Year: 2009

Luck is a Residue of Design

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By the standards of any counterinsurgency campaign, the IDF has superb intelligence on the other side.

There is also some luck involved, as when Israeli paras captured a man and found a detailed map of the measures that had been taken by Hamas in the al-Atatra neighborhood in Gaza. (see also here)

I would assume here that the reason that this man was targeted in the first place was because it was believed that he had valuable information.

An interesting side note to all this, is that Hamas is going Beau Geste in their plans, using manikins to tactical advantage.

The irony there is obvious.

Why NASA Is Screwed Up

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And why the first step of of the Obama administration should be to fire NASA administrator Michael Griffin.

He’s still lobbying aggressively for his pet project the Ares launcher, claiming that keeping the shuttle flying will cost $3 billion per year and have a one in 8 risk of another fatal accident, so we need to accelerate the Ares.

The fact is that there is a man-rated system that can meet the needs of space station servicing, the Russian Soyuz, in the interim, and not withstanding his arguments that the atmospherics of relying on a foreign system somehow or other diminish US prestige, this has been the sort of self destructive behavior that has characterized NASA since the shuttle, where they decimated existing capabilities in order to insure that there was no viable alternative.

Obama should be announcing a replacement for Griffin sooner, not later.

India Buys 8 P-8I’s for $2.1B

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It’s the largest defense contract ever between India and the US for 8 of the Boeing 737 derived maritime patrol and anti-submarine aircraft.

They will replace a similar number of Tupolev-142Ms “Bear” turboprops.

They will carry sonar buoys, depth charges, torpedos, and Harpoon missiles for use against surface combatants.

Considering that the next largest Indo-US deal was a $962 million contract for 6 C-130J, this is a step up, both in size and technology transfer.

That being said, the US is still a bit player, with Russia, France , and Israel dominating the defense import market to India.

More Evidence of Chinese Carrier Aspirations

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We have reports that the China are in negotiations to buy Su-33 carrier based fighters.

I think that we will see moderately sized (about 50,000 ton) carriers joining the Chinese fleet in the next decade, but the real indicator of their naval aspirations will be their submarine and amphibious warefare ship fleets.

The carriers are primarily a national pride undertaking, not a military endeavor.

Guided Rocket Video Pr0n

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Direct Attack Guided Rocket (DAGR) guidance kit for the 2.75-inch rocket
vid and pic
Note that this a Lockheed-Martin analogue to BAE’s Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System that I wrote about a few months back.

The rocket and guidance, semi-active laser homing for DAGR, appears to be pretty much the same as APKWS, though it appears that the launcher is designed to be compatible with Hellfire, as opposed to the existing 2.75″ rocket launchers.

Here is the video for the earth shattering kaboom.

Big Surprise Here

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I’m shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on here!

It appears that the congressional panel tasked with investigating the Treasury Department’s TARP program has discovered that absolutely nothing has been done by way of oversight on the recipients of this money.

Maybe I’m a cynic, but I think that this is a feature, not a bug.

Bush and His Evil Minions™ in general, and Henry Paulson in particular, have done their level best to ensure that not the smallest vestige of accountability accrue to those people who are most responsible for this mess, because they believe the rules of accounting and honesty should not apply to rich people.

Elizabeth Warren, who heads a congressionally appointed oversight panel, told ABC news there was no evidence the Treasury had used money from the Troubled Asset Relief Program to support the housing market by avoiding preventable foreclosures.

“There’s just no money that’s gone in that direction. This one’s not even arguable,” she said. “The TARP funds themselves have not been used in this way despite congressional statutes requiring them to do so.”

In a draft of a report to be released on Friday, the panel said the Treasury has failed to reveal its strategy for stabilizing the financial system and had done little to track how the money was used.

U.S. in Talks with India to Sell Star Wars Systems

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The US and India are in talks regarding the purchase of missile defense systems.

From a purely technical perspective, India’s defense needs are less challenging, the speed of an incoming missile increases with the distance with which it travels and Pakistan and China both share a border.

It’s unclear from the article whether this is a real attempt to sell systems to India, or a PR attempt intended by missile defense advocates on both sides to boost the government support for their respective systems.

Boeing’s ARH Proposals

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It looks like Boeing is leveraging its experience with the AH-64 Apache for its proposals.

The first proposal is a modification of it’s AH-6 “Little Bird” helo, with a 15 inch fuselage plug to allow space for extraction of downed airman, and a reprofiled nose to accommodate more avionics.

Interestingly enough, it eschews the common avionics architecture system (CAAS) for cockpit instrumentation that was used on the now canceled ARH-70, instead using a derivative of the suite on Boeing’s own AH-64 helicopter, along with rotor blades also derived from the Apache.

Of course, this is still a single engined helo, and Boeing is proposing a cut down version of the AH-64 “Apache Lite” if the army insists on two engines.

Is This a Deliberate Attempt to Obsolete the Existing Fleet

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It looks to me like USAF is making some decisions with their date links with an eye toward deliberately obsoleting the current fleet. (paid subscription required)

The short version is that the USAF has an existing data link, Link 16, which is both narrow-band and non-stealthy, so it needs replacement.

The USAF has just selected the directional multifunction advanced data link (MADL) in preference to the competing tactical targeting network technology (TTNT) for the B-2, F-22, and F-35.

While this appears to be inside baseball, the caption on a picture along with the article speaks volumes, “An anti-access data link will allow B-2s to share information with F-22s and F-35s, but not legacy platforms such as F-15s.”

So I am wondering if this is a deliberate attempt to obsolete legacy platforms so as to justify more F-22 and F-35 purchases?

F-35 Stealth Performance Attacked

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The ever reliable Bill Sweetman points us toward an Air Power Australia (APA) analysis of the stealth capabilities of the F-35 JSF.

The folks at APA have an agenda, and they have been very clear on it, they like the F-111 and F-22 for Australian service, and do not like the F/A-18 and the F-35, so that is a part of the subtext, but they have have a bit of a first in their analysis here, they have, “used publically available radar scattering models,” to get a first order approximation of the performance of the F-35 in various frequency bands.

The science has been known for some time, but actual computer codes available publicly are a fairly recent development.

They make it clear that this is an accounting of the shape, because information on RAM (radar absorbent material) is classified, Mr. Sweetman is right when he quotes Stealth pioneer Denys Overholser, who said, “the four most important aspects of stealth are shape, shape, shape and materials.”

Also note that the Russian double digit SAMs were largely developed post Gulf War, when it was clearly shown that higher frequency radars, particularly in the X-band, were the most vulnerable to a stealth, and that in a modern combat environment, you can not sit there with an air defense radar radiating looking for a target.

You either will not see the target, or eat an anti-radar missile, or both.

So, the surveillance radars have gone to lower frequencies both L-Band and VHF, and a lot more computer processing power has been devoted to finding a firing solution with less dwell time for the radars.

Obviously, there are a lot of assumptions made here by APA, so there is some uncertainty there, though Lockheed-Martin does not have a whole bunch of credibility as to their claims, which describe the aircraft as near-invisible with the capability to strike a target multiple times in a sortee.

Marine Corps Looks to Reduce Firepower

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About 4 months ago I mentioned that the Corps was looking at a magazine fed automatic rifle to replace the belt fed M249 SAW.

At the time, I wondered if this was intended simply to replace one M16/M4 in the fire team with something that was full auto, and it’s not.

The Marine Corps has awarded 3 contracts to investigate a replacement.

They are looking for a lighter (12 lb as opposed to 17 lb) magazine fed weapon without a quick change barrel.

Seeing as how the barrel cannot get as hot, because you cannot quickly swap it, and that the firing time is less, as a 30 round mag is a lot less than a 200 round belt.

It seems to me that it’s going back to the concept of the BAR, which was a great weapon (John Browning was an artist), but was never able to find a particularly good application in service. It was too big, too heavy, and did not fire enough rounds to suppress the enemy.

While the successor, in 5.56 should be lighter, it still will not throw enough rounds down range.

It will also be costlier than the obvious solution: Give that one guy in the fire team the Canadian M-16, which does do full auto.

Barack Obama , Bite My Shiny Metal Ass

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So, Barack Obama was there to unveil Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine as the new head of the DNC for the press, but Howard Dean, the outgoing head of the DNC, was not invited, “at the request of Obama advisers.”

Dean took a lot of heat for his 50 state strategy, with people like James Carville and Rahm Emmanuel lambasting him for things like putting resources into the hands of local Democrats in places like Alaska, where Democrat Mark Begich defeated longtime Republican incumbent Ted Stevens in a tightly contested race this cycle.

We know who was right, and John Aravosis nails it when he says, “There is a real problem when Joe Lieberman is treated better than Howard Dean.”

The argument is that he was on travel, but, his his brother Jim notednoted, “If he had been asked to go to that event, he would have been there.”

While it’s true that Dean was noted by Obama glowing terms in his prepared statements, it was literally in the same sentence as Rahm Emmanuel.

It’s entirely true that Obama might not have been aware of what is going on with his staff, most likely Rahmbo, and Dean, but as Harry S Truman said, “The buck stops here.”

Spend it on Rail

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John Judis at The New Republicmakes a good point*, that the stimulus package should be used to expand rail.

While there is an obvious argument to be made about how quickly one could get new high speed rail projects off the ground, the fact is that there is a lot of track maintenance and track upgrades that could be done very quickly.

Tracks for 200 mph trains take a while, but upgrading tracks to handle 100 mph passenger rail requires a lot less time.

Bullet trains would be nice, but more Acella lines would be a very good start.

*Yeah, I know, The New Republic and the phrase, “good point” don’t generally go together, but even a stopped clock is right twice a day.