We’ve been doing this for half a year now (slightly more, given that we took a Christmas break; 26 entries in total).

Defense

• Civilian on Rafale fly-along ends up getting the ejection seat experience – “Merde, I cannot take zis guy any longair…”
• Some information on the Navy’s shipyard modernization plans
• Putin’s security detail routinely spoofs GPS – Joke’s on them; INS- and laser-guided munitions still work just fine.
• USAF accelerating B-21 buys – I’ll believe it when I see it. “Let’s build a bunch of B-2s, but cheaper!” seems to be the rallying cry here, and I’m not sure how that’s going to work. Anyway, we’ll get them delivered just in time for Russia to announce some kind of synthetic aperture longwave radar that renders shape-based stealth obsolete.
• Sea Stallion-K deficiencies are fixable, say Marines – parvusimperator observes that almost every deficiency is technically fixable. The two big ones called out in the article are exhaust gas ingestion, which is not great for helicopters, and not having enough airframes to do testing, which doesn’t bode well for future availability.
• A little more on the Sea Stallion-K program – And also on the reductions in readiness the extant Sea Stallions are working through.
• USAF working on a gender-neutral physical assessment – There’s no way to do that which doesn’t either let in wimpy men or exclude fit women, but I suspect 1) they’ll err in the former direction, and 2) nobody will notice, because most Air Force jobs aren’t especially physically demanding.
• Congress should fund another National Security Cutter – As we discussed in the comments a week or two ago, there’s nothing wrong with the idea of a cheap hull you can pack a bunch of technology into later. The Legend class is a good candidate, as is the other modern Coast Guard cutter project, whose name escapes me right now. Medium something or another.
• Virginia procurement plans change – Rather than buying 9 of the next 10 with the extra Tomahawk VLS section, we’re buying 8 of the next 11 that way. It’s funny that we ended up with the same pattern as the 688s: “Ooh, land attack missiles are great; let’s add more.”
• Lake City ammo plant prepares to make 6.8 – parvusimperator observed over coffee that this is most likely just calling up Union Lead Castings Co. and Consolidated Swage Products LLC to make sure they have the right stuff on hand or in stock.
• Having whipped the F-35B into shape, the Marines shift focus to the F-35C – “Commander Smith, Captain Johnson, this is Sergeant Sledge. He’s in charge of the program now.”
• F-16 service life extension program details – Structural repairs to get airframe expected lifespans from the current 8,000 hours to 12,000, along with packing the F-35’s radar in. The Viper flies on.
• Is this the end for Big Kuz? – After his¹ drydock sank, Russia doesn’t have much in the way of repair options. They’re openly discussing scrapping him, which is new.
• The Columbias may cost more than expected – Cost inflation? On a boomer project? Perish the thought!
• More on Textron’s cased-telescoped ammunition – It’s basically a sales brochure, but cool to see nevertheless. Is that the 6.8 that the ammo plant is gearing up for? In thirty years, will all the cool kids be building the civilian version of the 6.8 cased-telescoped rifle?
• The USMC’s aviation plans – The SHORAD section is nifty. They’ve got a Leonardo/MOOG Stinger/gun system on a JLTV, and they’re buying Iron Dome. Evidently the Marines get all the best toys. Except the cased-telescoped squad machine gun, that is.
• Dutch F-16 hits itself with cannon fire during training exercise – Oops. The article notes this kind of thing has happened before.
• One of Japan’s F-35As has crashed
• Teach the controversy: don’t retire Truman, mothball her! – The author references Ian Toll’s excellent Six Frigates in support of reviving the ‘laid up in ordinary’ status, to include building a new laid-up-in-ordinary drydock for Truman. Easier said than done, I say, especially since (as a nuclear-powered vessel) Truman‘s skeleton crew requirements are probably larger than, say, Constellation‘s were.

Space!

• VP Pence to NASA: “Moon landing by 2024!” – I suppose the theory on the aggressive timeline is that we’ve already done it once, so why can’t we do it again but faster?
• Hayabusa 2 science schedule – Last week, the Hayabusa 2 asteroid-sample-return mission shot a shaped charge into the asteroid it’s visiting to make a new crater. Science!
• Midmorning edit: there’s a Falcon Heavy launch tonight, with the corresponding triple-landing attempt – Launch window is from 1830 to 2030 and the weather is good; I have a Lent thing at church for almost exactly that window, so no spoilers.

Science and Technology

• TSMC begins 5nm fabrication – ‘Risk production’, they say, which I assume means you-the-customer assume some of the risk.
• 737 Max preliminary crash report from the Ethiopian aviation authority
• More than you wanted to know about 737 stabilizer trim and control forces
• Does Google forget old websites? – No, but you could be forgiven for thinking so. They just have a very strong recency bias in search results, except in cases where you’re literally the only substantial Internet source. (Thanks, 50mm Supershot article.)

Sport

• Arizona Cardinals: revolutionizing the draft? – Taking a page from baseball’s book, the Cardinals seem to be of the opinion that players on rookie contracts are better than expensive players at the same position, which seems sensible. They’re stockpiling draft picks and aiming to take some players in high-impact positions even if they don’t need them, on the theory that they’re either trade bait or the next man up when the current guy hits free agency.
• Baseball records: Chris Davis sets the new mark for most consecutive at-bats without a hit – He’s up to 49 right now. His last hit was September 14, 2018; he’s only walked four times this year. And they say the record book is closed!

Your correspondent has been whammied with a cold for the past week, so this roundup does not contain all the interesting stuff we’ve read in the past seven days.

Defense

• Textron shows off their cased-telescoped Next-Gen Squad Weapon Technology Demonstrator – Shows off privately, that is. Per TFB, no new photos are available.
• India shoots down a satellite – Welcome to the club!
• Next-Gen Combat Vehicle competition to open up soon – Parvusimperator notes that it’s silly we’re both planning to replace the Bradley soon and planning new vehicles which use the Bradley chassis.
• An additional story on the NGCV competition
• Optionally-Manned Fighting Vehicle RFP coming soon – These are parvusimperator’s submissions, and I’m so poorly read-up on ground vehicles that I’m not even sure what the relationship between OMFV and NGCV is, so if you want smart commentary on this subject, you’ll have to convince him to write an article.
• The future is now: F-35s on the USS Wasp
• See also: The Drive reports on future plans to turn amphibious assault ships into light aircraft carriers, offloading air assault to other ships in the group – The F-35B is the biggest paradigm shift resulting from the F-35 program, because it means that a STOVL carrier is suddenly more than just a base for light attack planes.
• Pilots on flying the F-35
• China on the lessons learned from Guadalcanal – How the other half thinks.
• HMS Queen Elizabeth next to USS Enterprise – That’s NCC-1701D, not CV/CVN-whatever. She’s bigger than I realized.
• Air Force halts KC-46 deliveries again, as foreign object debris found inside – Boeing to give line workers stern talking-to about leaving wrenches behind?

Science and Technology

• Casino industry remains cutthroat – Also, ethical hacking is a hard sell to the targets.
• Cruise ship loses engine power off the Norwegian coast – I would consider the helicopter evacuation a free bonus, myself.
• India’s satellite shootdown poses a potential threat to the ISS – In which India learns that, when you add energy to an object in orbit, it goes higher. I wouldn’t expect the debris to stay in orbit very long, given that it’s still dipping down into the low-orbit, high-drag region of space, though.
• Fungal disease is wiping out amphibians across the world – 501 species in serious decline, 90 entirely extinct. If it were mammals and the proportions were the same, the 500-species count would represent ‘everything with hooves and everything with flippers’.
• Flooding in the Mississippi basin to drive beef prices higher – Buy and freeze now for the summer hamburger season.
• More on the QuadrigaCX coin exchange story – Which remains one of my favorite cyberpunk future stories of 2019.
• GPS week counters reset to 0 this week – GPS satellites use a 10-bit field to count weeks, so every 1024 weeks, the counter loops back around to 0. Happily, it’s not a Y2K-style problem, because it’s in the spec, and the last loop happened right around 2000, when counter overflows were on everyone’s mind.

Guns

• Nikonov AN-94 hyperburst accuracy testing – The AN-94 is one of the oddest firearms designs in modern history, so much so that it’s difficult to concisely explain its operating mechanism.
• US District Court for the Southern District of California enjoins enforcement of CA’s magazine ban – The injunction will almost surely be overturned soon, so California readers should get while the getting’s good.

Grab Bag

• Jussie Smollett’s Chicago PD case file – If you don’t know about this one, count yourself lucky.

Sport

• The AAF suspends operations – This one will take a paragraph or two.

One of the AAF’s intentions was to be a football minor league—a place for players not quite up to NFL snuff to grow and perhaps become useful to an NFL team. This included NFL practice squad players and down-the-liners on active rosters—get your third-string QB some playing time, the sales pitch went, so maybe he’ll develop further! This had two flaws. First, the NFL Players’ Association was never big on the idea for player safety reasons. Why risk injury playing for a minor league? Second, the AAF was never going to survive solely on the name recognition of NFL third-stringers. They had to make a watchable, entertaining on-field product.

They succeeded at the latter goal. AAF football was recognizably football, and in the last few weeks was good enough to be enjoyable on its own. The 4th-and-12 onside conversion and the must-go-for-2 rules injected some extra offensive fun into the game. So, why did it fail?

First: investor Tom Dundon, who swept in at the last rumor of financial trouble swirling around the AAF, seems not to understand that nobody is going to pay any more to watch Danny Etling (Tom Brady’s understudy’s understudy) throw passes than they will to watch Garrett Gilbert (the Orlando Apollos’ QB) do the same. Failure to reach an immediate agreement with the NFLPA isn’t financial doom.

Second: the AAF was too expensive for what it was. Minor league baseball is cheap, and so also should be minor league football. If you can’t take the family to a game and buy everyone hot dogs for, say, $50, you’re not going to get the random, “Eh, why not, it’s a good way to spend an afternoon” traffic you need to drive attendance for a minor-league sport.

I didn’t do week 8 picks on account of being sick, but my week 7 picks went 1-3, for a lifetime AAF pick’em record of 12-12. I’m no worse than a coin toss!

The calendar says spring is here, but beautiful Western Pennsylvania is still in winter trim. Ten degrees colder this March than last.

Short roundup this week.

Many Words New Releases

• At Many Words Main, I’m serializing a new science fiction story – It runs from now until the beginning of May.
• I released Gearheads, a motoring adventure micro-RPG – Don’t have the budget for Top Gear-esque travel? Neither do I! That’s why this is only $1.

Defense

• Trump’s visit to the Lima plant
• On the Navy’s routine purchase of defective ships – ‘Defective’ is the article’s word, not mine, but makes me wonder: given a war following a long period of peacetime defense budget, would I rather have 50 hulls that work perfectly, or 100 hulls we can pack full of new equipment? I think it’s the latter—it seems to me that shipyard room is likely to be the bottleneck for the US.
• Trump backs NATO, OECD membership for Brazil – I’m opposed to neither, except that it’s a further debasement of the name ‘North Atlantic Treaty Organization’. It’s easy for me to forget how huge Brazil is, too.
• Japan’s carriers are defensive weapons – … argues USNI Proceedings, on the grounds that sea control is defense for an island nation.
• USAF’s unfunded priorities list includes more F-35As, KC-46s – You can never have too many tankers.
• Pentagon indicates that the F-15EX purchase stems from a desire to keep two fighter manufacturers in business – You heard it here first.
• Redesigning ship bridges for better collision avoidance – Also possibly helpful: restoring a sense of pride, manning ships well enough to permit on-the-job training…
• Saab makes a maritime patrol aircraft? – Based on the Bombardier Global 6000.
• The enduring case for American naval power – Because almost everything interesting in the world is at least one ocean away.
• A modular tank name for M1A2 SEP v4 – Who’s in charge of naming tank variants nowadays, and where can I write to complain to him?
• Refuel the Truman—it’s the law – As regular reader Chris Bradshaw pointed out a few weeks ago.

Science and Technology

• Stadia: Google’s game-streaming service – Game streaming is a fool’s errand for latency reasons. If it’s noticeable from my computer to my TV with Steam streaming, how is it going to work from the greater Internet?
• Nvidia develops AI tool which turns MS Paint-style sketches into photorealistic landscapes – I’m waiting for the public release.
• Apple insults buyers of the refreshed iMac with a 5400rpm spinny platter disk – That’s just hilariously bad.
• A pilot riding along in the jump seat saved the Lion Air 737 Max which crashed on the subsequent flight – I’m reserving judgment until I can read an accident report for myself, because I can’t render it without knowing whether the 737’s trim wheels were spinning when MCAS was engaging incorrectly. If so, there’s a checklist for that, as the ridealong pilot seems to have realized.
• Blue Origin spokesperson writes an op-ed on the Air Force’s latest launch purchase plans – A big block buy last time around ended up getting smacked down in court, because SpaceX came in and undercut all the traditional providers the Air Force went with. This time, they’re offering a 60-40 split for launches between now and the mid-2020s, which seems like dubious stewardship of public resources (again), given how much the launch landscape is likely to change between now and 2025.
• Buried in a report about a new Bitcoin ETF, a gem on Bitcoin itself – Most of the volume reported by Bitcoin exchanges is fake, or with the most charitable interpretation possible, misleading.

Guns

• Baseless lawsuit against Remington accurately described as baseless by judge

Early post today, because I have lots to do and can’t afford the typical leisurely lunch. Late-breaking news will break next week instead.

Defense

• The Chinese dragon is a hydra – On China and state-sponsored espionage.
• F-22 rapid reaction force, able to deploy anywhere in the world in 24 hours? – Fishbreath’s verdict: silly idea. Four F-22s won’t do anything against a peer threat, and are overkill against a non-peer threat. Four Strike Eagles or modern F-16s would be a better idea.
• More on the Navy’s carrier-building strategy
• Big Army running into recruiting shortfalls – Maybe that’s one of the reasons behind the push for autoloaders lately? If you can automate some thousands of loaders out of a job, suddenly you can do more fighting with fewer men.
• Singapore’s F-35 plans detailed – One of the big issues is interoperability, of which there is currently very little between a) F-35s and b) the aircraft operated by Singapore’s likely allies. Still, I wish them all the best, especially given the option they have to operate F-35s off of an aviation ship. (It may be the problem child of the bunch, but the F-35B represents the largest paradigm shift in defense affairs—if the US likes you, getting an aircraft carrier with a capable, modern air wing into service is the easiest it’s ever been.)
• Deploy or Get Out burns the Army’s candle at the other end – That said, though, I agree in full with the underlying idea that most of a country’s military should be deployable.
• The Bradley and How It Got That Way – Parvusimperator has been reading this book, and said it should be mentioned. Not only is it packed with good information, it’s also not a doorstopper and hence easily digested.
• Russia claims military superiority in the Arctic – I’m not as sure as some that the trend of reduced Arctic sea ice is a permanent thing, and evidently, neither is Russia—their plans include more icebreakers. That’s burying the lede a bit, however. The real headline is that Russian now claims sovereign rights over the entire Northern Sea Route.
• A science fiction reading list for strategists – This article is about short stories, but includes a link to a novel reading list. I would put forward one of my own stories for consideration, but as yet, none of the ones I’ve published have been very strategy-heavy.
• American diplomacy helped stave off a shooting war between India and Pakistan – Reuters’ reporters surely gritting their teeth having to report that.
• Germany finds building, equipping Pumas is taking longer than planned – Germany? Readiness problems?
• Big Army is still interested in the Puma, though!
• New Air Force One will be expensive
• US Navy looking to retire the Ticonderogas – On the one hand, we lose a bunch of good ship names. On the other hand, I see no real reason to keep them around longer than planned, given that we’re still making Burkes, and Burkes are plenty capable.
• While some European countries struggle to scrape together a handful of Eurofighters, most of the USAF inventory is trending toward 80% readiness

Sub-Defense: F-35 vs. F-15(E)X

• Lockheed’s not happy about it
• Bloomberg reports that the 2020 F-35 buy is down 6 airframes from 84 to 78 – So at least LockMart isn’t unhappy for no reason.
• Pricing data for the F-15EX

Pictures

• A Charlie Hornet in aggressor colors

Science and Technology

• Restarting a national power grid is hard – If Factorio has taught me one thing… Speaking of, I think I’ll probably have a Factorio/Satisfactory review to post in the next week or two.
• World record short landing: 9 feet, 6 inches
• MySpace loses 12 years of music and video – Yes, it’s still around. No, people didn’t really notice. (The data loss happened some months ago, and it only hit the news now.) Yes, all data is similarly at risk¹.
• Related news: the Internet Archive is scrambling to preserve public Google+ data – A college friend of mine runs a Saturday afternoon teatime, planned as a Google+ event, which has run into trouble owing to the pending Google+ shutdown. This is perhaps the first real-world effect of that event.
• Cross-file under History: R/V Petrel finds the USS Wasp – I love that Paul Allen’s billionaire gig was finding old warship wrecks. It would be easy to make a crack about uselessness vis-a-vis, say, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and space, but the modern world pays too little mind to history², and I will instead say that it’s refreshing that Mr. Allen dedicated a good bit of his fortune to shining a spotlight on it.
• Is Huawei a security threat? – It looks to me like four of the seven experts interviewed by the Verge say yes.
• SpaceX may begin testing the Starship this week – That’s simple up-and-down hop tests like Blue Origin has been doing, not orbital testing. (Quite a bit of work to do before orbit is in the picture.) Also, anonymous sources report that the next Falcon Heavy launch could be as early as April 7th.
• Toyota’s Takaoka #2 factory is pretty nifty – Rather than bolt all the robots and whatnot down, they instead put everything on movable platforms, so they can expand and contract the line’s capacity almost at will and without dramatically changing the cost per car.

Sub-S&T: 737MAX MCAS

• The Air Current with a good overview of the issue
• Boeing self-certified much of the 737MAX’s safety – … reports Ars Technica, whose comment section is, charitably, not as good as Slate Star Codex’s.

Guns

• Hudson files for bankruptcy – Chapter 7, too. They plan to liquidate everything and pack it in. Doing my part for journalism, I used some of my free PACER credit to nab the relevant filings. Their list of creditors is not particularly pretty. They claim to have $50,000 in assets and between $10 million and $50 million in liabilities. On the plus side, apparently you can buy H9s for cheap as part of the liquidation sale, if that’s the sort of thing that interests you.

Grab Bag

• A parvusimperator annual favorite: the 2018-ish hater’s guide to the Williams-Sonoma catalog – Really, though, I don’t begrudge rich people the choice to throw their money around. It’s one of the reasons people chase wealth, after all.

I just realized last weekend’s post was dated March 27th, because I changed the month but forgot to change the day. Rest assured that, if we were to guess at news from the future, we would try a little harder than two or three weeks out.

Apologies for the lateness of the post. It’s Mrs. Breath’s birthday today¹.

Defense

• A human interest story to start off – The chief of staff of the Air Force was shot down over Serbia. He recently met with the pararescueman who got him out.
• It’s approximately the beginning of a month, so there’s a new issue of Defence Technology Review for your perusal – It’s one of parvusimperator’s regular reads, so it’s worth putting here. Also, there’s a great deal of potential humor in a notional Defence Technology Revue.
• An old story, but a good one: China’s plans to sell Pakistan an aircraft carrier and integrate militarily – Given Pakistan’s F-16s and AMRAAMs, that would make it a fascinating case of a nation buying from two great powers at once.
• More on that Truman early-retirement scheme
• Taiwan mulls F-16V purchase – If, like me, you hadn’t heard ‘F-16V’ before, here’s the LockMart store page.
• Germany concerned with readiness of submarines and aircraft – You don’t say!
• On the Zumwalts, ASW, and defeating hypersonic cruise missiles – The article suggests using the Zumwalts as linebackers to the Burkes’ safeties, given that (the article claims) their green-water ASW is better than the Burkes’. I see two problems with this: 1. The submarines just attack the Zumwalts then; 2. The Zumwalts are so expensive and there are so few of them that it seems silly to send them in-shore like that.
• The Drive’s The War Zone gets angry about the MiG-21/F-16 reportage – Mr. Rogoway writes up just about everything we know and what we can reasonably conclude.
• From The Drive’s related pages, some cool aggressor F-5 pictures – Aggressors get the best paint jobs.

(Mad) Science and Technology

• “We designed ocular injectable photoreceptor-binding upconversion nanoparticles” – In English, some nano-gubbins which, when squirted in the eyes, grant near IR vision sufficient to differentiate complex shapes, fully compatible with ordinary daylight vision. Where do I sign up?
• SpaceX launch manifest includes some Falcon Heavy, some Starlink – The next Falcon Heavy launch is slated for early April. You can bet I’ll be watching.
• Another ancient US-flagged container ship in bad shape – In which the Jones Act fails to overcome market forces. If we were to let foreign-built ships into the coastal trade space, we’d see an extraordinary expansion in US-flagged vessels, which is an unalloyed good. Building non-warships in the US has been an economic nonstarter for a long time.
• Some in-depth analysis of Land 400 and the tactical considerations developing therefrom

History

• A 1949 chart showing strike range into Asia from aircraft carriers – It lists a 700-mile combat radius under ‘short-range aircraft’. Also, Jerry Hendrix is a good Twitter navalist to follow.
• Dazzle camouflage in action – I guess it does work.
• Nobody can explain the dominance of cavalry
• Counterpoint: yes we can
• Sidebar: is linking to another blog’s comment section a new low for this segment? – I argue no, given that the commenters at SlateStarCodex are frequently better at writing and arguing than we official bloggers are.

Guns

• Beretta makes a steel-frame 92 for competition – Parvusimperator provides this picture, which I can’t find anywhere else on the Internet. I don’t know how he does it.
• Armed civilian in Venezuela fights back – Just saying.

Grab Bag

• A wargame about carrier damage control in WW2 – Thrill, as you play out the narrative of Shattered Sword!
• Ultimate Admiral: Age of Sail – If it’s as good as Ultimate General: Civil War at capturing the feel of its era, I am altogether in.

In which I repeatedly type single quotation marks backtick-text-quote instead of quote-text-quote, thanks to a LaTeX project.

Defense

• Wingman drone sounds like a real bro
• On the Truman‘s early retirement – I think you could make an argument for e.g. fewer carriers and more cruise missile submarines, but that isn’t what’s happening here.
• On the Indian MiG-21 downing an F-16 – Gee. Almost like short-range air-to-air kills are still going to happen. Most fascinating to me was that the Pakistani AMRAAM was a -120C-5, which is a pretty recent missile to be selling to Pakistan.
• The Marine Corps’ Amphibious Combat Vehicle is an example of sane procurement – “They’re practically the Navy anyway,” said Fishbreath, reinforcing his point from last week’s roundup while angering any Marines and Navy men reading.
• Russia’s latest diesel-electric boat is ready to enter testing – Lada is not an inspiring name for a submarine class, given its history in Russia.
• Feeders at the Congressional trough prepared to protest F-15X
• Another argument in favor of dropping the F-15X – Parvusimperator and I cautiously disagree with an F-35-only solution, for two reasons. One, the F-35 is a cool recipe, but still in the oven. Two, the F-15X project will keep Boeing’s fighter plants operating, which is important from a national defense sustainability reason. I wouldn’t be happy having just one company running all of my country’s major fighter projects, if only for scaling reasons come the next war.
• The F-35 ballistic missile defense plan sounds more and more cockamamie the more I read about it – “All we have to do is station F-35s on a continual basis directly adjacent to North Korean missile sites!”
• Weekly conspiracy mongering: are North Korea’s ‘weather satellites’ EMP bombs? – Makes sense based on their shape and lack of any visible sensors, at least.
• Draft RFP for FFG(X) – Worth special mention is the expected equipment list.
• If other countries are going to flout treaties and develop IRBMs, then so should we – It’s a law if everyone adheres to it. It’s a handicap if only you do.
• Germany bears some responsibility for NATO’s decline
• SpaceX/ULA spat, part one million and three – This time, it’s over national security launches.
• USN to buy more Poseidons – Can’t go wrong with more maritime patrol aircraft.
• Apparently some people argue that Clausewitz is irrelevant? – Here’s the correct reaction.

Photos of the Week: Bombers

• Entry #1: Lancer
• Entry #2: Vulcan

Science and Technology

• Chinese surveillance data found in a no-password, web-public database – Oops.
• SpaceX’s successful Crew Dragon launch represents an American return to manned spaceflight – The big problem for SpaceX going forward is going to be finding new sources for revenue (like their Starlink Internet plan) if they want to keep on funding the BFR. As it stands, they’ve pretty much cornered the worldwide market on non-natsec launches. There’s only so much profit to squeeze out of that. Blue Origin has an edge on large rocket development in my book, because it’s a billionaire’s passion project.
• University of California system cancels all its Elsevier journal subscriptions – Elsevier is a watchword in academia for ‘money-grubbing useless middlemen’, known for paywalling a bunch of journals so that universities have little choice but to maintain subscriptions for their own academics. Not that academia is without its flaws, but the least I can do is praise them for doing something so obviously right.
• Another Intel speculative execution bug – This one lets you figure out memory mappings efficiently, which lets you do the Rowhammer attack from 2015 in Javascript in a browser.
• The attention economy is saturated – That is, there’s too much entertainment for humans to consume all of it, so we’re into an age of prioritization. You’ve probably noticed this yourself. It also plays into the difficulty in getting off the ground as an independent creator of content—there’s more entertainment than ever before, but it’s still delivered through a small number of outlets. There are only so many screens at the local cinema, and only so many production houses which can afford to bribe their ways into your local theater. See also Amazon and books.

Money Matters

• China’s super-rich worried about the country’s future – Any country could turn into the next Venezuela, but China doesn’t seem likely to in the near term. Then again, five years ago, neither did Venezuela.
• Eyeglasses: a field just begging for some trustbusting
• A list of all US retail locations closing this year – I’m part of the problem. I have two separate Amazon packages arriving this week.
• QuadrigaCX update: most of the $150 million allegedly in cold wallets isn’t there – We reported on this a few weeks ago, but now more official sources are picking it up.
• …including the Beeb – Who have the story from start to finish, if you’re lost.

Special Report: Blacklisting and Politics in Publishing

• Indie pulp sci-fi authors wind up the SFWA – Publishing, and particularly the ivory tower comprising the major trade organizations and awards, has lately been a very, very progressive field.
• Journalist Jesse Singal has been writing about ‘YA [young adult literature] Twitter’ for some time now… – … documenting how dysfunctional it is.
• It’s pretty terrible. – Not only is it a war zone for people with none of the victimhoods of progressive orthodoxy…
• It’s also full of white editors telling non-white authors to stay in their lanes – “You can only reliably write about your own personal experiences, but also you should have a diverse cast.”

Singal’s doing good work on that subject generally, although it’s amusing to note that he himself is an identitarian progressive, just a milder breed who hasn’t yet fully internalized that all revolutions eventually devour their children.

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.

Last week’s call for laptop names was premature, happily. A replacement battery and some marring on the chassis from my jimmying screwdrivers later, and we’re back in action.

Defense

• France, not satisfied with the FREMM, is building another quality frigate – “Hon hon, let us show up les Americains again!”
• Older F-35Bs may not last beyond 2025 – That seems like a bit of a problem. The Drive reports they’re running into problems after around 1500 flight hours, with an estimated total life of about 2,100 hours. That is not great.
• Two more Fords coming – The carriers, not the automobiles. Buying two at once saves a few billion dollars, and is also a huge thumbed nose to China. “We aren’t even feeling very competitive yet, and we’re still building two at once.”
• Sending the Navy into the Arctic for FONOPS is dangerous – Not because of a lack of ice-melting gear on the ships themselves, but because of a lack of icebreakers. A trip whose purpose is to annoy Russia (and Canada, don’t forget) which risks getting a ship stuck in ice and then requires Russian or Canadian assistance is a bad investment.
• James Holmes: does the Navy really need to worry about fleet size? – In which we are reminded that hull count is a terrible measure, given that a 4000-ton LCS is basically useless but a 200-ton catamaran with a bunch of missiles on it is not. James Holmes, a perennial favorite here, is writing a book called A Brief Guide to Naval Strategy, due out in November. That’s going to be a day 1 buy for at least one of us.
• Rhodesian mine ambush protected vehicles – A Weaponsman classic.
• Germany’s putting Trophy APS on Leopard IIs – Parvusimperator’s current tank and active protection system preferences, all in a handy package.
• USAF light attack testing program stalls – What the Soviets call frontal aviation really should be an Army concern.
• Navy’s ‘Magic Carpet’ system makes carrier landings much easier – To the point where a reporter could pull them off (in a simulator, of course). That’s something else.
• China aiming to build four nuclear carriers – I, for one, welcome the 21st-century naval arms race to come.

Guns

• Forgotten Weapons on the Colt CK901 – It’s an AR-15-pattern rifle in 7.62×39, designed for the Yemeni military. It has some nifty features you don’t find in presently-available 7.62×39 ARs. I could see myself buying one, if they ever release it for the American shooting public.

Technology

• Oracle continues comic book supervillainy – By auditing Java users and attempting to wring license fees out of them for uses in violation of terms.
• Do e-cigarettes help people quit smoking? – They help people quit smoking cigarettes, at any rate. I suspect they are not so good at helping people quit vaping.
• A brewing Bitcoin scam? – QuadrigaCX is a Canadian cryptocurrency exchange whose founder recently died. The sub-bullets following are wild conspiracy-theorizing, based in part on the article above.
  • Gerry Cotten, the deceased, is claimed to have died in India of Crohn’s disease. He is Canadian, however, and lived in Canada. Crohn’s is not generally a fatal condition except in severe, poorly-managed cases. Severe-unto-death cases make long airline flights unlikely, for reasons of lavatory availability.
  • According to the blog post above, Quadriga’s story (that much of the exchange’s crypto reserves were in an offline wallet on an encrypted laptop) doesn’t jive with known transactions. Quadriga was paying withdrawals with new deposits, and a large amount of Bitcoin left Quadriga’s known online wallets by way of another exchange.
  • If I were looking to con a bunch of people and run away somewhere, a destination like India, where English is widely spoken, a life of luxury is readily and cheaply available, and local officials are not entirely above bribery, would be high on my list. So also would a cryptocurrency exchange be high on my list of methods.