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Nuke-Lobbing
SlideGuitar writes "The following is a fascinating article about how the Navy in the 1950s, wanting to assure that it had a carrier based nuclear force, used A1 Skyraider (single engine propellor driven aircraft) to lob nuclear bombs using a manuever called the "goofy loop" (read the article.) The goofy loop put about seven miles between them and a Mark 7 nuclear device at detonation. The pilots knew that (1) they couldn't get far enough away to survive, and (2) if they did survive there probably wouldn't be a carrier to go back to anyway. There are lots of emails from pilots who did the manuever and what they thought about the whole business."
Duh, you think? See, the difference between America and every other "imperialist" nation in the history of the WORLD is that America permits adversarial, even belligerent nations to control a vital strategic resource.
It used to be that only Noam Chomsky referred to the U.S. as an imperialist nation. And now the conventional wisdom has changed- not only are we imperialists now, but even being an imperialist power is an OK thing to be! (Sort of like how massive federal deficits are suddenly OK now too.) Things sure are changing a lot and fast. If you don't pay attention, you won't recognize the country you live in anymore. The language is changing underneath us, too. "Partisan" used to mean something about a bias for one political party or the other. Now it simply means you don't like Bush and therefore shouldn't be listened to. People who do favor Bush are never partisan.
OF COURSE the war in the middle east is about oil. More to the point, it's about protecting the supply of a strategically essential resource.
What exactly is wrong with that?
Well when you put it that way, it sounds so sensible, doesn't it? Which is why it was spoon-fed to you in that form so you could regurgitate it to us here. Something must be wrong with it though, or Bush would have simply told us the truth instead of inventing a crisis about "weapons of mass destruction".
Why can't he just tell us the truth? If there's one thing that I have really disliked about this war, it's the slick glossy marketing, the "psy ops" that are apparently designed to work on us at home instead of people in Iraq, the mounds and mounds of pure bullshit assembled to justify what is essentially an elective war, and the relentless and well orchestrated vitriol aimed at anyone who dares criticize the president during this phony crisis that he insisted on creating in the first place.
I've been trying to figure out for a long time what the motive for this war really is. The official reasons given (9/11, WMD, "he gassed his own people", bringing democracy to the nations in the region, etc.) either make no logical sense, are obvious lies, or are so outlandish that it's clear nobody in the administration takes them seriously. In fact it reminds me of the 2001 tax cut. They wanted the tax cut so badly, but couldn't offer any coherent reason for one. So they proposed the tax cut as a cureall for all sorts of problems. Inflation. Deflation. No matter what it was, the tax cut was going to fix it. The war was the same way. It's always pretty clear what the Bush administration wants, but they never indicate why they want these things. I do know two things about the true motive of the war:
I can at least understand a war designed to undermine OPEC. Why didn't Bush just flat out say it? "We want to invade a country so we can gain access to its oil fields." Spare me the bullshit about WMD, the war on terror, spreading democracy, etc. When a president lacks the political balls to announce to the world why he's starting a war, it's usually a sign that the war is a bad idea in the first place.
It's what the F-16 has to use in order to deliver weapons of this class (probably F/A-18 as well). The standard F-16 has to have physical (bomb attachment point strengthening, etc.) and avionics upgrades to handle it, but in the end it's basically just a faster, more accurate (ooh! software! ;)) version of the 50's manuever. (I googled looking for a link to back this up, but came up dry, probably just not using good enough queries... One bit of unintentional humor was noting the top text ad for "F-16 nuclear delivery", namely "Find a delivery service! Anywhere in the world! www.somedeliverycompany.com" or some such... Heh, I don't think that's what they had in mind...)
IIRC, back in the mid-80's (i think), there was a big stink between Pakistan and India caused by Pakistan obtaining some of these nuclear capable F-16s. Of course, at that time it was only suspected that Pakistan had The Bomb, but when your neighbor buys a shotgun you don't have to see the shells to get a little nervous. (When is there not a big stink between Pakistan and India? Anyway, that *particular* big stink was over Pakistan's nuke-capable fighters.)
News for Geeks in Austin, TX
The figures you cite are what was state of the art in 1991. The weapons have come a long way since then. The JDAM is far more accurate than laser guided bombs. If nothing else look at the Iraqi civillian casualty figures 5,000 or so civillian casualties is VERY low considering the amount of ordinace we dropped on Iraq during the recent campaign. If we had been using "dumb" bombs the casualties would be in the hundreds of thousands or millions.
Happy Fun Ball is for external use only.
The emails from pilots were very interesting, I thought; It made me remember all the "oral history" stuff with WW1 and WW2 veterans speaking of their experiences, and I realized how important it was for future generations that we almost constantly interview people about stuff and write it all down before their memories go.
Or this too anal an attitude on my part? It's like I write a diary entry every day but I hardly ever re-read old diary entries.
graspee
Our political masters tend to portray the Canadian Armed Forces as only peace keepers but the worst kept secret is our nuclear heritage. We had nuclear tipped Genie, Honest John and BOMARC missiles and from 1961 to 1984 Canadian Pilots based in Germany also practiced for the nuclear strike role with their CF-104 Star Fighter. Known as the 'missile with a man in it' or the 'widow maker' it was very fast -Mach 2.2 - but not very manuverable. 37 Canadian pilots died while practicing low level flying. A friend of mine described how they were briefed on how to use safe corridors to get to the target but the route for the return trip was up to them. Needless to say he figured if he ever had to do it for real, it was going to be a one way fight. He said that there was curtains in the cockpit to block the flash. The starfighter was fast enough to out run the blast but he said once you climbed above tree top level the missiles would probally get you.
I was in the Army in Germany in the 70's and we practiced snowballs or bugging out to get our vehicles as far away from the base as fast as possible before the Russian nukes or chemical strike hit. It is hard to descibe but when you heard those sirens going off at 3 in the morning, you never knew if it was a drill or the real thing. Thank God that no one ever 'pushed the button' for real.
Today's vices may be tomorrow's virtues.