Good Wednesday Afternoon March 10 .
Some bits and pieces for your review.
Do you shop at Amazon??
Thanks to Dutch and Dr. Rich
what a great thing Doctor Rich is doing!! - let's all sign up !!
Take a look at: www.honorvets.org
We started this organization about 15 years ago, to bring combat wounded vets to Jackson for "recreational rehabilitation" - which means fishing, whitewater rafting, kayaking, photography training, woodcarving, hunting (I'm envious of the trophies!), etc…
But the most important part of their trip is sitting around a campfire, or riding together to tour Yellowstone, or in a raft … talking about their trials and tribulations following their injuries. Vets who haven't been out of their homes for years are now able to socialize, get together, meet new friends, learn new skills, appreciate their surroundings … its truly amazing … and gratifying.
We are a completely voluntary organization other than our part-time (she's also my medical office manager!!) Executive Director, which includes fishing guides, hunting guides, drivers, photography instructors, etc…
So, if you shop at Amazon, and haven't designated a charity through "Smile.Amazon.com" … would you go there and consider "Honoring Our Veterans" please? The extra dollars would mean a lot to our group, and enable us to do more for the veterans!!
Thanks!
Rich Sugden M.D.
PS - if you do designate HOV as your Amazon Smile charity, please make sure you then go to Smile.amazon.com when you shop …. NOT www.amazon.com, or your donation won't be picked up …
PSS - pass this along to your friends if you feel what we're doing is worthwhile ...
PSSS - 👍🇺🇸👌🇺🇸👏🇺🇸
This from our Photography Instructor:
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: I can relate to this
thanks to Doctor Rich
Thanks to Johnny...
This morning, I realized that everything is about to change. No matter how I vote, no matter what I say, something evil has invaded our nation, and our lives are never going to be the same.
I have been confused by the hostility of family and friends. I look at people I have known all my life— so hate-filled that they agree with opinions they would never express as their own. I think that I may well have entered the Twilight Zone.
You can't justify this insanity. We have become a nation that has lost its collective mind!
We see other countries going Socialist and collapsing, but it seems like a great plan to us ……
Somehow it's un-American for the census to count how many Americans are in America.
People who say there is no such thing as gender are demanding a female President.
Universities that advocate equality, discriminate against Asian-Americans in favor of African-Americans.
Some people are held responsible for things that happened before they were born, and other people are not held responsible for what they are doing right now.
Criminals are caught-and-released to hurt more people, but stopping them is bad because it's a violation of THEIR rights.
People who have never owned slaves should pay slavery reparations to people who have never been slaves.
If a dude pretends to be a woman, you are required to pretend with him.
People who have never been to college should pay the debts of college students who took out huge loans for their degrees.
Immigrants with tuberculosis and polio are welcome, but you'd better be able to prove your dog is vaccinated.
Irish doctors and German engineers who want to immigrate to the US must go through a rigorous vetting process, but any illiterate gang-banger who jumps the southern fence are welcome.
$5 billion for border security is too expensive, but $1.5 trillion for "free" health care is not.
If you cheat to get into college you go to prison, but if you cheat to get into the country you go to college for free. And, pointing out all this hypocrisy somehow makes us "racists"?!
Nothing makes sense anymore, no values, no morals, no civility and people are dying of a Chinese virus, but it's racist to refer to it as Chinese even though it began in China.
We are clearly living in an upside down world where right is wrong and wrong is right, where moral is immoral and immoral is moral, where good is evil and evil is good, where killing murderers is wrong, but killing innocent babies is right.
Wake up America! The great unsinkable ship Titanic, "America" has hit an iceberg, is taking on water, and is sinking fast. Pray for our country!
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Thanks to Dr. Rich
Pretty impressive climb, eh?
Thanks to Ken ...
The Eagle in question, No. 72-0119, was stripped of its radar, flaps, air brake, guns and fire control system avionics, and left
unpainted in order to save weight - 1800 pounds worth compared to the garden variety F-15A, according to Joe Baugher.
Operation Streak Eagle commenced in January 1975.
The time to climb records set by the (then new) F-15 in 1975 were started with the landing gear handle in the up position. As soon as the weight came off the nose gear, it retracted. Then when the mains came off, they retracted. Every bit of drag reduction was important.
A few other tidbits from the Streak Eagle program:
Weight reduction- gun removed, radar removed, brakes removed, no paint, only enough fuel for the climb plus a little.
The airplane was chained by the tail hook to a hold down point (remember no brakes), full afterburner on both engines and when the predetermined fuel quantity was reached, an explosive bolt sheared the hold down.
Going through about 80,000 ft in a 60 degree angle of climb the engines were shut down to prevent them from overheating. The last 20,000 or so of the climb was pure ballistic. The engine was restarted at 20,000 ft or so with windmilling rpm (about 350 kts IAS minimum with both engines shut down as I remember).
Since the brakes had been removed, the hook was used to stop.
The records set were:
3000 meters 27 seconds
6000 meters 39 seconds
9000 meters 48 seconds
12,000 meters 59 seconds
15,000 meters 77 seconds
20,000 meters 123 seconds
25,000 meters 161 seconds
30,000 meters 207 seconds That's about an average of 28,500 fpm from dead stopped to the 98,425 ft level.
Here's an article about Streak Eagle, including a video of several of the flights … Takes off in 400 ft., vertical climb goes supersonic … zowie!
For Viktor … the Streak Eagle F-15 broke several MiG-25 records!!
Wonder how a stripped down current fighter would do?
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Thanks to Micro
The CIA had an opening for an assassin.
After all the background checks, interviews and testing were done, there were three finalists: two men and a woman.
For the final test, the CIA agents took one of the men to a large metal door and handed him a gun. "We must know that you will follow your instructions no matter what the circumstances. Inside the room you will find your wife sitting in a chair… kill her!"
The man said "You can't be serious. I could never shoot my wife." The agent said, "Then you are not the right man for this job. Take your wife and go home."
The second man was given the same instructions. He took the gun and went into the room. All was quiet for about five minutes. The man came out with tears in his eyes, "I tried, but I can't kill my wife." The agent said, "You don't have what it takes, so take your wife and go home."
Finally, it was the woman's turn. She was given the same instructions… to kill her husband. She took the gun and went into the room. Shots were heard, one after another. They heard screaming, crashing, and banging on the walls. After a few minutes, all was quiet.
The door opened slowly and there stood the woman, wiping sweat from her brow. "This gun is loaded with blanks," she said. "I had to kill him with the chair."
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Thanks to Dutch
for a alight moment
9-Year-Old Plays Banjo on David Letterman Show
Become a fan! https://sleepyman.com/fanclub9 year old banjo boy Jonny Mizzone and his brothers Tommy 13 on guitar, and Robbie 12 on fiddle perform "Flint Hi...
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Thanks to Chuck
Payback - it begins\RICH
To: Heyyyy fonzie
Subject: MORE: Payback - it begins\RICH
Hi to all -
Gretchen
Gretchen Whitmer is the governor of Michigan. She had some of the worst lockdown rules and mandates in the nation. She also crippled the state economy, and ignored court orders that told her she did not have authority for her actions. She bypassed the courts by having the state health authority speak for her, claiming ''health emergency". That man abruptly resigned, after collecting a large cash payment and a promise not to prosecute. This stirred some action, and now the state AG is suggesting that Gretchen may face criminal charges. See, Gretchen, like Cuomo, forced Covid positive patients back into nursing homes. This resulted in at least 5500 deaths, bringing Michigan into the top five states with high death rates. So much for Gretch 'keeping us safe', as my liberal friends there assert. Even if all these democrat tyrants escape the law here - there is another court with no escape, no appeal.
Nevada
The 'democratic socialists' there (read that as Communists) won all five senior leadership positions in the party. Not all democrats have drunk the Kool-Aid. Some can still think and act for themselves. The entire staff of the party resigned in protest. All of them.
As we said a while back...once the crooks 'win', they almost always turn on each other to gain power and wealth, or so they think.
Pork
The so-called Covid relief is only tangentially about helping the people. About 90% of this 'charity' is to bail out failed democrat leaders. Another example: $86 billion to rescue failed union pension plans, which the leadership has had their face buried into for years. Nancy at work.
Pepe le Pew
Cancel culture has caught up with the cartoon amorous skunk. He now represents 'rape culture'. Unlike Eric Swalwell, with his Chinese spy consort. Or Hunter Biden, the pedophile. Or the parade of democrats who are actual rapists. Go figure.
France
A 13-year-old schoolgirl has admitted that she falsely accused her teacher of presenting unflattering cartoons of Mohammed. Ten days after she did this, the teacher was attacked by Muslims, who beheaded him, but in a peaceful and tolerant manner, as their culture demands. The riots that resulted saw others murdered, much property damaged, and more. This young lady is not being identified, for her safety. Pretty tough baggage for her to carry - forever.
Rich
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Thanks to Chuck
F-35.... recent 4 articles
Who could have possibly seen something like this coming… sigh.
These have been edited down… follow associated links to the full articles.
The U.S. Air Force Just Admitted The F-35 Stealth Fighter Has Failed
The U.S. Air Force's top officer wants the service to develop an affordable, lightweight fighter to replace hundreds of Cold War-vintage F-16s and complement a small fleet of sophisticated—but costly and unreliable—stealth fighters. The result would be a high-low mix of expensive "fifth-generation" F-22s and F-35s and inexpensive "fifth-generation-minus" jets, explained Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Brown Jr. If that plan sounds familiar, it's because the Air Force a generation ago launched development of an affordable, lightweight fighter to replace hundreds of Cold War-vintage F-16s and complement a small future fleet of sophisticated—but costly and unreliable—stealth fighters. But over 20 years of R&D, that lightweight replacement fighter got heavier and more expensive as the Air Force and lead contractor Lockheed Martin LMT packed it with more and more new technology. Yes, we're talking about the F-35. The 25-ton stealth warplane has become the very problem it was supposed to solve. And now America needs a new fighter to solve that F-35 problem, officials said. With a sticker price of around $100 million per plane, including the engine, the F-35 is expensive. While stealthy and brimming with high-tech sensors, it's also maintenance-intensive, buggy and unreliable. "The F-35 is not a low-cost, lightweight fighter," said Dan Ward, a former Air Force program manager and the author of popular business books including The Simplicity Cycle. The F-35 is a Ferrari, Brown told reporters last Wednesday. "You don't drive your Ferrari to work every day, you only drive it on Sundays. This is our 'high end' [fighter], we want to make sure we don't use it all for the low-end fight." "I want to moderate how much we're using those aircraft," Brown said. Hence the need for a new low-end fighter to pick up the slack in day-to-day operations. Today, the Air Force's roughly 1,000 F-16s meet that need. But the flying branch hasn't bought a new F-16 from Lockheed since 2001. The F-16s are old. In his last interview before leaving his post in January, Will Roper, the Air Force's top acquisition official, floated the idea of new F-16 orders. But Brown shot down the idea, saying he doesn't want more of the classic planes. The 17-ton, non-stealthy F-16 is too difficult to upgrade with the latest software, Brown explained. Instead of ordering fresh F-16s, he said, the Air Force should initiate a "clean-sheet design" for a new low-end fighter. Brown's comments are a tacit admission that the F-35 has failed. As conceived in the 1990s, the program was supposed to produce thousands of fighters to displace almost all of the existing tactical warplanes in the inventories of the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps. The Air Force alone wanted nearly 1,800 F-35s to replace aging F-16s and A-10s and constitute the low end of a low-high fighter mix, with 180 twin-engine F-22s making up the high end. But the Air Force and Lockheed baked failure into the F-35's very concept. "They tried to make the F-35 do too much," said Dan Grazier, an analyst with the Project on Government Oversight in Washington, D.C. There's a small-wing version for land-based operations, a big-wing version for the Navy's catapult-equipped aircraft carriers and, for the small-deck assault ships the Marines ride in, a vertical-landing model with a downward-blasting lift engine. The complexity added cost. Rising costs imposed delays. Delays gave developers more time to add yet more complexity to the design. Those additions added more cost. Those costs resulted in more delays. So on and so forth. Fifteen years after the F-35's first flight, the Air Force has just 250 of the jets. Now the service is signaling possible cuts to the program. It's not for no reason that Brown has begun characterizing the F-35 as a boutique, high-end fighter in the class of the F-22. The Air Force ended F-22 production after completing just 195 copies. "The F-35 is approaching a crossroads," Grazier said. Pentagon leaders have hinted that, as part of the U.S. military's shift in focus toward peer threats—that is, Russia and China—the Navy and Air Force might get bigger shares of the U.S. military's roughly $700-billion annual budget. All at the Army's expense. "If we're going to pull the trigger on a new fighter, now's probably the time," Grazier said. The Air Force could end F-35 production after just a few hundred examples and redirect tens of billions of dollars to a new fighter program. But it's an open question whether the Air Force will ever succeed in developing a light, cheap fighter. The new low-end jet could suffer the same fate as the last low-end jet—the F-35—and steadily gain weight, complexity and cost until it becomes, well, a high-end jet. If that happens, as it's happened before, then some future Air Force chief of staff might tell reporters—in, say, the year 2041—that the new F-36 is a Ferrari and you don't drive your Ferrari to work every day. To finally replace its 60-year-old F-16s, this future general might say, the Air Force should develop an affordable, lightweight fighter.
Roper Hints NGAD Could Replace F-35; Why? Life-Cycle Costs
The NGAD program "represents a chance to design an airplane that is more sustainable than the F-35, if in fact the F-35 cannot get its cost-per-flying-hour down," said outgoing AF acquisition head Will Roper.
The F-35 fighter jet's exorbitant life-cycle costs means the Air Force cannot afford to buy as many aircraft as it needs to fight and win a war today, which makes the Next-Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) program all the more important, says outgoing Air Force acquisition czar Will Roper. "I think the F-35 program is a long way from being at a sustainment point that we need. I think it's a long way from being an affordable fighter that we can buy in bulk," he told reporters today. "That's the reason why Next-Generation Air Dominance is so important to the Air Force," he said. "It doesn't just represent a next-generation fighter with bells and whistles that we will need in warfighting. It doesn't just represent a completely different acquisition paradigm. It also represents a chance to design an airplane that is more sustainable than the F-35 if, in fact, the F-35 cannot get its cost-per-flying-hour down." Roper would not be drawn on whether the Air Force was considering downsizing it plan to build a total inventory of 1,763 F-35s — with the Air Force requesting 48 aircraft in 2021, and planning to ask for the same annual buy for the foreseeable future, according to a study last month by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "But what I can say is we're not at the sustainment price point we need to be for a very large fleet. So, the next few years are critical for the F 35 program," he added. He seemed to suggest that, all things considered, perhaps the answer is to turn to NGAD to more rapidly build a wartime-fit fighter fleet. "I very much hope for the future of the program, but I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't prepare for the worst. And so you can see that the movements that we have made in the TacAir portfolio have set the Air Force up to have options, so that our eggs are not in one proverbial basket," he said. Roper explained that Air Force fighters have to be ready to establish air dominance on day one of a war (along with satellites to secure establish communications.) "If they don't win the day, then there will be no time for the rest of the services to join." This is why the quantity of F-35s available matters, he said, as well as the quality of its capabilities.
https://breakingdefense.com/2021/01/roper-hints-ngad-could-replace-f-35-why-life-cycle-costs/
Ripping F-35 costs, House Armed Services chairman looks to 'cut our losses'
When Rep. Adam Smith thinks about the F-35, he thinks about "failure on a massive freaking scale." Michael Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images)
The House Armed Services Committee chairman railed at the expensive F-35 Joint Strike Fighter on Friday, saying he wants to "stop throwing money down that particular rathole," ― just days after the Air Force said it too is looking at other options. "What does the F-35 give us? And is there a way to cut our losses? Is there a way to not keep spending that much money for such a low capability because, as you know, the sustainment costs are brutal," Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., said a Brookings event. Air Force officials recently said they are conducting a study to find the best mix of fighters including Lockheed Martin's F-35, Boeing's F-15EX and a replacement for the service's oldest F-16s. Smith was thinking along similar lines. "What I'm going to try to do is figure out how we can get a mix of fighter-attack aircraft that's the most cost effective. And I am telling you right now a big part of that is finding something that doesn't make us have to rely on the F-35 for the next 35 years," he said. Though the Joint Strike Fighter was conceived as a relatively affordable fifth-generation aircraft, it's generally acknowledged as the world's most expensive weapons platform. Flying the F-35 currently costs $36,000 per hour, and it has a projected lifetime cost of $1.7 trillion. As of January, the F-35 was still struggling to meet its goal mission-capable rate, which is the percentage of aircraft that can meet at least one assigned mission. Only 69 percent met the threshold, well short of the military's longstanding 80 percent goal. While the F-35 was designed to replace the F-16 — among several other aircraft variants — Air Force officials said this month they were exploring less expensive options, including buying new F-16s from Lockheed, evaluating low-cost tactical drones and pursuing a clean-sheet fighter, as described by Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. CQ Brown in February. In broader remarks emphasizing more modest, cost-effective goals for the military, Smith said Congress must "seriously scrub" the Pentagon's big-ticket weapons programs. Though Smith holds a powerful job, the F-35 enjoys strong support in Congress, and the lawmaker lamented that the country seems to be locked into the program. "We have wasted a spectacular amount of money on weapons systems that either haven't worked at all or who have not lived up to their promise," Smith said. "The failure we wind up tolerating is failure on a massive freaking scale. Think F-35." In a statement to Defense News, Lockheed spokesman John Torrisi pointed to U.S. Marine and Air Force deployments of the jet and that it has flown more than 1,000 combat missions. "We look forward to continued engagement with Chairman Smith and other key members of Congress on the vital F-35 program during the coming Defense Authorization and Appropriation cycle," Torrisi said. "The F-35 is the most survivable, connected fighter in the world today." One of the reasons the Air Force is reevaluating the F-35 program is a tacit acknowledgment that the flat budgets projected in the near future may not allow the service to buy all 1,763 F-35s in its program of record. The F-35 remains the "cornerstone" of the fighter fleet that the Air Force is pursuing, Brown told reporters during a Feb. 25 roundtable. However, he said there are "cost pressures" on the program. "The reason I'm looking at this fighter study is to have a better understanding — not only the F-35s we're going to get, but the other aspects of what complements the F-35 in looking 10 to 15 years out," he said. "I want to make sure we have the right capability. That includes [the option of] continuing to buy the 1,763 [F-35s] like we've already outlined, but we also have a look at it to make sure it has the capability we need with Block 4 [upgrades] but also is affordable." At the same time, the service also needs capacity to support operations in the Middle East or other tasks such as defending U.S. airspace — missions that don't require stealthy fifth-generation fighters that are more costly to operate. "Geopolitics change faster than our programs of record. [With] the geopolitics we have now ... frankly we need a significant capacity," said Gen. Mark Kelly, who leads Air Combat Command. "In a perfect world ... a budget-unconstrained environment would have a huge number — capacity — of huge capability fifth-gen airframes for every squadron in the combat air forces. The challenge with [that] is the reality of fiscal requirements of a nation that is coming out of a pandemic and the impacts of it, and the demand signal of being really busy around the world."
Stop Throwing Money Down F-35 'Rathole,' Top Lawmaker Says
The active-duty 388th and Reserve 419th Fighter Wings conducted an F-35A Combat Power Exercise at Hill Air Force Base, Utah, Jan. 6, 2020. The exercise, which was planned for months, demonstrated their ability to employ a large force of F-35As -- testing readiness in the areas of personnel accountability, aircraft generation, ground operations, flight operations, and combat capability against air and ground targets. (U.S. Air Force photo/R. Nial Bradshaw)
The chairman of the House Armed Services Committee is questioning how the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program fits into the Defense Department's future strategy, likening the Pentagon's most expensive program to date to "throwing money down that particular rathole." "What does the F-35 give us?" Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., asked during a virtual Brookings Institution event Friday. "Is there a way to cut our losses? Is there a way to not keep spending so much money for such a low capability? Because the sustainment costs are brutal." The F-35 program's total cost has been projected at more than $1 trillion over a 50-year service lifetime. The program has been plagued with breakdowns -- including engine fires, structural cracks, and peeling and crumbling insulation in its cooling lines. Lawmakers have also scrutinized the jet's sustainment, maintenance and supply chain management because of mismanagement and cost overruns. While Smith acknowledged that Congress can't ditch the program, he wants the Pentagon to curtail its reliance on the fifth-generation platform. "What I'm going to try to do is figure out how we can get a mix of fighter attack aircraft that's the most cost-effective -- bottom line," he said. The U.S. Air Force is currently conducting a "TacAir study" to determine the right mix of aircraft for its future inventory and assess how "air dominance" fighter-drone concepts could fit into it. Smith has spoken about the F-35's growing pains in the past, but also given credit to its slow but steady progress. "The F-35 is the poster child for doing procurement the wrong way, but to the extent possible, they've cleaned up," he said in 2014. "It will replace 90% of fighter aircraft," he said, as reported by The Washington Business Journal. "It's going forward. There's no scenario where we'd scrap it at this point." Lockheed Martin beat out Boeing Co. for the program contract in 2001. It had to develop three versions of the jet -- one each for the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps -- which required a retrofit to jets still under development. That led to growing costs, drawing lawmakers' attention. Despite pushback in the early years of the program, more lawmakers have begun to show interest in maintaining or even expanding it, especially those whose districts host manufacturing facilities or bases that house the stealth jet.
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Thanks to Dutch
east Asia, the polluter -
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