ClearedHot

"Two"

Washington Post article on $500 Million for Military Bands Radio-Info.com article on Corporation for Public Broadcasting (NPR/PBS) $451 Million budget

Read an article today saying the military spend $500 Million a year on military bands...that is more than the budget of NPR and PBS....combined.

Great weapons but is it the F-22 of Army small arms. $35,000 per gun and $1,000 per round, how many can we afford. I hope the cost goes way down as they ramp production.

Are you gonna get some crunk to go with it?

An article in the Wall Street Journal this AM stating Sec gates is in favor of increasing Tricare premiums for retirees. I am sure the retired groups will be up in arms, but it seems to make sense to me. Enrollment fees have not changed since the program was founded in 1996 and the cost for a family would increase from $460 to $520 per year, that sounds more than fair and reasonable to me. Another change is to encourage the use of the mail-order pharmacy, no co-pay for using the service, certainly a reasonable option for non-time critical medicines. The co-pay would increase $3 if you still want to use a local pharmacy. With all the other cuts backs and issues facing us I am curious how others feel.

Have not seen the story yet, but hearing AF Times is outing a guy named Anthony LaTorre who has falsely been claiming to be a USAF Combat Controller. Pictured below at a recognition ceremony in Florida.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAGzh5Pck8E&NR=1

You don't have to live in the same city full time. Yes PhD programs take multiple years, but there are many variables after the first year or two. Some require teaching,other require research work...truly depends on the type of PhD she wants to pursue. My wife was able to make a few visits the last few years and one the last year to present and defend her dissertation. Two on the online degrees, far more credible these days.

Kinda small...

Air Force’s ‘All-Seeing Eye’ Flops Vision Test It’s the one of the most revolutionary — and one of the most chilling — weapons to come out of America’s decade of conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. Gorgon Stare, a new “all-seeing” camera system for aerial drones, is supposed to boost U.S. surveillance by an order of magnitude, by installing a hive of nine or more cameras under the wing of an Air Force Reaper drone. Gorgon Stare-equipped Reapers are meant to watch over a “city-size” area, while also simultaneously sending video feeds to dozens of “customers” on the ground. There’s just one problem. Gorgon Stare doesn’t work as promised, at least according to the Air Force squadron whose job it is to test the new system. In a draft report dated Dec. 30 and obtained by rogue military analyst Winslow Wheeler, the 53rd Wing at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida declared Gorgon Stare “not operationally effective” and “not operationally suitable.” Alleged problems include poor-quality video, glitches in the process for downloading video streams, and a small problem of the drone blinding itself with a laser. This is bad. Real bad. The Air Force is counting on Gorgon Stare to help its squadrons in Afghanistan meet “insatiable” demand for overhead full-motion video. Despite steadily adding drones — there are now more than 50 three-’bot “orbits” deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan — the supply is never adequate. “It’s like crack, and everyone wants more,” Army Brig. Gen. Kevin Mangum said of drone-supplied video. Equipping a portion of its drone fleet with Gorgon Stare would be like adding hundreds of new drones, from the perspective of the soldier on the ground. Now, the Air Force might not get that boost. A standard drone spycam takes a “soda straw” view of what’s beneath, focusing on a lone vehicle or a single home at a time. Gorgon Stare, on the other hand, uses a bundle of cameras, each one shooting at a very slow rate and at a slightly different angle. That allows the sensor to watch over a much larger area at once: about 36 square miles or so, according to some estimates. “Gorgon Stare will be looking at a whole city,” Air Force intelligence chief Maj. Gen. James Poss recently told The Washington Post. “We can see everything.” But that view might not be so clear. The 53rd Wing found 13 serious deficiencies in the system. To carry the Gorgon Stare pod plus the required processing pod, Reapers have to be stripped of other sensors and weapons and structurally reinforced. The layout of the underwing pod puts it in the way of the Reaper’s nose-mounted ranging laser, meaning Reaper remote pilots could accidentally “lase” and blind their own cameras. Even when working correctly, the Gorgon Stare’s cameras are ”marginally sufficient to track vehicles” but “not sufficient to track dismounts [people],” the testers wrote. “In general, IR [infrared] imagery quality is poor, which yields marginal mission capability at night.” Plus, soldiers on the ground could have a hard time capturing the Gorgon Stare’s video feed. Even if they do, a glitch in the system means imagery is “subject to gaps between stitching areas [where the camera images meet], which manifests itself as a large black triangle moving throughout the image.” Gorgon Stare “cannot reliably find and track human targets; it has additional problems for moving targets, and the random location inaccuracy makes the system virtually unusable for prosecuting even stationary targets,” Wheeler summed up in an e-mail. Gorgon Stare and other “wide-area airborne surveillance” (WAAS) systems came out of an Iraq-war imperative to track car bombs across an entire city. Spycams might not be able to prevent such attacks. But if a whole town could be surveilled at once, the car bombs could be traced back to their points of origin. As the insurgency evolved, and the Afghanistan conflict heated up, the need for WAAS changed. Instead of spotting vehicles after the fact, the military wanted WAAS to find individual, dismounted attackers — in real time. But with a resolution at least twice as bad as standard drone cameras — and a frame rate of just 2 per second, compared to 30 in standard-issue spycams — tracking individual militants might be too tough a mission for a WAAS system. “If somebody said Gorgon Stare could spot dismounts, they probably oversold it,” says a source familiar with the programs. “It was not designed to do that.” The 53rd Wing recommended more testing and development before Gorgon Stare gets installed on Reapers in Afghanistan, something that is supposed to happen “this winter.” We’ve asked the Air Force to respond to this report. We’ll let you know what they say. Now, to be fair, tests are designed to uncover problems, not just rubber-stamp things that already work fine. And military testers are paid to be skeptics and trained to find even the tiniest glitch in new weapons. That can result in unfair assessments of urgently needed weapons — and sometimes leads to clashes between testers and the broader Pentagon establishment. For example, testers for years declared the Navy’s EA-18G radar-jamming plane “not operationally suitable,” but the Pentagon pressed ahead with — and even expanded — plans to field the jet. Similar assessments were made of the now-iconic Predator drone back in October 2001, when the testers found it to be not “operationally effective or suitable.” It wasn’t long before the robotic spy plane was making important contributions to the war in Afghanistan. The 53rd Wing’s assessment of Gorgon Stare could be an example of over-stringent testers striving for unnecessarily lofty benchmarks. Or the Air Force testers are correct, and the Pentagon’s revolutionary all-seeing eye really is blurry and half-blind. Update 7:11pm: “Gorgon Stare is in the first increment of a multi-increment program, and the second increment will increase the warfighter’s capabilities by range and resolution,” Air Force spokesman Lt. Col. Richard Johnson says in a statement, released moments ago. The document leaked was a draft memo that was later revised in January. The January memo includes three issues that we have identified and have fixes in place. The first was addressing critical Technical Order shortfalls; the second was Gorgon Stare Ground Station image and grid coordinate generation; and the third was Remote Video Terminal compatibility. We’re working all three issues and do not believe they will affect the deployment schedule. Air Force leadership understands the importance of providing quick, timely and actionable ISR for the field. Gorgon Stare will not be fielded until the theater commander accepts it. The Air Force takes its responsibility seriously because lives depend on the quality of the intelligence products that are produced.

A couple of Air Force guys minus the everyday queep hanging it out to do the right thing...Fucking Standard.

She should have left it alone, turns out she was wanted on felony charges... Karma Bioch!

Want in my bar at home! A new way to "pour" beer.

Bravo!

Things have changed since I went through the ASG program. NOPC was really looked down upon (especially by the other schools), mainly because it was seen as a "short" course and the concurrency with command and staff courses (my ASG course work was COMPLETELY different from ACSC and I actually learned something). SAASS (not SAAS), SAW, and SAMS also attend the Theater Warfare Exercise at Maxwell, although when I went it was a very strategic level exercise. Finally, not all of the course are strategic minded. SAW in particular is focused on the operation level and the Operational Art of war. In fact, the Masters Degree they award is in Operational Art. I don't know enough about the current JAWS program, but if I were going to apply today it would be to SAASS, SAW, or SAMS. Just an old guys thoughts. Best of the scrubs that remain.

It varies by size of year each year group, but the numbers I've seen show a 25% in-residence rate for IDE over the past 10 years. ASG = Advanced Studies Group. There are three primary recognized ASG schools: 1. SAASS = School of Advanced Air and Space Studies, a year long USAF program at Maxwell AFB, 40 total students. 2. SAW = School of Advanced Warfighting, a year long USMC program at Quantico MCB, 27 students. 3. SAMS = School of Advanced Military Studies, a year long USA program at Ft Leavenworth, 120 students (too many, dilutes the intent of a focused second year program). There are two other programs that claim the same moniker but are not. NOPC is a 13 month USN program taught at Newport NB. I am not sure how many students they have, but this program is like an advanced elective for students attending IDE at Naval Command and Staff. All of the other programs are a complete second year of study after IDE. NOPC students are picked part way through Naval Command and Staff and spend an extra 4-5 months at the end. The claim to be equal to SAASS, SAMS, and SAW, but they are not. JAWS = Joint Advanced Warfighting School is a year long joint program taught at Norfolk. The program has only been around for a few years and I have heard good reviews, but they mix O-4, O-5's, and O-6's in the same class which would seem to dilute the focus for some. ASG grads get a special identifier when they graduate and their assignments are completely different from all other PME grads. ASG assignments are typically validated and approved by the VCSAF.

The current "commitment" from the chief is that if you are a "select" you will go. Timing varies, but as of late, the majority of IDE folks are going to school early, while SDE folks are going later...exceptions everywhere of course. The ASG programs take less than 1% of the in-res IDE grads for a second year of advanced school. If you are not a "select" then you are a candidate and 1-2% of candidates will eventually be selected, usually in during third look for IDE or fourth for SDE. Overall in-res rate for IDE = 25% Overall in-res rate for ASG = <1% Overall In-res rate for SDE = 10%

I think I was on that flight.

BQZIP's SoS ghajtaH Hab Quch

Barack Obama calls France America's strongest ally.

Number of gun related deaths in the U.S. in 2009 = 12,632 Number of deaths on U.S. highways in 2009 = 33,963 I guess we better ban cars, they are far more dangerous...

Things are different when you are racing through the air six miles above the ground. Mundane mistakes can become disruptions for hundreds of people, creating news and likely even fodder for comedians. And so it was for pilots of United Airlines Flight 940 on Monday night. One spilled coffee accidentally on the Boeing 777’s avionics while over Canada en route to Frankfurt from Chicago. When radios went goofy, a pilot put the “No Radio” code (7600) in the transponder but mistakenly entered 7500, which means hijacking or unlawful interference. When that happens, there’s a lot more than crying over spilled coffee. A Transport Canada report said Canada’s defense department was notified, but that with the help of United’s dispatch staff the flight crew confirmed it to be a communication issue and not a hijacking. The plane diverted to Toronto. A spokeswoman for Transport Canada told the Associated Press that in addition to communications problems, the plane also had some navigation problems. The Boeing 777 was carrying 241 passengers and a crew of 14. United said it flew them back to Chicago on another plane and put them up in hotel rooms overnight. They flew to Frankfurt on Tuesday aboard another 777. Spilled coffee, by the way, has long been a problem for commercial jets. Airlines typically have to repair corrosion in cockpit floor and sidewall areas that results from years of coffee spills.