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Splodey Part II
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DB: More on That Supposed Chinese-Authored Data Breach of OPM
Chinese Hackers Access Performance Reviews Of 3 Million Shitty Federal Workers
WASHINGTON – Chinese hackers were behind a massive cyber-attack that among other things accessed the performance reviews of nearly three million shitty federal workers, Duffel Blog has learned.“Most damaging was not the utter failure of our 40 billion dollar cyber security program, or access to key government organizational structures,” said Eric Mickens, a spokesman for USCYBERCOM. “Most damaging is the fact that Chinese government now knows how terrible a number of U.S. government service (GS) civilians actually are.”The breadth of the attack which was originally detected in April was unknown until late last week. According to sources, it is believed that the Chinese intend to use the information gathered to discover the most common characteristics for the ideal spy to infiltrate the federal government. The sources went on to state that the Chinese government was now recruiting spies based on the profile of a 40 year-old non-combat, medically retired gunnery sergeant with poor communications skills, a non-existent work ethic and no real job prospects in the civilian world.Bob Paul, a retired Marine sergeant major who has been double dipping in a GS-10 job with no real function, is concerned that people will find out he has been leaving four hours early for the past two years. “Everyone at work knows I hit on the young interns all day and falsify my timesheets, but I am horrified that now the Chinese know that too,” Paul said.“Everyone is concerned here,” said Rick Walters of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM). “My boss is concerned because his only function is to spam everyone’s inbox with motivational emails, his boss is concerned because he actually thought his employees were working, and I am concerned because everyone now knows that I don’t really do anything.”Danielle Smith, a medically retired Air Force staff sergeant now doing who-knows-what at Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, echoed many others’ sentiments. “I was medically retired for major depressive disorder due to the strain of my job. I earned the right to have a chill career with complete job security and no real purpose.”Still, Veterans Affairs Secretary Bob McDonald was upbeat when asked about the breach: “I think this is a positive development for the VA and especially me. I have received a lot of heat recently for the VA’s failures and I think now folks will begin to realize how shitty the talent I was working with actually was.”
The long term impact of this attack has yet to be understood, but in the short term it is clear China is using the information to its advantage. According to an anonymous source inside the Chinese government, the Chinese recently released over 3,000 workers imprisoned in gulags for poor job performance because the government realized that “maybe they are not that bad.”
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160th SOAR helicopters damage building in downtown Port Huron
A U.S. Military helicopter caused damage to the historic Sperry’s building in downtown Port Huron early Monday morning.
Around 1:30 a.m., during a military training operation, a helicopter approached the building from the east and the wind from the helicopter caused damage to the brick parapet above the building.
Randee Farrell, U.S. Army spokeswoman, said engineers have already reviewed the accident and found that the structure of the building was not damaged.
“Rotor wash from a helicopter caused damage to the brick veneer along the roof line which fell and caused damage to the awning,” Farrell said in a press release.
No one was hurt during the incident.
“The U.S. Army is responsible for the damage and will work with the property owner,” Farrell said.
There’s video embedded in the article that pretty clearly shows MH-60 helicopters operating at a nearby location.
http://c.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f9?isVid=1&isUI=1
Of course, the tin-foil hat crowd that is certain that #JadeHelm15 is going to result in martial law in Texas sees this as further preparation for the coming Obama takeover of the country.
Less nutty comments such as this one raise a point:
They have no buisness training in civilian areas. They have there own training areas to train. What is really going on here?
Yes, the Army does have its own training areas. The problem is, we all realize that vast amounts of future warfare will, perforce, take place in urban areas. And the military can only build so much urban terrain, that is, mock cities. The problem is, if you only have a couple of places to train, very quickly you end up gaming the system. You learn not the techniques you need to apply in the real world, but the specific techniques for those couple of particular locations.
For instance, my unit would routinely travel to Pinion Canyon for training. And we’d perform the same mission, reinforced platoon in the defense. Now, the same terrain meant the same defense was used. Literally. The same fighting positions were dug time and again. So where was the training value for the new 2nd LT platoon leader in learning how to site his resources? Yes, he saw a very good example of a well planned defense, but critically, he didn’t go through the process of actually having to make decisions on emplacing that defense.
Similarly, the pilots of the Nightstalkers can practice the fundamentals of their business at Ft. Campbell, their home base. But the reality of their mission is that they will have to land, at night or in bad weather, in dense terrain, on objectives they’ve never seen before. And they have to cope with hazards that exist in the real world, such as powerlines and flagpoles, that aren’t normally present at their home station.
And while most US based conventional units do the majority of their training on post, I was reminded last night that units in Germany routinely did almost all of their local training in the civilian community. And remember, after 1955, when West Germany regained its sovereignty, US forces were guests of the Germans, not an army of occupation. Somehow we managed to not impose martial law upon them.
It is more than passing strange that the US military is the most trusted government institution, and many worry about a growing divide between the services and the citizenry, but as soon as the military leaves post, so many instantly presume it is on a mission to oppress.
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Splodey.
The SkySword looks to be somewhat akin to a surface launched RIM-7 Sea Sparrow, though with a booster stage. Taiwan has a pretty robust domestic defense industry.
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Load HEAT- Emily Blunt
Someone mentioned how much they enjoyed the Tom Cruise sci-fi movie Edge of Tomorrow, and I agreed. And a large part of what made the movie was the Angel of Verdun- Emily Blunt.
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Blue Angel #5 Loses Part Of Wing At Rockford Airfest | AirshowStuff
An unusual moment occurred at the Rockford Airfest yesterday when Blue Angel #5 lost a piece of his wing! The outer portion of the leading edge flap on the left wing went missing some time before or during the Line Abreast Loop. The flap is an aircraft control surface that helps the wing maintain lift at high angles of attack. You can see the remaining portion of it angled slightly down in the photo above. The pilot, LCDR Mark Tedrow, completed that maneuver but appeared to give the rest of the formation some extra spacing until it was completed. He then came in to land while the rest of the team continued the performance, jumped into a two-seat backup jet, and amazingly took back off to finish the show. The situation was serious, but proved to be another shining example of the skill and professionalism of the team.
via Blue Angel #5 Loses Part Of Wing At Rockford Airfest | AirshowStuff.
Yikes! That’s the second time in two weeks they’ve had TFOA problems!
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PLUTO- Pipeline Under The Ocean
The Allies were reasonably confident that they would be successful in securing a foothold on the Normandy beachhead. The great concern was supplying the armies to advance across western Europe in a drive to Germany. Until great ports like Antwerp could be secured, the majority of the logistics would have to be delivered over the beaches. One of the most cumbersome commodities to deliver in war is fuel. The British, and most certainly the American armies were motorized and mechanized to a level never before seen in warfare, and every truck, tank, jeep and other impedimentia ran on gasoline, or as our British cousins called it, petrol.
The British gave much thought (and great effort) to the problems of logistics in the Normandy invasion, with many well known efforts, such as the famous Mulberry artificial harbors. One effort less well known was PLUTO, the Pipeline Under The Ocean, a series of pipelines laid across the English Channel to deliver bulk supplies of petrol ashore in France.
Mushdogs tipped me to this very interesting video showing just how complicated such a seemingly simple task was, involving fabricating a welded pipline 82 miles long, and then rolling it up like a spool of thread!
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Vortices
NASA’s photo of the day – the Canary Islands are seen kicking up von Kármán vortices off the Atlantic coast of Africa: http://go.nasa.gov/1AUa3ww
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Vin Scully can call a Dodgers game AND give a class on D-Day
Click through to the video. It’s worth it.
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Zap!
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