This is the 20th Edition of Wednesday What We’re Reading. It’s been a fun feature so far, and well-received to boot, so with a little luck, the next time I make mention of anniversaries in the introduction is when we’ve been doing them for a year.

Defense

• India and Pakistan have a go? – The lead story, obviously. With artillery fire exchanged across the Line of Control, and Indian airstrikes falling in Pakistani territory, things are heating up a bit on the subcontinent. On the other hand: North Indian civilian airports are still open, and there hasn’t been escalation as of press time. On the gripping hand: there’s an election in India in two weeks, and a few Twitterers who found their way to my timeline are saying that public opinion slants very much in the direction of, “Let’s teach them a lesson.”
• The case for the F-15X – I was interested last week. I’m still interested this week. It’s really hard to argue that: a) any war against even a near-peer force is going to involve stealthy aircraft only, and b) in a war which involves non-stealthy opponents, carrying nearly two dozen AMRAAMs is somehow a bad thing.
• India bails out of joint-with-Russia stealth fighter project – The Drive says it’s no surprise. We agree.
• India to buy unfinished MiG-29s to fill its fighter shortage – If they finish them to -K standards (or some other recent variant), not a bad move. Otherwise, maybe a bit questionable.
• F-35s as a nuclear defense weapon? – The headline is misleading. They mean using F-35s to attack launch sites or missiles during their initial climb, both of which seem to require more clairvoyance than I credit to the US intelligence apparatus.
• Big Army’s battlefield nuclear reactor project is a bad idea… – …says the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, which means I’m cautiously in favor of it.
• STRATCOM chief says US military needs to learn how to ‘go fast’ again – In procurement terms, mainly. We agree here, but I think everyone agrees. The difficulty isn’t in identifying the problem, but rather in solving it.
• On South Korea’s blue water navy aspirations – Fine by me, if by ‘blue water’ they mean ‘the blue waters to the east and west of the Korean peninsula’.
• The US Merchant Marine is tragically, criminally small – Yes, yes it is.
• British boomers have great names – Talking about HMS Warspite, of the Dreadnought class. Granted, they’re recycling names, but they’re good names.
• Columbia SSBNs are a key element to the nuclear defense triad – Obviously.
• Speaking of, the Columbias are actually on schedule – Is… is that a thing? Come to think of it, the two best-run American procurement programs of the post-Cold War era have been Navy: the Virginias and the Super Hornet. Maybe they have a secret.

History, Photos, Paintings

• The countermeasure washdown system is a key part of aircraft carrier NBC defense – Also on-deck firefighting. Here’s a video, too..
• HMS Agamemnon and friends
• French frigate Bellerophon and an unidentified FREMM – Provence, parvusimperator informs me.
• The consequences of the Battle of the Caudine Forks – A half-defeated enemy is the same as an undefeated enemy.
• Nighthawks are flying around the Southwestern deserts, and people are taking pictures

Science and Technology

• Chipmaker TSMC lost $550 million in revenue due to a manufacturing error – Oops.
• Grand Canyon museum left buckets of uranium ore sitting next to a visitor exhibit – Discovered only because somebody’s kid was a Geiger counter enthusiast. Weird hobby, sure, but if one of my future children picks it up, I won’t be mad.

Other

• On wage stagnation – Slate Star Codex is tops on my list of blogs whose authors I would disagree with on nearly every matter of substance, because the guy who writes it is so sharp. Also, the commentariat there is in the same club as ours—good ones.

“Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under socialism, the reverse is true.” – A Twitter Wag

“It’s been a really boring week in defense news.” – Me, in our article-sharing chat channel

AAF Picks

Results time! Scores first, my picks from last Wednesday in parentheses.

• Birmingham 12, Salt Lake 9 (Stallions +6.5): as in week 1, the strength of the Iron was defense.
• Arizona 20, Memphis 18 (Arizona -10.5): swing and a miss. Arizona only won at all on the grounds of a late comeback.
• Orlando 37, San Antonio 29 (Orlando -6.5): after Arizona’s stumble, Orlando has the best claim to offensive powerhouse status.
• San Diego 24, Atlanta 12 (Atlanta +9.5): I was right on this one until San Diego kicked a garbage time field goal (35 seconds on the clock!) to pad their lead.

Record to date: 2-2. I beat this sportswriter, whose picks went 1-3. Were it not for the stupid last-second field goal, I would have been 3-1 and he would have been 0-4.

There are no AAF odds for week three out yet, so I’ll do my picks later in the week, either tomorrow or on Friday. Tomorrow, I have a long-ish AAF review scheduled, so I’ll defer deeper comment on the subject until then. (Excepting, of course, a few articles linked below.)

Defense

• Big Army to acquire Carl-Gustaf – Everyone’s favorite Nordic recoilless rifle, coming soon to a United States near you.
• Like The Bear and the Dragon, but opposite – They have a closer relationship than you think.
• State of Defense report, 2019 – It’s very long by our standards, and I didn’t read the whole thing.
• On the long war against ISIS
• Russians overstating the potency of their weapons? – Say it ain’t so!
• On the flip side, take the Armata threat at least a little seriously – It isn’t that they’re going to flood through the Fulda Gap, it’s that the previously-moribund Russian armor industry is back to innovating.
• A photoshoot of Japan’s last Phantoms
• Marines want a long-range anti-ship missile – In WW2, they established control of the air and sea by capturing islands and building airfields. In the modern age, they see themselves doing the same by capturing islands and plopping down some missile batteries. Makes sense to me.
• USAF buying Ace Combat-edition F-15s – Thanks to triple launchers, the 80-airframe buy can carry a total of 1760 missiles (22 each).

Guns

• Tippmann, the paintball gun (and former gun gun) manufacturer is making a 9mm Gatling gun replica that you can buy! – In the manner of all modern 9mm products, it takes Glock magazines.

Science and Technology

• Goodbye, A380 – Surprising nobody, really. The A380 was a relic of a hub-and-spoke era in a point-to-point one. Unlike the 747, which was designed with cargo in mind (that is, designed with a top-deck cockpit to allow for a hinged nose), the A380 lives and dies on passenger flights, and market preferences in passenger flights run in a different direction now. Fun fact: when Boeing and Airbus were considering a superjumbo collaboration, Boeing said no, it’s a bad idea.
• The claim that Autopilot reduced Tesla crashes by 40% is statistically unsupportable – I’m willing to be pleasantly surprised if wrong, but I’m on the record saying that general-availability driverless cars are probably two decades away.
• The rise and decline of the Makerbot Empire – Makerbot was the vanguard of the cheap-3D-printer movement. Back in the day, a $700 filament deposition model was considered cheap. Now, you can get a fancy resin printer for under $500. Contra Wired, I think they were pretty successful at ushering in a new era. They just didn’t stay market leaders.
• What happens when techno-utopians actually win elections? – A case study from Italy. Spoiler: utopians are still humans, with human failings.
• Hand transplants: thumbs up or thumbs down? – A very long-form article from Wired on the topic.

Grab Bag

• 9th Circuit makes non-political decision
• New York politics still money-driven, questionably ethical
• Airplane listing of the week: the last original, unrestored P-51D – Includes 20 Merlin engines in various states of repair, and 6-8 semis worth of other spare parts. Price tag: $4.5 million. That’s a steal.
• Fishbreath favorite the Alliance of American Football is built on gambling technology – Gambling is a smart move for any new sports league, because the hardest thing to do when getting a sports league off the ground is instilling a rooting interest in otherwise blase fans.
• Also, the AAF needed a $250 million emergency investment before their second week of play – That’s not ominous at all. See my AAF article tomorrow for some insight into what that means.
• In search of the most cowardly punt ever – SB Nation’s Chart Party video series is one of my favorites in the field of sports nerdery. This one, unlike previous 10-15-minute entries, is almost an hour long.

Leading off with a (temporary) new section…

The Alliance to Restore the Republic of American Football

That section title got away from me a bit. (If it were the Rebel Alliance of American Football, it would be the RAAF! That’s a fun acronym that isn’t in use anywhere else.) Anywho, it’s that awkward time of the sports year which falls between the end of the NFL playoffs and the start of the NFL preseason¹, so the Alliance of American Football was an obvious thing to check out.

The short version is, it has promise, some of which is currently unrealized. The long version is, I’m writing a full post, so be patient. In the interests of having some extra fun with the league, I’ve decided to do picks against the spread for the remaining nine weeks of the season.

• Salt Lake Stallions at Birmingham Iron (-6.5): I don’t have a good feel for this one, but I say Salt Lake covers. Birmingham didn’t generate much offense last time out, and a shutdown defense only takes you so far.
• Arizona Hotshots (-10.5) at Memphis Express: Arizona in this one—the Hotshots are the pacesetters in the league right now, and Memphis is realizing that the Christian Hackenburg Show isn’t going to work.
• Orlando Apollos (-6.5) at San Antonio Commanders: I like Orlando in this one. San Antonio looked iffy in their game last week against the Fleet.
• Atlanta Legends at San Diego Fleet (-9.5): Atlanta to cover. I don’t think they’re bad enough to lose by 10 to the Fleet, who (despite being one of my chosen rooting interests this year) are not very good themselves.

Defense

• Is artillery underrepresented in today’s armed services? – The Russians would tell you yes, which is why they have artillery all the way down to the battalion level. I’m inclined to at least listen, given that the Russians are (have recently been?) engaged in the Donbass in one of the only near-peer fights in the world.
• Defence Technology Review is always worth a read – Of particular note: Land 400 updates (though no major ones), and Marines to try out UAV-guy-per-squad. That leads to an unwieldy structure, though: three fireteams of three each, plus a command element including the squad leader, assistant squad leader, and UAV operator. If your squad needs a command team, it may be too complicated.
• The first Ford-class carrier is almost ready for service
• Another story on the Fitz crash
• Venezuela’s military holds the key to power in that country – Military of critical importance in dictatorship, water still wet, sky still blue (or possibly gray).
• The USAF says it’s less than two years away from hypersonic missiles – Then we can threaten Chinese carrier groups like the Russians threaten ours!
• Iron Man suit not feasible, SOCOM reluctantly admits
• China considering dropping its no-first-use policy on nuclear weapons
• Canadian diplomats sue Canadian government over Havana Syndrome – Apparently, the Canadian government shrugged off stories of sonic attacks from American diplomats, only to find its own diplomats similarly afflicted some time later.
• Business Insider reports: the Gripen is underrated and awesome – German Eurofighter pilots were taunting Gripen pilots, who then used their full, unrestricted EW setups and flew up on the Eurofighters’ wings. Hot take: EW is better than stealth. Stealth requires design compromises and (sometimes) finicky coatings, and can’t easily be adjusted in the field. EW can be done in software (to a great degree).
• Australia to buy its new submarines from France – I guess they finally worked out the details to their satisfaction. Parvusimperator and I were kind of rooting for the Japanese Soryus.
• South Korea to increase payments for presence of US troops – With companion Polandball strip.
• The F-35B won’t solve Australia’s defense problems – The author asks an interesting question by way of analogy: “[…] if a stray oil rig off the Philippines is a problem for the State Department, and an occupying naval force is a problem for the Pentagon, which solves the problem of an occupying oil rig?” The defense problem China poses to nearby states is two-pronged, and the prong poking harder right now is the diplomatic one.
• M2A5 Bradley canceled, M2A6 Bradley proposed – You might think I’m joking. Nope.
• F-35Bs operating from amphibious assault ships conduct strike exercises with external stores – I wasn’t aware they were that far along.
• In related news, US F-35Bs will join British F-35Bs aboard HMS Queen Elizabeth on her first operational deployment – A happy bit of allied nation friendliness, that.
• China building a sixth-generation fighter – Although nobody’s quite sure what sixth-generation means. I think we’re at risk of marketing speak taking over, as it did with the occasional ‘4th+++bis-generation fighter’ designations you see.

History

• In the 1950s, atomic tests were a Las Vegas tourist draw – Very Fallout.
• Who or what brought down Dag Hammarskjöld? – Moving a decade or so on from Fallout to Bond.
• USS Hornet found

Science and Technology

• The Sum-Product Problem – A Quanta piece, so of course I’m not well-equipped to summarize it, but it was fascinating nevertheless.
• US railways are the most advanced in the world – American travelers use roads more than their European counterparts, but American railways are overwhelmingly more effective at transporting cargo.
• A profile of the founder of Tesla rival Rivian – Rivian is making an electro-SUV and an electro-pickup, both with non-trivial offroad capability.
• The Coriolis effect in rotating space habitats – I’ve been trying to wrap my head around this subject for years, and finally, thanks to this article, I think I have a handle on it.

Guns

• Revolvers are passé, says one commentator – Interesting article, but isn’t he 20 or 30 years late to the party?

Grab Bag

• The worst phonetic alphabet… in the world
• Facebook has a right to block hate speech, but here’s why it shouldn’t – Broadly, I agree.
• Inside the Cleveland Browns’ front office – It is, in fact, a clown show.
• In old but fun news, the saga of the AAirpass – If I could fly first class wherever I wanted for no additional cost, you can bet I would be taking my wife on the occasional lunch date to Europe.
• Attempting to quantify the money New Star Wars could have made – I don’t agree 100% with the analysis, but it’s a fun thing to try nevertheless. I have in mind a measure (inflation-adjusted Box Office Above Replacement), but I think I’d need more detail on historical movie releases and grosses than I have at present. I’d want to look at the average haul of the top 25 movies in a year to determine the average blockbuster, then adjust for inflation using ticket prices rather than, say, CPI.