we had dinner with him at the Anderson O Club and he told me the last B-52 rolled off the line in 1962 and all of them had been reskinned twice and had flown over the originally planned lifespan for the large strategic bomber. The white paint on the bottoms of the Strategic Air Command (SAC) bombers cost $75/gallon (we’re talking late 60’s dollars here) and was designed to reflect the heat of a nuclear explosion the aircraft would be speeding to escape, with no hope of outrunning all of the blast effects. Later, Jim took us on a flight line tour of his planes, which included a trip to the bomb farm. The ordnance guys handed us yellow grease pencils and let us write on the built up dumb bombs on the trailers getting ready to head out to the revetments to be loaded. I used to see the vertical contrails on the western horizon in the early afternoon, then hear them in the landing pattern an hour or so later. It was a puzzle piece in the daily life of that small Pacific island.
The parent of one of the swimmers from the Anderson team was an Air Force photographer. He got me a 1/2″ high stack of 8″x11″ pictures of B-52s, covering a full mission from bombing up, through the attack, refueling on the return leg and landing. Not sure where they went, but he took most all of them. Official stuff we’re talking here.
The evolution of this fine airframe is remarkable and in the last few years I read we will keep the B-52 in service until about 2050. As a Surface Warrior Officer, the B-52s found a maritime mission by being outfitted to carry the AGM-84 Harpoon Anti-Ship Missiles. Yes, we had the P-3s, the S-3Bs and the A-6Es to do that, but nothing says Doom like many more than 4 sea skimmers (I think they could bring 12 to the party) headed to you on a multi-axis, coordinated time-on-top attack, all from one platform with some serious “on station” time.
As a student at the Naval War College, I read and read and read, then read some more. One of the books I came across, which is excellent reading from the “other side” was “A Vietcong Memoir” by Truong Nhu Tang, the VC Minister of Justice. He described being on the receiving end of the carpet bombing of B-52 raid. It made strong men go insane.
My uncle spent a tour on Vietnam on logistics missions. He said when a B-52 raid was going on, the vibration, even from many, many miles away, would cause your chair to basically in the stay about an inch off the floor because of the severe vibrations….
There is so much to the history of this plane that served in Vietnam, Desert Storm, the GWOT and will be flying long after us old reader may be gone. It is a testament to the genius of those men and women of Boeing, who gave the American taxpayer a lot of return on our investment and the enemy, lots of bang for our bucks:
I first saw this on “Future Cars.” It gets my attention at several levels, like 2D fast maneuvering, great gas mileage, looks like a 2 seat fighter (that’s the “pure” F/A-18 pilots).More info here, here, and here, with the project main page being here.Using compressed natural gas, you’d be getting some serious distance for your energy dollar. The main site has some great cutaways of the frame structure, the steering and tilting systems, and other info….
After all, the only country besides the US to ever fly the F-14 TOMCAT happens to be the guys who like to spread mayhem via the back-channels, hoping they won’t get caught. So, make them into Bud cans and our valiant aviators and missileers won’t lose sleep over splashing an American icon, even if it wears a desert colored paint scheme.
Lex, I’m sure will be sneaking to his computer late at night, Guinness in hand, to watch this over, and over, and over in the dark…
Update: See, what did I tell you? But to be fair, he went one better…Maybe the F-14 challenges his fighter-pilotness or sumthin’ (not that there’s anything wrong with that…)
