Abe Karem and His World Record Helo

The Boeing (because it bought Karem’s company, Frontier) UAV helo called the ‘Hummingbird’ just set a new record for unrefueled helicopter flight endurance.

12.1 Hours!!!!

And it didn’t even use its max fuel capacity.

This system’s success means the world will have to rethink what exactly a helo can and cannot do.

I’ve been following this project for quite a while. I’ve followed it because the inventor Abe Karem made a huge impression on me when my old unit was helping test one of his earlier UAV designs, Project Amber (we called it the ‘Albatross’). While you may never have heard of it, you’ve probably heard of its descendents: the Predator and now the Reaper.

In the 80’s, I was a fly on the wall for about 15 minutes that seemed like an hour once when Karem was in our shop telling one of our engineers what we could do to get a few more easy knots out of our XBQM-106As.
Everything about Karem struck me as him being an “Aero’s Aero”- I swear the man can visualize pressure gradients, airflow and drag.

Note: For the curious, the closest (not very) to accurate info about the -106A out there is probably here.

25th Annual Military History Seminar

As my few readers who are not my friends may have deduced, I haven’t been blogging much lately because it is done in my ‘free’ time and I don’t have much of that these days. But I wanted to pass along my experience from two weekends ago at the University of North Texas (UNT).

I attended UNT's Military History Center’s 25th Hurley Military History Seminar on October 13th and it was a day very well spent. The more than 250 attendees were a pretty interesting cross-section of academics from UNT and elsewhere, North Texas (Including the Dallas-Fort Worth area) civic and business leaders, and current and past leaders of many veteran groups. Attendance was by ‘invitation only’ and I can’t thank Dr. (BGen) Hurley enough for being kind enough to put my name on the list.

I originally inquired about attending the event because I very much wanted to hear the first lecturer, Dr. Victor Davis Hanson speak. I’ve read most of his books on the ancient Greeks and warfare, have listened to or viewed many of the media events in which he’s appeared, and own a fairly extensive collection of audio files containing his lectures and debates over the years. I believed (correctly as it turned out) that I already knew much of what he was going to say on the subject of "The Significance of Ancient Warfare for the Present and the Future", but I also knew he had just returned from Iraq and was very interested in both what he might tell us about his experience and what others might ask him in the Q and A portion of the program.

The second lecturer was (for me) an additional and unexpected treat. I found out a week before the seminar that it actually was a seminar and not just a lecture by Dr. Hanson, and that there would be an afternoon session with Dr. Thomas A. Keaney (“The Future of Warfare: Politics and Technology”) of Johns Hopkins University (and former BUFF driver). Initially, his name seemed vaguely familiar and I’m embarrassed to say that at first I didn’t recognize exactly who he was. I asked a colleague in the D.C. area if he knew anything about Dr. Keaney, and he responded with a reminder that Dr. Keaney was the co-author of the “Gulf War Airpower Survey” which is, as my colleague reminded me, “possibly the finest account of an air campaign ever put together”. My embarrassment comes from the fact that I had used Dr. Keaney’s work as a key source document for modeling force employment scenarios for several different analyses in my last position, as well as a key reference in my grad school capstone project. I chalk the lapse up to the anonymity of government work and the fact that you never appreciate what you get for free. I’m certain I would have remembered the name if I would have paid for the reference.

The Hanson Session


Dr Hanson, as I mentioned earlier really didn’t present anything in the lecture portion of his session that I hadn’t heard before, but it is always wonderful to listen to someone speak extemporaneously on a subject so completely within his grasp and command. History departments on American campuses are rather polarized on the subject of military history as a rule, and while it could have been my imagination, it seemed that more than a few of the non-veteran attendees in my proximity were highly uncomfortable with some of Dr. Hanson’s assertions and observations, especially those on the unchanging nature of man and warfare. Dr. Hanson made his usual iron-clad case on every point... which seemed to make some audience members even more uncomfortable.

In the Q and A portion of the session, the question as to the nature of future warfare and need for traditional forces was raised. Dr. Hanson stated that he did not completely agree with the Fukuyama point of view that we are at or near the End of History . Dr Hanson noted that even if the entire world was composed of liberal Western democracies, all it would take (due again to the unchanging nature of man) for things to start breaking down again would be for an “innkeeper in Austria or Denton Texas” to decide he/she didn’t like the way the world was going and start making statements to that effect, and start gathering fellow travelers who also believed in the same vision to start shaking things up. Since the world is clearly nowhere near a “Kumbaya” moment at this time, and judging by how the audience reacted, I think he may have provided some attendees serious food for thought. This moment, I believe, also served as solid ‘battlefield prep’ for the second lecture.

Dr Hanson’s most memorable anecdote that I had not heard before (or had forgotten), was used to emphasize the point that in warfare, it is the human and societal ‘will’ that decides when a war is over or 'won'. He recounted that he at one time knew that his father, who had flown as a gunner on B-29 missions over Japan, had landed in Japan after the war. He had assumed at one point that it had been in 1946 or later, until his father told him it had been in late August of 1945, immediately after the surrender and before the occupation of Japan was really underway. Dr Hanson asked his father if he wasn’t worried that someone might decide to try and kill them since they had been bombing Japan fiercely even before Hiroshima and Nagasaki. His father replied that no, he hadn’t been concerned at all. When he asked his father why he hadn’t been concerned, his father replied (I’m paraphrasing and working from memory here until I get a copy of the lecture) “Because we knew that they knew that we could just start bombing them again if we wanted to”. Unfortunately Dr. Hanson was dealing with some health problems and couldn’t stay for the book signing later in the day, but even though he was apparently in some pain, it was not obvious or really even evident when he was at the lectern.

Dr. Hanson’s experience in Iraq as he related it solidly reinforces the public position of CENTCOM and General Petraeus, and Dr. Hanson is still writing more revealing articles about his Iraq visit at his website.

There was venue change this year for lunch and the second session.....




You can't really tell from the photos, but there were quite a few women and couples in the crowd and a good cross section of ages represented overall.
The Keaney Session

Dr. Keaney spoke after the luncheon. His topic “The Future of Warfare: Politics and Technology” went very much to the heart of the problems of modern defense planning. I particularly enjoyed his ‘timeline presentation’ where he pointed out that now in 2007, we think these x scenarios are the most probable futures, but did we think this ‘present’ was a probable future in 1997? Or did we think that we would be dealing with something else? Dr. Keaney was able to carry this analogy all the way back through the early 20th Century, pointing out that for every ten years going back in time, a significant disruptive event in the middle of that decade changed what we had seen as the future and were planning for, into a very different future that we then faced. He also pointed out that each of these possible futures that came true were not really surprises, but that they were known and had been previously tagged as ‘improbable’.

Dr. Keaney reminded the audience that during the Cold War, defense planning was easier because we had to deal with the Soviets and all other lesser contingencies could be dealt with as they popped up. Without a ‘big’ problem in front of National Security planners and the relative decline in defense spending (IMHO vital national defense is just as subject to ‘out of sight-out of mind’ stupidity as anything else), the consequences of picking the wrong ‘probables’ or even ignoring the ‘unlikelies’ are much greater. I thought this point was a great one to make because while it is all too obvious to those of us who lived and ‘fought’ the Cold War, there is a generation of academics, pundits and policy wonks out there now that only have an abstract and second-hand notion of the actual differences between then and now.

The most interesting question posed to Dr. Keaney was from what had to have been a young ‘emerging’ academic on the other side of the room and for some reason couldn’t have been asked without using the terms ‘Bush Administration’, ‘this Administration’ or ‘the Administration’ 4 or 5 times. Without the political emphasis it boiled down to:

The Commander in Chief had said that he was going to transform and streamline the military and now he is talking about adding/beefing up the military – what gives?

Dr. Keaney ably pointed out that what most of the young man was comparing was the ideas and plans of a Presidential candidate on the one hand, who on the other hand just a few months after taking office no longer had the luxury of a ‘quiet time’ in defense to carry out all the overhauling and changes that were originally envisioned. Dr Keaney also reminded the audience that defense "transformation" was not necessarily about changes in weapons and hardware, but about organization, processes, and communication (information age anyone?) and that while there were opportunities for ‘bargains’ in defense spending, not everything can be a bargain.

These are just my general observations of the seminar and may have more after I receive my DVD copies of the sessions.

SR-71 History Lesson

I was at another great military history function here in Texas this weekend that I (just maybe) would have been tempted to pass up and go listen to these guys if the opportunity had presented itself.

It would have been a pretty tough decision.

More later....

N409L (Not So Mysterious Plane) Busts Bush Airspace

Update:
Corrections made thanks to a commenter who reminds me there are two Redmonds in the Northwest (Since I was born in and lived in Oregon you would think I would have remembered that.) "cbaker97814" also informs me that "JCB" are the initials of the owner of Lancair, so my first guess was right: a 'principal' of Lancair DOES own it. As the cheerful commenter noted: I could have checked my facts more". But that means I would have had to put another 5 minutes into the project and then it would have been even later before I went to bed. I give myself an "A-" for the ten minutes of investigative journalism.

Hmmmm. Anyone heard who was flying this plane (owned by a New Orleans aviation (and more) attorney and prominent aircraft manufacturer) yet?

The original (corrected post) ...

Just heard this on the late (11PM Texas Time) news.
Apparently, it is believed that a light plane violated the airspace (probably inadvertent) over President Bush’s ranch today.

The report, while not identifying the name of the pilot, showed video of the plane on the ground in Addison, TX. The plane is a Lancair with retractable gear and a big “28” on the vertical tail surface and what looked like sponsorship markings on the fuselage. The registration was N409L.

This plane might someday be in the Smithsonian
Didn’t the reporters think the markings a little out of the ordinary? Couldn't they find anything else about the airplane?

It took less than 10 minutes to Google up the following:
1. This exact plane (Lancair IV) is a multiple FAI world record holder.
2. It is owned by “JCB5 INC” of Redmond, Oregon
3. The pilot who flew it at Reno for Lancair is a noted freelance experimental test pilot with his own website .
4. The plane is the PROTOTYPE Lancair IV and...
5. The plane raced at Reno and won at least twice
6. Redmond Oregon is the home of Lancair (and NOT Microsoft)

I will be surprised if “JCB5” is not a limited liability enterprise for Lancair (or one the principals) that protects them from potential adverse financial impacts that a bad racing experience could otherwise generate. (No longer a Second guess: a Microsoftee is involved.)

A smart reporter would have called Lancair right away to find out.

The airspace around Crawford is made for inadvertent penetration. This must be like the bazillionth time it's happened. If the President is home, the controlled airspace is huge. If he's away, it is only about a 3 mile radius around his ranch. Like they say in ground school: Woe be unto the pilot who doesn't read the latest NOTAMs.

Conservatives at the Gates

And only the ‘”Tenure Ramparts” are keeping them out!
Note: Part of this is also cross-posted as part of a comment at Greg Mankiw’s Blog.

Volokh Conspiracy has a great series of fresh analytical posts on the latest numbers (referenced by someone in an earlier comment) defining the liberal-conservative-libertarian divide.

My favorite parts:

A Title:

IDEOLOGY AND ACADEMIA – LIBERAL DOMINANCE ONLY IN THOSE FIELDS WHERE IT MATTERS

And an ‘Update’:

“Among actual scientists, in the physical and biological sciences, the percentage who identify themselves as Marxists is zero.””

Loved the ‘actual’ reference.

What shall we do M’Lord?
As to the defenses that liberal academics have erected to conservatism on campus. I’m still not too worried about it.

Ready…Fire!…Aim

AKA "Does anyone actually READ anymore?"

The hazards of the internet or any communications medium that does not allow direct real-time interchanges composed of iterative Sender-Message-Receiver cycles was brought home to me again this week: when I posted a comment to an article about Burt Rutan at a great little blog called Jet City Journal.

Kevin Pedraja’s Jet City post was about a Discover piece on Burt Rutan with a particularly insightful observation:

I had the opportunity to meet him once. He is an odd guy, but very compelling. Definitely an iconoclast.

To which, since I had just attended a lecture given by Rutan, I commented:

It is good to see him carrying his message beyond the fold, even if he is, as you say, an odd guy. I would say he generally comes over as a jerk, but a little while ago, just before it was announced that Northrp [sic, my fat fingered typo in the original] Grumman was buying the remaining interest in Scaled Composites, he gave a lecture at Northrop that was very entertaining and gave attendees great insight into his product development model. He also echoed what many of us already know: if Congress holds [t]he purse strings you can't 'test' anything anymore, you are only allowed to demonstrate'. Rutan accurately characterizes 'R&D' these days as no 'R' and all 'D'.

My comment, in turn, was commented on by two others (to date) who somehow translated my “I would say he generally comes over as a jerk” statement into me writing or asserting that he WAS a jerk.

This is why the USAF in its wisdom many years ago changed their communications training from emphasizing the “Sender–Message-Receiver” model to pounding into us the ‘improved’ “Sender–Message-Receiver-FEEDBACK” model in an effort to cut down on open-loop communications.

So, to clarify before I sign off (and now posted to the Jet City piece): I did not imply, state, hint, comment, pronounce, or otherwise express in any way, shape, or form that Mr. Rutan was a 'jerk'. I do not KNOW if he is indeed a ‘jerk’ (I actually suspect he is not – at least by my definition). I characterized his public demeanor as generally coming off (seeming, perceived, appearing to be) as a ‘jerk’.

Now, I may have to caveat this statement ever so slightly by adding "over the years", since he might have mellowed since my best reference points, but my original comment still stands.

Maybe someday, someone MIGHT be interested in what I meant in the first place, although if one bothers to read all the comments added to original post with a disinterested eye, one could probably deduce what I meant.

I also suppose it would have been worse if I also pointed out that brother Dick Rutan comes over as a much nicer guy than Burt. ;-)

BTW: This is also a good example of the power of ‘trigger words’. Would the word ‘jerk’ have had the same effect on people if I had placed it after my complimentary (to Mr. Rutan) statements and at the end of my comment?

Associated Press Discovers "Cold War was Hell!"

Do we have to wait until 2066 before they find out about the current war?

Robert Burns (definitely NOT the poet) has dropped yet another non-story on the public via the AP titled “US Considered Poisons for Assassinations”. James Taranto could file this under ‘Breaking Story From 1948’, only the joke in this case would be the fact that the story IS from 1948.
It is full of fun factoids that are harmless enough up front where the article establishes early that radioactive poisons were only one possible weaponization option under consideration, and in the end were NOT given a high priority nor were they slated for implementation:

Work on a "subversive weapon for attack of individuals or small groups'' was listed as a secondary priority, to be confined to feasibility studies and experiments.

But deep in the article, the author drops a juicy quote from a one ‘Barton Bernstein’.

Barton Bernstein, a Stanford history professor who has done extensive research on the U.S. military's radiological warfare efforts, said he did not believe this aspect had previously come to light.
"This is one of those items that surprises us but should not shock us, because in the Cold War all kinds of ways of killing people, in all kinds of manners - inhumane, barbaric and even worse - were periodically contemplated at high levels in the American government in what was seen as a just war against a hated and hateful enemy,'' Bernstein said.

Now normally I could (and would) let that little bit of nauseous hand-wringing at the end of the quote slide on by without comment, but......

Barton Bernstein is to my mind a ‘serial historical revisionist’. Professor Bernstein earned a special place in the Air Force Association’s archives on the controversy surrounding the Enola Gay exhibit at the Smithsonian back in 1995 as part and parcel of his apparent quest to convince the world that dropping the A-bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was anything but neccessary. He has also revealed himself to be quite a delightful Reagan ‘denier’ (2002 transcript and audio here). Just add today’s article to Bernstein’s revisionist ‘pile’ and resist the temptation to ask the good professor in what way the 'hated and hateful enemy' might not have been anything BUT hated and hateful. Two words prof'.....Joe and Stalin.

As to the article's author....
IMHO Robert Burns has made a career out of writing disparaging and slanted articles on the military and defense with lots of puff pieces in between as filler. I consider him a ‘Military Writer’ only in the same manner as General Schwartzkopf regarded Saddam Hussein a ‘Military Strategist’.

B-52 Nuke Story: A Tale of Two Chiefs

'Former Spook' at In From the Cold has an excellent post with one AF Chief's view of what went wrong (is still going wrong) in the Minot B-52 "Nuke" flight last week. He even has a skeptic in the form of another 'Chief' in the comments.

Hmmm. Both 'Chiefs' would be of about the same vintage, so both would have been a little past mid-career when Aspin's Bottom Up Review gutted the Air Force (my take on Aspin and the BUR was here): when all the structure provided by solid mentors who didn't want to suffer through the Clinton years bailed as fast as we could. The Chief in the main post makes the most sense though, and what he writes jives with what my 'little birds' have been telling me over the years. So the other 'Chief' might either be a fraud (low probability) or one of those Dufii (plural for Dufus) who never would have made MSgt much less CMSgt in my Air Force.

Continued 'Apologies to All' for not finding much time to post lately. Work (unfortunately) finds me writing, reviewing and editing several hundred pages of test plans, procedures, and operating instructions right now. I don't know how 'everyone' else does it.

The V-22 as Lemon Template Rolls on

UPDATE & BUMP
Over at Defensetech, most commenters are weighing in against the prospects and performance of the V-22. What do the people who fly it say? From the 'friendly' NYT in April:

The Marines say the V-22 will prove the critics wrong.

“Ask all the naysayers how many hours they have flown,” said Colonel Mulhern, the V-22 program manger.

“They are just sitting around a desk and crunching numbers,” he added.

“Go talk to the Marines. The V-22 has come of age. The first marine [sic] it saves makes it worth what we paid for it. And I have real confidence that the V-22 will do it.”

Fans include General Castellaw, a Vietnam helicopter pilot, who has flown the V-22.

“I came in at a high altitude and then did a tactical ingress,” said General Castellaw. “Yankin’ and bankin’ to avoid simulated fire, came in low, streaked into the zone. The aircraft is nimble, agile. You can yank and bank with the best of them.

“I believe absolutely that this is the most survivable craft for the Marine Corps’ most precious assets,” he added. “ If I did not believe that, I would not deploy it. I have absolute faith in the craft to do the mission.”

Godspeed Thunderchickens!

the original post now continues below with slightly updated disclosure.......

In DFW, we have an aerospace 'writer' named Bob Cox who is widely reviled by many of us in the local aerospace community as a complete shill for the Fort Woth Startlegram (Star Telegram) editorial meme-o'-the-day. I have never read ANYTHING this guy has written that fails to get at least one salient point either completely wrong or warped beyond recognition . I just found out today that he has a blog (hat tip Defensetech) , and today's piece doesn't disappoint in providing an example of the kind of vacuous articles he is locally infamous for.

Let us Fisk

Bob begins by laying down the Startlegram’s tried-and-true message template of “The V-22 is a lemon”:

One of the key selling points of the V-22 Osprey, one that is repeated over and over by the Marines and the Bell Helicopter-Boeing contractor team, is that the aircraft can self deploy to combat. In other words, fly high and long distances to get from one base to a combat zone - say from the U.S. to Iraq - where it can there [sic] be put into tactical use on the battlefields.
Well, for their first combat deployment with the V-22 to Iraq next month the Marines will be going by ship, Navy Times is reporting.

First off, just because you CAN do something doesn’t mean you SHOULD do something now does it? As a second point Bob, let us remind you that V-22s are designed and qualified for ship-based operations as an integral part of their primary Concept of Operation (CONOPS). Are you put out that the Marines thought it more important to deploy via ship with their support equipment than fly half-way around the world for PR purposes? Surely the Marines had a reason to deploy this way didn’t they? In the next part of the article we find....Why yes! The Marines did have a good reason. Who’d a thunk?

“It’ll save wear and tear on the airplane,” Lt. Col. Curtis Hill said. “This will also allow time to do shipboard integration operations. That will help us down the road as we look to integrate them with the [Marine expeditionary units].”

But Bob isn’t taking any reasonable explanations without a fight……so he cavils :

All along the Marines have viewed the V-22 as a dual role aircraft, able to operate from ships or land. But the self deployment capability is highlighted over and over and as a true revolutionary breakthrough, at least when compared to slower moving, lower flying helicopters.

First, nice cherry-picking of only one (and not even the most important IMHO) of the revolutionary advantages the V-22's have over other vertical lift assets. Yes, the V-22 will be able to self-deploy, and yes it will be a major advantage when the V-22 is at or closer to Full Operating Capability (FOC). But the V-22 is barely past Initial Operating Capability (IOC) isn’t it? Since all major weapon systems go through this maturing process, and Bob IS an aerospace 'writer', one might assume Bob was aware of this fact. If he isn’t aware, that’s bad. If he is aware but chooses to ignore it and fails to relay his knowledge in his reporting in an effort to fit a template, well that’s despicable.

What does Bob do next? Why, he speculates and assigns intent to prevent embarrassment as the motive of the Marines!

Of course, the reliability record of the V-22 is such that the Marines probably don't want to take a chance on seeing several of the aircraft have to divert to landing spots along the way for repairs. The V-22s much ballyhooed trip to England last year for the Farnborough Air Show got even more attention when one plane diverted to Iceland due to engine troubles, later described as minor, and the return trip to the U.S. was delayed for other repairs.

Of course Bob doesn’t acknowledge what is "probably" (he uses the word, so I get to also) the REAL driver behind the transport scheme. If my experience is any guide, the Marine’s main objective is to get their aircraft and unit into the area of operations intact and as quickly and efficiently as possible so they can execute their mission as quickly and efficiently as possible, take their lessons learned while performing their mission and make the V-22 and the Marines that operate them a better team and instrument of national power in the future.

Visualize this Bob: The Mission--The Mission--The Mission.

Learn it.

Love it.

Bad press is a minor nit compared to unduly hampering the mission. And if Bob Cox and the Startlegram understood half of what they like to believe they do, and cared about their work one-tenth of what the military services do, they wouldn’t publish this tripe.

Full disclosure: I attended Lawrence D. Bell High School, named after the founder of Bell Helicopter. My family had a dog named Huey (after the UH-1), my father was an engine rep on many aircraft including the proof of concept demonstrator for the modern tiltrotors, the XV-15, and I hate flying in pure helicopters because, among other things, half of your wings are going in the wrong direction at any given time. More Disclosure: I forgot! My unit also supported the V-22 program office by flying around some proof-of-concept CV-22 (AF SOF version) sensor technology on one of our itty bitty RPVs for a bit. It wasn't that memorable as I recall, just another Lincoln Labs or some such drive-by test program. They came, we flew, we got patches, and I think eventually one of our H-53 pilots got assigned to the JPO.

John Kerry Keeps Digging....Update

James Taranto at Best of The Web Today does a nice little interleafing of John Kerry's defense and the point-by-point fisking of JK's rant by the WSJ's citizen-readers in response.

And so JK's attempt to recover some semblance of moral standing after his first statement:

"We heard that argument over and over again about the bloodbath that would engulf the entire Southeast Asia, and it didn't happen."

.....fails miserably.

John Kerry Hits Bottom, Keeps Digging....Again

JK: The Gift That Keeps on Giving

“ John Kerry”, erstwhile Vietnam War veteran hit bottom with his assertions that a bloodbath in Southeast Asia after the US cut off the South Vietnamese at the knees in 1975 'didn't happen'.

As published on WSJ Online on 26 July 2007, James Taranto wrote:

Mr. Kerry, who served in Vietnam before turning against that war, voted for the Iraq war before turning against it. He draws on the Vietnam experience in making the case that the outcome of a U.S. pullout from Iraq would not be that bad. "We heard that argument over and over again about the bloodbath that would engulf the entire Southeast Asia, and it didn't happen," he said recently.

As seen at the page linked above, the Wall Street Journal (specifically James Taranto) "called out" the aging Junior Hairdo From Massachusetts on his shameful, self-serving statements. NOW, in an extremely weak retort, Kerry keeps digging and provides us with this gem, whereby he attempts to misrepresent the conditions in Southeast Asia both preceding AND following Congress’ shameful abandonment of the South Vietnamese in 1975 to fit his neat little left-wing POV.

Does his delusional summary of the Vietnam War and its aftermath ring true with the American people? True science isn’t run on consensus, but political science is, so what’s the bottom line? Did Kerry make a sale with the WSJ public? A review of the reader responses posted so far gives me cause to think well of my fellow citizens.

Citizens Vs. Kerry Scoreboard: 21-1-1

Out of 23 responses, 21 decidedly reject Kerry’s pseudo-intellectual posing, and most of those I would also say go so far as to properly MOCK the Senator and his ludicrous contortions.

One response is rational but approaches the issue with oblique peanut butter spreading of recriminations among all players in his sight. Ehh, call it a 'Tie' ( = neutral).

Finally, the lone (clear) Kerry supporter attempts to support his boy by also denying the Domino Effect via the technique of employing the narrowest possible definition of the Domino Theory and interpretation of the events that have followed, so allow the limited mind to ignore the instability of SEA after 1975. This supporter can be simply dismissed on the grounds that it is one of the WSJ’s perennial gadflies, a "semi-pro" commentator, who after retiring from a career as an ‘Educrat’ now spends his breakfasts crafting responses to any and all commentaries with which he is, or is not, in agreement. As regular readers are aware, one of my 'dreads' in this life is that we will be suffering more of such behavior in the future as more and more @# * #$^%@ hippies retire and have more time on their hands -- time to whine incessantly about all manner of things. Yes, “Michael D. McCaffrey of Yarmouthport, Massachusetts” I am talking about you and your ilk.

Yowzaa! A Blast From my Past.

AIM-4F/G and WSEM Test Station
Hadn’t seen one of these in decades....... until now.

[high rez version at source]

We really had to know what we were doing with the old systems.....
I was in one of the last 316X1L tech school classes to be trained on this piece of test equipment and the AIM 4F/G/WSEM missiles. We didn’t train on the missile shown, which looks like it could be an AIM-26B which was already obsolete in the US by my time, or it could be (from the looks of the dome and strakes) the Swedish license-built version, which was in service for years afterwards . The missile could even be the infeasible XGAR-11 (Experimental Guided Air Rocket) NUCLEAR version I’ve heard about but have never seen.

After the schoolhouse, I never saw the station or a functional AIM-4 again, because I never got stationed at an Air Defense Command F-102 or F-106 base. But we missilemen all got tested on them yearly for promotion purposes. Until about the time I put on TSgt, around 40% of our Specialty Knowledge Test was on these few systems, even though only about 10% of the career field EVER got any hands-on experience with them….which sucked unless you were part of the 10%. Heck, this station AND the missiles had "tubes", and the WSEM had an internal recorder and strip charts among other things.

I did have a funny EOD experience with an inert 'systems trainer' AIM-4F in Alaska once. But it was only funny because I wasn’t the one having to explain what it was doing in the dumpster outside my off base apartment. [;-)

Dr Heidi: “Scientist”

“Dr. Cullen, a climatologist with a doctorate from the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University” gets interviewed by a self styled ‘science’ reporter for the NY Times.

I found the interview revealing: it looks very much like a poor attempt at damage control. (Emphasis mine unless otherwise noted)

Extract 1:

Q: How did the Weather Channel executives know of you?

A: I think they’d been asking around. They were hunting for a Ph.D. scientist who could explain the science behind climate news. As it happened, my doctoral thesis has a lot of relevance to current affairs. Part of it involved looking at how to use climate information to manage water resources in the Middle East. It’s often said that the next war in the Middle East will be fought over water.

For my thesis, I studied droughts and the collapse of the first Mesopotamian empire — the Akkadian civilization. I was able to show that a megadrought at roughly 2200 B.C. played a role in its demise. I found the proof by examining the sediment cores of ancient mud. When one looked at the mud from the period around the Akkadian collapse, one found a huge spike in the mineral dolomite. That substance is an indicator of drought.

Here’s a tip to those who aspire to be thought of as “scientists”. Scientists understand the difference between ‘indications’ and ‘data’ . They also know the difference between ‘evidence’ and ‘proof’. They never confuse any two of the aforementioned. And they never fail to establish bounds around their assertions or hypotheses. I’ve read the paper(PDF here) (co)authored by Dr. Cullen.

While the paper presents evidence of correlation in time between drought and collapse, there is no “proof” per se as far as I can divine*. I see lots of (quite proper) weasel words and caveats. So I would also remind Dr. Cullen that scientists can tell the difference between ‘correlation’ and ‘cause’. It appears Dr Cullen knew the difference when she authored the paper, but it isn't clear she remembers it now.

*My Caveat: I concede the obvious and non-paper-worthy observation that droughts, in all likelihood, do not make anything easier on any society or culture. Duh.

Extract 2.

Q: What’s the point of knowing this?

A: Because until recently, historians, anthropologists and archaeologists were reluctant to say that civilizations could collapse because of nature. The prevailing theories were that civilizations collapsed because of political, military or medical reasons — plagues. Climate was often factored out.

And yet, indifference to the power of nature is civilization’s Achilles’ heel. I think the events around Hurricane Katrina reminded us that Mother Nature is something we haven’t yet conquered.

O-Kaaaaaaay…..
Now, I am far more ancient than Dr. Cullen, and even I learned in school that ‘nature’ was a major factor in the disappearance of the Anasazi (although we kids just knew them as ‘cliff dwellers’ back then). Perhaps Dr. Cullen is using the term ‘recently’ in terms of a geologic scale?

I only ask, because a quick side trip to the JSTOR archives confirms my childhood memories: in scientific journals, climate/drought shows up repeatedly in the 1940s as one possible factor in the depopulation of cliff dwellings. By the 1970’s, the number of papers published identifying climate/drought as a PRIME factor was growing.

Extract 3.

Q: Rush Limbaugh accused you of Stalinism. Did you suggest that meteorologists who doubt global warming should be fired?

A: I didn’t exactly say that. I was talking about the American Meteorological Society’s seal of approval. I was saying the A.M.S. should test applicants on climate change as part of their certification process. They test on other aspects of weather science.

Wow. Leading and inflammatory question aside, Dr Cullen is doing a little Three Card Monte with the truth in her response. What she wrote (link in original):

"I'd like to take that suggestion a step further. If a meteorologist has an AMS Seal of Approval, which is used to confer legitimacy to TV meteorologists, then meteorologists have a responsibility to truly educate themselves on the science of global warming.

Using the Reasonable Man approach to his statement, what else could “confer legitimacy to TV meteorologists” mean other than “confer employability”?

Consensus Seekers Gone Normal

Instapundit links to an editorial by Anne-Marie Slaughter, Dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton. In her Washington Post piece, titled 'Partisans Gone Wild' Slaughter laments a lack of “bipartisanship” in the US. When I read her name, I immediately remembered my first experience with Dr. Slaughter’s intellect: she was participating in a roundtable discussion with Victor Davis Hanson and Stephen Steadman on the topic of ‘Preemptive War’ (video and audio links here). It is well worth watching the whole program.

Steadman’s main contribution to the discussion was to make Slaughter seem less obviously outrageous than her arguments would seem on their own. Taking away the outlier Steadman, and dealing only with arguments of Victor Davis Hanson and Anne-Marie Slaughter, it became apparent that Slaughter was incapable of differentiating between the functioning of the real and some other hypothetical organization called the United Nations.

Slaughter essentially asserts that we as a Nation we MUST gain legitimacy for our actions by always making even more attempts to gain UN imprimatur for our actions than we did in our current situation, even though she obliquely acknowledges the uselessness of doing so. Hanson, succinctly disabuses her of that silly notion.

After watching and hearing her on this subject, I concluded that Ms. Slaughter was incapable of deciding when and where to make a stand on anything, much less doing so with any reasonable chance of success: She would seek bipartisan consensus and cooperation from a free range steamroller before she would see the need to simply step out of its way and take control of it.

With the Slaughters of this world, it seems the only principle to stand on is to not stand for anything: to always keep moving the line in the sand.

As to Consensus and Bipartisianship: she is the "girl who cried wolf" too many times.

Update 2008 Hrs: Fixed obvious cut and paste errors

Walk Forrest!... Walk!

or: "A Teachable Moment"

Sort of an "Anti-War" Field Trip I Guess...

Two young Americans march across the country to make a statement. I wonder if they will learn anything? The money quote:

Casale and Israel had hoped that others who opposed the war in Iraq would join them on their 3,000-mile walk from San Francisco to Washington. But since starting off May 21, it's usually just been the two of them.

Do you think they just might pause to wonder 'why'?

It will be interesting to see if the extra press amplifies their message down the home stretch. I keep thinking of the cross-country running scenes in Forrest Gump.