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Your Online Marketplace for Classified Jet Parts
jonerik writes: "Reuters is reporting that the U.S. Air Force is less than pleased about the recent posting of a number of sensitive jet communications components on eBay, including parts for the SR-71 spy plane, the F-16 fighter, the KC-10 tanker, and the giant C-5 transport. According to the article, the parts had sat in a warehouse for 12 years after being lost in shipping when the dealer, Norb Novocin, bought the lot for $244 in an unclaimed property sale. Novocin ended up selling four of the items to bidders in a recent auction, including an X-Band Weather Radar Modulator for $500 and a high-frequency radio circuit card for $32. The Air Force is looking into the incident and Novocin is cooperating."
Did he actually sell any of the "D" parts? It says that 11 of 18 were "D" and he sold 4 items .. he _might_ have only sold non "D" labeled items.
Also, did the packaging indicate that they needed to be destroyed or did it just have a big red "D" which he would not know the meaning of?
Thoughts on tech, Software Engineering, and stuff
My old physics teacher used to be in the army and I'm not sure how true this is but he claims that during the sixties UK was holding most of its plutonium reserve in an unmarked warehouse in New York.
When they did tell the New York mayor he wasnt pleased at all.
Mouse powered Chips, Open source Processors and Lego
Maybe the Australian Government should start ordering its military equipment over Ebay - it'll probably get there faster than the choppers they ordered *grin* N.B. I'm Australian, so it's hardly trolling or flamebait
Antiquis temporibus, nati tibi similes in rupibus ventosissimis exponebantur ad necem.
was about a man who purchased things from government auctions for a living. Some of the things that he acquired included Reagan's automated signature signer and the tracking system of a ICBM. He returned the guidance system, but only after he got 3 offers for it in the 10 mil range. Thats how he discovered what the big box he bought contained.
That still Cracks me up.
..which just shows that the human brain is ill-adapted for thinking and was probably designed for cooling the blood-T P
In 2001, NPR had a story about how a sizable portion of Canada's ground hardware was stuck on a Russian shipping vessel just off the east coast because the vessel's owners wanted to be paid for the shipment back to Canada, the Canadian government had paid a contractor, and the contractor had gone out of business without paying the Russian shipper.
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Visit one other web site and I find that k4bdj is:
MC LENDON, DAVID K, K4BDJ
2510 SEVEN ISLANDS RD
BUCKHEAD, GA 30625
Ah, now I remember why I don't use my ham callsign online.
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I've seen ebay ads for high end crypto gear. Technically unclassified itself, but it was built to fill hardware crypto keys, the crypto being quite classified when paired with the hardware it went to. With a couple connections in the right places, someone could use that to fill a STU-III(secure telephone) with current crypto
that carrier would have at last a full flight wing in the air, as well as being dead center of its carrier group. Any hostile trying to take out the carrier would have to go through a ring of aircraft - including AWACS with downward looking radar that doesn't really care if you're skimming the wave tops - followed by a ring of destroyers and cruisers. All fully armed with sea-to-air missiles and AEGIS anti-missile guns.
That's a pretty good summary of a basic fleet air defense. I think it's worth mentioning how the Soviet's actually planned to get through all that defense though.
The strategy is called a rollback. Basically, if you fire a lot missiles at an air defense system, each one will be intercepted a little closer to the target than the one before it. Slowly, the defenses are rolled back until missiles start getting through.
There's no way to stop a rollback. All Aegis or a good CWIS do is increase the number of missles required to roll the defenses back, or decrease the intercept range reduction from each missile. At some point, obviously, it would get too expensive (each cruise missile costs nearly 1mil) to fire that many - but it is always possible.
Other factors are fighter cover. The phoenix was designed to kill the bombers before they could launch (each backfire bomber destroyed = 3 cruise missiles). Submarines are a big factor. A submarine strike against one or two of the air defense cruisers (not the carrier itself) coordinated with the air strike is very effective.
Of course, the carrier group has its own subs to hunt the enemy subs. And the bombers can bring fighters to cover them. Offensive and defensive measures swing back and forth like that.
On top of that is the tactical use of all these weapons. When playing Harpoon, I used to like to feign an attack from one direction with a barrage launched by, say an Oscar submarine. Then I'd give the carrier taskforce just enough time to redeploy a couple of cruisers to that side and I'd hit them from the other side with a combined attack by bombers and subs.
If you're willing to spend the cash, it's really not all that hard to kill a single carrier. Of course, the bombers themselves need a large airbase - and that will be destroyed by the airforce right away... I could go on but you get the idea.
Man, C5 radar components are getting expensive!
Enjoy pictures and descriptions of the items in question:
Military sales at ebay
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