I’ve often said that technology is the great anachronism. What I mean by that is that technology identifies a period in time better than anything else. Anything that has a “style” attached to it, be it clothing, architecture or even language, would seem an obvious choice for an anachronism, but those things have a tendency to change and return in various forms, being cyclical in nature. Technology on the other hand rarely, if ever, takes a step back. When we look at a picture of an artist in his home with an early Macintosh, we can pretty much assume it’s from the mid-80s just the same way we can look at a picture of a person talking on brick of a car phone with the curled cord going into the console and say “early 90s.”
Personally, I think it’s when a technology that has become such a staple of modern life becomes obsolete, that’s when we really notice what I’m talking about. For example, from 2000 to 2010, several stalwart technologies we’d all grown up around more or less disappeared. Who uses phone books now? When was the last time you bought a CD in a store? Or had a land line installed in your home? Or best of all, used a phone booth on the streets, let alone see one in operation?
Say what you want about Knight’s Armament Co, but their history is an interesting one and while many including myself tend to poo-poo some of their products, they did come up with some revolutionary concepts and items. Of particular note is their RAS (Rail Accessory System) which instantly made a weapon system modular and capable of mounting items using the Picatinny rail interface. In the early 90s we had no standard way of mounting anything on our CAR-15 and later M4 carbines. The only standard mount was via the carry handle, which is why many of us were used to optics mounted high over the receiver. But many of us needed to mount lights or wanted to add a vertical foregrip, yet there was no standard interface to do so.
In 1994 the M4 added a Picatinny rail interface over the upper receiver which started to open things up for us, but we were still using duct tape, pipe clamps and other non-standard junk to mount on the forend of the carbine. Knight’s changed all of that with their RAS, which replaced the front grips with four modular rails. This revolutionized the M4 platform and in my opinion gave the decades old design some new life. That point is obvious when you consider the level to which the rail interface system has propagated across the entire spectrum of modern military firearms, from assault rifles to precision rifles and shotguns.
American Rifleman TV has a couple clips up interviewing Reed Knight about the history of his company
I’ve been reading quite a bit today about fears of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal falling into the hands of al-Qaeda or the Taliban. Over the weekend, extremists in Pakistan staged a very bold raid of a key military facility in Rawalpindi, surprising politicians and military analysts around the world. While it wasn’t a particularly successful raid on the military headquarters, it did highlight the Pakistan militant’s audacity and tactical capabilities and perhaps more importantly Pakistan’s internal vulnerability to such groups.
This has now resulted in the question: “are Pakistan’s nuclear weapons safe?” I’m sure the vision many people have is dishdasha-dressed Taliban storming a nuclear facility and getting away with a few nukes, thereby giving them the ability to put the hurt on the infidels in an atomic way. This isn’t a feeling without merit, but an accurate assessment requires an understanding of how nuclear weapons work and how Pakistan stores them.
Pakistan has several declared nuclear facilities sprinkled throughout the country and by looking at this map you may notice that many are in relatively close proximity to militant central (aka Waziristan and the Tribal Regions). Normally you’d think “don’t place them close to the bad guys” but in Pakistan’s case it really doesn’t make a whole lot of difference because they’ve decided to store the nuclear components separately from one another, electronically locking the weapons and separating the cores from the detonation devices. This is akin to storing racing car engines in one main location, then the distributor caps, spark plugs and fuel all in separate high security facilities.
Nuclear weapons are complex beasts, with the various components requiring very complex triggering to make a nuclear detonation possible. Fission bombs, which are the least complex and most likely type of nuclear weapons in the hands of non-superpowers, work by splitting atoms, releasing particles in the process that split more atoms, creating a chain reaction leading to massive energy release.
There are different ways to do this, with the easiest being most reliable but also least efficient and least powerful. The “Little Boy” bomb that destroyed Hiroshima was a simple design that slammed two masses of Uranium-235 together with chemical explosives together to create a critical mass that ignited nuclear fission. It should be noted that barely 1% of the mass of Little Boy’s nuclear fuel was converted to energy (E=mc2), making it a very inefficient weapon. This design was so simple that Los Alamos scientists felt confident that it didn’t need to be tested, so the first nuclear test would be with the Plutonium based “Fat Man” design in May of 1945. With this confidence came the realization that Little Boy’s “gun design” was inherently unsafe so future weapon designs deviated to more complex designs that would be much safer for transport.
It’s been long suspected that Pakistan’s nuclear weapons are relatively simple designs but of modern manufacture. So it’s entirely possible that they have something slightly more complicated than a gun design yet with modern safe guards, making the theft of a weapon by itself a less alarming issue. It should be noted that the Pakistani military draws its nuclear security personnel primarily from the relatively secular Punjab region instead of more religiously aligned area. This is telling in that it shows the government takes the threat of infiltration by extremists quite seriously. So to the question of “are Pakistan’s nuclear weapons safe” the more reasonable answer is “reasonably safe.” Everything reasonably possible has been implemented to prevent theft or unauthorized use of its nuclear arsenal.
Wow, this is quite impressive. Growing up in the hills of Northern California I was quite used to seeing aircraft dropping fire retardant chemicals. Many of these aircraft I remember as being light bombers from the 40s and 50s such as the A-20 Havoc. Later I remember seeing helicopters, particularly the CH-54 Skycrane (I actually jumped those a couple times in the Army) and other smaller helicopters doing an awkward dance around the blaze to drop what seemed as simple as a bucket of water on the fire. Larger aircraft such as the venerable C-130 have been in use for many years, but I was surprised to learn that there is a DC-10 jetliner in use for attacking fires. Check out this video…
It’s a little puzzling at first when I think about the reasons for going the route of a DC-10. Jets tend to have much higher stall speeds than prop-driven aircraft and that means the pilots can’t slow down too much. Higher speed means less maneuverability, so I would think it’s harder to get them lined up for their drop and a bit of a safety issue with other aircraft in the area. But perhaps the DC-10 can hold a higher volume of fire retardant? One thing is for sure, it can get to the fire a lot faster than the other aircraft. Either way, my hat’s off to these brave pilots!
Larry Vickers and friends return for season two of the tactical vignette show Tactical Impact. Each short episode going over a weapon system, tactic or technique and while rather simplistic, it accomplish its goal of providing quality info in a simple format. I particularly liked training under Larry; he’s got so many years in the Tier One community training shooters that his ability to diagnose problems and make on the spot corrections is impressive.
This is another one of those near and dear to me subjects. As a paratrooper for many years in the Army, I regularly jumped both the venerable T-10 parachute and the “newer at the time” MC1-1B (and low porosity -1C version). The T-10 was incredibly simple, giving the paratrooper little control when descending, which in all practicality is no big deal as the mission of the chute is to get the soldier from the aircraft to the ground as fast as possible without killing or injuring him. The MC1-1B gave us a bit more control through the air by adding a rather large opening in the rear of the canopy for air to flow though and some nifty toggles to steer the chute with. No, I’m not talking about a hot rod freefall chute. Steering the “dash one bravo” was a pretty sluggish thing and you used those toggles to avoid other jumpers as well as steer into the wind prior to performing your dynamite PLF (Parachute Landing Fall).
The video above is pretty cool as you get to see some very happy Rangers from the 75th Ranger Regiment testing the new T-11 chutes by jumping them “hollywood” out of an MC-130. I say happy because Hollywood jumps are fun jumps: just you and the chute, no heavy rucksack, weapons and other gear to make your jump miserable. Guys in the Ranger Regt don’t get to do Hollywood jumps very often, so this one is a treat. You also get to see the jump prep work prior to chuting up and boarding the aircraft. Every airborne operation involves a walk through of sorts under the watchful eyes of the Jumpmasters. Notice when they exit the aircraft they are jumping both doors simultaneously – that’s called a Mass Tac jump, something all airborne infantry units specialize in. In Special Forces we almost never jumped that way – usually just single door jumps. As they jump, you can see them fall from the door and watch the static lines yank the chute out of its pack, tossing it into the 120mph wind and deploying.
Fun stuff that I really, really miss. Have fun with those new chutes guys!
There’s been a handful of stories hitting the press recently about Blackwater (aka Xe) having secret contracts to support CIA operations overseas, specifically an “assassination team” as well as logistical ground support for forward deployed Predator and Reaper drones. While I have my concerns about Blackwater, I’ve defended the PMC industry against being commonly labeled as mercenaries. I’ve always said that they are just private security companies until they take an active offensive role in a military campaign. But the allegations of their involvement in direct action teams hunting al-Qaeda members sort of changes things around. If they were brought in to provide plausible deniability I can understand that as just how the game is played in the clandestine world, but if it was to skirt the law or oversight normally applied to the CIA and other services, then there’s a big problem. More below the fold…
The Boston Globe has an on going project called The Big Picture that has put out some really amazing imagery over the years. They pic a theme and collect up impressive photos to go along, sometimes telling a story, other times just stunning us. Their most recent one is called In Flight and is all about aviation. There are a few standouts that caught my attention that I wanted to comment on…
Say what you want about Knight’s Armament Co, but their history is an interesting one and while many including myself tend to poo-poo some of their products, they did come up with some revolutionary concepts and items. Of particular note is their RAS (Rail Accessory System) which instantly made a weapon system modular and capable of mounting items using the Picatinny rail interface. In the early 90s we had no standard way of mounting anything on our CAR-15 and later M4 carbines. The only standard mount was via the carry handle, which is why many of us were used to optics mounted high over the receiver. But many of us needed to mount lights or wanted to add a vertical foregrip, yet there was no standard interface to do so.
I’ve been reading quite a bit today about fears of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal falling into the hands of al-Qaeda or the Taliban. Over the weekend, extremists in Pakistan staged a very bold raid of a key military facility in Rawalpindi, surprising politicians and military analysts around the world. While it wasn’t a particularly successful raid on the military headquarters, it did highlight the Pakistan militant’s audacity and tactical capabilities and perhaps more importantly Pakistan’s internal vulnerability to such groups.
Pakistan has several declared nuclear facilities sprinkled throughout the country and by looking at this map you may notice that many are in relatively close proximity to militant central (aka Waziristan and the Tribal Regions). Normally you’d think “don’t place them close to the bad guys” but in Pakistan’s case it really doesn’t make a whole lot of difference because they’ve decided to store the nuclear components separately from one another, electronically locking the weapons and separating the cores from the detonation devices. This is akin to storing racing car engines in one main location, then the distributor caps, spark plugs and fuel all in separate high security facilities.
