Yesterday's Wall St Journal front page mentioned that Wall St firms might get $1 billion in fees for breaking up AIG and selling off the pieces. That's one hell of a commission, to be paid for by us long suffering taxpayers.
We could put all of AIG up on Ebay for $10 or so.
Friday, August 7, 2009
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
Obama's cybersecurity person resigns
Wll, I'd resign too. It's an impossible job. We standardized on totally vulnerable Windows computers. With every computer on the net vulnerable to any highschool hacker, what can anyone do to beef up security?
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
Why don't they?
Why don't car manufacturers mark the places a tow chain can be attached? The other night I managed to get the car stuck in a deep ditch, in the dark, in the rain. With the rain running down my collar, I'm on my knees in the mud, with flashlight, looking for somewhere solid enough to take a towing hook. Can't use the bumpers, the various plastic undercar bits ain't strong enough, and a unibody car has no frame.
How nice it would have been to see a proper sized hole, outlined in bright yellow, with "tow here" stenciled next to it. This wouldn't cost all that much to put on at the factory. While we are at it, how about giving the jack pads the same bright yellow treatment? Make a mistake locating the jack, and it will punch a hole right thru the floorboard.
How nice it would have been to see a proper sized hole, outlined in bright yellow, with "tow here" stenciled next to it. This wouldn't cost all that much to put on at the factory. While we are at it, how about giving the jack pads the same bright yellow treatment? Make a mistake locating the jack, and it will punch a hole right thru the floorboard.
Ads on my blog
Yesterday, just for grins, I enabled advertising on my blog. This morning I logged in to post, and bingo, there was a condom ad (Trojans) right on top. That's sort of offensive to me, especially the full motion ad featuring, well lets not go there. So, I turned off ads. Sorry about that.
Monday, August 3, 2009
Too big to pass.
Powerline suggests that any bill too big for Congress people to read is too big to pass. How true. The 1000 page Obamacare bill has all sorts of truly scary provisions hidden in the darker corners. Like the government can take money right out of your bank account, without your consent, to pay medical bills. Those big 1000 page bills tranfer authority to bureaucrats, lawyers and courts to do pretty much what they please. Give me a 1000 page law, and I can find language in to somewhere to support anything at all. No limit.
Needed reform. Plan A. No federal law shall contain more words that the Constitution of the United States. Plan B. All bills much be read aloud on the floor of House and Senate before a vote. A quorum must be present for the reading.
Either plan would slim bills down to understandable length.
Needed reform. Plan A. No federal law shall contain more words that the Constitution of the United States. Plan B. All bills much be read aloud on the floor of House and Senate before a vote. A quorum must be present for the reading.
Either plan would slim bills down to understandable length.
Sunday, August 2, 2009
DAR: Defense Acquisition Regulations
Aviation Week reports yet another attempt to clean up the defense acquisition mess. The system that brings us cost over runs, late delivery, outrageous costs, and $600 toilet seats.
" An effective defense acquisition enterprise must ... be trust based and founded upon ethical comportments by all parties. Today a lack of trust interferes with the relationship between Congress, the Defense Department and the defense industry. While the causes are varied, the predominant among them is the adversarial nature of the government industry relationship that has evolved over the past decades. The result is a damaging increase in legal wrangling, protests concerning contract awards and lack of candor between the government and the private sector."
Take the Air Force tanker bidding fiasco. The Air Force (my old service!) issued a vague request for quotations (RFQ). It failed to spec the size of the aircraft desired but had pages and pages of "scoring points" (so many points if the plane can do this, so many points if the plane can do that etc). Boeing bid a plane the size of the existing tanker (KC135), on the theory that fifty years of satisfaction with the KC135 means that size is the right size. Airbus bid a much larger aircraft, mostly because that's the only size they had in production at the time. Airbus won the contract. Boeing, faced with the loss of a giant contract, enough work to keep the company going for 20 years, double checked the Air Force scoring. They found the Air Force had slanted the scoring process to tip the contract to Airbus, and a court agreed with them. In short, the Air Force was not candid with Boeing. They wanted a bigger plane, but they didn't tell Boeing. Worse , the Air Force RFQ failed to spec the desired aircraft size.
Result. Years of time wasted, a number of reputations trashed, zillions of dollars down the drain, and a whole lot of angry Europeans, who think they are getting robbed by the Yankees. It doesn't get much worse than this.
In this case, the Air Force instead of running an honest competition, tried to tip the job to Airbus. And they were so clumsy that they lost in court.
Probably there were some Air Force officers with a grudge against Boeing on the tanker selection board. Nobody ever talked about it, but that's about the only explanation for such a screwup.
" An effective defense acquisition enterprise must ... be trust based and founded upon ethical comportments by all parties. Today a lack of trust interferes with the relationship between Congress, the Defense Department and the defense industry. While the causes are varied, the predominant among them is the adversarial nature of the government industry relationship that has evolved over the past decades. The result is a damaging increase in legal wrangling, protests concerning contract awards and lack of candor between the government and the private sector."
Take the Air Force tanker bidding fiasco. The Air Force (my old service!) issued a vague request for quotations (RFQ). It failed to spec the size of the aircraft desired but had pages and pages of "scoring points" (so many points if the plane can do this, so many points if the plane can do that etc). Boeing bid a plane the size of the existing tanker (KC135), on the theory that fifty years of satisfaction with the KC135 means that size is the right size. Airbus bid a much larger aircraft, mostly because that's the only size they had in production at the time. Airbus won the contract. Boeing, faced with the loss of a giant contract, enough work to keep the company going for 20 years, double checked the Air Force scoring. They found the Air Force had slanted the scoring process to tip the contract to Airbus, and a court agreed with them. In short, the Air Force was not candid with Boeing. They wanted a bigger plane, but they didn't tell Boeing. Worse , the Air Force RFQ failed to spec the desired aircraft size.
Result. Years of time wasted, a number of reputations trashed, zillions of dollars down the drain, and a whole lot of angry Europeans, who think they are getting robbed by the Yankees. It doesn't get much worse than this.
In this case, the Air Force instead of running an honest competition, tried to tip the job to Airbus. And they were so clumsy that they lost in court.
Probably there were some Air Force officers with a grudge against Boeing on the tanker selection board. Nobody ever talked about it, but that's about the only explanation for such a screwup.
Saturday, August 1, 2009
F22 performance figures
From Aviation Week.
"The F22's variable cost per flying hour $19000." Not exactly cheap. Assuming fuel consumption in the ball park of the old F106, and $2.69 a gallon, fuel would be $6000, so the rest, $13000, is wear and tear, tires, and brakes, and drag chutes, and engine overhauls, and black box repair & replace.
"The mission capable rate has increased to 68% from 62%." Not good. We were required to maintain 71% mission capable rates on the F106, and that was a vacuum tube airplane forty years ago, whose avionics needed repair after every single flight. F22 is all solid state and the black boxes ought to last ten times longer than vacuum tube ones.
"Mean time between maintainance action has matured from 0.97 hour in 2004 to 3.22 hr demonstrated in Lot 6 aircraft." Fair. Assume average sortie time of two hours, that means half the sorties will come back unbroke, ready for the next sortie for merely refuel and rearm. The F106 was worse, most sorties came back broke and needed fixing before the next sortie.
"The current software's stability exceeds 20 hr." I think that means the software crashes hard about every 20 hours. Let's hope the pilot has a reset button. Windows XP is better than that, and that's not saying much.
"The diagnostic software detects system faults and isolates them 92% of the time." Not bad. The F106 lacked diagnostic software. We fixed it by swapping black boxes until it worked again. Fortunately the black boxes were mounted in very easy to access racks, with quick change fasteners.
"Direct maintenance man-hours per flying hour have improved to 10.48 this year from 18.1 in 2008, exceeding the requirement of 12 manhours/flying hour." I can't remember what it was on the F106, but 10 manhours is pretty good.
F22 is now out of production as of last week in Congress, but the 187 aircraft already bought will be flying for decades.
"The F22's variable cost per flying hour $19000." Not exactly cheap. Assuming fuel consumption in the ball park of the old F106, and $2.69 a gallon, fuel would be $6000, so the rest, $13000, is wear and tear, tires, and brakes, and drag chutes, and engine overhauls, and black box repair & replace.
"The mission capable rate has increased to 68% from 62%." Not good. We were required to maintain 71% mission capable rates on the F106, and that was a vacuum tube airplane forty years ago, whose avionics needed repair after every single flight. F22 is all solid state and the black boxes ought to last ten times longer than vacuum tube ones.
"Mean time between maintainance action has matured from 0.97 hour in 2004 to 3.22 hr demonstrated in Lot 6 aircraft." Fair. Assume average sortie time of two hours, that means half the sorties will come back unbroke, ready for the next sortie for merely refuel and rearm. The F106 was worse, most sorties came back broke and needed fixing before the next sortie.
"The current software's stability exceeds 20 hr." I think that means the software crashes hard about every 20 hours. Let's hope the pilot has a reset button. Windows XP is better than that, and that's not saying much.
"The diagnostic software detects system faults and isolates them 92% of the time." Not bad. The F106 lacked diagnostic software. We fixed it by swapping black boxes until it worked again. Fortunately the black boxes were mounted in very easy to access racks, with quick change fasteners.
"Direct maintenance man-hours per flying hour have improved to 10.48 this year from 18.1 in 2008, exceeding the requirement of 12 manhours/flying hour." I can't remember what it was on the F106, but 10 manhours is pretty good.
F22 is now out of production as of last week in Congress, but the 187 aircraft already bought will be flying for decades.
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