The British government let a 330 million pound ($546 million) contract to modify 25 helicopters. The choppers, EH101 Merlins currently in service with the Royal Air Force, will be modified to serve at sea with the Royal Navy. The modified choppers will be used by the Command Helicopter Force as assault choppers, troop carriers. Modifications include a folding main rotor, a folding tail, beefed up landing gear, and a new avionics suite. This comes out to $21.84 million dollars per chopper.
Compare with a new Blackhawk ($6 to $14 million depending on which website you believe)
Far away from Britain, Israeli Aircraft Industries is offering used, refurbished, Kfir jet fighters for $20 million apiece. The Kfir's were retired from Israeli Air Force service in the 1990's and stored in the Negev desert to keep them from rusting. They have only a few hundred flying hours on them and IAI will tear them down, remanufacture and rewire them and equip them with up-to-date avionics. Such a deal for fairly decent mach 2 fighter.
Compare with a new F-35 which are going for $60 million apiece, give or take a few million for bargaining with wily salesmen. I think the used Kfir fighters are a reasonable deal, but I fear Her Majesty's government has been taken to the cleaners on the chopper deal.
Friday, February 7, 2014
Thursday, February 6, 2014
Does Sochi have any snow?
This is the winter Olympics. Skiing. For which you gotta have snow. The noble world press corp has let us know all about various discomforts they are suffering in Sochi, but except for once, they have not bothered to tell us if they have snow for skiing. Clearly personal comfort comes out ahead of reporting the facts.
F-35 ready to fly. Software ain't
F-35 is an all software airplane. Apparently it needs software to do anything. It's been flying on an early version of software that provides "basic aviate and navigate" functionality, but cannot launch missiles or even drop bombs. Next software version, 2B, offers some fighting capability but is pretty flaky. The report talks about "poor sensor performance and stability, excessive nuisance warnings, and disproportionate pilot workload required for workarounds and system resets". The Pentagon chief of testing thinks it will take a year to get software release 2B straightened out. The Marine Corps wants to start flying for real in six months. They can't both be right.
The Aviation Week article did not mention whether the software was written in the DOD miracle programming language ADA, which was supposed to make software development quicker and easier. Nor does it mention how capable the processor[s] are or what brand they are.
Lots of luck to the F-35 programmers, they will need it.
The Aviation Week article did not mention whether the software was written in the DOD miracle programming language ADA, which was supposed to make software development quicker and easier. Nor does it mention how capable the processor[s] are or what brand they are.
Lots of luck to the F-35 programmers, they will need it.
Cannon Mt Ski Weather
Fantastic. It snowed all day yesterday. We got 8 inches of powder. It's cold today, 8F, sunny, and is forecast to stay cold thru the weekend. This weekend might be the best skiing of the year.
Wednesday, February 5, 2014
Disfunctional Deadlocked Washington passes a Farm Bill
A farm bill. Pure pork. Corporations do the nation's farming now. The small farmer is pretty much extinct. So all the crop insurance, and price supports, and marketing orders, and sugar tariffs are pure welfare for corporations. That's half the money in the farm bill. Pork. The other half is food stamps. Corporate farmers love food stamps, it creates demand for their farm products. The taker class loves food stamps, it's more free stuff for them.
Congress still cannot deal with tax reform, defense spending, debt ceiling hikes, NSA snooping, TSA groping, the deficit, or immigration. All are locked in partisan squabbling.
But they can get together, and be bi partisan, when it comes to passing more pork that the country cannot afford.
By rights, we ought to cancel all handouts to corporate farmers, in fact to any kind of farmer. I don't get a handout, and neither should they. And we can reduce food stamps by half. And we should never put handouts to corporate farmers and handouts to takers into the same bill.
The country would be better served if partisan fighting had stalled this farm bill. Better to do nothing than to pour tax payer's money down a drain.
Congress still cannot deal with tax reform, defense spending, debt ceiling hikes, NSA snooping, TSA groping, the deficit, or immigration. All are locked in partisan squabbling.
But they can get together, and be bi partisan, when it comes to passing more pork that the country cannot afford.
By rights, we ought to cancel all handouts to corporate farmers, in fact to any kind of farmer. I don't get a handout, and neither should they. And we can reduce food stamps by half. And we should never put handouts to corporate farmers and handouts to takers into the same bill.
The country would be better served if partisan fighting had stalled this farm bill. Better to do nothing than to pour tax payer's money down a drain.
Congressional Budget Office sticks its neck out
CBO just released a damning forecast on Obamacare. They predict 800,000 lost jobs, 2.5 million workers put on part time, and a drag on the economy equivalent to a 1% tax hike. Ouch.
I wonder where CBO found enough backbone to speak up. When they were forcing Obamacare down our throats, CBO released several studies claiming that it wouldn't be all that bad. While anyone of common sense knew Obamacare would be expensive as a medium sized war. At the time, excuses were made for CBO, claiming that they were required to forecast based upon the presumptions passed to them by Congress rather than sure knowledge of what will really happen. For instance Congress could ask for a forecast with the assumption that the federal deficit would shrink. Everyone knows that is unlikely to happen. But if it did, wonderful things might happen, and CBO would dutifully forecast wonderful things.
Yesterday's forecast was a bummer for Obama. The TV news reported a lot of huffing and puffing from the White House.
Is this a sign that Obama is a lame duck? And CBO figures he will be ineffectual if he retaliates against them?
I wonder where CBO found enough backbone to speak up. When they were forcing Obamacare down our throats, CBO released several studies claiming that it wouldn't be all that bad. While anyone of common sense knew Obamacare would be expensive as a medium sized war. At the time, excuses were made for CBO, claiming that they were required to forecast based upon the presumptions passed to them by Congress rather than sure knowledge of what will really happen. For instance Congress could ask for a forecast with the assumption that the federal deficit would shrink. Everyone knows that is unlikely to happen. But if it did, wonderful things might happen, and CBO would dutifully forecast wonderful things.
Yesterday's forecast was a bummer for Obama. The TV news reported a lot of huffing and puffing from the White House.
Is this a sign that Obama is a lame duck? And CBO figures he will be ineffectual if he retaliates against them?
Tuesday, February 4, 2014
California regulators attack computer programming schools
In Silicon Valley a half a dozen computer programming schools received scary letters from the Staties. The Bureau for Private Post Secondary Eduation wants the schools to submit each and every curriculum change to the board for approval, and for all teachers to have three years of teaching experience.
Wow. Talk about killing off the goose that lays the golden eggs. This is Silicon Valley, which has laid a lot of golden eggs over the years. Silicon Valley runs on programming. The schools the staties are harrassing are necessary, private, costly ($10,000), and successful. 99% of their graduates are offered jobs. Caltech doesn't do that well. And yet, the staties cannot resist the urge to meddle.
The bit about requiring three years teaching experience is a killer. The schools are teaching Windows internals, and Internet programming. To make anything happen in a Windows computer or over the Internet, the programmer has to call specialized subroutines furnished by Microsoft or Oracle. These vital subroutines are poorly documented, or not documented at all. Only a few experts know what they are, where to find them, and how to use them. And these guys aren't about to waste three years teaching grade school for $30K. They can make 5 times that amount programming. They teach in the programming schools largely as a labor of love. Programmers love what they do, and want to enable others to get into programming just because they love programming so much. If the staties really enforce the "three years teaching experience" bit, the schools won't be able to find qualified instructors. The bit about submitting curriculum changes for state approval is less damaging, it only traps the schools in a web of paperwork that saps time and energy away from running the school and wastes it doing mickey mouse.
America used to be a free country. In a free country you can start any business, and run it, without getting approval from the staties. California is no longer free. Maybe that's why the state economy is so bad.
Wow. Talk about killing off the goose that lays the golden eggs. This is Silicon Valley, which has laid a lot of golden eggs over the years. Silicon Valley runs on programming. The schools the staties are harrassing are necessary, private, costly ($10,000), and successful. 99% of their graduates are offered jobs. Caltech doesn't do that well. And yet, the staties cannot resist the urge to meddle.
The bit about requiring three years teaching experience is a killer. The schools are teaching Windows internals, and Internet programming. To make anything happen in a Windows computer or over the Internet, the programmer has to call specialized subroutines furnished by Microsoft or Oracle. These vital subroutines are poorly documented, or not documented at all. Only a few experts know what they are, where to find them, and how to use them. And these guys aren't about to waste three years teaching grade school for $30K. They can make 5 times that amount programming. They teach in the programming schools largely as a labor of love. Programmers love what they do, and want to enable others to get into programming just because they love programming so much. If the staties really enforce the "three years teaching experience" bit, the schools won't be able to find qualified instructors. The bit about submitting curriculum changes for state approval is less damaging, it only traps the schools in a web of paperwork that saps time and energy away from running the school and wastes it doing mickey mouse.
America used to be a free country. In a free country you can start any business, and run it, without getting approval from the staties. California is no longer free. Maybe that's why the state economy is so bad.
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