The 'Man' is Keepin' Us Down - NOT!

Help! Help! I'm Being Repressed!

M.Simon at "Power and Control" has an excellent account of a visit to a Netscape Blog and online thread in which he participated. His exchanges with the economics-challenged are a hoot, and he completely roasts the victim-class within. If you visit the thread (Link above: 'Netscape Blog) you will notice he shows remarkable restraint in keeping his criticism to ideas, unlike the members of the 'pity party' who lash out from the get-go.

Reading the thread I was immediately reminded of listening to 'Dr Laura' on one of my 'mega-commutes' that I used to have to take from time to time between work facilities in L.A. (She was on KFI which provided the best traffic updates). Aside from the fact I thought she too often gave really bad advice, I couldn't stand to listen to her callers after the first few times I tuned in because they all had one of the same 4-5 basic problems but somehow they all thought their problem was different and couldn't be solved by fixing it themselves. These were usually pretty obvious problems with painful but otherwise simple solutions, but the callers insisted their problems were 'different' and required 'different' answers because "Bobby REALLY loves me" or "I CAN'T stop (fill in the blank)" or blah, blah, blah.

The 'blame others for my problems' and 'He's better off therefore I'm a victim' crowd in the thread M. Simon visited seem to have that same inability to recognize real problems and solutions.

It is just a lot easier to just envy and blame others I guess.

Force Reshaping: Mid-Career Gutting Behind Schedule

Just got the word yesterday on how it goes with the AF's 'reshaping' scheme relative to the 'mid career' folks. I'll save my comments for my Part 5, but here is 'The Word' almost verbatim:

1. Force Shaping. On 26 Jul 06, the Force Shaping program was initiated with the release of Force Shaping Message #1.

This message announced the implementation of VSP for officers with between 6 and 12 years of service. Since the window opened, we have received more than 2,400 applications leading to just over 1,800 approved separations (only 57% of our 3,200 goal).

These results aren't entirely surprising since there haven't been any previous involuntary programs for the VSP eligible population. That has now changed with the recently approved NDAA that gives the services the authority to conduct a Reduction in Force (RIF) board.

2. Message #3. The attached message extends the application window for VSP until 31 Mar 07. It was originally scheduled to end on 31 Jan 07. It also expands eligibility to officers whose TFCSD is between 30 Sep 95 and 31 Dec 01. Most notably, the message announces a RIF board scheduled for 11-29 Jun 07.

The RIF board will convene to evaluate officers in overage career fields (as defined by the matrix located on AFPC's Force Shaping website) with between 6 and 12 years of active commissioned service for continued retention in the Air Force. Specifically, the board will consider year groups 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 2000, and 2001.

The 1999 year group will be excluded as they will be in-the-promotion zone during this timeframe and historically, the Air Force hasn't considered officers for competitive promotion and involuntary separation during the same year. The RIF process is expected to achieve a reduction of approximately 1,000 officers. Additional VSP losses are also expected after announcement of the RIF.

This release is certain to cause many questions and consternation since this is the first use of RIF since the early 1990's. Hopefully we'll see an increase in VSP which reduce the numbers needed for the RIF board. Our goal remains voluntary over nonvoluntary actions.

"Our goal remains voluntary over nonvoluntary actions"? -- I do not think 'voluntary' means what whoever wrote this thinks it means.

Status on AF Reshaping: Part 5

I haven't dropped the ball: I'm taking some time here to wrap up my summary on the Air Force's 'Reshaping' B.S. effort.

Coming up through the NCO ranks, you learn that it is never enough to just have a criticism -- and sniping from the sidelines is nothing special IF you don't also have some constructive ideas as to how to make the problem go away, make things better, or sometimes just survive a bad situation with everybody's ass and career intact.

So I will be closing my 'Fisking' of the AF's plans with some clear (not neccesarily what anyone at the top will want to hear however - sometimes asses and careers don't get to stay intact) actions to take to get clear of the mess the AF is in, and asking for suggestions from the field.

So Long Hippies (Just Not Soon Enough)

The Hippie Effect: We're On the Cusp

A couple of weeks ago Dan Riehl had an excellent post highlighting the AP’s blatant misrepresentation of a long-time lefty as an ‘unlikely activist’. The post and comments with commensurate links fully exposed Rosemarie Jackowski as a fairly run-of-the-mill ‘Proto-hippie’ and no amount of Shinola from the AP will be able to hide it from this point forward. In the comments, I mentioned I was considering blogging an analysis of when we might expect the influence of all the 60’s retreads to start fading away, and when what I have come to call the ‘Hippie Effect’ will also diminish.

In subsequent comments to the post, “Fellow Peacekeeper” at Rearguard, suggested that I go ahead and blog it, and provided a ‘back-of-the-envelope’ analysis that was very close to my detailed analysis.

My take on the (in America anyway) Hippie Effect and when we can expect it to diminish significantly (as mentioned in the comments to the post at Reihl World View) is as follows:

1. Peak leftist cohorts are baby boomers born 1946-53,
2. College age years 1966-75 with peak radicalism in 1968-1972 timeframe,
3. Age now of the worst of them is 56-63,
4. Peak of influence IS about now,
5. Marked decline should be really felt around 2015 when they are 66-73: I just hope we don't have a lot of them using their retirement years clogging up the highways driving to the next protest.
6. I think the average age of the House/Senate will decrease soon on its own (heck, when Byrd leaves it will drop the average significantly), but the hippie effect might linger due to acute academentia in the universities.

I came to these conclusions based upon the following:

1. That left-wing activism was fomented (and has since been nurtured) in America’s colleges and universities, and that radicalism spilled out over into the general population to a certain degree.

2. The Vietnam War and advances (as well as follies) in civil rights were tremendous stressors on American civilization that Proto-Hippies successfully exploited for a time, and

3. The targeted/affected cohorts who were particularly susceptible to the Hippie Effect due to their coming of age in a pampered life without (relative to their parents) ‘struggle or want’ were made even more susceptible
due to the rise and spread of the drug sub-culture.

If we chart the year 1961 (pre-Vietnam) through 1980, and overlay historical events (some of which are shown on the first chart below) and highlight the degree of campus radicalism by year for each cohort, we can fairly closely identify those cohorts exposed to radicalism and approximate to what degree each cohort was exposed.

Weighting the depth of exposure to varying severities of radical environments, we can identify cohorts who were most at risk for radicalization, and to what degree they might have been exposed. (BTW: I did a few parametric excursions as to the assumed degrees and timing of radicalism and it didn’t make much difference in the relative cohort scores).

Assuming constant rates of changes in maturity and attitudes between age cohorts, the most radical age cohorts in the 60’s and 70’s should still be (relatively speaking) among the most radical cohorts today. This allows us to identify probable age distributions of those most radicalized groups driving today’s Hippie Effect:

[Note: the 1953 birth year cohort score only appears to be worse than the 1952 cohort due to line smoothing. They are actualy equal]

What the Hippie Future looks like...

The 2005 population distribution compared to projected distributions (Census .xls link here) in the U.S. looks like this:

The bulge in curve that shifts right over time represents the Baby Boomers. The portion of the bulge in living general population that represents the most pronounced Hippie Effect will decline by more than 32% between now and 2020. The chart below represents a slightly different group than the core represented in chart 2 above due to how the census ‘sliced’ the age groups in their data provided, but illustrates the sizable (and quite normal and expected) drop between now and 2020.

Hippie Retirement

Keep in mind that most of these people will really start retiring in large numbers around 2015. While trends in retirement age are under debate, this will still be most important in factoring the disappearing effects of those Hippies who exercise their influence through their workplace, particularly in the government and academic bureaucracies. In these arenas, Hippie government doyens and tenured superstars may linger much longer than 2015 (after all, MIT is still stuck with the last of the Proto-Proto-Hippies: Noam Chomsky). But to what degree will they maintain influence without their legions of Joe-average functionaries that now keep the gears of the Hippie infrastructure grinding?

The Hippies net influence in the workplace will also be slightly mitigated further by the fact that everyone after them also has to stay in the workforce a little longer, if post-Hippie cohorts must work until they can draw Social Security.

Buh-Bye Hippies! (AKA Demographics IS Destiny!)

If you remember all the hand wringing by the current crop of campus activist-wannabes and aging Hippies over the dearth of protests during the run-up and prosecution of the war on terror in Iraq, or perhaps are aware of more current reportage on the subject, then you know there appears to be no real impetus for a broad and popular protest movement on campus or anywhere else for that matter. Protests and ‘actions’ that have occurred are products of a hodgepodge of loony loners and fringe elements such as Islamofascist apologists, pseudo-anarchists and mere boutique commies: as evident to anyone who has ever seen one of these to-dos in person or has visited Zombietime.

Hey! Hey! Ho! Ho! ...Um, what are we mad about again-o?

There are significant differences between now and ‘then’ that seem to me to be obvious mitigating factors and it could be there is no activist groundswell for any and/or all of them. A short list (in no particular order) of the differences to be found:

1. Vietnam didn’t attack us within our borders
2. On campus, now the Left IS “The Man”-who-is-to-now-be-rebelled-against.
3. Psychedelic Drug use generally isn’t ‘cool’, ‘hip’ or whatever anymore. Most people now know it just messes you up.
4. STD’s and Womyns Studies both kind’a kill the 'Free Love' concept: Can’t use sex to lure young guys into the radical fold anymore. Dang.
5. Just not a lot of big-time social injustice in the U.S. (unless you are a ‘previously privledged’ majority, equate animal rights with human rights, or really feel for killers in Gitmo) anymore. Sorry.
6. No Draft = No threat to anyone’s plans to tour the world by micro-bus or become an otherwise unemployed liberal arts grad.
7. Reference the Zombietime link above. Do YOU want to be seen with these kinds of people?

And it goes on……

[Note: I am not too worried about the aging Hippies picking up on these reasons and adjusting their game plan, as since they are STILL Hippies, they almost certainly fall into a particular category (pdf file) that places certain concepts safely beyond their reach.(Updated 01/04/07 to correct the overuse of 'certain' and it's various derivitives.)]

As I wrote earlier, I still just hope we don't have a lot of Hippies spending their retirements clogging up the highways driving to the next protest. I can see them now through the bumper stickers, driving in the left lane going 5 mph under the speed limit, with the turn indicator on.

Update 1/6/07: Friend and Co-worker 'Dave' sent me an e-mail yesterday pointing out several things could happen to change the climate into one that would create a new generation of Hippies, and he also pointed out that I shouldn't underestimate the Nostalgia effect of people who like to remember the good old days who weren't even around in the good old days:

I have run into too many people that just want to keep the 60's alive. Music, good times, no responsibilities, …
Also the whole environmental/save the this-or-that can usually snag a number of people that will keep the movement alive. I've seen it. As an example look at the war re-enacters. This is a big draw for a large number of people, comraderie, history, heritage, fun, getting out of the house.

Since a lot of Enviros are 'watermelons' - updated Hippies with socialist and commie cores - it would only make sense that there will be some next-generation outcome of the current movements (Like Rearguard posted at Reihl World: Once a hippy, always a commie).
But without the right environment, next generation Hippies just won't have that 'oomph' that made '68-'72 the years that they were.

Saddam's End: Feels About Right

Saddam Hussein, by all accounts, is about to be hanged. While I can't imagine how this event plays out in the minds of the survivors of his terror, to me it just feels like something that needs to be done...is about to be done.

Good.

Now let's move on with our lives as soon as it IS done.

May Iraq elect ever more just governments from here on out, and her peoples find peace and prosperity. (Of course we may have to do something about Wahhabists and Islamofascists to help that last part along)

Yesssssssss! The F-35 Flies

Minutes ago, at exacty 1240hrs Central Time, the first F-35 took off from the runway at Carswell Joint Reserve Base with it's chase escort and is currently flying it's first test mission. Godspeed to all on the flight.

It took off with two F-16 chase planes doing an airborne pickup and an F-18 safety chase in trail. the pilot held the plane on the runway until after the 3000 ft marker and the plane climbed effortlessly into the sky. We'll know later after the data is reduced how well it performed. Watch the news later for flight footage.

As this is a normal 'off-Friday' for the program, only the most diehard (or those unfortunate enough to HAVE to be here) were present.

We saw several days of tantalizing taxi tests this past week or so that had only elevated our anticipation. As each taxi test began, a crowd would materialize on this side of 'the base' where the Lockheed Martin plant (officially AF PLant 4) shares a runway with the Guard and Reserve units on Carswell proper. Modern technology kept all the project team members appraised of activities leading up to first flight, with a live feed of the test hangar goings-on continuously transmitted throughout the plant via company intranet. So with every taxi test, the crowds grew bigger.

The bird looked great during ground tests. Out on the taxiway and runway, and away from obstructions and ground equipment, this was the first time we could really see what it really looked like. The landing gear is geometrically positioned farther back than one might expect: but weight-and-balance wise, it is probably close to a typical position relative to the center of gravity. The general layout makes the F-35 look 'fast'.

It looks lethal
The tweaks made to the earlier X-35 OML (outer mold line) design do it justice. The large volume planform (to carry more fuel and stores internally for 'stealth' purposes) gives it a husky, 'big-shouldered' look. The large unitary nose landing gear door is quite prominent with gear extended. The twin vertical stabilizers seem relatively small for the fuselage when compared to the F-15 and F-18, but look 'right' on this plane. The overall size still seems relatively small and compact.

It has a distinctive engine sound that is deeper and more full-bodied than the whine of an F-15 or F-16 engine -- probably due to the resonance of a larger-diameter engine core. It is relatively 'quiet' until the power is laid on and then a great rumble comes forth. When the power comes on, it gets the 'smash' up fast. (Mmmmmmm --I can hardly wait for the max performance tests later.)

I am definitely NOT "a fighter can do everything and do it better" guy. But I know airplanes and I know weapon systems: this one is "sweet" either way.

Today's flight caps years of development -- not to mention decades of programmatic redirection. We still have years of work left to develop it to its full potential of course. Time will tell if we keep getting the support and funding that will let us do the job, or if we suffer the same fate as the F-22, the B-2, and a lot of other systems.

Update: The plane and chase aircraft came back about 40 minutes later. No cameras allowed where I was standing, but JAWA has some pics of the flight: most are real ;-).

I've read 4-5 news reports that are out now. It is unfortunate that the Ignorati that run the media cannot seem to mention the aircraft without couching it in terms of being the 'most expensive/costly aircraft/defense program' ever. As the most advanced aircraft of its kind, that is going to be bought in larger quantities by more nations at the same time than ever before: what exactly is it that would make anyone think it ought NOT be an expensive program?

Update 2, 10:32 12/16/06: The Fort Worth 'Startlegram' has an article where they have some explanation about the short flight and the plans for the next flight. I feel better about things after the test pilot raved about the flying qualities specifically instead of just calling it 'very successful' AND the fact they are planning to fly again after the weekend.

I will be surprised if they do even if the airplane is ready, because early in a flight test program (this is as 'early' as you can define the word) it takes more time than the schedule ever allows to digest the data from the last flight and learn something before the next.

C-SPAN Wants Even MORE Buffoonery?

According to The Hill, C-SPAN is 'pressing' Rep. Nancy Pelosi to "increase transparency" by loosening the television rules for video transmissions while the House is in session. The CEO of C-SPAN, Brian Lamb, thinks the public is being cheated:

Lamb wrote that the current 28-year-old arrangement is "an anachronism that does a disservice to the institution and to the public…Congressional technicians are limited to taking static, head-on shots of the representative who's speaking at the podium."

Rules and established practices prevent cameras from taking individual reaction shots or from panning the chamber, leaving viewers with an incomplete picture of what's happening in the House," he added.

Ahem, Mr. Lamb?

No.

No Way.

No...Freakin'...'Way.

How much imagination does it take to see how all the petty pompousness, preeening, and posing we get whenever committee hearings are televised would only be amplified and come at us a hundred-fold whenever the whole House was in session? It wouldn't take long before the camera hogs started vamping in competition for 'reaction shots' -- and not long after that the House in session would start making the House of Commons look well-behaved.

Beyond the decay of decorum and debate, which is about the only thing that could make our Legislature even less productive than it already is, Who would decide which shots get taken? Whose 'reactions' get shown? Will Representative Serious get as much air play as Representative Showboat? Will the "Bravado Caucus" supplant the Gang of Fourteen as the greatest usurpers of majority rule? I think we have enough variables in the government at this time, thank you very much.

C-SPAN's quest is simply a lousy idea that would make better TV, but outside of C-SPAN, everyone would suffer.

Kofi: Despots' Fool, Terrorists' Tool

Kofi is gone (finally!)

A Fox News article on Kofi's farewell swipe at the US contained a pretty good summary on the man:

"Kofi Annan has been a shameless appeaser of dictators and tyrants on the world stage and he was fundamentally opposed to the removal of Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq,".

Yep, that's about it!

And Kofi?…

Don’t let the door hit you on the ass on the way out.

For further reference: A primer on Kofi’s ‘accomplishments’ from the Hertage Foundation.

Go Read "In From the Cold"

For the life of me, I don't know why more people don't visit Former Spook at In From the Cold and do it more often.

Or perhaps they do -- and they just always lurk without comment as I do.

Former Spook is on a roll! His posts today on search engine powerhouses ignoring CENTCOM press releases, the Dems plans to 'gut' Missile Defense, and the funeral arrangements for that most-useless ex-president and his bloviating are absolutely dead on as usual.

Update: OK I caved this time -- I just had to comment on the 'Missile Defense' post

Air Force 'Force Reshaping' Sales Pitch. Part 4

For the story so far, see Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3

As mentioned earlier, Part 4 is where we will examine the part of the AF brief where they inadvertently highlight the US military’s slide into ‘superpower-lite’ status”. Since this turned into a particularly long piece, we will now defer the AF’s delusional ‘vision’ of the ‘better, cheaper, faster’ mantra as a follow-on in Part 5.

And now.... Part 4

Slide 13 is a 'marvel'.

Hmmmm, There is Something Missing….

What makes this slide extremely interesting is as much about what not shown as anything else, so we will give it special attention. While this slide is used as a simple attention-getter in preparation to the AF’s next point, it gives hints about so much of what has happened to the AF since 1989, while it avoids giving any information that would take the audience ‘off-message’. Indeed, the missing information must surely be considered ‘counter-message’ by HQAF.

As presented, this slide is little more than factoids on a timeline. To be useful as anything more, one needs to have a good grasp of the ‘whys’ behind the numbers. But an understanding of the ‘whys’ would also tend to subvert the AF’s message. Remember: The ‘message’ the AF is trying to sell is that 'force reshaping’ -- AKA force(d) reductions -- are necessary”!

There is a major intermediate ‘conceptual’ step that occurred between 1989 and 2006. Although a pure cynic might think it was skipped over only because it would be ‘counter message’, it was most likely not mentioned due to a combination of slide space considerations and the fact that in implementation, the intermediate step became little more than a whistle stop on the way to current force constructs, which would have made it harder to couch comparable numbers for that step on this slide. Therefore, I will generously chalk the omission up as due to chartsmanship and sloth instead of intent. As the AF suffered a major purge in 1993-7 (discussed below) it is also entirely possible that the 'functionary' that built the slide is a ‘newbie’ and has little or no awareness of what is missing.

Fact: Today’s ‘2006’ force construct is largely an outcome of Les Aspin’s (Clinton’s first SecDef) efforts to gut the military.

It is quite remarkable how much of our current perspectives on defense spending can be traced all the way back to Clinton, Aspin, and a Democrat-controlled Congress that was salivating at the thought of meting out the ‘Peace Dividend’ to their various pet projects and constituencies. If anything, the current force posture and the predicament the military is in are more than anything a clear statement about how disastrous and lasting the impact of an incompetent ideologue such as Aspin can be. This is what happens when a twit is given free reign over the DoD for even a short tenure (9 months!) by a feckless ‘party boy’ in the Oval Office.

Now: On to the missing piece!
The ‘step’ that is missing was ‘The Base Force’ (previously mentioned here, and for Lorna Jaffe’s definitive paper on the topic see here. What became "The Base Force" can be largely credited to then-JCS Chairman Colin Powell, and a few visionaries who picked up early on the decline of the Soviet Union and the impacts of President Reagan’s direct confrontation with the Evil Empire. Gen. Powell may not have been the originator, but he sure recognized the need and provided the horsepower that developed the Base Force concept.

The ‘Base Force’ construct was conceived as a rational way forward to draw down the size and composition of the post-Cold War military in a way that also allowed for future defense need uncertainties that the U.S would face as the sole remaining ‘superpower’. It wasn’t perfect of course, but it was at least based upon reasonable assumptions and prudence. At the time, Aspin was HASC Chairman---or rather I should say “was a HASC Chairman who envisioned that he alone understood what kind of military that was needed in the future”. Powell’s run-ins with Aspin on the subject were public and loud. I dare say it was one of the main reasons Aspin got the SecDef job, much to the chagrin of too many troopers in Somalia a short time later.

Overshadowing even his 'Blackhawk Down' moment in lasting impact, Aspin implemented what he called the ‘Bottom Up Review’ (BUR) which gamed all the analyses to arrive at the (his) predetermined conclusions. If Aspin got information he didn’t want, he ignored it: nothing would stop him from slashing the military to well below the levels required for the US to fulfill its superpower responsibilities and commitments.

While the objective of saving the almighty dollar was the most 'popular' excuse for this endeavor, in my opinion Aspin was determined to ‘demilitarize’ the US at any cost to our security and safety—and I stand on his voting record in Congress to say it.

Here’s a cheerful thought: The next Congress looks like it is going to be run by all the 60’s retreads who now have seniority, so expect ‘Aspinesque’ idiocy to be issuing forth soon. As far as National Defense needs go, we are entering another dark age. Remember, President George H. Bush lost re-election on the heels of fighting and winning exactly the kind of war the Base Force was designed to handle. But sometime between 1991 and the election in 1992 the winning political battle cry would become: “It’s the ‘The Economy Stupid”.

And so this chart rushes past any mention of “Why” we are continuing what might one day be acknowledged as our largest and longest running defense misstep in the 20th and possibly the 21st century: the gutting of the DoD (and the Air Force as a subset thereof).

There are a couple of gems here as well…

Force Sizing Basis
First, note the particular differences in ‘strategy’ as it is addressed in each column. This is a pretty ‘interesting’ summary of the decline in our national defense objectives over the last 15 years.

Reading across the top we can see that we are expected to believe we have gone from planning against an overarching known threat (threat-based), to a ‘capabilities-based’ planning approach, to a ‘capabilities-based & budget-constrained’ planning approach. If this wasn’t such a serious topic, this little twist on reality would be hilarious. Why? It is because even when we were using ‘threat-based’ planning, we were ‘budget-constrained’ --- as we (properly) have been since the end of WWII. Paul Kennedy’s fantasies aside, as a nation we have not had to choose between guns and butter since 1945.

What the ‘strategy’ line on the slide really tells us is that the AF 'leadership':
1. Cannot or is unwilling to make the case to expand the budget,
2. Cannot or is unwilling to even recognize the need to expand the budget, or
3. There are leadership 'factions' guilty of one or the other.

Basing Concept
I just LOVE this part. Now the AF is telling its Airmen that the ‘expeditionary’ concept so prominently employed today is only ‘semi-expeditionary’! So I suppose things are really going to be ‘expeditionary’ in the future?!

The ‘expeditionary’ idea was conceived as an option to deal with the reduced force structure and projected associated reduced overseas basing footprint (but didn’t have the neat shades-of-Black-Jack-Pershing moniker at the time). It became absolutely necessary in the wake of Aspin’s BUR debacle, and now AF management is calling today’s concept ‘semi-expeditionary’? If the current situation is ‘semi-expeditionary’ then ‘future expeditionary’ has to translate into English as: ‘permanently deployed’. Yep, I can see a lot of people wanting to spend 20-30 years forward-deployed. Good luck with that!

And so now HQAF sets up the audience for the bloody details by first spreading a little pablum:

Oh, tell us! Please!

Whoah!

This slide is…is…-- Well I’ll just hit each point they try to make and you can come to your own conclusions. The second row will be dealt with last because that is the ‘money shot’ as far as I’m concerned.

First Row: Environments

The 20th Century was 'predictable'? Outside of two world wars that were telegraphed to us from a long way off before we got involved, what exactly was predictable about it? The 20th Century was about ‘conventional’ threats? Again, outside the two world wars, what was ‘conventional’ about them?

The only thing that makes the 20th Century 'predictable' is that it is now ‘history’.

Asymmetric threats are a new problem? For reference, here are some asymmetrical threat situations that the US has had to deal with in the 20th Century:

• 1910-1916 Mexican Expedition
• 1909-1933 Intervention in Nicaragua and,
• Most of the rest of these as well as,
• The entire Vietnam War involved dealing with asymmetric threats.

Third Row: “Force vs. Effects Focus”

This line looks like a ‘slide filler’. Either that or a ‘Butter Bar’ with no prior enlisted experience wrote it. We were never ‘geographically focused’ except in the respect that we set our butts in geographic regions necessary to address whatever the national defense needs required. We had forces forward-deployed because the threat they faced was forward deployed AND leaning forward, and we had unilaterally decided to give them the initiative (lest we be thought of as "provacative"!) in any combat scenario: hence the term ‘tripwire’ to describe our (NATO’s) posture. We would give up too much too fast if we hadn’t also been ‘forward deployed’. My fighter squadron wasn’t in Iceland because of the beaches, fiords, or volcanoes. It was there because the Soviets were very keen on sending submarines, Bear bombers, and other players down the Greenland-Iceland-United Kingdom Gap so they could operate off the coast of the United States (frequently at a surprisingly high tempo), and pull good duty in the Worker’s Paradise. Somebody thought it would be a good idea to keep an eye on them as they came by.

“Effects Focus”?

We have always been an “effects-focused” force. We bomb = they die. This is just recognizing that the desired effects we’re looking for are somewhat different than before, or to put it another way: “We bomb = they die but also some other ‘they’ is ALSO terribly inconvenienced”. This is actually still an awfully abstract concept to be touting as a solution to anything. This concept has very vocal defenders and opponents in DoD, and what an “effects-based” air campaign looks like is still evolving. But it IS a really cool sounding concept so the term gets bandied about quite a bit.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for ‘effects based’: the better we define the desired effects we wish to achieve, the better we can execute the mission to meet our objectives. But this represents less a paradigm shift than a six-sigma quality effort in force employment. Structuring one’s forces so that they are perpetually stressed by the "ops tempo" hardly promotes the ability to ‘adjust’ the force employment and deployment patterns in pursuit of the current desired ‘effect’, much less address new needs that can and will pop up.

‘Garrison Based’?

Operationally, the only advantage of forward deploying over forward basing is the cost savings from not having to move households and other infrastructure overhead, but even that isn’t a one-for-one-savings. Everything pretty much just changes ‘cost buckets’. For example, we can either pay to store bombs where we will operate or we pay extra to store them on pre-positioning ships or pay extra to ship them where we need them, when we need them.

We can pay to put the infrastructure in place where we need it, or pay a lot more to put less in
place when and where we need it. We could also pay more dearly in other ways when we don’t get it in place in time or at all. Again, don’t get me wrong, I’m actually for the US basing and forward deployment scheme as long as there is ‘enough’ Air Force to do the job over the long haul. The current path is only a good one as long as the world behaves in a way that is known and ‘hoped for’.

Fourth Row: “Trim the Fat”

This almost made the top of the list for reasons I will go into covering another slide later in the brief. At this time, just let us observe that for this aspect of the AF, the ‘20th Century’ ended about a decade earlier. Also please ask yourself the question: “If forward forces are ‘reaching back for support’, who are they reaching back to, if AF management is also gutting the home stations?”

The punch line at the bottom of the slide is good as far as it goes, but it is incomplete. It
should read:

This is a different Air Force we’re building…not “the same, but smaller”, and also a heck of a lot less capable and not nearly good enough to use as a
deterrent.

Seriously, this is eerily reminiscent of the early 90’s when we were looking at the post Cold War environment and were told something to the effect of:

In the past, it was ‘do more with less’, this time we’re going to ‘do less with
less’.

At least in the 90’s, AF ‘Leadership’ openly acknowledged the impact of the course we were taking. What a stark contrast to today’s AF ‘Management Team’.

And finally…..The Second Row: “Force Structure”

This is the most frightening bit in the whole brief, as it is an explicit admission that the AF on its current path will in the very near future NOT have the essential element of ‘mass’, and are consciously choosing to dispense with it. I’ve been on the bleeding-edge of operations research and have performed a ton of force employment studies. The number one question that is always asked is:

How many aimpoints can we service in X amount of time and how long can we keep it up?

To do well with either half of that question, the AF needs to be able to bring ‘Mass’ against it’s foes. Now the concept itself has changed somewhat in the sense we no longer need (for now) hundreds of platforms going against an industrial center in the hopes of hitting a couple of factories. But we still need the capability to strike many places at once, and do many missions at once, and do it over long distances. For all the above you need to have "mass".

To get the most out of any aerospace force, you need flexibility, precision, lethality, speed (airspeed, a subset of speed is only better to a point), and survivability/sustainability. If you want to be able to operate over a sustained period of time, or really press an advantage quickly, you need sufficient ‘numbers’ ladies! This slide tells me the AF is only planning on fighting wars against greatly inferior forces, which of course will only encourage undesirable behaviors in near-peer competitors, (or petty despots when they see us occupied elsewhere).

This line on the slide tells me that the 'leadership' either thinks we do not need mass anymore, and/or they really don’t understand the modern definition, or (most likely) is betting they can keep the hardware costs at bay until they can ‘afford it’ in the future. Any of these three beliefs should be completely unacceptable to any real commander of warfighters.

As Vegitus asserted "Igitur qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum." (loosely translated: “if you want peace, prepare for war”). It appears AF 'leadership’ has decided they want a ‘little peace’, so they’re only preparing for ‘little wars’.

Part 5 will be the last substantial post on the subject. If this had been an ‘external’ brief, instead of a sales pitch to the thousands of service men and women affected, most of the slides after this would have been ‘backup’ slides, but I will present those without a lot of comment to keep the full impact and thrust of this briefing in full view for posterity.

Check Six!

Killer Asteroids and Risk Management 101

"The dinosaurs became extinct because they didn't have a space program. And if we become extinct because we don't have a space program, it'll serve us right!" --Larry Niven

Captain’s Quarters points out a fairly good ‘dead tree’ media piece on the threat of killer asteroids. In the UKGuardian article there are the obligatory ‘experts caution’ kind of references - to try and play down any hysterics from earlier citing unprovable statistics I guess – but on the whole it is a pretty good writeup (especially so, considering the source).

The Captain closes with “but let's make sure we're tailoring the budget and the mission to the real threat, and not some hysterics intended to sell books and buy tax money”, and I agree.

So how do we think about the ‘real threat’? Risk management techniques were made for this kind of easy example. We don’t even have to deal with nuances.

First, what is the ‘risk’ to us from such an event? Generally speaking, and without considering action and intervention, ‘Risk’ is a two-dimensional concept. To characterize it we must assess the probability of an event happening and the consequences of such an event if it did happen.

Given what we know: a. we’ve been hit before and b. we don’t always see them coming, I can think of no reason to characterize the near-term risk of a killer asteroid in any way other than ‘low probability – dire consequences’ = taking no preparation against a possible ‘killer asteroid’ should be considered ‘High Risk’.

But we should and would intervene and take action if we could wouldn’t we? How fast could a threat appear and how fast can we come up with a way to deal with it? These factors can modify the ‘Risk’. Again, a simplified risk chart can illustrate the importance of the time factor:


Since large astronomical bodies have been first observed as they have already passed their closest point, and we don’t always get a long look at inbound threats we do see ahead of time, the speed the threat can materialize has to be considered ‘Quickly’. Since we haven’t developed a counter to the threat yet, and any program you can conceive will take longer to develop than the time it takes for one of these things to appear, the 'Risk' can still be considered 'high', even if we start developing a counter today.

When we DO develop a counter to the threat, how effective must it be to reduce the 'Risk'?



Since we already characterize the raw threat as ‘Great’, unless whatever counter we come up with is VERY effective, we (as in the whole freakin’ Earth ‘we’) will still remain at a high risk to a cosmic collision.

There are a lot of 'more probable' things that we have to worry about, but none have a greater consequence than wiping out the planet surface and current ecosystem in the blink of an eye. So stop fretting over unverified ‘man-made global warming’ and tell me why we don’t have a full time deep space watch and a long range counter-asteroid system yet?

Yes, We Should Judge the Election Outcome by the Joy it Brings Our Enemies

...and we should judge our political parties by their willingness to give and/or sustain our enemies' joy.

Powerline is right.

Captain Ed at Captain's Quarters is wrong.

Captain Ed's "high-mindedness" reminds me of a conversation I was having with a colleague last year. In our exchange, my learned friend pointed out that one problem with a metaphorical "Aunt Martha" was that "she thinks that these mullahs preaching Jihad in the mosques are 'just like Reverend So-and-so their Baptist Minister'. After all, 'they're both men of God' aren't they?" I think the Good Captain (with whom I agree with on many many things) is experiencing the same sort misplaced identification with the Islamist enemy and sees them as fellow human beings.

Oh, they are humans and no more or less human than we are of course. It's just they're not fellow humans. They are not our 'fellows' in the sense where we would have the same dreams, the same aspirations, the same core beliefs, the same sense of honor and human dignity. Their culture and the lives they lead don't allow such things. This is one of the reasons Islamists hate the West so much: our existence is a threat to their ability to sustain the feudalism and fascism that is at the root of their power.

I wouldn't even call Captain Ed's postion to be 'high-mindedness' but would characterize it more as 'optimism unsupported by events or evidence'. These enemies have a long history of saying exactly what they are thinking and what they are going to do. I believe them when they gloat from a safe place.

If the Dem leadership wanted to at least pretend they were good Americans, they would have sounded off on this immediately. Instead we hear......crickets.

Airbus Aircraft Design Culture: Update

I've been following this since the Airbus 300 series airplane went down over NY right after the 9/11 attacks. Airbus and others insist that the pilots used too much control input to shear the vertical stabilizer off the fuselage. The question in my mind was and is: How is it even POSSIBLE to use too much control input?

I'm still waiting to see it explicitly stated, but I'm pretty certain Airbus used a McDonnell Douglas or maybe Boeing (now all Boeing so it doesn't matter which) proprietary design under license for the aircraft in question. I'm equally certain after reading several articles including the one linked in the header that Airbus chose NOT to implement the feature of the design that would have limited rudder deflection angles under the same conditions and prevented the crash. Why didn't Airbus think it was needed, when it was part of a proven design?

I'm not a huge fan of Airbus as I've readily acknowledged previously. But they may have a viable contender for the tanker replacement "KC-X" program since they are teamed with Northrop Grumman. An injection of common sense airplane savvy from Northrop Grumman could spill over to help other Airbus programs but significant cultural barriers would have to be broken down for that to happen. In any case, a USAF involvement could improve the Airbus passenger version similar to how improvements that created the KC-10 helped the DC-10/MD-11 airliners.

Full disclosure: I have deep vested interests in Northrop Grumman.

My Election Post Mortem

I think Hugh Hewitt drives a spike in the root cause of the Republican downfall today over at Townhall.com.

A Short summary of my take:

Too many Republicans acting like Democrats,
Too many Liberals masquerading as Conservatives,
And the Media Snake (big media) was a Snake because that is all it knows how to be.

The good news (I suppose) is that there is no way Nancy Pelosi and the rest of her gang will behave for the next two minutes, much less the next two years. Like I noted above: Snakes just gotta be snakes.

A prediction: This will be either the most highly fractured or the fastest self-alienating Democratic House ever!

Today's Responsibility

....and civil right

Go Vote.

Now.