US Bomber Projects #02 Available

 aircraft, APR, art, drawings, history, new products, projects, spacecraft, US Bomber Projects, weapons  No Responses »
Jul 202013
 

Issue number 2 of US Bomber Projects is now available (for background, see HERE). This issue includes:

  • Rockwell D 645-1: LH2:: A variant of the low-cost missile carrier using liquid hydrogen for fuel
  • NAA High Performance Penetrator: a 1963 design for a supersonic bomber, led in part to the B-1
  • Boeing Model 701-273-1: Second in a series on the evolution of the XB-59
  • Lockheed GL-232: A subsonic nuclear powered bomber
  • Boeing Space Sortie: A small unmanned spaceplane
  • Martin Model 233-2: Second in the series on the development of the XB-48 – a wartime turbojet powered medium bomber
  • Boeing Model 461: Second in the series on the development of the B-52… and early postwar turboprop heavy bomber
  • Northrop Low Altitude Penetrator: A competing idea for what became the B-2

USBP#02 can be downloaded as a PDF file for only $4:

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usbp02ad

 Posted by at 7:31 pm

Current Projects: USBP

 AARRRGH, aircraft, APR, art, awesomeness, blather, books, drawings, new products, news, projects, rockets, spacecraft, weapons  7 Responses »
Jul 192013
 

More than half a dozen years ago I started working on a book: US Bomber Projects Since World War II. I made some good headway on the research and drafting sides of the effort, and put out a “Preview” to test the waters (which you can still order here. If you haven’t, yer a commie). As with many such efforts, it took much longer than initially expected, started to balloon out of control, helped end my aerospace career and, before too long, became somewhat redundant. When I started working on USBPSWWII, there were no books like that in the world. Lots of Luftwaffe, 1946 stuff, but basically diddly squat about US projects. But before long, reputable publishers started putting out books that covered the basics on USBPSWWII. So since the book was becoming an encyclopedic monster that would not only cover ground other had covered, but would be massively, prohibitively expensive to print, much less buy, I let the project slide into oblivion.

A while back I was talking the project over with a friend, explained why it collapsed. And she pointed out a whole new reason why, instead of letting it be stomped on, I should have charged ahead with it way back when. An important reason, a reason I should have thought of years ago, a terribly motivating reason: spite. And since that’s virtually the only reason why I do much of anything anymore, spiting fate if nothing else, I cracked open the files and started working on it again.

The original plan is still kaput. One great big book that covers, in detail, the evolution of the B-52 and the B-58 and the B-1 would be impossibly large. The original plan was something like Aerospace Projects Review on steroids, with hundred-page articles on a whole bunch of topics, covered in great depth. But a lot of these designs have been covered in the other books that have been published. So… the revived US Bomber Projects will cover the *less* well known designs. Sometimes in my researches I’ve come across designs for which the only documentation is, say, a three-view drawing. In the normal course of things, these designs would be largely left by the wayside since their stories cannot be told with detail and confidence. But now? Heck, those will be the USBP bread and butter. And it won’t be restricted to post-WWII stuff; the war years produced some amazing concepts. There are designs from the 1930’s that really need to be shown.

US Bomber Projects will, instead of one giant book, be a series of short magazines or booklets, covering eight or so designs per issue. The designs in each issue will be unrelated to each other, but there will be “arcs” through the issues. For example, designs leading to the B-48 and B-52 and B-59 are followed from the get-go.

I’ve got the first two issues wrapped up; I need to revise me websites and upload the files, all that mind-numbing necessary stuff. I hope to have #1 and #2 ready for sales within a day. I’m thinking $4 per issue?

usbp01ad

usbp02ad

 Posted by at 10:47 pm

A Real Estate Investment Idea (British Edition)

 blather, dumbassery, news, weapons, ಠ_ಠ  8 Responses »
Jul 012013
 

If I remember my “Scooby Doo” correctly, there is profit to be made by trying to scare off property owners – or prospective property buyers – by dressing up like a ghost pirate and making them think the place is haunted. While that certainly seems a fine, foolproof sort of plan, a new wrinkle has been demonstrated in the UK:

Couple discover 7,500 machine gun, shotgun and pistol bullets in their back garden while weeding their pond

In short: a small cache of bullets (including the “2.2mm rifle round,” which I’ve never heard of before, but which sounds truly impressive) found in a backyard pond. How did everyone involved respond? Rationally and reasonably? Well…

‘It’s sad because we love this house and have spent time and effort making it a home. And somebody somewhere has ruined that. I don’t want to stay in a house where that kind of thing has been found in the garden. I’m gutted.’

Note that the math in the story doesn’t work:

  • 2,200 bullets – the majority of which were 2.2mm rifle rounds
  • 20 to 30 machine gun rounds
  • two shotgun cartridges
  • more than 50 9mm rounds
  • 30 8mm rounds

How you get >7,500 rounds out of that, I don’t know. And just what is a “machine gun round?” In any event, the lesson here is clear: if you want to drive someone away from their property in today’s Britain, simply scatter a few bullets around.

 

 Posted by at 5:42 pm

The Executive Order that Backfired

 blather, history, Hmm..., I'm from the government, news, politics, weapons  12 Responses »
Jun 292013
 

Some months ago, in a fit of  “something must be done,” President Obama fired off a bunch of Executive Orders that were supposed to have some impact on firearms crimes. one of those orders directed the Centers for Disease Control to study firearms crimes, and how that impact public health. The National Academy of Sciences has just put out their report:

Priorities for Research to Reduce the Threat of Firearm-Related Violence

Where we learn:

Defensive uses of guns by crime victims is a common occurrence,
although the exact number remains disputed (Cook and Ludwig, 1996;
Kleck, 2001a). Almost all national survey estimates indicate that defensive
gun uses by victims are at least as common as offensive uses by
criminals, with estimates of annual uses ranging from about 500,000 to
more than 3 million per year (Kleck, 2001a), in the context of about
300,000 violent crimes involving firearms in 2008 (BJS, 2010). On the
other hand, some scholars point to radically lower estimate of only
108,000 annual defensive uses based on the National Crime Victimization
Survey (Cook et al., 1997). The variation in these numbers remains a controversy in the field. The estimate of 3 million defensive uses per
year is based on an extrapolation from a small number of responses taken
from more than 19 national surveys. The former estimate of 108,000 is
difficult to interpret because respondents were not asked specifically
about defensive gun use.
A different issue is whether defensive uses of guns, however numerous
or rare they may be, are effective in preventing injury to the gunwielding
crime victim. Studies that directly assessed the effect of actual
defensive uses of guns (i.e., incidents in which a gun was “used” by the
crime victim in the sense of attacking or threatening an offender) have
found consistently lower injury rates among gun-using crime victims
compared with victims who used other self-protective strategies (Kleck,
1988; Kleck and DeLone, 1993; Southwick, 2000; Tark and Kleck,
2004).

 None of this is particularly new news to those who have been paying attention. Political hacks working to disarm the citizenry repeatedly trot out the line that a gun in the home is more likely to be used to kill a family member than to kill an intruder; but this of course ignores the fact that a gun can deter a violent intruder or other criminal *without* actually killing him. A “defensive use” of a gun might be to blow the back of a rapists skull off, but it might just as easily be the simple pointing of a gun at said rapist, or racking the slide of a shotgun. These actions will quite often cause your average criminal to decide to cease current operations and go somewhere else.

What *is* news is that this is an official response to a White House directive. One can hope (but little more than hope) that some reporter with actual integrity and courage will use this report to demand a response from Obama.

anigif_enhanced-buzz-25334-1370024206-14

 Posted by at 1:01 pm

High-capacity assault knives

 blather, Crazy, Hmm..., news, religion, weapons, ಠ_ಠ  10 Responses »
Jun 262013
 

Report: 36 killed after knife gang attacks China police station

The title just sounds nutty. But the details make the incident sounds drearily familiar… about ten “attackers” went to a police station to slaughter people. Guess why. Go on, guess.

Oh, and guess what stopped these knife-wielding murderers. If you answered “people with guns,” collect your prize.

A few months ago:

‘Terrorist attack’ involving axes, knives kills 21 in China

 Posted by at 9:46 pm

Unleash Hell

 awesomeness, history, photography, weapons  4 Responses »
Jun 202013
 

Long Exposure Photos of Gunfire at Night

In April of 1970 I was near Phu Tai, Vietnam in the 173rd Airborne Brigade Admin Compound. We were pissed off at taking Viet Cong sniper fire from the mountain above us several nights in a row. The guy would stand up from behind a rock and blow off a clip from his AK47 on full-auto. The sniper was shooting at such a high angle that most of his rounds came through the sheet metal roofs of our hooches. We decided to use a “heavy” response the next time(s) the sniper hit us.

Take a look at the photos at the link. No, really. Go look. Dayum.

 Posted by at 7:04 pm

So much for “Army-Navy Stores”

 blather, I'm from the government, news, weapons, ಠ_ಠ  7 Responses »
Jun 192013
 

Back in the 1970’s, the “Army surplus store” was actually filled with Army surplus. Military outfits, helmets, bayonets, de-miled flamethrowers, de-miled rocket launchers, flak jackets, instruments, grenades, shells, bombs, guns, you name it. Back then the stores were loaded with surplus from Viet Nam, Korea and even WWII, along with the “peacetime” in between. But if you go into such a store today, you’re far more likely to find a store full of commercial camping supplies and the like. Now, it’s not as if the military hasn’t been buying, and then replacing, shiploads of *stuff,* but there seems to be vastly less of it making its way back to the US civvie market. For instance: when was the last time you saw a civilian owned M-1 Abrams, AH-64 Apache or F-14 Tomcat?

There is news relevant on that topic:

Scrapping equipment key to Afghan drawdown

the U.S. military has destroyed more than 170 million pounds worth of vehicles and other military equipment as it rushes to wind down its role in the Afghanistan war by the end of 2014.

About 2,000 MRAP (Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected) vehicles are listed as “excess” and are being shredded.

One would imagine that there are a vast number of AR-15/M-4/M-16 magazines that are kinda beat up, but that civilian gun owners woul snap up if the price was right. Not to mention the M-4’s, M-16’s, M-14’s, Barrets, sidearms and all the rest that would find many happy buyers back home.

 Posted by at 11:19 pm

Solid Jupiter

 drawings, history, nukes, projects, ships, weapons  9 Responses »
Jun 152013
 

Before the Polaris missile was developed, the US Navy studied several approaches to using submarines to launch ballistic missiles. An early idea was taken directly from WWII Germany… store Jupiter IRBMs in special canisters, towed behind subs. These would be partially flooded whe  the subs got to the launch site; this would cause the canister to tip up 90 degrees. A few hours later, the liquid fueled Jupiter would be ready to launch. Additionally, there was some thought put into the idea of installing the Jupiter vertically within subs. But nobody much liked the idea of large liquid propellant missiles in submarines. So by April 1956 the idea then moved to solid propellant rockets designed to emulate the Jupiter, carrying the same payload on more or less the same trajectory. The missile would be fatter than the standard Jupiter, but also shorter. Still, at ten feet in diameter and 41 feet in length, it was a very large missile, and only four could be carried within the body of the sub and the greatly extended sail. Fortunately, within a few months the Polaris design came on the scene, a much smaller missile made possible by both a smaller warhead and higher energy density double-base solid propellant.

solidjupiter

Lockheed illustration.

 Posted by at 12:07 am
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