Purity of Essence

One of my fav movies ever.... Dr. Strangelove satirizes the cold war and the strategy of "mutually assured destruction" (MAD) that was supposed to prevent nuclear attacks.

In the 60's, the Strategic Air Command (SAC) was responsible for a major chunk of the US nuclear delivery platforms. They controlled the B-52 bombers and the ICBM's (The other nuclear delivery platforms were the ultimate deterrent - submarine launched ICBM's - and tactical nukes launched as artillery shells). To provide deterrence, SAC operated a fleet of B-52's in the air at all times, ready to strike targets in the Soviet Union within 2 hours of orders. This was called Operation Chromedome.

The movie portrays a B-52 bomber crew who have been given orders to bomb their targets by a lunatic general. What is impressive is the level of detail to which the actual nuclear dropping operations have been shown. The youtube clip below shows it all - multiple levels of security to make sure that accidental nuclear strikes don't happen; as well as security to ensure that once orders are given, they can be followed easily.

Which brings us to the economics of having a nuclear capability. You might need to spend only 30 billion to develop a nuke. But developing reliable delivery platforms will cost you a 100 times that. And developing a set of processes for handling these nukes safely is priceless.

As for the title of this post, you need to watch the movie to get it :-)


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgHSDa2Jwqc

Raven

Following up on my previous post on how avaiation has permeated into all branches of the US military, this video shows the Raven - the most successful UAV used by the US in Iraq.

It is launched by throwing it into the air, can fly for 60 mins, and can have a normal videocam or an infra-red camera. Because of it's small size, it can be packed into a backpack and carried by a patrol unit or special-forces team. And since it operates on batteries, it is silent. If operated at night by a special-forces squad, it is undetectable. The batteries can be charged in a humvee, just like your cellphone. So usually a patrol squad, launches it for 60 mins, brings it down, swaps in another battery, and off it goes up again; meanwhile the old battery gets charged in the humvee.

This UAV is so succesful, that around 9,000 seem to be in use in Iraq and Afghanistan. A package costs around 250k USD, and has 3 UAV's and 1 controller laptop and some batteries.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZ83pD8xEms

Everyone is a pilot now!

As technology becomes more and more entrenched in out lives, everybody becomes a geek. Nowadays, even my mom knows how to right click and play a song in iTunes instead of the default Windows Media Player.

In the early days of computers, you had people just to create charts and operate word-processors. Investment banks had huge teams of chart experts to create pitch books. Now you and me can do it better.

This trend can be seen in military aviation as well. Soon, most military aircraft will be operated by the particular force that needs air support (army/marines/special-forces), rather than a dedicated air-force.

UAV's are becoming more and more common, and cheaper, and easier to operate. With more R&D being done due to the Iraq war, UAV's are acquiring most of the capabilities of ground-attack fighters. Air-force ground-attack figthers usually attack targets based on army requests. But there is a lot of tension between the US army and the US air-force because the air-force doesn't always provide the support requested. If you want to relate to this, think of some centralised function in your company that you depend on. If that division is internal, most probably, they have their own priorities, and you will be bottom in that wait-list.

UAV's have been the manna from heaven for the US Army. The US Army currently operates around 9,000 UAV's in Iraq, all operated by soldiers. These UAV's have been responsible for cutting down most of the combat fatalities since 2007. Nowadays I don't hear much of soldiers dying there. The UAV's verify a patrol route before a combat patrol passes thru the area. They also run some special image processing programs to search for roadside bombs.

Now every soldier is a potential pilot!!