2018 Bomber May Have Been Delayed for Right Reasons

For a Change.
H/T Dewline
Well actually, I find THIS is pretty heart-warming:

It was clear the Secretary was not comfortable … with how we define what attributes this aircraft will have," Schwartz said. He added, "There is no question in my mind that there is a need for long-range strike in our portfolio," but that Gates wants to be further "persuaded" on what the "essential characteristics" of the next bomber should be. He said, "Certainly that’s what we intend to do, here in this upcoming cycle." The characteristics will be some mix of stealth, speed, payload, persistence, and whether the aircraft should be manned or unmanned.

Read the rest at the link.

Heck, if they want to know what they really need in a long-range strike capability, all they have to do is ask. I'll be standing by, but not holding my breath.

Celebrate Earth Day: My Least Favorite Pagan Holiday

Iowahawk has a link up that captures what I believe is the correct spirit for Earth Day, my least favorite Pagan holiday.

Geez, why won't the stupid Hippies just go away already?

Yeah, That's Me! I'm Johnny Republico!

Iowahawk has outed me:

Republico matches every profile we have for a dangerous sleeper terrorist - pallid complexion, male, military veteran, weirdly unenthusiastic about paying taxes...
...In fact, we believe he may even have a gun.

Rats, I'm busted.

Read it all - TOO funny. Sad too...but funny!

Happy Endings off Somalia: AP Pi**ing in Wind

Sheez,
Captain freed. Mostly dead pirates. A good day. But no matter how good things go, the AP tries to put a negative spin on what goes down. Case in point: "Military crackdown hasn't deterred Somali pirates" put out just 7 hours ago and authored by someone named Lara Jakes. The opening:

"The U.S. military's moves to crack down on high seas piracy have done little to deter the epidemic of ship ransoms that preceded Sunday's Indian Ocean rescue, a top Navy official said Sunday."

Is that what was really 'said'? - Or is that just Lara Jakes' and/or her editors' creative 'interpretation'? The article does provide more insights...

"Despite heightened ocean crackdowns that led to criminal charges against 130 suspected pirates over the last three months,it wasn't having an effect of drawing the number of attempts down," Gortney told reporters during a telephone conference call from Bahrain.
...
For months, the Navy has sought to prevent or disrupt scores of ship hijackings near the Gulf of Aden. More than 100 ships off the Horn of Africa came under siege in the past year.

Well there you go!, sounds like the AP is just reporting the facts. But... wait a second! What's this?

But as the Navy began focusing on the Gulf of Aden and seeing results, Gortney said, the pirates shifted their activity south into the Indian Ocean. Over the past week, pirates commandeered at least seven new ships, including the Maersk Alabama.

Seeing results? Pirates shifting their activity? No deterrence in effect there eh? Any other info provided?

"As a result of our activity and a lot of Navy presence up in the Gulf of Aden, we saw both attempts and successful attacks go down," Gortney said. "But the last couple of weeks, we saw activity, attempts and successful attacks occur on the east coast of Somalia — where this one did."

So the pirates 1.) changed their behaviors such that we "saw both attempts and successful attacks go down" (i.e. the response we wanted) and 2) are trying something different (which I'm sure we expected them to do...after all, they're just turd-world thugs) . But I guess just stating the obvious isn't doom-laden enough for the AP, at least not as doom-laden as implicating our efforts are bearing no fruit.

BTW: How does the AP rule out the possibility that the last couple of weeks are not just a rough patch on the road to success? Especially since:

"Additional Navy ships also have been sent to the region to patrol for pirates, Gortney said."

Not to mention the pirates knew they screwed up by accidentally attacking an American ship.

Quick! Somebody send AP (and President Obama) a copy of Frederick Leiner's book The End of Barbary Terror, maybe they will catch a clue that success doesn't come in a day or a week.

Ron Howard: "Dopey Opie, Opie Dopey"

Whatever...

(H/T: Brent Baker)

If you are an Andy Griffith Show fan, or have just watched enough episodes over the years, you will remember the episode when the new kid comes to town and starts causing trouble with Opie and his friends by trying to lead them into what looks like a life of minor crime; stealing, vandalism, riding bikes on the sidewalk (Oh Barney Fife where are you now?!), etc. The interloper tries to dominate the Opie (Ron Howard) character and assume leadership of the group by making a fun of Opie's name, by various means including the use of a taunting rhyme: 'Dopey Opie'.

Now I admit, that as a kid I watched the Andy Griffith Show with more interest than most others (and it WAS the No. 1 show for years on TV) in part because I felt an affinity for Ron Howard and his character. We were about the same age and on the black and white TV sets we looked a lot alike as kids -- it was like having a near twin on TV, and I got a lot of "Hey! Are you...?, Well you look just like him" in the early years of the show. (Later in life , it would be the same, only with Drew Carey. But that is another story).

So I always had an affinity for Ron Howard and his work. Growing up I'd see him or his Dad on TV doing various talk shows/specials and other things and they seemed to be so common sense and otherwise 'Un-Hollywood'. As Ron Howard became a noted film maker, you had to admire and respect his transition from child-star to a powerful and successful movie maker.

Then, as they say, he had to "open his mouth and ruin everything".

It turns out that for all those years he only seemed to be 'Un-Hollywood' , while turning into some sort of BDS suffering, Obama-Idolizing idiot. After his Obama promo, I can honestly say I've felt no desire to watch any of his work and doubt if I ever will again. Since he produced that paean to Obama (and the whole Hope and Change 'thang) his movie "Frost/Nixon" was released, which from this quarter seems like an insecure attempt to endear him to the rest of the Hollywood set even more. Of course, it only helps that Frost/Nixon promotes the lefty view of the interviews, and the fact that the account of Frost interviewing the disgraced Former President is historical revisionism can only help his cause with his fellow travelers.

Well folks, Opie is still digging. On Bill Maher's show this week Howard let lose some real gems, not the least of which is:

"at a certain point I don't think we'll be so consumed with being the pre-eminent super-power and, you know, driven by sort of militarism and this need to export, you know, democracy.”

Now THAT folks, is Hybris. After seeing the 'interview', I wondered what's keeping Opie from moving to Europe already?

Go to Brent Baker's and read the rest. The post and comments are well worth the trip.

Leftard Foreign Policy or Something

Three hard-core Leftard Radicals, a Deadbeat Defaulter, and three other (but more generic) Useful Idiots of the (D) variety all went to the Workers Paradise for some fun in the sun.

Oh......and they also kissed a couple of murdering commie dictator asses. Who are the ringleaders? We shall know them by their deeds (and these are just the defense-related outrages).

The Leftard Radicals on Parade
Barbara Lee(D)
-Democratic Member of Congress, co-chair of the radical Progressive Caucus
-Former agent of Black Panther leader and convicted killer Huey Newton
-Collaborated with the Marxist dictatorship of Grenada to deceive the U.S. Congress
-Voted against using military force against terrorists following the 9/11 attacks
-Has consistently voted against U.S.-led military action, regardless of circumstances

Melvin Watt(D)
-Member of the radical Progressive Caucus

Watt has voted:
-Against the development of a national missile-defense system;
-Against the Anti-Terrorism Act of 2001;
-Against the post-9/11 anti-terrorism measure known as the Patriot Act;
-Against allowing the U.S. government to use electronic surveillance to investigate suspected terrorist operatives;
-Against a bill permitting the government to combat potential terrorist threats by monitoring foreign electronic communications which are routed through the United States;
-Against an October 2002 joint resolution authorizing U.S. military action in Iraq;
-Against the establishment of military commissions to try enemy combatants captured in the war on terror;
-In favor of withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq immediately and by a preordained date;
-Against President Bush's 2007 decision to deploy some 21,500 additional U.S. soldiers in an effort to quell the violent insurgents in Iraq;
-In favor of a proposal to expedite the transfer of all prisoners in the Guantanamo Bay detention center;
-Against requiring hospitals to report (to the federal government) illegal aliens who receive emergency medical treatment;
-Against the Real ID Act, which proposed to set minimal security requirements for state driver licenses and identification cards;
-Against separate proposals calling for the construction of some 700 miles of fencing to prevent illegal immigration along America's southern border;
-Against a proposal to grant state and local officials the authority to investigate, identify, and arrest illegal immigrants.

Bobby Rush (D)
-Member of the Progressive Caucus
-In 1968, went AWOL from the U.S. Army
-Co-founder of the Illinois branch of the Black Panther Party
-In 1969, served six months in jail for an illegal weapons conviction

Rush has voted:
-Against the development of a national missile defense system;
-Against the Anti-Terrorism Act of 2001; Against the post-9/11 anti-terrorism measure known as the Patriot Act;
-Against allowing the U.S. government to use electronic surveillance to investigate suspected terrorist operatives;
-Against a bill permitting the government to combat potential terrorist threats by monitoring foreign electronic communications which are routed through the United States;
-Against an October 2002 joint resolution authorizing U.S. military action in Iraq;
-Against the establishment of military commissions to try enemy combatants captured in the war on terror;
-In favor of withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq immediately and by a preordained date;
-Against President Bush's 2007 decision to deploy some 21,500 additional U.S. soldiers in an effort to quell the violent insurgents in Iraq;
-In favor of a proposal to expedite the transfer of all prisoners in the Guantanamo Bay detention center;
-Against requiring hospitals to report (to the federal government) illegal aliens who receive emergency medical treatment;
-Against the Real ID Act, which proposed to set minimal security requirements for state driver licenses and identification cards;
-Against separate proposals calling for the construction of some 700 miles of fencing to prevent illegal immigration along America's southern border;
-Against a proposal to grant state and local officials the authority to investigate, identify, and arrest illegal immigrants;

How’s this Leftard Do-it-yourself Foreign Policy working? Well the Murdering Commie Dictators are already making hay out of it.

BTW: The three generic Useful Idiots were: Emanuel Cleaver (MO), Marcia Fudge (OH) and Mike Honda (CA).

Sigh~The Bomber Flies Back Into the Wilderness

Punting Long Range StrikeThere's a lot of decisions in the FY2010 defense budget, announced today, that are problematic, but one thing in SecDef Gate's announcement leaps out as farce:

We will not pursue a development program for a follow-on Air Force bomber until we have a better understanding of the need, the requirement, and the technology (emphasis mine).

This statement is pure political Bulls***. It is a statement that provides cover for an organizational blindspot whereby unpopular answers to tough questions can be avoided.


As I illustrated only a short while ago, the long-range strike question is one of the most thoroughly examined and best understood issues in defense. Let me provide a translation of the above; one that I assure you is FAR more accurate than the drivel shoved into the SecDef's announcement:

We will not pursue a development program for a follow-on Air Force bomber until we have an answer that will NOT threaten the Fighter Establishment and its aquisition strategies. We have grand hopes that we can develop promising technologies that will greatly improve the small and fast-mover capabilities while magically be of no benefit to long-range subsonic platforms.
With these magic technologies, our Fighter Mafiosi expect to be able to FINALLY get rid of all pesky non-fighter strike aircraft.

There. Much better.

The most staggering thing in all this (to me) is that so many in the Fighter Establishment really and truly believe in their steeds and the nobility of their Crusade.

Looks like Return of the Bomber is set back, once again, by the Long-Range Blind Spot.

One Bright Spot
The recent creation of the Global Strike Command should re-establish a virile constituency for the LRS mission and mission needs. Its first 'provisional' Commander, BGen James M. Kowalski, is both an airpower theorist (see my earlier post where he is cited) AND a veteran practitioner of LRS. I only hope his selection is part of a process to groom him to take over the permanent job (or ACC) someday (It is at this time a three-star position). A competent advocacy for LRS could do much to turn the DoD's officially stated position against the entrenched parochial interests.

Gun Fear

I've been on the road for a few days and am just catching up with the world before I post a few items that I've been mulling. In the interim, here's a link to what seems to be a nice person fretting about all those conservatives with guns. (H/T Say Uncle).

I think her general lack of perspective on the subject probably arises from a life within a sheltered 'progressive' environment. She probably isn't widening her horizons much in a 'law school'. I'd recommend she begin a regimen of regularly visiting Clayton Cramer's Civilian Gun Defense blog as a prophylactic to the 'progressive' drivel surrounding gun ownership and use.

Perhaps someday she will refuse to be a victim.

The ACLU and Blind Pigs

File this under "even a blind pig finds an acorn every now and then".

This reads like a bad TV movie (IF you weren't/aren't living through it).

Hmmm. It occurs to me that normally within in these kinds of stories there's some easily identified 'worst case' villian involved, but in this one article I'm having a hard time deciding exactly which of these people truly present the greatest threat to the American Way of Life. Is it the paranoid and rationalizing school administrators? The strawman-creating Berkley-programmed Academe? The morality-stunted Ninth Circuit (apologies for the redundancy) Judge?

About the only one we know who isn't a threat is the Student victim.

The Opponents of Long Range Strike

I posted a slightly abbreviated version of this in a comment at Strategy Page a couple of months ago. I wanted to make sure I had a copy of it at my place as a kind of quick reference for me to refer to in the future. Whenever I run into the typical 'anti' long range strike weapon systems type I can now just point them here.

Enjoy.

"Enemies" of Long Range StrikeThere are several entrenched interests that have played tag-team in working continuously against the development of a new Future Long Range Strike heavy bomber. In order of effectiveness, they are: the Speed Fetishists, the Nostalgia Air Force, the Cruise Missile Cultists, and the Airliners Alliance. At the current time, the Speed Fetishists and Nostalgia Air Force are the strongest insurgents.
Speed Fetishists
The Speed Fetishists invoke the 'Faster! Faster!' battle cry for two interrelated reasons. First, faster means smaller which means more fighter-like, which is what fighters-can-do-everything pilots believe in.
Unfortunately it also means shorter range and lower payloads. 'Faster' has also meant 'more survivable' in the past, and the Speed Fetishists can't seem to wrap their heads around the possibility that 'faster' just means 'die sooner' on the modern battlefield against a sophisticated near-peer foe.
Speed Fetishists cling to the heartfelt belief that faster is better, yet cannot explain what a Mach 2 speed will do for you against a Mach 10 double-digit SAM, except decrease your turn rate and ability to get out of the way for any given bank angle.

The Nostalgia Air ForceThe Nostalgia Air Force is fully vested in the near-religious belief that the venerable B-52 should fly on forever, and that the B-52 is the most dependable of all the LRS assets. The first is a romantic notion, and the second is a false truth. The fact that the BUFF has changed missions from direct attack to standoff in high threat areas gets glossed over in discussion of its long operational life on the one hand, while if a new bomber design came down the pipe tomorrow and had a forecast operational life equivalent to the BUFF's - it would be pilloried for having 'too high' forecasted life cycle costs on the other hand.
The vaunted reliability and O&S costs of the BUFF are the result of gaming the maintenance reporting burdens, due to the availability of co-located attrition reserve aircraft, essentially 'flying spares', that allow work to be performed off an organization's O&S books. 'Hard break' on a B-52? Just rotate it into the Attrition Reserve pool and bring on a full-MC bird, and voila!... little reported downtime. Trouble is, when they forward deployed in OEF/OIF, they had the worst MC rate in-theater.

The Airliners Alliance & Cruise Missile CultistsThe Airliners Alliance guys come and go, as it seems each generation of defense planners has one or two bean-counters get what they think is an epiphany, and the idea gains traction until somebody actually does the cost tradeoffs between standoff and direct attack...and realizes that the system cost including weaponization is many times higher using commercial airframes to carry standoff weapons (caveat: only IF it is ever actually used however).
And in anything but a highly permissive environment, a commercial airframe would need to carry standoff weapons such as one of the various cruise missile types. This makes every aimpoint an expensive proposition to attack, even if cruise missiles were a) suitable for the aimpoint and b) had a high success rate. The cost differential between direct attack and standoff attack is dramatic.
For example, even assuming 100% success rate for each weapon type, the cost differential of employing JDAMs instead of certain cruise missiles saves about the equivalent of an Aegis cruiser for every 1000 aimpoints serviced.

I may clean this up later and perhaps add some graphics, but for now I just wanted to get it on the site.

Lord Monckton on Global Warming

Former male model G. Gordon Liddy interviews a man he thinks Al Gore fears the most here (mp3 audio).

Brilliant.

H/T American Thinker

Moral: There Are Good Reasons For Tankers to be MORE Than Tankers

Our guys in the deep canyons of Afghanistan just got a whole lot 'better connected' to their lifelines.

Note: Keep in mind when you are reading this post how Boeing attempted to minimize the importance of 'excess capability' including non-tanking duties as part of their disinformation campaign supporting their KC-45 protest. (See here for more on the KC-45 fiasco)

In a recent public release, the Air Force reveals a success story that Boeing may not want you to think about too much....even though it involves their venerable KC-135s. the title of the piece is "Manas KC-135s revolutionize combat operations", and it gives accounts of how Air Force KC-135s are now contributing more than just fuel on station in prosecuting the War on Terror:

"During the fourth mission with a ROBE refueler on July 27, our aircrew overheard radio chatter between an F-15 (Eagle) pilot and a joint terminal air controller on the ground," Colonel Bence said. "A forward operating base deep in a valley was under attack and in danger of being overrun. We could tell the F-15 pilot was struggling to identify and strike the targets without causing collateral damage or friendly casualties. We turned on ROBE and within minutes, we knew the system was a success by a comment made by the F-15 pilot. The fighter pilot said, 'I don't know where the picture (target imagery) is coming from, but I got it (the target) now. Thanks.'

That is only one of the success stories of the ROBE provided in the article, and the AF article honestly airs a little dirty laundry by also giving an account of the difficulties involved in fielding the system, including having to overcome significant institutional intransigence in getting the ROBE capability actually in the planes, working AND deployed forward :

Despite its initial successes and demonstrations in several military exercises, ROBE was not embraced by everyone, and many of the "B-kits" purchased by the Air Force remained shrink-wrapped for years in storage, quietly waiting for the right opportunity to prove the system's worth.

Honestly, I didn't think this would ever happen. It has been a LONG time coming considering the relative scope and benefit of fielding such a capability. The last thing I heard about the program was at a lecture given a couple of years ago by a retired AF Chief of Staff who gave an account of the fact that even HE couldn't get the Tanker Community to get past the tanker-only mindset and 'get with the program'.

When Jumper was pushing this on his watch I thought it was a great idea. He likes to point out that tankers are nearly always around and overhead wherever airpower is operating. I knew from flying test missions as an LCO and telemetry systems operator, over the mountainous Western test ranges, that our plane invariably collected the cleanest data with the fewest droputs than any of the range ground stations ever collected-- and that when we relayed the data we collected from our operating altitude, every ground station involved could pick up our transmissions. It is a simple matter of line-of-sight working better (and farther) going up and down than it does sideways over the horizon.

There's another interesting facet to this success story that always gets overlooked AFTER a success. If the press/detractors had gotten their teeth into this program BEFORE Spiral 2, the program might have been cancelled before it could have a fair chance to succeed:

"With previous versions of ROBE, because of the limitations of the satellite antenna, whenever the aircraft would bank through a turn it would lose connection to the satellite, Sergeant Judd said. With Spiral 2, they are installing more antennas which should drastically improve the aircraft’s ability to stay connected." (source here)

Al Qaeda: Death From Above

From the LA Times:

"An intense, six-month campaign of Predator strikes in Pakistan has taken such a toll on Al Qaeda that militants have begun turning violently on one another out of confusion and distrust, U.S. intelligence and counter-terrorism officials say."

Excellent!

Read the whole thing before the LA Times realizes it doesn't support the anti-war meme. Of course, if the LA Times editors checked in with the Long War Journal more regularly, they could have told everyone about these successes pretty much as they've unfolded.

Kudos to the Predator operators, and the Chain of Command that showed some brains and unleashed the power. I take some small vicarious satisfaction from your successes as part of the test organization that helped Abe Karem get the Predator's ur-ancestor into the sky.

Predator History Trivia: Internally we referred to the Project Amber as the 'Albatross', as in 'hanging around our neck'. To this day this causes confusion among some alums (myself included) when we talk among ourselves about past projects.

Abe Karem's then-company, Leading Systems, had (what looked like to us from the outside) some of the most fly-by-night techs and engineers as we ever ran across. All we were supposed to do on the program was facilitate their test operations and evaluate their progress. On one mission, the engine was running prior to take off when it was discovered there was some critical control function(s) that weren't working. Without shutting down, one LSI guy opened a panel, pushed some rat's nest wiring around until the thing started 'working', gingerly reinstalled the panel and gave a thumbs-up to take off. No sh**.

Powerline's Scott Johnson Nails President Obama

Powerline's Scott Johnson has a riff on why he's 'depressed' in a personal reflection on Professor Victor Davis Hansen's recent post: Thoughts About Depressed Americans .

Johnson's bottom line: "I am depressed because the president of the United States is a fool who will immiserate us, render us wards of the state and lose us our life and liberty to those who understand what they are about."

I'm not depressed Mr. Johnson, but that's not saying that the source of your depression is not real or accurately perceived. Your reasoning is sound. I'm not depressed because there is a growing resistance to this fool (and his fellow fools of Pelosi, etal) who would immiserate us.

I'm more frustrated and angry but still optimistic because we have these folks on our side.

Conservatives! Ya gotta have faith and commitment, baby!

Making the Jersey Shore Safe for Summer

Thank goodness. Because when bikini waxes are outlawed, only outlaws will have bikini waxes!

Via JammieWearingFool


Updated out of the Box:
Cripes! Instapundit has already picked this up. Curses, Instapundit and your Legion Army of Davids!