OPNAV Staff; Get Your Graph Software Working

.... you need to build the Navy's version of this graph of Amara's Law.

Roy Amara is an engineer and futurist (long before that term became trendy) at the Institute for the Future think tank. Amara's law is probably best illustrated by the "Hype Cycle," a term coined by Gartner Group to characterize the hype or "Peak of Inflated Expectations" and subsequent "Trough of Disillusionment" before reaching the "Slope of Enlightenment" and "Plateau of Productivity".

"Trough of Disillusionment" - power phrase of the week. I think that comes towards the last third of your first sea tour.

More geek glory at the link that demands your full read as it is spot on.

Brook's Law explains LCS.

Thackara's Law explains trying to make a pocket-battleship sized ship "stealthy."

Reed's Law explains ... unofficial milblogging networks.

Hat tip Chap.

Diversity Thursday

Let's have fun with the (D)iversity Bullies as they try harder and harder to justify their six-figure paychecks!

Let's plow in to last week's fun (D)iversity foolishness from the DoS. Almost as good as USNA's Indian Runs .... time for some mini-Fisking!

"Diversity Notes" on pg.8 - always make (D)iversity your first stop!



Someone is trying real hard to earn a paycheck. Well, being that we are decades past real discrimination ... I guess you have to start to make shi'ite up.

How many times have you or a colleague asked if someone could “hold down the fort?” For example, “Could you hold down the fort while I go to…” You were likely asking someone to watch the office while you go and do something else, but the phrase’s historical connotation to some is negative and racially offensive. To “hold down the fort” originally meant to watch and protect against the vicious Native American intruders.

Well - they were vicious Siberian American intruders ... and they lost to the tribe that never stopped coming; just like they displaced the tribes before them, etc for thousands of years. My wife tells herself that on a regular basis as one part of her DNA argues with the other.

Being that my ancestors fought in and out of forts from New Orleans through Georgia about 200 yeas ago with mostly Siberian Americans against other Siberian Americans ... most of the time those they were asking to "hold down the fort" were Siberian Americans of the Choctaw, Cherokee (not Elizabeth Warren type), and Lower-Creek variety.

Sorry John, your blinkered view of history doesn't wash. Let's see what other horrors you have found in the air.

“Going Dutch.” Likely you or your colleague meant that each person pays for his or her own meal. The historical meaning: a negative stereotype portraying the Dutch as cheap because they will invite you to a meal but then not pay for it.

Good googly moogly John. Go get your passport stamped at Schiphol and talk to some real Dutch. They are tight and smart with their money, and take it as a source of national pride. Just try to tell them a Scot is cheaper, and they brain 'ya with their klompen.

They don't care - why should you. They also all speak English - so you should be fine ... just don't visit in the Christmas Season; your nogg'n might explode. Embrace other cultures John ... have this Christmas to DoS a Dutch Christmas!

“Rule of thumb.” This is an acknowledged and generally accepted benchmark. Many women’s rights activists claim this term refers to an antiquated law, whereby the width of a husband’s thumb was the legal size of a switch or rod allowed to beat his wife.

You know what is really sexist? Being a patronizing harpie indulging other people's ignorance. Just click here. We do not have to run our lives by the fevered paranoia of professional feminists.

There is no absolute verification as to the historical roots of the word “handicap.” However, many disability advocates believe this term is rooted in a correlation between a disabled individual and a beggar, who had to beg with a cap in his or her hand because of the inability to maintain employment.

John, read your own stuff; "no absolute verification as to the historical roots .... many ... believe ... " Well, some people "believe" that aliens enjoy spelunking human digestive tracks ... but that does not mean we need to incorporate their mental illness in to our daily lives.

Just a note taxpayers .... you are paying tens of millions of dollars - through the government - probably even in to the hundred million + in salary, office space, travel, benefits etc for people just like this.

Those Sneaky Dutch Bastards ...

Hey .... they are the peoples' representatives. One of America's finest!

Save yourself the trouble of excessive drain bramage and go straight to the 3-minute mark.

FORWARD!

The Colbert Report
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A Book Review - Shipmate Style

What does a Froggy look like on the top rope? Kind of like this.

If you want to know what happens during classified SEAL operations, then nut up and join the fight yourself. You should be satisfied that you are being protected and served by exceptional men who are entitled to your respect if not your gratitude. You are not owed the inside scoop on how we do our business. Rest assured our activities receive oversight from your elected representatives, our chain of command, and most importantly the integrity of the vast majority of the operators. We are not gladiators in the arena to entertain you, and by supporting works like this you are helping to validate a very ugly aberration of our most closely held beliefs.

'Nuff said.

Ummmm .... About Your Drone CONOPS

Ahhhh, yes. From wannabee police forces that cannot get enough of spying on people just living their lives, to others looking to look on the cheap - everyone wants their own drone.

Well ... there are issues;

Using a GPS spoofing device that cost less than $1,000 to build, a University of Texas team was able to commandeer an unmanned aircraft and send it veering off course.

After initially demonstrating the concept in Austin, assistant professor Todd Humphreys and his team were invited to White Sands, N.M., on June 19 by skeptical Department of Homeland Security officials and proved they could divert a UAV from its flight path from about a kilometer away, a university news release said.

“The recent demonstration ... is the first known unequivocal demonstration that commandeering a UAV via GPS spoofing is technically feasible,” according to the release.

It is one small step from there ...

Civilian GPS devices are unencrypted and extremely vulnerable to spoofing attacks. While not impossible, doing the same to military aircraft that use encrypted signals would be more difficult. Military aircraft are more vulnerable to “broad-spectrum attacks,” Humphreys said.

Those attacks do not take direct control but jam an unmanned aircraft’s ability to receive signals. That can confuse them and send them into holding patterns that keep them circling overhead until they run out of fuel and crash or automatically land.

Many drones run on both GPS signals and direct command from a ground station.

“All drones do well if you cut one of the two links, but if you snip both, they don’t,” Humphreys said. “If you overwhelm the aircraft with enough jamming, it fails to navigate and can’t even phone home for help.”
...
Humphreys said there are always possible threats, even to encrypted links, but “this is not going to affect Predator drones, Global Hawks — it mostly concerns civilian drones that will inhabit the national airspace in 2015 and beyond.”

If spoofed, those could be piloted into targets in the U.S., he said, turning even cargo drones into deadly missiles.

Let you imagination go from there.

I'm a fan us UAS/V, but there are limits and risks.

Keeping an Eye on the Long Game: Part XLII

Bits and pieces ... spot by spot.

Sen. Webb (D-VA)'s article linked to above has some points well worth considering. Not to get too excited about - but to put in your nogg'n for future use.

On June 21, China's State Council approved the establishment of a new national prefecture which it named Sansha, with its headquarters on Woody Island in the Paracel Islands. Called Yongxing by the Chinese, Woody Island has no indigenous population and no natural water supply, but it does sport a military-capable runway, a post office, a bank, a grocery store and a hospital.

The Paracels are more than 200 miles southeast of Hainan, mainland China's southernmost territory, and due east of Vietnam's central coast. Vietnam adamantly claims sovereignty over the island group, the site of a battle in 1974 when China attacked the Paracels in order to oust soldiers of the former South Vietnamese regime.

The potential conflicts stemming from the creation of this new Chinese prefecture extend well beyond the Paracels. Over the last six weeks the Chinese have further proclaimed that the jurisdiction of Sansha includes not just the Paracel Islands but virtually the entire South China Sea, connecting a series of Chinese territorial claims under one administrative rubric. According to China's official news agency Xinhua, the new prefecture "administers over 200 islets" and "2 million square kilometers of water." To buttress this annexation, 45 legislators have been appointed to govern the roughly 1,000 people on these islands, along with a 15-member Standing Committee, plus a mayor and a vice mayor.

Pardon me for being rude ... but where has Senator Webb been? Where has his leadership been to further the discussion on equipping and training a force for this?

The question is whether the China of 2012 truly wishes to resolve issues through acceptable international standards, and whether the America of 2012 has the will and the capacity to insist that this approach is the only path toward stability.

For the full six years of his term as a US Senator, he has always been in the party of the majority in the Senate. You can do a lot with that.

So much power - and from USNA to this topic .... I sure hope he has done much more behind the scenes than he has out front. Though I disagreed with him on many things, he is/was an important voice - shame if it was a lost opportunity.

Multilateralism again, on Midrats

As our listenership in the last year is up four-fold (!), I decided to roll back this weekend to the 14th episode for a Labor Day best of.

For the full hour this Sunday from 5-6pm EST, we will look at what are the pluses and minuses of working with other nations at sea. Are we leveraging the capabilities of other nations enough - or are we in danger of relying on them too much? How does the American Navy see working with other naval forces - and how do they look at working with us? What special capabilities do other nations have that we don't, and what could we learn from them? What do the lessons from multilateralism in ground combat in Afghanistan, and multilateralism against pirates tell us?

Our guests will be Hans de Vreij and James S. Robbins. Hans de Vreij is the Netherlands correspondent at Jane's Defence Weekly, and the Security and Defence specialist at Radio Netherlands Worldwide. He received his education at the University of Amsterdam. Previously, he was economics, web editor, and EU & NATO correspondent for Radio Netherlands World.

Also, James S. Robbins; Senior Editorial Writer for Foreign Affairs at the Washington Times. He is also author of the book, Last in Their Class: Custer, Pickett and the Goats of West Point, and a political commentator and contributing editor for National Review Online. Dr. Robbins holds a Ph.D. and Master of Arts in Law and Diplomacy from The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in Medford, Massachusetts. He also has Masters and Bachelors degrees in Political Science from the University of Cincinnati. In addition to contributing to a wide variety of publications, h served in government for ten years, and in 2007 was awarded the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Joint Meritorious Civilian Service Award.

Join us live if you can, but if you miss the show you can always listen to the archive at blogtalkradio - the best way to get the show and download the archive to your audio player is to get a free account and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes.

Listen to Midrats