You Just Can’t Trust Men
Drumpf is going to be heartbroken that he wasn’t the only recipient of election assistance from Vlad’s ‘hybrid warfare’. Putin has been targeting western European politics for months .
‘Chaos’ is deep denial over Putin.
On-line Opinion Magazine featuring annoyed rumblings from the leading edge of the Baby Boom firmly tied to a reality-based world.
Established: 21 November 2004
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Yeah. Vlad’s been annoying a lot of Nations. The UK seems to be the latest target to annoy:
Russian warship escorted by Royal Navy frigate through English Channel
It’s the 2nd Russian warship in a week.
Though, it seems everyone wants to annoy the USA lately. Even China has gotten into the act:
China seizes US Navy underwater drone in international waters of South China Sea
The USA is sending F-22’s here (among other assets). Great… Just what we need now. Still, I hope they bring a LOT of money! We do need that. And there is a minuscule hope that the stupid politicians will reconsider the F-35 for the F-22.
US to base stealth fighter jets in Australia in response to South China Sea tensions
Too bad we disbanded our FB-111 fleet. It could have been quite useful now. But that’s what happens when people in charge have a myopic short term view of the World. Stupid decisions constantly get made. Then again, if they have been mothballed properly, it’d probably only cost a couple of F-35’s to get them to combat readiness status. Not sure about ground & flight crews though.
The FA-18s would probably be the most coast effective choice. Canada is looking at them due to F-35 delays. Canada’s current fleet of Fa-18s are aging out ad they need replacing. Arctic winters are not kind to aircraft.
Vlad wants to be John IV ‘The Awesome’ [Ivan the Terrible to most English speakers] and is only qualified to be Nicholas II. His KGB job was buying IBM computers in East Germany.
I would think that ground crews would be more difficult to organize that flight crews for the FB-111s. Pilots change aircraft but good ground crew specialize. Then there is the spare parts problem. You are still correct that you have the replacement aircraft available before you mothball your current models.
The Chinese have cost the US Navy vessels and people for a very ling time. They don’t have a lot of concern for international treaties or borders.
LOL True about ground crews. Given that I kinda was one of them. 🙂 The FB-111 is quite specific compared to others. It was designed to have modular avionics, but due to the design of the FB-111, they were mostly non-standard. And most of us have long retired & have no intention of returning. As for flight crew, the No. 1 crew are now in their 70’s. Milt was a Group Captain & retired to become MD of GD (Aus.) when I was hired. He had a lot of fascinating stories to tell! 😀 In ’57, he was a Flt. Lt. & Commander of the British Vulcan B.1 XA892 test aircraft. He scared everyone (including his co-pilot) by taking it above IMN 1.04 instead of the tasked limit of IMN 0.98. LOL He was also the only Aussie pilot to fly an FB-111 to Vietnam during the last months of the conflict. He flew Mustangs during the Korean war.
In a curious sense of timing, I found a good video of Milt talking about testing the FB-111 (NOT F-111) on FB not long ago:
By Group Captain Milt Cottee (Ret) on F-111 testing and a funny take about the first Canberra Bomber to land at Sydney’s Kingsford Smith Airport
Ummm, for those wondering: IMN means “Indicated Mach Number”. There is a difference between the Mach number shown on instruments (IMN) and the true Mach speed. Due to many errors in reading & calculating the number (due to some complex Physics). 🙂 Pilots who flew aircraft above M 0.7 were issued correction charts which improved accuracy of the reading. Another problem is that the USAF & most other Nations (and even US NATO & Euro NATO) calibrate the instruments differently. Ya gotta love standards! 😉 😀
Altitude, atmospheric pressure, humidity, winds aloft all go into determining Mach. Given that the speed of sound isn’t a constant value, its purpose is knowing what happens when you transition to supersonic from a design point of view. If it wasn’t for the sonic boom and the jitters when you transition, no one would care. Ground speed and air speed cover the necessary information.
Yep. There’s also pitot error (primarily due to a shockwave forming across the front of the pitot at high subsonic, transonic and supersonic speeds); and static error, which increases proportionally the nearer to M=1 the aircraft get’s, then decreases. (From memory) 🙂
Did you check out Milt’s video? It still makes me chuckle. He was a bit of a larakin (typically denoting an outback Aussie, usually marked by enthusiasm, passion, and zest for life). But when in combat, deadly serious. He owned a huge Cadillac (his wife’s car) and a ’68 Mustang, which was still left-hand drive. he lived in Canberra where the laws allowed him to get an exception to have the car converted to right-hand drive. Laws in the ACT tend to be more lax than the rest of Aus. I stayed with him a few times over a weekend at his home, and we had some fun racing around in the Mustang, it had a CB & radar detector, & he’d often call up truckies to see if any *bears* were ahead on the road. 😉 😀 The car’s were kept on the large driveway because his double garage was full of filing cabinet’s & crates with RAAF, USAF & GD markings. I’m pretty certain most were not supposed to be there! LOL He had a TRS_80 there that was the catalog so he could find things. One of my jobs & the first trip there was to set that up.
One of the few men I still respect from those days. 🙂 Some of the few good memories I have from the 80’s.
Well, Obama claims that the US Gov will do *something* about the Russian hacking. But details are lacking, and he has very little time. *shrug*
‘We Need To Take Action. And We Will’ Obama on Russian hacks
And:
Vladimir Putin was behind hacking of emails: White House
I watched the video after fighting with Zuckerberg because I don’t have a Facebook page. That was a good ‘goof’ on getting the landing permission. We had a ‘airplane driver’ at Offutt who was famous for the number of times he had made Major after being busted back to Captain because of his love of ‘touch & go’ landings’ in C-135s – in North Korea, on a US aircraft carrier, etc. The guy could fly 135s. One-handed he would connect for aerial refueling and the aircraft would be dead steady until disconnect. He could land and take-off well below stated minimum distances. He didn’t get booted because he was just too good.
I assume that the majority of the space in the filing cabinets is filled with reprimands 🙂
We probably know who did what because the ‘hackers’ used ‘lost’ NSA tools, which I’m guessing leave traces. The US can definitely retaliate if it has the will and Russia’s system isn’t hardened enough to stop the attacks. I assume that the hackers, if they have any real skills, have hardened their equipment, but the infrastructure in Russia has major weaknesses that can be exploited.
He didn’t get booted because he was just too good.
Same with Milt. 😀 He did make Group Captain, which I think surprised even him. His REO on the FB-111 & longtime friend & RAAF partner made Air Vice Marshal. So his larakin ways probably did hold him back somewhat. Not that he cared. He just wanted to fly. 🙂 Milt’s garage had better security than most Banks! LOL There was even a Commonwealth Police patrol regularly in his street and the area. I went out for a walk one night, and was stopped and asked what I was up to. I explained and they took me to Milt’s house and asked if he knew me. 🙂 Milt told me later that was zero crime in that suburb even though it was a high value area. The CP aren’t like the regular State Police. They are very serious people and will arrest anyone they think they need too. They are more like a para-military force. And even stupid crim’s know better. Milt also had an RAAFP unit stationed across the street in a van, I suspect mainly because of that garage! 😉 😀
Sorry about Facebook. I forgot about that. I have an account due to necessity, but I rarely use it now. Comes in handy for things like that. 🙂
I never understood Obama. Never will I suspect. *shrug* On the one hand, he talked a lot about human rights & caring for people; on the other, he deported more for minor reasons than Reagan & Clinton! He should pardon Snowden, but that would require him to do something right, so it won’t happen.
I got a bit of good news, seems Murdoch is hemorrhaging money:
News Corp moves into loss, flags more job cuts
Australopithecus rupertus™ just blew major cash buying a controlling share in SKY Broadcasting for no obvious reason while his US media properties are fading into the sunset. Lately he seems to be acquiring thing, just to say he owns them rather than having a plan.
Obama claims he can’t pardon Snowden because he hasn’t been convicted of anything. Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon before any charges were filed, so there is a precedent.
Great pilots can get away with almost anything 🙂
Here, something for a laugh! From Canada via Twitter (reproduced on Indy100 – No account required). I have a new hero! LOL This lady (Karen Geier) totally slam dunks a typical right wing climate denier!
limate change denier who says no one can explain global warming gets completely schooled by someone explaining it
If you don’t want to read the explanation tweet by tweet, they condensed it near the end of the post. 🙂
There is also a link (reproduced here) to NASA’s Global Climate Change site with a more detailed explanation. You probably already know this, but for anyone who doesn’t:
Climate change: How do we know?
It is really simple to understand and if you pay attention to coast of the Bering Sea and the Inuit villages that are disappearing or the temperatures on the Yukon Quest and Iditarod it is fairly obvious. People don’t pay attention and don’t accurately remember what the weather was like twenty years ago.
Well, we got one early Xmas present:
BP finally withdraws application to drill for oil in Great Australian Bight
Geee… what a surprise BP had no environmental plans, and that an LNP Minister is upset they can’t *drill baby, DRILL!*
Good! They got the Xmas gift those bastards deserved! 😆 😈
When they investigated after the well blow-out in the Gulf of Mexico, it was discovered that BP had just copied the spill response plan from their Alaska drilling applications. The problem is that none of the facilities, equipment, and vendors that are available in Alaska are available in the Gulf.
That is the kind of crap that makes people opposed anything they want to do. People starting noticing the amount of tax money being spent to clean up oil company messes.