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BRILLIANT! I-594 Requires Background Checks For Nail Guns, Flare Guns – Bearing Arms
Will Home Depot, Walmart, Lowe’s, Cabela’s and countless other sporting goods and hardware stores, as well as construction companies in Washington and even the state Department of Transportation, comply with Initiative 594 when it becomes law, and will this state’s prosecuting attorneys prosecute those who don’t?
via BRILLIANT! I-594 Requires Background Checks For Nail Guns, Flare Guns – Bearing Arms.
“Here, hold this for a second” is, by law in Washington, cause for a transfer and background check.
Bad laws make criminals of innocent men.
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Are you Koalafied?
Sergeants do not punish their soldiers for their misdeeds. Punishment is a specific term for the penalties awarded either through Non Judicial Punishment (by ones commander) or via a court martial.
Instead, Sergeants motivate, correct, instill a sense of discipline, alacrity, and attention to detail. They make on the spot corrections, and they provide corrective training, and extra military training to bring their soldiers up to the expected standards of behavior and performance.
Now, how they do that… can be sometimes somewhat creative.
And yes, I’ve both had my troops do this, and done it more than once myself.
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Milblogs are dead. Long live the Milblogs!
When blogs first started to flourish, around 2002 to 2004, not surprisingly a lot of guys deployed to various parts of the world started blogs. From 2005 to 2008, it was very common to come across a Milblog written by say, a Staff Sergeant or junior officer that was basically an online journal of their deployment to Iraq or Afghanistan. Eventually, concerns with operational security and a tendency of chains of command to be wary of potential bad press led to social media guidance that made running a blog quite cumbersome. It’s hard enough to write a decent blog without having to comply with directives at the same time.
The huge impact of Facebook, and now Twitter as well, has also seen the influence of the lone blogger wane. It’s just easier to share with your friends over those networks. And finally, conglomeration has had an impact. It used to be one guy could start a blog and become an Instapundit, an Ace, a Talking Points Memo. Instead now, both legacy media hire content providers (that is, bloggers) or e-zines are formed. Buzzfeed takes content from just about anyone. And then there’s reddit.
So the day of the blog is likely past.
But a funny thing happened along the way to blogging obsolescence. A lot of people found out they liked having a forum to discuss issues. Discussion boards run for the benefit of junior soldiers soon built incredibly strong communities. Ideas were shared, argued, torn down, and built up. Where previously a junior officer’s only chance to write and publish was likely in his branch’s monthly journal, these independent forums were far easier to submit to, and far quicker to publish.
And that trend has continued. And those same junior officers are now field grade officers. And they are looking to elevate the discussion from the purely tactical level at with they previously operated, to the operational and strategic levels they are now faced with.
A few years back, there was a short lived Army blog called the League of Disgruntled Majors.
Now comes three of what we can only describe as the League of Gruntled Majors. Majors Cavanaugh, Finney, and McRae are three among the many who seek to use online forums to further the profession of arms. Not just tell war stories, but to actually influence the shape and future of Army thinking.
A core group of mid-grade officers are changing the way professional discussions, doctrinal analysis, and institutional innovations take place in the Army. Like the famous interwar dialogue between Patton and Eisenhower that later found battlefield application during WWII, this group is attempting to foster a smarter, more relevant Army. Unlike those dialogues, they are using the internet and military blogging to drive change and new ideas, aligning with the culture of innovation that defense leaders hope will ensure advantage over potential future adversaries. Initially born of tactical-level information sharing on junior-officer message boards during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, this movement is comprised of officers now working at the field-grade officer level—Major through Colonel—having traded tactical discussions for institutional ones.
They aren’t the only ones. The article mentions the Defense Entrepreneurs Forum, from where we’re going to steal materiel for a post tomorrow.
Another such organization is CIMSEC, the Center for International Maritime Security.
These organizations, all largely “organic” in that they sprang to life independent of any official high level sanction from their services, are rapidly gaining respect as vibrant centers of thought.
So the blog is dead. And yet mightier than ever before.
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On the back side of the power curve, and other oddities of the carrier approach.
Piggybacking on Spill’s post on the S-3, I should mention that he and I discussed Direct Lift Control quite a bit the other day.
DLC is used on several different aircraft. And while there are various ways of achieving the effect (the F-35C apparently programs the flaps) let’s take a look at the F-14 Tomcat’s version.
On a carrier approach, you have to balance several issues simultaneously. Airspeed, angle of attack and attitude, and lineup.
Lineup is the left or right displacement of the aircraft from the extended centerline of the landing area. Now, since the landing area of a carrier is canted to port 8-10 degrees, and the ship is moving forward, lineup is never static for the approaching aircraft. The landing area appears to be continuously crawling to the right. So a series of corrections for lineup have to be made throughout the approach. The amount of correction varies due to the variances in just how much ambient wind there is, and the actual speed of the carrier through the water.
Airspeed is critical as well. The lift generated by the wings of a plane is directly related to the speed of the plane, obviously. Similarly, attitude, that is, the amount of nose up pitch, and angle of attack, are critical with respect to the rate of descent. The two are related. AoA is very roughly the angle at which the wings are biting in the air. Obviously, attitude is related to this. But so is airspeed.
Changing any one of the three, airspeed, attitude, or angle of attack changes the other two factors. Given that precision needed for a successful carrier approach, that places an enormous workload on the aviator. And so, tools to reduce that workload are prized.
Here’s the other odd thing. You’d expect airspeed on an approach to be controlled by the throttle, and the angle of attack to be controlled by the control stick. In fact, it’s just the opposite.
When a carrier jet settles into the groove for its final approach, jet is supposed to be at a given airspeed (generally about 130 knots, but varying by type), and a specific angle of attack (again, varying by type) and at a specific rate of descent (again, varying by type, but aligning with the standard 3.5 degree glideslope used on a carrier approach). The jet would ideally maintain this slight nose up attitude all the way to touchdown. There’s no “flare” to stop the rate of descent just before touchdown.
When in this approach configuration, the jet is said to be on the back side of the power curve. You normally think of jets, pull back on the stick, the nose goes up, and the plane climbs, right? On the back side of the power curve, the increase in induced drag from the increase in angle of attack actually causes the plane to slow down, and in fact, increase the rate of descent! Pushing the stick forward lowers the nose, increases the speed, and reduces the rate of descent.
In the cockpit of every carrier jet, there’s a quick visual aid to tell the pilot his angle of attack- the AoA indexer. What it is really telling the pilot is if he is fast or slow. The pilot simply cannot glance down to his airspeed indicator. Even in HUD equipped aircraft, an AoA indexer is a faster way of imparting information to the pilot than a digital airspeed indication).
If you’re slow, pitch the nose down slightly. If you’re fast, pitch the nose up slightly. Helpfully, the “arrows” point the way you should go. If you’re seeing the green donut, you’re on speed. While the picture shows all three symbols illuminated, in operation, only one would show (or on some, two, for instance red and green, indicating slightly slow).
Having this tool to show his airspeed, the carrier aviator also needs information on his glideslope. As noted, there’s a notional 3.5 degree glideslope reaching from the ideal touchdown spot aft into space along the approach path. To give the pilot a visual reference, mounted on the port side of the carrier is “the meatball.” The IFOLS, or Improved Fresnel lens Optical Landing System shines a beam of light along that 3.5 degree slope. That beam is centered between datum lights that show the proper glide slope. If a pilot is high, the “ball” climbs above the datum lights. If the pilot is low, the ball sinks. Sink to far and the datum lights turn red, because landing short on a carrier approach means smacking into the aft end of the carrier.
When you hear Maverick at three quarters of a mile, call the ball, that’s what he’s seeing- confirming to the Landing Signal Officer that he in fact sees the IFOLS.
If our intrepid aviator is on speed, but a bit high, he would squeeze off just a touch of power. That increases the rate of descent. As he approaches the correct glideslope, he’d add on a bit of power. If our aviator is low, he would goose the throttles a bit, and then pull off a bit before climbing through the glideslope.
The problem is, it’s very rare to only have to make one correction. Instead, our aviator would end up having to jockey the throttle virtually to touchdown. All while trying to maintain the perfect speed, attitude, and angle of attack.
So back to DLC. If there is a way to suddenly increase or decrease the rate of descent, without having to jockey the throttles, that’s a boon. And that’s what DLC does.
On the F-14, on carrier approach, the spoilers were partially deployed. That inefficient use of the wing raised approach speed by about 10 knots. That’s the downside. On the plus side, if our aviator is high on his approach, simply using a thumbwheel on the control column allows him to add a bit more spoiler deployment. That instantaneously increases the rate of descent. Coming to the proper glideslope, releasing the thumbwheel puts the spoilers back in the default position, and instantaneously puts the Tomcat back to the normal rate of descent. The converse is also at work. Low? A little thumbwheel lowers the spoilers, increasing the efficiency of the wing, and decreasing the rate of descent.
Spill also mentioned the poor response time of the S-3’s engines at approach power. The lower the power a jet engine is producing, the lower its RPM. Inertia being what it is, it takes time for jet engines to spool up to produce more power.
For this reason, most carrier jets fly the approach with their speed brakes deployed. The higher drag means they need considerably more power to maintain their approach speed. That higher RPM also tends to improve throttle response times, as there is less inertia to overcome. If also means that if a pilot suddenly needs quite a bit more airspeed, all he has to do is pull in the speed brakes.
When Spill and I first talked about DLC, I was a bit surprised to learn one of the very first uses of it was on the Lockheed L-1011 TriStar jetliner. Apparently, it was rather highly thought of by the crews.
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Exclusive: Flournoy Drops Out of Race to Be Next Secretary of Defense
Michèle Flournoy, the most widely rumored candidate to replace Chuck Hagel as the next secretary of defense, has taken herself out of the running for the job, according to sources familiar with the situation. The decision complicates what will be one of the most important personnel decisions of President Barack Obama’s second term.
Flournoy, the co-founder and CEO of the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), a think tank that has served as a farm league for future Obama administration officials, would have been the first female secretary of defense had she risen to the position.
via Exclusive: Flournoy Drops Out of Race to Be Next Secretary of Defense.
DoD needs some real talent and a steady hand at the tiller for the next couple years. But it’s unlikely to get that.
Why would anyone want to serve as SecDef for the rump of a failed presidency, particularly when any real authority remains in the hands of Valerie Jarrett and Susan Rice?
Anybody taking odds on how long before Ash Carter says “thanks, but no thanks?”
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Ferguson: "Certain Instigators"
In this afternoon’s post, XBRAD applied the term “certain instigators” to define the thugs and race-baiters who wish for “black rage” and senseless violence in Ferguson rather than any acknowledgement of facts or desire for justice. Those instigators have fanned the flames of racial hatred, demanded that due process be set aside so that revenge could be exacted, and assiduously masked the REAL issue of the Ferguson story: police overreach. (No, I am not talking about the shooting death of Michael Brown. Reaching for a policeman’s firearm in a wrestling match almost guarantees such an outcome.) I am talking about law enforcement who treats every citizen as a suspect and potential perp. Cops that sight in on unarmed civilians and scream that they are going to kill them. Cops with little restraint, regardless of skin color of either the officer or the citizen. Who might be eager to suppress that issue? Our highest law enforcement official in the land. And the President whose vision of government is one of omnipotence and intimidation.
The old saying, “You’re known by the company you keep”, certainly applies to those two. Behold, the “certain instigators” of Ferguson:
![images[6]_23](https://xbradtc.files.wordpress.com/2014/11/images6_23.jpg)
Birds of a feather. They have far more than skin color in common. They are hucksters. Bigoted, race-baiting charlatans. Despicable and dishonest. They see an opportunity for racial agitation in Ferguson, and in Wappinger Falls, NY, Durham, NC, Sanford, FL, but apparently none in Duncan, OK, or in South Salt Lake, UT, or Chicago’s projects. And they are indistinguishable from one another, except that two of them are supposed to be supporting and defending the Constitution.
For people like Tim Scott, Alan West, Mia Love, and Dr. Benjamin Carson, skin color is the ONLY thing they have in common with those pictured above. Something about content of their character, I believe.
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S-3 Viking Flight Quality Improvement Program
Lockheed S-3 Viking The Lockheed S-3 Viking was a carrier borne antisubmarine aircraft that entered service with the US Navy 1974 and ended it’s front line service in 2009.
The War Hoover (as it’s known due to the sound of it’s engines) was one the few carrier borne aircraft from Lockheed and as such they partnered with Ling-Temco-Vought (LTV) who had a long line of success of building carrier based aircraft. Lockheed put LTV’s experience in the S-3 to work as it uses the main landing gear from the F-8/A-7 stable of Vought carrier based aircraft.
Before all naval aircraft enter service they all undergo testing to evaluate how they handle when coming aboard the carrier for landing and how they behave when launched from the carrier’s catapult. The testing for the S-3, conducted in 1973 was no different. The case study of the S-3 illustrates the design complexity that all naval aircraft undergo to safely operate from the carrier environment.
Vikings from VS-21 “Fighting Redtails” aboard an aircraft carrier. Note the wing fold for stowage aboard the carrier. The S-3 has a high aspect ratio wing the aircraft makes for a good glider and large turbofan engines that have 22:11 bypass ratio big that don’t respond to power changes quickly. Now you have an aircraft that uses low engine power to maintain position on the glide slope (with very low RPM on the engines). Not a huge problem on land but on a ship:
“If all the sudden your starting a settle coming into the carrier, you add power” to regain altitude, but nothing happens because of the delay in getting the engines to respond. “Then you find yourself sitting there looking at the ramp,” the wall of steel below the deck of the carrier. Hitting the ramp means dying. “In fact I almost hit the ramp” when testing the S-3 on the carrier, Webb said. “The combination of a very clean and very slow power response was a major problem.”
An S-3B illustrates how the engines are tilted 9.5 degress from the aircraft longitudinal axis. Another problem was the S-3 would pitch up when power was added and pitch down when power was reduced. This was because the thrust line of the engines was below the center of gravity of the aircraft. This always placed the aircraft “out of trim” whenever a change to power was made. The remaining problem was that during simulation, Lockheed didn’t account for the burble of air coming from island and flowing across the landing area. Lockheed assumed the flow was horizontal behind the carrier.
“This gust responsiveness makes it considerably more difficult to bring aboard under wind conditions which create a strong ‘burble’ of distrubed air behind the carrier. In fact the aircraft failed its initial carrier suitability testing largely due to its gust responsiveness”
After additional flight testing, Lockheed implemented a number fixes to address these problems. The first was called “thrust trim compensation.” Whenever the pilot increased or decreased power, the elevators would automatically down or up to neutralize the pitching. “With that fix, a pilot trying to stay on glide slope while coming in to trap “does not have to fight the pitch with power all the time.””
The S-3 Viking’s Pitch Trim System as schemtically illustrated from the S-3 NATOPS Manual. Another fix was applied to the S-3 spoilers. A spoilers is a control surface at the top of the wing, hinged on the wing’s leading edge. The spoiler is designed to disrupt or “spoil” the airflow on the top of the wing to dump lift. Normally, in the S-3, the spoilers are activated one wing at a time with movement of the stick left or right to assist the ailerons in control of the aircraft’s roll. With the press of a button the spoilers on the S-3 rise on both wings simultaneously. This allowed the pilot to reduce lift and descend faster without the pilot having to pull back on the throttles to reduce power. This “direct lift control” meant that the pilot could keep the engines at a relatively high power and not back to the unsafe “low-rpm” low power regime. The pilot needs the engines to main at a high power level in case he needs go around and try for another landing.
An S-3 on launch from a carrier. You can see the DLC spoilers on the upper surface of the wings just forward of the flaps (seen in red and captured mid retraction). These improvements took almost 10 years to apply and were collectively known as the FQIP (Flight Quality Improvement Program) Mod. The S-3 eventually became a very successful carrier borne aircraft and had a reputation the fleet as being an aircraft with relatively benign carrier landing characteristics. The Viking FQIP is one of many example of the performence constraints that naval aircraft must operate in.
S-3 Viking on the landing rollout after catching a wire. Sources:
Flying the Edge by George C Wilson.
World Airpower Journal Volume 34 Autumn/Falll 1998.
S-3 Viking NATOPS.
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Army Chow- Just in time for the holidays
Meals in basic training were…. rapid. You didn’t have time to taste them. But the burping the rest of the day let you know what it was you had wolfed down. Not bad meals. Just not really a great environment to enjoy them. We did have Thanksgiving during my cycle, and my mom and an aunt and uncle were able to join me. As usual, the Army does a fine job of putting on a traditional turkey dinner.
My unit mess in Hawaii seemed to be… poorly staffed. Breakfast was always good. It’s pretty identical throughout the Army. But lunch and dinner, while occasionally good, were usually just serviceable.
I was on three different posts in Germany. The first was excellent, the second was very good, and I simply cannot recall the third. Seriously, I’m drawing a blank on where it was, or what it was like.
You see, about halfway through my tour in Germany, I was assigned as a driver for the brigade XO. And the XO doesn’t plan his day around my ability to eat in the mess hall. So onto BAS I went. I could eat in the mess hall when feasible. Or failing that, I was expected to eat on the economy. Even after I left that job, I simply stayed on BAS the rest of my time in the Army. I still ate in the mess hall often. I simply paid cash.
Worst mess hall experience? TDY to Fort Benning for a couple months. We were billeted well away from any mess hall. And the school hours precluded us from actually eating in a mess hall. But the byzantine regulations that cover feeding and pay said that technically a mess hall was available, so we didn’t get any extra money. BAS hardly covers eating out for an entire month. There was at least a decent food court near our billets. For lunch, the instructors for the course set up a grill and made burgers for a buck a pop. Two or three burgers, and a quick trip to the vending machine for a couple bottles of YooHoo! were lunch.
Not exactly a mess hall, but ABN-AMRO/LaSalle Bank in Chicago had a cafeteria in the basement of their offices. And it was fantastic. And the members cafeteria of the Chicago Board Options Exchange had a monthly prime rib for about $7. A slap of nearly raw beef the size of a dinner plate!
What’s your fond memories? Good mess halls? Bad college meal plans?
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Ferguson
Everyone else is talking about it, so here’s a couple random thoughts.
You’ll hear people lament that Michael Brown didn’t deserve to die for his crimes. Deserve? No. But the evidence shows that he took actions that led almost inevitably to his death.
There’s a tendency among males, especially young males, and most markedly among black urban young males, to escalate a confrontation. When that involves the police, that often ends badly for the police. But it almost always ends badly for the young man.
Brown wasn’t killed for stealing cigarillos, or jaywalking. He was killed because he placed a police officer in danger. Just being unarmed doesn’t mean there’s not a potentially deadly threat. Don’t believe me? Allow me to introduce you to WorldStar HipHop (NSFW).
What the heck took the Guard so long to show up last night? It’s not like everyone didn’t know rioting was going to break out.
Those of us sitting in our comfy places watching and tut-tutting probably don’t understand deeply enough the mistrust that exists between a good bit of the black community and police forces. I’ll wager that if we were to get some of these hooligans to sit down and present them with the evidence, they might even come to the same conclusion as the grand jury–but their reactions would still be the same. This isn’t necessarily about Brown’s death, it is about perceptions built up over years and simmering rage. The Ferguson incident simply provides a convenient outlet for these emotions.
Emphasis mine. Concur.
If you want to tell me there is a problem with how the police and the black community in America intersect, I’m all ears. But the Brown case isn’t the mountain to plant your flag on. Why is it that those who seek to incite their community to outrage always seem to chose a losing case? It can’t be that hard to find a case where a shooting was pretty clearly uncalled for. Heck, just ask Radley Balko. The guy makes a career out of trying to highlight unjustified use of force by the police.
Or take a look at this shooting in NYC.
Could it be that certain instigators don’t wish for justice, but rather thrive on the unrest?
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One of the Greatest NFL Commercialz Eva
I am a fan of the New England Patriots, and as such I seem to be required to hate all things Manning. Not a chance. Not only is Peyton Manning one hell of a quarterback (his brother is no slouch, either), but I loved his old man, Archie in the long-ago days when he QB’d the Saints.
One of the things I like best about the Manning clan is their collective senses of humor. They have had some great commercials (the one in the museum when the old man gives them the look for misbehaving being among my favorites) and Peyton certainly was a hit hosting Saturday Night Live. But I think my favorite commercial they ever did is this one:
Makes you wanna go out and get football on your phone. Yo. Fo’ shizzle.
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