This website [hat tip: kausfiles] has a cool on-line game that helps you figure out potential ways to make Social Security solvent. Turns out it's not that hard. It can be done pretty easily by reducing benefits to or increasing revenues from people who are relatively rich. Seems to me that would be a more or less politically painless way to do it. Why all the hand-wringing and portents of doom about Social Security if it's this easy to fix? I think some people feel the need to play modern-day Cassandra's. Just think about all the predictions of doom coming from environmentalists; if they were even 10% right the Earth would have died long ago, yet it stubbornly refuses to do so. I think some people have some psychological malady that compels them to predict doom (think crazy homeless person preaching about Armageddon, without the smell [errr, maybe WITH the smell when it comes to hippy environmentalists {I seem to be really good at interrupting myself, I'm almost out of bracket types (oops, I did run out of brackets and had to switch back to parenthesis [ha, ha, prepare to be inundated, I'm stuck at work writing reports; time to flood the zone])}]). <-- Now THAT'S the way to end a sentence.
It kinda reminds you of those who were against those who were against the establishment of the Church of England... Or not.
Thursday, April 22, 2004
Tuesday, April 20, 2004
Frayed Ends of Sanity
You'll note that I've written quite a few posts the last few days. I've been staying pretty late at work and I take "breaks" by searching the 'Net; when something piques my interest, I writes me a little post. And today this article piqued me off. I'm concerned with the authors overall point but he gets so much wrong in the middle that I am forced to unleash the Fisk 'o Fury on him. Here is paragraph numero uno:
In the twelve-course meal that is the war in Iraq, America has just been served the first entree. The fight with IraqÂ’s state armed forces was merely the amuse-bouche. The subsequent guerilla war with the Baath, as distasteful as we found it, was still just the appetizer. Over the past two weeks, we have been presented with the first of the main courses, Fourth Generation war waged for religion. If, as is traditional, this is the fish course, our reaction suggests it is flounder.
Huh? Easy on the French, buddy. Part of writing is making a point; this first paragraph has one, but it's deeply buried. Clearly we swept the Iraqi army like so many fleas, but this Baath "guerilla war" thing has been on a pretty low-level, so the "appetizer" analogy isn't so bad. The "past two weeks" is referring to the recent Shiite thuggery commited at the behest of Al-Sadr. I believe when Lind refers to the course as "flounder" he is referring to us; it would be far more appropriate to apply it to Sadr's goons. They captured many government buildings, but were quickly thrown out; Sadr himself found a mosque to hole himself up in, but then got scared that the mosque wasn't enough to protect him and has moved; he's currently negotiating his own surrender so that he can face the murder charge awaiting him as a result of his ordering a cleric's murder. Go see here and here and here and here and here. The Belmont Club did an excellent job covering this. This is a lot to read so to summarize: Sadr is really an Iranian proxy trying (unsuccessfully) to destabilize the situation because Iran is fearful of having a free Iraq as a neighbor.
Frankly, I was surprised how quickly this dish arrived. It seems Mohammed’s kitchen is working rather more speedily than usual. While a broadening and intensifying of the anti-American resistance was inevitable, I did not think it would reach its present intensity until this summer. The fact that is has erupted so early has political as well as military implications. The full scope of our disaster in Syracuse err er, sorry, Iraq – may be evident before the party conventions, as well as prior to the fall election. Might Bush do an LBJ and choose not to run? Will a Kerry who voted for the war be a credible nominee? Military disaster can displace all sorts of certainties.
It's obvious that most Iraqis would prefer that we weren't there, but they also recognize the need for us to create a secure situation before we depart. It was and is far from "inevitable" that the "resistance" would broaden. Sadr's rebellion was a flash in the pan; a last gasp power grab by a weak leader and his gullible band. Then Mr. Lind makes a horrible analogy, by name-dropping Syracuse, he is implying that we are like the Athenians, in overstretching ourselves and biting off more than we can chew, resulting in our ultimate demise. Bullshit. We're not trying to conquer Iraq, for starters. And it's difficult to argue that Iraq is truly stretching our nations resources; on a short-term basis our existing military forces are stretched but if the political will existed we could pay for a much larger military. Moving on, Lind speculates that Bush might not seek his party's nomination a la LBJ. Again, bullshit. The security situation is helping Bush by demonstrating that national security is still a big issue (and people recognize Kerry is weak on this issue).
It is not yet a disaster, some may say. On the tactical level, that is true, although it may not be true much longer. But on the strategic level it is not just one disaster, it is four:
It is still a potential disaster at worst, even on the strategic level. And the only sure way it will be a disaster is to turn tail and run as Lind is implicitly suggesting.
The pretense that we came to “liberate” the Iraqi people and not as conquerors is no longer credible. Faced with a popular uprising, we effectively declared war on the people of Iraq. The overall American commander, General Abizaid, “gave a stark warning for the Iraqi fighters, from the minority Sunni as well as the majority Shiite populations,” according to the Cleveland Plain Dealer. “’First, we are going to win,’ Abizaid said, seated at a table in a marbled palace hall…’Secondly, everyone needs to understand that there is no more powerful force assembled on Earth than this military force in this country…’” That is the language of conquest, not liberation, and it destroys the legitimacy of America’s presence in Iraq, both locally and around the world.
What the frell is this guy talking about? He needs to read something other than Paul Krugman columns. There was and is no "popular uprising." If there were, we would be in some deep dren, but it ain't happened yet. And we have handled ourselves with incredible restraint in minimizing civilian casualties; we declared war on those who are trying to kill us, that's it. General Abizaid's comments are true. We ARE the world's most powerful force and anyone dumb enough to fight us directly will die in short order. And having a strong military force in country does not imply a particular purpose (i.e. conquest), as Lind suggests.
We have now picked a fight with the Shiites, who control our lines of communication and who make up a majority of the Iraqi population. I thought that even the Valley of the Blind that is the CPA would have better sense than to make this final, fatal strategic blunder, but it seems they can always find a new ditch to stumble into. We did it over the utterly trivial matter of Muqtada al-Sadr’s newspaper printing lies – this from an American administration that long ago won the Order of Pinocchio, First Class, with Oak Leaves, Swords and Diamonds. While many Iraqi Shiites don’t much like al-Sadr, they like seeing Americans kill fellow Shiites even less.
Ummm, no. Sadr (who does not represent all or even many Shiites) picked a fight with us. It would have been foolish to allow him to spew his violence-inciting invective without response. The Shiites understand that if we leave, they will be stuck with people like Sadr in charge. That would be bad, for them and us. We are doing now what we should have done when we first invaded Iraq: eliminate those who cannot accept a free Iraq.
The Marines threw away the opportunity to de-escalate the fighting with the Sunnis in Fallujah and instead have raised the intensity of anti-Americanism there. For months, the Marines trained for de-escalation. But because of one minor incident of barely tactical importance, the killing of four American contractors, the de-escalation strategy was thrown out the window and replaced by an all-out assault on an Iraqi city. The Marines may have been given no choice by the White House, but it also looks as if their own training did not go very deep; the Plain Dealer quoted a Marine battalion commander in Fallujah as saying, “What is coming is the destruction of anti-coalition forces in Fallujah. They have two choices: Submit or die.” That is hardly the language of de-escalation.
Methinks it was the Sunnis who escalated the fighting, not the Marines. The killing of the contractors was a gauntlet thrown by the wolves inhabiting Fallujah; if we had not responded we would be seen as weak and ineffectual. Once again we're doing something that should have been done earlier: draining the Fallujah swamp of criminals and thugs opposed to any non-kleptocratic government.
Finally, our whole “say good-bye at the end of June” strategy depends on the reliability of the Iraqi security forces we have been busy creating. But when faced with fighting their own people on behalf of Christian foreigners, most of them went over or went home. This was utterly predictable, but its effect is to leave us without any exit strategy at all.
The June hand-over date is primarily a symbolic move. We won't be leaving, and we're developing strategies to enhance the reliability of Iraqi security forces (like stiffening their ranks with Special Forces personnel).
So what comes next? The current violence may follow a sine wave, ebbing and then flowing again, with the whole curve gradually trending up. Or, it may rise in a linear, accelerating curve, in which case we will soon be driven out of Iraq, possibly in a full-scale sauve que peut rout. The former appears more likely, but it still leads to the same ending, if taking a bit more time to get there.
Undoubtedly the violence will ebb and flow. It seems more likely that the violence will follow more of a lightly damped sine wave than an unstable one (i.e. the violence will gradually decrease over time as the Iraqis start to take charge of their own affairs though there will be some spikes in violence). The Iraqis are faced with a clear choice: the American way, or the Iranian way. And the many protests and widespread discontent in Iran pretty clearly show which is the way of the future.
Unlike traditional twelve-course dinners, this one does not finish with a dessert or a savoury. It ends, to borrow one of John Boyd’s favorite phrases, with the “coalition” getting the whole enchilada right up the p--- chute. You cannot get anything you want at Mohammed’s restaurant.
Whatever. Mr. Lind's primary point, that we may have bitten off more than we can chew, is a matter of concern. But clearly he has swallowed the mainstream media's negatively exaggerated version of events hook, line and sinker. Interpreting everything in the worst possible way is rarely going to be correct (and that's coming from an admitted pessimist [errr, actually realist, but usually realism=pessimism]).
In the twelve-course meal that is the war in Iraq, America has just been served the first entree. The fight with IraqÂ’s state armed forces was merely the amuse-bouche. The subsequent guerilla war with the Baath, as distasteful as we found it, was still just the appetizer. Over the past two weeks, we have been presented with the first of the main courses, Fourth Generation war waged for religion. If, as is traditional, this is the fish course, our reaction suggests it is flounder.
Huh? Easy on the French, buddy. Part of writing is making a point; this first paragraph has one, but it's deeply buried. Clearly we swept the Iraqi army like so many fleas, but this Baath "guerilla war" thing has been on a pretty low-level, so the "appetizer" analogy isn't so bad. The "past two weeks" is referring to the recent Shiite thuggery commited at the behest of Al-Sadr. I believe when Lind refers to the course as "flounder" he is referring to us; it would be far more appropriate to apply it to Sadr's goons. They captured many government buildings, but were quickly thrown out; Sadr himself found a mosque to hole himself up in, but then got scared that the mosque wasn't enough to protect him and has moved; he's currently negotiating his own surrender so that he can face the murder charge awaiting him as a result of his ordering a cleric's murder. Go see here and here and here and here and here. The Belmont Club did an excellent job covering this. This is a lot to read so to summarize: Sadr is really an Iranian proxy trying (unsuccessfully) to destabilize the situation because Iran is fearful of having a free Iraq as a neighbor.
Frankly, I was surprised how quickly this dish arrived. It seems Mohammed’s kitchen is working rather more speedily than usual. While a broadening and intensifying of the anti-American resistance was inevitable, I did not think it would reach its present intensity until this summer. The fact that is has erupted so early has political as well as military implications. The full scope of our disaster in Syracuse err er, sorry, Iraq – may be evident before the party conventions, as well as prior to the fall election. Might Bush do an LBJ and choose not to run? Will a Kerry who voted for the war be a credible nominee? Military disaster can displace all sorts of certainties.
It's obvious that most Iraqis would prefer that we weren't there, but they also recognize the need for us to create a secure situation before we depart. It was and is far from "inevitable" that the "resistance" would broaden. Sadr's rebellion was a flash in the pan; a last gasp power grab by a weak leader and his gullible band. Then Mr. Lind makes a horrible analogy, by name-dropping Syracuse, he is implying that we are like the Athenians, in overstretching ourselves and biting off more than we can chew, resulting in our ultimate demise. Bullshit. We're not trying to conquer Iraq, for starters. And it's difficult to argue that Iraq is truly stretching our nations resources; on a short-term basis our existing military forces are stretched but if the political will existed we could pay for a much larger military. Moving on, Lind speculates that Bush might not seek his party's nomination a la LBJ. Again, bullshit. The security situation is helping Bush by demonstrating that national security is still a big issue (and people recognize Kerry is weak on this issue).
It is not yet a disaster, some may say. On the tactical level, that is true, although it may not be true much longer. But on the strategic level it is not just one disaster, it is four:
It is still a potential disaster at worst, even on the strategic level. And the only sure way it will be a disaster is to turn tail and run as Lind is implicitly suggesting.
The pretense that we came to “liberate” the Iraqi people and not as conquerors is no longer credible. Faced with a popular uprising, we effectively declared war on the people of Iraq. The overall American commander, General Abizaid, “gave a stark warning for the Iraqi fighters, from the minority Sunni as well as the majority Shiite populations,” according to the Cleveland Plain Dealer. “’First, we are going to win,’ Abizaid said, seated at a table in a marbled palace hall…’Secondly, everyone needs to understand that there is no more powerful force assembled on Earth than this military force in this country…’” That is the language of conquest, not liberation, and it destroys the legitimacy of America’s presence in Iraq, both locally and around the world.
What the frell is this guy talking about? He needs to read something other than Paul Krugman columns. There was and is no "popular uprising." If there were, we would be in some deep dren, but it ain't happened yet. And we have handled ourselves with incredible restraint in minimizing civilian casualties; we declared war on those who are trying to kill us, that's it. General Abizaid's comments are true. We ARE the world's most powerful force and anyone dumb enough to fight us directly will die in short order. And having a strong military force in country does not imply a particular purpose (i.e. conquest), as Lind suggests.
We have now picked a fight with the Shiites, who control our lines of communication and who make up a majority of the Iraqi population. I thought that even the Valley of the Blind that is the CPA would have better sense than to make this final, fatal strategic blunder, but it seems they can always find a new ditch to stumble into. We did it over the utterly trivial matter of Muqtada al-Sadr’s newspaper printing lies – this from an American administration that long ago won the Order of Pinocchio, First Class, with Oak Leaves, Swords and Diamonds. While many Iraqi Shiites don’t much like al-Sadr, they like seeing Americans kill fellow Shiites even less.
Ummm, no. Sadr (who does not represent all or even many Shiites) picked a fight with us. It would have been foolish to allow him to spew his violence-inciting invective without response. The Shiites understand that if we leave, they will be stuck with people like Sadr in charge. That would be bad, for them and us. We are doing now what we should have done when we first invaded Iraq: eliminate those who cannot accept a free Iraq.
The Marines threw away the opportunity to de-escalate the fighting with the Sunnis in Fallujah and instead have raised the intensity of anti-Americanism there. For months, the Marines trained for de-escalation. But because of one minor incident of barely tactical importance, the killing of four American contractors, the de-escalation strategy was thrown out the window and replaced by an all-out assault on an Iraqi city. The Marines may have been given no choice by the White House, but it also looks as if their own training did not go very deep; the Plain Dealer quoted a Marine battalion commander in Fallujah as saying, “What is coming is the destruction of anti-coalition forces in Fallujah. They have two choices: Submit or die.” That is hardly the language of de-escalation.
Methinks it was the Sunnis who escalated the fighting, not the Marines. The killing of the contractors was a gauntlet thrown by the wolves inhabiting Fallujah; if we had not responded we would be seen as weak and ineffectual. Once again we're doing something that should have been done earlier: draining the Fallujah swamp of criminals and thugs opposed to any non-kleptocratic government.
Finally, our whole “say good-bye at the end of June” strategy depends on the reliability of the Iraqi security forces we have been busy creating. But when faced with fighting their own people on behalf of Christian foreigners, most of them went over or went home. This was utterly predictable, but its effect is to leave us without any exit strategy at all.
The June hand-over date is primarily a symbolic move. We won't be leaving, and we're developing strategies to enhance the reliability of Iraqi security forces (like stiffening their ranks with Special Forces personnel).
So what comes next? The current violence may follow a sine wave, ebbing and then flowing again, with the whole curve gradually trending up. Or, it may rise in a linear, accelerating curve, in which case we will soon be driven out of Iraq, possibly in a full-scale sauve que peut rout. The former appears more likely, but it still leads to the same ending, if taking a bit more time to get there.
Undoubtedly the violence will ebb and flow. It seems more likely that the violence will follow more of a lightly damped sine wave than an unstable one (i.e. the violence will gradually decrease over time as the Iraqis start to take charge of their own affairs though there will be some spikes in violence). The Iraqis are faced with a clear choice: the American way, or the Iranian way. And the many protests and widespread discontent in Iran pretty clearly show which is the way of the future.
Unlike traditional twelve-course dinners, this one does not finish with a dessert or a savoury. It ends, to borrow one of John Boyd’s favorite phrases, with the “coalition” getting the whole enchilada right up the p--- chute. You cannot get anything you want at Mohammed’s restaurant.
Whatever. Mr. Lind's primary point, that we may have bitten off more than we can chew, is a matter of concern. But clearly he has swallowed the mainstream media's negatively exaggerated version of events hook, line and sinker. Interpreting everything in the worst possible way is rarely going to be correct (and that's coming from an admitted pessimist [errr, actually realist, but usually realism=pessimism]).
Democratic Referendum in Iraq
Most polls I've seen of the Iraqi people show that most of them want us to be there, helping them form a democratic governemnt, despite the violently vocal minority's intransigence. Perhaps one way the U.S. could silence its critics is to hold a referendum on whether the Iraqi people want us to stay and help them rebuild their society or not. It could be as simple as a single question:
Do you
a) want the Coalition to continue helping Iraq rebuild, to create the first free, secular and democratic Arab government.
or
b) want the Coalition to leave Iraq.
A fair referendum on such a question would demonstrate our level of support in Iraq, showing how few Iraqis truly oppose us. Even if, somehow, the referendum failed it would provide a good opportunity for us to leave, without suffering additional casualties for an ungrateful people. Either way, we would be better off than the current situation.
Do you
a) want the Coalition to continue helping Iraq rebuild, to create the first free, secular and democratic Arab government.
or
b) want the Coalition to leave Iraq.
A fair referendum on such a question would demonstrate our level of support in Iraq, showing how few Iraqis truly oppose us. Even if, somehow, the referendum failed it would provide a good opportunity for us to leave, without suffering additional casualties for an ungrateful people. Either way, we would be better off than the current situation.
Moon Nuking
The Frankster over at imao, has brought back the Nuke the Moon shirt. I mentioned the concept back in
this post. Get yours today and be like me.
this post. Get yours today and be like me.
Monday, April 19, 2004
All that remains is the proper application of overwhelming ignorance
An article in Slate talks about the recent proliferation of Vietnam analogies. Most of the article is decent, but then as an aside the author loses connection with reality. He says:
"(What does genuinely echo Vietnam, however, is the barrage of scurrilous attacks against those who question the occupation. Richard Nixon used to argue, in a textbook case of black-is-white newspeak, that protesters who demanded an immediate end to the war were actually prolonging it—rather like saying that Martin Luther King Jr. was prolonging segregation. Now, sadly, that twisted logic is being revived to try to disparage administration critics.)"
It's "twisted logic" to say that demanding the immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces DOESN'T play into our enemies hands. That doesn't necessarily make it wrong (it's important to examine whether or not what we're doing is worth it), but no thinking person can deny that the terrorists want us to leave. This was also true for Nixon in Vietnam, it was part of Vietnamese strategy to try and convince the American public that it was not worth it, and it wasn't until Nixon made it clear by intensifying the bombing in the Linebacker I and II campaigns in 1972 despite protests, that the Vietnamese were willing to make a deal (even if it didn't end up being the best deal in the world for us, we did leave). The author might want to look up the word "paradox" in the dictionary. For the record, the first definition over at dictionary.com is:
"A seemingly contradictory statement that may nonetheless be true"
It seems contradictory to say that working to shorten the war only lengthens it, but IT IS TRUE.
"(What does genuinely echo Vietnam, however, is the barrage of scurrilous attacks against those who question the occupation. Richard Nixon used to argue, in a textbook case of black-is-white newspeak, that protesters who demanded an immediate end to the war were actually prolonging it—rather like saying that Martin Luther King Jr. was prolonging segregation. Now, sadly, that twisted logic is being revived to try to disparage administration critics.)"
It's "twisted logic" to say that demanding the immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces DOESN'T play into our enemies hands. That doesn't necessarily make it wrong (it's important to examine whether or not what we're doing is worth it), but no thinking person can deny that the terrorists want us to leave. This was also true for Nixon in Vietnam, it was part of Vietnamese strategy to try and convince the American public that it was not worth it, and it wasn't until Nixon made it clear by intensifying the bombing in the Linebacker I and II campaigns in 1972 despite protests, that the Vietnamese were willing to make a deal (even if it didn't end up being the best deal in the world for us, we did leave). The author might want to look up the word "paradox" in the dictionary. For the record, the first definition over at dictionary.com is:
"A seemingly contradictory statement that may nonetheless be true"
It seems contradictory to say that working to shorten the war only lengthens it, but IT IS TRUE.
Fight Fire with Fire
Just wanted to share this article from the folks over at Winds of Change who share my hardest of the hardlinersestness. Read it all to see why we should invade Iran and probably will. Mwaa ha ha. It's all part of the vast Nazi/Jewish (i.e. Bush/Sharon) conspiracy to prevent the use of nuclear weapons. Beware!
Rocket Science is Easy
Mr. Denbeste has the first two parts up for a series speculating on characteristics of future space warfare based off the past. I have a comment on a particular off-hand comment he makes. Poor Denbeste gets deluged with letters about such tangential issues, so I'm posting it here instead.
"When the Harrier goes into 'hover' mode, the engine has to be overcranked and water is injected into the input air stream to keep the engine from blowing up. A Harrier usually carries enough water to hover for 90 seconds."
I can't say for 100%, but I believe his rationale for the water injection system is incorrect.
The Harrier is a peculiar aircraft, being able to land and takeoff vertically;these types of aircraft are called VSTOL or Vertical and Short TakeOff and Landing vehicles. VSTOL is obviously a desirable characteristic, because you don't need a huge runway from which to fly an aircraft. The airplane could be based almost anywhere; it could function like a helicopter. But there have been relatively few VSTOL aircraft; not counting helicopters, there are basically only the Harrier and Russian Yak-141 that have been built in significant numbers. There is a reason for this, and its part of why the Harrier has a water injection system, but I want to talk about some other things first.
There are several ways to achieve VSTOL ability. The engines can be tilted to provide lift, the thrust can be redirected down to provide lift or some combination of the two. The V-22 Osprey uses the first method by tilting its engines such that it is a de-facto helicopter on takeoff and landing. The Harrier uses the second method, having ducts that direct the exhaust to movable nozzles to direct the thrust down on takeoff. The Joint Strike Fighter uses something of a combination of the two. It directs part of its thrust downward by tilting to the nozzle and uses the rest of the power it generates to turn a fan at the front of the engine. This has many advantages and is a much more efficient system and part of why the Lockheed version won the JSF contract. But I'm going on a tangent to my tangent.
The Harriers direct lift system imposes some constraints on its design. It obviously has to generate enough thrust to lift its weight at takeoff, when it will weigh the most. This means it needs a large engine. The airplane also has to be controllable when taking off and landing, which forces the engine to be centrally located such that the thrust will balance the airplane. This can cause maintenance problems; the Harrier has to have its wing removed to replace the engine, for example. There is a cost associated with making an airplane VSTOL, which is why not every plane is.
Getting to my main point real soon, be patient. For any airplane you want to make the engine as small in thrust as you can get away with because it has a big effect on the cost of the engine and on how expensive it is to operate. However, as mentioned earlier, the engine must be capable of lifting the airplane at its heaviest. Like people, airplanes have a tendency to gain weight as they age, as newer, and heavier, equipment is added. If the engine was not initially designed to allow for this weight gain, then some compromise has to made (reduced payload or fuel). The other option is to increase the thrust of the engine. I'm going to give away some secrets of aerospace now.
Turns out that rocket science is pretty easy (errr at least thrust calculations). The thrust for a rocket is equal to the mass flow rate coming out the end times the exit velocity of what's coming out. That's it (though it does make numerous assumptions and ignores the chemistry involved). The basic equation for a jet engine is pretty similar; the mass flow rate coming out of the engine times the exit velocity minus the mass flow rate coming in times the velocity of the gas coming in. So there are two ways to increase the thrust of an engine, increase the exit velocity or increase the mass flow rate. Increasing the exit velocity makes the engine much noisier, the exhaust hotter, and the engine less efficient, plus it would require major changes in the engine itself. But by injecting something like say, water, into the exhaust the mass flow rate (and hence thrust) can be increased without causing other deleterious effects or forcing the engine to be changed. The disadvantage of this is that the water that is injected wastes volume and increases the weight of the vehicle, slightly decreasing performance. I'm pretty sure this is how and why the Harrier has a water injection system. It needed more thrust, but only for short periods of time, so it was cost-effective to just tack on a water injection system instead of redesigning the engine. A pretty small part, to be sure, but I thought the accompanying explanations could be helpful. And now you can tell people that you know rocket science!
"When the Harrier goes into 'hover' mode, the engine has to be overcranked and water is injected into the input air stream to keep the engine from blowing up. A Harrier usually carries enough water to hover for 90 seconds."
I can't say for 100%, but I believe his rationale for the water injection system is incorrect.
The Harrier is a peculiar aircraft, being able to land and takeoff vertically;these types of aircraft are called VSTOL or Vertical and Short TakeOff and Landing vehicles. VSTOL is obviously a desirable characteristic, because you don't need a huge runway from which to fly an aircraft. The airplane could be based almost anywhere; it could function like a helicopter. But there have been relatively few VSTOL aircraft; not counting helicopters, there are basically only the Harrier and Russian Yak-141 that have been built in significant numbers. There is a reason for this, and its part of why the Harrier has a water injection system, but I want to talk about some other things first.
There are several ways to achieve VSTOL ability. The engines can be tilted to provide lift, the thrust can be redirected down to provide lift or some combination of the two. The V-22 Osprey uses the first method by tilting its engines such that it is a de-facto helicopter on takeoff and landing. The Harrier uses the second method, having ducts that direct the exhaust to movable nozzles to direct the thrust down on takeoff. The Joint Strike Fighter uses something of a combination of the two. It directs part of its thrust downward by tilting to the nozzle and uses the rest of the power it generates to turn a fan at the front of the engine. This has many advantages and is a much more efficient system and part of why the Lockheed version won the JSF contract. But I'm going on a tangent to my tangent.
The Harriers direct lift system imposes some constraints on its design. It obviously has to generate enough thrust to lift its weight at takeoff, when it will weigh the most. This means it needs a large engine. The airplane also has to be controllable when taking off and landing, which forces the engine to be centrally located such that the thrust will balance the airplane. This can cause maintenance problems; the Harrier has to have its wing removed to replace the engine, for example. There is a cost associated with making an airplane VSTOL, which is why not every plane is.
Getting to my main point real soon, be patient. For any airplane you want to make the engine as small in thrust as you can get away with because it has a big effect on the cost of the engine and on how expensive it is to operate. However, as mentioned earlier, the engine must be capable of lifting the airplane at its heaviest. Like people, airplanes have a tendency to gain weight as they age, as newer, and heavier, equipment is added. If the engine was not initially designed to allow for this weight gain, then some compromise has to made (reduced payload or fuel). The other option is to increase the thrust of the engine. I'm going to give away some secrets of aerospace now.
Turns out that rocket science is pretty easy (errr at least thrust calculations). The thrust for a rocket is equal to the mass flow rate coming out the end times the exit velocity of what's coming out. That's it (though it does make numerous assumptions and ignores the chemistry involved). The basic equation for a jet engine is pretty similar; the mass flow rate coming out of the engine times the exit velocity minus the mass flow rate coming in times the velocity of the gas coming in. So there are two ways to increase the thrust of an engine, increase the exit velocity or increase the mass flow rate. Increasing the exit velocity makes the engine much noisier, the exhaust hotter, and the engine less efficient, plus it would require major changes in the engine itself. But by injecting something like say, water, into the exhaust the mass flow rate (and hence thrust) can be increased without causing other deleterious effects or forcing the engine to be changed. The disadvantage of this is that the water that is injected wastes volume and increases the weight of the vehicle, slightly decreasing performance. I'm pretty sure this is how and why the Harrier has a water injection system. It needed more thrust, but only for short periods of time, so it was cost-effective to just tack on a water injection system instead of redesigning the engine. A pretty small part, to be sure, but I thought the accompanying explanations could be helpful. And now you can tell people that you know rocket science!
Sunday, April 18, 2004
Seven Habits of Highly Effective Terrorism for Dummies
Is it just me, or are terrorists exceedingly retarded? There are THOUSANDS of terrorists controlling MILLIONS of dollars in money. With access to these kind of resources they should be making alot more than three major attacks over the past three years (9/11, Bali, Madrid), and a bunch of piddly attacks in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, etc. If I had access to 1000 useful idiots and 10 million bucks (and I lost my conscience) i feel confident I could wreak much havoc.
So, for your amusement and because I don't think any terrorists will read this (ha ha almost no one will read this), I hereby provide "Seven Habits of Highly Effective Terrorism for Dummies."
Habit 1: Make your attacks work for you
You can never have too much money. It's important that attacks serve multiple purposes. For example, before the 9/11 attacks I would have taken as much extra money as possible and used it to sell short on airline and insurance stocks. If Osama had done this, he could have inlaid his cave with gold he would have made so much money. Before any attack, I'd figure out which companies or industries it would help or hurt and make money off it. If I was going to attack nuclear power plants or cause some blackouts I would sell short on energy companies, for instance. More money means more attacks, and it's always good strategy to kill two birds with one stone. In Pentagon-speak this would be called "leveraging resources."
Habit 2: Randomate
Part of what makes terrorism so terrorfying is that it's supposed to be random. But Osama and Friends haven't been that random. They hit the same place twice (WTC) and made an attack on the 2.5 anniversary of 9/11 (the Madrid bombing happened on 3/11). Patterns and predictable start with the same letter for a reason (or something). I would use a random number generator to decide dates for attacks and also to pick targets, after making a large database of potential ones that included a wide variety of types and locations. The other side (i.e. us) can't protect everywhere and if terrorists were truly random a good defence would be virtually impossible without taking a large toll.
Habit 3: Bluster bad, bombing good
Osama has been regularly releasing audio tapes (because he's either dead or so sick that it would be embarrassing to be seen) with threats. At this point, it's a little counterproductive to make threats. If you're going to threaten somebody then follow up on it. Nothing makes you look weaker than bluster you can't back up. If you're going to make empty threats the least you can do is attack someone other than who you threatened, just to keep people off guard.
Habit 4: Even the little ones count
Even if you can only make fairly small-scale attacks, ones on U.S. soil are worth more, psychologically. Osama should have taken notes when a homeless crazy person and a young boy made most of the Northeast terrorfied for weeks. It doesn't even take that much resource-wise, just a few crackpots with marksman training, to have a real psychological effect. If I was in charge there would be a new sniper in a different area (chosen with a random number generator of course) every few months. That would keep those Americans on their toes. And the resources could come by having the jihadis stop their stupid frontal attacks on U.S. soldiers in Iraq.
Habit 5: Preserve resources
Obviously wacko extremists willing to die for no good reason are going to be in fairly short supply. Make 'em count. Don't waste them against highly-trained U.S. soldiers in Iraq.
Habit 6: Follow the leader
The whole Blackhawk Down thing was a nice try in Iraq, but clearly it ain't gonna work. Read up on some Vietnam war history if you want to see some good strategy. The Vietnamese had no hope of beating the U.S. on the battlefield so they let dumbass Americans (cough) do their work for them. Encourage this sort of foolishness in your enemy; lie and say that if only the "root causes of terrorism" (ie globalization, poverty and whatever other crap leftists always cite) really ARE the reason you want to kill. It might even work, but it would be sure to muddy the waters enough to confuse the heck out of Americans lacking in the abililty to think.
Habit 7: No state sponsorship
It's tempting as a terrorist to align yourself with like-minded states like Iran, Syria, and Afghanistan back in the day. Bad news. States are too good a targets and have no chance of standing up to the U.S. If terrorists are like fish, a friendly state is like a barrel, not the place to be when the shark (U.S.) comes knocking. Stay in Western countries that are too politically correct to screen people based on race. The closer you are to your enemies the more difficult it is for them to find you.
If Osama would take the above advice he might even live long enough to die of kidney failure (if he's even still alive of course).
So, for your amusement and because I don't think any terrorists will read this (ha ha almost no one will read this), I hereby provide "Seven Habits of Highly Effective Terrorism for Dummies."
Habit 1: Make your attacks work for you
You can never have too much money. It's important that attacks serve multiple purposes. For example, before the 9/11 attacks I would have taken as much extra money as possible and used it to sell short on airline and insurance stocks. If Osama had done this, he could have inlaid his cave with gold he would have made so much money. Before any attack, I'd figure out which companies or industries it would help or hurt and make money off it. If I was going to attack nuclear power plants or cause some blackouts I would sell short on energy companies, for instance. More money means more attacks, and it's always good strategy to kill two birds with one stone. In Pentagon-speak this would be called "leveraging resources."
Habit 2: Randomate
Part of what makes terrorism so terrorfying is that it's supposed to be random. But Osama and Friends haven't been that random. They hit the same place twice (WTC) and made an attack on the 2.5 anniversary of 9/11 (the Madrid bombing happened on 3/11). Patterns and predictable start with the same letter for a reason (or something). I would use a random number generator to decide dates for attacks and also to pick targets, after making a large database of potential ones that included a wide variety of types and locations. The other side (i.e. us) can't protect everywhere and if terrorists were truly random a good defence would be virtually impossible without taking a large toll.
Habit 3: Bluster bad, bombing good
Osama has been regularly releasing audio tapes (because he's either dead or so sick that it would be embarrassing to be seen) with threats. At this point, it's a little counterproductive to make threats. If you're going to threaten somebody then follow up on it. Nothing makes you look weaker than bluster you can't back up. If you're going to make empty threats the least you can do is attack someone other than who you threatened, just to keep people off guard.
Habit 4: Even the little ones count
Even if you can only make fairly small-scale attacks, ones on U.S. soil are worth more, psychologically. Osama should have taken notes when a homeless crazy person and a young boy made most of the Northeast terrorfied for weeks. It doesn't even take that much resource-wise, just a few crackpots with marksman training, to have a real psychological effect. If I was in charge there would be a new sniper in a different area (chosen with a random number generator of course) every few months. That would keep those Americans on their toes. And the resources could come by having the jihadis stop their stupid frontal attacks on U.S. soldiers in Iraq.
Habit 5: Preserve resources
Obviously wacko extremists willing to die for no good reason are going to be in fairly short supply. Make 'em count. Don't waste them against highly-trained U.S. soldiers in Iraq.
Habit 6: Follow the leader
The whole Blackhawk Down thing was a nice try in Iraq, but clearly it ain't gonna work. Read up on some Vietnam war history if you want to see some good strategy. The Vietnamese had no hope of beating the U.S. on the battlefield so they let dumbass Americans (cough) do their work for them. Encourage this sort of foolishness in your enemy; lie and say that if only the "root causes of terrorism" (ie globalization, poverty and whatever other crap leftists always cite) really ARE the reason you want to kill. It might even work, but it would be sure to muddy the waters enough to confuse the heck out of Americans lacking in the abililty to think.
Habit 7: No state sponsorship
It's tempting as a terrorist to align yourself with like-minded states like Iran, Syria, and Afghanistan back in the day. Bad news. States are too good a targets and have no chance of standing up to the U.S. If terrorists are like fish, a friendly state is like a barrel, not the place to be when the shark (U.S.) comes knocking. Stay in Western countries that are too politically correct to screen people based on race. The closer you are to your enemies the more difficult it is for them to find you.
If Osama would take the above advice he might even live long enough to die of kidney failure (if he's even still alive of course).
Mind-read some of this
Reading this article at the Weekly Standard when I come across this:
"Hillary Rodham Clinton, who is campaigning for Kerry while secretly hoping he loses so as to clear the way for her own presidential bid in 2008, says" ...
What? Give me a break. When exactly did Mr. Stelzer gain the ability to read minds? This was an entirely unnecessary aside; the least he could do is qualify it with a "probably" so he doesn't sound like such a jack-ass. This comment had basically nothing to do with the rest of the article. Mr. Editor should have cut it, it makes the author sound like a jerk and adds nothing.
In the completely unrelated department, I had previously mentioned the fact that the z on my keyboard stopped working after I spilled some water on my keyboard. Well, yesterday I was demonstrating to someone at work that it didn't work and it suddenly started working again. yay.
"Hillary Rodham Clinton, who is campaigning for Kerry while secretly hoping he loses so as to clear the way for her own presidential bid in 2008, says" ...
What? Give me a break. When exactly did Mr. Stelzer gain the ability to read minds? This was an entirely unnecessary aside; the least he could do is qualify it with a "probably" so he doesn't sound like such a jack-ass. This comment had basically nothing to do with the rest of the article. Mr. Editor should have cut it, it makes the author sound like a jerk and adds nothing.
In the completely unrelated department, I had previously mentioned the fact that the z on my keyboard stopped working after I spilled some water on my keyboard. Well, yesterday I was demonstrating to someone at work that it didn't work and it suddenly started working again. yay.
Tuesday, April 13, 2004
The hardest of the hard-liners
Read an article in Slate about how Bush is distorting Kerry's views on the War on Terror (blaa blaa blaa, same old), and came upon this quote:
"Not even the hardest of the hard-liners today proposes additional land invasions as part of the war on terror."
Ummmm. I do. I think we should militarily depose the mullahs in Iran, hopefully before they get nukes. Because Iran has elements of democracy already (the mullahs have a parallel government that has veto power) we could take out the mullahs without having to occupy the country. There would be a government all but in place; though it would require much assistance.
And on top of this, I think we need to do a little housecleaning in the Bekaa Valley region of Lebanon where the Iranian-backed Hebollah calls home, though it is also infested (with all implications use of this word entails) with other terrorist groups.
So apparently I am the hardest of the hard-liners. Maybe I should add that quote to my sidebar.
"Not even the hardest of the hard-liners today proposes additional land invasions as part of the war on terror."
Ummmm. I do. I think we should militarily depose the mullahs in Iran, hopefully before they get nukes. Because Iran has elements of democracy already (the mullahs have a parallel government that has veto power) we could take out the mullahs without having to occupy the country. There would be a government all but in place; though it would require much assistance.
And on top of this, I think we need to do a little housecleaning in the Bekaa Valley region of Lebanon where the Iranian-backed Hebollah calls home, though it is also infested (with all implications use of this word entails) with other terrorist groups.
So apparently I am the hardest of the hard-liners. Maybe I should add that quote to my sidebar.
UFO's and the Soviet Union
I saw this at One Hand Clapping, which linked to this, leading me to this original article (a convoluted path to be sure). I never thought about how the Soviet Union would handle UFO's before. Their response, try to shoot them down, is unsurprising; it's amusing to see how often they tried and failed to get them, however. I wonder if they thought they were part of some capitalist conspiracy?
"All that remains is the proper application of overwhelming force"
The title is a quote from a jubilant Churchill after hearing that the U.S. was joining WWII after Pearl Harbor. Many thought Churchill was being over-the-top, after all, it was 1941; Germany had conquered almost all of continental Europe and was at the gates of Moscow, and the Japanese had taken much of China and were about to go on a rampage throughout the Pacific. But the quote was correct; the size and strength of the United States virtually assured an Allied victory. It would have taken ineptitude of the first-order (or a Nazi nuclear bomb) for us to have lost WWII; our strength in men and material dwarfed that of the Axis powers. The only way we could have lost is if we beat ourselves.
Unfortunately we have something of a history of doing so. Obviously we had to beat ourselves in the Civil War (by definition). And more recently we defeated ourselves in Vietnam. It is the conventional wisdom that the Vietnam War was fundamentally unwinnable, at least politically. I've always believed that the political limitations placed on our forces caused our defeat. Not entirely true, according to an article in NRO today. In it, the author argues that in the period 1968-72 we switched tactics and virtually defeated North Vietnam, and if we had continued to help them they might be in the same position as South Korea, prosperous and free. But what we won on the battlefield we gave up on the negotiating table.
Recently many have compared our current situation in Iraq to Vietnam (including a certain senator from Taxachusetts with a propensity for missing bridges, ahem). This is perhaps not that far from the truth. In Vietnam we won militarily but lost politically. We are in danger of the same in Iraq, if we persist in making foreign policy a bitterly partisan issue. We are the only ones who can defeat us. That is the political lesson of Vietnam. Let's not do it again; let's keep Vietnam as the only mark on our otherwise perfect record in war. Recent polls show a drop in support for the war. Our ultimate victory cannot be in question, it merely requires us to stay the course.
Militarily, it is clear that we've learned the lesson of Vietnam. We aren't suffering large numbers of casualties; we've figured out how to use our superior technology to our advantage. We are much more powerful than any of our enemies. For us to win, all we have to do properly apply our power; which is, of course, more difficult than it sounds.
Unfortunately we have something of a history of doing so. Obviously we had to beat ourselves in the Civil War (by definition). And more recently we defeated ourselves in Vietnam. It is the conventional wisdom that the Vietnam War was fundamentally unwinnable, at least politically. I've always believed that the political limitations placed on our forces caused our defeat. Not entirely true, according to an article in NRO today. In it, the author argues that in the period 1968-72 we switched tactics and virtually defeated North Vietnam, and if we had continued to help them they might be in the same position as South Korea, prosperous and free. But what we won on the battlefield we gave up on the negotiating table.
Recently many have compared our current situation in Iraq to Vietnam (including a certain senator from Taxachusetts with a propensity for missing bridges, ahem). This is perhaps not that far from the truth. In Vietnam we won militarily but lost politically. We are in danger of the same in Iraq, if we persist in making foreign policy a bitterly partisan issue. We are the only ones who can defeat us. That is the political lesson of Vietnam. Let's not do it again; let's keep Vietnam as the only mark on our otherwise perfect record in war. Recent polls show a drop in support for the war. Our ultimate victory cannot be in question, it merely requires us to stay the course.
Militarily, it is clear that we've learned the lesson of Vietnam. We aren't suffering large numbers of casualties; we've figured out how to use our superior technology to our advantage. We are much more powerful than any of our enemies. For us to win, all we have to do properly apply our power; which is, of course, more difficult than it sounds.
Monday, April 05, 2004
Plane Crazy Article
Saw an interesting article in the WaPo (Washington Post) today. Some of the points he makes are good, but much is crap. I will therefore unleash the Fisk of Fury to enlighten you.
The subject of the article is the F-22 Raptor; the Air Forces newest and most expensive fighter. The article begins:
Imagine paying $300 million for just one fighter plane. That's enough to build a 300-bed hospital or 10 new high schools, or pay for the national school lunch programs in the District, Maryland and Virginia for more than a year. Yet, the way things are going, now $300 million is what one Air Force F-22 fighter plane is going to cost us taxpayers.
Yawn. Thanks for the meaningless comparison. It is trivially easy to take some high dollar item, like a fighter jet or an aircraft carrier, and try to point out what else could be done for this money. It's not the federal government's job to build hospitals or schools, but it is up to the Government (with a capital G) to provide for defense. It would be valid to point out how many thousands of infantry could be paid for and sent to help in Iraq with $300 million, but the examples he provides are crap. It is a different question to say that this money could be used for non-defense needs; we've already decided that this money will go towards defense.
The Pentagon's figures show that it intends to buy 278 F-22 fighters for $72 billion, or $258 million a plane, counting research and development costs already spent to bring it into being. But the General Accounting Office has just told Congress this will not be enough. The GAO says it will take an additional $8 billion-plus to finance the planned upgrades to make the F-22 a high-tech ground attack aircraft as well as air superiority fighter. This improvement would push the F-22's price tag up to $300 million.
The reason the thing is so damn expensive is in the first line of this paragraph. At one point, we were planning on building 442 F-22's, and so Lockheed-Martin (who's building it) planned for 442 aircraft and chose the manufacturing methods and materials to match. When you cut the number built in half, of COURSE the cost is going to go up. Not only would they potentially be using different methods, but the development costs would be amortized over fewer vehicles. This is what happened to the B-2 and why it cost $1.2 billion (yes BILLION), because they only built 22 when they (Northrop-Grumman in this case) had been planning on hundreds. It's elementary economics but unmentioned in the article.
The $80 billion to buy a fleet of F-22's is one-third higher than this year's Education Department budget and about eight times as much as the State Department's current annual budget. The top priority the F-22 is getting as the president and Congress apportion tax dollars suggests this is a must-have airplane. But in fact changes in the world and other developments argue against buying this plane in the numbers being contemplated. President Bush is scheduled to decide whether to put the F-22 in full-scale production this December. Here are some reasons he should say no:
Welcome back to meaningless comparison land. Having the world's best military, by far, is expensive. If we're already going to be spending this money on defense then comparing it to other spending is ridiculous. If you look here you'll see that the U.S. spends ~3.2% of GDP on defense, or number 47 in the world in this index. This is still smaller than was spent during most of the Cold War (about 5% of GDP). To reiterate again, don't compare spending money on ONE defense program to non-defense related items; it is meaningless. After this first point the author digs himself a deeper hole. He says that we shouldn't build "this plane in the numbers being contemplated". That's a good idea. Let's build less of them so that they'll cost more per plane and he can write another article about how the costs have grown (see above). Maybe he's thinking of his job security. Let's go through some of his reasons the plane shouldn't be built.
The threat that the plane was designed to combat no longer exists. Back in 1986, when the F-22's gestation began, the Cold War was on. Air Force leaders successfully argued that they needed a super fighter plane that could down, at long range, the swarms of warplanes the Soviets were expected to put over Europe in a shooting war. The Pentagon is not worried about that kind of war today.
By this guy's logic after the Cold War we should have scrapped the whole military because it was designed for a threat that no longer existed. The military is flexible, as was proved in Iraq and Afghanistan it is capable of using vehicles in ways to counter whatever particular threat exists. And what's this about not expecting swarms of warplanes? Has he not heard of China? They have hordes of obsolete aircraft, and a significant number of Su-27s equal to the best of what we currently have, that we may someday have to fight. Much better to be prepared than caught with your pants down, especially when it takes such a long time to develop a new aircraft.
The United States has less expensive fighter bombers flying and others in development that could shoot down any enemy's warplanes. For example, the updated F-16 fighter bomber, which is still in production, remains a deadly killing machine. One thing I learned in auditing the Navy's 11-month test pilot training course at Patuxent River was that today's air battles are usually won by the side that has the best "systems" -- the high-tech radar, communications and missiles -- and crews. The metal airplane itself, the platform, has become so secondary that pilots often complain they have been reduced to office managers running the systems. The United States has a huge lead in systems and air crews.
"Others in development" must be referring to the Joint Strike Fighter (the F-22's little brother), which is the only other fighter aircraft in development. The JSF is a great airplane but not nearly as capable as the F-22; it is designed to replace a wide variety of aircraft in a wide variety of missions and is therefore a compromise design when it comes to air-to-air combat. The F-22 is the point of the sword and the JSF is the edge of the sword, so to speak, to be most effective you need both. Also the F-16 is no longer in production for the U.S.; Lockheed is building them for Israel and Singapore, I believe. And when these orders are done the manufacturing facility will be converted for use in building JSF's, so it is unrealistic to build more of these. Finally, the author talks about how the airframe is so much less important than the innards of an airplane in making it more effective. This is true, but the stealthiness of the F-22 is still a big edge. Also, the systems on the F-22 are more advanced than anything we have, so it would be, by his own logic, more effective. The clincher is that the systems are also the most expensive part of an airplane. So his bitching about the cost of the F-22 would apply to upgrading any other aircraft, except that the maintenance costs for the F-22 would be much less for a new aircraft compared to our current '70s era fleet.
The Navy has to worry about the same threats that have driven the Air Force to keep building the F-22 even though the Cold War is long over. Former defense secretary and now vice president Dick Cheney decided that Navy pilots could safely go to war in a lesser and cheaper plane than the F-22. He canceled the A-12 flying wing fighter, which had many of the same expensive stealth characteristics as the F-22 and which the Navy had planned to base on aircraft carriers. Cheney said the A-12 was costing too much. The Navy settled for the $92 million-a-copy F/A-18 E and F to combat enemy planes and penetrate air defenses on the ground. If this Chevrolet is good enough for the Navy, why do we need to buy almost 300 of the Air Force's F-22 Cadillacs?
Let's repeat, it is primarily the internal systems (more specifically the software to run the thing, not stealth) that make it so expensive. The author also clearly does not understand why the F-18E/F was developed. The F-18E/F is supposedly just an upgrade to the existing F-18s but is in fact essentially a completely new design. Why did the Navy try to pass it off as an upgrade? Because it was an easier sell to Congress, a lesson learned from the A-12 program. This is not a good example.
For the threats beyond what the F-16 and F/A-18 E and F can handle, the Pentagon is already far along in building a new fighter bomber, the Joint Strike Fighter. It is expected to cost less than a third of what the F-22 does, $80 million vs. $300 million. Some of the Joint Strike Fighters will be able to do something the F-22 cannot: take off and land from a short runway or carrier deck. This is a highly desired capability in many global hot spots where long runways are scarce.
As mentioned above, the JSF was built for a different reason. It is a smaller, cheaper airplane because it is less capable. The Air Force philosophy is to have a high-quality aircraft in fewer numbers (currently the F-15) to do the primary air-to-air and a lower-quality aircraft in higher numbers (currently the F-16) to be primarily air-to-ground. It is unrealistic to expect the JSF to be able to replace the F-22; it will not be as capable for air-to-air. Period. And when he says the JSF can take over vertically he's only half telling the truth. The vast majority of JSF's will be built for the Air Force and Navy and will NOT be able to take off vertically. A small number will be built for the Marines and the British that can (at a cost in performance), but it is not an advantage shared by the whole fleet.
Although the F-22's ability to foil enemy ground defenses is indeed impressive, there is a bloodless way to destroy them in the works. It takes the form of unmanned bombers that can fly low and hit antiaircraft sites while manned aircraft direct the drones from a safe distance above.
Here he shifts gears in his attack to something completely new. This two sentence throw-away paragaph suggests that manned aircraft period are obsolete. If he seriously wants to present this as an alternative he needs to back it up. But I'll consider it anyway. The Air Force is envisioning the use of unmanned vehicles to take out anti-aircraft sites, but this is not the mission the F-22 would be used for anyway. It is an air-to-air vehicle that will have a secondary role as a bomber after the enemy defenses are swept away. This is a related mission, but significantly different; an unmanned vehicle could take out the enemy's air defenses while the F-22 destroyed its air defenses. They are complimentary, not contradictory, which could be why this is barely mentioned.
Buying the expensive F-22 would worsen the Pentagon's death spiral in procurement. Even within today's huge Pentagon budget there isn't the money to buy enough expensive planes to modernize the military's aging air fleets. Only a few flying Cadillacs can be purchased in any one year. Yet the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps need to keep hundreds of aircraft flying to patrol their global police beats. So the armed services spend billions to keep old crates flying to cover the hot spots. These gigantic maintenance costs eat up money needed to buy new planes, meaning our aircraft fleets keep getting older and more dangerous to fly despite the billions being spent on them.
To repeat myself, the defense budget is large in absolute terms, but not that big in relative terms. The reason it is so much bigger in absolute terms is because our economy has grown so much since the Cold War. After this first line, this guy proceeds to destroy his own argument. He says that we spend massive amounts to keep our ancient airfleet flying. OK. Doesn't this make the argument for buying new aircraft stronger? We need to build new planes to replace our old and expensive-to-maintain current ones, not cancel one of our very few airplane development programs.
We don't need the F-22 no matter what it costs. President Bush and Congress owe it to the taxpayers to ask themselves whether this trip into the wild blue yonder is necessary.
Wait a minute. In the previous paragraph did he not say that we need to replace our current aircraft. Now he's saying "we don't need the F-22 no matter what it costs." Well, which is it? Do we need to replace our aircraft or don't we? A little consistency please. I say we need to replace our airplanes (though in the interests of full disclosure some of the paid research I'm working on is for Lockheed on the JSF program, so I AM biased).
The subject of the article is the F-22 Raptor; the Air Forces newest and most expensive fighter. The article begins:
Imagine paying $300 million for just one fighter plane. That's enough to build a 300-bed hospital or 10 new high schools, or pay for the national school lunch programs in the District, Maryland and Virginia for more than a year. Yet, the way things are going, now $300 million is what one Air Force F-22 fighter plane is going to cost us taxpayers.
Yawn. Thanks for the meaningless comparison. It is trivially easy to take some high dollar item, like a fighter jet or an aircraft carrier, and try to point out what else could be done for this money. It's not the federal government's job to build hospitals or schools, but it is up to the Government (with a capital G) to provide for defense. It would be valid to point out how many thousands of infantry could be paid for and sent to help in Iraq with $300 million, but the examples he provides are crap. It is a different question to say that this money could be used for non-defense needs; we've already decided that this money will go towards defense.
The Pentagon's figures show that it intends to buy 278 F-22 fighters for $72 billion, or $258 million a plane, counting research and development costs already spent to bring it into being. But the General Accounting Office has just told Congress this will not be enough. The GAO says it will take an additional $8 billion-plus to finance the planned upgrades to make the F-22 a high-tech ground attack aircraft as well as air superiority fighter. This improvement would push the F-22's price tag up to $300 million.
The reason the thing is so damn expensive is in the first line of this paragraph. At one point, we were planning on building 442 F-22's, and so Lockheed-Martin (who's building it) planned for 442 aircraft and chose the manufacturing methods and materials to match. When you cut the number built in half, of COURSE the cost is going to go up. Not only would they potentially be using different methods, but the development costs would be amortized over fewer vehicles. This is what happened to the B-2 and why it cost $1.2 billion (yes BILLION), because they only built 22 when they (Northrop-Grumman in this case) had been planning on hundreds. It's elementary economics but unmentioned in the article.
The $80 billion to buy a fleet of F-22's is one-third higher than this year's Education Department budget and about eight times as much as the State Department's current annual budget. The top priority the F-22 is getting as the president and Congress apportion tax dollars suggests this is a must-have airplane. But in fact changes in the world and other developments argue against buying this plane in the numbers being contemplated. President Bush is scheduled to decide whether to put the F-22 in full-scale production this December. Here are some reasons he should say no:
Welcome back to meaningless comparison land. Having the world's best military, by far, is expensive. If we're already going to be spending this money on defense then comparing it to other spending is ridiculous. If you look here you'll see that the U.S. spends ~3.2% of GDP on defense, or number 47 in the world in this index. This is still smaller than was spent during most of the Cold War (about 5% of GDP). To reiterate again, don't compare spending money on ONE defense program to non-defense related items; it is meaningless. After this first point the author digs himself a deeper hole. He says that we shouldn't build "this plane in the numbers being contemplated". That's a good idea. Let's build less of them so that they'll cost more per plane and he can write another article about how the costs have grown (see above). Maybe he's thinking of his job security. Let's go through some of his reasons the plane shouldn't be built.
The threat that the plane was designed to combat no longer exists. Back in 1986, when the F-22's gestation began, the Cold War was on. Air Force leaders successfully argued that they needed a super fighter plane that could down, at long range, the swarms of warplanes the Soviets were expected to put over Europe in a shooting war. The Pentagon is not worried about that kind of war today.
By this guy's logic after the Cold War we should have scrapped the whole military because it was designed for a threat that no longer existed. The military is flexible, as was proved in Iraq and Afghanistan it is capable of using vehicles in ways to counter whatever particular threat exists. And what's this about not expecting swarms of warplanes? Has he not heard of China? They have hordes of obsolete aircraft, and a significant number of Su-27s equal to the best of what we currently have, that we may someday have to fight. Much better to be prepared than caught with your pants down, especially when it takes such a long time to develop a new aircraft.
The United States has less expensive fighter bombers flying and others in development that could shoot down any enemy's warplanes. For example, the updated F-16 fighter bomber, which is still in production, remains a deadly killing machine. One thing I learned in auditing the Navy's 11-month test pilot training course at Patuxent River was that today's air battles are usually won by the side that has the best "systems" -- the high-tech radar, communications and missiles -- and crews. The metal airplane itself, the platform, has become so secondary that pilots often complain they have been reduced to office managers running the systems. The United States has a huge lead in systems and air crews.
"Others in development" must be referring to the Joint Strike Fighter (the F-22's little brother), which is the only other fighter aircraft in development. The JSF is a great airplane but not nearly as capable as the F-22; it is designed to replace a wide variety of aircraft in a wide variety of missions and is therefore a compromise design when it comes to air-to-air combat. The F-22 is the point of the sword and the JSF is the edge of the sword, so to speak, to be most effective you need both. Also the F-16 is no longer in production for the U.S.; Lockheed is building them for Israel and Singapore, I believe. And when these orders are done the manufacturing facility will be converted for use in building JSF's, so it is unrealistic to build more of these. Finally, the author talks about how the airframe is so much less important than the innards of an airplane in making it more effective. This is true, but the stealthiness of the F-22 is still a big edge. Also, the systems on the F-22 are more advanced than anything we have, so it would be, by his own logic, more effective. The clincher is that the systems are also the most expensive part of an airplane. So his bitching about the cost of the F-22 would apply to upgrading any other aircraft, except that the maintenance costs for the F-22 would be much less for a new aircraft compared to our current '70s era fleet.
The Navy has to worry about the same threats that have driven the Air Force to keep building the F-22 even though the Cold War is long over. Former defense secretary and now vice president Dick Cheney decided that Navy pilots could safely go to war in a lesser and cheaper plane than the F-22. He canceled the A-12 flying wing fighter, which had many of the same expensive stealth characteristics as the F-22 and which the Navy had planned to base on aircraft carriers. Cheney said the A-12 was costing too much. The Navy settled for the $92 million-a-copy F/A-18 E and F to combat enemy planes and penetrate air defenses on the ground. If this Chevrolet is good enough for the Navy, why do we need to buy almost 300 of the Air Force's F-22 Cadillacs?
Let's repeat, it is primarily the internal systems (more specifically the software to run the thing, not stealth) that make it so expensive. The author also clearly does not understand why the F-18E/F was developed. The F-18E/F is supposedly just an upgrade to the existing F-18s but is in fact essentially a completely new design. Why did the Navy try to pass it off as an upgrade? Because it was an easier sell to Congress, a lesson learned from the A-12 program. This is not a good example.
For the threats beyond what the F-16 and F/A-18 E and F can handle, the Pentagon is already far along in building a new fighter bomber, the Joint Strike Fighter. It is expected to cost less than a third of what the F-22 does, $80 million vs. $300 million. Some of the Joint Strike Fighters will be able to do something the F-22 cannot: take off and land from a short runway or carrier deck. This is a highly desired capability in many global hot spots where long runways are scarce.
As mentioned above, the JSF was built for a different reason. It is a smaller, cheaper airplane because it is less capable. The Air Force philosophy is to have a high-quality aircraft in fewer numbers (currently the F-15) to do the primary air-to-air and a lower-quality aircraft in higher numbers (currently the F-16) to be primarily air-to-ground. It is unrealistic to expect the JSF to be able to replace the F-22; it will not be as capable for air-to-air. Period. And when he says the JSF can take over vertically he's only half telling the truth. The vast majority of JSF's will be built for the Air Force and Navy and will NOT be able to take off vertically. A small number will be built for the Marines and the British that can (at a cost in performance), but it is not an advantage shared by the whole fleet.
Although the F-22's ability to foil enemy ground defenses is indeed impressive, there is a bloodless way to destroy them in the works. It takes the form of unmanned bombers that can fly low and hit antiaircraft sites while manned aircraft direct the drones from a safe distance above.
Here he shifts gears in his attack to something completely new. This two sentence throw-away paragaph suggests that manned aircraft period are obsolete. If he seriously wants to present this as an alternative he needs to back it up. But I'll consider it anyway. The Air Force is envisioning the use of unmanned vehicles to take out anti-aircraft sites, but this is not the mission the F-22 would be used for anyway. It is an air-to-air vehicle that will have a secondary role as a bomber after the enemy defenses are swept away. This is a related mission, but significantly different; an unmanned vehicle could take out the enemy's air defenses while the F-22 destroyed its air defenses. They are complimentary, not contradictory, which could be why this is barely mentioned.
Buying the expensive F-22 would worsen the Pentagon's death spiral in procurement. Even within today's huge Pentagon budget there isn't the money to buy enough expensive planes to modernize the military's aging air fleets. Only a few flying Cadillacs can be purchased in any one year. Yet the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps need to keep hundreds of aircraft flying to patrol their global police beats. So the armed services spend billions to keep old crates flying to cover the hot spots. These gigantic maintenance costs eat up money needed to buy new planes, meaning our aircraft fleets keep getting older and more dangerous to fly despite the billions being spent on them.
To repeat myself, the defense budget is large in absolute terms, but not that big in relative terms. The reason it is so much bigger in absolute terms is because our economy has grown so much since the Cold War. After this first line, this guy proceeds to destroy his own argument. He says that we spend massive amounts to keep our ancient airfleet flying. OK. Doesn't this make the argument for buying new aircraft stronger? We need to build new planes to replace our old and expensive-to-maintain current ones, not cancel one of our very few airplane development programs.
We don't need the F-22 no matter what it costs. President Bush and Congress owe it to the taxpayers to ask themselves whether this trip into the wild blue yonder is necessary.
Wait a minute. In the previous paragraph did he not say that we need to replace our current aircraft. Now he's saying "we don't need the F-22 no matter what it costs." Well, which is it? Do we need to replace our aircraft or don't we? A little consistency please. I say we need to replace our airplanes (though in the interests of full disclosure some of the paid research I'm working on is for Lockheed on the JSF program, so I AM biased).
A Simple Question
If every terrorist the U.S. kills is a shahid (martyr) and will go to heaven, then aren't we doing them a favor by sending them there sooner? By killing terrorists aren't we just respecting their culture? They have defined us as the enemy, so aren't we just playing the part they want us to? Shouldn't the multiculturalists be FOR killing more terrorists?
Linkagery
I don't want to turn this into a link blog as there are plenty of those out there (see sidebar), but there are a few things I want to point out today. This will not be a frequent feature, I've just got some free time while running some aerodynamic analysis in the background.
First, in National Review there was a funny article with some satirical commercials for the NCAA tournament. I think the Chevy Obliviator commercial would make a good real commercial since that's the whole point of getting a gigantoid SUV.
Second, Jason Van Steenwyk of IraqNow, has a possible explanation for why I tend towards the realpolitik school of thought, since I've enjoyed European history since I was kid.
Third, the NY Times reports that an arrest warrant has been issued for Moktada al-Sadr, whose followers have been clashing with our troops recently. According to Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) [warning: some profanity] Sadr has NO clerical training and is basically an Iranian stooge. Let's be rid of him.
Fourth, the military is evidently having no problems reaching its recruiting goals. Turns out that Iraq is not causing an exodus of soldiers out of the millitary, contrary to much speculation by anti-war pansies.
Fifth, here's some motivation for me to add comments or my e-mail address. Frank J has had on ongoing conversation with a wacky leftist he calls The Limey. This is the latest chapter, with links to the previous ones. If you need some humor just start at the beginning and enjoy Frank at his best.
And lastly, from Frankie J's archives, is this essay about how to achieve world peace. You have to love any paper that has "Peace can only be achieved through excessive acts of seemingly mindless violence" in its first paragraph.
My aero code is almost done so now I must depart. That should keep y'all busy.
First, in National Review there was a funny article with some satirical commercials for the NCAA tournament. I think the Chevy Obliviator commercial would make a good real commercial since that's the whole point of getting a gigantoid SUV.
Second, Jason Van Steenwyk of IraqNow, has a possible explanation for why I tend towards the realpolitik school of thought, since I've enjoyed European history since I was kid.
Third, the NY Times reports that an arrest warrant has been issued for Moktada al-Sadr, whose followers have been clashing with our troops recently. According to Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) [warning: some profanity] Sadr has NO clerical training and is basically an Iranian stooge. Let's be rid of him.
Fourth, the military is evidently having no problems reaching its recruiting goals. Turns out that Iraq is not causing an exodus of soldiers out of the millitary, contrary to much speculation by anti-war pansies.
Fifth, here's some motivation for me to add comments or my e-mail address. Frank J has had on ongoing conversation with a wacky leftist he calls The Limey. This is the latest chapter, with links to the previous ones. If you need some humor just start at the beginning and enjoy Frank at his best.
And lastly, from Frankie J's archives, is this essay about how to achieve world peace. You have to love any paper that has "Peace can only be achieved through excessive acts of seemingly mindless violence" in its first paragraph.
My aero code is almost done so now I must depart. That should keep y'all busy.
Saturday, April 03, 2004
The X-43, Hypersonic flight, and Scramjets
Recently, NASA's X-43 research plane flew successfully. I have noticed some misconceptions regarding the significance of the flight and I want to clear some of them up.
The X-43 was the first airbreathing vehicle to fly at hypersonic speeds. The transition from supersonic to hypersonic flight speed is not nearly as well-defined as from subsonic to supersonic; there is no hypersonic barrier. The hypersonic flight regime is typically regarded as speeds beyond Mach 3 or three times the speed of sound. By this definition the Mach 3.2 achieved by the SR-71 (first flown in the '60s!!!) qualifies, but just barely. The X-43 on the other hand, flew at Mach 7, undeniably hypersonic.
The propulsion system used by the X-43 to achieve this speed was two-staged. First a booster rocket accelerated the vehicle to high-speed and then something called a scramjet was used. This was the first time a scramjet was operated generating enough thrust to accelerate the vehicle (the Aussies have got one to work, but it didn't actually accelerate the vehicle).
The most important element of any transportation vehicle is its propulsion system. For flying vehicles there are numerous engine types that are particularly well-suited to certain flight regimes. I'll talk about the following six types:
1. Internal combustion
2. Turbo-prop
3. Turbofan
4. Turbojet
5. Ramjet
6. Scramjet
The order of these is important. There are listed in order from slowest to fastest.
The internal combustion engine (like a car engine) is the most efficient system to use for very low speed flight but becomes less efficient the faster you fly. So low-speed general aviation aircraft use this engine.
The turbo-prop uses a jet engine to generate power to turn a propeller like the internal combustion engine, but it is more efficient for moderately fast flight. These are generally on commuter type airplane which fly short distances and hence don't need to be very fast.
The turbofan has a jet engine which develops thrust and also provides power to turn a fan at the front of the engine. The fan acts like a propeller in that it accelerates the air and provides thrust. This is the most efficient engine for high-subsonic flight and even for moderate supersonic flight, although an engine designed for supersonic flight will be different than for subsonic in that it will rely less on the fan to provide thrust and more on the turbojet portion.
The turbojet is what is typically called a jet engine. It provides thrust by burning fuel to add energy to the airflow and expels it out the back. The turbofan was developed as a derivative of this engine to be more efficient. For supersonic flight this is generally the most efficient, though it drops off as the Mach number increases.
The ramjet is basically the same as the jet engine, but more simple. It uses the inlet design to compress the incoming air before adding fuel and burning it for thrust. The jet engine uses a compressor, which is a highly complicated fan to increase the pressure so that the fuel can be burned more efficiently. By getting rid of the compressor the ramjet is more simple and more efficient for higher Mach numbers. The ramjet, however, cannot operate subsonically because it needs to be flying fast such that the inlet can compress the air. So a ramjet-powered vehicle needs another system, be it a rocket or turbojet or whatever, to accelerate it fast enough that it can operate. A big disadvantage.
The scramjet is almost identical to the ramjet except that combustion occurs inside the engine with the air moving at supersonic speeds (scramjet means supersonic combustion ramjet). The ramjet uses the inlet to compress the air and slow it to about Mach 0.5 so that it can ignite the fuel, but the scramjet burns its fuel at supersonic speeds. This has been compared to lighting a candle in the middle of a hurricane; it's a difficult engineering problem, but it allows higher speeds. Like the ramjet it needs something else to bring it up to speed.
The last type is the rocket, which most people are familiar with. It burns its fuel and pushes it out the back to generate thrust. Rockets can go almost any speed but they are horribly inefficient.
It is hoped that a scramjet, combined with a rocket or turbojet or something else for low speeds, could be used to replace rockets to get to space and be much more efficient (and hence cheaper). This technology is a long way for being ready for something like that, but the flight of the X-43 is a step in that direction.
From what I hear, NASA's hypersonics research program is being lost in the shuffle of the reorganization following Bush's space plan announcement. NASA is being organized into a space group working on getting to the moon and Mars and an aeronautics group. Hypersonics doesn't clearly belong in either, but it was assigned to the aeronautics group without any funding. And the aero guys don't want to pay for it so it sounds like hypersonics will go back the backburner.
The X-43 was the first airbreathing vehicle to fly at hypersonic speeds. The transition from supersonic to hypersonic flight speed is not nearly as well-defined as from subsonic to supersonic; there is no hypersonic barrier. The hypersonic flight regime is typically regarded as speeds beyond Mach 3 or three times the speed of sound. By this definition the Mach 3.2 achieved by the SR-71 (first flown in the '60s!!!) qualifies, but just barely. The X-43 on the other hand, flew at Mach 7, undeniably hypersonic.
The propulsion system used by the X-43 to achieve this speed was two-staged. First a booster rocket accelerated the vehicle to high-speed and then something called a scramjet was used. This was the first time a scramjet was operated generating enough thrust to accelerate the vehicle (the Aussies have got one to work, but it didn't actually accelerate the vehicle).
The most important element of any transportation vehicle is its propulsion system. For flying vehicles there are numerous engine types that are particularly well-suited to certain flight regimes. I'll talk about the following six types:
1. Internal combustion
2. Turbo-prop
3. Turbofan
4. Turbojet
5. Ramjet
6. Scramjet
The order of these is important. There are listed in order from slowest to fastest.
The internal combustion engine (like a car engine) is the most efficient system to use for very low speed flight but becomes less efficient the faster you fly. So low-speed general aviation aircraft use this engine.
The turbo-prop uses a jet engine to generate power to turn a propeller like the internal combustion engine, but it is more efficient for moderately fast flight. These are generally on commuter type airplane which fly short distances and hence don't need to be very fast.
The turbofan has a jet engine which develops thrust and also provides power to turn a fan at the front of the engine. The fan acts like a propeller in that it accelerates the air and provides thrust. This is the most efficient engine for high-subsonic flight and even for moderate supersonic flight, although an engine designed for supersonic flight will be different than for subsonic in that it will rely less on the fan to provide thrust and more on the turbojet portion.
The turbojet is what is typically called a jet engine. It provides thrust by burning fuel to add energy to the airflow and expels it out the back. The turbofan was developed as a derivative of this engine to be more efficient. For supersonic flight this is generally the most efficient, though it drops off as the Mach number increases.
The ramjet is basically the same as the jet engine, but more simple. It uses the inlet design to compress the incoming air before adding fuel and burning it for thrust. The jet engine uses a compressor, which is a highly complicated fan to increase the pressure so that the fuel can be burned more efficiently. By getting rid of the compressor the ramjet is more simple and more efficient for higher Mach numbers. The ramjet, however, cannot operate subsonically because it needs to be flying fast such that the inlet can compress the air. So a ramjet-powered vehicle needs another system, be it a rocket or turbojet or whatever, to accelerate it fast enough that it can operate. A big disadvantage.
The scramjet is almost identical to the ramjet except that combustion occurs inside the engine with the air moving at supersonic speeds (scramjet means supersonic combustion ramjet). The ramjet uses the inlet to compress the air and slow it to about Mach 0.5 so that it can ignite the fuel, but the scramjet burns its fuel at supersonic speeds. This has been compared to lighting a candle in the middle of a hurricane; it's a difficult engineering problem, but it allows higher speeds. Like the ramjet it needs something else to bring it up to speed.
The last type is the rocket, which most people are familiar with. It burns its fuel and pushes it out the back to generate thrust. Rockets can go almost any speed but they are horribly inefficient.
It is hoped that a scramjet, combined with a rocket or turbojet or something else for low speeds, could be used to replace rockets to get to space and be much more efficient (and hence cheaper). This technology is a long way for being ready for something like that, but the flight of the X-43 is a step in that direction.
From what I hear, NASA's hypersonics research program is being lost in the shuffle of the reorganization following Bush's space plan announcement. NASA is being organized into a space group working on getting to the moon and Mars and an aeronautics group. Hypersonics doesn't clearly belong in either, but it was assigned to the aeronautics group without any funding. And the aero guys don't want to pay for it so it sounds like hypersonics will go back the backburner.
Thursday, April 01, 2004
Democracy = No War
This post is just a good excuse for the following quote:
"for you know as well as we that right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must."
Who do you think said this?
Stalin?
Nope.
Machiavelli?
Nope.
Julius Caesar?
Nope.
I'll give you a hint: they're Greek.
Alexander the Great?
Nope.
Someone from Sparta perhaps?
Wrong again.
Then who?
That paradigm of bloodthirstiness and warmongering: Athens, during the Pelopennisian War.
Wha-wha-what? But they were a democracy and democracy is all about peace and justice and love and no war, man.
Umm, no. The Athenians were speaking to the island of Melos, which they pre-emptively conquered to threaten a minor power on the coast of modern-day Turkey to keep them from allying with the Spartans (during a lull in the War). Those good-old democratic Athenians lost the war because of the hubris so eminently displayed in the above quotation. Their big mistake was an expedition to Syracuse to conquer the island of Sicily that was virtually annihilated. This started the long, slow slide to defeat.
Just goes to show that it's just a big honking pile of horse manure that democracies only engage in defensive wars. And it's a cool quote.
"for you know as well as we that right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must."
Who do you think said this?
Stalin?
Nope.
Machiavelli?
Nope.
Julius Caesar?
Nope.
I'll give you a hint: they're Greek.
Alexander the Great?
Nope.
Someone from Sparta perhaps?
Wrong again.
Then who?
That paradigm of bloodthirstiness and warmongering: Athens, during the Pelopennisian War.
Wha-wha-what? But they were a democracy and democracy is all about peace and justice and love and no war, man.
Umm, no. The Athenians were speaking to the island of Melos, which they pre-emptively conquered to threaten a minor power on the coast of modern-day Turkey to keep them from allying with the Spartans (during a lull in the War). Those good-old democratic Athenians lost the war because of the hubris so eminently displayed in the above quotation. Their big mistake was an expedition to Syracuse to conquer the island of Sicily that was virtually annihilated. This started the long, slow slide to defeat.
Just goes to show that it's just a big honking pile of horse manure that democracies only engage in defensive wars. And it's a cool quote.
Lazy
I've been more than a tad delinquet in updating for the past week. I've been busy with school and wasting time in other ways. For example, I've finished Civilization and Its Enemies and it's very different than what I expected. It will take a little more time to organize a cogent critique. In the meantime, might I suggest perusing these two chapters by Bill Whittle of Eject Eject Eject (link also in the sidebar). Good stuff. I would also recommend reading all his essays linked in the main page. They are long but interesting reads. Whittle almost has me believing that most people aren't complete morons, pretty impressive.
Friday, March 26, 2004
Civilization and Its Enemies
Yesterday I got my copy of Lee Harris new book: Civilization and Its Enemies. I started reading it last night and am already impressed. He talks about the real reason the hate us (Hint: it's not because of our support for Israel or our troop presence in Saudia Arabia or any of the other claptrap that has been proffered by leftists). Expect a summary and commentary on it when I'm finished.
Lee Harris is an occasional contributor here. I would recommend reading his columns.
Lee Harris is an occasional contributor here. I would recommend reading his columns.
Thursday, March 25, 2004
Guaranteed Source of Posts
I've lucked out. If I ever can't think of something to post about I can now just go here to Noam Chomsky's new blog, take any post of his and pick apart the inaccuracies and inconsistencies (Hat tip: Drezner). For those who don't know, Chomsky is a linguist and MIT professor, legendary for anti-Americanism and hard-core leftism. Everything he says sounds good and true until you start checking up on it and find he's lying.
So even though I have plenty to post about (I'm working on my power measurements gathering data) I'm going to go ahead and fisk Chomsky's first real post, titled Bush's Economics (link currently not working).
First paragraph:
Whether Bush believes, or even understands, the economic policies of his administration I have no idea, and it really doesn't matter much. What's important are the policies, not whether Bush understands what his handlers instruct him to say.
Ok, so he pulls out the tired old line about Bush being a moron with his advisers pulling the strings. False. While it seems that Bush disdains the minutae of policy he exerts clear control over the basic direction. Strike one.
Second paragraph:
The current policies are an extreme version of what has been going on since the late Carter years. According to Congressional Budget office economists, real income of the bottom 90% of taxpayers fell by 7% from the mid-1970s through the Clinton boomlet (largely a bubble), while the income of the top .01% rose 600%. And mobility sharply declined as well. Bush's policies are much more extreme, but one should have no illusions about what preceded. Robert Pollin's recent Contours of Descent is one of several excellent and quite readable studies carrying the matter through the Clinton years.
I appreciate how Chomsky helpfully tells us exactly what policies he disagrees with (Sarcasm Alert). Even worse, he fails to provide links to the sources of his data. That's a key strength of blogging; your readers can check up on you and make sure you're telling the truth. Of course, Chomsky would rather you accept everything he says as Gospel truth. To refute his points, in a 30-second search of Drezner's site, I found this post from about a year ago, which makes some key points. First, real wages increased for everyone over the period Chomsky highlight. Second, income mobility did NOT sharply decline. Third, "Americans don't begrudge the rich getting richer." Strike two.
Third paragraph:
Whether the economy can survive with such radical inequality, not to speak of the huge and growing double deficit, no one knows. But it's surely a success for the planners and the very narrow interests of wealth and power they represent. And planning is not for the longer term, part of the lunacy of semi-market systems.
As mentioned above, there is no danger of political collapse due to income inequality. There is no enslaved proletariat to rise up in anger over income equality a la Marx. And what the heck is a "double deficit"? As for the lack of long-term planning in a market economy, it is at least partially made up for by the responsiveness of markets. Planned economies, like the Soviet Union, have been shown to be complete disasters. So whose policies have been proven to be a failure? Strike three and Chomsky quits while he's behind.
These things write themselves, it really makes my job easy. I now have a good back-up plan. Thanks Chomsky.
So even though I have plenty to post about (I'm working on my power measurements gathering data) I'm going to go ahead and fisk Chomsky's first real post, titled Bush's Economics (link currently not working).
First paragraph:
Whether Bush believes, or even understands, the economic policies of his administration I have no idea, and it really doesn't matter much. What's important are the policies, not whether Bush understands what his handlers instruct him to say.
Ok, so he pulls out the tired old line about Bush being a moron with his advisers pulling the strings. False. While it seems that Bush disdains the minutae of policy he exerts clear control over the basic direction. Strike one.
Second paragraph:
The current policies are an extreme version of what has been going on since the late Carter years. According to Congressional Budget office economists, real income of the bottom 90% of taxpayers fell by 7% from the mid-1970s through the Clinton boomlet (largely a bubble), while the income of the top .01% rose 600%. And mobility sharply declined as well. Bush's policies are much more extreme, but one should have no illusions about what preceded. Robert Pollin's recent Contours of Descent is one of several excellent and quite readable studies carrying the matter through the Clinton years.
I appreciate how Chomsky helpfully tells us exactly what policies he disagrees with (Sarcasm Alert). Even worse, he fails to provide links to the sources of his data. That's a key strength of blogging; your readers can check up on you and make sure you're telling the truth. Of course, Chomsky would rather you accept everything he says as Gospel truth. To refute his points, in a 30-second search of Drezner's site, I found this post from about a year ago, which makes some key points. First, real wages increased for everyone over the period Chomsky highlight. Second, income mobility did NOT sharply decline. Third, "Americans don't begrudge the rich getting richer." Strike two.
Third paragraph:
Whether the economy can survive with such radical inequality, not to speak of the huge and growing double deficit, no one knows. But it's surely a success for the planners and the very narrow interests of wealth and power they represent. And planning is not for the longer term, part of the lunacy of semi-market systems.
As mentioned above, there is no danger of political collapse due to income inequality. There is no enslaved proletariat to rise up in anger over income equality a la Marx. And what the heck is a "double deficit"? As for the lack of long-term planning in a market economy, it is at least partially made up for by the responsiveness of markets. Planned economies, like the Soviet Union, have been shown to be complete disasters. So whose policies have been proven to be a failure? Strike three and Chomsky quits while he's behind.
These things write themselves, it really makes my job easy. I now have a good back-up plan. Thanks Chomsky.
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