It’s still the 26th.

Wuhan Bat Soup Death Plague

• The CDC’s summary page, if you haven’t found it already
• Community transmission detected in the US – This is the point at which I buy a month’s worth of red beans and rice boxes and canned chunk chicken, I think. Is it the end of the world? Doubtful. Will I want the option to not go anywhere for a month or two, if it comes to that? Getting there.
• Avoiding clickbait on the death plague – For instance, the “sulfur dioxide from mass burning of corpses?” story is very likely bunk.

Defense

• 75th Ranger Regiment releases photos of its armory – Nice.
• Navy researching new class of medium amphibious ships – On the one hand, cool. On the other hand, why let them steal budget from your big amphibious ships, which, with the F-35, have the benefit of being better backup aircraft carriers than everyone else’s front-line aircraft carriers?
• L’Armée de Terre teste un canon de 140 mm au Leclerc Terminateur – No idea if that Frenchy talk is right, but you get what you pay for, and what you are paying for is not expertise in French.
• Navy looking for a containerized sonar system for long-term deployments – Ad-hoc SOSUS. Good to see Big Navy thinking about ASW.
• USAF and SpaceX teaming up in live-fire exercise – Presumably, it’s the Air Force doing the live firing, and SpaceX providing support. I’ve written in these pages about how SpaceX represents a massive strategic advantage with an expiration date. Plowing money into a flying Starship for total reusability makes perfect sense to me in an era when satellites are increasingly likely to be shot down in a war¹.

History

• YouTuber Drachnifel on why the Mark 14 torpedo’s failures occurred – In gory detail.
• Same Drachnifel on marine boilers, design adn development of – Go subscribe to this guy. I’m shocked I somehow missed him for this long.

Science and Technology

• Bell tests a Model 429 with electric ducted fans for anti-torque – I’m not sure if it looks cool or weird, but the benefits are manifold.
• Oil field fires got you down? Put ’em out with a pair of MiG-21 engines on top of a T-34 chassis – Non-broken video here.
• h/t Kilo Sierra via Discord: Astra is a rocket company with a containerized, no-launchpad-required rocket – I half considered putting this under Defense, given that it was a) built with DARPA money and b) the lion’s share of the prize money comes from being able to roll up to a new location, uncrate, and launch in good order.

Grab Bag

• A knitter peers deep into my heart and writes about my life – ‘Second sock syndrome’ is what (some?) knitters call the tendency to start a pair of socks and quit midway through. As in knitting, so in everything.