Move to Shrangri-La

Ladies and gentlemen of the most sensitive nature, that is the only useful advice that I can give you.  That you should move to Shangri-La and enjoy the meditative peace found in that far distant destination.  As opposed to where you now find yourself living since it seems to be such a tribulation. 

Fleeing things like high taxes or inferior schools you moved away from the local city center to a more rustic area.  So you settled for a nice house in a suburb that was was just a few miles and to the left of the runways of your local airport.  Now it is a few years later, you and your neighbors have happily settled in and done improvements.  But there is a fly in your ointment.  Those dratted planes taking off at all hours of the day and well into the night.  Oh how will that Dutch china given by an aunt survive all the rattling?  Never mind your cute little pug named Fifi who goes into spasms with every aviation related noise.  So you hit upon a brilliant idea, complain to the city and airport management!  By Jove that is what you will do. 

By now you, dear brave home owner, have forgotten it was you who had move near the airport, not vice-versa.  Now you scream in city council meetings and meetings of the airport board on how the noise of take offs and landings damage your house and ruin your sleep.  You will thunder at one point in these proceedings on how its un-American to be subjected to these noises.

The long serving members of the airport management will silently turn to each other while you thunder from the podium and trade knowing glances.  The glance will communicate that not much has changed in fifteen years when farmer Jones was saying the same things about jet noises making his chickens laid funny eggs and then farmer Bjorn will immediately follow and claim those noises are ruining his cows' milk.  Next they will each think in the deepest recesses of their minds 'You stupid fool you chose to move next to an airport. But now here we go placating you for your stupidity.  And then get with the FAA to devise noise abatement plans that will cost money.  Money taken from your taxes bud and airport fees.  Just to keep you happy in your McMansion.'  But none of this will be visible for they will have their poker faces on.  And once you have run out of steam they will thank you politely for letting them know how you feel and adjourn the meeting.

Variations of the above always run through my mind when someone complains about noise from their local airport.  What has caused me to wax to long and eloquently this time concerns the plane in the picture at the top of the post, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.  Burlington, VT is the home of the Vermont Air Guard's 158th FW which is an F-16 unit and is now trying to be one of the first units to get F-35s.  Sounds grand except for those who complain the F-35 is far louder than the F-16.  Leading the fight it seems is Rosanne Greco who is the South Burlington City Council President.  She is most concerned because the noise from the F-35s will be akin to a vacuum cleaner running three feet away, that seems unacceptable to her.  So she is leading the opposition.  For a 29 year Air Force intelligence officer she does realize how quickly jet noise transits?  Or does she?  A more detailed biography of Greco can be found here.  Failed novice nun, retired officer, and now environmental activist.  I think I know her true motivation now.  And if she gets her way and no F-35s are assigned soon there will be no F-16s either and when that unit shuts down many nice paying technical jobs will go with it.  Which will have a negative impact on the tax base.  But if you ask Greco about that impact she will probably say that is fine with her as long as she turns Burlington into her personal Shangri-La.

1903

On December 17th, 1903 the first powered controlled flight by a heavier than air craft took place.  The Wright brothers, Orville and Wilbur, had built a revolutionary machine based on a long process of experimentation and testing.

On this day at Kill Devil Hill North Carolina their Wright Flyer made a series of four flights.  The first one was a mere 12 seconds and 120ft.  It would have been enough for the record books, but the brothers flew their plane three more times.  The longest flight being 59 seconds and 852ft.

The original Wright Flyer now resides in a place of honor at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum.

1992 Electric Car

Jack Jurden. Wilmington News Sentinel 1992. Best Editorial Cartoons of the Year 1993 Edition

The 1992 Volt, same as the 2012 Volt.

Armoured Women

Back in 1934 Robert E. Howard help create a whole new genre of sword fantasy, the fearsome woman warrior.  Her name was Red Sonya and the story was The Shadow of the Vulture.  This inspired the later comic hero Red Sonja and then a movie was made which put Red Sonja into the Age of Conan.  So the ring linking two Robert E. Howard characters was forged.

Red Sonya/Red Sonja had another impact in the world of fiction.  More than a new genre was created, a new term was also birthed.  From thence onwards any story that featured a woman warrior in skimpy armor was called a 'Chick in Chainmail' story.  Esther Friesner and Baen Publishing then proceeded to turn the concept on its head with the publication of Chicks in Chainmail, a collection of short stories featuring woman warriors who proceed to prove who's really the baddest warriors.

So where is this going this post?  Is it supposed to be just on fiction and fantasy?  Not really.  Like the authors in Esther Friesner's book, the United States Army has come to a realization of a different sort, body armor designed for men really does not properly fit all the women in the military.  So they have gone back to the design board to address this uncomfortable matter.  I just have a problem with the Army invoking another fictional female warrior in their attempt to sell the new designs - Xena.  One thing I can say is, if the new armor is based on the Xena armor then the US military won't see any chicks in high-tech chainmail.  I am reserving judgement on the whole idea after the Army finally realized that the $5 billion ACU program was a dangerous bust.

Looking forward in time, if the Army is successful in creating more female friendly body armor, will the Knight Sabre HardSuits be far behind?

News for Friday

Egypt is progressing to a regressive state with all alacrity - American tourists taken hostage and then released.

Google's seven year battle with authors who want their royalties has taken another step to somewhere.  While having a corporate motto of 'Don't Be Evil' it seems Google is using the old lobbyist ways to influence the federal government to see things it's way.  

Meanwhile Amazon keeps going digital and redefining the concepts of bookstores and business models.

The Obama administration and its water-carriers better gird their ideological loins as Catholics and their organizations take their objections to the next level.  Get ready for June 14th.  It might be the thing to toss OWS onto the rubbish heap of failed socialist plans.

Special bath salts have entered the common lexicon after a man had to be killed by police in Miami as he tried to chew another man's face off.  It seems to be a serious problem where sedation does not work and no one is sure if people will be normal after taking a dose.

On the space front, there was a bit of good news.  The SpaceX Dragon capsule performed a flawless mission to the ISS and splashdown.  Bravo Zulu people, may you keep doing it.

Leftist Civility

This is how some seem to define civility.  Notice they have a cartoon version of Sarah Palin who is putting a gun to her head.  Notice they toss in a disclaimer that they are not advocating that Sarah Palin should be assassinated, but I would say their picture belies that statement.  I find, you decide.

Acquisition Mis-step Again

It seems the United States Air Force is snake bit again.  First it was the knife fight over a replacement tanker to replace the KC-135 fleet which is still a mess.  Then there was the duel for the CSAR-X contract for a replacement combat rescue helicopter.  Now we have the mess for the Light Air Support [LAS] contract that is supposed to supply 20 aircraft to the Afghan government.  It has now been cancelled and is being investigated.  Air Force Material Command is talking of focusing on a lack of documentation on how the decision awarding the contract to Sierra Nevada Corporation [SNC] was reached, this bodes ill for the people at Wright-Patterson AFB involved in the solicitation.  Some involved in the KC-X debacle went to jail remember.

Hawker Beechcraft filed suit after its AT-6B was disqualified without any reason given beyond a vague reference to deficiencies.  The company tried to get answers from the USAF and GAO, both refused to specify the reasons.  As a result the company filed suit which forced the USAF to issue a stop work order to Sierra Nevada Corporation, Embraer Brazil's US front company, that had been awarded the contract.

To buttress its arguments, Hawker Beechcraft has a fact-page up comparing its AT-6B against the A-29B Tucano.  Oddly the AT-6B is far more inter-operable than the A-29B when it comes to USAF/NATO weapons and electronics.  It's a smaller lighter airframe which means it should have greater flexibility to operate from smaller and more austere airfields.  And in the payload department the AT-6B can carry 1100lbs more than the A-29B, approximately 4200lbs to 3000lbs.

To counteract all this, SNC has issued a press release that is interesting to say the least.

"It's unfortunate that the truth is being sacrificed for the self interests of Hawker Beechcraft and its owners, a Canadian company, Onex, and an investment bank, Goldman Sachs."

Embraer is a company owned wholly by the Brazilian government so they try to deflect and attack the partial private foreign ownership of Hawker Beechcraft while invoking the very tired straw-man of Goldman Sachs. Who rights this stuff?  Van Jones?

What is also odd in that Feb 3 press release is the quotes attributed to Taco Gilbert who is listed as a retired USAF Brigadier General that are well nigh scandalous in their attacks on Hawker Beechcraft.  What is even more strange is Taco Gilbert III is still listed as being on active duty and assigned as Director of Strategic Plans, Requirements and Programs, Headquarters Air Mobility Command, Scott Air Force Base, Ill.  Are they one and the same?  This could be messy.

SNC argues only the A-29B meets the original request since it already exists as a COIN aircraft.  That ignores the fact the PC-9 has been used as a COIN aircraft already by Ireland.  Over 250 PC-9s are in service around the world.  The T-6A Texan II, which the T-6B is based on, was developed from the PC-9 and there are 446 T-6As being used by the US military.  I guess its a bit muddled and SNC is hoping no one takes a close look.

Of course the $355 million question that has to be asked is - is this aircraft needed now?  Afghanistan is getting more unstable and lethal.  The original contracts have already been severely cut-back.  And the mission of the United States military is winding down quickly there.  I vote to cancel and keep the A-10C Thunderbolt IIs flying while letting Karzai's government buy their own planes.

Another Victim of Settled Science

It is sad to report that the cult of man-made climate change has claimed another victim. Dr. Ivar Giaever, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1973, has tendered his resignation to the American Physical Society because they have adopted the position that the evidence of man caused temperature rise is 'incontrovertible.'

One hundred years ago in the field of astronomy the belief was all the violence evidenced on Earth's own Moon was long in the past. That something like the Music of the Spheres prevailed. Then our probes to other planets showed the violence was not limited to the past. And the final proof that violence still existed in the solar system was when the fragments of the Comet Shoemaker-Levy smashed into Jupiter and we observed it almost in real time with the Hubble Space Telescope.

Percival Lowell captivated many people with his observations of Mars. The fascination was with the canali or canals he saw in his telescope that prompted speculation of life being on Mars. And spawned many a science fiction story. Then our probes like Mariner and Viking showed how dead Mars is. Mars might have had life but it was millions of years in the past.

Forty years ago the concept of a meteor smashing into the Earth and wiping out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago was thought a far fetched idea and was scoffed at in scientific circles. Then Dr. Richard Alvarez [ whoops should be Dr. Luis Alvarez] went and found worldwide a rare earth element Iridium at the boundary marking the extinction of dinosaurs. And then the actual impact crater was discovered at the tip of the Yucatan Peninsula. Now the argument is how much of an impact did that meteor have? Was it an outright kill or was just the final push of the dinosaurs to extinction.

We all grew up on the idea that all dinosaurs were cold-blooded reptiles. And all the cheesy movies with dinosaurs reinforced this notion. Due to the work of scientists like Dr. Robert Bakker that view has been tossed out. There is evidence now to suggest at least some dinosaurs were warm-blooded.

These are just four examples of 'incontrovertible settled science' being overturned by new discoveries and data. So for such an august scientific body as the American Physical Society to say man-made climate warming is incontrovertible is to fly in the face of traditional scientific inquiry and the quest for the truth. Those who say the science is settled are in fact anathema to the scientific method. For various reasons they have closed their minds to any other possible answer. They are akin to the Holy See and its treatment of Galileo and Copernicus by these actions. How else to explain their brutal attempts to ostracize anyone who disagrees with them? In fact when they call such skeptics 'deniers' they are venturing into an even more troublesome arena, that of the KGB calling dissenters mentally unstable and using medication to 'adjust' them. What a brave new world we are in.

Bing B-52s

This popped up on Bing today. Its cool and its sad, but one reason why Bing rocks while Google just stinks. Bing will actually show cool stuff.

What could --- Oooppss

In 1965, the Soviet nuclear powered ice-breaker V.I. Lenin suffered the first of its two nuclear accidents. One reactor suffered a loss of coolant before the nuclear fuel was removed. Due to all the heat, many of the rods melted themselves to the reactor vessel. The melted parts of the reactor core were sealed and disposed of in 1967 on an island. The second accident in 1967 involved a leak in one of the reactors. They had to use sledgehammers to get through the containment vessel to find the leak. The sledgehammers damaged the reactor vessel beyond repair. The repair and installation of new reactors was completed by 1970. In 1989 the ice-breaker was retired.

Back in 1994, in the primitive days of the Internet when a 56k modem was high speed, an American teen managed to turn his mother's garden shed into a Superfund site. David Hahn was a Boy Scout who managed to get his Atomic merit badge in 1991. But he did not stop there. Using various means including social engineering nuclear officials, he managed to obtain critical information. Along with material. First he wanted to create a neutron gun. Then he decided to try and create a breeder reactor. Then things started to get hot when his Geiger counter picked up radiation five doors down from his mother's house. So he started to take his project apart. It was the parts in his car that unraveled the whole mess, someone had called the police reporting a teen was stealing tires. Police found David Hahn. Along with a toolbox in the car's trunk that David said was radioactive. So the garden shed was taken apart and buried with other radioactive waste. David refused treatment for radiation exposure. And that should have been that. Except in 2007 David Hahn was arrested and convicted of stealing smoke detectors. His 90 day sentence was delayed because he had to get treatment for radiation exposure. His mug shot ain't pretty.

In these modern 21st Century times, such incidents might be filed under lessons not to repeat. It seems some have not learned. Or are just betting they can avoid the pitfalls this time around.

Example of the first, of not learning, seems to be this story out of Sweden. This delightful chap tried to do Hahn one better. He tried to build a reactor on his kitchen table. Then he had an attack of sanity, called Swedish nuclear officials to ask some questions about legality, and then the man and his project was scooped up before any harm happened.

Second one is from Russia and is far more troubling due to the possible scope of impact if calamity happens. And again it seems the Arctic environment is what could be affected, including all those polar bears everyone worries about. The Russians want to put on large cargo vessels nuclear reactors so they can stake better claims on Arctic resources. They use their experience with nuclear ice-breakers as justification that these 'nuclear wessels' will be safe. Right. Its also mentioned that Algeria and Indonesia are interested in floating nuclear power stations. Morocco, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Israel, Lebanon, Turkey, Greece, Italy, France, and Spain I think would object to such a plan; all of them worrying what happens if the vessel founders and the reactor gets breached in the confines of the Mediterranean Sea. And just thinking of such a vessel getting caught in another tsunami that devastated Banda Aceh gives me major goose pimples.

Aviation Round-Up

The 49th Paris Airshow is rolling along with all the aviation companies trying to sell their wares to anyone with money or good financing. Saab is demonstrating their JAS-39 Gripen NG demonstrator, they are looking for Brazil orders and re-entry into the Indian MMRCA competition. Boeing has displayed the latest 747-8 cargo version.

Airbus/EADS is of course there with their products. The A380 suffered another embarrassing moment, on top of a previous accident where a 380 clipped a smaller jet, when its wing-tip clipped a building. So a Korean Air Lines A380 did the fly-by while the damaged plane sat on the tarmac with a cover over the damaged wing.

Nor was this Airbus/EADS only mishap, the very long delayed A400M had one also. To whit a cracked gearbox in one of the turboprop engines, so another A400M had to be slotted in. To add to the controversy surrounding the four year overdue A400M, the RAF will name their planes Atlas and not Grizzly, shades of the Eurofighter Taifun/Typhoon name controversy. All the delays surrounding the A400M project has allowed American companies to snag orders; Boeing happy with C-17 orders to the RAF, RCAF, RAAF, Oman, and Hungary and Lockheed-Martin selling C-130Js to RAF, RCAF, and a host of other possible A400M customers. And South Africa has cancelled it's A400M orders. And is it me or does the A400M nose and cockpit look like a C-141?

And what post on modern aviation would be complete without mentioning the Peoples Republic of China? It seems the designers at Chinese Military Aviation have developed a new airlifter in the 400,000lb category that bears a strong resemblance to the Boeing C-17 Globemaster III. Very curious confirmation on Chinese intelligence efforts and on Chinese power projection goals, perhaps to places like Africa or Taiwan?

File this under old airshow news. Back in 2009 the Islamic Iranian Air Force had their own airshow. One of the centerpieces was supposed to be an overflight of their IL-76 Candid based AWACs plane named Simurgh. As the video in this link shows, things went terribly wrong and resulted in the loss of crew and plane.

No Thank You Google

I just logged into Blogger and Google asked me to enter my phone number. I declined. Google has been stealing peoples information via wireless. Google is in a legal fight with authors and publishing companies over Google's digitizing 'orphan' books and making money off it. So I see no real reason to give Google anymore information than I absolutely need to. For a company that purports to do no evil, some of their actions are awfully smelly.

The No Lube Spin

There is only one revolution on this planet that requires no petroleum based lubrication. That is the spin put out by people opposed to domestic oil production. Case in pont is J.W. Sutton Jr from Wisconsin. I should forgive him, since he is pulling the data for his opinion from NPR. Sole sourcing in a time of $107.24/barrel for May delivery is not terribly prudent.

First lets look at that 3% rise in oil production since 2003 he quotes. the last numbers released by DOE are from July 29, 2010. Deepwater Horizon blew out on April 20, 2010, killed 11, and has since shut down oil exploration in the Gulf of Mexico due to Dept. of Interior moratorium and very lethargic issuance of new leases. So right there Sutton is using out of date information to base his opinion. Or should I say NPR is using out of date information for its report and Sutton is reciting by rote what NPR says? I can't honestly say since Sutton does not even link to the NPR article.

Lets next look at the term "Proven Oil Reserves" Sutton uses. In the United States, that term has a legal definition that factors in government regulation. Which means if the federal or state government says a site is off-limits, then whatever oil deposits are beneath that site are not factored into US proven oil reserves. ANWR in Alaska is off-limits to oil-exploration, which means 6 to 16 billion barrels of oil [ 6 billion barrels at $107 = $642,000,000,000] is not part of that 2% of proven global oil reserves Sutton uses to argue against increasing domestic oil production.

Just by calling into question these two premises of Sutton's logical construct, the structure of his argument is endangered. His argument can be summarized as - we are already at max domestic oil production so we can't just "Drill Baby Drill!" our way out of the current predicament.

So I have to say Sutton is wrong on many fronts. We are not at our max domestic production, not with the likes of ANWR aribitrarily taken out of the equation. ANWR is 19 million acres of land, of that acerage only 1.5 million acres along the coast would be open for oil exploration. Prudhoe Bay is only 100 miles away so running pipeline between them would not be of the same order of magnitude as building the original Alaskan oil pipeline nor take as long. There is also the 1.5 trillion barrels of oil just waiting to be tapped in Ken Salazar's old stomping ground of Colorado called oil shale.

But I guess I should forgive Sutton since all he is doing is parroting what President Obama has recently said. Obama used that 'the US only has 2%' argument to support his desire for more government subsidised Green projects while ignoring what those subsidies does to the national debt. Recently on his tour of Brazil, President Obama told Brazil the US would be happy to buy their oil, so Sutton was wrong to lump Brazil in with China.

Sutton ends his opinion piece with collectivist pap - "We need electric cars, not those that run on gasoline. We need solar and wind generators for electricity to power those cars. We need less vehicles on the road, period. The fuel efficiencies of buses and trains must be chosen over the speed and flexibility of automobiles, tractor-trailers, and commercial airplanes."

Lets see the solar projects in the southwest American deserts are being held up due to environmental impact studies, what will all that shade do to native species is the question. Wind generators only work when there is wind plus they tend to kill migratory birds as they spin. In fact many energy projects are stalled by bureacratic red-tape, from nuclear reactors to geothermal. Buses and trains tend to be government run and only on schedules, thus ensnaring people to fixed timetables. Plus trains and buses are so last century in the technology department, hasn't Sutton heard of telecommuting? If he is so enamored of getting cars off the road and planes out of the air while reducing oil consumption, then telecommuting is the way to go.

If Sutton is a product of the Wisconsin school system, I have one thing to say. Gov. Walker fire all the teachers and get new ones. As for US energy needs, first lets stop the government from acting like a roadblock. Let the markets determine what is viable, not another $200,000/year drone in Washington D.C.

Info War Pt MMCVII

J.R. Dunn postulated about using Julian Assange as a patsy to peddle mis-information in American Thinker.

Any number of methods exist for manipulating Assange and his organization -- send WikiLeaks fake files, locate their archives and insert new files, manipulate e-mails and other messages, and others that even my nasty imagination would miss without specialized training. As for the purpose -- that's not difficult to envision. A message implying that certain jihadi leaders are on the payroll. That a critical North Korean officer is a Western agent. That certain things that Osama, the mullahs, or Dear Leader wanted done were not done, or were botched in the doing.

Well it seems Pakistan is doing it if we are to believe this article. Naturally the phony cables paint their arch-rival India in a negative light. While it seems these cables will be disproved, who is to say some of the 250,000 cables Assange says he has have not already been compromised? After all he is screaming about his internal leaks so he is not very smart when it comes to security or intrigue.

Welcome to the very murky world of online information. Trust but verify has been the by-word of many for years due to previous manipulations of data. On the one hand we see nation-state actors akin to Public Security Section 9 waging cyber-war[Stuxnet] while those fighting for Julian Assange are an odd collection of free-lance hackers that bring to mind comparisons to the Individual Eleven[Anonymous]. The battlelines in this war go far beyond the physical but will have an impact on many battlefields including the physical.

I now have a nostalgic urge to go read The Adolescence of P-1, Snowcrash, The Cuckoo's Egg, and Takedown. The simpler days of computer security and hacking. Assange reminds me of Mitnick is some ways, both loners with no real understanding of the tools they used for their larceny and that lack of understanding ultimately brought them down.

Geek Humour?

Amusing[?] error message I got trying to fix my network this morning. Reboot nor resets fixed things. Even turning off the DSL modem failed to fix it. What finally fixed it? Well turned off the DSL modem and unplugged its power, waited a minute, plugged power in, and turned modem back on. Wow. As for www.microsoft.com being well known, well... lol

SkyNet Awaits

or maybe Colossus or MME. Take your pick before you have no mouth and must scream.

The US Navy recently lost control of one of their MQ-8B Fire Scout drone helicopters. Fail-safes were supposed to kick in and land it if contact was lost. As I said, supposed to. In fact the drone kept flying for 23 miles and even invaded restricted air space around Washington D.C. I think its back to the old electronic brain for these nautical boffins.

If we are lucky we will get Dr. Falken's computer at NORAD wanting to play a game at this rate. If not, do you know where the fall0out shelter is and how much food&water is stored there? You may want to get acquainted quick.

Dirty Tricks Done Dirt Cheap

As for Assange and Wikileaks, it seems this administration is protesting and demanding all this information be returned before more harm can be done. all because Wikileaks is threatening to release even more messages.

By now one would think the US would have Interpol picking up Assange for espionage and seizing computer assets. But it does not seem this administration has thought of this.

Or work through agencies like ICANN and IANA to erase Wikileaks from all of the DNS servers across the globe. If there is no resolution between IP and URL, Wikileaks does not exist. Or go into the routing tables and simply tell them any packets addressed to Wikileaks will be automatically dropped. Make Wikileaks an online blackhole, requests go there but nothing ever comes out.

But stop this verbal posturing. Do something to save lives in this war.

Back To The Past

On 22 April, 2010 from Cape Canaveral FL, the United States Air Force launched the X-37B unmanned space plane atop an Atlas booster. The mission has been cloaked in secrecy even as the ship orbits the Earth with its cargo doors open. If you read all the possible uses for the X-37 in this article, one has to think of a previous USAF project that was cancelled. The X-37 is being lauded for possibly ushering in the era of quick response time launches. To surprise someone and gather intelligence before the target is aware. How strange this all sounds and how refreshing until one thinks on that previous USAF program. What is this program? It was called the X-20 Dynamic-Soaring program. It would be launched from atop a Titan booster or even a Saturn I into low earth orbit. And it would carry out reconnaissance missions or even hypersonic bombing missions from the edge of the atmosphere. Save omitting the bombing capability and the pilot, is the X-37 really all that removed from the X-20? It's as if Apollo and the Space Shuttle never happened and the USAF is back into building the MOL with the X-20 ferrying the astronauts to it. Or the USAF being able to strike from the edge of space anyone who threatens the security of the United States. Or giving NASA that rescue capability it so desperately needed for Columbia.

I will leave you with some videos, one of David Jensen and Gregory Peck in the Martin Caiden based movie Marooned in which the X-RV, a relative of the X-20, is launched to rescue Ironman One trapped in orbit. Caiden's novel was originally written in 1964 long before the Apollo One fire. Others gives one a behind the scenes look at building the X-20 and what a mission would have looked like if it had been built.

The X-RV launches in the eye of a hurricane from the movie Marooned.

The X-20 carries out a spy mission.

What is the X-20 Part 1 - Official USAF film.

Building the X-20 Part 1 - Official USAF film.

More Eurofighter News

It has been a long time since I have blogged on the Eurofighter project. Remember when the Serious Fraud Office investigation of BAE and its contract with Saudi Arabia for Typhoons was stopped dead in its tracks? Well while I was paying attention to more local news, it seems that case moved forward and has reached a possible conclusion. Though the tale it seems has grown more tangled.

We have an Austrian count with a castle who had to post bond and not leave London. It seems he greased palms in the Czech Republic, Hungary, and his home country of Austria to sell them SAAB JAS.39 Gripens, of which BAE has a stake in.

Then there is an advanced air traffic control radar that was supposed to be sold to Tanzania. But it was never delivered and the BAE adviser in Tanzania pocketed 8 million British Pounds. This is the only charge BAE plead guilty to in the UK with the Serious Fraud Office. It cost the SFO about 5 million to prosecute this case, they may see 2 million in return. The rest of the 30 million will be returned to Tanzania.

The biggest fine though is supposed to be paid to the US Department of Defense because of BAE efforts to conceal information and transactions through the use of off shore shell companies. The fine levied by the US on BAE is 256 million Pounds. But by sheer happenstance a BAE pension fund in the US has experienced a one time windfall of 261 million Pounds which will nicely cover the fine.

Things like this is why reality is always stranger than fiction. Reality does not have to follow rules of believability least the reader exclaim that can't happen. Something or various things still stink about the various schemes BAE has engaged in. One hopes more will come to light and those who have done wrong are punished.

The First iPad

I'm afraid Dave, I can't play Flash animation.

Once again, Kubrick and Clarke saw the future more clearly than many others. We are still on the ultimate trip.