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The Blues Are in SF for Fleet Week.
And local photographer Rich Shelton got a fantastic once in a lifetime shot.
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Air Force Pilots Say They Have No ISIS Targets to Bomb – The Daily Beast
Within the U.S. Air Force, there’s mounting frustration that the air campaign against ISIS in Syria and Iraq is moving far more slowly than expected. Instead of a fast-moving operation with hundreds of sorties flown in a single day—the kind favored by many in the air service—American warplanes are hitting small numbers of targets after a painstaking and cumbersome process.
The single biggest problem, current and former Air Force officers say, is the so-called kill-chain of properly identifying and making sure the right target is being attacked. At the moment, that process is very complicated and painfully slow.
“The kill-chain is very convoluted,” one combat-experienced Air Force A-10 Warthog pilot told The Daily Beast. “Nobody really has the control in the tactical environment.”
via Air Force Pilots Say They Have No ISIS Targets to Bomb – The Daily Beast.
I’m starting to see speculation that after the mid-term elections, a ground combat mission might be inevitable. Right now, there’s not really anyone on either the political right or left calling for that. There’s a lot of criticism of what is being done, but no major political effort to build support for a ground mission. We’ll see if that changes. And one wonders if ISIS is keying its current push to the Baghdad metroplex to take advantage of the US current focus on domestic politics,
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Rolling Thunder- Free
Mark Berent’s first novel of the air war in Vietnam is available free from Amazon for Kindle until October 22. The other four books in the series are $3.99.
If you do choose to buy some of them (or anything else) how about entering Amazon via the link in my right sidebar? I’m an Amazon affiliate, and your purchase helps support this blog, at no cost to you!
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Secondary
As we’ve noted a time or two, the steel armor of a combat vehicle doesn’t burn. But damn near everything else on board will. Artillery self propelled guns are especially vulnerable. As soon as one round cooks off, the rest are sure to go in a sympathetic detonation.
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The X-31
Spill hit an estate sale this week, and came away with a nice little gem.
This coin contains metal from the X-31 aircraft.
How did they get the metal from the aircraft? Glad you asked.
The use of digital fly-by-wire controls in high performance aircraft, covered by Spill here, 2, 3, 4, 5, meant that unconventional flight controls could be used on planes to maneuver in ways not previously possible. In particular, thrust vectoring could be used to control aircraft at very high angles of attack.
A joint US and German test program conceived and built the Rockwell/MBB X-31 research plane to explore this use of DFBW control in conjunction with high angles of attack and thrust vectoring.
X-31 in flight. Notice the three “paddles” used to vector the thrust.
Two were built, and a highly successful test program showed the X-31 was capable of maneuvers that were then astonishing. Since it was purely a research aircraft, it was quite small, had a very small fuel load (typically, only 4100 pounds) at take off had a thrust-to-weight ratio of 1:1, which meant it could accelerate vertically right off the runway.
After several years and hundreds of test flights, one of the two X-31s had its pitot tube replaced by a Kiel tube. The pitot tube us the pointy stick pointing out of the nose of the jet. It measures the dynamic pressure of the air. Between it and a static air pressure sensor, the pitot system provided air data to the flight control computer to determine speed and altitude.
Remember, in a DFBW system, the pilot doesn’t control the airplane directly. He uses the flight controls to tell the computer what he wants the plane to do. The computer uses those imputs, along with air data from the pitot system, and attitude data, to determine which controls should be deflected, and how much.
Obviously, if the air data was corrupted, the computer would provide corrupted control deflections.
One of the most common failure modes for pitot tubes is icing. Moisture from clouds or humidity freezes on the pitot tube, constricting the flow of air through the tube, which makes the computer think it is going faster than it is. To combat this, most pitot tubes have an electrical heater, just like the rear defroster on your car. The normal pitot tube on the X-31 was replaced by Kiel tube, which gave more accurate air data at high angles of attack. But it didn’t have a heater. Given that the flight test rules for the program prohibited flying the X-31 in known icing conditions, this wasn’t thought to be a significant hazard.
Of course, Murphy gets a vote. The engineers knew there was no pitot heat. The pilot didn’t. And of course, the X-31 encountered pitot icing. Not immediate, but gradual accumulation of ice led to a steady degradation of airflow, and hence data. And that led to instability, as the flight computer tried to make the plane do things that it didn’t want to do. The X-31 exectuted an uncontrolled pitch-up, and as soon as the pilot realized he had no control, he safely ejected.
The loss of the X-31 is unusual in that it was very carefully documented. It took place almost directly over the airfield, and was being tracked by powerful cameras on the ground.
Here’s the short version:
If you’re interested, a 40 minute video investigates the chain of errors that led to the mishap. It can be found here.
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New dispute erupts over Marine commandant's basic officer training | Marine Corps Times | marinecorpstimes.com
Paging URR, paging URR. Your favorite four-star is in the news.
Gen. Jim Amos’ most dogged critics are not letting him quietly retire as commandant of the Marine Corps, raising fresh allegations of wrongdoing even as he prepares to end his tenure on Oct. 17.
At issue is whether Amos attended basic Marine officer training in 1972 as he said in the career service record he provided Congress four years ago upon his confirmation as the service’s 35th commandant.
Amos was a Navy pilot and lieutenant junior grade who cross-decked to Marine Corps aviation and bypassed The Basic School, a rite of passage for all Marine officers. The Corps says its top officer did complete TBS – five years later than claimed and via correspondence course.
I haven’t really paid much attention to Amos. I’m an Army guy. I know he’s got a lot of detractors, some upset just because he was an aviator, and not a groundpounder.
But having taken a brief look at his service as listed in the article, it’s even more unusual. Commissioned originally in the Navy, then lateral transfer to the Corps (rare enough in itself), then a break in service to fly for Braniff for four years before returning to active duty? I’m surprised he screened for Lieutenant Colonel.
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‘Archer’ Drops ISIS: The FX Series Dumps the Spy Org’s Name in Light of Recent Events – The Daily Beast
It seems, on the surface, like a throwaway shot. During the premiere episode of the sixth season of Archer, FX’s outrageously funny animated spy series, spy matriarch Malory Archer (Jessica Walter) is seen speaking on the phone with her juvenile, coddled son. In the background, you can see two movers rolling out a large, circular blue ISIS sign.
You see, for the past five seasons, ISIS (International Secret Intelligence Service) has been the name for the underground, non-government approved, New York City-based spy organization at the heart of the show. In light of recent events, however, the creative team behind the Emmy nominated series—creator Adam Reed along with executive producers Matt Thompson and Casey Willis—made a decision to quietly eliminate the acronym from their show.
I think we can file this under “Really Easy To Make Decisions.”
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Ace of Spades HQ
And these apps can send your information to parties unknown in China, India, and Russia. In fact, he says that some are designed to do just that.
He says that some apps state in their terms and conditions that you are giving the app permission to geo-locate you and access your information. But no one reads this, and just hits “Accept.”
One thing he recommends is just not downloading these apps. But if you insist on doing so, look for apps with small file sizes (100 KB or less). The malware flashlight apps have large sizes (1 to 5 MB). And you don’t need that much code just to make your phone’s display all white.
via Ace of Spades HQ.
I kinda thought everyone knew this, but just in case, I’m sharing.
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Lockdown
So…. don’t lose a weapon.
Lot’s of items count as sensitive equipment, and can trigger a lockdown. And you can spend quite a bit of time in that status. Rumor has it, 1-66AR lost a weapon. They might be there a while
A soldier “lockdown” that started Thursday is still in effect as of Friday morning.
Fort Carson says the lockdown involves soldiers from the 1st Battalion, 66th Armor Regiment, and is “due to the unauthorized removal of government property from the unit area.”
The Mountain Post did not elaborate on what the “government property” is. They did tell 11 News that in this particular instance, lockdown simply means that the soldiers are being kept on-duty working instead of being released to go home. Fort Carson also stressed that this only affects a small portion of the post, about 500-700 of 26,000 soldiers.
Fort Carson stated that this type of lockdown is a common procedure when property is missing, and that all soldiers will be taken care of until they are released. A spokesperson said soldiers are being fed, given showers and will be provided with medications if needed.
One time, we went to Pinon Canyon for a couple weeks, then came home for a weekend, preparatory to going back down for another week or two. It’s a couple hours drive from Ft. Carson to Pinon Canyon.
We brought back all our weapons, night vision goggles, and such, but left the Bradleys at Pinon Canyon.
After cleaning our weapons and turning them in, there was one little problem. We were short on M47 Dragon missile system night sight. The night sight was a BIG piece of equipment. And terribly expensive. And an all around flaming pain in the butt to use.
It wasn’t really missing, though. One squad simply didn’t realize they were required to bring it back to Carson, and had left it locked inside the buttoned up Bradley.
So the CO’s driver, the humiliated squad leader (NOT ME!) and the guilty platoon sergeant all had to drive back to Pinon Canyon, retrieve the sight, and return.
Of course, none of us could be released from duty until the round trip was complete. It was annoying, but nothing like some other units have gone through.
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Democrat Senator has Master’s Degree Revoked
We wrote a few weeks ago about the incredibly thin thesis submitted in support of a master’s degree at the Army War College by National Guardsman and Montana Senator John Walsh. Walsh, then a Colonel, and later the state’s Adjutant General.
“The board found that then Colonel John Walsh did commit the offense of plagiarism and thus his Master’s Degree and status as graduate of the U.S. Army War College should be revoked,” War College spokeswoman Carol Kerr said in a statement.
The review board made its conclusions less than 20 minutes after closing its August hearing, according to the report released by Walsh’s office. Possible extenuating circumstances submitted by Walsh of post-traumatic stress disorder and a fellow soldier’s suicide were not enough to support any other recommendation.
“It should also be noted that other students … have had similar or more serious personal and psychological issues during their year at USAWC, and they have been able to successfully complete course requirements without resorting to plagiarism or other cheating,” the review board’s report said.
Partisan politics aside (Walsh dropped out of the campaign), I’m still mightily disturbed that AWC thought the paper was even remotely in line with accepted scholarly standards.
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