
BTW - if you like Ramirez's work - the Investor's Business Daily Pulitzer Prize-Winning Editorial Cartoonist has a great book out, Everyone Has the Right to My Opinion
Proactively “From the Sea”; an agent of change leveraging the littoral best practices for a paradigm breaking six-sigma best business case to synergize a consistent design in the global commons, rightsizing the core values supporting our mission statement via the 5-vector model through cultural diversity.
On a chilly morning in March 1788, Louis XVI’s finance minister sat down and drew up what was the first entirely truthful budget of the French monarchy — which almost turned out to be its last. It revealed that some 500 millions of revenue were offset by 629 millions in expenses, of which more than 50 percent went for service on the royal debt — a debt largely racked up, ironically enough, by Louis’s support for the American war for independence. For the first time, it was apparent that the system created to rule France since the days of Louis XIV could no longer continue. It was on that day, not the fall of the Bastille more than a year later, that the ancien régime ended.... and where did that lie start? Simple - with the worst Congress of the last 100 years that we have discussed here and Midrats - the 93rd Congress.
Something similar is happening with the current debt-limit imbroglio. Some people compare our current political turn, including the growth of the Tea Party, to the American Revolution. A far better comparison is with the French Revolution. Our ancien régime is tax-and-spend Washington, which Franklin D Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson, and a host of lesser Sun Kings built and which the current dauphin Barack Obama wants to sustain. A corrupt bloated French monarchy sustained itself on the lie of divine right of kings, which made the king’s will law. Our Versailles sustains itself on a lie called baseline budgeting.
Created in 1974 by the same Democratic congressional majority that handed over South Vietnam to the Communists and gave us the CAFE standards that ruined the American auto industry, baseline budgeting forced the Office of Management Budget for the first time to consider growing government as the fiscal norm, and reduced spending as an aberration. Even reducing the rate of spending was redefined as subtracting money, not adding money by a slightly lower amount. This has created a system which today’s Congressional Budget Office would score a freeze on all government spending as a $9 trillion cut, even though there’s no reduction in spending at all.There is nothing we can do about it with the Senate and President we have. Lean in hard - and vote in 2012. Put this at the top of the list of things to fix.
The root of the dilemma we face is not political or fiscal, but moral. Until Congress overturns an accounting system that deliberately distorts empirical reality, we will never escape the corruption it entails — or the catastrophe that’s coming.
At this time, Gyrodyne was producing and delivering over 100 QH-50C drones per year.
A Marine who braved enemy fire alone to retrieve the bodies of his fallen comrades will be awarded the Medal of Honor, Marine Corps Times reports.A humble and modest man; of course.
Dakota Meyer, who now lives in Austin, Texas, will be the first living Marine to receive the nation's highest military honor since the Vietnam War.
...
on September 8, 2009, in Ganjgal, a remote Afghan village near the border with Pakistan. As his unit of 13 U.S. service members came under attack by a force of 50 heavily-armed insurgents, Meyer, a corporal at the time, repeatedly ran through enemy fire to recover the bodies of fellow American troops.
Killed in Ganjgal were Marine 1st Lt. Michael Johnson, Gunnery Sgts. Edwin Johnson and Aaron Kenefick and Navy Hospitalman 3rd Class James Layton, according to the Marine Corps Times. An Army soldier, Sgt. 1st Class Kenneth Westbrook, later died of wounds sustained during the battle.
"Whatever award comes out of it, it's for those guys (who were killed) not for me," Meyer said in an interview with Military Times.
A U.S. serviceman is in custody after he allegedly admitted he was planning an attack on the U.S. Army base at Fort Hood, Texas, the same base where 13 people were killed in a 2009 terror attack.
U.S. officials told ABC News an AWOL serviceman, identified by the FBI as a Private First Class Naser Jason Abdo, was arrested Wednesday after making a purchase at Guns Galore in Killeen, Texas, the same ammunition store where Maj. Nidal Hasan purchased the weapons he allegedly used to gun down 13 people and wound 30 others on Nov. 5, 2009.
Abdo, 21, allegedly told law enforcement he was targeting the base to "get even," according to law enforcement documents obtained by ABC News. The soldier had gone AWOL from Fort Campbell's 101st Airborne Division over the July 4 weekend, according to a senior military officer.
Subject: Active Duty Status & EDO Diversity Policy Accountability survey
Date: Wed, 29 Jun 2011 08:42:26 -0400
From: [redacted]@navy.mil
ALCON,
I know that each of you are busy with your active duty assignments and we do not want to burden you with extra reserve administrivia, but I have a couple of requests:
(1) CDR and CDR(S) please participate in the EDO Diversity Policy Accountability survey - http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/Diversity_2011 and the password is "edo". The suspense on this task is 08JUL2011, but we are trying to wrap up this week. This is literally a 5 minute survey.
Please advise me when you have completed it. If you have already done this and reported that information to the NAVSEA Reserve Program Regional CO thanks.
(2) We would like pictures and stories. At your convenience send me a picture of you and a short paragraph on what your assignment entails. I have also requested the same of the IA. All told we have had ~40+ RC ED on active duty for the last two years. We want to make sure the word is getting out on how we are supporting the AC ED community and the bigger Navy. Strong publicity is likely to lead to follow-on assignments and keep the active duty tempo at the same rate.
(3) Please send me a copy of your orders and advise me of your PRD. Given the shift in the DON budgets, future follow-on recalls or extensions are unlikely unless you want to do a high priority fill such as Afghan Pakistan Hands (APH). Please let me know of your desires so we can plan. ADSW are easier to arrange if your command has the right color of money. CDR [redacted] is the POC for NAVSEA ADSW.
Thanks for your service.
V/r,
CDR [redacted]
NAVSEA RC ED Community Manager
SEA [redacted].2, (202) 781-[redacted]
DSN 326-[redacted]
[redacted]@navy.mil
The nation’s leading independent naval architectural firm has been quietly seeing whether senior Navy officials are interested in a new class of frigate that would be smaller and lighter than the aging ships now being phased out of service.So - you have "issues" with my license built EuroFrigates concept? Fine. Build this.
The new 3,500-ton "light frigates" would be more heavily armed than previous models and be capable of carrying out a variety of missions over a wide area of the world’s oceans.
Gibbs & Cox of Arlington, Va., says it has produced concept drawings for a roughly 400-foot steel-hull, twin-propellor, diesel-powered light frigate that would be capable of firing Tomahawk cruise missiles as well as Standard III’s, missiles that can be used for ballistic missile defense. The ship also would feature sophisticated phased-radar.
-----Original Message-----Why he is hanging out with reptiles, I don't know.
Subject: U. S. Senator Mark Warner Town Hall Meeting
Date: Mon, 25 Jul 2011 18:13:02 -0400
Forwarded on behalf of U. S. Senator Mark Warner; contact information below.
Please join U. S. Senator Mark Warner for a Veterans Town Hall Meeting
Friday, July 29th at 3:00 pm hosted by USO and Geico at the Virginia Beach Geico Office
1345 Perimeter Parkway
Virginia Beach VA 23454
All veterans are invited to attend to discuss important issues affecting veterans today.
RSVP to 757-441-3079 or Norfolk_Office@warner.senate.gov by Tuesday, July 26th at 6:00 pm.
Two Chinese fighter jets crossed an unofficial dividing line in the Taiwan Strait late last month in pursuit of a US spy aircraft, according to defence sources in Taipei and Beijing.China feels it loses face every time we exercise our unique capabilities. They push too hard sometimes - but we aren't going to stop.
The incident marked the first time in more than a decade that Chinese military aircraft have entered Taiwan’s side of the 180km-wide strait. According to Taiwan’s defence ministry, two Chinese Su-27 fighter jets briefly crossed the so-called “middle line” on June 29.
Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, told reporters in Washington that the US would "not be deterred from flying in international airspace". He said: "The Chinese would see us move out of there. We're not going to do that, from my perspective. These reconnaissance flights are important".We like to watch and ponder. That is good.
China's military is developing electromagnetic pulse weapons that Beijing plans to use against U.S. aircraft carriers in any future conflict over Taiwan, according to an intelligence report made public on Thursday.Admiral Adama is still grumpy with us.
Portions of a National Ground Intelligence Centerstudy on the lethal effects of electromagnetic pulse (EMP) and high-powered microwave (HPM) weapons revealed that the arms are part of China’s so-called “assassin’s mace” arsenal - weapons that allow a technologically inferior China to defeat U.S. military forces.
...
The declassified intelligence report, obtained by the private National Security Archive, provides details on China’s EMP weapons and plans for their use. Annual Pentagon reports on China's military in the past made only passing references to the arms.
Aleksy Kowalik, one of the three surviving heroes of Poland's first World War II battle has died. He was 96.Rest well Mr. Kowalik. Rest well.
Kowalik's daughter Jadwiga Bucz told Polish news agency PAP that her father died on Sunday in the southern city of Blachownia, where the family has lived for over 60 years.
Kowalik was among the 205 Polish troops guarding the navy's arsenal on Westerplatte peninsula, on the Baltic coast, who on Sept. 1, 1939 put up an uneven fight against German warship Schleswig-Holstein. Kowalik operated an anti-tank gun and was wounded.
Cut away from munitions and food supplies, they resisted for seven days in what was Poland's first battle of the five-year war. When they eventually surrendered, their clout prompted the German troops to salute them, when taking them prisoner.
As a POW, Kowalik worked on German farms.
He returned to Poland in 1947, got married and settled in Blachownia. He had four daughters.
Bucz said Monday that Kowalik will be buried in Blachownia on Tuesday.
The Belgian head of state used his traditional eve of national day address to demand an end to disputes that have left Belgium without an elected government for 14 months.There you go King - those pesky peasants wanting to run their own affairs with their own community. How gauche.
"On this national day, I would have liked to enjoy with you the swearing in of a new government. Alas, we are not there yet, and I deplore this," he said.
Banging the table during Wednesday's broadcast from his castle just outside Brussels, the king castigated "ignorant" voters and painted a pessimistic picture of the divisions between Dutch and French speaking communities.
"Our current situation is a cause for concern among our partners and could damage our position in Europe, and even the momentum towards European integration which has already been undermined by populism and Euroscepticism," he said.
- Hold managers accountable for diversity success.As we've covered this over and over - we know what that means; metrics, AKA goals, AKA quotas. If you don't meet your metrics, your UIC gets a yellow or red light. That is bad - so behavior is modified to give preferential treatment to certain groups that the Navy has decided it prefers over others; active discrimination in order to move to a green light. That means, more often than not, preferential treatment to self-identified, but not necessarily Hispanics and Blacks. Mr Garcia considers himself a Hispanic I assume - but does he or his children deserve any type of special treatment?
A Harvard Law School graduate and former Texas state representative, Garcia is a veteran of the Navy himself. He served as a Navy aviator, having gone through the Navy Officer Candidates School. He joked that his first naval commission was skippering the submarine ride at Disneyland while working his way through UCLA.Of course not - but he does and he will, all based on what he checks in the block.
When I sit in a meeting with senior officers and senior government civilians on a daily basis, I value their perspectives but I can also look around the table and look around the room and I can see that some perspectives are absent, and I know that because of that absence good ideas are going unheard as a result.There you have Admiral Roughead, the Chief of Naval Operations admitting that he practices the most primitive and base of human behavior - judging someone simply on looks; in this case initial impression of racial and ethnic background. Yea, wow. Not to be undone;
... I walked in with an all-white male staff and tried to tell – and there were many young junior officers there, as well. And one of the pieces of feedback I got from that visit was: You know, nice try. You know, what about your staff? A big message.There you have Admiral Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in a disgustingly generational narcissistic speech on race where he too admits in not only judging race and ethnicity on a blunt facial recognition basis - but has also actively discriminated against one race - in this case Caucasians - in order to positively discriminate in favor of another in his Staff selection.
And so, two years later, when I – and I think Les has heard this story. But two years later I was having a farewell party for my personal staff – for four or five of them. And we had this party at the quarters. And there were probably, I don’t know, 20 of us or so in the quarters. And I looked around. And as a – going back to that visit to New Orleans, that somebody called me on. And, literally, you know, from that moment forward, my staff diversified greatly, in terms of women and minorities – because of, obviously, just the message itself that that sent in terms of priority.
UNCLAS PERSONAL FOR ALL FLAG OFFICERS AND COMMANDERS FROM ADMIRAL GREENERT//N05370// NAVADMIN 188/11// MSGID/GENADMIN/CNO WASHINGTON DC/N1/JUN// SUBJ/CHARGE OF COMMAND// REF/A/MEMORANDUM/CNO/09JUN11/NOTAL//Admiral Roughead's letter in a nice summary and full of good advice - but having them SIGN IT? Really? Admiral "let's classify everything that might make me look bad" Greenert, who sent out the message above, will be the next CNO. Consider this I&W.
AMPN/CNO MEMORANDUM FOR PROSPECTIVE COMMANDING OFFICERS CONCERNING THE CHARGE OF COMMAND, WHICH CAN BE DOWNLOADED AT HTTP://WWW.PUBLIC.NAVY.MIL/BUPERS-NPC/OFFICER/DETAILING//
RMKS/1. ACCOUNTABILITY HAS LONG BEEN THE FOUNDATION FOR COMMAND IN OUR NAVY. THE ESSENTIAL COMPONENT OF THE CHARGE OF COMMAND IS THAT WE HOLD OUR COMMANDERS ACCOUNTABLE TO THE HIGHEST STANDARDS OF PERSONAL AND PROFESSIONAL CONDUCT. THIS PERSONAL AND PROFESSIONAL ACCOUNTABILITY BUILDS THE TRUST NECESSARY FOR OUR NAVY'S COMMAND AND CONTROL STRUCTURE AND IS AS CRITICAL AS OUR STANDARDS OF MATERIAL, PERSONNEL AND OPERATIONAL READINESS.
2. TO CODIFY THE CHARGE OF COMMAND, THE COMPACT BETWEEN NAVY LEADERSHIP AND OUR COMMANDERS AND COMMANDING OFFICERS, CNO HAS SIGNED REF A. THIS DOCUMENT IS A COUNSELING AND MENTORING TOOL AND APPLIES TO ALL OFFICERS IN COMMAND, TO INCLUDE FLAG OFFICERS. IT IS ALSO AN OPPORTUNITY TO PROVIDE CLEAR GUIDANCE AND LEADERSHIP TRAINING, IN PERSON, TO THOSE ENTRUSTED WITH THE MOST DEMANDING RESPONSIBILITIES IN OUR NAVY.
3. NLT 1 AUG 2011, ALL COMMANDERS WITH IMMEDIATE SUPERIOR IN COMMAND (ISIC) RESPONSIBILITY ARE DIRECTED TO REVIEW REF A WITH THEIR SUBORDINATE COMMANDERS AND COMMANDING OFFICERS DURING TRAINING, COUNSELING OR MENTORING SESSIONS. SUBSEQUENTLY, THOSE COMMANDERS AND COMMANDING OFFICERS ARE DIRECTED TO PROVIDE THEIR ISIC WITH A COUNTERSIGNED COPY OF REF A. NLT
1 AUG 2011, ALL COMMANDERS WITH ISIC RESPONSIBILITY FOR FLAG OFFICERS ARE DIRECTED TO REVIEW REF A WITH THEIR SUBORDINATE FLAGS DURING MENTORING AND TRAINING SESSIONS; FLAG OFFICERS WILL PROVIDE THEIR ISIC WITH A COUNTERSIGNED COPY OF REF A.
4. BEGINNING 1 AUG 2011, ALL ISICS WILL REVIEW REF A WITH PROSPECTIVE COMMANDERS AND COMMANDING OFFICERS PRIOR TO THEIR ASSUMPTION OF COMMAND. UPON ASSUMPTION OF COMMAND, COMMANDERS AND COMMANDING OFFICERS WILL PROVIDE THEIR ISIC A COUNTERSIGNED COPY OF REF A.
5. EACH ISIC IS DIRECTED TO RECEIVE AND RETAIN THE COUNTERSIGNED COPIES UNTIL THE SUCCESSFUL COMPLETION OF THE COMMAND TOUR BY THE COMMANDER OR COMMANDING OFFICER. THE COUNTERSIGNED COPIES OF REF A WILL BE PROVIDED TO THE ISIC'S RELIEF AS A COMMAND TURNOVER ITEM.
6. REF A WILL BE INCLUDED AS PART OF TRAINING RECEIVED BY ALL PROSPECTIVE COMMANDING OFFICERS AT THE COMMAND LEADERSHIP SCHOOL BEGINNING 1 AUG 2011.
7. THIS DIRECTIVE WILL BE CODIFIED BY AN UPDATE TO MILPERSMAN ARTICLE 1301-802.
8. VICE CHIEF SENDS.//
The fleet once numbered over 400 but in the last decade the count has been around 75 shipsFunny thing is - I'm trying to find some light in this hole we dug for ourselves, and I'll find one to post about soon, I hope.
Under the Obama administration, the US Maritime Administration has stepped up efforts to dispose of these ships. By 2017, they will all be removed and scrapped.Indeed.
They are the two ships no one wanted, almost constantly embroiled in one dispute or another for the past 25 years. The two Navy behemoths have never gone on a mission, were never even completed, yet they cost taxpayers at least $300 million.
Now the vessels, the Benjamin Isherwood and the Henry Eckford, are destined to leave Virginia waters for good and be scrapped at a Texas salvage yard, with no money coming back to the U.S. Treasury.
...
The Isherwood and Eckford were part of an 18-ship class known as the Henry J. Kaiser fleet of replenishment oilers, titans that carry oil for Navy vessels around the globe.
They were the only two that went unfinished, and were part of a 1985 budget request from the Navy for three oilers for a combined $567 million, according to records.
The two were built at the Pennsylvania Shipbuilding Co. in Philadelphia, which defaulted on its Navy contract in 1989. The ships were then sent to Florida to be finished. But disputes over costs and materials in Tampa led to the termination of that contract in 1993, according to records.
The Navy thought about turning the Isherwood and Eckford into ammunition ships, but that proved too expensive. In 1997, three years after the ships had been mothballed in the James River ghost fleet, the Navy cut its ownership ties.
Since then, the two star-crossed ships have sat idle in the middle of the James - until this week.
Once again - the issue isn't govt revenue - it is spending. Anyone who thinks we are going to have a steady state shipbuilding budget through 2030 is, in a word; high.According to the report, between 1990 and 2006 — the year in which issuance of Asset-Backed Securities (ABS) peaked — assets with the highest credit rating rose from a little over 20 per cent of total rated fixed-income issues to almost 55 per cent. Think about it. More than half of the world’s debt securities were, for all intents and purposes, considered risk-free. In 2006, that was nearly $5,000bn of assets.
The financial crisis had a lot to do with triple-A ratings being slapped on to subprime securities which didn’t warrant them, we know that. The report says between 1990 and 2006 ABS accounted for 64 per cent of the total growth in the amount of AAA-rated fixed income, compared with 27 per cent attributable to the growth in public debt, 2 per cent to corporate and 8 per cent to other products.
But watch what starts happening from 2008 and 2009.
The AAA bubble re-inflates and suddenly sovereign debt becomes the major force driving the world’s triple-A supply. The turmoil of 2008 shunted some investors from ABS into safer sovereign debt, it’s true. But you also had a plethora of incoming bank regulation to purposefully herd investors towards holding more government bonds, plus a glut of central bank liquidity facilities accepting government IOUs as collateral. Where ABS dissipated, sovereign debt stood in to fill the gap. And more.
It’s one reason why the sovereign crisis is well and truly painful.
It’s a global repricing of risk, again, but one that has the potential for a much larger pop, so to speak.
As I studied the Vietnam war over the last 14 months, I began to think that John F. Kennedy probably was the worst American president of the previous century.Ummmm, yea. That is a good start.
In retrospect, he spent his 35 months in the White House stumbling from crisis to fiasco. He came into office and okayed the Bay of Pigs invasion ... Vienna summit conference and got his clock cleaned by Khrushchev ... the Cuban missile crisis and a whiff of nuclear apocalypse ... American descent into Vietnam. The assassination of Vietnam's President Diem ... decision to wage a war of attrition ... another coup that JFK supported earlier in 1963: the Baathist one in Iraq ... Anyway, I think his track record kind of makes even old Herbert Hoover look good.
Tom Ricks, was born in Massachusetts and is the grandson and great-grandson of Democratic politicians there.Good. I think in the second decade of the 21st Century we can, at last, talk about JFK as adults.
Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC) Port Hueneme in Port Hueneme, Calif., announced July 14, it has successfully designed and integrated a fire control system upgrade aboard Royal Australian Navy frigate HMAS Sydney.What makes the US Navy look worse - a SM-2 on a fully functional and maintainable MK-13, or the VLS cluster forward?
The system upgrade completes a four-year effort by the Royal Australian Navy to launch standard missiles from Adelaide-class ships.
NSWC Port Hueneme personnel were responsible for the design, development, integration and test of the software upgrade to the weapons control processor of the Mk 92 Fire Control System, which is a key element in the system that provides the new capability to launch SM-2 missiles from a Royal Australian Navy frigate Mk 13 launcher.
The Navy’s Southeast Regional Maintenance Center (SERMC) formally re-established its Intermediate Maintenance Activity (IMA) at Naval Station Mayport, June 28, providing the fleet with a renewed capability to train Mayport-based surface ship crews to perform shipboard maintenance and repairs.I almost titled this another "XXX goes Salamander" - as things that we have been talking about for years - and being told to shut up about because we "didn't get it" - are now coming to pass.
In the past, IMAs served as a critical component of the training pipeline for fleet Sailors. In recent years, however, funding cuts led to the downsizing of these facilities. Re-establishing the intermediate maintenance activity in Mayport reflects the Navy’s commitment to a “back-to-basics” approach to shipboard material readiness.
“This is not just about a ceremony, but rather we are embarking on an important mission that recognizes the significant revolution that has happened in how the Navy views surface ship maintenance,” said Vice Adm. Kevin McCoy, commander, Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA). “In a budget-constrained environment, the fleet has supported adding a total of 50 additional skilled personnel to this activity. By 2012, we will add another 85 military and civilian. We are expanding and bringing back the needed facilities to properly support the needs of the fleet.”
While the changes were well-intended and the immediate results of the reorganization of the maintenance infrastructure and hands-on in-rate training created a short term cost savings for the Navy, the unintended consequences of not training Sailors to maintain or repair their shipboard equipment created a noticeable void in material readiness that degraded with time.Ya'll's can put the beer you owe us next to Mr. T's Haircut's seat for when he returns.
The commanders of the Atlantic and Pacific Fleets, concerned over this decline in readiness, commissioned a Fleet Review Panel in 2009 to look into how Surface Force readiness had changed and to make recommendations for improvements. The Panel report concluded there was no single specific cause or issue driving down Surface Forces readiness, but rather it was the result of many changes in policy and practices over time. The report served as a catalyst to focus senior Navy leadership's attention on the readiness issue and spawned a number of corrective actions.
A pair of top Navy officials admitted Tuesday that its endemic readiness problems are basically unresolved — and may keep getting worse — before the service’s plans to fix its surface fleet finally take effect. Vice Adm. Bill Burke, the Navy’s top maintenance officer; and Vice Adm. Kevin McCoy, head of Naval Sea Systems Command, told a House Armed Services Committee panel that it took so many years, and so many interconnected decisions, to put the surface Navy in its current state that it would take a lot of time and effort to get it right again.Congressman, they get away with it because there is no accountability. You are actually promoting those who fail to tell you the truth.
...
Over the past five years and beyond, Navy inspections have found that a growing number of the Navy’s surface warships aren’t ready to fight: The ships are in bad physical shape, carry broken equipment, insufficient spare parts, and can’t even rely upon their advanced weapons and sensors. But despite years of embarrassing reports in the press and harangues from Congress and top DoD officials, the fleet has been slow to recover, given the wide range of causes for its woes. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, when the “running government like a business” craze swept the Pentagon, top leaders rewarded commanders who could get the job done for less money, which then sparked a flurry of inter-related decisions that had the net effect of reducing the readiness of the surface Navy: The Navy fielded smaller crews, making fewer hands available for regular maintenance; it cut human-led, hands-on instruction, preferring to teach sailors their jobs using “computer-based instruction,” which meant they weren’t qualified to do their jobs at sea. And simple budget cuts meant ships didn’t get the regular maintenance or spare parts they needed.
...
has taken years to get the top brass to acknowledge the failures of initiatives such as “top 6 roll-down,” “lean manning,” and the “fleet response plan.”
...
McCoy and Burke said that about 70 percent of the Navy’s hoped-for fleet of 313 ships is in service today, but the service can only get to that goal if all its destroyers and cruisers, for example, actually serve for their full 40 or 35 years.
But Congress has heard Navy leaders give this explanation many times before, Forbes said. He pointed to statistics that showed an ever-growing number of Navy warships were being found unready each year — from 12 percent in 2009 to 24 percent last year, and 22 percent already this year. What is the Navy’s target for that number? Forbes asked. McCoy and Burke said the service is in the process of formulating one, but it’s a complicated situation. Forbes complained that defense witnesses always come before Congress with a plan for how they’ll get better, but they seldom appear to be able to act on it; as when DoD was unable to even conduct the basic audits of itself that officials promised they would.
Since Milestone C, the program has conducted extensive flight testing collecting 1,500 MQ-8B flight hours between March 2007 and March 2011. Contractor developmental test pilots executing developmental test plans flew 1,250 of those hours. These developmental tests were not operationally realistic, and yielded little insight into the operational effectiveness of the system. The tests were conducted in a controlled environment with no opposing forces and at whatever pace was needed to collect required engineering data. No tests were conducted in adverse weather or with any form of electronic combat. Navy operators flew the remaining 250 hours in a littoral environment, taking advantage of shipping that happened into the field of observation and with no ground truth (time, space, position information) available.2.
There are limited data from which to assess the reliability, maintainability, and availability of the system. The contractor does not use standard Navy maintenance procedures, tools, and tracking and reporting software while maintaining the systems used during developmental test. While the aviation detachment aboard the USS Halyburton does follow standard Navy maintenance practices, the detachment includes additional personnel and contractor technical representatives that will not be present once the Navy fields the system.3.
The ground control station user interface software generates actions unrelated to operator actions or intent. As an example, during flight, if an operator deletes a target from the target list, it results in a lost link that requires execution of the emergency procedure to regain control of the air vehicle. In one recently discovered anomaly, the space bar on the keyboard acts like an “Enter” key for the currently selected window. Inadvertently hitting the space bar activates the selection in that window. Operators aboard the USS Halyburton discovered this anomaly when the air vehicle operator’s headset cord inadvertently hit the space bar and activated the self destruct countdown timer.... and we deployed it to Libya.
2011 Summer Recruiting Events ScheduleDon't you love the fact that they are supporting one of the most racist organization out there, "La Raza?" For those who don't know Spanish, let me translate for you, "The Race."
July
* 2nd Annual Asian American Pacific Leadership (APAL) Career Fair
Washington, DC, July 8
* National Contract Management Association (NCMA) World Congress 2011
* Denver, CO, July 10
* Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI) International User Conference
San Diego, CA, July 11-15
* 2011 National Conference of La Raza (NCLR) Diversity Career Fair
Washington, DC, July 25
* 2011 National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Convention Diversity Career Fair
Los Angeles, CA, July 26-27
* NGA Hiring Event (BY INVITATION ONLY)
Various Locations, July 27-28
dis·crim·i·na·tionRemember - to actively deny something to one group that you intentionally provide to other is discrimination. Full Stop.
/dɪˌskrɪməˈneɪʃən/ [dih-skrim-uh-ney-shuhn]
–noun
1. an act or instance of discriminating.
2. treatment or consideration of, or making a distinction in favor of or against, a person or thing based on the group, class, or category to which that person or thing belongs rather than on individual merit: racial and religious intolerance and discrimination.
3. the power of making fine distinctions; discriminating judgment: She chose the colors with great discrimination.
- Fragile data link that results in lost communication and constant launch delays. Is that what caused the Libya debacle?I note that all the above is in an almost sterile electronic environment.
- Operators can't establish data link with ground control station (GCS) before flight without "excessive troubleshooting" and "procedural workarounds," and the data link often dropped out during flight. See the National Capital Region airspace violation. That's what happened.
- Because reestablishing that data link with the air vehicle is time-consuming, it's not suitable for time-sensitive operations.
- Fire Scout completed only 54 percent of assigned missions aboard the HALYBURTON this year, and failed to complete a single mission during a pre-deployment dress rehearsal at Webster Field.
We also achieved the early operational deployment of the MQ-8B Fire Scout Vertical Takeoff and Landing Tactical Unmanned Air Vehicle,... and then she was shot down.
The Pentagon's top weapons tester criticized the MQ-8B Fire Scout unmanned helicopter drone as unreliable in combat situations and only good for collecting non-time-sensitive data, according to a June 24 report submitted to the congressional defense committees.BTW - if anyone can find the testimony as a whole - please send it to me. There has to be more "there there" from the DOT&E bubbas.