SAAB has cut a deal to integrate the front end of the Selex Galileo Vixen AESA radar with the existing back end PS-05/A radar for the Gripen NG.
This replaces the Thales radar on the NG demonstrator, which Thales does not intend to make available for production.
No big surprise. Splitting the contract would increase acquisition costs significantly, and operational costs by an even larger amount.
Splitting the contract is about appeasing representatives from Boeing, who quite simply had an older and less capable design that cost more than the EADS proposal.
The first is a report from the GAO revealing the least well kept secret in defense procurement, that the JSF is over budget and behind schedule, to the tune of about $2 billion, the GAO also believes that the F-35 will need about 1000 additional flight test hours than the F-35 Joint Programme Office (JPO) does, and notes that the time to assemble the first production airframes was 40% greater than predicted.
Additionally, as I have noted before, it appears that there are some very concerning issues regarding thermal management for the aircraft, and it looks like the fuel-air heat exchanger, which not only cools the avionics, but the electro-hydrostatic flight controls is not sufficient in hot weather conditions, like the Middle East.
Additionally, the author of the linked article, Bill Sweetman, notices another potential heat issue, this one having to do with IR signature, that the location of the exhaust for the integrated APU/EPU exhaust has been relocated in the production models.
In the pre-production models, it was located on the top of the aircraft in front of the left vertical stabilizer (you can see where the heat cooked off the paint in the top picture), but in the production models, it has been relocated to the bottom of the fuselage.
The exhaust does not look particularly stealthy from a radar perspective to my untrained eye, and I would have to imagine that it would be a big infra-red “kick-me” sign for Marine STOVL JSFs which would be minutes from the battlefield with APUs running on unimproved strips when the aircraft is used to provide close air support.
A helicopter and a Tornado crashed in Germany recently.
No fatalities in either incident, though the Tornado crew was taken to hospital.
Which is generally considered the bottom bound for viability as a battlefield weapon.
This is significant because an electric laser should be a lot easier to handle than the chemical lasers, which require very large quantities of noxious and hard to handle chemicals.
They are looking take it out of the lab and hit a test range in about a year.
If you win the CBS Cares® Colonoscopy Sweepstakes:
Welcome to the CBS Cares Colonoscopy Sweepstakes!
This is an actual sweepstakes and, if you are the grand prize winner, we will fly you and a companion to New York where you will receive a free colonoscopy. You will also be given three nights’ accommodation in a suite at the luxurious Loews Regency Hotel, which will include the night before you are “awarded” the colonoscopy.
…….
This is just wrong on so many levels.
People over a certain age should get regular colonoscopies, and they should be checked for polyps, but this contest is the worst idea since the little Johnnie home root canal kit.
Courtesy of the Texas Freedom Network, we have a live blog of their meeting, where they are going Creationist.
There has now been testimony that Nasser Kazeminy, a close friend of Norm Coleman instructed his CFO to pay $100,000.00 to Coleman’s wife’s insurance agency for nothing in the way of services.
Now the Star-Tribune has obtained a March 19 deposition from the lawsuit that first surfaced the scandal. The deposition is from B.J. Thomas, the chief financial officer of the company that paid out $75,000 to a firm where Laurie Coleman worked as a consultant — even though he found no evidence of actual work.
Thomas was asked: “In that conversation that you had with Mr. Kazeminy, did he tell you, quote, United States senators don’t make sh#$, close quote? Or words to that effect?”
Thomas answered: “Yes, sir.”
Kazeminy is boned, unless he roles on Coleman, and Coleman is a rat, so you gotta figure so is Kazeminy.
Pass the popcorn
HR 875 is a fairly innocuous bill, trying to make sure that food, both domestic and imported, is safer, but a campaign by the National Independent Consumers and Farmers Association (NIFCA), which opposes any regulation of food, and a couple of right wing conspiracy theorists, and suddenly the bill is an attempt by Monsanto to shut down every farmers market in the nation.
Well, it’s not. Go read the article for the full scoop.
Well, it looks like the Europeans are wising up to the China option of creating false offsets for greenhouse gasses:
The European Union, frustrated that its 11,000 factories and power plants are failing to adequately reduce greenhouse-gas pollution, will seek tighter emission rules that may raise the price of burning fossil fuels.
The 27-nation bloc wants to curb access to a program run by the United Nations that rewards companies more for funding emission-reduction projects in China and India than for decreasing their own gas output in Europe. New limits are needed to force extra pollution cuts at home, the EU said in proposals for climate talks starting in two days in Bonn.
My original post on the subject.
It appears that they are concerned that foreign authorities will arrest them…..More accurately, they are concerned thatforeign authorities will arrest them, and then they will sing like canaries.
My heart bleeds for people whose business model is based on the idea that, “Only the little people pay taxes.”
And I mean this in a clinical sense, though obviously, I am an engineer, not a doctor, dammit!*
*I LOVE IT when I get to go all Doctor McCoy!!!
They expect to see an annual savings of ¼ billion from not locking up people for years for a single joint.
It looks like we will see more of this as the downturn saps state budgets.
Certainly, if I were a prosecutor, I would be looking at here, because Ruth Madoff’s got a $2 million payment from Madoff Securities International Limited just before her husband was arrested, the London office of the Ponzi scheme, and itself under investigation for aiding and abetting Bernard Madoff’s fraud.
Because Indian scientists are working out how to put curry in space.
I volunteer as a test subject.
So, we have some mixed news on the state of consumers, consumer sentiment improved slightly, though it is still near historic lows, and incomes have fallen.
Since consumers are generally deleveraging, I would place more importance on the latter, case in point, is February automobile sales continuing to drop, with the replacement for the US auto fleet, fleet size divided by monthly sales, hitting 27 years.
Obviously, this is not a sustainable number, and I would expect car sales to improve at some point, though whether this in time for the Big 3 (Big 2½) is anyone’s guess.
In any case, it apperas that Japan is heading back toward a deflationary situation, with their January CPI figures showing no change.
In energy and currency, the dollar is up and oil and other commodities are down.
I’m not sure how to deal with a spy agency that is so focused on an eventual war with India that it allies itself to terrorists, short of some of those predator strikes should hit ISI HQ.
Hopefully, the idea of a government run option, one that can show similar efficiencies to Medicare or the VA, both of which consistently beat private insurance, will survive the conference committee.
I’ll bet that he is wondering the same thing that I am, how much of this was legitimate deal making, and how much was self-dealing.
Hopefully, we will see serious criminal investigations here.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has reversed hundreds of convictions of children made by judges who took kickbacks from privately owned detention centers.
Obviously, it’s nice to see their records expunged, but some of the damage will be permanent.
As I said 6 weeks ago, old post This is a Natural Result of Private Prisons.