Assholes of the Week: The Myanmar Ruling Junta

YANGON, Myanmar - Myanmar's military regime distributed international aid Saturday but plastered the boxes with the names of top generals in an apparent effort to turn the relief effort for last week's devastating cyclone into a propaganda exercise.

The United Nations sent in three more planes and several trucks loaded with aid, though the junta took over its first two shipments. The government agreed to let a U.S. cargo plane bring in supplies Monday, but foreign disaster experts were still being barred entry.

State-run television continuously ran images of top generals — including the junta leader, Senior Gen. Than Shwe — handing out boxes of aid to survivors at elaborate ceremonies.

[From Myanmar junta hands out aid boxes with generals' names - Yahoo! News]

This is far beyond irrational. First their country gets slaughtered by a natural disaster. Then they refuse the free flow of aid workers, and refuse the shipping of help shipments. Why? Probably paranoia that the powers-that-be are going to try to use the disaster as an excuse to topple the junta.
Then they allow aid flights, but confiscate the material. Why? This one puzzled everyone, until now. The aid was eventually distributed, only plastered with pro-regime propaganda.
This is just plain dumb. All they had to do was allow the shipments, then after the aid was distributed use their monopoly on communications to claim that it was the regime that helped their people. The UN gets to help people in need, the local ruling group gets to save face, and the victims get some relief. Everyone wins.
But no. With fatality figures approaching the 500,000 mark in a country with an estimated population of almost 48 million, these people decide to run a political exercise.
Assholes.
The sad thing is that with China sharing a 2,000 Km border, it makes you wonder why the Chinese haven't sent a subtle word to these people to get their acts together and stop drawing so much attention to the area. They are just probably straddling the fence, seeing how this mess develops to see how THEY can take advantage of it.

My Way News - Gates Orders Inventory of US Nukes

Defense Secretary Robert Gates has ordered a full inventory of all nuclear weapons and related materials after the mistaken delivery of ballistic missile fuses to Taiwan, the Pentagon said Thursday.

Gates told officials with the Air Force, Navy and Defense Logistics Agency to assess inventory control procedures for the materials and to submit a report within 60 days.

Earlier this week, Gates directed Navy Adm. Kirkland H. Donald to take charge of a full investigation of the delivery mistake in which four cone-shaped electrical fuses used in intercontinental ballistic missile warheads were shipped to the Taiwanese instead of the helicopter batteries they had ordered.

[From My Way News - Gates Orders Inventory of US Nukes]

This is one of these things that you never heard of back when I was in the service in the 90's. From the day we put on the uniform it was burned into our brains that all of our equipment must be accounted for at all times. The company commander basically signs for every item within his command, down to each trash can, chair, etc.

One of the classic punishments for misbehaving lieutenants was to have them re-inventory everything, starting with the office supplies closet.

The more sensitive the item, the more controls are put into it. If they could get away with it, they would have us count spent brass before we turned it in before leaving a firing range. If the item was remotely classified, then you had to push a LOT of paper because of each individual item. This was institutional, you couldn't just say screw it, I am not going to document it.

Fast forward to the late 2000s, and suddenly people are fucking up, either by accident, incompetence or dereliction. How are we expected to believe that something as sensitive as these fuses can simply be misplaced during a foreign transfer? It is not like the damn things were sitting in a shelf at an airport and somebody picked the wrong boxes. Or maybe they were?

Costs soar for Marine One fleet - Washington Post- msnbc.com

A year after Sept. 11, 2001, the White House set out to build a fleet of state-of-the-art Marine One helicopters for the al-Qaeda age that would be safer, faster and more reliable than the iconic white-topped aircraft that have landed on the South Lawn for decades.

But the al-Qaeda age has met the military acquisition process. Six years later, the cost of the new helicopters has nearly doubled, production has fallen behind schedule, and the bulk of the program has been put on hold while the government tries to figure out how to salvage it.

[From Costs soar for Marine One fleet - Washington Post- msnbc.com]

My very first reaction was that was just one more sign that the Republicans were going to lose the White House ("no shiny new helos for the next guy!"). The amusement at how funny I thought I was quickly went away once I saw that each of these new helicopters costs more than the last Boeing VC-25.

Yes, a helicopter that costs more than the most exclusive VIP airplane in the world. This is actually a good thing, because it shows, with extremes, how much dangerous helicopters are in comparison to fixed wing aircraft. This is of course a blanket assumption, but think about it: Air Force One is already ultra-secure, as secure as we can make it to protect the current President plus an entourage of hundreds, yet it costs more money to build just one helicopter to carry him and maybe a dozen people total with a reasonable degree of security.

If you would like a very quick explanation on why helicopters are much more dangerous than fixed wing aircraft, take a look at Phil Greenspun's take on the subject.

Photo Credit: Photo by culhanen, used under the terms of a Creative Commons license.

Air Force's stealth fighters making final flights - CNN.com

DAYTON, Ohio (AP) -- The world's first attack aircraft to employ stealth technology is slipping quietly into history.
art.stealth.ap.jpg

Technicians service an F-117 stealth fighter after it arrived at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, on Monday.

The inky black, angular, radar-evading F-117, which spent 27 years in the Air Force arsenal secretly patrolling hostile skies from Serbia to Iraq, will be put in mothballs next month in Nevada.

Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, which manages the F-117 program, will have an informal, private retirement ceremony Tuesday with military leaders, base employees and representatives from Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico.

The last F-117s scheduled to fly will leave Holloman on April 21, stop in Palmdale, California, for another retirement ceremony, then arrive on April 22 at their final destination: Tonopah Test Range Airfield in Nevada, where the jet made its first flight in 1981.

[From Air Force's stealth fighters making final flights - CNN.com]

Good night, funny guy. The coolest thing about the F-117 was that it was kept in secret so well that we spent years flying simulator games about the plane, and the shape was completely wrong (plus our games called it the F-119 or F-19).
At least they did not try to cover their asses about this being a money decision, which will let them route even more money to the F-22 and F-35 programs. It's actually amazing that the plane is already 27 years old.

Hearing loss is silent epidemic in U.S. troops

SAN DIEGO - Large numbers of soldiers and Marines caught in roadside bombings and firefights in Iraq and Afghanistan are coming home with permanent hearing loss and ringing in their ears, prompting the military to redouble its efforts to protect the troops from noise.

Hearing damage is the No. 1 disability in the war on terror, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs, and some experts say the true toll could take decades to become clear. Nearly 70,000 of the more than 1.3 million troops who have served in the two war zones are collecting disability for tinnitus, a potentially debilitating ringing in the ears, and more than 58,000 are on disability for hearing loss, the VA said.

[From Hearing loss is silent epidemic in U.S. troops - More health news- msnbc.com]

It's actually worse than that, since these statistics are only taking into account combat veterans that suffered damage related to either explosions, weapons fire or heavy equipment. They don't include those of us that spent our service in equipment control rooms with heavy levels of white noise that resulted in loss of hearing within particular frequency ranges.
Yes, I am including myself. I was handed a pair of earplugs during my in-processing at Fort Jackson, South Carolina when I joined the US. Army. These earplugs were color coded, each style fit a different kind of ear canal. Mine were orange and very painful to insert (you basically shoved them into the ear canal). We used these for two things: shooting and working around generators and other obviously loud equipment.
Nobody ever told us about the white noise, and it is something that most people just can't tell because it is very low.
In my case, I did not notice how loud our operations center in Germany was until the one time in my tour that we actually shut the whole place down. They had improved our commercial electricity power, and they wanted to feed us from two separate power grids in addition to the emergency generator grid. All that power is run through a complex power control system, but it is hardwired for one commercial grid, one generator grid. In order to upgrade us to having two commercial grids they had us shut completely down.
For about 8 hours we sat in that building with the air conditioning turned off, and just flash lights. The silence was horrible, it felt like a tomb. That is when most of us realized how loud that place was. Just imagine a few thousand square feet full of computers, server racks, etc. Each server rack has one or two fans. There are a half dozen commercial grade air conditioners scattered around. The floor is raised two feet, and air runs under the tiles.
Day in and day out, the whole place hums, and your brain filters it out, but your ears take the damage.
When I left the service, my very first civilian job had more or less the same arrangement, except that the controllers sat in a part that was more or less isolated from the equipment room. As long as we kept the doors closed, it was fine. Two jobs later, my boss had metal racks with about eight Dell half tower servers, with at least two UPS units. I have no idea how she could stand sitting there for more than a few minutes.

US lawmakers blast Boeing defense contract snub

US lawmakers have reacted angrily after the US military awarded a 35-billion-dollar aircraft deal to Europe's Northrop Grumman/EADS group, in a major blow to US manufacturers Boeing.
"It's stunning to me that we would outsource the production of these airplanes to Europe instead of building them in America," said Republican Senator Sam Brownback about the Pentagon's decision.

"I'll be calling upon the Secretary of Defense for a full debriefing and expect there will be a protest of the award by Boeing."

[From US lawmakers blast Boeing defense contract snub]

In other words, "how dare they add these 5,000 jobs to Alabama instead of Kansas! Oh, the insanity!"

The only reason that Brownback is mad about this deal is because the pork is going to Alabama and not Kansas. Even more, we are not just talking about building 179 tankers. Nope, the baseline is to run through 179 aircraft through the life of the contract, but they are also opening the possibility of commercial aircraft work. This is a huge deal for an industry that for a while has centered around Boeing.
Ain't competition a bitch?

Northrop Grumman gets $40B deal to replace Air Force tankers - CNN.com

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The U.S. Air Force on Friday announced one of the largest military acquisition programs in U.S. history, saying the service had chosen Northrop Grumman over Boeing to replace its aging air refueling tanker fleet.

"We look forward to partnering with them as we continue to defend our great nation in the future," said Secretary of the Air Force Michael Wynne.

The announcement was a surprise to many in the business industry who expected Boeing to be favored over the company, which will use a European company's airframe, Airbus, for the tanker.

The $40 billion deal to start replacing 179 tankers -- known as the KC-45A program -- will expand to over $100 billion to replace the entire fleet of almost 500 planes, Pentagon officials said.

Boeing proposed a tanker based on its 767 commercial airliner, while Northrop -- working with Boeing arch-rival Airbus and its parent company, European Aeronautic Defense and Space Company (EADS) -- offered a model based on the Airbus A330 airliner, which is larger than the 767.

[From Northrop Grumman gets $40B deal to replace Air Force tankers - CNN.com]

Build a plant in Alabama, and they will let you build foreign jets to sell to the USAF. You can almost see the high fives from everyone that had to fight over this huge pork barrel. I bet the NATO countries (a few of which are part of Airbus) are going to be delighted that when the time comes for "foreign" sales they will in reality be selling these planes to themselves. Yay!
I actually would feel better if some of these $100 million could be re-routed to buy more MRAPs for the Marines. After all, how many long range bombing and surveillance missions (that require air refueling) are we doing every day nowadays?

$40 billion Air Force tanker deal expected - CNN.com

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The U.S. Air Force is expected to announce this week a $40 billion contract to replace its aging fleet of air refueling tankers, a process which has been mired in corruption and political wrangling for years.
art.fleet.jpg

The U.S. Air Force is expected to announce that it's replacing its aging tanker fleet.

Two groups are competing for the project known as the KC-X program -- Boeing and Northrop Grumman.

Boeing is proposing a tanker based on its 767 commercial airliner. Northrop, working with Boeing arch-rival Airbus and its parent company, European Aeronautic Defense and Space Company, is offering a model based on the Airbus A330 airliner.

To sweeten the deal, EADS announced it would put a plane assembly plant in Alabama if the company wins the contract.

[From $40 billion Air Force tanker deal expected - CNN.com]

With contract options added, we are talking a cool $100 billion.
By the way, the "to sweeten the deal..." issue with EADS building a plant in Alabama can be easily translated to "it's the only shot we got at selling an Airbus to the USAF."
I am also disappointed in how CNN failed to notice that this deal would easily reach beyond tankers. That airframe is a no brainer for a strategic airlift plane and even as an AWACS platform.

Probe sought in Marine vehicle delays - Yahoo! News

WASHINGTON - The Marine Corps has asked the Pentagon's inspector general to examine allegations that a nearly two-year delay in the fielding of blast-resistant vehicles led to hundreds of combat casualties in Iraq.

The system for rapidly shipping needed gear to troops on the front lines has been examined by auditors before and continues to improve, Col. David Lapan, a Marine Corps spokesman, said Monday night. Due to the seriousness of the allegations, however, "the Marine Corps has taken the additional step" of requesting the IG investigation, Lapan said in an e-mailed statement.

In a Jan. 22 internal report, Franz Gayl, a civilian Marine Corps official, accused the service of "gross mismanagement" that delayed deliveries of the mine-resistant, ambush-protected trucks.

[From Probe sought in Marine vehicle delays - Yahoo! News]

This is less than a week after the allegations were first made public.
What sucks here is that the article completely ignores the fact that the Marines are at the mercy of the U.S. Navy for logistical support. How come nobody is pointing fingers at the Navy and instead try to make it all look like a problem that is self contained within the USMC?

BBC NEWS | World | Asia-Pacific | North Korea detains Russian ship

A Russian cargo ship has been detained and boarded by armed coastguard agents in North Korean waters, Russian maritime officials say.

The Lida Demesh, carrying a consignment of cars from Japan, was heading for the Russian port of Vladivostok when it was stopped by patrol near Cape Musudan.

No reason was given for the search, but Russian sources said the ship may have gone too close to a missile test site.

A similar incident in 2005 took 15 days to resolve through diplomatic channels.

The ship had sought shelter from a storm in North Korean territorial waters.

[From BBC NEWS | World | Asia-Pacific | North Korea detains Russian ship]

The world is going to hell in a hand basket. I am a child of the Cold War. Back in the day you could have taken for granted that all them axis-of-whatever countries played more or less with the same game book. Now the North Koreans are even picking up fights with the Russians.
Of course, what do we know? Was it really a cargo ship? Or maybe it was a covert intelligence gathering ship? What is Dear Leader going to do when Putin takes off his shirt and starts flexing his pecs?

Picture (not related) by .JohnW, used under a Creative Commons License.

Stealth bomber crashes; pilots safe - CNN.com

HAGATNA, Guam (AP) -- A B-2 stealth bomber plunged to the ground shortly after taking off from an air base in Guam on Saturday, the first time one crashed, but both pilots ejected safely, Air Force officials said.

A B-2 stealth bomber taxis at Andersen Air Force Base, Guam, in a 2005 photo.

The aircraft was taking off with three others on their last flight out of Guam after a four-month deployment, part of a continuous U.S. bomber presence in the western Pacific. After the crash, the other three bombers were being kept on Guam, said Maj. Eric Hilliard at Hickham Air Force Base in Hawaii.

At least one B-2 bomber had taken off safely from Andersen Air Force Base but was brought back when another aircraft plunged to the ground.

There were no injuries on the ground or damage to buildings, and no munitions were on board. Each B-2 bomber costs about $1.2 billion to build.

[From Stealth bomber crashes; pilots safe - CNN.com]

Are these bombers insured? One would think that a capital expenditure of $1.2 billion would have some kind of financial protection against hazardous duty. At least the crew was unharmed, over the length of their service the pilot and crew will probably cost a nice fraction of that $1.2 billion just in training. Let's see if they will actually blame the crash on a mechanical/electrical failure of the aircraft or if they will instead use the crew as scapegoats.

UPDATE: The whole B2 bomber fleet is now grounded until they can find if it was either pilot error or a problem with the aircraft.

Photo by Beige Alert used under a Creative Commons license.

U.S. warns Serbia it's responsible for safety of embassy - CNN.com

BELGRADE, Serbia (CNN) -- The U.S. Embassy in Belgrade is evacuating all nonessential personnel following Thursday's attack on the building by a crowd of protesters, a spokesman for the embassy told CNN Friday.

The U.S. ambassador, Cameron Munter, is staying, officials said.

The embassy was closed Friday, and a handful of riot police holding shields stood outside the building, its outer walls blackened from fires set the night before and some of its windows smashed.

It will remain closed until Monday or Tuesday so officials can assess the damage, said Bill Wanlund, the embassy's spokesman.

He said embassy staff were still in a heightened state of alert but there were no specific threats against any staff members.

The United States has warned the Serbian government that it has a responsibility to protect its assets.

[From U.S. warns Serbia it's responsible for safety of embassy - CNN.com]

Still zero mention of who the hell was in charge of guarding the embassy. Please don't tell me we are stretched so thin that we can't afford a Marine detachment in each embassy, regardless of how unimportant it is in the grand scheme of things.
Now, based on yesterday's reports, the embassy was set on fire. Where are the ambassador and his entourage working from today? A Starbucks?
I don't think CNN is treating this issue seriously. The concept of the embassy has not changed much over the past couple hundred years or so. Violating the integrity of a foreign embassy is no different than attacking the country itself.
If protesters here in Washington had jumped the fence of the Russian Federation embassy and set the sonofabitch on fire, we would have had an international incident, with the UN Security Council going into freak out mode to prepare to present sanctions to the U.S. for not providing acceptable security to that diplomatic mission. But when it is our embassy elsewhere then nobody gives a shit.

Rogue satellite destroyed by SM-3 ship-launched missile

It looks almost like when Alderaan was blown up.
What I am really enjoying about the press coverage of this event is how everyone pretty much understood that the shooting was more than just removing the threat of that dangerous satellite plummeting down to earth: it is also a technology demonstrator of a functional ballistic missile shield.
I also think it's really cool that the kill vehicle is kinetic (basically a huge bullet) instead of an explosive warhead. Tom Clancy explored this scenario with a similar platform, except the kill vehicle was an anti-air warhead. The technical challenge for that scenario was that the tracking software was making it follow the hottest part of the ballistic inbound, which is wrong since it would aim the missile at the tail end of the flying fireball surrounding the inbound. The warhead flies faster than the velocity of the explosive in the intercept missile, so by the time the missile blows up, the inbound is already too far to feel the explosion. Clancy's solution: switch to a radar tracker, which let them (at least in theory) track the actual inbound.
Fun stuff.

Navy missile hits spy satellite - Space- msnbc.com

WASHINGTON - A missile launched from a Navy ship successfully struck a dying U.S. spy satellite passing 130 miles over the Pacific on Wednesday, a defense official said.

Two officials said the missile was launched successfully just after 10:30 p.m. ET. One official, who is close to the process, said it hit the target. He said details on the results were not immediately known.

The goal in this first-of-its-kind mission for the Navy was not just to hit the satellite but to obliterate a tank aboard the spacecraft carrying 1,000 pounds of a toxic fuel called hydrazine.

[From Navy missile hits spy satellite - Space- msnbc.com]

The missile used has been reported as a variant of the RIM-161 SM-3.
What I find fascinating is that the purpose of the mission wasn't simply to intercept the satellite, but to hit a specific spot, the hydrazine tank. Also, at least in the SM-3, the warhead is a kinetic warhead, which means that the missile kills by punching its target, not by blowing it up with an explosive warhead and/or the shrapnel generated by such an explosion.

Study: Delayed delivery of trucks led to Marine deaths - CNN.com

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Hundreds of U.S. Marines have been killed or injured by roadside bombs in Iraq because Marine Corps bureaucrats refused an urgent request in 2005 from battlefield commanders for blast-resistant vehicles, an internal military study concludes.
art.mrap.ap.jpg

Mine-resistant, ambush-protected trucks can cost between $450,000 and $1 million.

The study was written by a civilian Marine Corps official and obtained by The Associated Press.

It accuses the service of "gross mismanagement" that delayed deliveries of the mine-resistant, ambush-protected trucks for more than two years.

Cost was a driving factor in the decision to turn down the request for the MRAPs, according to the study.

Stateside authorities saw the hulking vehicles, which can cost as much as a $1 million each, as a financial threat to programs aimed at developing lighter vehicles that were years from being fielded.

After Defense Secretary Robert Gates declared the MRAP the Pentagon's acquisition priority in May 2007, the trucks began to be shipped to Iraq in large quantities.

[From Study: Delayed delivery of trucks led to Marine deaths - CNN.com]

The MRAP is a family of military vehicles that is new to the US arsenal. These start as a heavy duty commercial chassis, then they build them into mine and IED resistant vehicles. The most important trait is that they all have a "V" shaped hull, which would deflect most of a blast from underneath and keep the vehicle roadworthy.

These trucks are not new, they have been making the PR rounds for a while. What is new is that it has created an interesting political nightmare for the Marines. Hindsight is of course 20-20 before Lasik, so what is going on right now is that somebody leaked a report that claims that of course, delaying the deployment of these trucks have cost X lives. That by itself is shocking, but what I find most interesting is the political infighting itself.

Way before I left the US Army, 11 years ago, we had a big push for using commercial, off-the-shelves gear (COTS) whenever it made sense. If we needed a computer and we had the budget, we could order it from Dell through their government sales instead of having to go through a 5-year program to study and analyze the specific needs for the computer and what kind of computer we needed. I know that sometime along these 11 years everyone else in the military embraced COTS.

The problem with COTS is that it screws with provisioning procedures that (read: bureaucracies) that have been in place for years. In other words, careers are at stake. There are people that do nothing but keep the old style provisioning process alive. These are civilians with nice cushy jobs, some of them got into these jobs after leaving the services. If you start speeding up the process to procure new things, then we don't need as many of these people around.

The article has a nice little section where it hints that one of the major reasons for the Marines to drag their feet with adopting the MRAP is because it would screw up with other long term projects that are years away from delivering whatever it is that they are trying to deliver. In other words: if we can get the right truck now, for a million bucks apiece, it means that we can't fund five years worth of studies and procurement on some other truck that costs $900,000 (now) and for which we will pay $1.2 million seven or eight years down the road. If we ever do it.

Remember, even if the program gets shelved without delivering a single truck, a lot of people got paid to sit on their asses all day and make powerpoint slides, take long lunches and screw around with their blackberries in the middle of their status meetings.

The good news is that somewhere along the line the right thing was done, and the trucks were approved for service. Maybe they can use this new vehicle family to learn what the hell is wrong with the HUMVEE and how to design a better replacement without having to resort to bolting on up-armoring kits at an additional expense to the tax payer, instead of making this a standard feature.

Russian bombers intercepted near U.S. ship - Security- msnbc.com

WASHINGTON - U.S. fighter planes intercepted two Russian bombers flying unusually close to an American aircraft carrier in the western Pacific during the weekend, The Associated Press has learned.

A U.S. military official says that one Russian Tupolev 95 buzzed the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz twice, at a low altitude of about 2,000 feet, while another bomber circled about 50 nautical miles out. The official was speaking on condition of anonymity because the reports on the flights were classified as secret.

[From Russian bombers intercepted near U.S. ship - Security- msnbc.com]

This is one of those Tom Clancy scenarios where things are not what they really seem. Even if both had stayed at the 50nm mark, that is probably well within the kill range for whatever air-to-ground missiles a Tu-95 can carry. I still don't understand why one of the bombers was allowed to fly right above the carrier except that it was obvious that they were harmless.

If you find this kind of maneuvering interesting, then you owe it to yourself to read Tom Clancy's "Red Storm Rising", where he goes pretty wild exploring all of the hell that those naval bombers can raise. Of course, things have changed, I highly doubt that in a combat situation a flock of Tu-95s can make it within 250nm of a US carrier group's protective bubble.