We’ll call it a biweekly-what-we’re-reading this time.

Your correspondent writes to you from the New Mexico countryside, watching the scrubland give way to thin forest as the Southwest Chief wends its way toward Chicago.

Random Thoughts

• One of the set of frequently-wrong ‘thought leaders’ on Twitter (Yglesias, maybe?) had the shocking realization that, although Chicago started as a rail hub, it’s now mainly a large city on the basis of network effects. Like, you know, every city.
• The Planes of Fame museum in Chino, CA is worth a visit, if you’re into airplane museums. They have the only airworthly A6M with an original Nakajima engine.

WuFlu

• How to test every American for the coronavirus every day – The short version: spit test strips at a low, low price per unit. As accurate as PCR testing? No, but much easier to mass produce. It would cost a few billion dollars, but you can find that behind the sofas on Capitol Hill, and the economic benefits would be massive.

Defense

• Royal Australian Regiment looking into 60mm platoon mortars – I’m on board with the idea.
• Not new, but Australia has a procurement decision-making framework that seems to be working pretty well – Better than the American system of, “Start the project and cancel it before completion seventeen times in a row,” certainly. Parvusimperator’s TLDR of the Australian framework: “If there’s an obvious choice, skip the competition, buy the obvious choice, and move on.”
• We’re selling the Qataris the AMRAAM-ER – That’s an AMRAAM seeker on an ESSM body. Next up: Washington, DC.
• Whither the MiG-35? – The Drive suggests the answer is, “Onto the scrap heap alongside a bunch of other modernization projects, in favor of more Flankers.”
• Bell reveals V-280 naval variants
• Also, gunships – I dunno. As a rotorhead flight simmer, I still think I prefer a proper helicopter.
• Strykers with lasers on their heads
• The Bruce Krulak Center speculates, by means of essay contests, on ways the USMC might vanish
• USAF working hard on the F-16’s new AESA
• Also, the F-16 is getting pylons with built-in MAWS and countermeasures systems – That’s a pretty clever place to stick the sensors, given that your average F-16 is pretty crowded already.
• Drone swarms! – For EW purposes, among other things. It’s a nifty plan.
• Flying the YF-23 – And its fancy flight control system.
• To replace the BMP-2, Hungary selects the Lynx – Which might, in turn, make the Lynx more attractive to the Aussies and their Land 400 program.

Guns

• Testing rifle muzzle brakes – The methodology is ingenious. Parvusimperator has some additional thoughts, which I believe he’s turning into a full post.
• Parvusimperator and I saw, in the latest issue of the USPSA magazine, a review of a custom-fit earplug guy. Unfortunately, he isn’t coming this far north this year. Fortunately, I ran across Decibullz, a silly name for a mold-your-own-earplugs solution. I haven’t had very good luck with in-ear protection beyond you classic orange foamies, but I’m hopeful that a custom fit and the so-called percussive filters will a) serve more comfortably for a full day of shooting, and b) let me hear things while still blocking shooting noise. There will be a review to come.
• Duncan v. Becerra opinion – The train wending its way toward Chicago originated in the greater LA area, where my wife and I spent some time quarantining with her family, who are also people of the gun, and you can bet this was a topic of excited conversation.

Grab Bag

• Beirut blast in pictures – Yes, we’re a bit slow off the mark on this story, but that’s the downside of the biweekly timeline.
• Tracing the path of the Rhosus, whose load of ammonium nitrate, abandoned 7 years ago, caused the explosion
• Italian explosives expert suspects that it was more than just ammonium nitrate – Bring your own Google Translate.
• Hong Kong turned into your average mainland Chinese city real quick, after the passage of that national security law
• The story that actually frames it in those terms – It’s been a while since I’ve put one of these together, okay?
• NY billionaires vote for Democrats, find themselves targeted by Marxists – Parvusimperator, a native of the Empire State, requested a tiny violin.
• Hollywood executives getting canned at an alarming rate – Well, alarming if you’re a Hollywood exec, I guess. There is very little sympathy for them in our internal chat; certainly, there’s more for the ordinary salaryman who gets laid off.
• Google kills off business-to-business products too