Not Quite Out of This World
(Hit and Run) h/t Claudio
Claudio does pull down some interesting articles and this is yet another one. Planetary billiards and gravity wells went into making the young Solar System. The article is worth reading and offers interesting theories.
Irresponsible Immigration
The Biden regime and the scoundrels in Congress do what they do to wreck the system and overwhelm dedicated resources. We all know the motives for their current immigration program. Open borders are NEVER a good idea.
How many people can they lure in before the nation rises against it? Can the Democrats stay in power forever by using your tax money to buy votes? Free education, free medical care, free welfare, free housing, and a new ObamaPhone? Who wouldn’t come?
Teeth on the Littoral Combat Ship
The U.S. Navy’s Littoral Combat Ships (LCS) are slated to receive eight smart, stealthy and survivable Norwegian RGM-184 Naval Strike Missiles (NSM) in two opposite-facing quad mounts. Given that the Navy took heat for spending so much on ships with a short combat radius and couldn’t defend themselves, they’re now trying to put some fangs on their lemon.
Before
After
The LCS are wearing out at an alarming rate, so I’m sure that the navy will be able to remove them from the LCS and mount them to something else once they’re redundant and headed off to be recycled.
The Navy’s mission against the Chinese Navy is an anti-surface ship (ASuW) Strike program and having the fleet of LCS weaving around pacific islands hauling Marines and launch their eight missiles is better than a jab in the butt with a sharp stick, or so the admirals tell us.
Arming the LCS (and Marine aviation rotors) with anti-shipping-missile equipped helicopters is also on the drawing board.
The FFG(X)/FFG-62 program offers a better option as a fighting platform but I see no problem with the Navy mounting RGM-184’s on its MH-60R Helicopters (below) if they can lift and fire them.
The primary mission of the MH-60 series is antisubmarine warfare, though and if you put mounts for large over-the-horizon anti-shipping missiles, will you have to strip the ASW gear?
There are options. You can put dedicated ASuW helicopters on civilian-style cargo ships and they can deploy from there. The Navy’s problem is that its primary mission is fighting the climate and establishing racial and gender bias to the point of driving many out of the service by creating a hostile work environment.
LL I could not get the link to Claudio’s article to work, at least in Firefox.
Primary mission for all of the services, except for possibly the Marines (don’t communicate with any active Marines so don’t know), is diversity, fighting the climate etc. That might not be what they advertise but when you look at the number of diversity, equal opportunity, and similar classes the enlisted have to attend it is pretty apparent what the services emphasize.
I wonder how all of these policies will affect recruitment?
Not at all familiar with Navy strategy but 8 missiles sure doesn’t seem like a lot. Can they reload while under fire?
They don’t carry re-loads.
It also appears the canisters are not reloadable at all so even with an underway resupply the LCS could not restock.
They could vert-rep them. Helicopter hauls them away and drops them in the drink, then gets re-loads, but you wouldn’t do that if somebody was shooting at you.
Maybe the brass figures an LCS isn’t worth more than eight shots to defend itself?
I continue to maintain that they need to sail with massive radar reflectors. Make them look like aircraft carriers and they can be bullet sponges. Otherwise, they’re a complete waste of time.
Given our procurement debacle, I have doubts that we’d have enough reloads on shore to re-arm them all if they had to use them in anger. Then again, what are the odds that most would ever make it back to be reloaded? Half of those coming back would probably need months in a yard for repairs. By the time they came out, we’d have newly built missiles for them. Assuming China agrees to sell the chips to us…
Ship: What happens when modern engineers forget past design expertise. I swear they think they’re reinventing the wheel as some magnum opus, only it doesn’t work as well or last as long. But they’d get an A in their college design class.
Alluding to a certain member of Congress…America might tip over if we import/let in/transplant too many people (who get tons of free stuff including spiffy fashion-forward Bidenwear and eco-friendly water bottles)…especially if they aren’t evenly spread out.
Open border = World of hurt for citizens
This must be a golden time for corrupt politicians. Bags of cash being handed out by the ChiComs and the cartels.
The miss on the $3.5 trillion must hurt.
WSF- Money freely flowing like water to the thirsty, only the hand pumps are operated on the whipped backs of American citizens.
LL. Picturing Pelosi in the Scanners movie…exploding head. Imagine that pipsqueak (she’s kinda tiny, like a blasting cap) launching HRC style on anyone in close proximity. Heads are rolling and no specialty ice cream for her. Good.
May it be a fatal hurt.
She certainly no spring chicken, but for some reason evil-doers live way beyond their warranty.
Look at Soros…
Today’s graduating Enginers are, for the most part, blinded by their simulations and cpomputer models. They have ZERO real World experience in how systems behave under Real World Conditions, like dirty power, poor or no environmental controls, poorly trained users and maintainers, how to “Design for Maintainabilty” and on and on and on.
Henry Ford used to insist that ALL of his new hire Engineers spend at least a year on the factory floor learning all the things that weren’t taught in “Engineering School”.
Years ago, one of the trade magazines I used to get had an artical on “Ten Things That Aren’t Taught in EE School”, and it was hilarious. Things like “There are at LEAST ten different types of capacitors, and they all have their place”, and “90% of what you learn in Engineering School, except for the advanced mathematics which you will NEVER us, are be obsolete by the time you graduate.”
At first it annoyed me that the young uns didn’t know this stuff, but then I took it on as a pay-it-forward for all the mentoring that I had received over the years. What annoyed me most wasn’t that they didn’t know it, but the attitude thay had that they didn’t need to know it.
Some were quite grateful that I was attempting to impart actual Real World lessons to them, and some were almost insulted.
Those with that attitude were allowed to fail a few times (sometimes spectacularly) before I offered help again….
Not engineering but back in the day I was running the sales/installation side of a modular home builder. We had lots of advertising “stuff” but nothing simple, stupid. I took all the “stuff” to a printer and it had printed on the largest paper they had with one side for addressing. It was then folded into a 5″x 9″ mailer.. Our receptionist could grab one when a phone inquiry came in, hand print an address, stamp and mail. Took two minutes, top. For a fee, we would send a large packet of “stuff”.
One day a customer was taking a plant tour and said he was impressed with our mailing piece but disappointed with the packet. Our guy said something along the lines of, “The packet was designed by our ad agency professionals. the mailer was designed by a salesman”.
djim, I’m trying to train one of those “don’t need to know it” little assholes right now, and it’s about to eat my lunch. 5 months out of engineer skool, and the only thing I tell him that he will to listen to is “lets go to lunch.”
One of the few things that works (sometimes…) is to let them get in over their head, and just sit back and see how they handle it. Young cock-sure Engineers NEED to fail a few times in their early career. Sometimes seeing how they handle failure is as important as anything they were taught in skool.
Think Kobayashi Maru, but that’s an extreme example.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kobayashi_Maru
I’m just going to say no comment and leave it at that… Re the 60s, they are already at max gross, so ‘multiple somethings’ would have to come off. FFX is actually looking pretty good.
There is a blog coming about the FF(X) and yes, they are looking good. They are what the LCS should have been.
So we’ve turned the LCSessesssssss into Motorized Missile Boats? That’s it?
Damn them, damn them all.
I’m a little concerned about the present lack of LSS training (fishing) platforms on the lake. For goodness sake, those striper won’t catch themselves.
The DLC could use an LCS on Lake Whitney as a floating command post. Use the helicopters to locate hungry stripers.
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