FOG HORN

We wish to thank Brigadier General Camille Nichols for her time and insight.

Topics for this morning’s roundtable included a number of initiatives and programs: Army Combat Pant, Pelvic Protection, Combat Boots, Individual Carbine Competition, M4 Carbine Product Improvement Program, XM25, Individual Gunshot Detector, Joint Effects Targeting System, and the Nett Warrior program.

[————————–Highlights—————————]

• The FY 2011 budget has $2.8 billion earmarked for Soldier equipment.
• Emphasis to remain on COTS.
• Looking forward the U.S. Army will need to do more with less.
• In the area of ballistic protection, the Army will be looking at and fielding a number of products ranging from Kevlar athletic cups and underwear to exterior ballistic protection that wraps around the pelvic regions to provide protection to the penis, testicles and rectal areas.
• Earlier this year one of the topics that I wrote about was the hybrid night vision technologies; that is the integration of thermal imaging with image intensification. Formally designated as the ENVG for enhanced night vision goggle, the U.S. Army has 5,000 units in the field, with very positive results.
• The ECH, Enhanced Combat Helmet, a collaborative effort with the USMC is now in production. The ECH is lighter, better prevents trauma and offers enhanced ballistic performance.
• Look for new Hot Weather Mountain Boots.
• The Army’s carbine improvement program continues its two-pronged approach. The carbine competition will proceed first followed by the p-i-p phase. Candidly I can’t see why those aren’t concurrent efforts since any interdependencies can be readily managed.
• NETT Warrior designed to enhance dismounted situational awareness seems to be headed in the appliance agnostic direction. The soldier will be able to use the appliance that best suits his needs.

I continue my headlamp series with a superb offering from Streamlight, the Sidewinder Compact™. This little personal light is feature rich and magnificently functional.

When I first received Streamlight’s press release, mid year 2009, I said to myself
“this is a winner”; two years later I got the opportunity to qualify my initial impressions with a hands-on look at the Sidewinder Compact™.

The crash of Air France’s Flight 447 was the deadliest aviation accident in Air France’s history. The accident took the lives of 216 passengers and 12 crew members. I understand that the investigation is still underway but the preliminary findings bewilder me.

The initial postmortem suggests that an aerodynamic stall was the cause of the accident and minutes before the stall the pitot tubes started to give inconsistent speed readings; suggesting that they were icing up. Here’s my problem.

An aerodynamic stall can occur at any speed throttle setting and in any configuration, meaning you can be clean – flaps retracted and gear up, or you can have flaps fully extended and landing gear down. An aerodynamic stall occurs when the airflow over the leading edge of the wing is disrupted to the extent that you lose lift. Stall speeds are aircraft specific and are listed in terms of indicated airspeed. For example, a light aircraft with flaps retracted can stall at an indicated airspeed of 65 m.p.h. A pilot can apply full throttle and change the aircraft’s attitude by pulling back on the elevators; raising the nose of the aircraft thus increasing the angle of attack to the point where airflow over the wing is disrupted,  air speed drops and the wing stalls. A stall can occur at any airspeed  throttle setting in a turn, in a climb and a variety of  maneuvers where the indicated airspeed drops to the rated indicated airspeed.

The pitot tube, senses air pressure and provides airspeed information to the cockpit instruments as well as the automatic pilot. It is my understanding, that the autopilot disengaged in Air Frances’ case, which meant that the pilots had to take manual control of the aircraft. Other than ice forming on the wings causing a loss of lift, how the heck do you stall an Airbus at cruising altitude with the variety of instruments available to the pilot.

Let’s assume that the aircraft was flying straight and level. For some reason or another the pitot tube failure causes the autopilot to believe that the airspeed was higher than it actually was. So, the engine thrust is reduced correspondingly. As altitude drops the pilot applies elevator resulting in a further reduction of airspeed. As a result, airspeed drops to the point where the wing stalls…

Situations such as this would create so many telltale signs that it’s hard for me to comprehend how a stall can occur at cruising altitude. Moreover, what circumstances existed that the pilot could not recover from the stall. Even in conditions where the horizon is not visible, there are instruments in the cockpit that would make airspeed and attitude changes detectable.

So, how the heck do you stall an Airbus at cruising altitude and not recover from the stall. It is beyond me I have to admit.

Aviators feel free to chime in with comments!

Revision:

I’ve committed the cardinal sin of writing and that is – writing when something ticks you off. You’ll always make mistakes or misstatements. Having said that I have a few corrections that I’d like to make to the original post.

This comes from our friends at Soldier System; they came across it via US Palm – it’s a moral patch from TNVC. We’d like to share it with you because its brevity and sheer eloquence says it all.

Camelbak Products, LLC is located in one of San Francisco Bay’s nicest cities, Petaluma. The company personifies the innovative spirit of Californians.

At the heart of Camelbak’s beginnings are two bicyclists Michael Eidson and Jeff Wemmer who recognized a need and filled it. It’s hard to believe that Camelbak’s beginnings can be traced back to an IV bag in a tube sock’ but that’s how it all began. How’s that for some out of the box thinking.

Camelbak redefined hydration; making it organic to the U.S. Armed Forces. Today, Camelbak hydration systems serve military men and women in the field around the world. The experienced gained enabled the company to develop, with input from the field, new and innovative tactical products like their line of tactical gloves launched in 2006.

In August I continue our look at Camelbak’s tactical glove line with my review of their new Impact Elite™. See for yourself…

Battlecloth BMP

 Battlecloth is unlike any gear supplier. Steve, its founder will custom make just about anything that you need, including suppressed weapon pouches. His work is excellent as is his customer service.

Battlecloth is pleased to introduce the BMP (Battlecloth Magazine Pouch).  This is a five pocket storage case that fits most popular full size and compact pistol magazines.  The top flap is designed and built to accept a standard 5” Velcro backed military name tape.  You can get these printed to say pretty much anything you might want (within reason) in the way of identifying what mags you have stored in the BMP.  Make, model, caliber, department name, your name…  In other words, what ever makes the most sense to you!   The name tapes are Velcro backed, so they are removable and swappable.  You can buy them from me or your favorite name tape maker, the BMP works with ANY standard Velcro backed 5” military name tape.

The BMP is priced at $19.95 each.  Name tapes are $4.00 each.  Shipping is additional so please email BATTLECLOTH@COMCAST.NETfor a quote.  Built to order, lead time is approximately three weeks (less if you’re not buying the

I appreciate all of your questions and I’ll be more than happy to answer your question; however, there are better forums than FOG HORN to get that information. I did open the door by opening the topic, but I’d like to close it with this response.

Thank you for understanding and thank your for visiting FOG HORN.

A budget deficit occurs when the U.S. government spends more than it takes in. The government has a number of revenue streams. It follows, that when the government spends less than it takes in, we experience a surplus.

When the government is running on a deficit, the amount by which spending exceeds income has to be financed. The government goes to the private sector and raises the funds it needs by borrowing. When the government borrows it incurs a liability. In other words, it is on the hook for the amount borrow as well as interest payments on the borrowed funds.

Interest payments are part of the fiscal budget; therefore, as national debt increases our interest payment obligation increase. Eventually, these interest payments become a larger part of our annual budget; preventing us from funding programs needed to maintain our defense posture, entitlements and all those things that benefit our country and its citizen. If unchecked, debt can increase to the point where interest payments and maturing obligations can consume the majority of government’s income. Greece, Spain, Portugal are struggling with these problems as I write this.

When a government realizes as surplus, as in the Clinton Presidency, it does not follow that the national debt will reduce correspondingly. In President Clinton’s case, national debt grew 1.02 trillion dollars 1993-1997 and 0.4 trillion dollars 1997-2001. So, take the deficit v. surplus discussions with a grain of salt until legislation is passed that requires all surpluses be applied to retire national debt. When that happens you can take it seriously.

Surpluses come when the economy is growing, which gives government a larger revenue base. You don’t want to tax your way to a surplus because you are reducing disposable income which shrinks the economy further. There are a number of other issues such as balance of payments etc. that need to be considered and are advanced topics.

The key to surpluses is an expanding GDP (this gives you near full employment) with a reduced balance of payments.

I hope this helps you.

As a follow-up to an earlier post I want to show you where some of your defense dollars go to. The projects that I represent here are just those of the Raytheon Corporation. There are literally hundreds of companies across the United States working on a number of defense driven initiatives with equal commercial promise.

My challenge to you is find one project in the list below that does not have commercial application. In fact, find one that would not accelerate technology and / or productivity.

• Advanced Chemical Battery Technologies: The Lithium Revolution
• Power Sources That Last a Century
• Creating Compact, Reliable and Clean Power With Fuel Cell Technology
• The Battlefield Game Changer: Portable and Wearable Soldier Power
• Solar Power: Applying Raytheon‘s Defense Technologies
• External Combustion Engines for Military Applications
• The ReGenerator: Alternative Energy for Expeditionary Missions
• Intelligent Power and Energy Management
• The Role of Energy Storage in Intelligent Energy Systems
• Cyber Risk Management in Electric Utility Smart Grids
• Cybersecurity for Microgrids
• Standardizing the Smart Grid

Information on many of these projects is directly available from Raytheon or check out a copy of Technology Today, 2011, Journal 1.

Nin-Hai Tseng is a journalist that covers economics and finance for Fortune.com. She recently published an article that asks an interesting question, “Defense spending helped create today’s fiscal problems. So why isn’t it being considered seriously as a way to help fix them?…”

First, let’s clear up a couple of things. Raising the debt limit is congressional authorization for the United States of America to increase its line of credit. It’s the equivalent of you, as an individual, accepting a credit limit increase on a revolving line of credit. This is not necessarily a bad thing; businesses call it the degree of operating leverage. Leverage, or debt, can greatly improve your personal finances or business during periods of increasing or stable income. Your home, for example, in a rational market, will increase in value on an annualized basis, at a rate of 5.5% to 10% depending on location and other factors. That appreciation occurs not on your equity but on the appraised value of your home; therefore, your equity grows at a rate of, say, 8% on $250,000 and not your $20,000 down-payment. This is leverage at work. So, having debt is not a bad thing.

Defense spending is a recurring operating expense that accounts for a sizeable chunk of the United States fiscal budget. Defense spending, is no different from your annual expense for going back and forth to work, it’s simply part of your annual budget. Where the problem comes in is when you are spending on an annual basis more than you take home in the form of income. If you make $10,000 per year but spend $12,000 the $2,000 difference is absorbed by your line of credit. In government’s case deficit annual spending adds to the national debt.

The great smoke screen being thrown out is that reducing defense spending will reduce the national debt. Nothing could be further from the truth. Cutting defense spending will only reduce government’s annual expenditures; therefore, you won’t add to the existing national debt by borrowing to cover deficit spending.

Decimating the defense budget has a serious impact on national security that will have a significantly higher cost when discounted to present value. The corrective action needed to respond to future threats will exceed the planned savings; there are also endless intangible costs.

Much of the technology gains that we experience in today’s markets are as a direct result of industry responding to the needs of the military in support of the Iraq and Afghanistan actions, and virtually 96 cents of every dollar spent on defense stays in the United States.

Blindly tightening purse strings on the DoD will do far greater harm than good. The better approach, is process oriented. This involves everything in the ladder starting with flattening organizations – you can start with DHS – to procurement. Clearly defining needs, adherence to COTS, wherever possible, and a leaner bureaucracy are the keys to success.

Dealing with the national debt requires surplus revenues, but you can only do that in an expanding economy. It won’t come with increased taxation and it shure as hell won’t come from the frenetic pace of outsourcing – look at everything in your home to see where its been manufactured and/or assembled.

I reiterate the statement the German government made a year or more ago: “…the United States needs to start building things again…”

Taking a mechanic out of a Lockheed Martin plant, due to a cancelled project, and putting him or her in Target selling toasters will never deliver surpluses, and surpluses is what is needed to reduce the national debt. The peace dividend is no dividend at all.

Get real folks!