VLJs and Air Taxis: The Contenders

While the net number of platforms seems to be growing on the list of contenders, I’ll focus on only what I see as the three most viable at this time: The Eclipse 500, the Cessna Mustang, and the Adam 700. Some of the other possibilities could warrant more consideration very soon.

This post will compare aircraft design and performance, and acquisition costs. Sometime later, posts will explore some of the less glamorous but no less important aspects of the designs: often referred to as the ‘ilities’ and in still later posts I plan on giving an appraisal of the major “players” as well as some high-level observations concerning possible Air Taxi operational concepts.

The Aircraft: Eclipse, Cessna & Adam

DESIGN
Assuming that all the designs ‘fly right’ and there are no handling abberations associated with any of the aircraft, there are three ‘most important’ VLJ contender performance design elements to evaluate: structure, propulsion, and avionics.

Structure. An evaluation of the contenders from Eclipse, Cessna and Adam pretty much cover all the salient factors (‘Marketeer’ hair-splitting aside) that would apply to any other contenders, as these three manufacturers’ offerings represent all the key discriminating technical approaches in areas of airframe, propulsion, and avionics.

The Eclipse 500 and Cessna Citation Mustang are both conventional wing-body-tail configurations, while the Adam 700 is a twin-boom design (see graphic). The Eclipse and the Cessna are optimized designs tailored for their target range/payload specifications, while the Adam is a follow-on design optimized for maximum commonality with another version of otherwise basically the same aircraft, the Adam 500. The Adam’s planform was originally designed as a twin propeller-driven aircraft with one engine in front and another at the back of the center fuselage, commonly called a ‘push-pull’ arrangement. The primary advantage to the Adam’s planform in the prop version is there are no asymmetrical thrust or adverse yaw problems encountered in single engine-out scenarios.



The Adam is (by a nose) the largest (dimensionally) of the three designs and is of all-composite construction. The Cessna and the Eclipse are of primarily sheet-metal construction, although the Eclipse makes use of new technology that greatly reduces labor-intensive rivet construction techniques. The weights for the Adam and the Cessna are not yet ‘published’ from what I can determine, but the Cessna is supposed to be approaching 8000 lbs gross weight and the Adam 700 should be the same or heavier than the Adam 500’s 6500 lbs. The smaller Eclipse 500’s much lighter maximum takeoff weight is now expected to come in at family’ as the Cessna Mustang’s engines, although rated at a slightly lower thrust than the Cessna’s. This might also indicate a slightly better reliability for the Eclipse engines, if the major differences between the two thrust ratings boil down to how hard P&WC works the same components: differences in operating temperatures and associated stresses can cause different failure rates and modes.

The Adam 700 uses a Williams FJ33 engine. The FJ33 is not closely related to the Williams FJ22 engine that was a setback for Eclipse, but the FJ33 design is closely related to the well-respected Williams FJ44 engines now flying on many other aircraft including larger Cessna business jets.

Avionics. All three aircraft use the latest generation of avionics. Adam is teamed with Avidyne and utilizes their most advanced system available. Cessna uses a Garmin avionics suite, with one of the best display configurations I’ve seen in any non-military aircraft. Eclipse is employing a highly-integrated system from Avio.

While I cannot tell from the material available how integrated the systems are on the Cessna or the Adam, the Eclipse’s “Avio” system reaches far beyond traditional avionics capabilities. This is not at all surprising, since one of the three key tech goals of the Eclipse has all along been to field just such a system that takes a lot of the workload off the pilot/crew and enhances aircraft safety. The “Avio” is the product of a partnership involving Avidyne, BAE Systems and General Dynamics that:

“...is designed to replace nearly 30 individual boxes with 4 identical chassis units. Its major components are the electric power distribution system and the aircraft integrated electronics unit (AIEU) with dual FADEC channels, dual 3-axis autopilot and autothrottles."

The level of integration in Eclipse’s approach is getting into the territory more common to advanced fighter avionics design than people-haulers.

PERFORMANCE
It is no secret that aircraft companies tend to obscure or highlight their performance data to put on their best face for potential customers. This is not necessarily deviousness on the part of manufacturers, but it is at least partially due to the fungible nature of aircraft performance. That is to say, unless two aircraft were designed to meet exactly the same specifications, one really can’t compare the two and state objectively if one is better than the other. Each is different with different strengths. Combine this fact with the reality that the customer rarely knows exactly what they need or what would be best for their operation and you get statements of performance data couched in vague enough terms and in various different ways, as to make most direct comparisons impossible. For example, aircraft range will be specified without all-important supporting information, such as with how many ‘people on board’ or what the total payload weight was or without the “fuel consumed” data. Unreal planning factors such as an average passenger weight of 150 lbs, accompanied by a trivial amount of baggage, or something equally un-“real world” may be given in the marketing pitches.

Eclipse is a remarkable exception to the rule in that not only has it been famously transparent in their development progress, but also in characterizing their claimed and forecasted performance data. Adam Aircraft I would gauge as the second most transparent: they present some data; probably a reasonable amount, given the ambiguities they still have to resolve in their final design and test stages. I would assess Cessna the least transparent of all, as they require interested parties to contact their staff if they are doing some comparison shopping.

Since all of the jets use latest generation technology optimized to some degree for the same flight regimes, some basic assumptions about performance can be made with relatively low risk of significant error. In their respective and equivalent design-optimized cruise altitudes, the lighter jet will generally have the lowest fuel consumption and highest cruise speeds. This would seem to give an edge to the Eclipse, and indeed, the cruise speed at altitude for the Eclipse is significantly higher (375Kts) versus approximately 340Kts for the other two aircraft.

In the Eclipse’s payload ‘sweetspot’ (pilot plus three passengers) it appears the Eclipse also has longer range and better fuel economy than the others. Economically, the Adam 700 may have some significant advantage at shorter ranges with higher passenger load factors.

ACQUISITION COSTS
This is an easy topic, because one thing aircraft manufacturers will usually tell you eventually is the price. [The hard part to figure out later is: what is the ‘Life-Cycle Cost’ vs. Utility that yields the ‘Value’ – the real bottom line.]

Straight out of the box, the Eclipse is the least expensive plane to acquire. in ‘June 2006’ dollars, the Cessna is projected to cost $2.623M, the Adam 700: $2.284M, and the Eclipse: $1.495M.

If the Eclipse 500 meets a buyer’s overall needs, it would take a lot of comparative savings in recurring costs for the other two aircraft to overtake the Eclipse’s substantial edge in acquisistion costs, to be competitive in a total life cycle cost comparison. But that is another post for another time.

Air Taxis -- The Players

As one might surmise, this topic grew to what will now be three total follow-on postings. I am working on the (hopefully) last installment that will highlight some of the major players among both the VLJ manufacturers and contenders among the Air Taxi Operators, as well as some speculation on my part as to what yet may happen in the chaos that the new market for both will generate.

~Sigh~ After reading this post, I'll probably have to do this in at least two more installments.

UPDATE:
In my OJT in blogging here, I'm learning a lot of different things. One of them is don't predict how many posts it will take to cover a subject. The other is, just because you know something very well, it doesn't mean you can quickly find all the references you need to have to backup what you write. Learning IS a lifelong endeavor after all!

The Air Taxi: Disruptive Innovation Part B

Continuing with the Air Taxi Discussion...

Next-generation Air Taxi operators will be using VLJs with significantly lower acquisition and operating costs. If the kind of sales volume appears as predicted by optimists, the acquisition costs will be even lower. At published estimate numbers (now cached), the range of direct operating costs per aircraft flight mile vary (depending on how and what one calculates) from approximately $.60 to $1.10 per mile. At these rates, an Air Taxi could charge 4 passengers each the equivalent of a government rate for using a personal car and make between 60% to almost 200% gross profit per trip.

One “Per Seat On Demand” business model uses the assumption that the prices for a seat on an Air Taxi would be only slightly higher than equivalent coach fares, and when total costs of an overnight stay in a hotel and additional car rental charges are factored into the equation, the total trip cost would be less than using the airlines – if they were even available for the same trip segment. If one has to take a longer commercial flight due to airline system route design, the Air Taxi flights might become cheaper no matter how they are weighted.

At the forecasted cost of ownership levels, the Air Taxi’s biggest competition might be from more companies creating their own flight operations activities that would both compete for production output from the VLJ manufacturers and take passengers away from the market.

Factors Working Against Air Taxi Success
In every business sector, entrenched interests have a stake in maintaining the status quo, and to operate within the known business rules and environment. When disruptive innovations introduce new ‘unknowns’ into the environment, these unknowns add perceived risk (real or not) that the established players tend to reflexively react to, in an effort to protect their established interests. Their first instinct is almost always to protect the status quo, instead of evaluating the innovation for exploitation. The Air Taxi concept appears to have triggered such a reaction within the air transport industry.

There has been an ongoing effort for some time by the Air Transport Association (ATA) – think “Airlines” - to offload some of their costs onto the General Aviation community, under the false flag of ‘fairness’, and that effort seems to have been redoubled as the VLJs and Air Taxi concepts move toward reality. The ATA and others can be expected to use many false rationales (safety is a good scary one) and sound an increasingly shrill alarm, but I could write many pages and not do as good of a job exploding the vested interests arguments as this article here. I can only expand upon Mr. Rayburn’s last comment:

The airlines will not recognise that we offer a tremendous opportunity for them to grow. We are not going to take passengers away; we are going to create passengers who will fly to get to the airlines. We are about the best thing that could happen to them.

Airlines: Adapt or Die
The airlines are at a point in their existence where they have to ask the same kind of questions that the railroads in this country had to ask themselves a few years ago. The railroads thought they were in the ‘railroad business’ like the airlines think they are in the ‘airline business’… and the railroads were going out of business (sound familiar?)

What the railroads finally figured out is that they were in the ‘transportation business’ and then they worked hard to integrate themselves with the other modes of transportation where it made sense and gave up markets where they couldn’t make money. This is why you now see many trains completely composed of engines pulling rail cars specifically designed to carry stand alone or semi-trailer container systems; container systems that had been bypassing them on the highways and had been driving them out of business. Embracing the change and competition saved the railroads. How long will it take for the airlines to also divine that they are in the ‘transportation business’?

While the ATA seems to be firing the first shots at the Air Taxi industry, I believe it is only a matter of time before the major labor groups and hub airport operators become more vocal on the subject.

The Air Taxi: Disruptive Innovation

The emerging Air Taxi transport concept has the potential to revolutionize the air transportation industry. This revolution will be driven by highly-disruptive innovations that leverage new technologies that make new operating concepts feasible. While some existing Air Taxi operators are positioning themselves to be market players in the new paradigm, to compete against more agile entrants they may be forced to reinvent themselves to ensure their continued existence.

A Solution for the National Transportation System Aerospace Element
The National Transportation System (NTS) includes Airfields and Airways, roads and highways, as well as waterborne, and railway transportation. It even includes pipelines. In short, any means or method to move goods and services from one point to another is part of the NTS. The roots of the emergent Air Taxi concept is found in results of studies conducted in the 1990’s, which revealed a need to add capacity to the existing Air Transport System element of the NTS to support continuing national objectives (economic growth, improved distribution of goods and services).

Current Air Transport Capability Woefully Underutilized
The studies found there was underutilization of smaller regional and community airports that were already part of the National Plan of Integrated Airport Systems. These studies also showed that there was huge untapped potential for using the existing airspace and airports beyond the current paradigm relying on commercial airline hub-and-spoke operations for the near total movement of passengers. The hub-and-spoke system is designed to make things as efficient as possible for the airlines to move aircraft from place to place, and is not the most efficient way to move the passengers riding those planes from their starting point to their ‘final destinations’.

While nearly all Americans live within 20 miles of more than 3000 airports that are part of the National Plan of Integrated Airport Systems, only about 600 of those airports have scheduled commercial air service, and 70% of all air travel involves just 31 ‘hub’ airports. Thus, most trips are not point-to-point under the current system. Unless your travel is a single direct flight, you are traveling farther than you really need to go, and taking longer to get there than absolutely necessary.

Add:
1. the time it takes to get to or from one of the relatively few airports with scheduled commercial flights,
2. extended layovers (think Chicago’s O’Hare in January) or
3. impacts to the national system when a critical hub is closed for some reason affecting flight dispatches a thousand miles away,
and the equation for the best travel method can change dramatically.

[As an egregious example of the last point, I have personally sat at a gate in sunny Burbank, California waiting for flights to clear out of Salt Lake City, Utah that were waiting for flights to depart O’Hare, that were waiting for Northeast airports to open up after a snowstorm the night before.]

While as one might suspect the choice of transport method for taking trips is based upon individual traveler’s value judgment, the choice of ‘fly or drive’ tends to fall towards flying as the distance between departure and arrival points grows. Since September 11, 2001, and the subsequent changes to airport and airline procedures, the equation seems to be shifting to driving even longer distances instead of taking a scheduled flight. The Air Transport Association (subscription required link here) notes that:

…the U.S. Inspector General's January 2004 report shows that turboprop flights to small airports declined 41% between December 2000 and December 2003. McElroy cited another factor: "We continue to see reduced travel on 300-mi. routes and believe it's due to a change in the 'fly versus drive' equation. Due to security procedures and corporate travel budget changes, many people are driving when they could be, and used to be, flying.

The creation and implementation of the Air Taxi market, whereby hundreds or thousands of VLJs carry one to ‘a few’ passengers point-to-point between thousands of airports is to air transportation, what building more interstate highways and adding lanes to all existing interstates would be to motor vehicle transportation.

Factors Working for Air Taxi Success
Success of the Air Taxi concept rests in their ability to make travel more efficient and economical. This ability will depend upon several technology developments, some of which have already been accomplished or have had critical breakthroughs

As an outgrowth from the original studies, NASA and other agencies started a series of initiatives to make increased use of smaller aircraft and smaller airports feasible. One of these initiatives was the Small Aircraft Transportation System (SATS) which focused on maturing needed technologies: on-board computing, advanced flight controls, improved “Highway-in-the-Sky” displays for improved operator situational awareness, and automated air traffic separation and sequencing. The SATS proof-of-concept program concluded with a successful demonstration in June, 2005, but other initiatives are moving forward as part of the Next Generation Air Transportation System (NGATS) and are part of the overall long-range strategic planning by the Department of Transportation.

Continued next post....

Like I Said: Oscar Ratings

I wonder how bad it would have been without a new MC?

From Reuters:

Sunday night's broadcast, hosted for the first time by comedian Jon Stewart, drew an average household rating of 27.1 percent, which would be the lowest percentage of homes that has tuned into the Academy Awards since 2003, according to data Nielsen collected in the 55 largest U.S. TV markets

Yeah, I know: wasn't much of a stretch. But when I figure out what makes women tick, you will all bow down to me! (Insert evil laugh here)

Hollywood Self-Love: Oscar Who?

Hollywood's Assault On Culture will Tank

Here's a prediction that I don't think is too much of a stretch: The Oscar ratings will be lousy. The ratings won't be as bad as they could have been since they have some new blood this time around in Jon Stewart, but they will still stink.

The lack of blockbusters this year, and the apparent requirement to promote alternative lifestyles, demonize the West, or otherwise thumb a metaphorical nose at American culture just to be nominated these days, has generate little positive buzz and even less revenue.

MSN has a list of 'ten reasons' to watch the Acadamy Awards. Notice none of them is "to see which popular movie that took America by storm wins Best Picture".

Eclipse Starts Production

Talk about a dynamic environment! Here's some news to chew on until I finish my more complete posting on the subject: Yesterday, Eclipse Aviation began the first production version of the Eclipse 500. See the article here.

Note the skepticism of the 'Aviation consultant' concerning Air Taxis. It reveals a fairly typical point-of-view of many in the established aerospace industry. One of the posts I'm working on now will provide quite a bit of evidence that such skepticism is, while understandable given history to-date, it is unfounded given the forces that are shaping the future.

Air Taxis -- A Work in Progress:

Please Stand By.......

My apologies anyone who happens by for not yet posting the follow-on to my last post. I was just going to give a brief overview of the Air Taxi concept and how the Eclipse and other Very Light Jets (VLJs) were positioning themselves to capitalize on the 'Air Taxi' market-to-be (Although there are currently air taxi services none match the promised scope of the new paradigm). I am working diligently on the subject, but it has grown to the point that I must break up the follow-on into at least two separate segments: The factors driving the Air Taxi concept will be the subject of Part 2, and an appraisal of the contenders (aircraft and operators) will be in Part 3.

Gee….This is just like my REAL job in aerospace: I’m behind schedule, but I’m going to give you more in the delivery.

Eclipse 500 Wins the Collier Trophy

Now THIS is cool

Innovation and Paradigm Shifts: Synergy of the Economic and Cultural Elements of Power.

I’ve been following the Eclipse story since it began. It was formed by a small group of big-name leaders from a fairly diverse set of tech industries, many of whom are real ‘airplane’ people who have the vision and wherewithal to create an innovative jet for a target market that didn’t (and doesn’t) yet exist.

The idea is pure genius, because the new market doesn’t have to materialize for the jet and company to succeed. The stand-alone effort itself forces a revolution in the light aircraft and executive jet industry using breakthrough technologies such as friction-stir welding and low-cost integrated avionics/systems, which lower costs and prices dramatically: the Eclipse 500 is about half the cost of its closest competitor. Eclipse is poised to protect their edge in the Very Light Jet market through proprietary interest in the new technologies. A third key technology, an extremely low cost engine design didn’t work out in time to meet Eclipse’s schedules, but it got them far enough down the path of development to gain an established light jet engine builder’s interest in the potential market for an engine that would meet Eclipse’s needs.

If you placed your order and deposit at the start of the project, your airplane will cost less than one million dollars (plus the opportunity cost of having your deposit money tied up for the duration of course). To give you an idea of what kind of a ‘legacy’ aircraft you can get for that kind of money, think of an older piston-powered airplane with a turboprop conversion. Maybe. If you are a real good horse-trader. The costs of buying and operating are so reasonable, my own physician (FAA medical examiner), who has a Beech Baron now, is thinking about getting an Eclipse.

Next Post: Eclipse Part II -- Changing Air Travel.
If the new market does materialize in a size and scope that the makers of the Eclipse envision, it will force the already ailing airline industry to make further changes as well to respond to entry of a new competitor, the Air Taxi service.

Fed Consumer Survey: Demographics and Economic Recovery at work

The Fed just released the findings of the latest (2001-2004) survey of consumer finances aptly titled: Recent Changes in U.S. Family Finances: Evidence from the 2001 and 2004 Survey of Consumer Finances.

Let me categorically state up front that it appears the Fed paid for generally sound methodology (a hallmark of NORC), and that reasonable care was taken in executing the survey. The survey’s limitations were properly noted in the report; and although most people probably wouldn’t recognize them, they should be obvious to those with the most interest in the survey.

The ‘bottom line’ finding of the survey is that between 2001 and 2004, the growth rate of the mean and medium income was lower than the previous two cycles. See chart above.

Fed Releases Survey of Consumer Finances Molehill, MSM Builds Mountain Range
(AKA: Thank goodness we have the UAE Ports non-scandal right now, or else the Left would have their phasers set on ‘Shrill’.)

Now that the findings have left saner realms and have entered the wilds, a Google search yields no fewer than 277 (as of 20:50 Hrs Central Time US) ‘news’ references to the survey. Among the first thirty items returned we find:

Wages not keeping pace with inflation, survey finds
Median net worth slows from 2001
Barely gaining
Incomes fell from 2001-04, Fed says
As debt rises, wealth leveling off
Debt, lower wages clip net worth growth
Average inflation-adjusted family income drops in 2004
Family incomes dropped 2.3% 2001-2004, Fed says

It looks like about 1 in 5 media sources resisted (this time) the dark side. Apart from the inability to tell a mean from a mode or a median, most of the MSM evidently can’t tell a 'lower gain' from a 'loss'. Or in some cases, if they had bothered to read the report at all, they would have seen the gain that was experienced, was already adjusted for inflation.

Study's Limitations Prevent Leaping to Conclusions

There’s some insight to the methodologies used in the study available elsewhere on the Fed website, but there is plenty within the document itself to keep me from drawing any kind of ‘negative’ reaction with the information that has been released. I have questions about some things that are not explained, but just going over what is explicit in the report should suffice in understanding my ambivalence. Here is a couple of examples:

First, much or all of the reduced growth, as seen in the chart above, could be explained by a single point made within the report (Page A2):

The U.S. economy was in a mild recession through much of 2001, and real gross domestic product was flat for the year. However, this pause in the growth of real GDP was followed by some pickup in 2002 and sharper gains of 4.1 percent in 2003 and 3.8 percent in 2004.

So we spent 2001-2004 climbing out of a recession. If one has any kind of memory at all, one would remember that most of that time being called a time of ‘jobless recovery’ in the press and by others. The jobs that would have raised the growth rate in median and mean income came later in the recovery. Continuing the same paragraph…

However, this pause in the growth of real GDP was followed by some pickup in 2002 and sharper gains of 4.1 percent in 2003 and 3.8 percent in 2004. The unemployment rate, which had peaked at 6.5 percent in mid-2003, fell to 5.1 percent in 2004.

But if that isn’t enough to explain all of the ‘lower growth’, perhaps the following (page A1) is:

Several demographic shifts had important consequences for the structure of the population. The aging of the baby-boom population from 2001 to 2004 drove a 2 percentage point increase in the share of the population aged 55 to 64. Overall population growth was about 3 percent, and, according to figures from the Bureau of the Census, 58 percent of the growth was due to net immigration. Also according to Census estimates, the number of households increased 3.6 percent—a rate slower than the 5.5 percent pace in the 1998–2001 period—and the average number of people per household remained close to two and a half.

So we have significantly more people at retirement age during this last survey period than previously, and over half of our growth rate is from immigrants who traditionally fill entry level jobs at higher rates than the general population. These factors alone could account for most of the reduced growth. In my industry (aerospace) alone, we are experiencing a huge earnings (and brain) drain due to the bulk of the workforce reaching retirement age:

As noted by the Commission on the Future of the U.S. Aerospace Industry, "Statistics from a variety of sources indicate that the aerospace workforce is "aging" and that 26-27 percent of aerospace workers are eligible to retire by 2008. The average age of production workers is 44 in the commercial sector, 53 in defense, and 51 at NASA.

Aerospace is not the only high-pay technical area that has this problem, but to understand the impact of retirees leaving high-paid jobs just in the aerospace sector, consider this testimony made in the House of Representatives Committee on Science in 2003:

The aerospace industry is a powerful force in the U.S. economy, contributing over 15 percent to the Nation's Gross Domestic Product and supporting over 15 million high quality jobs

You read that right: One industry = 15% of the GDP. At my company, they started retiring in droves about 1996, and hardly anybody is staying longer than they have to. We can’t hire young engineers fast enough, and they don’t make nearly as much as the old hands in this “knowledge worker” industry.

There are some other things that could have inordinately affected the results of this survey compared to past cycles. For example, this time around the Fed treated company-financed pension plans differently. There is also the big unknown in the effects of oversampling the upper income group (due to much lower survey response rates) and how that might vary from cycle to cycle. And I want to now mention the obvious factor I have studiously avoided to keep things manageble up to this point: A little event called September 11, 2001 -- the full impact of which could not have been felt before the end of the previous survey cycle. Finally, if one wanted to split hairs (and if this was done by anybody but NORC I would) the whole idea of using a survey instead of a census would make this too suspect for concrete conclusions.

Read the survey report and the referenced materials. You will end up yawning over this ‘story’ as well.

I Enjoy the Yale Free Press....Typos and All

I hadn’t checked in at the Yale Free Press for a while because I thought they weren’t updating it anymore. I was contemplating removing it from my ‘favorites’ when I was pleasantly surprised to find they’ve started posting new stuff.

I was doubly happy to find TWO relevant pieces to recommend:

Assassination as a Tool Update

Looks like I’m not the only one who recognizes that sometimes assassination could be the best course of action. Read Kerri Price’s “How Do You Solve a Problem Like Mugabe?”

Liberal Colleges are (gasp) Liberal!

The YFP conducted a Freshman Poll and found:

“nine out of ten respondents labeled themselves “liberal,” “leftist” or, worse, “socialist.” When asked to list their political heroes, the left-leaning frosh favored Democrats like Bill and Hillary Clinton.”

So it looks like it is pure GIGO* at some universities.

Couple this with the resignation of Larry Summers as President of Harvard (Hat Tip: American Thinker) due a vocal (read ‘rabid’) ‘plurality’ of PC faculty, and you have to just wonder why these places are still referred to as ‘Elite’ when all they are is 'Exclusive'.

BTW: I don’t see a lot of Ivy League job applicants, since I am (mostly) just involved in hiring Engineers. But when I do, their job application goes straight to the bottom of the pile, and they have to work their way up in the stack during the interviews. They'll always get fair consideration: I work from the going in position that even Harvard can't keep all the good people out.

*Garbage In, Garbage Out

The Army of Davids, Gatekeepers, and the Global Warming Debate

Information is Royalty – Instant Access is Divinity

I experienced two independent events today that have a common element: Barriers to communication and information are disappearing. They are not doing so voluntarily, but are being forcibly knocked down.

First Encounter:

I looked at the newspaper rack as I went through the turnstiles to work this morning and noticed the top headline was something I had read all about online. Yesterday.
Before I went to work.
Again.

I immediately thought about Glenn Reynolds’ meme in his new book: Army of Davids. It’s not released yet, but the subtitle reveals the general thrust of it: How Markets and Technology Empower Ordinary People to Beat Big Media, Big Government, and Other Goliaths. I’ll probably buy this one instead of borrowing it from the library, because it’s a concept with major implications in all areas where there is competition (which essentially means ‘everything’). There are also direct implications in my Military Operations Research work. Gatekeepers are potential chokepoints or 'centers of gravity': potential weaknesses that can be exploited.

There are a lot of constructs for thinking about how information (or anything else for that matter) is created, accessed, and distributed. ‘Stocks and Flows’ and ‘Producers and Gatekeepers’ are two of the more widely known constructs. The thought occurred to me (once again) that newspapers would be a lot better off if they changed their business model from getting incomplete or incorrect information out as fast as possible to a business approach that would provide more accurate detailed information on complex news. This would leverage their inherent advantage in research resources and production capability, and stop a losing battle against the millions of ‘Davids’ who have picture phones and camcorders and are on the scene everywhere. Let the ‘Davids’ get the ‘instant’ word out: Newspapers could give us the ‘meat’ of the story.

I don’t hold much hope of it happening though. It looks like the allure of the ‘scoop’ still holds sway.

Second Encounter:
(Sidebar for Full Disclosure: I am an Anthropogenic Global Warming Skeptic. I understand the difference between models and reality, data and evidence, anecdote and proof.)

So tonight I am researching the latest Global Warming news and I come across an interesting post at Climate Audit. What caught my eye, beyond the excellent article referenced, was this comment (#12, emphasis mine):

My father-in-law, Dr AB Hollingshead, a noted social scientist and department head at Yale in the 60s and 70s were [sic] discussed the weakness of the peer review processes over a couple of beers in my back yard in 1973. He pointed out that most shifts in scientific theory comes at generational boundaries, as those protecting 20-30 years of academic work die off, allowing the next generation to stake their reputation on new ideas and better information. He saw peer review as nothing more than a job protection mechanism, newly minted academics conformed to the current dogma, or they do not get published. In a [sic] publish or perish environments, this could have long term implications for young professors, but it was job protection for the old guard. In dad’s view when the old guard died off, there was a window of opportunity to introduce new ideas. Now, we have outsiders like Steve and Ross, who are not waiting for a generational boundary to identify the errors of the old guard and providing new insight to the problems of calculating past temperature trends from cherry picked tree rings.

That last sentence aptly identifies the Climate Audit authors as the ‘Davids’ of this little corner of scientific controversy.

A little later in my daily reading on the same subject, I came across this excellent opinion piece, highlighting the point that (from my POV) Climate Alarmists seem to think as little of the ‘Anti-Alarmist’ Davids, as the MSM does of theirs:

Phil Maxwell makes the snide comment that “most of the Global Warming Deniers are elder members of the scientific community desperately carrying on a rearguard action”. It is indeed true that a large proportion of these independent scientists are retired people. They can afford to be independent.

Thus, from the news of the day to pressing scientific issues, the Army of Davids are on the march.

Space Force?

Every now and then I want to unload with a more substantial topic than the 'Outrage of the Day'. So here goes...

Separate Space Force? Someday
A lot of 'futurists out there want a Space Force now.
and yeah, I've been thinking about this for a while.....

Introduction

The discussion surrounding a possible separate military service responsible for "Space" has been heating up for years. Critics of the current system that has the Army, Air Force and Navy participating as components of a joint Strategic Command (an arrangement that has existed since 2002) feel the current system, like the system before it where individual service components reported to a unified U.S. Space Command, does not offer real advocacy for "Space".

The usual criticism is that the system merely perpetuates the relative apportionment of the "space pie". Whether or not the criticism is valid is not germane to the question of a need for a separate space service. What must be done is to use the principles and rationales that were behind the creation of the existing services, and overlay them on the current question of a separate space force. Using this methodology it will become obvious that there is no valid reason for creating a separate Space Force at this time.

Core Problem

The main difficulty in addressing the problem is that the individual service branches and the parent Department of Defense (DoD), as institutions, do not fully understand the reasons for the continued division in their responsibilities. They fail to understand the reasons because they do not recognize them. This failure comes about largely because the two most senior of the three independent services, the Army and the Navy have their conceptual roots in ancient history, and so the issue has not been thoroughly examined, or even greatly reflected upon, for centuries. It is also due to the fact that the third service, the Air Force, is still so new that some still believe it should be part of the other two services, and that the Air Force's own self-perception as an institution is still evolving(1).

Service self-perceptions have been further muddied in light of the Goldwater-Nichols (2) Act which, among other changes, made the nine unified combatant commands' Commanders (formerly called CINCs) directly responsible to the President through the Secretary of Defense. These Commanders are America's "warlords", who command organizations that have "broad, continuing missions" and are "composed of forces from two or more military departments (3).” Thus, the chain of command above the actual combatant commands now circumvents individual service chains of command and cultures. The individual services are no longer directly connected to, much less responsible for, the conduct of war.

Dilettantes and partisans assert that we have unnecessary overlap in the Roles and Missions of the different Services. Some have so grossly oversimplified the Service structures as to assert the US has ‘four air forces’ (4) or ‘two armies’(5). Setting aside resolving this issue for a moment, let us examine the specifics of the individual Service’s approach to the exploitation of the Space milieu.

Service Views on the Stewardship of Space

There was not even an American Air Force when the first military use of space occurred: the Nazi's V-2 rocket entered space on its sub-orbital hops from mainland Europe to England. At the end of the war, the Army and Navy vigorously pursued their own space programs using captured German technology as a seed for their own programs. The Army and Navy orbited the first and second United States military satellites respectively. The Air Force, as a new service in its own right, began immediately investigating military uses of space.

The Army and Navy saw (and still see) space as critical to performing their mission, and all services acknowledge that the Space dimension of warfare is going to grow even more important. This relevance to all the services drives their concern for space.

The Army and Navy stake some claim related to their role on land and sea, but only the Air Force has laid definitive doctrinal claim to space as a service-specific area of responsibility. All see space as part of a "continuum"(6) in which they operate, but the Navy and Army see it as part of a continuum of different environments through which they project force. Only the Air Force views space not as an extension into a different environment but as part of a continuous environment that is one of air AND space:

“Our Service views the flight domain of air and space as a seamless operational medium. The environmental differences between air and space do not separate employment of aerospace power within them.”(7).

It is this concept of the medium, central to the Air Force view, which caused Air Force General Larry D. White to coin the term “aerospace,” in 1954, and also later led to the Air Force being assigned the land based leg of the strategic "Triad"; ICBMs.

So all the Services find “Space” a critical element to their mission. When will Space warrant it’s own separate Service?

Looking Back To The Origins of the Existing Services

As mentioned earlier, the key to justifying the origin of a separate Space Force is found in the origins of the existing services.

The concept of an "Army" precedes recorded history, or at the very least has existed since history began. An army's purpose was (and is) to advance or defend some social construct. Since warfare only occurred on land, ancient armies were responsible for the total defense needs of a society.

In ancient times, a state’s ‘navy’ was the sum total of all it’s sea-going fleet of merchant ships. Around 1200 BC, the first recorded sea battle occurred between the Egyptians and the Sea People. This first battle was between sea-borne infantry forces carried aboard small ships designed for other purposes. If the nature of man has not changed too much over the centuries, there can be little doubt this battle on the ocean set off the first calls for an independent combat Navy: But for centuries that followed, the Navy's sole combat purpose was to transport the Army to far shores for use in land battles. While occasionally sea combat occurred, it was always in context of supporting land-based objectives, by ramming the enemy and using foot soldiers engaged in close combat. Eventually, technologies were developed for sea-based combat, such as purpose built ships with catapults (the first naval artillery). Over time the growing importance of sea-borne trade to a society's survival also created a need to protect that trade. The focus then shifted to exploiting the sea medium as a means to directly support societal objectives, not exploiting the sea medium to support land-oriented combat. In short, control of the sea became an important objective in its own right.

Roles and Missions Vs. Mediums and Methods

Modern discussions of the different services have focused on how their Roles and Missions are unique yet mutually supportive. But ‘Roles and Missions’ are the ‘what’ in how Service responsibilities differ and are merely products of the differences in ‘Mediums and Methods’.

The ‘Mediums and Methods’ are the ‘why’ we have different Services.

For centuries now, the purpose of the Army has been to exploit terrain and the Navy's has been to exploit the sea to support societal (now national) objectives. When man first began to fly, a new medium for conflict and exercising National Power became available. It’s an environment distinctly different from the others, in that it is a three-dimensional and global medium. Like the earliest naval combat example, it was originally viewed in the context of its usefulness to the other mediums, but over time has become important in its own right (non-withstanding the fact that there are those who would see the Air element as forever a supporting element.)

The other services still use the air (now aerospace) as an environment in exploiting their primary mediums, as the Air Force also uses the land and sea in exploiting aerospace. The key to understanding the delineation among the services is to understand that while they all use the land, sea, and aerospace mediums, each one is only responsible for development of methods to exploit one of the mediums. Thus, instead of thinking of the services in terms of Roles and Missions, it is more appropriate to think of the delineation in terms of Mediums and Methods.

The Goldwater-Nichols Act has driven home this concept, by completing the separation of the individual services from the direct responsibility to conduct warfare operations and explicitly tasking the individual services for providing the right forces, through training, research and development, and acquisition, to exploit their respective mediums under a joint service effort.

Air and Space or Aerospace?

So at what point does Aerospace yield to "Space"? As stated earlier, the key to justifying the origin of a separate Space Force is found in the origins of the existing services. Each service is chartered to exploit a medium for national defense. The need for each service to become a separate entity came about when its medium and operation within that medium became important in its own right to a societal interest. At this time, all space operations (8) are important as a support element to or sub-part of operations in the other mediums, and clearly within the concept of Aerospace. As the 'space' portion of Aerospace becomes a more critical part of what would previously be considered pure "air" operations, it would probably be appropriate for the Air Force to become the Aerospace Force.

Conclusion

Space will become an important medium in its own right when stand-alone activity in space becomes important to national interests. When space becomes an important medium in its own right, separate from its support function to operations in other mediums, space will warrant a separate service charter to exploit and develop the medium of Space sans "Aero." This will likely occur after we are living and working permanently in deep space, executing non-earth-centric operations and then only after we are out there with a more significant investment in resources and personnel. Examples of this kind of environment includes permanent self-sustaining space-borne activities, such as Lunar or Lagrangian-based large scale manufacturing concerns, that cannot be effectively protected or developed by Aerospace forces. Eventually, as extra-terrestrial colonization is established, a Space Force will be necessary to ensure free trade and movement among far-flung interests.

References:
(1) See The Masks of War and The Icarus Syndrome by the late Carl Builder for excellent analyses and summaries of the service branchs' self-perception.
(2) See Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986 at http://www.ndu.edu/library/pubs/gol-nich.html for a complete summary.
(3) Ibid
(4) Senator Sam Nunn on the Senate Floor, 1992. http://www.cdi.org/adm/617/
(5) Richard D. Hooker, America’s 2 Armies, http://www.dtic.mil/doctrine/jel/jfq_pubs/jfq0806.pdf
(6) An excellent example of this is found in Space is an Ocean, a briefing on the Naval Strategic Vision for Space by the Strategy and Policy Division (N51), Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, retrieved 1 March 2002 from http://www.hq.navy.mil/n3n5/Topsight/space/spaceTP3/tsld001.htm
(7)United States Air Force, The Aerospace Force (Washington D.C., 2000), i. See also, United States Air
Force, America’s Air Force Vision 2020: Global Vigilance, Reach, and Power, (Washington D.C., 2000), page 3.
(8) See The Transformation of American Air Power by Benjamin S. Lambeth. “A functional or operational, as opposed to a systems, approach to thinking about space power application should make the differences between orbital and atmospheric operations irrelevant.” Page 258 (Cornell University Press, 2000)

Assassination: Another clear candidate for the Exterminator.

Moron ups ‘reward ‘ for killing Danish cartoonist
(Hat Tip: Michelle Malkin )

Really! Sometimes I think the worst thing about being a slow-to-take-offense free and democratic society is that our peaceful inclinations are always misread by our potential enemies as evidence that we are ‘weak’ and won’t fight under any circumstances. How many times has the United States ended up fighting a war, because we were pushed too far?

Let’s see, for starters :

1. It is why we were ‘late’ to enter World War I after initially declaring absolute neutrality.

and…

2. Why a ‘pacifist’ national mood made FDR support the Allies surreptitiously against the Axis for so long. Had Japan not blundered and attacked us, would we have ever entered the war or would all of Europe be German-speaking?

I hope I am wrong, but I think we could be looking back in 5 to 10 years and realize that since September 11, 2001, world events to-date have been a precursor to another conflict that could rival WWI and WWII in scope. It all depends if the ‘other side’ wises up to the idea the West can only be pushed so far.

To finish on an ‘up-note’: our tolerance and desire for peace seems to always make the ambitious losers of the world overplay their hands too quickly, and that allows us to overcome, usually at a great cost that could otherwise have been avoided. (OK, so that very last part was kind of a downer)

Assassination: An Underappreciated Tool in the Toolbox

Assassination is a Facet of The Military Element of Power
The recent announcement of a large reward for the murder of a Danish cartoonist by a ‘cleric’ in Pakistan highlights a dynamic in the current war against Islamofascists that isn’t being discussed openly in the West. Hopefully it is being discussed privately among the Western leadership.

The subject is assassination and subversion: more specifically, the selective assassination of certain so-called 'leaders' calling for the destruction of the West, and the active subversion of their power structure. These ‘leaders’ are actively seeking to destroy Western Civilization, and impose dhimmitude upon the West. Their selective death and/or disappearance would frustrate and inhibit potential replacements. This will do nothing about the burning hate behind the remaining fascist’s ideology, but it will ensure that their hate stays within a tighter circle of fanatics...because it is a lot harder to foment trouble when you can’t scream at the top of your lungs about it.

How to (Mostly) Stem the Tide of Islamofascism
It seems to me quite sensible to develop a coherent strategy for dealing with these vermin as individuals without having to go to the trouble and cost of conventional warfare for the following practical reasons:

1. If action must be taken, the elimination of a relatively small number of troublemakers is a far more moral and desirable option than placing large populations under the threat of total warfare. Taking this approach would not necessarily pre-empt use of general warfare for other compelling reasons.

2. Assassination would more fully exploit a Western advantage in asymmetrical warfare. It capitalizes on the weaknesses of the Islamofascist organization along tribal lines. Decapitation of organizational leadership creates greater internal friction among factions and potential successors in these kinds of groups as compared to democratic organizations with tried-and-true formal rules of succession.

3.Assassination will create distrust between the heretofore cooperative elements, such as the different allied organizations operating under the Al Qaeda umbrella

4. The current aversion to assassination as a military option is a relatively modern phenomenon. Serious consideration of the assassination option will shed new light on the flawed logic that proscribed it in the first place.

To preempt any silliness asserting that we shouldn’t use assassination as a tool because someone else could try and use it against us, let me point out that they have already tried to use it.