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Yeah, I got to watch the Starfire "show" on a regular basis. Amazing how fast it can track stuff flying around the planet.

http://www.de.afrl.af.mil/SOR/

Enjoy the link.

http://www.de.afrl.af.mil/SOR/

SOR is way cool. I can't tell you how many nights I'd be sitting out in the desert guarding things that make a really big bang when out of the southeast you'd see this green laser streak across the sky. Way cool.

The urban dictionary is wrong. It calls Wild Weasels a "crazy" mission. It wasn't. It was dangerous, but so is everything else in warfare. I used to work on the F4D and F4G - The Phantom F4G was called the "Wild Weasel" in its day. af.mil/museum. It was a cool plane. In 1984, when the US bombed Libya, F111's were the Wild Weasels, and one didn't come back. I don't think it was the result of enemy action, tho, IIRC it had mechanical problems.

I think it's amazing that the military is starting to build "Star Trek" technology into tanks!

Next thing you know they'll equip tanks with mysterious Tractor Beam technology to lock onto and tow vehicles!

-

Heres a place to start http://www.brooks.af.mil/AFRL/HED/hedr/reports/hum an_exposure/humtb24.html

It's a survey of studys done related to cancer and electronics. Some show statistically significant increases in cancer rates. Unfortunatly for the chicken littles they are in the professions that did things like solder and clean electronics. Not those that did things like climb towers or work in generating plants.

These people were exposed to levels of non-ionizing radiation that are many orders of magnitude higher then you get from cell phones.

In summary. Solvents are bad for you. Radio waves are not.

Of course you chould just come back with another middle school analysis.

[flamebait]
During the Middle Ages, while gentiles pushed their smart sons into the priesthood and celibacy, the smart Jews became rabbis and had lotsa kids.
[/flamebait]

The Izzies have had to become really smart because they're surrounded by people who'd like nothing better than to push them into the sea. As a matter of fact, when they got military gear from the States, the manufacturers often came back and asked them exactly *what* they did with the electronics; it might have had to do with the 88-2 kill ratio over the Bekaa Valley in the early 80s.

http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/a pj/apj89/hurley.html

It's not only Things That Go Fast And Explode, either: Morel of Israel also does a bang-up job improving speaker designs sourced from the Danish firm Dynaudio, to the point where some of their tweeters are considered among the best in the world.

The same thing holds for chip designers, and don't forget the Russian Jewish exodus into Israel - just because the Soviet fab lines were a couple of Moore generations behind didn't mean their chip guys were slouches. The Israelis took over the Pentium III and designed the Pentium M, whence came Conroe. Motorola (now Freescale) recent DSPs are also Israeli. They know how to Make Stuff Work Better.

Yeah, a PowerBook/MBP docking station would be nice, and I don't know why Apple hasn't made one (ExpressCard could handle it). But that's not the solution for everyone -- I have a tower with faster hard drives and 2 big monitors at home, so I don't dock. I use my DVI connector on the road to connect to monitors and projectors at remote sites, and VGA wouldn't always cut it.

I also like the trackpoint and wish it were available as an Apple option. I disagree with your characterization of the keyboards, though -- I find I'm faster with the Apple PB/MBP keyboards than the ThinkPad one. (If you're thinking of the flimsy iBook keyboard it's a different story.)

The other thing which the ThinkPads (and 99% of all other non-Apple laptops) is lacking is digital audio output. This is especially glaring as laptop analog audio hardware is both cheap and very prone to interference from inside the case.

By the way: stealth fighter = 1982. :-) Seriously, I'd love to buy other Core Duo laptops but I haven't seen one with a design even half as sleek and well-executed as Apple's -- and the MBP is only a slight evolution of a design first unveiled in 2003! Laptop manufacturers need to get with the design program. Garish multicolored plastic 1.5" thick enclosures aren't good enough.

The article may have briefly talked about terrorism, but I suspect the real danger comes from state-sponsored cyber-attacks, like from China. Terrorism is just a convenient explanation to use to the public. You can't come out and say you're preparing for an attack by China now, can you?

BTW, for those who think that cyber-warfare is a science-fiction concept, I draw your attention to the following analysis of Operation Allied Force. In particular, the section regarding cyber-attacks on surface-to-air (SAM) missile systems to protect our fighters (F-22, F-35):

Beyond the stealthiness portended by the F-22 and F-35, another promising avenue for dealing with emergent SAM threats may lie in the realm of nonkinetic alternatives. To offer but a glimpse into the more intriguing possibilities in this respect, General Jumper remarked after Allied Force that although information operations remained a highly classified subject about which little could be said, the Kosovo experience suggested that "instead of sitting and talking about great big pods that bash electrons, we should be talking about microchips that manipulate electrons and get into the heart and soul of systems like the SA-10 or the SA-12 and tell it that it is a refrigerator and not a radar." Some of the more cutting-edge variants of first-generation offensive cyber warfare, reportedly tested successfully in Allied Force, suggested the feasibility of taking down enemy SAM and other defense systems in ways that would not require putting a strike package or a HARM on critical nodes to neutralize them. Toward that end, Gen Hal Hornburg, current commander of Air Combat Command, recently reiterated the importance of looking beyond familiar solutions to this looming threat in certain portions of President George W. Bush's "axis of evil," where the United States might find itself engaged militarily: "We don't just need jammers and we don't just need Block 50s. . . . We need an array of capabilities. . . . I am looking for kinetic and non-kinetic solutions. I am looking, for example, for space to be able to get down to an SA-10 and convince it to launch all missiles right now or to deny it from launching their missiles right now."

Information warfare WILL happen, my friends. In fact, it's happening now. No, you won't find that written up in the newspaper. Do a little bit of googling and see what you come up with. :)

GMD

Surprisingly few of our Defense Contractors' engineers are actually qualified pilots. That's why our DC ANG F-16 pilots complain that the F-16 is an airplane "designed by engineers, not pilots." That's why Lockheed had to pay so much money to the wives of German fighter pilots after the F-104 fighter failed so miserably as to break up under stress. (Our own government didn't do anything extra for the US F-104 widows.)

The Boeing B-1 Lancer was a good plane when they designed it, but the engineers then overloaded with so much gear that they either stall on climb or go into an unrecoverable dive. Naturally, the Reagan DoD claimed we needed the B-1 to win the Cold War. I guess that's why they're still flying B-52s.

Pointing to a DoD press release doesn't help your case, and neither do ad-hominem attacks, (to which I shall never stoop). This is the same DoD that claimed we had a missile gap in 1960, that East Germany had a higher standard of living than West Germany in the 1980s, and that we're winning the war in Iraq. The first version of the M-1 tank couldn't even shoot and move at the same time. The Bradley Fighting Vehicle? Another triumph of military engineering so great they had to make a movie about it.

The Moab desert robot drive challenge was successfully completed only last year. AI isn't as advanced as you might think. UAVs certainly do NOT have to follow all the rules of passenger aircraft under Parts 61, 91, 141 or 142 of FAA regulations. When UAVs fly, the FAA issues a NOTAM and restricts the airspace around it so no airplanes with humans on board fly anywhere near them. A surprisingly large amount of U.S. airspace is restricted, including most of the airspace over Nevada, for instance. Thus, the military and defense contractors get whatever exemptions they want from civil airspace rules. Don't believe me? Fly over Area 51 and see what happens.

The FAA controllers regularly complain about military bozos who want to restrict all US airspace to military traffic only. After 9/11, the Pentagon almost seized Washington's Reagan National airport and were stopped only when members of Congress figured out how long it would take them to drive to other airports.

Those of you who are ready to fly in airliners piloted by AI should:
1) take a class in AI
2) get a pilot's license, or at least take a flight lesson.
I have done both (not at MIT, though), and those designing these aircraft, for the most part, have not.

The main point of this is, don't believe everything you read in a press release.

"Unfortunately, the engineers designing these things aren't pilots or air traffic controllers and have no idea how our airspace works. (They work fine in Iraq, but that's a war zone with no civilian aviation.) Apparently engineers do know how to weasel our tax dollars to fund their overpriced remote control toys."

If AI was smart enough to fly an airplane, why aren't they flying airliners?

All scramjets, including this one, use rockets to get the engine up to speed.

Not this one.

Check floating isn't the same thing as expecting delays in check cashing.

Wrong.

In 2004 a law known as "Check 21" was passed and put into action.

Please read up on what check floating is and what the law "Check 21" does.

Under new law, floating checks no longer float
New law sinks 'check floating' practice
Check Floating

I've never been without a .mil email account. Maybe the FBI can copy off of us, we seem to be able to pull it off. We could just sign them all up for GI Mail http://www.gimail.af.mil/, that's what I use for my home email account. Best part is you can use it from any .gov computer (and civilian computers as well)!

Good news, the Air Force is already on it (see page 35, note also this is a PDF, and pretty large))

Here's the money quote:
The civilian populace will likely accept an implanted microscopic chips that allow military members to defend vital national interests.

Yep, the dry lakebeds have saved many, many test pilots lives and many expiremental planes. More info can be found at the Edwards AFB website.

There is precedent for converting it into a drag racing strip. RAF Podington, a USAAF airfield in WWII, home of the 92nd Bomb Group with their B-17 bombers, was converted after the war into the Santa Pod drag strip, now the most famous drag strip in the U.K.

I mean yeah these are "Robots", but by this definition so are the Preditors and they have been firing Hellfire missiles in combat for almost 5 years now.

Link from the article
Says that these are not autonomous and are controlled by humans. Is this really any different than the Global Hawk?

The US has had much of the world's surface under continuous large scale infrared observation for 25 years or more with the Air Force DSP program. It can easily detect the smallest asteroid or comet impacts. I don't know if a scientific survey of its data has ever been done.

An interesting study was done by the U.S. Military (the Airforce, I believe) concerning Open Source and it's place in the department of defense, though it is written in such a way to be useful to non-military personnel and applications. It is a similar, yet IMHO, a more interesting read than the parent.

The report can be found as a PDF at http://www.stsc.hill.af.mil/crosstalk/2005/01/0501 Tuma.pdf

An interesting study was done by the U.S. Military (the Airforce, I believe) concerning Open Source and it's place in the department of defense, though it is written in such a way to be useful to non-military personnel and applications. It is a similar, yet IMHO, a more interesting read than the parent.

The report can be found as a PDF at http://www.stsc.hill.af.mil/crosstalk/2005/01/0501 Tuma.pdf

If I was sorting my bookmarks into alphabetical order I use bubble sort.
The chance of my screweing up the implementation is greatly reduced.

Code complexity is a very real metric used in important systems.

http://www.stsc.hill.af.mil/crosstalk/1994/12/xt94 d12b.asp

When your "director of engineering" uses it as an excuse for the memory leak, like the OP was whining about, you should start to question their competence. Not of coding ability but of design choices.

Oh really? What about this or this? Granted, this is transparent Alumina, which is aluminum oxide - Al2-O3 but it's close enough in my book.

Lockheed tried this about 10 years ago, with a drone called DarkStar. My friend was working at Lockheed as a contractor at the time. After it crashed on takeoff, he said the project was doomed - Everyone at the airbase started calling it Project DarkSpot.

Aha! I have defeated your information cloaking to see the secrets within:

Global Hawk http://www.af.mil/factsheets/factsheet.asp?fsID=17 5

Desert Hawk http://www.defense-update.com/products/d/deserthaw k.htm

Verrry tricky, appending an extra '/' to the end of the URL to make us think it was a broken link. I have added this to my bag of tradecraft for future use, at a time when you least expect it.

Good day.
</neurosis>

FYI, those links are both dead. Both are giving 'file not found' errors.

I did some quick Googling:

Desert Hawk:
http://www.defense-update.com/products/d/deserthaw k.htm

Global Hawk:
http://www.af.mil/factsheets/factsheet.asp?fsID=17 5

So, they do not want to compete with the expensive Global Hawk http://www.af.mil/factsheets/factsheet.asp?fsID=17 5/ made by Northrop Grumman. Instead, their interested in the cheap Notebook controlled Desert Hawk http://www.defense-update.com/products/d/deserthaw k.htm/ models deployed in Iraq. They are pretty cool. Designed and delivered in 4 months.

Seems like a good idea. However, if these were deployed in other arenas, where the enemy had the ability Jam the "cheap" communication, those drones would be...well...long gone. How do military communication systems handle jamming?

If it's really that critical, you might want to take a look at something like Correctness by construction. They actually do not recommend using C++, but with rigorous developer discipline you can achieve similar results to what they describe.

Also, separating critical and non-critical modules is a good idea. That means you can do the not-so-critical GUI quickly in some convenient environment (Qt, Kylix, whatever) and do the critical stuff the hard way.

(Apologies for the lame sig below)

Intelligent design? In the military? Isn't that pushing your faith a bit *too* far?

/side note: this gator will run on JP8 (jet fuel)

In reality, my system is a hell of a lot more effective. Show the bugs a picture of the SPARK product manager and bugs are so utterly freaked out, that they run for the hills rather than residing in the code.

So did the /XB-49.

XB-35
XB-49

my understanding was that they were not all that hard to control, but that the CEP ( circular error probablity ) was too high for bombing. There are some questions about why the airplane
was cancelled. Some say conspiracy, some say that was just the way it was.

So did the /XB-49.

XB-35
XB-49

my understanding was that they were not all that hard to control, but that the CEP ( circular error probablity ) was too high for bombing. There are some questions about why the airplane
was cancelled. Some say conspiracy, some say that was just the way it was.

That's why systems and platforms like these are written in a tried and true language like JOVIAL.

Note: When I refer to language, I mean the syntax and semantics and primitive types. When I refer to environment, I refer to the language plus any standard libraries; I am not refering to a particular VM. I think my definitions may be the source of some of the confusion, as Sun appears to want everyone to think that the java.* and javax.* libraries are part of the language. As far as I am concerned, they are just part of the standard environment. (I bend my own definition a little to include packages under the java.lang library as being part of the language, because they are object-oriented wrappers for the primitive types.)

Your original post mentioned work by Aonix on hard real-time Java. My post referred to Java features that are not able to be used in hard real-time applications. Here is my reference; granted it's a year old, but I haven't found anything newer to contradict it. The author is (or was at the time of writing) in charge of the Aonix real-time JVM.

http://www.stsc.hill.af.mil/crosstalk/2004/12/0412 Nilsen.html

Note the table of differences between traditional Java, soft real-time Java, hard real-time Java, and safety-critical Java. As you can see, hard real-time and safety-critical Java are highly restricted compared to traditional Java. Safety-critical is a subset of hard real-time that is even more strict; it requires formal proofs of safety and therefore throws out most Java features and standard libraries, leaving only the core syntax and single-threaded semantics of the language. (Well technically, safety-critical allows multiple threads but they cannot overlap, so its like single threaded programming for purposes of proofs.) Safety critical requirements are defined by FAA specification DO-178B and several JVM suppliers are working on DO-178B-compliant JVMs.

Soft real-time applications can use all (or almost all) of the Java standard libraries, whereas hard real-time applications can use only a restricted subset of the standard libraries and safety-critical applications are restricted to an even smaller subset of the standard libraries. Therefore, one great advantage of the Java environment (remember my definition of environment), its extensive standard library, is neutralized with respect to hard real-time and safety-critical applications.

Furthermore, almost all third party libraries depend on standard libraries that are forbidden under hard real-time or safety critical constraints. Therefore, these libraries are also forbidden and another great advantage of the Java environment (remember my definition of environment), the extensive field of third-party libraries, is lost to hard real-time and safety-critical applications.

The Real-Time Specification for Java defines a set of library calls and semantics which, when implemented within a general-purpose Java virtual machine.... [snip] In fact, Sun demonstrated a real-time Java application running alongside non-real-time applications on the same VM. > Note the emphasis on the word "within". Applications that implement real-time features get the JVM+RTS. Applications that do not implement real-time features fall through to use the traditional JVM. However, non-real-time applications do not automatically become real-time applications simply by being run on Java RTS. Nothing here contradicts my original assertions.

I'd like to know more about the real-time application they demonstrated. What kind of real-time application was it: soft or hard? Did you see the source code of the real-time application? If so, what libraries did it use? The link you provided didn't provide much concrete information. However, it did provide a link to Sun's official Java RTS page:

http://java.sun.com/j2se/realtime/

I am not sure how they can claim conformance for soft real-time, because they do not yet provide a real-ti

-WS

I was watching a documentary on the race to build the next generation fighter jet, and time and time again, the main argument in favor of the X22 was that the other design looked weird.

Yeah, plan your multi-billion dollar expenses on the sexiness of the machine boys, not on the functionality. I too get "the willies" thinking that people this infantile are sitting with their finger on the metaphorical nuclear button.

You don't suppose that rather than try to dig up classified information, or try to determine the objective criteria used in the decision(things like unrefueled range, weapons load, maintainability, cost, situation awareness aids, etc. ) that the producers took an easy out and said it won because, " Oooooh, its pretty and fast!" I find that notion easier to believe than the assertion that a major defense program providing the primary air superiority fighter for the Air Force, the F-22 would be decided primarily on aesthetics and that said selection would survive scrutiney by the Department of the Air Force, DOD, Congress, and the President. There are many philosophical positions that can impact programs like this, (purpose built vs general purpose, heavy vs light) but ugly vs pretty isn't really one of them. If it were, two of the most effective aircraft the US has built would never have seen the light of day: the F-117 Nighthawk stealth figher, and the A-10 Thunderbold II, AKA Warthog.

I was watching a documentary on the race to build the next generation fighter jet, and time and time again, the main argument in favor of the X22 was that the other design looked weird.

Yeah, plan your multi-billion dollar expenses on the sexiness of the machine boys, not on the functionality. I too get "the willies" thinking that people this infantile are sitting with their finger on the metaphorical nuclear button.

You don't suppose that rather than try to dig up classified information, or try to determine the objective criteria used in the decision(things like unrefueled range, weapons load, maintainability, cost, situation awareness aids, etc. ) that the producers took an easy out and said it won because, " Oooooh, its pretty and fast!" I find that notion easier to believe than the assertion that a major defense program providing the primary air superiority fighter for the Air Force, the F-22 would be decided primarily on aesthetics and that said selection would survive scrutiney by the Department of the Air Force, DOD, Congress, and the President. There are many philosophical positions that can impact programs like this, (purpose built vs general purpose, heavy vs light) but ugly vs pretty isn't really one of them. If it were, two of the most effective aircraft the US has built would never have seen the light of day: the F-117 Nighthawk stealth figher, and the A-10 Thunderbold II, AKA Warthog.

Indicating to them that there's either a super-secret installation there or a giant penis statue?

Or both!

Air Force has had Space Command for awhile.

Mission: To defend the United States of America through the control and exploitation of space.

My old employer

Of course you also have these guys!

Cyber space war fighting and understanding the combat needs of networks have been part of the airforce mission for over two decades. Adding it to the mission statement is only showing the increased concern and admitting the increased importance that networks and computers are playing in war fighting. For some interesting reading try http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/transformation /oft_implementation_ncw.pdfNetwork-Centric Warfare (1.10 mb) detailing a significant increase in the undertanding and capability. Secondly, there understanding of "cyber-warfare" and most net saavy citizens aren't quite the same.

The only holdover I know of that it still has is that an officer facing a court martial can choose for his jury to only be fellow commissioned officers and not enlisted personnel or warrant officers.

That isn't quite right. Anyone facing court martial is by default a) tried by officers, and b) tried by people senior to him/herself. Enlisted members may request that 1/3 of the jury be composed of enlisted members, but if they don't so request, they get all officers.

Here are some links

Sean

Ney. Only the clients ever did, if that. NORAD was completely built on IRIX - which I believe they converted to Solaris - this was LOOOONG after I left the state. I worked on the Loral project, and the whole thing was run off a huge bank of SGI Crimson's at least as late as 1997. But no, there's no F'in *way* that the systems could run on Windows - and this coming from a QA person at the code level. If you can tell me how this system could possibly run on Windows, I'll give you a cookie! :P

http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/au-18/au18004c .htm

Did I mention that I'm hellaterrified of the information that I was able to pull up while looking up to confirm that they are still on IRIX??????

http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/facility/cmc.htm

While I could not find any information on what they are actually running today (that would be *bad*) It looks like some systems are using HP-UX, too. But that will have to go away, since HP let that go down the pipes. Bastards.

But suffice it to say, there's no way in hades that NORAD systems could be running on W2k, it just couldn't handle it. Again, there's the possibility of the clients doing it, but not the backend systems. :)

Jho

I looked for confirmation of the price, so you wouldn't have to take my word for it :) I found this (which alludes to the price). This gives the price as $25, which may be what I paid. It's been about a year and a half since I last used the program, but either way I was in the ballpark.

HAARP US Patent 4,686,605
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PT O1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=/netahtml/srchnum.htm &r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=4,686,605.WKU.&OS=PN/4,686,605&RS =PN/4,686,605

HAARP Invertor's military ties
http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread15366/pg 1

Military research report (1996): Weather as a Force Multiplier: Owning the Weather in 2025
https://research.maxwell.af.mil/papers/ay1996/spac ecast/vol3ch15.pdf

SecDef is absolutely in the chain of command.

POTUS - SecDef - unified commanders - everyone else.

The Joint Chiefs are on the side, as advisors.

Now...does SecDef have the 'authority' to order a private around? Technically, yes. Obviously, no, that doesn't happen.

AC-47's are even more deadly. Think Puff the Magic Dragon when he's pissed;-)

I am not suggesting the Orbiter was the right way to go but I think it could have had an escape system built into it similar to the F-111 http://www.wpafb.af.mil/museum/air_power/ap36.htm.

Yeah, along with being very expensive, with the article saying "10 to $15 per square inch".

That's not a misprint, that's per square inch. So $1440 to $2160 per square foot.

A case made from this stuff would be more expensive than a brand new sports car.