So the first first littoral combat ship got underway at the end of last month, more than a year behind schedule, and at twice the forecast cost.
The ships, the size of a large corvette or small frigate, are intended to work in coastal waters.
Interestingly enough, the Israelis are considering the conventionally hulled LCS as the basis of a ship for their navy, but they are ditching the modular weapons system, because they feel that it leaves the ship too lightly armored.
Ares Homepage: “The End of the NRO?
Posted by Bill Sweetman at 8/14/2008 8:15 AM CDT
“Radical change” is an over-used phrase, but the proposals of the Allard Commission on US national security space – previewed by commission member Gen. Ed Anderson at the Space & Missile Defense Conference in Huntsville on Wednesday, are certainly radical.
The commission recommends eliminating the National Reconnaissance Office – the agency that helped win the Cold War, and whose very existence was secret until the early 1990s – as a separate entity and removing executive authority for space systems from the Air Force, transferring both functions into a single new organization.”
The National Security Space Independent Assessment Panel, aka the “Allard Commission,” is proposing that the NRO and the U.S. Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center (SMC) be folded into a completely new agency.
Basically, the feel that the existing agencies are doing a piss-poor job, with the NRO recent history being disasterous, and the USAF constantly pulling resources to support its aircraft programs.
My take? Deck chairs, titanic.
In yet another indication that the Diamond-Thielert split is permanent, Diamond Aircraft showed its 168-hp. AE 300 Austro Engine diesel at Oshkosh.(Paid Subscription Required)
It is based on the same block as the Thielert, the Mercedes A-class four-cylinder engine, but heavier, since they replace some of the aluminum parts with cast iron for greater reliability, which has always been the Thielert Achilles heel.
It’s currently being test flown in 3 aircraft.
Constant Volume Combustion (CVC), pulse detonation and constant detonation, should be about 10% more efficient than conventional combustors, and they are looking for the technology to bridge the gap between the top end limit of turbines and the bottom end limit of scramjets.
They are looking at an 80k lb demonstrator, and the turbines would be cocooned at around Mach 3, and the CVC would operate from Mach 1.5 to Mach 4+.
While I am familiar with the PDE, the CDE is new to me:
Various CVC concepts are likely to be proposed, says Bussing. “We’ve left the door open. They include classic [pulsed-detonation engines] in which tubes can be arranged axially, valved at the front and back, or they could be rotating or stationary, or they could be valveless.” By contrast, the CDE (sometimes called a continuous-detonation wave engine) typically includes a combustion chamber consisting of an annular cylindrical tube with one end closed and the other open. A mixture of fuel and oxidizer is injected from the closed end through a ring slit or a number of regularly arranged small holes, and the detonation wave travels in a clockwise or counterclockwise direction. Exhaust products flow toward the open end and discharge through a diverging nozzle at supersonic speeds.
The guy who came up with this will, of course, be drummed out of the service, because there is no defense contractor profit in it.
Air Force Staff Sgt. Ray Stetler using, “a soldering iron and six feet of cable”, created a Voice Over Secure Internet Protocol communications system for the MQ-1 Predator drone.
It plugs into the radio from the helmet, and they can talk to base, as opposed to, for example, typing in text messages asking for permission to fire.
Have I mentioned that Randall Munroe is a genius?
H/T xkcd – A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language – By Randall Munroe
First, the obligatory Real Genius reference:
Of course, the conceit of that movie was that it could make a human being vaporise from orbit.
Well, this laser ain’t gonna do it.
Nor will it, as this PowerPoint presentation implies, allow one to kill someone with plausible deniability.
First, one needs to understand the language of weaseling in defense procurement, and PowerPoint presentations are the slate upon which weaseling is written.
Then, there is the baisc physics: Human beings are basically water bags, and water is hard to heat, the specific heat of water is: 4.186 joule/gram-°C, which means that the laser, which is supposed to be in the 100KW range, would take about 3.14 seconds to heat up 75 kg (165 pounds) of water from body temp to boiling.
Human reaction time is around 200ms, so in order to burn a hole through someone (100cm deep x 1cm 1cm, 100 g water), you would need about 2.09kw, but once the tissue started to ablate, the resultant steam cloud would start degrading the beam.
Also note that you would carbonize the tissue, and carbon melts at 3500°C, and a person being lasered would be a reducing atmosphere, so it would burn.
Additionally, you would need to hit a vital part. When you hit a liver or a femoral artery with a bullet, death follows in minutes (or less) with a bullet, but a laser wound would be cauterized, so basically, you need a heart or a head hit, and even then the damage is localized along the beam path.
The physical characteristics of a laser wound mean that any post mortem would point to a laser, which in turn, given the cost of lasers, would point back to the US, after all who is going to drop all that money on a few tons of chlorine, hydrogen peroxide, and iodine.
So this won’t be a people killer.
Basically, it’s easier to poke holes in or cut tissue, and more difficult to vaporize tissue relative to metal (Steel’s specific heat is about 0.5 joule/gram-°C, 1/8 that of water)
On the other hand, if you used it on something like a SAM missile motor to trigger an explosion, it might work, or to set off an explosion in an ammo dump, it might very well work.
As the technology gets smaller, and lighter, and cheaper, I could see more applications though.
Posts by David Hambling here and here, and Boeing’s press release here.
I would say, as is de regeur with the USAF, they are overselling the technology.
What Mr. Hambling noted as a scenario, from an orbiting aircraft, with all the shaking involved, along with a claimed 20km of air currents bending the light, is not credible:
According to the developers, the accuracy of this weapon is little short of supernatural. They claim that the pinpoint precision can make it lethal or non-lethal at will. For example, they say it can either destroy a vehicle completely, or just damage the tires to immobilize it. The illustration shows a theoretical 26-second engagement in which the beam deftly destroys “32 tires, 11 Antennae, 3 Missile Launchers, 11 EO devices, 4 Mortars, 5 Machine Guns” — while avoiding harming a truckload of refugees and the soldiers guarding them. It reminds me of how the Lone Ranger could always shoot the gun out an opponent’s hand without injuring them; if that could really be done from an aircraft circling overhead, it would certainly be an impressive feat.
It is potentially useful in limited circumstances, but in most circumstances, something like a missile will do just as well for a lot less money.
When a solid state laser can do something north of 5KW, you will start to see wider application of the technology.
Fuji Heavy Industries (FHI), who make the Subaru, are looking at manufacturing a Subaru branded light bizjet.
It’s actually not as whack as it sounds, FHI started as Nakajima Aircraft Company in the early 20th century, and it made the T-7 trainers for the JASDF, and is a major structures subcontractor to Boeing, so the basic know-how is there.
Still, I think that going with the Subaru brand for a business jet???
The intersection of Subaru owners, and business jet owners seems awfully small.
That has fail written all over it.
Is I’ve written before, Japan really wants to buy F-22s for the JASDF, but as this is still prohibited by US law, they are delaying their RFP for a new fighter, as they will have a long weight for the JSF since program partners get it first.
Instead, they will be upgrading the F-15Js that they are currently flying as a gap filler.
They may also buy an interim aircraft, with the F-15, doubtless with an AESA radar.
In 1983 they stopped counting actually counting housing costs in the consumer price index (CPI) and started using something called owners’ equivalent rent.
The argument was that it gave a better picture of inflation, but in reality, it just gave a smaller picture of inflation.
Among other things, it would have had the Fed tightening sooner, because inflation would have been high enough in early 2004-2005.
Go to the link for the chart pr0n. Of particular interest is that core inflation would be negative right now if we used the old metric.
It appears the Arnold Schwartzenegger feels that any cost of the California budget crunch must be born by ordinary folk, and not businesses.
Rep. William Jefferson (D-LA) tried to claim that dismiss RICO charges against him, but the court was having none of it, so the charges stand.
Prosecutors have revealed some more Ted Stevens (R-AK) sleaze.
It appears that he bought a condo in Florida for $5K down, when the contract required $36K, and sold it a few months later for a $130K profit…tsk, tsk.
The inestimable Barry Ritholtz finds a a very interesting bit of stock trivia: that 300 point rallies in the dow only occur in bear markets.
He has further analysis here and here.
His basic thesis is that bear markets are more volatile than bull markets.
The department of defense has been refusing to allow Dr. Kaye Whitley to testify before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which had previously been refused
She had been ordered not to testify, even though the committee had subpoenaed her.
This isn’t national security though, she’s the Pentagon’s expert on sexual abuse and sexual assault in the military, the director of the Department of Defense Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office.
Morgan Stanley is advising the Treasury Department on a possible bailout of Fannie and Freddie, but conginuing to underwrite salse of their debt.
Un-dirtyword-believable.
Writing at the Danger room, Galrahn notes the unbelievably rapid response time of the Russian navy to the invasion of South Ossetia.
Basically, the Black Sea fleet would have to have gotten underway within an hour of the invasion to make the time line.
The Russians knew that the attack was coming, and they knew when it was coming.
The FSB, or some other Russian TLA has thoroughly penetrated the Georgian security establishment.
Today has actually been a good news day, with US industrial production increasing by 0.2% in July, though one should remember that inflation is 0.8%, the the consumer sentiment index rose in Augst, though July was a 28 year low, and the New York Fed Manufacturing Index rose. (no qualifiers on this one, it really appears to be good news)
Good news on all my standard metrics too, oil down, gas down, and dollar up.
Inflation is the fly in the ointment, as Dean Baker notes, because the increased inflation means that the 3rd quarter will almost certainly be a contraction.
I would, however be remiss if I did not note that commodity prices are falling very sharply, which may bring moderation in inflation in the coming months.
In the economic scandals section, we have Wachovia joining the parade of banks and investment houses settling on auction rate securities, to the tune of $5.5 billion.
In the “It should be a scandal,” category, we have S&P deciding not to downgrade MBIA and Ambac, even though anyone with two brain cells to rub together knows that the monoliner insurers are junk
I would also note that I’m wondering if we will see a Peso rally, because Mexico’s central bank just increased rates for the 3rd straight month.
And The Onion is a national treasure:
John McCain just freaked out conservatives by saying that Tom Ridge’s support for abortion rights would not rule him out as a VP pick.
This means that Lieberman might be on the short list too, as he is (barely) pro-choice, and I think that most of the freaking out is about the possibility of Joementum on the ticket. It’s not abortion, it’s pulling the lever for a Yid that gets to them.
In unrelated, except that it’s bad, news, Andrew McCain, John’s son sat on the audit committee of Silver State Bancorp until January of this year, bailing just before they posted enormous losses:
As of June 30, the bank said 14% of its $1.96 billion in total assets were nonperforming, up from 0.75% six months earlier. A year ago, its shares were trading for more than $18 on the Nasdaq Stock Market. They closed Thursday at 83 cents in Nasdaq 4 p.m. trading. The loss restatement was released after the market close.
And little Andy was on the audit committee, and bailed out before they started to tank.
Nothing to see here, move along.
Well, bush is now saying that U.S. ties with Russia are being reassessed.
You know, if Bush and His Evil Minions™ were not detested in America and world wide, and if he were not leaving office in 5 months, the Russians might care what he thinks.
They are counting down, just like everyone else.