Interesting name, assuming the actual name is the Persian word for that phrase. I can’t really bust his chops too badly for that, however, given the presence in our inventory of a weapon system called “Reaper.” (I believe it’s safe to consider “ambassador of death” a synonym to “Grim Reaper,” yes?)
The ship looks an awful lot like a AGM-86 ACLM (air-launched cruise missle) with a single jet engine, air intake at the top rear of the fuselage just ahead of the tail. The ACLM is a missile, however, not a bomber. The story goes on to suggest that the Iranian bird is capable of being armed with either a pair of 250-lb bombs or a single 450-lb device. That implies that it will actually fly to the target, drop the payload, and return. I’m not sure I’m seeing the sensor apparatus that would permit such a mission and there are issues with flying remote-presence sorties that have nothing to do with the actual aircraft. As I have said before in posts about the Iranians’ military advances, lately, it seems to be something beyond their abilities. Until, that is, you factor in the rather cozy arrangement they have with the Russians. I would imagine that nuclear fuel isn’t the only thing they’re getting from Moscow.
For almost 20 years I have pursued my family’s history, the study of genealogy. It’s taken me from the archive room at the National Archives, where I scrolled through dozens of microfilm reels, through forgotten family records and into the reaches of the Internet, a territory I know very well. Lately, there’s been a new tool I’ve been using, a network of volunteers who photograph the tombstones in the various cemeteries in the country, large and small. Over the past couple of weeks I took time out of my vacation wanderings to hike through cemeteries looking for the ancestors of people too distant to make the trip. I was largely successful in those searches (and my fellow researchers were quite thankful for my efforts) but as I made my way past those long lines of stones I ran into several that were literally unreadable due to their age. Neighboring stones showed dates as far back as 1803 in one case. The effort gave me some time to do some thinking.
Tombstones mark the earthly remains of one who has passed on. They provide a final touch point for many of us, connecting us to the past and the memories of a particular person. It is said that so long as one is remembered by those who loved them in life, they are never truly gone. The name of a person now deceased graven in the stone at their burial place calls the memories of a lifetime back to immediacy. It’s a very important part of our social structure and, indeed, of our civilization.
All of that goes double for those who have served our country in uniform and with distinction. Those who have died in the line of that duty, especially, are owed the honor and respect such actions bestow and the families are owed their unique point of connection. When it doesn’t happen, it’s more than a mistake. It’s a travesty and a dishonor. In the wake of the discovery of managerial misconduct at Arlington National Cemetery it’s now been revealed that the incompetence of that management may have resulted in thousands of grave sites at Arlington being mislabeled:
An internal Army investigation found at least 211 discrepancies between burial maps and grave sites at Arlington. The review found lax management of the cemetery and a reliance on paper records to manage the burial sites.
At a news conference Monday in Columbia, Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill said the number of burial site errors could be much higher because the Army report was limited to a small section of the cemetery.
McCaskill called the growing scandal a matter of “heartbreaking incompetence” and said the military has spent more than $5.5 million over seven years in its unsuccessful attempts to computerize the cemetery’s burial records.
“At the very essence here you have waste,” she said. “There may be fraud – we don’t know at this point.”
I find it hard to understand, considering I know the data required to provide a good record of a burial and my expertise in the information systems field, how the expenditure of $5½ million to computerize the cemetery records could be unsuccessful and not be intentional fraud. It’s ridiculous. It’s demonstrated incompetence.
I eagerly await the results of the full investigation and the trial, should it come to that, of the people responsible for this. No, I don’t want them jailed. I want them spending every weekend for the next 12 years going from 1 cemetery to the next to assist in grounds keeping. Perhaps spending the time seeing to it that final resting places of the deceased are kept in good condition – under tight supervision – will impress upon them the importance they should have been ascribing to the task they screwed up.
America’s top-of-the-line air superiority fighter aircraft is about to have some company in the “5th Generation Fighter” category. Yesterday, Russia’s PM Vladmir Putin announced the introduction of their latest design, the Sukhoi T-50.
She’s a pretty ship, that’s for sure. Knowing the success of Sukhoi’s other designs I have no doubt she’s a capable bird, too. There’s a few nagging items about this whole thing, though, and I just can’t not address them. I have mentioned before that there’s been some… interesting… situations where Russian designs have seems to bear a remarkable resemblance to American designs. Look at our space shuttle and the Russian version. I’ve already noted the example of Northrop’s prototype A-9a ground attack ship and the Russian Su-25 Stormovik. So I’m afraid I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that the T-50 above looks an awful lot like this ship:
And that would be America’s own F-22 Raptor, an aircraft design that started in 1981 and went into production over the last decade. Putin claims the T-50 would out-perform the F-22 – and cost less, ‘natch – and would just generally be “superior” to the Raptor. Even if I were to concede that claim (which I don’t) wouldn’t you expect a fighter design announced 3 decades later to outperform an older design? One of the reasons I doubt it so much is comments like this:
According to the government website, the test pilot told Putin the controls of the T-50 allowed the pilot to operate most of the plane’s systems without taking his hands off the joystick, which he said would be very useful under high forces of gravity.
Useful, indeed. At least, that’s what we thought when we introduced the concept in our HOTAS (“Hands-On-Throttle-And-Stick”) feature incorporated into the F-16 Fighting Falcon…. back in 1978. I mean, it’s all well and good the Russians would follow our lead but to suggest that this is an example of why the T-50 is superior to the F-22… well, that’s just kind of bogus.
The T-50 is slated to be jointly produced by Russian and India, which is an interesting partnership on its own. should be interesting to see them brought into active service.
On 14 June, 1775, the Continental Army was formed to fight in the American Revolution. From those roots we have, today, the most capable military force that has ever walked the planet. Today marks the 235th birthday of the US Army. Happy birthday, soldiers!
Hats off, ladies & gents, to the memory and remaining survivors of the opening action of taking back Europe from Hitler’s Nazi Germany 66 years ago today. The Normandy Invasion was a massive amphibious and airborne effort replete with stories of tragic loss and towering heroism. If you don’t know much about, go have a look at the link and learn. Lots of young men died fighting clear and present evil in the land. You need to know about it. And if you do know about it, take a moment today to think about those boys, those who never came home and those who were left to soldier on.
Ebola. The name conjures visions of a hideous death, far too gruesome and far too slow. And with a 90% mortality rate, it’s as close to certain death to contract it as most of us can conceive.
After decades of unsuccessful research, a collaboration based out of the Army’s labs at Fort Detrick, Maryland has devised an experimental injection that cures the Ebola virus by targeting its genetic material.
The injection uses a novel technique, called RNA interference, to stop viral cells from replicating. Scientists packaged RNA snippets into particles that were then injected into four rhesus monkeys, who’d been infected with a dose of Ebola that was 30,000 times more potent than the virus’ most lethal strain, which already has a measly 10 percent survival rate. The snippets latched onto key viral proteins, and cured all four monkeys after a week of daily injections.
Outstanding news, for a couple of reasons. Obviously, when we find a way to cure a deadly disease, that’s reason enough to celebrate. Moreover, this technique might lend itself to treatments for other, more common diseases. The real killer of an H1N1 epidemic wouldn’t be that virus directly, it’d be the parasitic infections that follow, most commonly viral pneumonia. Aside from treating the symptoms there’s just not a whole lot medicine can do for that disease, yet. Perhaps this technique could change that as well?
Anyway, it’s good news and I hope to be hearing lots more about it in the future.
Today as most of us enjoy the day off I urge you to take a moment to recall the meaning of this day. We have all enjoyed the benefit of the actions of those fallen soldiers we honor. It is in thanks for those actions that we should pause, remember, and offer up a prayer or two.
And then, as I have done in years past, I would urge you to get out there and enjoy the day. Almost every member of the military I’ve ever spoken with on this has agreed that what they’d like to see on Memorial Day is Americans doing the things they’d like to be doing with us: grilling up some tasty, gathering with family and friends, and washing it all down with something cool. (And, likely, at least 6% alcohol!) So offer up that work over the grill and knock one back in honor of those fellow Americans who served and laid it all down to see our freedoms remain.
I’m hardly surprised that he’s decided to blow them off after just 1 year in the White House. But I am disgusted at him. The Commander-in-Chief should have more class and more care for the troops he commands.
A key first step – and I do mean first – to fixing our immigrations system is to effectively control our borders. As I’ve been saying here on this blog for years no other part of “fixing” immigrations here in America will do anything but make the problem worse if the border is still so porous that illegals cross by the hundreds or thousands daily. We must get control of the border and stop the flow of people crossing illegally for whatever reason.
One of the time-honored methods of securing a border dates back literally thousands of years – you put soldiers in forts along said border. Tardy (as usual) to the party President Obama has recently announced that he’s going to actually do something about securing the border. To the southern border of the United States, a line almost 2000 miles long, he’s going to send 1200 National Guardsmen. Whoop-dee-do.
In the late 19th century, the U.S. government built a series of forts in the American southwest with full complements of U.S. Cavalry. Some, like Fort Huachuca, established in 1877, are still active military posts. Huachuca was home to the famed all-black 10th Cavalry Regiment, better known as the “Buffalo Soldiers.” American icon Douglas MacArthur spent some of his youth in one of these forts — his father Arthur was the commanding officer.
The forts were designed to protect settlers from Indian actions and they were largely effective. Dorinson notes that if you go to the border today you’ll note that the border patrol is stationed not at the border but 20 miles north of it. He calls that pretty much ceding 20 miles of American territory to drug traffickers and illegal aliens jumping the border. He’s right. He goes on:
Currently the Border Patrol behaves like cops in a city. They meet each morning at headquarters, receive their assignments, and then go out for the day to patrol. The Border Patrol also conducts night operations, but there is no 24-hour presence in force at the actual border.
One current effective tactic is the utilization of Forward Observation Bases (FOB). These stations are situated right along the border and staffed with Border Patrol agents, who live at the bases for days at a time, using horses and ATVs to patrol the area.
Human traffickers and drug smugglers avoid these places. It works.
Requests by AZ and NM congressmen to have more FOB’s built along the border have been basically ignored. An association of ranchers, the Arizona Cattle Growers, have a plan for securing the border and part of that is a proposal to built FOB’s every 12 miles along the border, fully staffed year-round. They have committed to supporting these FOB’s by providing the water necessary to provision them. Dorinson also notes the difficulty in movement in some of these areas. The terrain is extremely difficult on vehicles. The best suggestion appears to be – use horses.
But how about horses? The Arizona cowboys use them in the area, just like the Buffalo Soldiers did over 100 years ago. Think it’s a crazy idea? Read Horse Soldiers by Doug Stanton. He writers [sic] that the U.S. Special Forces used horses and mules to great effect in 2001 to topple the Taliban during Operation Enduring Freedom.
If we could make horses work in Afghanistan, we surely could do it at home in cowboy country. Time to sound the bugle call, “Boots and Saddles,” and bring back the U.S. Cavalry.
(Link provided by me.) One of the things several of my customers are usually surprised to hear me say is that advanced technology isn’t always the best answer. I like my Blackberry and my laptop’s a tool I literally couldn’t do my job without but there are times when a notepad and a pencil are not only sufficient, they’re actually the best tool for the job at hand. Horses have been harnessed to extend our mobility for as long as we’ve been putting forts up at borders. Dorinson’s got an excellent point: if it’ll work in the badlands of Afghanistan, it’ll work in Arizona.
These are serious folks with serious suggestions that have great merit but they’re being dismissed out of hand by the Obama administration. Sending a token force of even the best soldiers on Earth is a waste. We need to send more – lots more – and we need to be building them the facilities to actually secure that border once and for all.
On May 6, 1937 the German airship Hindenburg was completing another transatlantic crossing and was coming in to dock at Lakehurst Naval Air Station in New Jersey. Although the actual cause of the ignition might never be truly known, that an ignition occurred onboard is certainly not in doubt. With over 7 million cubic feet of hydrogen contained within her 803-foot length, Hindenburg became an inferno in seconds and burned completely to her skeleton in less than a minute. Thirteen of her passengers and 22 of her crew died that day as did 1 member of the ground crew. With them, the era of passenger airship travel perished as well.
The Hindenburg was not the only airship that saw passenger service and the United States Navy deployed airships in their operations in the 1920′s and early 1930′s. Two of the largest were the USS Akron and the USS Macon, both effectively airborne aircraft carriers capable of launching and recovering fighter/scout aircraft while in flight. It’s a fascinating era in aviation history brought to a rather tragic close by the Hindenburg disaster.
He writers [sic] that the U.S. Special Forces used horses and mules to great effect in 2001 to topple the Taliban during Operation Enduring Freedom.
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