I know that it was German defense posture to land and launch aircraft from the autobahn as a backup to bombed air fields during the cold war, but doing it in the F104? That is nuts!
Category: Military
Kucinich (D-OH) Demands to Visit Private Bradley Manning
Good for him. He is is clearly using his position as a Representative to shine light on what is clearly an attempt to torture the alleged Wikileaks source into fingering Julian Assange:
Ohio congressman Dennis Kucinich has asked the Defense Secretary Robert Gates for a visit with an Army private suspected of giving classified material to WikiLeaks.
Kucinich, a Democrat who is a member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, sent a letter Friday to Gates asking for a visit with Pfc. Bradley Manning.
Manning is being held in a Marine Corps brig in Quantico, Va.
Kucinich says he is concerned about reports of Manning’s treatment while in custody. Manning’s lawyer has filed a complaint with the Quantico commander about the conditions Manning is being held under.
I’m not a particularly big fan of the distinguished gentleman from Ohio, but he’s right here.
The worst thing about this is that it is only his name on this letter.
Where are the other 434 people who have sworn to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution” in Congress?
Egypt Is Heading ……… Somewhere
The protests have gotten big enough that the professional, and pampered, state security forces, have run out of resources, and the military has been sent in, but the military is taking a remarkably hands off stance regarding the protesters.
What is going on is that the police, and other civilian state security forces are volunteer, and favored by the current regime, and are invested in it, while the military is largely conscript, all Egyptian males serve, and so they aren’t invested in their position in the current regime.
It’s a pretty good reason to support a return to the draft in the good old USA, if you ask me.
In any case, the opposition has started to become more organized, and has decided on Nobel laureate Mohamed ElBaradei will head whatever negotiations with the Mubarak government.
Note that this has occurred despite the fact that the regime managed to almost completely shut off Internet access for the country, or maybe it was because the Egyptians are upset about being unable to watch Justin Beiber videos on Youtube, but somehow I think that the Egyptians taking to the street are a bit less shallow than that.
Deep Thought
The reason for the aggressive overuse of acronyms in the military is because it makes the entire process of meaning oversight more difficult and intimidating.
J-20 Video Pr0n
What is with those huge landing gear doors?
Yep, someone got some (remarkably high quality) video of the J-20 doing taxi tests.
As an aside, the recent outpouring of “surreptitiously” snapped photos and videos of the new Chinese fighter prototype indicate that this is something that they really want us to see.
China Expected to Field First Carrier in 2011
Click for full size
The Varyag is out of dry dock
It looks like the Chinese will be launching their first carrier this year.
It’s made from the hull (no equipment or propulsion when bought as scrap) of the old unfinished Soviet STOBAR aircraft carrier Varyag, and while I doubt that it will ever serve in anything remotely resembling a combat capability, neither did the USS Langley, though it did see service as a seaplane tender.
What is important here is that it means that China will be developing equipment, doctrine, and training for a carrier borne air wing.
U.S. Navy Splits the Baby on the LCS Contract
Both Lockheed-Martin’s conventional design and Austal’s Trimaran got contracts for 10 ships, at $538 million, without mission modules, which means not much in the way of meaningful sensors or weapons.
For a ship that weighs as much as a frigate, but is as lightly armed as a corvette, but has the advantage of being able to change tasks, by swapping out mission modules, going from anti-sub warfare, to anti-surface warfare, counter-min, ISR, etc. if it can find its way to suitably equipped port.
Yes, “It’s a dessert topping AND a floor wax!”
Yeah, the idea sounds really stupid to me too.
This is a Classic Case of Deterrence
It appears that the Chinese DF-21 anti-ship ballistic missile is operational, a 900 mile range anti-ship missile, at least according to Admiral Robert Willard, Commander, U.S. Pacific Command.
It’s intended to be a carrier killer, and while the capabilities, particularly the targeting, are unclear, but considering that the Pershing II’s MARV (MAneuverable Reentry Vehicle) got a roughly 30 m CEP, it will certainly give a CVBG cause to pause.
Even the warhead is nothing more than 150kg of high strength steel descending at 1000 m/s, it will still completely ruing a carrier skipper’s day.
There are 2 possibility two possibilities here, either this is an attempt by the Pentagon to hype the Chinese threat, or the Chinese are trying to create an effective no-go zone for the flat-tops by creating uncertainty steps to cut in the missile in an operational posture.
Then again, it might be both.
OK, It Looks Like I Was Wrong …… Again
Click for full size
The trailing edge of the wing implies that stealth is not a high priority
The tail arrangement resembles MiG’s Project 1.44
It appears that the Chinese stealthy aircraft is the real deal.
The insignia, which I noted earlier when I called hoax, appears to be correct at the higher resolutions.
As Bill Sweetman notes, the fact that the the planform appears to be a fairly conventional clipped delta, which, “Has some signature implications, with what looks like an almost unswept trailing edge, because edges scatter forward and backwards.”
The size of the aircraft is still not yet clear, though it appears to be at least as large as the F-22.
At that size, it is likely to be intended either as a strike aircraft, or as an interceptor, or (more likely, it will be expensive, and expensive single taskers are bad) both, rather than the sort of “air dominance fighter” that the F-22, and (probably) the PAK-FA are.
The bottom picture of the abortive MiG 1.44 project shows that the arrangement at the back is very similar to that project, and it should be noted that this project did not have stealth as a priority.
Please note that anything that I say here come from a perspective of rather profound ignorance though.
It’s the Fuzzy Aircraft Photo Home Game
Click for full size
Note the Insignia
Note the lack of insignia
A ¾ rear view
A frac34; front view
PLAAF (Chinese) Insignia
Soviet Era Insignia
Current Russian Insignia
So, the late Ted Stevens’ “Series of Tubes” is abuzz with what purports to be fuzzy photographs of a Chinese stealth aircraft.
I don’t think that these are raw photos, and that some photo-shopping has been done, most notably the oversize tail insignia, which is most assuredly NOT a PLAAF symbol, as Stephen Trimble observes.
Some other oddities, to my (very) untrained eye:
- The wing has anhedral, and the canard dihedral, which would be a no-no in stealth design, you would want the surfaces more or less parallel.
- The same goes for the drooping wing tips, which are absent on the front view but present in the rear view.
- Pictures 1 and 3 of the aircraft appear to be with the power and the hydraulics unpowered, but there is no gravity caused droop in what are supposed to be axisymmetric thrust vectoring nozzles. (They pretty much have to be with the small tail size).
- On the top picture, it appears that the observers in the rear are about 1½ feet taller than the ones around the front of the aircraft.
While I think that it is clear that the Chinese are looking at developing some sort of stealthy fighter or attack aircraft, I really don’t think that it has gotten to the point where a 70 foot long demonstrator of some sort is flying.
It’s possible that the pictures are real, though there appears to be at least a bit of digital wizardry involved.
This Has Fiasco Written All Over It
Well, it’s not quite this bad
We have the Army Tilt-Rotor
and the USAF STOVL Hoover
So, the USAF wants a STOL cargo aircraft with greater capabilities than the C-130, while the Army wants a VTOL cargo aircraft with roughly the carrying capacity of the C-130.
Well, it appears that they are looking at a common airframe intended to do both.
So a jack of no trades and a master of none, because when you combine these disparate needs, and requirements, you end up with something that just does not work.
See the cancelled Naval F-111B, for instance.
I’m with Bill Sweetman on this, “The people promoting these abominations are secretly working for Airbus Military.”
Navy Demonstrates a 33 MJ Railgun
Some notes on the video below
The US Navy Surface Warfare division has set a new record for “muzzle” energy from an electromagnetic railgun. (see also here).
You really cannot determine the mass or size of the projectile accurately from the video, but given an energy of 33MJ, and its size appearing near to that of a 5″ naval round, one could assume a mass of the round of somewhere between 10 and 32 kg. (The latter is the weight of the current 5″ round)
This would give a velocity of somewhere around 1500 to 2500 m/s (5000 – 9000 km/h, 3000-5500 mph, or Mach 4-9.5).
By way of comparison, the 16 inch guns on the Iowa class have a muzzle energy of about 410 MJ, 1225 kg at 820 m/s, but velocity here can translate into a lot more range, something well in excess of 200 km, and this technology is in its early stages, so achieving an order of magnitude improvement in energy is certainly possible.
A note, based on comments with people who have used capacitors to use an arc to generate hypersonic shock waves for high speed simulations.
First, the power cables are almost certainly coaxial to minimize impedance, and the sheath on the outside is doubtless very heavy, because the high current generates forces that would otherwise blow the conducting jacket off. (in the wind tunnel case, the capacitor room looked “like a porcupine turned inside out”, I wish that I had been there for that.)
Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System (EMALS) Tested
H/t Danger Room
The US Navy has conducted its first successful test of the EMALS electric catapult at its Lakehurst, NJ air field.
The navy is doubtless heaving a sigh of relief, as the Ford class carriers were designed to mount these catapults, and retrofitting steam catapults would be very involved.
The British are probably even more relieved, as their carrier(s) have gas turbine propulsion, and so have no steam available, so without this, they would just be big floating anvils.
It’s a similar technology the Navy’s recently tested railgun, but the energy storage is mechanical (flywheels) on the catapult, and solid state (capacitors) on the railgun.
Given the state of the art in capacitors, it probably makes sense, since the rail gun is much higher power (a few orders of magnitude), and lower energy (by around a factor of 5) than the catapult.
Senate Passes DADT Repeal
This is very good news, but understand that this bill does not set the speed or manner by which the military will end this policy, which means that I expect to see them slow walking this, with separations continuing for some tome, and with the Obama administration doing nothing to ensure that discrimination does not remain the policy of the Pentagon.
Obama is Now Blocking DADT Repeal
So much for his promise to be a “Fierce advocate” for the LGBT:
Sources on the Hill are telling me a big reason DADT repeal isn’t moving faster comes right from 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Despite President Obama’s public support for repeal, with DADT stacked up against the START nuclear arms reduction treaty that Obama carefully brokered with the Russians earlier this year, the White House is putting its legislative push behind START.
At this point, with more than the 60 votes secured to invoke cloture on a repeal bill in the Senate, obstacles to repealing DADT legislatively are a simple combination of time and priorities. Time is short in the lame duck session, and DADT repeal is just one of many items the Senate would like to address before it adjourns. Where repeal slots into the remaining legislative calendar, and how much time is left in that calendar when it does pop up, will make the difference between repealing the ban and keeping the status quo.
I strongly disagree with the next paragraph though:
No one questions that Obama wants to see DADT end, or that he wants to see it end this year. The concern is over the priorities: Obama, it seems, wants START to come first. And with the White House pushing START (in daily phone calls from top White House officials, according to one source on the Hill), Obama could end up standing in the way of DADT getting done.
Truth be told, Barack Obama’s excuses for not supporting LGBT civil rights, whether it’s his slow-walking DADT, or aggressively defending it in court, or ignoring judges orders to recognize gay marriages where they are legal, etc. rivals John McCain’s flip flops on gay rights for their mendacity.
And Now the US Military is Torturing Its Own Soldiers
Specifically PFC Bradley Manning, who is accused of leaking documents to Wikileaks:
Bradley Manning, the 22-year-old U.S. Army Private accused of leaking classified documents to WikiLeaks, has never been convicted of that crime, nor of any other crime. Despite that, he has been detained at the U.S. Marine brig in Quantico, Virginia for five months — and for two months before that in a military jail in Kuwait — under conditions that constitute cruel and inhumane treatment and, by the standards of many nations, even torture. Interviews with several people directly familiar with the conditions of Manning’s detention, ultimately including a Quantico brig official (Lt. Brian Villiard) who confirmed much of what they conveyed, establishes that the accused leaker is subjected to detention conditions likely to create long-term psychological injuries.
Since his arrest in May, Manning has been a model detainee, without any episodes of violence or disciplinary problems. He nonetheless was declared from the start to be a “Maximum Custody Detainee,” the highest and most repressive level of military detention, which then became the basis for the series of inhumane measures imposed on him.
From the beginning of his detention, Manning has been held in intensive solitary confinement. For 23 out of 24 hours every day — for seven straight months and counting — he sits completely alone in his cell. Even inside his cell, his activities are heavily restricted; he’s barred even from exercising and is under constant surveillance to enforce those restrictions. For reasons that appear completely punitive, he’s being denied many of the most basic attributes of civilized imprisonment, including even a pillow or sheets for his bed (he is not and never has been on suicide watch). For the one hour per day when he is freed from this isolation, he is barred from accessing any news or current events programs. Lt. Villiard protested that the conditions are not “like jail movies where someone gets thrown into the hole,” but confirmed that he is in solitary confinement, entirely alone in his cell except for the one hour per day he is taken out.
It should be noted that this sort of treatment produces profound long term damage to mind that is akin to traumatic brain injury.
This is deliberate punitive torture, and its purpose is two fold:
- To serve as a warning to other whistle blowers.
- To coerce false testimony that can be used to prosecute Julian Assange.
Welcome to Barack Obama’s America, which is a lot like George W. Bush Dick Cheney’s America, only less respect for due process and transparency.
You can donate to PFC Manning’s defense fund here.
Meanwhile, in the House…
The House of representatives passes a stand alone bill to repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell:
After impassioned debate both for and against the measure, the House of Representatives today passed a standalone bill to repeal the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. The measure passed by a vote of 250 to 175, and the House broke into applause at the announcement of the final vote.
The measure was introduced Tuesday, in the final days of the Democratic-led 111th Congress, after the Senate last week failed to pass a defense authorization bill that included a repeal of the policy. “Don’t ask,” which has been in effect since 1993, prohibits gays from serving openly in the military.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said today that repealing the law would fix a “fundamental unfairness in our nation” and “honor the service and sacrifice of all who dedicated their lives to protecting the American people.”
Considering the relatively efficiencies of the House and the Senate, I am thinking that the “World’s greatest deliberative body”, i.e. the Senate, is nothing more than growth media for sociopathic narcissists.
Oh, and I forgot to Add
Blah, blah, blah!The US Air Force is now blocking the New York Times, The Guardian and a number of other news outlets because they are reporting on the contents of the cables.
You know, I think that the fact that US authorities have gone completely batsh%$ insane over this might be doing a lot more damage to our credibility worldwide than anything in those damn cables.
Saab Gripen and Eurofighter Typhoon Pitched to Canada
The idea that Canada would buy anything but a US aircraft, particularly with a significant long shot, but the fact that both companies are pitching their aircraft as an alternative to the F-35 JSF:
Representatives from the German-based Eurofighter Typhoon and Sweden’s Saab Gripen appeared at committee and told members their planes can meet Canada’s air force demands, and are far cheaper than the fifth-generation F-35 Joint Strike Fighter stealth jet the government agreed to buy in July.
Canada intends to buy 65 F-35s for $9 billion — plus maintenance costs — to replace the aging fleet of CF-18s, with delivery expected to start in 2016.
Antony Ogilvie with Saab said they could supply Canada with 65 upgraded Gripens, with 40 years of maintenance costs included, for under $6 billion.
I am unsure of the maintenance costs of the F-35, but it is safe to say that the life cycle costs for the F-35 are at least twice as much as the diminutive Swedish fighter.
If the Gripen ever reaches sales critical mass, it could be the F-5 of this era. It’s half the life cycle cost and size of its competitors while offering decent performance by the standards of the day.
Truth be told, it’s likely that the Eurofighter will probably be cheaper over its lifetime than the JSF as well, and while not offering the all aspect stealth (or stealthish if you listen to the critics) of the JSF, it does offer a known price and operating cost, a wider array of munitions, greater agility, supercruise, and higher ceiling, with the advantage of known operational and purchase price and a 2nd engines for safer operations over the largely uninhabited, and rather inhospitable, areas in northern Canada.
God Help Me, I Agree With Joe Lieberman
Yes, the sanctimonious rat-fink is saying that the Senate should postpone its adjournment to make sure that there is time to repeal Don’t Ask Don’t Tell:
Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) wants the Senate to stay in session until it’s passed legislation to do away with the military’s “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.
Lieberman, a key Senate proponent of repealing the military’s ban on openly gay or lesbian members, doesn’t want the chamber to adjourn until it’s acted on a defense authorization bill that contains a provision to do away with the policy.
Note that Lieberman has been a stronger advocate of repeal than either Barack “Fierce Advocate” Obama or Harry Reid.
For once, we have a bunch of wankers in the room, and Lieberman isn’t one.