Weekly Photo Challenge: Geometry

Posted on 3 November 2012 by SJPONeill

As this week’s challenge, ‘geometry‘ was very specific in what it wants “…find a good subject that contains an interesting geometry…try to crop tightly into the subject to make an unexpected composition…” Hmmmm…unexpected seems to imply ‘so that it’s actually identify is concealed’…more hmmm….OK, here goes…crops to the top, originals to the bottom…

…and the orginals…

Water intakes on one of the hydro-electric dams in the Waitaki Valley

Wing fence on the YF-23 prototype at the USAF Museum

SR-71 at the Eglin Armament Museum

Remnant of the Iraqi ‘Supergun’ from DESERT STORM days in the Imperial War Museum at Duxford

Faster than…

Posted on 2 November 2012 by SJPONeill

Just for perspective, the upload and download speeds here are twice those we were getting with satellite broadband; the ping is almost 20 times faster!!

It doesn’t seem so long that we used to get excited at home when the dial-up download speed got anything over a mighty 6kbps…it’s been our curse to never live (for any period of time anyway) anywhere with fixed line broadband…then, one day early in 2010, the nice folk at Telecom rang up and said we were just inside the coverage for the XT network (after they got ALL the bugs out of it, of course).

Contrary to all the bad press that Telecom gets, they were very nice about it and offered to send out an XT modem for a month’s free trial. Couldn’t say no to that and all of a sudden we were in the world of broadband…not without its issues though: we only had 2Gb a month to play with and the only reception was in one room of the house (fortunately the study: working from home could have become interesting if it had been the bogger!!). XT worked really well for us for almost two years but as I reverted to working more and more from home (the great thing about policy analysis and doctrine review is that you can pretty much do it anywhere), we more and more started to exceed our 2G monthly allowance and the cost started to spiral upwards…

We had been aware of Farmside and its satellite broadband options for a while but hadn’t considered them as cost-effective as the XT option – plus they had (and still do) this annoying habit of answering emails with phone calls which is nice if one is at home but of limited use if one is spending a lot of time away from home and thus not able to answer the phone when it rings…By the end of 2011, though, their satellite and home line bundles were starting to look pretty attractive – the all-up costs were about the same as what we were already paying but the big bonus was a much larger monthly cap albeit with 25 of the 30Gb only being available offpeak between midnight and 2PM – that actually wasn’t too bad as I normally start work at 6AM to catch the back end of the US working day.

Once we established comms – after more email/phone tag – the Farmside sign-up process was swift and efficient and the installer turned up the day after Boxing Day. We would have preferred to have the dish placed further up the wall of the house so that the modem and cables would be out of sight/mind in the loft but still able to wifi through the house…but the installer didn’t come with a long enough ladder (even though we had advised that the wall was pretty high) and we think he may have been a little scared of heights…but the job was soon done and, apart from more lights than the flight deck of Concorde where the modem and router had been placed in the spare room, we achieved another plateau in the quest for decent broadband. The only downer with satellite broadband is that it is high latency – about 800 milliseconds, or the better part of a second – which only meant that pages took a little longer to access and load unless one uses a VPN for work as I do in which case it can be quite frustrating and tiring using a real time mouse and keyboard on pages lagging about a second behind.

Just before I went overseas in September, our phone went off for the day – late in the afternoon, someone claiming to be from Telecom rang and apologised for the disruption of service, attributing it to some errors when our local cabinet was cut into the new fibre network. Fibre? Did someone say fibre? You would think that finding out if we could now access fixed line broadband would be a simple thing mais non…both Farmside and Telecom fobbed us off with “We will tell you when these services are available” responses. To their credit, when we nudged Farmside again after a month or so, they came to the party and advised (after more email/phone tag) that it looked like we could now access proper broadband.

Those living in urban areas will be all “hohum” but these are the things that are important in rural areas where connectivity = communication and the ability to do business from home…the ADSL modem arrived this morning – and didn’t work. Five calls with the really helpful customer service staff (thanks, Chris and Jess) later, we had narrowed the problem down to a modem that had not been configured before it had left the store. All that was easily fixed and by lunch time, it was all up and running, and we were able to kill the Concorde lights in the spare room for the last time. By close of play today, I had been enjoying the rapid response of web pages and had indulged in a long ‘test’ Skype with Rowland from Hawkeye UAV. Now that we have decent 24/7 broadband, we plan on using Skype a lot more and possibly reducing our homeline calling plans – more

So all that thinking and fault locating made me a might peckish….I didn’t quite get the angle right in this picture – I should have reduced the angle so that the whole is silhouetted against the white of the plate – so it doesn’t look as nice as it actually did and certainly not as well as it tasted. All it is is some kumara hash brown mix left over from my kumara and salmon stack the other night, and a chunk of fresh-fried lamb I found in the fridge with a squirt of Carmen’s homemade chili sauce…the curry in the hash brown and the chili sauce blended deliciously…so I made another and it was just as good…

Sitting back now, watching Lost in Space (the original, not the sad-as movie with Joey from Friends) after a great dinner of pork sausages with a cheese omelette….

They live!!!

Posted on 1 November 2012 by SJPONeill

Just been up the road for a coffee and endured yet another nutjob spouting off about why New Zealand just has to have fast jets if it hopes to have any credibility internationally. I’m not going to get into that argument although I will admit I do kinda miss the sound of tortured air as 75 Squadron crank across the Rangipo Desert…but…this nutjob made the comment that the Skyhawks are just rusting away, neglected and forgotten, down in Woodbourne. And that’s not true….so just for the record…

A while back, someone emailed me a PDF that had clearly been a copied and pasted Word document drawn from an internet or print article – there were no identifying links, or names or anything to give away the source. If anyone does recognise the source, please let me know so that I can credit the source and link to the original item…so, just for the record, everything from here on in italics and the pictures are all someone else’s work…not mine, not at all…but I do think it’s all pretty cool…

“There has been lots of rumblings in the military aviation community about the future of the Black Diamond Jet Team and the possible establishment of a commercial adversary support arm of the group, known mysteriously as Draken International. It is now clear that Draken International and its team, which sports famous names like a Dale Snodgrass in its roster, is deadly serious about jumping into the fickle commercial adversary support/contractor air services industry, with an armada of blazing afterburners to prove it.

I have written at length about the coming storm of demand for commercial adversary support services. As America and her allies transition into an almost all 5th generation fighter inventory, fighter wings will not be able to afford to accomplish all their required training tasks using “in-house” aircraft as they have done in decades past. 5th generation fighter capability comes at a huge cost, not just in the upfront purchase of the aircraft, which will cost at least twice as much as a comparable fourth generation fighter, but the operational and sustainment costs of these cutting edge machines will be absolutely crushing for users around the globe. It simply does not make sense to send an F-35 up to train on basic radar intercept procedures against another F-35. Incredibly valuable airframe hours are consumed
needlessly by doing so and aircraft operating costs for such sorties will be astronomical. Further, having a state of the art 5th generation fighter mimic an inferior threat is not only inefficient but it is also somewhat problematic. This is precisely where commercial adversary support providers will come in to alleviate these fiscal and operational pressures, providing simulated threats and other support duties that can be tailored cost effectively to each individual sortie’s training goals. Further, outsourcing such duties instead of expanding current military adversary support squadrons or establishing new ones will create an elastic on-demand force that will be much more cost-effective than a standing military force alternative. In other words, by outsourcing adversary support duties to a commercial entity an air arm only needs to pay for exactly what it wants, when it wants it. If they become dissatisfied with their provider or someone else shows that they can provide the same service better or cheaper than they can take their business elsewhere. Such an arrangement is a proven economic and operational win-win for all those involved, the problem is that there is simply not enough supply of these services right now to fulfill what will become a huge demand by the end of the decade. This is where companies like Draken International are beginning to step into the picture, possibly taking what has been a niche industry and thrusting it into the mainstream international defense marketplace. Draken International’s fleet of aggressors is simply eye watering:

29 MiG-21BIS/UM: This is a lot of supersonic threat simulation aircraft! The majority of these jets are ex-Polish birds and are equipped with the dated by today’s standards, yet still capable RP-22 radar set, as well as a radar warning receiver. The MiG-21 in this configuration is roughly similar to the F-5Ns currently serving in the aggressor role for the US Navy. With the addition of a capable electronic warfare/jamming pod, the MiG-21 is known to be a dangerous jet to engage with on an air to air level even in modern times.

8 Ex-Royal New Zealand Air Force A-4K: Yes, some of the New Zealand’s Skyhawks have finally been sold to a loving new home after years of busted deals and “tire-kicker” inquiries. These are the most capable Skyhawks ever produced and sport an advanced version of the F-16A’s APG-66 pulse- doppler phased array radar, hands-on-throttle-and-stick pilot interface, a full-fledged heads up display, a capable radar warning receiver, 1553 digital bus which will allow for carriage of advanced stores, and even mid-air refueling pods. These A-4Ks will obviously be Draken International’s high-end threat simulation mainstay and will bring a capable radar set to the commercial adversary support industry for the first time, which is a true game-changer. Also, seeing as these jets are equipped with refueling stores, they can offer that capability for fleet training or to enhance their own aggressor capabilities where “time-on-station” is a big selling point for potential customers. The A- 4Ks are slated to be operational by early 2013.

3 A-4L Skyhawks: Currently wearing “zebra’ camouflage and Draken International titles.

9 Ex-Royal New Zealand Air Force MB-339: These advanced jet trainers are equipped with similar sub-systems as their A-4K cousins, such as an advanced HUD and 1553 digital bus, albeit without the APG-66 radar and other combat oriented gear. Slated to be operational by the fourth quarter of 2012.

5 L-39: Presumably these are the same aircraft that are flown by Draken International’s non-profit aerial display and exhibition team.

When you look at this fleet in comparison to other contractor air services/commercial adversary support providers you realize that Draken International has procured a diverse and flexible combination of aircraft that matches more advanced threats, and in greater volume, than what is currently available on the market today. The MiGs are fairly cheap to procure and are a good match for simulating enemy anti-ship and cruise missiles, some of which now possess solid supersonic performance. The Skyhawks will be a an affective “jack of all trades” and will be especially useful at presenting a cost-effective fourth generation fighter threat in the beyond visual range arena, a capability that is currently sorely lacking in the CAS industry. The MB-339s, and even the L-39s to a certain extent, will be good for lugging around jamming pods and presenting rudimentary radar targets for aircraft and ships, as well as providing close air support training for JTAC/FAC schools at home an abroad.

What is most astounding about Draken International’s business plan is the sheer amount of aircraft in their inventory and the endless
potential of how they could be mixed and matched together to form an incredibly diverse and capable aggressor force. With so many airframes of different capabilities, including those which can mid-air refuel and supply a persistent radar picture for their red air team, Draken International will have the ability to supply an enemy air force “on demand” for large force employment exercises that mirror the capabilities of many potential adversary nations.

In business they say timing is everything, and in Draken International’s case that key ingredient may remain illusive due to a faltering F-35 program and shrinking defense budgets both at home and abroad. Yet these same factors, which may seem negative at first glance, could very well end up being Draken International’s proverbial ace in the whole, as the F-35 program is almost unstoppable at this point and costs related to it will continue to balloon, thus resulting in smaller fighter fleets than originally planned for most nations involved in the program and less cash available to fly the jets once they are purchased. As a result hiring companies like Draken International will be absolutely necessary for providing continuous training support at comparatively minimal cost.

One thing is for certain, with firmly entrenched contractor air service providers like Top Aces and ATAC already holding substantial market-share and burgeoning new startups like ECA Program and Draken International just stepping onto the stage, the biggest dogfights for these companies may no happen high in the sky but in corporate boardrooms and DoD contracting offices instead. Competition will be furious for the as yet to grow adversary support pie, but once a new, much bigger pie, in the form of the F-35 program, finally gets served it will be good eating for many for years and years to come…”

PS: Why place this in ‘The Thursday/Friday War‘ category and not ‘Playing with Toys‘? Easy…I think that the relationship between commercial and traditional military providers of capabilities to nation-states et al is just getting started and won’t stop til it gets us to the days of Falkenberg’s Legion and Hammer’s Slammers (look ’em up)…