Category: Video

Maneuverability is Irrelevant

No Comments

That’s the latest pitch for the F-35, as noted by Stephen Trimble.

They even have a video showing how their new whiz bank sensor fusion means that you can see everywhere all the time, so maneuverability does not matter, because they have the Electro-Optical Distributed Aperture System (EO-DAS).

You have to love this quote at around the 3½ minute mark, “maneuverability is irrelevant. Instead of mutual kills, the F-35 simply exits the fight, and lets its missiles do the turning.”

Shades of the no gun versions of the F-4 Phantom II, and how well those worked.

Watch the video, and I’ll note how this is disingenuous afterwords.


First, note that with distinctly limited space in the weapons bays, the F-35 is pretty much limited to the AIM-120 AMRAAM and the AIM-9Z, the latest Sidewinder, both of which are smaller, and so have inferior kinematics (range and end game maneuverability) to their Russian and Chinese counterparts, particularly when they start off with an 180° turn with an over the shoulder shot, so shooting the aircraft behind you is not all that likely, since by the time that they are in your missile envelope, they have already fired.

This is particularly true of the Sidewinder, which was never designed with thrust vectoring, and is smaller (5″ diameter as vs 6″ diameter), and is using an older motor not designed for thrust vectoring. The Over the shoulder AMRAAM actually has a new larger motor using the space available from a reduction in the size of its guidance electronics.

Of course, at the ranges where the AMRAAM outperforms the Sidewinder, you probably want to turn and put the nose on target to improve the envelope anyway.

Improved situational awareness is a good thing. Most pilots get shot down by a threat that they never see, but once the guy is in your 6 o’clock, you are hosed.

An Unlikely Voice of Reason

No Comments

Jesse “The Body” Ventura, on Larry King, of all places.

VENTURA: No, I live in Mexico now, Larry. So I do a lot of reading. I don’t watch much TV. This year’s reading, I covered Bush’s life. I covered Guantanamo and a few other subjects. And I’m very disturbed about it.

I’m bothered over Guantanamo because it seems we have created our own Hanoi Hilton. We can live with that? I have a problem. I will criticize President Obama on this level; it’s a good thing I’m not president because I would prosecute every person that was involved in that torture. I would prosecute the people that did it. I would prosecute the people that ordered it. Because torture is against the law.

KING: You were a Navy SEAL.

VENTURA: That’s right. I was water boarded, so I know — at SERE School, Survival Escape Resistance Evasion. It was a required school you had to go to prior to going into the combat zone, which in my era was Vietnam. All of us had to go there. We were all, in essence — every one of us was water boarded. It is torture.

KING: What was it like?

VENTURA: It’s drowning. It gives you the complete sensation that you are drowning. It is no good, because you — I’ll put it to you this way, you give me a water board, Dick Cheney and one hour, and I’ll have him confess to the Sharon Tate murders.

KING: Even though you know it’s not going to happen — even though before it, you know you’re not going to drown.

VENTURA: You don’t know it. If it’s — if it’s done wrong, you certainly could drown. You could swallow your tongue. You could do a whole bunch of stuff. If it’s it done wrong or — it’s torture, Larry. It’s torture.

Sorry Jesse, but our nation has a big deficit.

When Cheney is up for waterboarding, we are taking bids, starting at $1 million.

Just So You Know, There Are No Grown-Ups In Charge

No Comments

Alan Grayson (D-FL) questioning the Inspector General for the Federal Reserve, and it appears that no one is in the process of reviewing any Federal Reserve activities.

Un-dirtyword believable.

The Federal Reserve needs to be reformed and made more transparent.

I don’t know of any specific allegations of corruption, but when you are seeing 9 trillion in transactions, and not even the attempt to see what is going on, I cannot imagine that someone out there is not lining their own pockets.

USAF Sees Writing on the Wall

No Comments

The US Air Force Chief of staff, General Norton Schwartz, is now saying that maybe, just maybe, the service should look at procuring a “light strike” capability.

The current aircraft operate too far from the front, and do not have the endurance to stay on station a meaningful length of time.

He was talking about something like the an armed turboprop trainer, though the basic needs are very similar to the A-10, and there are a lot of those in the boneyard.

I would also argue that a turbofan based new airframe, designed to roughly the same specs as the A-10 would be superior, because you could incorporate narrow band stealth to address the issue of the radar guided AAA.

My guess is that a replacement for the A-10 would be, considering advances in armor, propulsion, and cannon, would be at less than ¾ of the weight.

The problem would be how to deal with mission/feature creep.


Video courtesy of the DEW Line.

Rachael Maddow Gives Us Context

No Comments

She links torture to political needs, as opposed to security needs. (13:23)

This may explain why Karl Rove is flipping out on Fox News about a possible criminal investigation: If this was done for political reasons, then he had to be actively involved in pursuing the policy.

Politics and electioneering went through his office.