Archive for November, 2006
From a performance in Norway. Awesome.
Linkzookery for Turkey Day. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
Hooker sent on this 1936 Thanksgiving menu from the battleship USS West Virgina:
Cheney’s office denies he’s in Iraq
But the denial didn’t seem to be absolute. We’ll see.
What American journalists should be thankful for
Americans should be thankful they don’t live elsewhere. Malkin has a list.
Christmas For Our Wounded Heroes
The Big Holiday is just around the corner. Go see what Andi has to say about it.
Killer Rocket Plane
The latest of the ‘Deadlies’ at Defense Tech.
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If you can read this, it means you’re seeing MO on the new server.
If you can read this in English, thank a soldier.
Murdoc’s apologies, but I must turn off comments for the night. Due to a number of issues with my new host (and exacerbated by a friendly spam attack) I’m once again having to move MO to a new host. I’ve given up trying to cheap out on hosting and hopefully this will be the last move for a while.
You won’t have to do anything. Do not adjust your set.
UPDATE: If you’re seeing this, it means the DNS change has reached you and you’re meeting the new MO, same as the old MO. Only more so.
Comments are now restored.
I forgot to mention the Deadlies contest at Defense Tech, and now that I was going to get my nominee in I see that someone already submitted it.
Anyway, the Man Cannon mentioned on MO back in May (here and here) made the list. Check out Defense Tech for more Deadlies.
Regarding the DARPA Man Cannon, I wrote:
My initial reaction was “why isn’t everyone working on an “IED Manhattan Project”, but upon reflection I’m wondering if maybe we don’t necessarily want this group of researchers working on anything involving explosives.
The latest Deadlies entry? Why, the Nuke Bazooka, of course.
This is several years old, but Murdoc hadn’t seen it before. A reader tipped him off to it just now, and it’s apparently the real deal. Here’s the email that the reader forwarded:
I’m told that there is a huge rock near a gravel pit on Hwy.25 in rural Iowa. For generations, kids have painted slogans, names, and obscenities on this rock, changing it’s character many times. A few months back, the rock received its latest paint job, and since then it has been left completely undisturbed. It’s quite an impressive sight. Be sure to scroll down and check out the multiple photos (all angles) of the rock. I thought the flag was draped over the rock, but it’s not. It’s actually painted on the rock too.
Here’s one of the pictures:
Incredible.
Here’s some more info and pics:
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Here are a couple of recent pics:
Iraqi army soldiers with 1st Battalion, 2nd Brigade, 6th Iraqi Army Division conduct a combined patrol with U.S. Army soldiers from the Military Transition Team of 2nd Battalion, 17th Field Artillery Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division in the Adhamiyah neighborhood of Baghdad, Iraq, on Nov. 13, 2006.
Iraqi army soldiers with 1st Battalion, 2nd Brigade, 6th Iraqi Army Division conduct a combined patrol with U.S. Army Soldiers from the Military Transition Team of 2nd Battalion, 17th Field Artillery Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division in the Adhamiyah neighborhood of Baghdad, Iraq, Nov. 13, 2006.
There’s no doubt that the new Iraqi army has made great strides in capability and organization lately, but the effort has a long way to go. Here’s an article in today’s WaPo: Flaws Cited in Effort To Train Iraqi Forces.
See also what Phil Carter had to say about this in Phil Carter back from Iraq.
Text in the video:
“The Hungarians replaced the turret from an old Russian tank with 2 turbines from a Mig 21. Water is injected in the exhaust, they throttle up and distinguish the fire.”
I think that’s supposed to be “extinguish”, actually. But we knew what they meant.
And here are some non-tank versions. But what fun is that?
E-Mail Raises Concerns About Military Rifle
A reader sent me this link about reliability problems with the M4 carbine:
Experts said the weapon has a light modular design and the military considers it a great weapon.
However, in March 2002, Natik, the Army’s main laboratory for developing weapons, found 15 percent of U.S. troops surveyed reported the M-4 jammed.
Also, 20 percent reported double feeding — which is when two rounds of ammunition go in at the same time and cause a jam, the report said.
Though this is not new, the television station is pulling out all the stops to turn this into a full-blown investigative report. Check out the video on the Local6.com site.
Regarding the percentage of troops who told of problems in the survey, those numbers don’t mean anything without knowing exactly what they mean. 15% of the troops say that the M4 jams? Ever? Or that it jams 15% of the time every time they try to fire it?
That’s a big difference.
That being said, the M16/M4 gas system that vents directly into the action just doesn’t seem to be terribly smart. A number of newer weapons with piston systems are available, and it would be nice to see them get some consideration.
However, even if the reliability issues are resolved to everyones satisfaction, next up will be complaints about the 5.56 ammunition (particularly when fired from the M4′s shorter barrel).
It seems unlikely, but does anyone out there have any opinions on these issues?
Last week, the San Fransisco school board voted 4-2 in favor of dumping the local Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps. 1,600 kids participate in the program. Err, participated.
This column is really too good to excerpt, but I’ll grab this bit:
The problem is with the anti military bigotry of the school board majority and the “peace” activists who lobbied against the program on the grounds that San Francisco’s schools should not be sullied by an association with the US armed forces.
“We don’t want the military ruining our civilian institutions,” said Sandra Schwartz of the American Friends Service Committee, a far-left pacifist organization that routinely condemns American foreign policy and opposes JROTC nationwide. “In a healthy democracy . . . you contain the military.” Board member Dan Kelly, who voted with the majority, called JROTC “basically a branding program or a recruiting program for the military.” In fact, it is nothing of the kind: The great majority of cadets do not end up serving in the military.
But then, facts tend not to matter to smug ideologues like Schwartz and Kelly, who are free to parade their contempt for the military because they live in a nation that affords such freedom even to idiots and ingrates.
Many claim that the resistance to the program is based upon the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy regarding gays. But it should be clear to almost anyone who’s paying attention that there’s a lot more involved here than that. Pathetic.
You really ought to go read the whole thing.
Also, Rebekah Sanderlin points out a “fun link” at objector.org, one of the San Fransisco ban’s largest supporters, and writes:
Perhaps they could build us a nice little leper colony somewhere…
