The Defense department budget for this coming year is about 500 billion dollars. Congress passed a 400 and something billion defense budget and then just put in another 70 billion for Iraq operations in yesterday's giant continuing resolution. Call it $500 billion overall, give or take a few tens of billions.
For all this money, the country is putting 100,000 infantry men into Iraq. So, for 500 billion, we are paying for a very small active army. Divide $500 billion by 100,000 soldiers and it works out to $5 million per soldier sent into combat. You can hire baseball stars for that kinda money. Too bad the troops don't get much of it.
Thursday, December 20, 2007
3400 pages for the hiding of the pork
Congress, under the gun at the last minute, decided to keep the US government running. They passed a single giant bill authorizing spending for next fiscal year for the entire government. It's nearly a trillion dollars, 3400 pages, and nobody has read it.
I mean, like who can read 3400 pages of the dull obfusticated text in less than a month? This baby went from Congress to President for signature in 24 hours, so it hasn't been read. The only people who know what's in it are the 20 or so staffers who wrote it. Or cut and pasted it together from last year's budget. Major benefit to the insiders, you got plenty of places to hide your pork.
Used to be, Congress would pass one appropriation bill for each executive department, Defense, Agriculture, Education, State, Treasury and so on. They were supposed to pass all appropriations bills before the end of the fiscal year. Back in 1964 this actually happened, I was in USAF at the time, and we took notice of these things. By the end of the fiscal year Air Force money was always tight and we waited for the new budget to come down so we could buy beans and bacon and jet fuel and spare parts and all the stuff you need to keep a fighter wing going.
Next year (1965) Congress was a month late, and things got very tight indeed. So for 1966 Uncle Sam moved the end of the fiscal year back a month to give Congress more time to do the appropriations bills. Naturally the appropriation bills were even later. Give 'em more time and they will take more time. This annual slippage kept getting worse.
Some time in the 80's or 90's, Congress just gave up appropriating and started passing "continuing resolutions" at the last minute. A continuing resolution is an act of Congress that says "Keep things running, limit your spending this year to whatever was in last year's appropriation."
Now, they let everything go til the last minute, and then pass a single giant continuing resolution which in reality, puts the power of the purse into the hands of Congressional staffers, and a few well connected lobbyists. Congressmen just vote on whatever the staffers create, they don't have a clue what's in it.
Back when appropriations bills only covered one department, they were smaller and it was possible for diligent Congressmen to understand one of them. These few diligent Congressmen became legends in the armed services, Carl Vincent, Sam Nunn, and John Stennis for example. Stennis was so legendary that they named an aircraft carrier after him.
Apparently modern Congress men are more interested in making political gestures, like trying to cut off Iraq war funding again and again when they don't have the votes to do it, rather than getting the country's business done. Business has been delegated to unelected staffers, so the elected Congressmen can spend their time posing for the TV cameras.
I mean, like who can read 3400 pages of the dull obfusticated text in less than a month? This baby went from Congress to President for signature in 24 hours, so it hasn't been read. The only people who know what's in it are the 20 or so staffers who wrote it. Or cut and pasted it together from last year's budget. Major benefit to the insiders, you got plenty of places to hide your pork.
Used to be, Congress would pass one appropriation bill for each executive department, Defense, Agriculture, Education, State, Treasury and so on. They were supposed to pass all appropriations bills before the end of the fiscal year. Back in 1964 this actually happened, I was in USAF at the time, and we took notice of these things. By the end of the fiscal year Air Force money was always tight and we waited for the new budget to come down so we could buy beans and bacon and jet fuel and spare parts and all the stuff you need to keep a fighter wing going.
Next year (1965) Congress was a month late, and things got very tight indeed. So for 1966 Uncle Sam moved the end of the fiscal year back a month to give Congress more time to do the appropriations bills. Naturally the appropriation bills were even later. Give 'em more time and they will take more time. This annual slippage kept getting worse.
Some time in the 80's or 90's, Congress just gave up appropriating and started passing "continuing resolutions" at the last minute. A continuing resolution is an act of Congress that says "Keep things running, limit your spending this year to whatever was in last year's appropriation."
Now, they let everything go til the last minute, and then pass a single giant continuing resolution which in reality, puts the power of the purse into the hands of Congressional staffers, and a few well connected lobbyists. Congressmen just vote on whatever the staffers create, they don't have a clue what's in it.
Back when appropriations bills only covered one department, they were smaller and it was possible for diligent Congressmen to understand one of them. These few diligent Congressmen became legends in the armed services, Carl Vincent, Sam Nunn, and John Stennis for example. Stennis was so legendary that they named an aircraft carrier after him.
Apparently modern Congress men are more interested in making political gestures, like trying to cut off Iraq war funding again and again when they don't have the votes to do it, rather than getting the country's business done. Business has been delegated to unelected staffers, so the elected Congressmen can spend their time posing for the TV cameras.
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
End it don't Mend it
Title of a piece on Transterrestrial Musings I agree. CIA has so discredited itself over the last ten years that nobody should take their findings seriously. Why fund an intelligence agency that will never produce another piece of believable intelligence? The codebreakers and the recon satellites do most of US intel work. State dept is there to provide unclassified intel, the military would be happy to do the covert action. Why fund CIA?
Broken gas gauge grounds shuttle (Aviation Week)
Last week's shuttle abort was caused by failure in the hydrogen level sense system in the big external fuel tank. Four engine cutoff sensors are supposed to signal when the hydrogen is all used up and cut off the engines. Otherwise the turbopumps will overspeed when the fuel line goes dry and they start spinning in air (or vacuum). Centrifugal forces from pump overspeed can cause the pumps to fly apart, flinging pump parts thru out the spacecraft at high velocity and triggering an explosion. Normal operating speed of the turbopumps is 39,000 RPM, which is faster than stink. For comparison, a car engine will blow up at a mere 5,ooo RPM, a turbojet can shuck turbine blades at 10,000 RPM. These pumps are running on the ragged edge of failure under normal conditions. Letting them spin faster when the hydrogen runs out naturally makes all hands pretty nervous, and rightly so.
The failure only shows up when the hydrogen tank is full of supercold liquid hydrogen. NASA was going to run a ground test yesterday by filling the tank with 385,000 gallons of liquid hydrogen. I don't know what hydrogen costs, but at gasoline prices, that's about $1,000,000 worth of fuel. A lot of it will boil off just sitting in the tank.
Apparently the problem has been there all along.
"It seems to me likely that we have been flying the entire history of the shuttle program with a false sense of security and that we never had reliable protection from a [catastrophic] liquid hydrogen low-level engine cutoff. That is a really sobering thought ." writes Wayne Hale, NASA program manager, in an email obtained by Aviation Week.
So far, the shuttle computers have been shutting down the engines when orbital velocity of 25,700 foot per second is reached. Up to now, there has been hydrogen left in the tank at engine cutoff. Any one of a number of malfunctions, starting with a leaky tank, could cause hydrogen to run out before orbital velocity is achieved, causing the shuttle to explode unless the hydrogen level sensors are working.
Managers had initial considered flying the 9 Dec mission with "relaxed ECO rules", NASA speak for flying with broken hydrogen sensors, but the Astronaut Office objected.
The failure only shows up when the hydrogen tank is full of supercold liquid hydrogen. NASA was going to run a ground test yesterday by filling the tank with 385,000 gallons of liquid hydrogen. I don't know what hydrogen costs, but at gasoline prices, that's about $1,000,000 worth of fuel. A lot of it will boil off just sitting in the tank.
Apparently the problem has been there all along.
"It seems to me likely that we have been flying the entire history of the shuttle program with a false sense of security and that we never had reliable protection from a [catastrophic] liquid hydrogen low-level engine cutoff. That is a really sobering thought ." writes Wayne Hale, NASA program manager, in an email obtained by Aviation Week.
So far, the shuttle computers have been shutting down the engines when orbital velocity of 25,700 foot per second is reached. Up to now, there has been hydrogen left in the tank at engine cutoff. Any one of a number of malfunctions, starting with a leaky tank, could cause hydrogen to run out before orbital velocity is achieved, causing the shuttle to explode unless the hydrogen level sensors are working.
Managers had initial considered flying the 9 Dec mission with "relaxed ECO rules", NASA speak for flying with broken hydrogen sensors, but the Astronaut Office objected.
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Israel wants the new F-35 Lighting II fighter
Of course nothing is perfect.
" Weaknesses include a one man cockpit, the perishability of of it's stealth, and the need to use Israeli-specific equipment" reports AW&ST Senior Military Editor David A. Fulghum on the Aviation Week blog here.
F-35 is the latest hottest fighter, so new it isn't really in service yet, just a couple of prototypes flying.
" Weaknesses include a one man cockpit, the perishability of of it's stealth, and the need to use Israeli-specific equipment" reports AW&ST Senior Military Editor David A. Fulghum on the Aviation Week blog here.
F-35 is the latest hottest fighter, so new it isn't really in service yet, just a couple of prototypes flying.
Vista Disappoints
Also from the 17 December eWeek:
" Microsoft Windows Vista officially launched to much fanfare, and it was received with a resounding ... thud. Eschewed by consumers who thought that XP still had the right stuff, and virtually ignored by corporations whose applications weren't ready for the new OS, Vista made news in 2007 for all the wrong reasons."
Looks like me and my daughter aren't the only ones attempting to avoid Vista. Who wants copy protection and extreme sluggishness?
" Microsoft Windows Vista officially launched to much fanfare, and it was received with a resounding ... thud. Eschewed by consumers who thought that XP still had the right stuff, and virtually ignored by corporations whose applications weren't ready for the new OS, Vista made news in 2007 for all the wrong reasons."
Looks like me and my daughter aren't the only ones attempting to avoid Vista. Who wants copy protection and extreme sluggishness?
IT can do all, see all, be all...
In the 17 December eWeek (an IT trade magazine) Eric Lundquist wrote:
"The technology shortcoming of 2007? Despite their continued investment in technology, the finance companies looked increasingly foolish as the sub prime mortgage crisis intensified. Banks and financial institutions -- traditionally the most robust technology buyers-- continued an embarrassing dance of writing down billions of dollars in debt without the ability to track and estimate how much greater their losses might grow."
Eric is clearly a believer of the "Corporate IT can predict the future, travel in time, and leap tall buildings with a single bound" theory. The sub prime mortgage mess was caused by wheelers, dealers, and scammers who finally got caught. Investors finally wised up and stopped buying "bonds" (actually IOU's) "backed" by pools of sub prime mortgages. The holders of these IOU's know they cannot sell them, so their actual cash value is zero. Nobody reports that, 'cause that loss is so bad as to force the reporters of same into bankruptcy. The holders hope that maybe, some time in the future, on a sunny day, they might be able to sell them for something, but nobody knows what. So rather than report the ugly truth, they report a small and not too hurtful ugly, or say that they don't know.
Anyone who thinks that a clever piece of software could have prevented the sub prime meltdown is kidding himself.
"The technology shortcoming of 2007? Despite their continued investment in technology, the finance companies looked increasingly foolish as the sub prime mortgage crisis intensified. Banks and financial institutions -- traditionally the most robust technology buyers-- continued an embarrassing dance of writing down billions of dollars in debt without the ability to track and estimate how much greater their losses might grow."
Eric is clearly a believer of the "Corporate IT can predict the future, travel in time, and leap tall buildings with a single bound" theory. The sub prime mortgage mess was caused by wheelers, dealers, and scammers who finally got caught. Investors finally wised up and stopped buying "bonds" (actually IOU's) "backed" by pools of sub prime mortgages. The holders of these IOU's know they cannot sell them, so their actual cash value is zero. Nobody reports that, 'cause that loss is so bad as to force the reporters of same into bankruptcy. The holders hope that maybe, some time in the future, on a sunny day, they might be able to sell them for something, but nobody knows what. So rather than report the ugly truth, they report a small and not too hurtful ugly, or say that they don't know.
Anyone who thinks that a clever piece of software could have prevented the sub prime meltdown is kidding himself.
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