Today is an extremely grab-bag day.
Defense
- A lovely F-35C glamor shot
- The Tu-22M3M, the logical end result of Russia’s insane aircraft naming scheme. (Remember, folks, the Tu-22 and the Tu-22M are different airframes!)
- Forbes on the business impact of the Army’s ITEP re-engining program – Helicopter engines are big money. Think 10,000 units at least.
- The Maritime Silk Road, or China’s geopolitical strategy – Basically, all their repossessed infrastructure investments make for a nice network of bases, and a nice network of countries pleasantly disposed toward China.
- Quality, not quantity, or the American military spending strategy – I think this is a reasonable peacetime choice, except insofar as modern military production is very hard to scale up.
- US Navy tests Littoral Combat Groups – They don’t include any Littoral Combat Ships, because why would they?
- Britain plans to build a new base in Southeast Asia – Brunei is apparently high on the list. Singapore seems like a natural choice, too, but there’s way less room there.
- Flashpoint: Arctic Circle – Russia is improving its bases in the high arctic.
- A tweet from John Noonan on Chinese rhetoric in 2019 vs. Japanese rhetoric in 1941 – “[…] the US is a weak, pleasure-seeking nation, and if we thump their Navy hard enough, they won’t fight for little Pacific islands.”
- Ongoing problems with the Ford-class carriers’ weapons elevators – You’d think they’d have that nailed down by now. Also on the grapevine is continued issues with the advanced arresting gear. Those, at least, operate on an interesting principle, using adjustable vanes in a water-twister energy sink to vary arresting force by aircraft.
- Soapbox favorite CDR Salamander writes an ode to the naval gun – As I recall, he came of age as an officer in some battleship or another before they were retired, so it’s no surprise he’s fond of gunnery.
Firearms
- GQ Magazine on training gun-carrying teachers – parvusimperator has been to a class with the guys who ran the training course, and recommends them highly. He also recommends the article as a very fair look into that world.
- Aluminum bolt carrier test (video), and one for sale at a good price – If parvusimperator springs for one, we want to do a blind test. One guy slaps either a steel or aluminum bolt carrier into a rifle while the other isn’t watching. Then the other guy shoots. Swap the carriers, do it again. Can we tell the difference?
- The USPSA magazine reports on popular competition gear – I’m gratified to say that none of my guns appear on it.
Technology
- Patreon’s censors (video) – Noting the danger megacorporations pose to free speech online is one of the least traditionally conservative positions I hold politically. I have a longer post on the issue in draft status, but it’s a hard one for me to write, probably because there aren’t any easy fixes. The main point I found compelling in the linked video is that it’s absurd that Patreon exercises editorial control, when in effect it’s content creators hiring them to do behind-the-scenes accounting.
Having received the very valuable advice to sub before jumping into a full time teaching job (I ended up getting a long term sub…then stopped going that direction) – I learned a few things:
1) Teaching in HS wasn’t for me (and I sub’d at a wealthier school)
2) Guns and schools – as the article alluded to (the comment by the coach), there are school staff that shouldn’t have guns. Reminds me of a comment made by some president of a teachers association after the Stoneman-Douglas shooting: she would never be able to shoot a student – even if that kid was in the midst of a mass shooting. Sorry, that kid became a threat the second he/she/it pulled the trigger – as my wife has highlighted, the military did a good job (on me) of turning threats / targets into remorseless objects. Heck, it wasn’t until I got home after a kid threatened me – that I realized that had he attacked me, I could of killed him…
3) Equal-terms if not over-match: All the recent mass shootings have used AR style weapons, and you’re expecting school staff with a compact 9mm (or smaller) to engage / neutralize the threat? Screw that noise, I’d figure some way to secure an AR in the classroom – heck and might as well keep body armor there too. On that note, are armed school staff and/or first responders trained on how to prevent fratricide?