Caption:
(Fox News) The UN has issued a letter to its 193 member states warning that they face ‘imminent financial COLLAPSE’ after Donald Trump cut US funding. I wonder how long the WHO will last?
At the deepest level, Pres. Trump is collapsing foreign policy, trade policy, and security policy into a single coercive instrument. Energy access. Transit chokepoints. Contract law. Tariffs. All fused into one pressure system. This is not signaling. This is execution. Cuba is the test case, not the target. The target is the entire China, Russia, and Iran network, which has been using weak nodes in the Western Hemisphere as hubs for logistics, finance, and influence. Cuba’s energy dependence makes it ideal. Cut the fuel, and the regime loses basic functionality within weeks. No invasion required. No regime change doctrine needed. Just suffocation.
From the Mailbag
Q – Can you skydive without a parachute?
A – You don’t need a parachute to go skydiving. You need a parachute to go skydiving twice.
Q – When will the sequel to The Confederate Cipher come out? You indicated February.
A – I ordered the proof for Hudson’s Scouts from Amazon, which means that the story and the cover are complete. I want to look at the paperback version of the book before it goes live. Because Amazon is Amazon, I want the paperback out before I launch the digital copy, which literally only takes a mouse click. I’ve been hard at the third book in the series, The Crow Creek Expedition. It’s at about 50K words, after some re-writing, which is over halfway. It may end up about 85K words, a few pages shorter than the first two. The fourth book, Vengeance and Retribution, is still in the formative outline stages, and I have no idea when it will be complete. I hope in 2026. To summarize, Hudson’s Scouts will be out in paperback and digital formats within a week or so, and The Crow Creek Expedition will be out in March or April.
Of note, The Crow Creek Expedition will be dedicated to Al Kirk, who follows the blog. Of everyone, he’s been the most encouraging. A kind word gets you 5000 words when writing. I’ve never met Al, but I appreciate him. There is no money in writing. I made $40 in royalties from the first month’s sales of The Confederate Cipher. If I can get a modest lunch for two out of thousands of hours of creative effort, it’s par for the course. Writing in the present environment absent massive promotion and advertising (P & A) is sort of a waste of time. We’re back to Yeates – “No law nor duty made me fight – lonely impulse of delight, etc.”
I may take a break from Henry Hudson (the duelist) and his adventures and work on a science fiction story. Some of you have mentioned the short story “Half Life,“ which is in one of my short story collections, and you’d like to read more about The Coil and the planet in Lyra. I have done some work on that and might push out the complete story. There is a fleet on the way from Earth to wipe out the manufactured species, so there is a backstory to it all.
My current personal goal is to write 3 books per year at a sustainable pace. I don’t think that’s too ambitious, and focusing on that helps with the PTSD.
Bullet Points:
** Do what the white man says. Just do it.
** When grandpa buys a robot.
** I was chatting by e-mail with WSF about SAT diving (navy and civilian) the other day. Circa 1996 – but it’s a guess on the date, I started a company with a dive buddy called Super Frog Salvage. We used my 32′ Sea Ray and took work from insurance companies. I learned that in Southern California, there were several suspicious offshore yacht sinkings that were classified as accidental rather than as skuttling. If they dropped them in the Catalina Channel under 3,000 feet of water, there was no way to know, but many of these guys would put out an SOS not far from shore and drop the boat with the sea cocks open. The Sailboats had a lot of keel weight, and they tended to go to the bottom. Some of the smaller yacht-type boats tended to float, and we didn’t do those. It was a moonlight job, and we did as many as ten of those jobs over the course of three or four months. We’d photograph the boat and dive at less than 150′. A couple of decompression stops – but they were relatively quick inspections with short bottom times. Deeper, we had a homemade ROV on a tether for depths to about 225′. My buddy was hurt (eardrum injury), and I took heat for moonlighting, so we closed the business. I don’t know if anyone cares. It wasn’t a great business, but men, boats, toys and diving… it was more of an excuse to play and make some pin money. One accidental find on the seaside of Catalina Island was a yacht that pinged up on the depth sounder. It’s relatively flat and shallow >45′, so a boat on the bottom looked like a mountain. It was a sailboat, soundly anchored to the bottom with large concrete blocks that narcos used to cache smuggled drugs. We guessed that cargo ships would put a Zodiac over the side and drop the dope, and a sport diving boat would pick them up and take them in. We notified the Coast Guard & LA Sheriff (patrols Catalina Island). I dont’t know what ever came of it.
Editorial Note: There’s a significant difference between US Navy Combat Swimming, including the use of a closed circuit system – Drager & open circuit, and SAT diving. There is a place where the two meet, but it’s uncommon in the military context. Sport SCUBA and commercial diving are completely different. Most serious divers are very technical in their approach, much like pilots. (no old bold divers)
** How do communists feel about housecats?
** (MSN) (h/t Claudio) This has been in the news, but I thought I’d mention it – more unintended consequences in the Worker’s Paradise. China’s massive tree-planting push has long been hailed as a climate win. But new research shows the country’s ambitious effort to slow land degradation and fight climate change has also reshaped its water supply in surprising and sometimes uneven ways. According to a new study published in Earth’s Future, between 2001 and 2020, freshwater availability dropped in China’s eastern monsoon region and northwestern arid region, but increased over the Tibetan Plateau.
** Next Sunday is the Super Bowl.
** What about putting an 8-inch/55 (Mk 71 MCLWG) on the new CGX? I’m not talking about a rail gun of the sort canceled on the DDG 1000 Zoomie Class ships. If the US decided to replace the aging Tico Class CGs*, why don’t we put 2 larger guns on the next generation? Pro/Con: What do you think?
* About seven Ticonderoga-class cruisers are remaining in active service with the U.S. Navy, down from a total of 27 built between 1983 and 1994. The fleet is being rapidly decommissioned due to high maintenance costs and aging, with final retirements planned for around 2027 to 2029.
** Katie Hopkins – in from batshit, bonkers, Britain discusses current politics in Old Blighty.
** The SSGN gap – The U.S. Navy’s four Ohio-class guided-missile submarines (SSGNs)—USS Ohio, Michigan, Florida, and Georgia—will retire by 2028 and will not be directly replaced, creating a significant, temporary capability gap. Instead of new, dedicated SSGNs, the Navy is mitigating this loss by integrating the payload capacity into future Virginia-class Block V submarines. The four converted Ohio-class SSGNs provide massive cruise-missile (up to 154 Tomahawks) and special-operations capability. The Navy hopes to bridge the gap by 2040.
** The Canadians have one more thing to be upset over.
** Any landing you can walk away from…
** The UN’s decision to cut programs rather than the bureaucracy reminds me of how school board members threaten to cut football and basketball after voters vote down a school levy. Cutting the number of assistant school superintendents never enters their minds.
** (YouTube) Holodomor – Mao (Mousey Tongue) did it in his Cultural Revolution – the Great Leap Forward 1966-76. Stalin beat him to it, helping write the playbook 1932-33. Stalin went at it with a fervor (hold my borscht), causing a higher, more concentrated death toll, with estimates often ranging from 3.5 to over 5 million in Ukraine over the course of a little more than a year. Mousey Tongue was more systematic. Some say that Russians killing Ukrainians off by peaceful means (like Nazis killing Jews in concentration camps) was kinder than the kinetic Russia-Ukraine war now moving into its fourth year.
** You’ve seen it before. This isn’t the first time that ICE visited Minnesota.
From ZeroHedge
The problem in defense is how far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without – Dwight D. Eisenhower
(link) China is a feudal society much like it was at the end of the Qing dynasty (1911). Instead of aristocrats and landowners, Red princelings are the nobility today, remnants of the upper echelon of Mao’s victorious forces in 1948. The fortunate ones ceased being comrades long ago, having morphed into trust fund babies following Deng’s opening of China to market forces.
Common folk with talent and energy thrived for a time during the Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao years. Jiang’s reign lasted for 13 years, during which his faction accumulated enormous amounts of power and wealth. When he was forced to step down in 2002, he retained significant influence in the PLA, controlling the top of each branch with his own people.
Hu Jintao is a technocrat, not a Red princeling, and he ruled with significantly less power than his predecessor because his people didn’t control the Central Military Commission, the committee of generals that manages the PLA. Without control of the People’s Liberation Army, a General Secretary’s impact is severely limited.
When Hu’s 10 years were up in 2012, the various factions within the CCP met to choose a new General Secretary, with a secondary goal of limiting the power of the Jiang Zemin faction. The compromise was a Red princeling of only modest talents named Xi Jinping. He was meant to be a placeholder loosely allied with Hu Jintao to continue weakening the Jiang faction’s stranglehold on the PLA and financial system.
Xi Jinping – Meet the new boss, same as the old boss – Pete Townsend (The Who)
Before his rise, Xi was best known for keeping a low profile and surviving periodic turmoil amid a political quagmire. He was relatively unknown and initially taken for granted. Once in office, he set out to purge the Jiang faction from the PLA with the help of the other CCP factions.
Along the way, he quietly built his own faction, amassing wealth and influence by placing his own people in important roles. The result was that Xi became the new monster of the CCP, elevating himself to Mao’s level, precisely what the factions within the CCP did not want.
Once he secured sufficient power, Xi began acting like a despot. He had Hu Jintao forcefully removed from a Politburo meeting and is widely believed to have ordered the death of Li Keqiang, who passed under mysterious circumstances. Xi also attempted to staff the PLA with his own generals, which led to a Stalin-like purge of PLA leadership in 2019.
Xi reportedly experienced an illness, possibly a stroke, during the summer of 2025, and this opened the door for party elders such as Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao to step in. While recovering, they apparently joined forces with General Zhang Youxia to reduce Xi’s power to that of a placeholder instead of forcing him out. Their goal was to maintain the illusion of CCP unity for a nation ravaged by an economic depression and demographic collapse. Their timidity may have destroyed the Middle Kingdom.
Chaos
Civilization begins with order, grows with liberty, and dies with chaos – Will Durant
China’s Central Military Commission is supposed to have 5 members under the party’s General Secretary, but due to political infighting and possibly an assassination, only one member remains. Vice Chairmen Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhengli were either arrested or assassinated on January 20th; their fates are still unclear.
Li Shangfu and Miao Hua, both close to Xi, were arrested over the past year. This leaves Zhang Shengmin as the sole remaining member of the CMC. In effect, the heads of China’s military have been removed. Over the past few years, roughly 30 full generals have been purged for various reasons. Joe Stalin would be impressed.
This would be chaotic in the US or Europe, but it may prove devastating in China because the PLA isn’t homogeneous. Instead, each regional army group seems to have its own political affiliations and loyalties. Zhang Youxia was extremely well-respected in the army, so much so that none of the regional armies have openly supported Xi’s decision to remove the general.
Xi is believed to control the nation’s intelligence and police apparatus but not the armed forces. If he is unable to consolidate power over the next few weeks, things could get ugly in China. Chaos has the potential to produce regionalism in reaction to the power vacuum in Beijing. In its ancient history, China has rarely been united as one nation. In recent history, the Qing dynasty lost Manchuria to Russia in 1860; Japan regained it in 1931, and it was only returned to China in 1949.
Impact
Success breeds complacency. Complacency breeds failure. Only the paranoid survive – Andy Grove
The US has been exceedingly complacent for 30 years, and now a significant amount of the global supply chain circulates through China. Until January 20th, Chinese party elders and the capable general, Zhang Youxia, kept things largely under control. Now, we have extreme uncertainty thanks to the actions of a highly incompetent Mao acolyte.
It’s possible that things settle down in the next couple of months, but it’s also possible that the whole country goes up in flames. The economy has been destroyed for most citizens who lived through Xi’s devastating policies.
Will the CCP fall? Will civil war develop? Will Xi succeed in consolidating power and making himself emperor? Will Xi attempt external military action to divert domestic attention from his failed policies?
The only good news is that China has historically been governed by a cadre of local administrators, whether under an emperor, a president, or a general secretary. This tradition promises a modicum of stability at the local level.
But if China descends into chaos, it will have a profound negative impact on the global economy. The global banking system would incur enormous losses, and given the delicate nature of global finance, capital losses could trigger a domino effect among counter-parties. I see little concern for this possibility in the media.
Additionally, there is a secondary impact. Globalism can’t survive without China. Europe and Canada would lose the critical counterweight to US hegemony. Central bankers would lose the deflationary impetus from Chinese exports, ending their cover for money-supply crimes. Worse, if China becomes a massive version of North Korea, the world would be desperate to be protected by the US military.
Conclusion
Ambition is the last refuge of the failure – Oscar Wilde
Whether he succeeds in consolidating power or not, I already consider Xi Jinping a monumental failure, perhaps worse than Mao. He’s the very definition of ambition without talent, and the Chinese people are suffering under his leadership. Xi inherited an economy on a weak footing, yet respected around the globe, and managed to make a difficult situation 100X worse while alienating much of the world.
This is the man who allowed COVID to spread to the world, locked down his own country with disastrous consequences, and proclaimed a goal to take Taiwan by force in 2027. Zhang Youxia was a stable force on the CMC to counter Xi’s ambitions, and now he’s gone, either assassinated or jailed.
The spectrum of possibilities ranges from no impact to supply chain disruptions to global war, and it’s impossible to assign probabilities because China is opaque. This isn’t a risk that can be ameliorated by diplomacy or a deal.
Adding this risk to a weakening US economy, problems in US private credit, a deteriorating Western Europe, and continued warfare in Ukraine and possibly Iran, we’re in quite a fix as investors. Quant models can’t possibly anticipate this level of risk; there are no historical equivalents to draw from.
If we get chaos, money will flow to the US dollar and precious metals. Interest rates will fall around the world as supply chains seize.
Xi Jinping has gone one step too far by eliminating Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhengli. The Chinese people already hate him, and now, the Chinese elite can’t trust him.
Identify the Aircraft
1
2
Identify the Ship
3
Parting Shot
h/t Claudio
Note: Claudio’s wife is a SWEETHEART. I’ve met her. If he told her to calm down and that she was wrong, I’m sure that she’d calm down, accepting his verdict in stride.
End
Identify the Aircraft:
1. SEPECAT Jaguar M
2. RC-135U Combat Sent
Identify the Ship:
3. USS Decatur (DDG-31)
Nailed them.
AI never sleeps.
My brother was sort of a maverick. He liked to dive, and when stationed in Florida, he violated his leave, and went diving far from where he was supposed to be. He managed to get a gas embolism, said if felt like a Volkswagen sitting on his chest, and never sought professional help. He didn’t want a Captain’s Mast for his action, and suffered until the symptoms disappeared. To make things worse, he was diving alone on a wreck.
A few comments: (1) Wreck diving is about the most dangerous thing you can do if you plan to enter the wreck. At best, it is a highly technical dive that requires a team and a plan. Some wrecks are just debris on the bottom, and that’s not what I’m referring to. (2) Embolisms are medical emergencies. He’s lucky that he didn’t choke to death on his own blood. (3) I’m glad he survived.
Brother did some wreck diving in Florida with his instructor, very carefully done dives as you indicate, don;t think he entered any wrecks but certainly was tempted.
Dad and Mom did a lot of wreck diving at Kwajalein from 1970 to 1973. There were RULES that had to be followed lest the full weight of the USMJ be flung at those who survived breaking the rules.
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Things like having equal number of rescue divers in the boat/on the shore (for shore dives) as the number going down, use of lines and markings (like in cave diving) and no going into places marked off-limits.
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Done properly, with good training, wreck diving can be fun. Very technical, but fun. Done wrong and it’s a quick way to end up dead and if the situation really sucks, the authorities will leave the deaders where they die as it’s too dangerous to get bodies out.
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And so here I live in Alachua County, FL, home of some of the best cave diving in the world. Same rules, same situation. Follow the rules and be properly trained and it’s very technical but fun. Done wrong, they’ll never find the bodies.
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I took diving from a guy named Lloyd Bailey. A famous cave diver, his harrowing stories of getting bodies out of bad places were very harrowing.
Moonlight diving; great exploits. Thanks for sharing.
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Writing; Carry on and enjoy! You’ve introduced me to Kipling and now Yeates. Pain management has been my plight, distractions of reading and the lesser, watching stories told. Will try harder on productive focus, thanks again.
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The fleet on mission to Lyra, and survival of the Lyra species; The character connection like the exiles from Eden, keeps me as reader in the story, a long with many other intriguing details.
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Perhaps related, from V.M. archives, watching Denver beat Bilecheck and the Brady bunch, being outnumbered and heightened emotions. I’m inclined to modestly root for the under dog, even if their playing the local team, just see a close game.
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Off topic, no bad bunny anti ice for me, please! We’ll be hiking and target practicing. Any other alternatives planned for those in the blogasphere?
> no bad bunny anti ice for me, please!
None for me either. Frankly, anti-ICE or even pro-ICE I want nothing to do with some person calling xirself “Bad Bunny”. Much less a rapper calling xirself Bad Bunny.
But I’m aggressively uninterested in pro sportsball overall, with its millionaires owned by billionaires; both groups showing through their actions that most of them despise normal Americans. Yet we have otherwise sensible people going around wearing the names of the millionaires on their backs, and giving massive tax-payer funded subsidies to the billionaires. Thor’s left nut, but they’ve got us coming and going, don’t they?
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Oh, alternative? Probably be working when Bad Bunny and whichever teams are on the field. Likely on my “own” stuff (meaning self-assigned project for academic/publication purposes, as opposed to for-hire stuff. It IS Sunday, after all).
You can always watch TPUSA’s halftime alternative, headlined by Kid Rock, etc…Don’t get mad, just get even often works. I won’t be watching, gave up on pro sports moons ago, especially football, 15 seconds of actual “play” bookended by 10 minutes of inane commercials that I swear are subliminal mind-numbing suburbanite brainwashing. Pro ball is even worse with the owners constant fiddling with the game, started with the cork center ball to reduce home runs all the way up to adding the designated hitter rule to regain more viewer revenue. Money, always about the money.
Mike, you never disappoint. 😄
I have been invited to a Super Bowl party. I told the host that I favor the Patriots. He looked at me like I just arrived from Mars. I said, “I don’t think they’ll win, but just so you know.” Anyway, it should be fun. This is an uber-conservative conclave, so I think we’ll watch the Turning Point halftime. I couldn’t sit through Bad Bunny’s performance at the halftime show. I guess that I could excuse myself and eat snacks or something. He usually BBQs carne asada, but I don’t know what it will be this year. I predict the Seahawks by 14+, but I’m more of a baseball fan, so what do I know? I have a son-in-law from Boston who is hosting a large party, but it’s in Southern California. I’ll stay local.
The Seahawks came into the NFL while I was living in King County. I had season tickets for a while – business deduction. Their nemesis, season in and season out, were the arrogant 49ers. The thought of them winning the Superbowl in Levi Stadium warms my evil heart.
I don’t watch games. The avalanche of advertisements ruins the experience for me. Ads are why I haven’t owned a TV in years.
>How do communists feel about housecats?
Delicious! When diced and stir-fried properly with a little ginger and spring onions that is. Stewed with cubed daikon and five spice (go light on the anise) is good too.
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Clankers: And in less than five years, AI has replaced male porn actors. (And they said physical labor was safe from AI.) “Yes, it’s 3/5th of a man. The bottom 3/5th.” #tishboom
Not that anyone is aroused by robots with girls, but that’s what you’re gonna get. It’s another humiliation ritual from the people who make most of pornography. Because porn is not really about sex. It’s about rewiring your brain, contributing to your alienation, and thereby making it easier for you to be controlled. If they can work in a little humiliation as well, bonus for them. Because they despise you.
Any similarity between clankers-on-blondes with current-day pornography is entirely coincidental, I’m sure.
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> Holodomor: Russians killing Ukrainians off by peaceful means
Wigga, please! It wasn’t Russians killing off Ukrainians, it was Bolsheviks killing Ukrainians (and everyone else, including each other). Chief architects of the Holodomor being Molotov and Kaganovich. What an irony that we allowed Mrs Kagan (“Toria” to her friends) to be in charge of Slavic foreign policy, and specifically Ukrainian policy until recently. Not saying that the neocon Kagan clan has anything to do with Lazar Kaganovich (nor am I refuting that; I don’t know one way or the other) but gosh, it’s awkward optics, innit? Kinda like having some person with the now-unfortunate surname of Mengele be the Surgeon General or something. Optics aside, would a rational country put Haewon Park, wife of Korean ultranationalist Duksoon Lee, in charge of Japan policy? (Then again, would a rational country have put John Kerry in State? i.e. Nuland was not the only problem.)
In that vein, it’s looking like Troy (2004) is going to be the FAR better movie concerning the Trojan War versus Nolan’s upcoming Helen of deTROYt. Remember in Troy when Achilles sarcastically asks “Imagine a king who fights his own battles. Wouldn’t that be a sight?” Now imagine American foreign policy being run for the benefit of the US-as-a-whole above all else. Wouldn’t that be a marvel?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-JkIcHeeL4
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Upcoming SSGN gap? OMFG!
#doubletishboom
Sorry. I’ll show myself out.
“Let’s you and him fight,” Mike. It was ever thus, and the human species shows no signs of abandoning the tradition.
Always taking commenting up a notch, eh Mike. About spit out my very good cup of covfefe.
The Super Bowl, World Series, pro sports, etc., sort of become something to do that I don’t often do, so yes, mia culpa, I’ll be at the party. It’s more about the excuse to hang at the party, eat food that’s bad for me, and trash-talk Big Mike, the Ayatollah, and Tampon Tim & tribe than anything else. The one thing you can say for Northern Arizona is that it’s organically conservative…until you get to Flagstaff (our Austin/San Francisco). But I avoid the place.
No issue here with the party aspect. You could invoke the Danish, “anything for a party’ guilt free reasoning.
Ps. Had a nice Mexican fare meal in Cave Creek on a one time visit with neighbors who had a place outside Scottsdale. Summer…had the misters going (which I thought was brilliant), otherwise stepping out into the sun was like walking into a blast furnace. No thanks.
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Sidebar: Guthrie case…seems the ‘loser sister’ may be involved (brother had some source), something about her and the husband again demanding money from mom only to be told ‘no’. We shall see how this shakes out, suffice ti to say there are a lot of entitled psycho’s out there, some in one’s own family. Hope ‘mom is okay and wasn’t taken to Nogales…but the ‘bitcoin’ ransom was telling (assuming that’s true per this ransom note)…can’t be easily traced and doubtful cartels would demand that sort of payment. On Stigall earlier he got a call from a local Catalina Hills resident, they had a bunch of kidnappings last year by cartel, said it happens all the time in the Tucson area.
I have had a lot of experience with kidnapping and have taught courses in investigating, as well as in how to conduct a planned political kidnapping. Cartel and, to an extent, the Asian organized crime kidnappings were often initiated to pay a debt. You owe me $50K, so I’ll kidnap your mother. More often, the Mexicans would just murder your mother. Or some woman who lives on the same street as your mother, who looks enough like your mother (I have many stories about these things). Sending a team to kill X and ended up killing a guy on the same street who was mowing his lawn because he was available – close enough for cartel work.
.’
In other cases, it was more of trying to prove a point – PaulM is so weak that he can’t protect his mom, so we’ll kidnap her and then ransom her. If he’s weak, he’ll pay. That’s more of an Asian mindset. In Mexico, more often than not, the kidnappers were the State Judicial Police, who would arrange to pay the ransom on your behalf. More often than not, they’d release the victim because it’s not good business to kill them if you’re doing a volume business. Nobody pays for a corpse.
The trick is to never allow yourself to get that vulnerable.
Mike_C the SSGN gap is every bit as significant as the storied mine shaft gap. How can we allow that to stand (The Big Lebowski)? The Military Industrial Complex provides welfare for the Middle Class – if that goes away, you have Michael Douglas stomping around the golf course (Falling Down) and scaring the octagenerians, shooting their golf carts and such.
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I find the elites (for the most part) like John Kerry and — Congress — and Wall Street, and the Ivy League to be such turds. There’s no clean end to lift it up by. Which is why I live at the White Wolf Mine, buffered by 100 miles of ponderosa forest on all sides. For me “civilization” is tough to take in large doses.
Thanks LL.
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As to the long China write up. I’ve read it twice now. Each time I learned more and the understanding was not encouraging for the future. Xi may pull a rabbit out of the hat, descend the world into chaos, or just vanish as the Chinese figure something out on their own. But even if he disappears it still may end up as chaos. Not a pretty picture. Worse, as a country, the USA is not remotely ready to deal with the potential global chaos financially or military wise. It’s a sobering discussion.
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Super Bowl. Until Corporate America stops buying suites at the stadiums, and buying advertising time on the television, the stupidity will continue.
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Knew the RC-135U. However, I must say, it’s this blog that caused me to learn about these aircraft and the critical roles they played.
Traveling to China – I was always surprised by the place. By that, I mean I always learned a great deal more by just walking around. I recall being in Changsha (Famous from The Sand Pebbles), giving a lecture, and my hosts from the Public Security Bureau asked if I’d like to see the forest. Of course, I said yes. There wasn’t a squirrel or a bird or an ant. Weird. I asked the PSB knuckle draggers why. They said the public eats everything, so there was nothing to support ants. The joke was that they’d try to net an airliner flying overhead and eat it too if it didn’t fly so high.
Skydiving…you know, it’s not the fall that kills you, it’s the sudden stop at the end, so might as well enjoy the ride down. (Old, yes, but worth repeating)
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On that note, power glider loses engine…my exact reason as mentioned as to why I won’t hangglide, powered or not. Lucky pilot.
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Tired of Winning? Not one bit…MOTP! ™ Saw a meme with a picture of Punxatawny Trump: “Well, it looks like another three years of Trump! It was a big beautiful tremendous shadow – everyone’s saying so” (Donald John Groundhog) heh
I miss skydiving/parachuting sometimes. It is intoxicating in its way. Wingsuits – take that rush to a whole new level.
My guess is if I tried any one of those ‘rush’ activities I’d get hooked, my luck I’d auger in so stayed away…backcountry travel kept my feet on the ground.
Jumping into the ocean (back when I did it for a living), the altimeters weren’t that good if they worked at all, and it’s VERY difficult to navigate the ocean with wave action and know how high you were above the water. The doctrine called for you to jettison the old T-10 parachute using the harness clips on your shoulders BEFORE impact. If you cut away at 20′, no big deal. If you misjudged and cut away at 200′ – bigger deal.
200′ is like concrete, 20′ would still wake you up. Geez, major h/t to you and all who do this sort of thing.
And altho it’s not fully equatable to parachuting, we still appreciate ‘The Guardian’ as insight into what rescue swimmers do; jump out of a helo at 50ft or so, then swim to save someone, all in lousy weather and big seas.
I’m not tired of winning.
Have a fabulous day and rest of the week. :)
Stay frosty Comedy+
Landing. I have no personal experience. From what I’ve read, fly it all the way to the crash. Aim between the trees and let the wings take the impact.
Unless you’re wearing a wingsuit and your arms are the wings.
RHT447. Yes, you fly it all the way. As is said – aviate, navigate, communicate. You fly it, you look for somewhere to put down then, if you have time, you communicate i.e. tell somebody what is happening.
As to aiming between the trees and letting the wings take the impact. The problem arises, and here I speak from personal experience, having been involved in an aeroplane crash just over twenty odd years ago in Indonesia, is when on impact with the trees one wing comes off. A short description of the circumstances is below.
We had, my Indonesian Police general friend (whose aeroplane it was and who was doing the flying) and I, against our better judgement because of the heavy traffic, accepted an intersection take-off at Jakarta’s Halim Airport when, just past the end of the runway, we lost the engine. We could not land straight ahead, nor to the left, because of high rise apartment buildings, so our only option was to go right and aim for the nearby multi-lane tollway. To get there we had to clear another high rise apartment block and a dense thicket (for want of a better word) of tall trees bordering the roadway. We cleared the apartment block (barely) and then hit the trees. When this happened it slowed the aeroplane considerably, and then the left wing came off, the aeroplane rolled to the left, and dropped straight down until it hit the ground hard. It then rolled through the trees, which took the other wing off, through a chainlink fence and across the tollway, hitting several motor vehicles as it did so. Luckily, there was no fire after we stopped rolling as the fuel was in the wings. Unfortunately, the crash killed my friend and seriously injured the two back seat passengers. I walked away virtually unscathed, except for extensive bruising which turned my body black for weeks, and severe gashes to my knees where they hit the bottom of the instrument panel. I put my survival down to luck (if it had been the right wing that had come off, with the subsequent impact with the ground being the right side, it would have been me who died) and the fact that I was in the habit of, for takeoffs and landings, of pulling my straps exceedingly tight. This had been drilled into me by the man who first taught me to fly, who had been a Spitfire pilot during the Second World War, and who had made several forced landings in his time.
The cause of the engine failure – a valve stem had broken, the valve had dropped into the cylinder, the piston had jammed, causing the engine to seize. There was no way we, despite our efforts, were going to restart the engine.
Sorry if this is a bit longwinded.
” Any landing”
just curious – I’ve never driven one of thoses things, but why didn’t he just do a U-y right back to what appeared to be a reasonably good landing field when his engine died
from what I could see, I think he had still had the altitude to make it back
He said that with another 150′ altitude he could have.
He had just taken off when his carburetor failed.
Boron. Mrs BRM is probably better qualified to answer this than me as she is currently flying but, back when I was flying seriously, the mantra was that if you lost the engine (in a single engined aeroplane) on take off you never tried to turn back to the runway/airfield you had just taken off from. The reasoning was that, if you turned to steeply you would stall, and with insufficient height to recover, you would go in. It was deemed better to force land straight ahead or, depending upon your height above ground, to go right or left if there was a suitable open space to put down.
That’s what the piloting the video said.
The gal half of a couple I shoot with frequently had like 200+ civilian jumps and spent months in the hospital recuperating after the last one, but not what you might be thinking. Driving home after the jump, some dolt crossed the center line, hit her car head on and that’s what ended her parachuting. Point is, it’s not necessarily the fall that kills you, it could be something else.
The sudden stop is always a problem. Like Lady Diana into the freeway abutment at 100 mph.
Navy stuff – I would love to see the 8″ machinegun back in Fleet service.
I think we should have kept at least a half dozen modern equivalents of the Des Moines class
in service to the current day. You don’t need them all the time, but there is nothing like them,
when you do need them.
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SSGNs – I think half of the first 8 Columbias off the line should be built as SSGNs. I’d want 6 total.
I bet they’ll get a lot more use than the boomer versions…
– Kle.
Oh, and Superbowl – we’ll watch and root for the locals, my Sister and her
brood in Yakima will watch and root for their locals.
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I don’t think I’ve watched a SB halftime show this century, maybe longer.
Nor the weirdly popular ads – the magic of the remote control and DVR.
– Kle.
The new Virginia-class (Block V, etc.) submarines will be nearly as long as the Columbia-class submarines. I’m not an expert, and I hope that the maneuverability of the SSNs won’t be compromised by making them that large. It isn’t a bad way to distribute missile-launch capacity across platforms, thereby improving survivability.
Looking forward to the new stories!
Fun facts … CSS Virginia ironclad was around 275 ft by 51 beam. (Thanks LL new book The Confederate Cypher) The new USS Virginia block 5 is estimated at 560 feet by estimated 34 feet beam. Now that’s really interesting but since today had a Super Bowl portion… for perspective as feet is hard to visualize, the CSS was almost as long as a football field and as wide. So visualize that sitting on the field. Needless to say 560 feet is really huge. The USS Iowa battleship for comparison is around 887 feet. The standard Ticonderoga class cruiser is estimated at 567 ft by 55 ft beam. So it’s the size of a modern cruiser. Think about that as a submarine and how well does it handle and turn underwater.
Excellent China brief, thanks for that.
And yes, let’s see the UN and WHO implode.