Credo
"Sign on, young man, and sail with me. The stature of our homeland is no more than the measure of ourselves. Our job is to keep her free. Our will is to keep the torch of freedom burning for all. To this solemn purpose we call on the young, the brave, the strong, and the free. Heed my call, Come to the sea. Come Sail with me." -- John Paul Jones
"Pardon him, Theodotus; he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature" --George Bernard Shaw, "Caesar and Cleopatra"
"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music."--Friedrich Nietzsche
"A kind Providence has placed in our breasts a hatred of the unjust and cruel, in order that we may preserve ourselves from cruelty and injustice. They who bear cruelty, are accomplices in it. The pretended gentleness which excludes that charitable rancour, produces an indifference which is half an approbation. They never will love where they ought to love, who do not hate where they ought to hate."--Edmund Burke
“You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours.”--General Sir Charles Napier
"Μολὼν λαβέ" -- Leonidas
"Blogito Ergo Sum" -- Neptunus Lex
Reads you like a book, does she?
It’s a necessary and very normal skillset for daughters by the age of 2 years old or so, to be able to read and, more importantly, game ‘the old man’ into doing things for them…..something about preparation for later life. Sort of like horse riding is training for a woman on how to control a much larger, stronger, and dumber ‘companion’.
Appears that Kat has intuitive DAS for bipeds, or at least DAD DAS.
But it still has only ONE engine.
Looks like she’s coming around and starting to appreciate her Dad. See, you were right to give up the admiral-striker career path!
Actually, save for destroying the Su-35s on it’s tail multiple times (which fortuitously despite being within VISUAL RANGE to even be detected by DAS and in perfect firing position has kindly declined to shoot at the F-35) the overall picture is pretty accurate.
Marvel as the F-35 destroys an SA-4 GANEF site! (Originally designed in 1957)
Wonder as the F-35 defeats the ZSU-23! (Introduced in 1962)
Sit in awe with a cockpit view of a swirling dogfight as the F-35 basically flies straight and level and accurately identifies the friend or foe status of aircraft mere hundreds of feet away that happen to slide in front of it! (Despite the fact they are CLEARLY hornets and flankers. I wonder how many American pilots they expect to NOT know from relying on their own wits which of those two will be the good guys and which the bad guys.)
The two on two dogfight? Seriously?!?! Again, notice how the F-35 doesn’t even try to maneuver (it can’t) and the Su-35s graciously decide to not shoot, even though they have HOBS beyond 90 degree ability.
(My sound wasn’t working so excuse me if I’m missing something important from the audio, but I was imagining the Benny Hill theme the entire time.)
To this point, how effective might said high-tech systems be against, say, the S-300 in the hands of, oh, say, the Iranians?
Or even the S-400 (2007)?
Try not much at all.
The new double digit SAM systems operate at a lower frequency where in the weird physics of stealth/radio wave reflection you want something big (relative to the wavelength of the emission, has to do with the type of scattering) to be stealthy, i.e. B-2 magnitude wingspans. F-35 is, paradoxically, too small to be all that stealthy against such systems. And with the extremely high range and speed of those SAMs I doubt the F-35 could get off a return shot, and it lacks the kinematic ability of the F-22 to possibly evade them.
And those systems are scary effective. S-300 in the hands of the Iranians is a game changer, and not in the good way.
It’s good to have multiple approaches to defeating such systems, and NGJ will be necessary if we want to keep our tactical forces relevant in that environment.
I think it was you that gave the best comeback to DAS. Instead of spending billions to “see through the floor,” can’t they just roll the plane?
Think so, and I still stand by it. It reminds me of the whole multi-million dollar US space pen that could write underwater, in zero gravity, during a spacewalk, etc. The Russians used a pencil. Sometimes American tech lust goes a little overboard . . .
There was no “multi-million dollar US space pen”.
The Fisher Pen Co. developed the space pen with no NASA funding. The company reportedly invested about $1 million of its own funds in the effort then patented its product and cornered the market as a result.
Fun story, though.
The Russian pencils, by the way, turned out to be a bit troublesome, in practice.
Particles of graphite and wood from sharpening them tended to drift about the cabin, and got into stuff.
Hey, never let the truth get in the way of a good story!
I think the point of the parable is still the same though. Sometimes tech lust can lead you to a very complex, very expensive solution to a not terribly pressing problem.
I wonder how many American pilots they expect to NOT know from relying on their own wits which of those two will be the good guys and which the bad guys.
USAF fighter drivers I’ve quizzed suck at target recognition, and I’ve quizzed more than a few. They improved, marginally, after the revelation that two UH-60s got nailed by a pair of F-15s during Northern Watch, because they mistook them for Mi-24s. The Hind looks *nothing* like a Black Hawk, and both ‘Hawks involved had *large* US flags painted on their external fuel tanks.
The Air Force claim that the F-15s involved in that incident fired from altitude is a flat-out lie, BTW. The attack was witnessed by the entire population of a Kurdish village, and one of them had a camcorder. I’ve seen the vid. One of the damned Eagle drivers was right on the lead -60′s tail when he fired…
Yikes. My solution? Playing cards with silhouettes. I’ll sell them to the Air Force at 1/100,000th the cost of DAS and still be laughing al the way to the bank.
They have ‘em. They don’t use ‘em.
Part of my annual *Army* aerial gunnery evaluation was being shown 3-view silhouettes of 15 aircraft and 15 armored vehicles. I not only had to ID each one properly, but know the weapons systems and vulnerabilities of each. If I had ever misidentified a good guy as a bad guy, or vice-versa, I’d have been grounded until I re-tested correctly. If I blew the re-test, I’d probably have spent what little remained of my career as a FAC III, RL 2 staff weenie — “Authorized Flight Simulator Only — Copilot Only”…
Worse, S-3 Air.
Lip-stack, knife in the back, weenie pack: Krivak!
And then there was the “Ropy Ropuchka,” (for the life rafts) and the “So-very-many” (for all the many ASMs). The Romeo class sub showed a certain degree of “ardor” on the sail.
The “Kilo” was a bit of a two-step: Eat the donut, and you’d gain 2.2 pounds.
All those brain cells, going to waste.
Never had a problem ID’ing the fighters – they could kill you. Had the bombers down cold too – you could kill them. We honestly didn’t spend much time on helos; they couldn’t kill you and weren’t worth killing.
Teaching RECCE was probably one of my favorite parts of being an AIO. I used large bags of candy “special” shots where one had to id the owner of the “side lobes” and “rear aspect” shots. Worked pretty good and attendance was always high. “foxtail” on the Foxtrot anyone?
We honestly didn’t spend much time on helos; they couldn’t kill you and weren’t worth killing.
I know of at least two occasions where MiG pilots discovered otherwise — one a -15, the other a -15bis. They tried to tag a UH-1C gunship.
I went 2v1 in an OH-6A against a pair of A-7s at Ft. Drum one year. The controller had a tough time convincing the jetsters I’d nailed them until he showed the tape. And I already told the tale of how two A-10s almost found themselves in a rocket-rain from four AH-1Fs at AP Hill, VA.
But I *like* that “not worth killing” thang. It makes things soooooo much easier when the other guy is overconfident…
BillT/
I knew LtC Randy May, the lead shooter and Sq Co of the UH-60 shootdown when he was a 1/lt C-130 co-pilot living across the hall from me in the BOQ at RAF Woodbridge in 1971. (Was in the AARS Sq that shared the runway with us) He used to complain all the time about being stuck in trash haulers and told me he was moving heaven & earth to get into fighters. “You fighter guys have all the fun,” he used to tell me. When I heard of the shoot-down my first reaction was: “Well, I see Randy got his wish.” My second: “Be careful what you wish for.” Followed by “Are we having fun yet?”
And, yes, sadly you are correct about USAF ac recognition standards–at least when I was in, I’m ashamed to admit.
Little technical gig, here, PAMDO
The PROPER nomenclature is ZSU-23-4! 
Virg,
Where would I be without you?
Are we joining the ranks of the Pedants VX?
Its obvious, the Flanker pilots were cleary Monologuing “I’ll get you you Imperialist Scum, just you wait as my, dot dot dot”
Great, can we keep DAS and hang it on an airframe with a better cost / capability ration?
Not sure if anything will be delivered at this point, at least to the navy.
You guys! Dang! I thought _I_ was the autistic tech nerd here! Lex was talking about bonding with his kid, developing a common interest and understanding! You bozos!
That cracked me up!
Just, given the pathetic nature of the public schools today, it is imperative that the parental units teach the youngsters those techniques involved in critical thought. Which we’re trying to do here regarding the F-35. There is also the lesson of thrift, again brought to you through the example of the F-35. I mean, we’re all about education here, ya know?
Which, yeah, I think I was perhaps 7 when I first saw Star Wars. Great movie, had me transfixed. Until Has Solo said, “It’s the ship that made the Kessel run in less than 12 parsecs.” I remember sitting there in my seat, thinking, “Parsecs? That’s a unit of distance, not time…”
Next day at the library I found that time and distance are related via Einstein’s theory of Relativity.
I couldn’t understand all the theory, but chance opportunities like this can be far-reaching.
For example, we let the Little tricycle Motor watch the movie “The Incredibles” on TV this evening before setting her to bed. I do believe she will awake with an intense desire to karate-kick and punch every evil-doer in the living room tomorrow morning. That pretty much leaves Mom and the dog as the targets. Some days having to leave for work before they awake is a good thing.
My hope is I can find Donald Duck in Mathematicaland and inspire her to learn math. Or shoot a near-perfect game of pool. Either will have her financially set for life.
– Max
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_ssR7M5Px0
Don’t forget to follow it up with…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hwk1MBRNUz0
Wow, I grew up on all those Disney classics. Brings back memories . . .
Compare the above to Go Diego Go or the rotely PC junk on for kids now.
Max – you knew about Parsecs at age 7? I saw Star Wars for the first time at age 14…and I only cared about how cool and cute Han and Luke were.
You needed to get out more!
Sorry, Kris — Dad had a subscription to Science News, among other magazines, and I was an avid reader of anything having to do with science or mechanics. I didn’t always understand everything I read, which is why like the Kat I followed up with questions to Dad.
I did actually “get out” at that age, spending most of my afternoons doing chores or playing in the woods and fields, but after supper I preferred reading to watching TV.
– Max
Hey – no apology needed! I kid but I think it’s cool that you knew that at such a young age.
Sheesh. Kids.
You needed the benefit of age, experience, and at least one combat tour in RVN to realize that Star Wars was an epic parable of the WWI Yank newby Spad pilot challenging both Jasta Boelke and the aces of the Flying Circus to mortal combat in the deadly skies over Passchendaele — and then convincing the rest of his squadron that it wasn’t a *smart* thing to do, but it was the *right* thing to do.
Chewie was, of course, a trench rat who attached himself to the squadron in gratitude for having been plucked from the mud and dragooned into being the squadron cook…
Yeah, right – whatever.
Han and Luke were still cool and cute to this 14 year old.
My grandson found “Jack, Jack Attack” and spent the next 3 hours replying it. His older sister (by 2 years) was furious.
The Parsec is still a unit of distance. It’s actually an astronomical term and is about 3.26 light years, and was derived from parallax measurements.
General Relativity has nothing to say on the matter of the Parsec.
The parsec is a unit of distance. The time it takes an object to travel that unit of distance is well described by the theory of General Relativity. If it has any mass at rest it should take far longer than if it doesn’t. And if it can reach the velocity C it should be able to shed mass for an increase in velocity, at which point the equations get very, very wierd.
To the point of positing that if some mass hit speed C and exceeded it, you’d have a body shedding mass to speed up, expanding as speed increased, and time constraints kind of go missing. Time at speeds above C sort of works out to you arrived before you left.
Which, impossible according to the theory but had it happened once that would explain a lot of the timelessness, infinite power, etc of a Diety.
Just saying, if faster than C and were the physics known it’s possible that parsecs would be used as a unit of both time and distance combined as at speeds above C both are variable.
And did anybody else notice the film had a *girl* in it? In white robes? And a hair-do that looks like a couple of cinnamun buns on the side of her head?
If not, you were probably thinking about parsecs…
– Max
I liked the metal bikini in Jedi. Personally speaking.
Cinnamon buns?
Huh. And here I’d thought they were supposed to be cheese danish…
bonding? understanding?
What these stranges things you speak of?
As long as she doesn’t kick Throckmorton. At least, not until he’s older, and probably has it coming.
Pretty neat–why use a IRST with moving parts and a limited field of view when you can use 6 (relatively cheap) fixed IR cameras and some nifty software?
I like… and this should be cheap enough to incorporate on most future planes, as well (albeit there’s nowhere enough bandwidth to transmit full-round vision from UCAVs).
Likely won’t take many dollars to outfit all of the JSFs we’ll be buying, relatively cheap or no…
http://www.defensedaily.com/sectors/army/DoD-Confirms-F-35-IOC-Delays-50-percent-Nunn-McCurdy-Breach_9587.html
(subscription required to read the whole thing; reprinted in the 12 March CHINFO clips)
Even if the system works (carefully eliding the child-parent bonding aspect of the post), it’s just another measure of the pilot only being along to validate the computers’ decisions.
Eric Hines
The bigger question is why Kat asks him about neat stuff like this and mine asks questions about painting the breakfast room? No fair.
I guess Kate the Luddite Wife’s concerns lie midway between techno-coolness and housewifery.
Last time I was home and a Huey went whupping overhead, KtLW looked at me ad asked, “Was that you up there?”
It’s easy to get them interested, but, hard to keep them that way. We had a “Squadron Family Day” one time so that family members could come to the hangar and see what their Son or Dad did for a living. As an exhibit we had external power hooked up to one of the helos so that all of the lights came on without wearing down the battery. Everybody thought it was neat and it was working out well until the 9 year old son of one of our pilots got to sit in the seat. The guy who was supposed to be watching him was talking to the 20 year old sister of one of the other guys and wasn’t paying attention. The first indication of a problem was when the starter motor on #1 engine started powering up. This kid had watched his Dad studying his NATOPS proceedures so many times that he was well on his way to starting the engine. If he would have advanced the throttle it would have fired right up. Up until the point where he was stopped, he would have passed a NATOPS test too.
Every man should be so lucky as to have a daughter. They’ll test you and age you and keep you up nights, but they’ll also keep you honest. And just when you despair of ever really being able to connect, they’ll look right into your soul and see you as clear as day.
Whenever I’m having a bad day lately a 5 minute phone call with the Idaho Sailor cheers me right back up. Especially when she ends with “I love you Dad.” The kids my heart.
My own experience anyway. Your mileage may vary.
It’s hard, what with the sisters being two timezones away in either direction. Don’t hear from them nearly enough.
I saw that article on DAS a couple days ago and snarked DAS-BOOT? Like, what happens when the DAS decides to (re)boot in the midst of a flaming fur fight at 4K? Or what resistance to EMP does all that fragile electronics have (not that I’ll ever know and hopefully will never find out). Don’t get me wrong, as a technologist I just drool over the latest toys, but having spent a week+ trying to recover from the latest hardware crash with a bad backup from faulty software, the snark got the best of me. I just hope the guy flying in that dark and stormy night doesn’t find the bug he’s experiencing is fixed in release 3.7.2 and he’s got 1.0.42 loaded……..
Two thoughts. Fist, I thought DAS was cool. Until I read all the comments, that is. Second, but that I had a Dad like Lex – how cool would that have been?
Engine choice….
A Super can make a trap with one engine put to idle.
DAS would be great if only it wasn’t on the Just So Farcical.
still makes me wonder why the video didn’t have the Gomer Bandits using something like Archers or Adders? Unless when confronted with the coolness of the JSF, they are incapable of being employed and the pilots are driven to close to BVR to better admire the beautiful lines and technology.
DAS: Pretty cool notion, but hardly a replacement for the Mk I Mod O on a swivel. I remember Robin Olds saying once that he used to turn down the RHAW gear volume when the SAM’s were flying, mostly because he could see them and didn’t need the distraction screeching in his ears.
The Kat: Sounds like SNO may have a sibling on the Fighter track in a few years. From Jumpers to Jets…not all that big a leap.
Spikkin a which, SNO started filling out his log book yet?
Starts IFS ground school next week, flying Cessna 172s on the gubmint dollar in a cuppla weeks. Still a while before he “classes up” to API.
Thanks for the update on SNO. I’ve got a friend whose daughter will be heading that way after graduating from the Academy. She’s already been told to expect some sitting and waiting time before she gets to fly. The USNA did run her up to solo in a C172 earlier this year though.
Getting back to the original subject matter, DAS, I could see an AAQ-37/APG-81 type of combination going into an outgrowth of X-47B type systems.
Personally, I’d love to see a spin off of DAS into the Flight Sim market…cool looking helmet and all. 3D motion helmet video replacing external monitors would be da bomb!
AAS-37. Doh!