USS Independence & SeaRAM

USS Independence LCS-2

It's Fleet Week at the Portland Rose Festival.

SeaRAM Close In Weapons System

Ross paid a visit to the USS Independence and came away with this photo of the SeaRAM Close-In-Weapons-System. It looks like they took a Phalanx system and replaced the gun with a big box of rockets.


SeaRAM Anti-Ship Missile Defense System [beware annoying upbeat music]
The SeaRAM is supposed to be able to shoot down incoming anti-ship missiles before they hit the ship, the same thing the Phalanx system was supposed to do. I would think using missiles instead of bullets should give you better range. You might be able to reach out a couple of miles with bullets, but missiles might give you ten times that. You are limited by the number of missiles you have, but the Phalanx has a limited supply of ammunition. It's large, but it's still limited, and it uses it at a prodigious rate.

Pic of the Day

Glacier water vending machine survived the inferno of the Camp Fire.
Picture taken at the remnants of the Paradise Safeway.

How did the vending machine survive the fire? The propane cylinders in the foreground we can assume are either empty, or they have pressure relief valves that allowed the propane to escape. Or it was aliens.

Via Posthip Scott

Conspiracy Rant of the Day

SpotX satellite messenger

Adaptive Curmugeon tackles privacy head-on, with beaucoup de snark. SpotX is a 2-way satellite messenger (radio, above). SAR is Search & Rescue.

Pic of the Day - Boeing

Boeing Stearman PT-17

The Stearman (Boeing) Model 75 is a biplane formerly used as a military trainer aircraft, of which at least 10,626 were built in the United States during the 1930s and 1940s. Stearman Aircraft became a subsidiary of Boeing in 1934. Widely known as the Stearman, Boeing Stearman or Kaydet, it served as a primary trainer for the United States Army Air Forces, the United States Navy (as the NS and N2S), and with the Royal Canadian Air Force as the Kaydet throughout World War II. After the conflict was over, thousands of surplus aircraft were sold on the civilian market. In the immediate postwar years they became popular as crop dusters, sports planes, and for aerobatic and wing walking use in air shows. - Wikipedia 

The engine is a "Continental R-670-5 7-cylinder air-cooled radial piston engine, 220 hp". Radial engines have an odd number of cylinders, it makes for evenly spaced power strokes. 9 cylinders is most common and is also easier to layout as 360 degrees is evenly divisible by 9. Seven cylinders is not as popular and one reason for that might be that nothing is evenly divisible by 7.

Update June 2021 stripped special formatting.

Race To Alaska

Perseverance: Dagger board snapped in half due to the sheer force of Stage 1’s confused and violent seas.

Some sailors with small sailboats are racing up the west coast of Canada. Then ran into some rough seas on the first day out. Scuttlebutt Sailing News has the story, and quite a story it is.

Via Iaman

Veterans and Dangerous Women

Iaman (who spent a couple of years in the Air Force) has a couple of things to say about the Veteran's Administration:

Hi, got an email about MISSION Act and several robocalls inviting me to attend a conference call announcing this improvement to my VA benefits.
The always-delusional Drumpf has taken steps to increase the privatization of the VA health system.  This will cost the 140 million tax payers each about $1,300 a year each.
My experience at the  existing VA has been a  wonderful extravagance,  now it gets better by pumping more-deficit money into these urgent care palaces we see sprouting on the street corners.  I was wondering what they saw that I did not, now I know.
By the way,  the number of vets having actually seen combat, at least as close as a safe FBO, is a hard figure to nail down.  The military doesn't want people to know how fat it is.  Some say 10%, my experience says, for those that actually hear high velocity whizzing by,  is closer to 1%.
A interesting picture of disciplined future combat veterans graduating from West Point, getting a piece of the pie is increasingly equal opportunity. Go Girl!

Black female cadets with the Class of 2019 pose at the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, N.Y. on May 7, 2019. Hallie H. Pound—U.S. Army/AP

I'm always glad to see women doing more than might be expected of them. I am not sure why this might be, other than it might be that women are generally smarter than men and I am always happier to be talking with someone who has a brain than some dunderhead who doesn't.

Yes, the military might be fat, and they are probably preparing for the wrong war, but they have a big organization and they know how to get things done and one of these days we might need them to do something and then we will be very glad to have them. Right now there might be a lot of button polishing going on, but what else have they got to do? We don't have any real threats. Maybe that's why we are in Afghanistan. By continuing to fight against the Taliban, our guys are getting some combat experience which could prove to be invaluable. Yes, it's a shame that our people are getting killed over there, but that's part of combat, isn't it? These constant low level reminders that war causes death might be enough to keep us from getting involved in a more extensive conflict.

Canonbury Tower

Canonbury Tower

Brian Micklethwait posted a picture of Canonbury Tower and notes that the building dates from the 1500's. It doesn't look that old. It looks like it could have been built anytime in the last century. I mean, did they even have bricks back in the 1500's? Turns out that, yes, they did. Seems bricks have been a standard building material for over 6,000 years. We're talking about fired bricks here, not sun dried mud bricks (adobe) that have been used ever since there have been people.

The other surprising thing is how much detail Google Maps can show. The above image is a screen shot of a 3-D view. Follow the link to Google Maps, press the control key, and click & drag any point on the screen with your mouse, and the whole image comes alive in three dimensions. I am astounded at how they are able to capture the three dimensional shape of the building, especially since (I surmise) that they are doing it all from satellite images and not from architects plans.