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The UK Prime Minister is not rumored to have an especially deep appreciation of foreign policy, which in part explains why he gave that dreadful speech in Ankara.

David Frum, on the other hand, posits a deeper game.

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The [...]]]> Try to find a pattern in the randomness!

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The UK Prime Minister is not rumored to have an especially deep appreciation of foreign policy, which in part explains why he gave that dreadful speech in Ankara.

David Frum, on the other hand, posits a deeper game.

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The Marine Corps’ STOVL variant of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is once again proving that complexity is, well: Complex.

Lockheed Martin said Tuesday that several parts on the most complex version of its F-35 Joint Strike Fighter were failing more often than expected, a problem that is slowing flight testing on a model tailored for the Marines.

The company’s chief executive, Robert J. Stevens, told analysts that the problems had occurred on the version that can take off in short distances and land vertically like a helicopter.

Mr. Stevens said the defects had reduced the flight tests on that model to 74 so far this year, 21 fewer than planned. He said the company was working with suppliers to fix the problems and thought it could catch up by extending some of the flights.

The real struggle with the F-35B is behind the scenes of the Blue/Green team, where the rumor tells me that senior Navy flag and Marine general officers only speak to each other in order to shout. Navy has been counting on Marine fighter squadrons to deploy aboard aircraft carriers in order to ameliorate the fighter gap, but no one is able to suitably explain how the STOVL variant will operate of conventional carriers in cyclic operations. Not to mention heat dissipation.

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Speaking of shouting, Sal has one of his Diversity Thursday posts up that has set blood a’boiling throughout the Navy, a confidant reports. Seems that Navy is keeping a list. A very important, very private list. Eyes on the future, and that.

The Navy is ordered on businesslike lines these days, and things must have metrics. Metrics give you leverage to control processes and institute change. I get it.

But it seems to me that “accountability” had a different flavor, back in the day.

Probably I was just naive.

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Pundita has some pictures up of Afghanistan, then and now. If you don’t like to see pictures of young Afghan girls with their noses cut off, you should probably forgo the link.

Also skip it if you don’t like pictures of young Afghan girls sitting in biology classes back in the 60s. With their hair uncovered!

You should also give it a pass if you don’t like being reminded of the consequences of Realpolitik during the Cold War:

Q: When the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that they intended to fight against a secret involvement of the United States in Afghanistan, people didn’t believe them. However, there was a basis of truth. You don’t regret anything today?

Brzezinski: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter: We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.

Q: And neither do you regret having supported the Islamic [fundamentalism], having given arms and advice to future terrorists?

Brzezinski: What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?

Something of an open question, it seems.

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Support for the Afghan mujahadin was labeled “Charlie Wilson’s War” in media.

Closer to home, Representative Charlie Rangel (D-NY) has his own little war going on:

In laying out 13 charges of ethical violations committed by Representative Charles B. Rangel, the House ethics committee set the stage for a rare public trial of the Democratic Congressman this fall, a potential embarrassment for the Democratic leadership during the election season.

The unveiling of the charges Thursday came even as Mr. Rangel’s lawyers suggested they were trying to reach a settlement to avoid such a fate for Mr. Rangel, 80, a Harlem Democrat.

Ethics committee members appeared somber on Thursday, expressing fondness for Mr. Rangel even as they issued the stinging report, which states that Mr. Rangel’s “actions reflected poorly on the institution of the House and, thereby, brought discredit to the House.”

Two brief points: 1) Congressional approval ratings have sunk to 11%, a number chiefly made encompassing actual congressmen, staffers that depend upon them for employment and their extended families. Take away Mr. Rangel’s purported ethical lapses and that number jumps to 12%, maybe. Discredit?

You already had that.

2) Louisiana’s Edwin Wilson Edwards once boasted that the only way he could fail to win re-election was if he was found in bed with a dead woman or a live boy. One gets the sense that even these would be insufficient to stir Rangel’s constituents, who have sent the man to Washington 20 times.

Summary: Politics are local, and GOP hopefuls eying a take-over of the House of Representatives need to remember that we tend to be overly fond of our own rascals, preferring to throw other people’s bums out.

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All for now, work beckons &c.

More later, maybe.

Russian Navy plans to buy the first batch of MiG-29K fighters set to be deployed on an aircraft carrier later this year, said a Navy official on Friday.

“This year we are planning to buy the first batch [...]]]> Vladimir Putin is a clever lad, but I think he’s mistaking expenditures for relevancy:

Russian Navy plans to buy the first batch of MiG-29K fighters set to be deployed on an aircraft carrier later this year, said a Navy official on Friday.

“This year we are planning to buy the first batch of several machines,” the RIA Novosti news agency quoted the unnamed official as saying…

A total of 24 MiG-29Ks will be purchased by the Navy in the next three to four years with an estimated cost of one billion U.S. dollars, said the report.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said in late last September that one of the most import issues for the Russian Armed Forces was to recreate Navy in the coming decade.

Russia has always been a continental power, rather than a naval one, and Admiral Gorshkov’s imperial Soviet fleet has been something of a millstone hung around the Russian neck ever since the Cold War ended. A couple dozen Fulcrums will not change that.

Prestige navies are rarely affordable in the long term.

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I have just about narrowed down my search for the airplane I will purchase when my lottery number hits. Which it is mathematically possible, or it would be if I played the lottery.

It will be a Mooney 252 TSE to get there quickly, economically (and compactly) without blowing the top off half way to major overhaul like a 231 might. Or else a Beech B36TC, to get there with friends. Or, perhaps a V35B to get there classically. Or a Super Decathlon to get there aerobatically. A Super Cub or a 200 HP Aviat Husky (I can not decide which) to get there slowly, but not have to much worry about where “there” is, so long as there are a few hundred feet of nice grass or a river bend. Or maybe a Vans RV-8 that I could build myself, if I could trust myself to build an actual airplane that I myself might fly. Safely.

The Flanker? Right out. Operating costs, you know.

So. I’ve got that going for me.

So, there you have it: Build me an IFR equipped, taildragging airplane that will cruise at 200+ kts for four hours on 9 gallons per hour, can clear the western mountains, carry four people plus a modicum of cargo and I’ll buy it.

Once, you know: The lottery hits.

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Speaking of lottery odds, some in the GOP have convinced themselves that Ted Kennedy’s former Senate seat might actually be up for grabs. Which I’ll believe when I see it, and anyway they’ll only change the rules so there’s no use getting het up about it. Health care reform is to be a “signature achievement” or summat like that. For your own good.

So just shut up and take your medicine.

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Heretofore, these pages have been silent on the peccadilloes of the world’s greatest golfer, because frankly we don’t think about other things when watching a masterful ball smiter smite the ball masterfully. But with the news that Eldrick Tont Woods is all set to go to a sex rehab clinic – in Mississippi, of all places – enquiring minds want to know: Is this one of those 12-step things, or is it done cold turkey? Because if it’s the latter, a Dachshund puppy is cheaper it at $800 or so.

I speak from experience.

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The Fort Hood shootings: Mistakes were made.

Mr. Gates cited poor communications about internal threats to the security of personnel, as well as a weak supervision by commanders, as systemic problems with implications that go beyond the single case of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the military psychiatrist accused of the shootings.

The formal report, released at noon by the Pentagon, found that “some medical officers failed to apply appropriate judgment and standards of officership” when dealing with Major Hasan, and that more attention should have been paid to his overall performance rather than just his academic record.

Round up the usual suspects, but for God’s sake, stop staring at that elephant in the room.

You’ll only radicalize it.

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Air Venture 2009. I really have to try and make it one of these years.

Land on the Yellow Dot.

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Well, it’s been a long week, so I’ll let you go now.

Have a great weekend.

Internet companies and civil liberties groups were alarmed this spring when a U.S. Senate bill proposed handing the White House the power to disconnect private-sector computers from the Internet.

They’re not much happier about a revised version that aides to Sen. Jay Rockefeller, a West [...]]]> This, actually, is not as bad as it sounds:

Internet companies and civil liberties groups were alarmed this spring when a U.S. Senate bill proposed handing the White House the power to disconnect private-sector computers from the Internet.

They’re not much happier about a revised version that aides to Sen. Jay Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat, have spent months drafting behind closed doors. CNET News has obtained a copy of the 55-page draft of S.773 (excerpt), which still appears to permit the president to seize temporary control of private-sector networks during a so-called cybersecurity emergency.

The new version would allow the president to “declare a cybersecurity emergency” relating to “non-governmental” computer networks and do what’s necessary to respond to the threat.

Used to be most of the malfeasance on the web was low-grade criminal stuff. But state actors have gotten into the game as well, occasionally blurring the line between basement hacker and national security cracker. The average (Windows) PC is connected on the web for mere seconds before the first automated attempts at hijacking occurs, and given the propensity of most folks to save their sheckels and hope for the best, the odds of a distributed botnet attack causing real denial of service problems given the right motivation approaches 1.0. Since much of the national security infrastructure rides atop the broader global information grid, it makes sense to find a way to temporarily turn threats off as they manifest themselves.

It ain’t pretty. But it also isn’t your father’s network.

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Krauthammer looks into the health care future, declares the public option dead, disparages quasi-governmental bodies dispensing end-of-life guidance and predicts inevitable rationing.

In the same paper, Ezra Klein – who reminds me altogether too much of “Scrubs” J.D. Dorian to take him seriously – responds that we already ration health care.

Reason’s Roger Bailey reminds Ezra that that word? It does not mean what he thinks it means:

It’s not rationing if an individual decides to spend his money on a 16-ounce steak—but it is rationing if he can only purchase a USDA prime rib eye when he has a coupon issued from a government agency. In other words, true rationing occurs when individuals are forbidden from spending their money on products or services they want to buy.

Imperfect as private health insurance markets are, if a customer [or his employer] doesn’t like the decisions made by Blue Cross Blue Shield, Kaiser Permanente, or Golden Rule insurance bureaucrats, he can look elsewhere for his health insurance coverage. But if the government health care scheme becomes a monopoly, when the bureaucrats at the new Health Benefits Advisory Committee decide that a treatment should be withheld, that treatment will be withheld. That’s rationing.

I believe you have to be of a certain age to remember what governmental rationing really means. Or else live in Britain.

That’d work too.

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Were you aware that you could buy a piston twin for less than $100k?

I was not.

Still, there you are.

Still made of unobtanium for a guy sending his daughter off to college out of state.

Found myself wondering about the time and expense of building a Glasair III. Three hundred horses under the cowl, 284 turbocharged knots at 18K, a 2000+ FPM rate of climb, aerobatic and 1000+ miles of cross country range. What’s to hate?

One of these days.

And you know what question I ask myself, when I get to the point where it’s all paid for and I can just go somewhere: Then what’ll I do?

And then I answer: Just go somewhere else.

Because you can.

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This sort of thing? It’s not supposed to happen here.

In Austria maybe. But not here.

This is not a capital case, of course. Although for the life of me, I can’t imagine why. A life was taken here, the life that Jaycee Lee Dugard should have had. And obviously, there are special circumstances.

I guess there’s a reason why I’m not in charge.

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Sherlock homes could solve a crime by noting the dog that didn’t bark. It’s left to us to ponder what other echoing silences might mean.

De mortuis, nil nisi bonum.

Dicendum est.

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Yeah, well. That’s it for the now. Supper beckons, and the Hobbit will not be denied.

If you’ve got any sense at all.

Y’all have a great weekend.

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Up early this morning, and down to the NAVNET (naval networking) breakfast in Mission Valley. The breakfasts start at 0700, and I hadn’t been to one since I experimentally dipped [...]]]> This is one of those days when I don’t have anything to say, so I’ll go ahead and say it anyway:

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Up early this morning, and down to the NAVNET (naval networking) breakfast in Mission Valley. The breakfasts start at 0700, and I hadn’t been to one since I experimentally dipped my toe in the water last year, before I retired. The notion is that there are a lot of folks looking for jobs, and a lot of folks who have them. Hiring inside the gene pool you know is not a bad way to go. And with unemployment running nearly 12% here in California, a little networking can’t be a bad thing.

I went to hire somebody to replace a co-worker who had gone over to the government dark side. We got a couple of eager nibbles, and I have to tell you that – even given all the aggravations that go along with work – it was better to be supplicee than supplicant. Young officers leaving the service with bright eyes, good ideas and slim resumes. Older fellows that admit quite frankly that they’re “between things.” One even went so far as to say that he was unemployed. “In transition” is, I believe the word of art. “Unemployed” has such a weighty connotation. I wonder how long you have to be “in transition” before you ‘fess up to being unemployed.

My company prolly isn’t big enough yet, but I couldn’t help thinking that it’d be neat to have an internship program. Charge the government a half man-year, bill four hours a day of scut work and spend the other four hours getting up to speed on the acquisition, systems engineering and program management courses. After six months or a year you’ve got yourself some real human capital, familiar with the play book and the players, ready to hit the ground running.

But what do I know?

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An ugly Friday, compared to all the rest of them. Brought unwelcome news about a program slide, dependencies not under our control having shaped our destiny. All you can do is present the facts unemotionally, recommend courses of action, enumerate the risks. So that’s what I did.

It’s kind of like briefing and debriefing a four-ship air superiority sweep. Without the flying part.

Even Peter Pan grew up, I believe.

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Spent the late afternoon looking at more resumes. You can put all the job requirements against a position you’d like, people will send you “fleet” bullets that really don’t much apply. It seems like obvious advice, but here it is to mah bruthas and sisters in khaki: Decide what you want to do, where you want to do it. Then prepare yourself.

It’s competitive out here too.

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SDA Kate has the gouge on a old idea whose time has apparently come ’round again:

Last year, bureaucrats at the VA’s National Center for Ethics in Health Care advocated a 52-page end-of-life planning document, “Your Life, Your Choices.” It was first published in 1997 and later promoted as the VA’s preferred living will throughout its vast network of hospitals and nursing homes. After the Bush White House took a look at how this document was treating complex health and moral issues, the VA suspended its use. Unfortunately, under President Obama, the VA has now resuscitated “Your Life, Your Choices.”

Your life, your choices. Our guy in the white coat.

Thanks for your service.

Oh, and while we’re on the topic of white coats do at least follow the Charles Krauthammer link. Say what you’d like about his politics, the doctor knows something about living with a burden.

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Unpaid advertisement:

Dear Lex

I am really excited to announce that as part of our Support Our Troops program, we’ll be offering 1-cent shipping to any APO and FPO address when you order Jolt Energy Gum online! I hope you might be able to spread the word.

The past few months that I’ve spent working on showing our support for the men and women of the armed forces has been really gratifying, and I’ve enjoyed every minute!

You can learn more about the program here: http://joltgum.com

Best,
Catherine

If you can’t get beer (see also, General Order Number One), you might as well get some caffeine in you, sojer.

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Remember this?

It’s closer than you think.

Now if they could just get busy on those light sabers for liberty in Hong Kong, we’ll be good to go.

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Well, it’s been a ruther hellish day, so I’m taking the rest of it off, maybe.

Hope y’all have a great weekend.

Welcome Ace of Spade readers! Consider signing this petition to name the Navy’s newest aircraft carrier after  a fighting ship rather than a politician!

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The North Vietnamese were cruel tormentors of the American POWs [...]]]> The flotsam and jetsam from things that have come into my scan. Updated throughout the day, maybe.

Welcome Ace of Spade readers! Consider signing this petition to name the Navy’s newest aircraft carrier after  a fighting ship rather than a politician!

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The North Vietnamese were cruel tormentors of the American POWs that came into their grasp. Some of the latter delivered petty torments of their own:

One morning in late December 1968, we heard the customary hiss as the loudspeaker system began warming up for what we anticipated would be the usual propaganda session from radio Hanoi. To our surprise, however, at 8 a.m., instead of radio Hanoi, we heard a man with a British accent say, “This is the BBC Hong Kong. The American astronauts become the first human beings to come under the gravitational influence of another celestial body.” And then the radio went dead… An hour later, we were taken out to wash. The first man out of our cell was Air Force Capt. Kenneth Fisher. We had not rehearsed what happened next. Ken looked up and could see the moon in the clear winter sky. He came to a stop, snapped to attention and saluted the moon. Instantly, the rest of us caught on. As each of us left the cell, we came to a stop, snapped to attention and saluted the moon. The guard who was on duty in the guard tower leaned out to see what we were saluting. He had to lean so far that his pith helmet fell off. He almost dropped his rifle and, for a second, we thought he would fall out of the tower himself. Navy Lt. j.g. Ted Stier went up to one of the guards and pointed at the moon and spoke the Vietnamese word for the United States, “Hoa Ky.” He then pointed at the ground and said “Vietnam.” He then made a pantomime as though he were operating a very large piece of artillery. Pointing at the moon again, and again speaking the Vietnamese word for America, “Hoa Ky,” he began rocking back and forth with his imaginary artillery piece while crying out “boom, boom, boom” to show that American artillery, if placed on our moon, would have the range to hit North Vietnam. Ted walked away while the guard continued to stare doubtfully at the moon.

You hold on to what you must, and get back what you can.

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Our military defends democracy at home and abroad. Perhaps it’s time we give them the opportunity to participate?

The brave men and women of our military are the most disenfranchised group of voters today. Literally. The Heritage Foundation has published the results and analysis of research performed by Hans A. von Spakovsky, a legal scholar and a former Commissioner on the Federal Election Commission, and by Eric Eversole, a former active duty officer in the Navy JAG Corps and former lawyer in the Voting Section of the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. The authors assert that members of the military have traditionally been disenfranchised at both the state and federal levels due to the unique circumstances and situations in which soldiers find themselves (i.e. war). Spakovsky and Eversole also conclude that unless Congress does something about this injustice, “military personnel will continue to be the largest group of disenfranchised voters in the United States.”

Maybe it’s just me, but if it were a more favored being denied a chance to vote – the UAW, NEA or trial bar lobby for example – I think we’d see quicker action.

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The UK Telegraph has a pitcher post up showing a series of troop formations back in the day. The statue of liberty photo took 18,000 men – 12,000 in the torch alone, since it was furthest from the camera lens. Weeks to set the outlines up, but a mere 30 minutes to muster for the photographs themselves.

Which is probably how they sold it to them sojers, and you can tell that to the Marines.

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Speaking of soldiers, Teflon Don has the tale of a wounded vet that needed a bit more help that we gave him.

You’d think we’d have this sort of thing covered by now.

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Two v. Three the hard way. The eagles win again.

It’s unwise to bother the eagles.

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In the heath care fight, Nancy Pelosi has found the enemy and it is private industry, specifically the heath care industry. One of the most heavily regulated industries in the country, by the way.

“It’s almost immoral what they are doing,” Pelosi said to reporters, referring to insurance companies. “Of course they’ve been immoral all along in how they have treated the people that they insure,” she said, adding, “They are the villains. They have been part of the problem in a major way. They are doing everything in their power to stop a public option from happening.”

If only government ran everything. Give it time.

Speaking of time, that whole “get it done before the August recess” folderol? That was the media’s fault, as it turns out.

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Today’s French lesson for the Norks: S’il vol, il est mort.

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Most unfortunate headline. Evar: Boeing P8-A Poseidon promises intelligence for the Navy

Promises, promises.

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Ciao, for now.