What happened to OC? - CLOSED Carnage?!

Weps

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Posts posted by Weps


  1. New reports on the  Russian Forces massing in the Donetsk Region and Crimea;

     

    - A total of seven Russian combat brigades in the Donbas (Don River Basin) of Ukraine and Crimea.

     

    - A number of surface combat vessels from the Black Sea Fleet are also afloat outside of two Ukrainian Donbas Black Sea port cities. 

     

    We known one of the brigades is the 56th Guards Air Assault Brigade;

     

    56th-Guards.jpg

     

    It's likely the other six brigades are Motor Rifle Brigades; 

    Russian-Ground-Forces-Motor-Rifle-Brigad

     

    Detailed breakdown of the Russian "Motostrelki" Motor Rifle Company, the primary close combat element of the Motor Rifle Battalion:

     


  2. Just a heads up, 

     

    Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has signed Decree No. 117/2021 "Strategy for De-occupation and Reintegration of the Temporarily Occupied Territory of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the City of Sevastopol", the Cabinet of Ministers has been instructed to develop an action plan to immediately implement the strategy and the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine has approved. 

     

    Ukraine is stating it intends to take Crimea, Luhansk, Donetsk, and Sevastopol by force and so using "diplomatic, military, economic, informational, humanitarian and other measures at restoring the territorial integrity, state sovereignty of Ukraine within its internationally recognized borders through the de-occupation and reintegration of Crimea."

     

    Simply put, it's an indirect declaration of war.

     

    Since the signing of the decree, there has been a lot of movement of Russian equipment, vehicles and assets into Crimea, as well as as the proto-states of Luhansk and Donetsk in Ukraine. The 56th Guards Air Assault Brigade, a VDV Airborne Brigade has been preeminently regarrisoned from Kamyshin, Russian to Feodosia inside Crimea.

     

    Twitter is hot with videos showing Russian armor and artillery being moved via rail into Crimea, which in the event of conflict is most likely be Russia's staging point for, as it affords them the greatest amount of protection that isn't within their direct borders, allows them port access via Sevastopol, and air defense via their organic AA assets like the Buk. S-300, and S-400 systems...and their ship-based systems on their guided missile frigates and corvettes, it also provides a shield against naval threats posed by NATO as the Russian's directly control both the Black Sea and Sea of Azov. 

    For US Naval Forces to access the Black Sea, it would require they traverse the Dardanelles and Bosphorus Strait, and as has been shown by the unintentional, accidental bottlenecking of the Suez Canal via Evergreen's Even Given container ship, the Russian's could easily command both choke points with their Black Sea Fleet, as well as form a beachhead within the straits, as the Turks do not have the military means to defend against the Russians, but the wild card, as has always been intended since the Cold War are our nukes stationed at Incirlik Air Base in Turkey, but I wouldn't hold faith in the Turkish Government to not fold or possibly even double-back. Russia has had far greater success in forging relationships in the Mid-East, particularly with Iran, Yemen, Lebanon, Syria, ect... through trade, arms supplying and, technical and finical assistance. 

     

    NATO has also increased surveillance of the region, as there have been hundreds of cease-fire violations committed by Russian backed forces in the region.

     

     

     

     

    Enclusion, Takka and Sunstriker7 like this

  3. Good_News_Everyone.jpg\\

     

    I've managed to get the display contrast high enough most of it can be seen, albeit still highly faded, but enough to make out what characters thanks to a user on another forum. So, now, at least I have an idea of what freq it's on. 

     

     

     


    164070768-741571969835759-69473234831575

    164348474-222865906256263-75546068931240

     

     

    Think I'm gonna take the Youtube Engineer route and see if replacing the polarizing filter like Sunstiker recommended. 

     

    Wish me luck...

     

     

    tarikja, Sunstriker7 and Takka like this

  4. Long time no see guys...

     

    So, as the thread title eludes I have a Radioshack PRO-2053 scanner that has a 12x4 character LCD display that has faded to the point the characters can't be read making it kind of pointless because you can't see what frequency is displayed when traffic is picked up. 

     

    He's my question, because it's outside my technical expertise, would it be possible to replace the original LCD display (which is likely anywhere from 20-10 years old) with say a newer 16x4 or 20x4 character display out right or is she just dead in the water no hopes of simply replacing the display. 

     

     

     

    Pfhunkie and Sunstriker7 like this

  5. Thanks for the mention, @Sunstriker7

    Steerage on tanks has drastically changed over the decades, but you're not far off on how steerage worked for pre-1950's tanks, the lever system was borrowed from tractors of the era.

    The Ford 3-Ton 1918 was essentially an armored tractor operating two Model-T engines and an M1919 .30Cal, however the French really were at the forefront of armor development with the purpose built Renault FT, sporting a modern turret with a mounted gun...which isn't mean to detract from the British armor development effort, they just have a very unique, but inefficient  and costly design with the Mark series landships. 

     

    Now, my "expertise" is in post-WWI, western armor, particularly US, so that's what I'll reference mostly here;

    The M47 was really the first tank design to see a departure from the lever steerage system, implementing a joystick-type of system nicked-named the "wobble stick", which was abandoned with the M48 and replaced with an oval-shaped steering-wheel, but with the development of the M60A1 the steering wheel was dropped in favor of a simplified yolk-bar which was standard on the M60A1 RISE,  M60A2, and M60A3 TTS, but with the M1 Abrams an advanced yolk-bar with an integrated gear-shift and reverse-function was utilized and has just been regularly updated as time has moved forward.

    M47 steerage control: https://postimg.cc/dLmVKPpL

     

    M48, M103 & M60 steerage control: https://postimg.cc/4n1xDRrn
     

    M60A1/A2/A3 steerage control: https://postimg.cc/N953GVDh


    M1/M1A2/A3 steerage control: https://postimg.cc/9wHL3NNY

     

    You'll also notice a drastic increase in gauges and electronic control surfacing surrounding the driver as time progresses in tank design.
     

    Now, fire control on tanks has maintained a similar overall design since the M47; multi-axis powered traverse yolk system that controls elevation and traverse simultaneously;

    M47 Gunner's yolk vs M1 Gunners' yolk: https://postimg.cc/8fBQxvws

     

    Maingun power-traverse stabilization had been around since the M4A1, but was wildly unpopular with crews until the M26, due to the arduous task of co-sighting and the lack of a turret bustle. The M48 was a leap froward in stabilization using a stereoscopic rangefinding system, with the M60A3 TTS being the next leap with a ruby-red lensed laser rangefinder, and the Abrams using a much more advanced ELRF laser rangefinder and gaining the ability to fire while moving due to the advanced fire control system computers capable of doing immediate fire controls ballistic solutions. 
     

    Sorry to kind of just dump all that on you. If something doesn't make sense or comes across as confusing feel free to ask away, there is no such thing as a stupid question. 


  6. It is indeed a multifaceted problem, but it's a problem that will never truly be solved due to an underlying agenda. 

    The crux isn't ease of access, video games, the NRA, or any of the other agenda-driven "explanations" politicians, media or activists claim it to be.

    This problem is the result of a broken system that is led by corrupt politicians and bureaucrats; A system where the mentally unwell are left to worsen because of lethargic law enforcement, social services, schools, ect... a system where people are forced to live in squalor, eking out an existence in poverty where violence and crime are a way-of-life and survival, a failing system that is then worsened by media hype and sensationalist journalism that deals in false information and agenda-driven reporting.

    The political outrage and sensationalist reporting surrounding mass shootings is driving a push to "fix" and "do something" that will do nothing at all to solve the problem of violence.

    Below I've copied and pasted  a section out of the Wikipage on Nicholas Cruz, the Parkland Florida Shooter and Devin Kelley the Sutherland Springs, Texas shooter.

     

    Cruz's past is rife with run-ins with law enforcement, mental health treatments, requests for help, repeated school transfers (six schools in three years) and repeated suspensions due behavioral issues, as well as threats against faculty and fellow students, repeated online postings and threats on his willingness and intent to shoot up a school, he was investigate by the Florida State Department of Children and Families for posts on Snapchat of him cutting his arms and plans to buy a gun (as well as posts on YouTube expressing his desire to become a school shooter). He was recommended for an involuntary psychiatric examination under the Baker Act by a school resource officer and agreeing two school counselors, but a local mental health center claimed Cruz "did not meet criteria" and state investigators concluded he was "at low risk of harming himself or others". Twice, the FBI was anonymously tipped by people close to Cruz about his erratic behavior, desire to kill people, his firearm ownership, disturbing online posting and threats, and his potential to shoot up a school. 

    This individual should have never been able to buy a firearm, let alone allowed to keep one after repeated tips to the FBI and run-ins with the Broward Sheriff's Department. However, his slip into instability was allowed to persist, even as he expressed a willingness to kill and commit mass murder. 

    Cruz passed a background check...why? Because none of the information concerning his psychiatric treatments, criminal history, police run-ins, school suspensions, ect... was ever fed into the FBI's National Crime Information Center database. Not a single person in authority that had an interaction with Cruz practiced due diligence to update or transmit his violent or unstable behavior.  

    Identifying Prohibited Persons - BATFE
     

     

     


    Sheriff Scott Israel said that his office received 23 calls about Cruz during the previous decade, but this figure is in dispute. CNN used a public records request to obtain a sheriff's office log, which showed that from 2008 to 2017, at least 45 calls were made in reference to Cruz, his brother, or the family home.[100][101] The calls included an anonymous tip on February 5, 2016, that Cruz had threatened to shoot up the school, and a tip on November 30, 2017, that he might be a "school shooter in the making" and that he collected knives and guns. On September 23, 2016, a peer counselor notified the school resource officer of his suicide attempt and intent to buy a gun; the school indicated it would do a "threat assessment".[102][103][104]

     

    In September 2016, three people—a sheriff's deputy who worked as a resource officer at Stoneman Douglas, and two of the school's counselors—stated that Cruz should be committed for mental evaluation.[105][106]

     

    On September 24, 2017, a person with the username "nikolas cruz" posted a comment to a YouTube video that read, "Im [sic] going to be a professional school shooter". The person who uploaded the video to YouTube reported the comment to the FBI. According to agent Robert Lasky, the agency conducted database reviews but was unable to track down the individual who made the threatening comment.[107][108]

     

    On January 5, 2018, more than a month before the shooting, the FBI received a tip on its Public Access Line from a person who was close to Cruz. On February 16, two days after the shooting, the agency released a statement that detailed this information. According to the statement, "The caller provided information about Cruz's gun ownership, desire to kill people, erratic behavior, and disturbing social media posts, as well as the potential of him conducting a school shooting." After conducting an investigation, the FBI said the tip line did not follow protocol when the information was not forwarded to the Miami Field Office, where investigative steps would have been taken.[109][110] The FBI opened a probe into the tip line's operations.[111]

     

    The lack of response by Israel and other members of the Broward Country sheriff's department to the numerous red flags and warnings about Cruz has been the subject of much scrutiny.[112] In the days following the shooting, calls for Israel's resignation intensified as more information that alluded to the department's inaction was revealed.[113] Since the shooting, Israel has declined to resign and refused to take responsibility for his role in failing to stop Cruz before the mass shooting took place.[114] In an interview with CNN, Israel described his leadership at the department as "amazing", a claim that was widely mocked and criticized.[115][116][117][118]

     

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoneman_Douglas_High_School_shooting#Warnings_to_law_enforcement

     

    The school district conducted an assessment of the handling of Cruz. According to their redacted report, which was reviewed in August 2018 by The New York Times, The Daily Beast, and other media, a year before the shooting Cruz had sought help from education specialists, as his grades at Stoneman Douglas were declining. He was an eighteen-year-old junior, and met with the specialists with his mother. The specialists recommended that he transfer to another school, Cross Creek in Pompano Beach, where he had done well before. But he wanted to graduate with his class at Stoneman Douglas, and rejected this option, as an adult. He was advised that if he stayed, he would no longer be able to access special education services, but this was incorrect.[119][120] A few months later, he withdrew because of failing grades. After that, Cruz requested to go to Cross Creek, but he was told a new assessment was needed, delaying action.[121][122][123]

     

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoneman_Douglas_High_School_shooting#Seeking_help
     

     


    Now, Cruz's story isn't the only one like this, they're all like this, histories of violence, instability, rage, ect... all ignored, all passed over, all push down the line for someone else to deal with..until they lashed out and killed innocent people.  

    Devin Kelley, the individual that shot up the church in Sutherland Springs, Texas. Talk about an individual that should have never been able to purchase a firearm, let alone allowed to keep one. 

    Kelley had a well documented history of violence. He'd been charged with assaulting his wife and fracturing his son' skull, he'd threatened fellow airmen and his superiors, he'd been caught sneaking firearms onto the base he was stationed at, made threats of self-harm, and had been involuntarily committed to a mental health facility and escaped. In 2012 he was given an Article 22 Court Martial, was charged with assault on his wife, aggravated assault on his stepson, two charges of pointing a loaded gun at his wife, and two counts of threatening his wife with an unloaded gun, was sentenced to twelve months confinement and given a Bad Conduct Discharge.  

    Any discharge other than General or Honorable makes an individual a prohibited person, (heck, Kelley's commitance to a mental health facility made him one as well) yet Kelley passed a background check and was able to purchase multiple firearms. How did that happen? The DoD failed to submit Kelley's criminal history to the FBI and had failed to do so with 40,000 other individuals records over the past 25 years.

    Identifying  Prohibited Persons - BATFE

    Report of Investigation into the United States Air Force’s Failure to Submit Devin Kelley’s Criminal History Information to the Federal Bureau of Investigation - DoD Inspector General

     

    DoD Agents Complained of Failure to Share Records with FBI Decades Ago, Were Ignored - Washington Free Beacon
     

     

     


    After graduating, Kelley enlisted in the United States Air Force. He served in logistics readiness at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico from 2009 until 2014. He married in April 2011.[36][37] In October 2012, he was charged with assaulting his wife and fracturing his toddler stepson's skull. In response, Kelley made death threats against the superior officers who charged him, and he was caught sneaking firearms onto Holloman Air Force Base.[38] Around that same time, he made threats of self-harm to a coworker.[34] He was then admitted to Peak Behavioral Health Services, a mental health facility in Santa Teresa, New Mexico.[38]
     

    In June 2012, Kelley escaped from Peak Behavioral Health Services but was soon apprehended ten miles away at a bus terminal in El Paso, Texas.[38][39] The facility's director of military affairs later recalled that Kelley had stayed at the facility for several weeks, until he was brought to court-martial. While there, he had expressed a desire for "some kind of retribution to his chain of command" and was discovered to have used computers to order "weapons and tactical gear to a P.O. box in San Antonio".[39]
     

    Kelley and his wife divorced in October 2012.[36] In an interview with Inside Edition, his ex-wife said she lived in constant fear of him, as their marriage was filled with abuse. He once threatened her at gunpoint over a speeding ticket, and later threatened to kill her and her entire family.[40]
     

    Kelley was brought before a general court-martial on four charges: assault on his wife, aggravated assault on his stepson, two charges of pointing a loaded gun at his wife, and two counts of threatening his wife with an unloaded gun. In November 2012, Kelley pleaded guilty to two counts of Article 128 UCMJ, for the assault of his wife and stepson. In return, the weapons charges were dropped.[41][42][43] He was sentenced to 12 months of confinement and a reduction in rank to Airman Basic. He appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces, but was unsuccessful.[44] In 2014, he was dismissed from the Air Force with a bad conduct discharge.[45][46]

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sutherland_Springs_church_shooting#Military_service_and_violent_behavior

     


    As I said, this isn't unique to Nicholas Cruz or Devin Kelley, authorities across the board have failed to preform due diligence and ensure the public safety in nearly all these cases.

    Omar Mateen, the Pulse Nightclub Shooter had been on an FBI watch list, his father had been an FBI informant, and a gun store that Mateen had tried to be purchase body armor, a firearm, and ammunition but was denied had contacted the FBI concerned over Mateen's request and attempt to purchase. Mateen had also been in the employ of G4S, a security contractor that provides armed security to various clients. Mateen was suppose to have been given a psychiatric evaluation to certify him to carry a firearm, but the company lie and only had the results of an administered test reviewed by non-approved psychologists. 

    The list goes on, but fortunately mass shootings are rare, and I mean actual mass shootings, not other types of crimes or altered data being purposely mislabeled and misreported as "mass shootings".

    US Mass Shootings, 1982-2019: Data From Mother Jones’ Investigation

    The School Shootings That Weren't - NPR

    Race, Discipline, and Safety At U.S. Schools - ACLU

    Quick Look: 250 Active Shooter Incidents in the United States From 2000 to 2017 - FBI

    A Study of Active Shooter Incidents in the United States Between 2000 and 2013 - FBI

    Active Shooter Incidents in the United States in 2016 and 2017 - FBI

     

    Active Shooter Incidents in the United States in 2018 - FBI

    The School Shooter: A THREAT ASSESSMENT PERSPECTIVE - FBI

    This purposeful misrepresentation has and is causing other crimes to be all, but ignored. 

    FBI Uniform Crime Report, Table 20, Homicide

    CDC National Vital Statics Report, Deaths: Final data for 2017

     

    Annually, around 14,000 firearms homicides occur. Now fortunately, firearm homicides have been on a national trending decline, primarily due to various factors such as increased standard of living, improved socioeconomic levels, educational standards improvement, ect... However, major cities aren't seeing a significant reduction in firearms crime, to include firearm homicides. 

    How is this problem solved? Well, the City of Boston asked the same question in the summer of 1994 and devised Operation Ceasefire, which yielded surprising results; 

    Reducing Gun Violence: The Boston Gun Project's Operation Ceasefire - National Institute of Justice 

     

    Now, this isn't a one off case where the city was lucky, a similar plan was enacted by a Harris Rosen in the Tangelo Park in Orange County, Florida 

    One Man’s Millions Turn a Community in Florida Around - NYT

    This problem isn't solved by arbitrarily banning or regulating guns,  accessories,  video games, ect... or enacting ERPO's that are ripe for abuse and WILL result in further needless loss of life. It's solved by holding politicians and authorities accountable, by making positive and effective change in areas with negative economic, educational, vocational, and employment opportunities. By providing better assistance to those in need, be it mental health support, educational, vocational, or economic support. 
     

    We solve this problem by taking care of each other, keeping an eye out for friends, family, neighbors, ect... that are showing signs of mental health needs and helping  and encouraging them to seek out that help. We solve this issue by removing the stigma that surrounds mental health assistance.

    As cheesy as it sounds, we are what solves this problem, we have to pro-active in helping others and supporting programs, groups, organizations, and plans that do.

    Want to help educate youth on the dangers of gang violence, education them on firearms, and show them a productive, meaningful way to achieve a better way of life? Support guys like Maj Toure and his group Black Guns Matter. 

    Want to help those in need? Volunteer your time, find you local United Way and help them inform your community that help and resources are only a phone call away. 2-1-1 can put someone to contact with damn near any help they may need, from mental health assistance, to education, employment, rent assistance, healthcare, ect... 

    Sunstriker7 likes this

  7. This conundrum goes beyond simply spying on average people, reliance on Chinese manufactured and produced goods threatens a wide array of issues, ranging from national security to the global economy;

    An excellent example can bee seen by the power Gazprom has wielded with it's stranglehold; the repeated gas-disputes with Ukraine, the acquisition of Chornomornaftogaz through the annexation of Crimea and now with the European Commission having accepted Gazprom's offer last year ending the antitrust case Grazprom will faced no fines, the concessions offer by Gazprom were already planned as Gazprom was moving to change it's marketing and sales strategy. 

     

    What is stopping China from utilizing it's same stranglehold on REE from making demands or utilizing it to cause economic destabilization in other parts of the world? We've already seen this play out on a smaller scale in 2010 when China banned all exports of REE to Japan over territorial disputes.

    In terms of national security pertaining to the US & NATO; it would affect our ability to repair and produce newer combat platforms as nearly all our weapons systems laser range finders and designators utilize Nd:YAG lasers, which requires Yttrium and Neodymium, which historically has come from Mountain Pass Mine...which has been operating at minimal capacity and  Leshan Shenghe Rare Earth Co. Mining has a minority, non-voting interest in the mine. 

     

    That's just skimming over a minute potential of economic impact and national security implications, this would impact healthcare, industrial services, the scientific community, ect... 


  8. 156140170769004.jpg

     

    Today, Raspberry Pi is introducing a new version of its popular line of single-board computer. The Raspberry Pi 4 Model B is the fastest Raspberry Pi ever, with the company promising "desktop performance comparable to entry-level x86 PC systems."

     

     

    The new model is built around a Broadcom BCM2711 SoC, which, with four 1.5GHz Cortex A72 CPU cores, should be a big upgrade over the quad core Cortex A53 CPU in the Raspberry Pi 3. The RAM options are the even bigger upgrade though, with options for 1GB, 2GB, and even 4GB of DDR4. The Pi 3 was limited to 1GB of RAM, which really stung for desktop-class use cases.


    There has been some upgrades and tweaks to the Pi 4 I/O, too. The Gigabit Ethernet returns, as do the four USB ports, but two of them get an upgrade to USB 3.0. Power is now supplied via a USB-C port, instead of the aging Micro USB of the Pi 3. The headphone jack returns, too, and it's still a four-pole solution providing audio and composite video.

    One interesting choice is the removal of the single, full-size HDMI port of the Pi 3 in favor of two micro HDMI ports. The Pi 4 will now support two 4K monitors, but you'll have to deal with the less-ubiquitous cable selection. To push those displays, Raspberry Pi is promising lots of multimedia support: H.265 decode for 4K60p, H.264 1080p60 decode and 1080p30 encode, and OpenGL ES 3.0 graphics.

    The 40-Pin GPIO header is fully backwards compatible with previous boards, so all your old hats should work. Ditto for the flex two cable connectors, which are still a two-lane MIPI DSI (Display Serial Interface) and a two-lane MIPI CSI (Camera Serial Interface). The device still features 2.4GHz and 5GHz 802.11b/g/n/ac Wi-Fi, while Bluetooth has been upgraded to 5.0. As always, the Pi has 0GB of storage. You'll need to pop a MicroSD card in to load an OS and run programs.

    Just like the Raspberry Pi 3, the Pi 4 starts at $35 for the version with 1GB of RAM. There are now higher tiers with more RAM: 2GB for $45 and 4GB for $55. Raspberry Pi says the Pi 4 will remain in production until at least January 2026.

     

    Source

    Takka, Sunstriker7 and Kavawuvi like this

  9. Quote

    the second pilot is dead, body parts found in several locations


    Yeah, that'd do it. 

    I'm curious to know if the collision was head-on or parallel. Based on the second pilot's body condition, I'd assume a parallel strike, having ejected into a debris cloud or hitting the other Typhoon. 


  10. 156112909748402.jpg

     

    "We're predicting a really brutal consolidation of the small-launch-vehicle market."

    Welcome to Edition 2.04 of the Rocket Report! We've got some up-to-the-minute news this week, with updated launch dates for NASA's commercial crew missions, BE-7 rocket engine tests, and a Falcon Heavy flight early next week. Thanks to everyone for their great contributions—nearly all of this week's content came from your tips.
     

     

    As always, we welcome reader submissions, and if you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.

    Small Rockets

    "Brutal consolidation" coming for small launch. In an interview with MIT Technology Review, Rocket Lab's Peter Beck talks about how his company does (and does not) use 3D printing technology for its rockets and engines. Beck also discusses a consistent theme of this newsletter, namely that despite all of the activity in launch vehicle development, a significant winnowing is coming in terms of providers.

    Definitely a bubble ... "There's a huge number of small launch vehicles in development," Beck said. "And it's funny, because everybody's quoting the same customers. So we're predicting a really brutal consolidation of the small-launch-vehicle market. Right now it's definitely in a bubble. I think small launch is in for a really brutal time in the next 12 to 18 months." Hard to disagree with that sentiment, although depending on the extent of US Department of Defense support, we can see at least two or three US smallsat launch companies making it, as well as a like number in China.

    Stratolaunch for sale. Holding company Vulcan is seeking to sell Stratolaunch for $400 million, people familiar with the matter told CNBC. Vulcan is the investment conglomerate of late billionaire and Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. Allen died last October following complications of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. The price includes ownership of the airplane as well as the intellectual property and facilities.

    Who will buy? ... It is not clear who might emerge as a buyer, although the report suggests that Virgin's Richard Branson has offered $1 for the airplane. This is an unfortunate, but probably predictable, development for a company that never seemed to make that much sense from a business standpoint: using a very large airplane to launch relatively small rockets. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

    Firefly offers free rides on its first launch. On Monday, Texas-based Firefly announced that it will accept some academic and educational payloads free of charge on the first flight of its Alpha rocket. "We've wanted to do something like this on our first flight from the beginning," CEO Tom Markusic said. The payloads will fly to a 300km circular orbit, with a 97-degree inclination. The company also has an (undisclosed) customer for the flight, Ars Technica reports.

    So when is the launch? ... Markusic admitted that pushing toward a December launch from California's Vandenberg Air Force Base is aggressive and that, to make it, the company must meet a tight schedule of milestones. Objectively, a December launch is doable. Historically, however, Markusic said he realizes that problems often occur during stage testing and other activities that have the potential to delay launch dates. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

    NASA developing a new launchpad for smallsat rockets. Set for completion by the end of this year, NASA is developing Launch Complex 48 between Kennedy Space Center's pad 39A and Cape Canaveral Air Force Station's Launch Complex 41 to the south. The space agency intends to use the facility for commercial companies wanting a pad from which to launch their small rockets, Florida Today reports.

    Small rockets only ... "This is a NASA capability that is being made available to whatever small launcher company wants to come in here and do small-vehicle launches," Tom Engler, Kennedy Space Center's director of planning and development, told the publication. Maximum liftoff weight for small rockets would be 300,000 pounds, and no landings would be allowed. This represents a fairly large change in thinking by NASA from a decade or two ago, and a welcome one. (submitted by trimeta)

    Does Rocket Lab have to disclose its payloads? The company has not disclosed one of the seven payloads launching from New Zealand on its "Make it Rain" mission later this month, and a local publication, called Stuff, has submitted a request to the government to force disclosure. New Zealand's Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment will make a determination on the request. The ministry would balance the justification for any secrecy against the public interest in disclosure and would have to provide the grounds on which it declined to provide information.

    No weapons ... One thing Rocket Lab's Peter Beck said the company will not do is launch weapons. "All of the defense payloads we have launched to date are all 'R&D' payloads that have dual-use applications," Beck said. "We will never fly weapons or anything that really isn't committed to the safe and secure and responsible use of space. We are not going to do anything that doesn't align with our core values." This will be an interesting case to follow, with the potential to hurt Rocket Lab's commercial prospects for New Zealand launches. (submitted by platykurtic)

    Environmentalists raise concerns about Scottish launch site. Land on the A' Mhòine Peninsula in northern Scotland has been identified as a location for the launching of rockets carrying small satellites, but new research questions why a "wild land" site covered by environmental protections was chosen for the project, the BBC reports. Research by professors Mike Danson and Geoff Whittam also casts doubts on claims that 40 "high-quality" jobs would be created by the spaceport, suggesting "the jobs which will be available to local people have been stated as housekeeping and security."

    Pushback from Orbex ... The paper questions the focus by Highlands and Islands Enterprise on the A' Mhòine site over other locations. It also suggests a previous report overstated the level of community support while not paying enough attention to infrastructural issues and environmental designations. Companies that have proposed using the launch site, such as Orbex, have pushed back against the new conclusions. (submitted by BH)

    Medium Rockets

    NASA updates launch dates for commercial crew. As part of standard planning among the international partners, NASA has revised its Visiting Vehicle plan for all upcoming and long-range missions to the International Space Station, and the update includes new planning dates for the first Commercial Crew launches on SpaceX's Crew Dragon and Boeing's Starliner vehicles, NASASpaceFlight.com reports. These dates should all be regarded as subject to change, especially the crewed flights.

    A busy end of the year ... Boeing's uncrewed Orbital Flight Test of its Starliner vehicle will move to a launch planning date of September 17, 2019. SpaceX's Demonstration Mission-2 is now tentatively planned for November 15, 2019. The flight would see astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley perform a 7-day flight of the Dragon capsule. Then, Mike Finke, Nicole Mann, and Chris Ferguson would launch November 30, 2019, on the first crewed mission of the Starliner capsule. We'll be pleasantly surprised if any of the crewed missions occur in 2019. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

    SpaceX gets a boost from House committee. The House Armed Services Committee last week approved legislation that seeks to increase competition in the national security space-launch program. The amended language retained two key provisions that help SpaceX and Blue Origin while removing two others that were opposed by United Launch Alliance and Northrop Grumman. Chairman Adam Smith (D-Wash.) led the changes, SpaceNews reports.

    Revising Phase 2 ... The legislation concerns the Air Force plan to award launch contracts from 2022 to 2026, known as Phase 2. Under the revisions, the Air Force will allow other competitors to challenge the two winners of Phase 2 after the first 29 launches are completed; and the Air Force will create a $500 million "certification and infrastructure fund" to be made available to SpaceX if it wins a Phase 2 contract. The latter funding puts SpaceX on an even playing field with companies that won Phase 1 awards for development of their launch systems. The US Senate must agree to the language.

    Heavy Rockets

    Report raises questions about SLS award fees. A new US Government Accountability Office report anticipates that the Artemis-1 mission—in which a Space Launch System rocket will boost an uncrewed Orion spacecraft around the Moon—will likely slip as late as June 2021. NASA also appears to have been obscuring the true cost of its development programs, particularly with the large SLS rocket, which has Boeing as its prime contractor, Ars Technica reports.

    No consequences? ... The report found that NASA has continued to pay Boeing substantial award fees. From July 2014 through September 2018, the GAO found that NASA assessed Boeing's performance on development of the SLS rocket's core stage as "good," "very good," and "excellent" at various times. The agency gave Boeing $271 million in award fees during this period, even after the rocket's scheduled launch continued to slip. (submitted by JohnCarter17 and rochefort)

    Blue Origin has fired its BE-7 engine. Announced via tweet by company founder Jeff Bezos, Blue Origin performed the first hotfire of its BE-7 lunar lander engine on Wednesday at Marshall Space Flight Center. "Data looks great and hardware is in perfect condition," Bezos wrote. "Test went full planned duration—35 seconds."

    Mmmm, new hardware ... This is the engine that Bezos only revealed the existence of in May during an event in Washington, DC, to highlight his company's Blue Moon lander. The test comes as Blue Origin and other space companies are bidding on NASA contracts to develop a "descent" module for a lunar lander, essentially a large truck that could ferry supplies and perhaps a human ascent module down to the Moon's surface. Always nice to see a new rocket engine enter the fray. (submitted by Unrulycow and Ken the Bin)

    Falcon Heavy launch on track for Monday night. After SpaceX completed a static firing of its Falcon Heavy rocket, the company said it remains scheduled to launch the Space Test Program-2 mission for the US Air Force on Monday night, from Florida. The rocket will contain two dozen satellites, including a novel solar-sail experiment, Ars Technica reports.

    Sailing through space ... LightSail 2 will attempt to harness the momentum of photons and "sail" through space, and it is the culmination of decades of work by The Planetary Society. "This goes back to the very beginning, to Carl Sagan, Bruce Murray, and Lou Friedman," the organization's chief executive, Bill Nye, said (yes, that Bill Nye). "We are carrying on a legacy that has been with us since the founders. It's just an intriguing technology because it lowers the cost of going all over the place in the Solar System."

    Larger Ariane 6 rocket gets its first customer. Arianespace is planning two variants of its new Ariane 6 heavy lift rocket: one with two solid rocket boosters (Ariane 62) and one with four (Ariane 64). The rocket with two boosters will fly first, sometime in 2020, the European rocket manufacturer has said. Now the larger Ariane 64 has its first customer.

    Getting to work, sooner ... Peter B. de Selding reports that the ViaSat-3 Tbs broadband satellite will move from an Ariane 5 rocket to an Ariane 64, for a launch sometime in 2021. By launching on the more powerful Ariane 64, the ViaSat-3 satellite will be able to reach a higher-energy geostationary transfer orbit and thus begin operations sooner. ViaSat also has contracts with SpaceX and United Launch Alliance for its ViaSat-3 program.

    Fully restored Saturn IB rocket returns to display. NASA's last remaining flight-configured example of the rocket that launched the first Apollo astronauts into space is back on public view in Florida, having undergone an almost year-long extensive restoration, CollectSpace reports. The forerunner to the Saturn V that launched astronauts to the Moon, the Saturn IB, was first used by NASA's Apollo 7 crew in 1968.

    As it should be ... The rocket can be seen at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Florida. Work to restore the Saturn IB began in July 2018. The Space Coast's salt-rich atmosphere and 40 years lying on its side had taken a toll on the rocket, which once stood on a launchpad ready to fly a planned but never-needed rescue mission to the United States' first space station, Skylab. The rocket now looks like new and is preserved as it deserves to be. (submitted by JohnCarter17)

    Next three launches
    June 21: Proton-M | Spektr-RG | Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan | 12:17:14 UTC
    June 25: Falcon Heavy | Space Test Program-2 | Kennedy Space Center, Florida | 03:30:00 UTC
    June 27: Electron | "Make It Rain" | Mahia Peninsula, New Zealand | 04:30:00 UTC

     

     

    Source

    Takka likes this

  11. Not a surprising occurrence, it's a strategic move in the on-going cyber war;

    The NY Times published an article on the 15th outlining the escalation of US attacks against the Russian power grid, which is a response to increased attacks and intrusions by Russian assets against US energy and industrial infrastructure. The FBI and DHS have issued multiple reports since 2015 concerning the discovery of attacks and intrusions against industrial control systems (ICS) of US energy and industrial infrastructure.
     

    Alert (TA18-074A) Russian Government Cyber Activity Targeting Energy and Other Critical Infrastructure Sectors (March 15th, 2018)

    Solaris likes this

  12. 156052806533714.jpg

    Neural networks are on the path toward explainable intelligence, which may help speed the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) by the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD).
     

     

    The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) is prioritizing the fielding of artificial intelligence (AI) systems to help augment the capabilities of warfighters by offloading tedious cognitive or physical tasks and introducing more efficient ways of working.

     

    The 2018 DoD AI Strategy states: “The United States, together with its allies and partners, must adopt AI to maintain its strategic position, prevail on future battlefields, and safeguard this order. We will also seek to develop and use AI technologies in ways that advance security, peace, and stability in the long run. We will lead in the responsible use and development of AI by articulating our vision and guiding principles for using AI in a lawful and ethical manner.”

     Neural networks are one realm of AI actively being explored for future DoD use; the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is working on a program called Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI), which has as its goal the development of neural networks capable of explaining why they make their decisions and showing users the data that plays the most important role in its decision-making process.

     
    Neural nets

    Bill Ferguson, lead scientist at Raytheon BBN and principal investigator on DARPA’s Explainable AI program, gives an inside look at the concept and use of neural nets.

    Neural networks got their start back in the 1960s, with the first ones simply a bunch of electrical components connected via wires and knobs that could be adjusted to make them do the right thing. “We’re doing the same thing now – just hundreds of billions of times faster, bigger, and better,” Ferguson says. “But it’s the same basic idea.”

    A neural network is essentially a computer program with hundreds of millions of virtual components connected by ­virtual wires. These virtual wires have different connection strengths.

    “In this great big network, some wires are considered to be the input components,” he explains. “On the far end of the network, with a bunch of wires in between, are the output components. It looks vaguely like a human or animal brain, which is why it’s called a neural network. Within the brain, components, namely the neurons, are connected together by the axons and dendrites of the neural cells.” Those have various connection strengths, depending on what the brain has learned.

    Neural nets consist of layers or stacks, which are analogous to the human brain. “Our partners at MIT have done work exploring what’s going on within these big stack systems and it turns out that the neurons very close to the pixels on the input side are recognizing things like colors, textures, and edges,” Ferguson says. “The ones higher up in the network – closer to where it’s about to make its decision – are recognizing things like wheels, feet, eyes, etc. Just like a human brain, the layers are meaningful. The lower layers are doing very simple things to recognize objects, while the higher layers take that data and put it together into more complex things like legs and arms or whole objects.”

     
    Training neural nets

    To train a neural net, “you take the kinds of input it might see, like a picture, and attach the pixels to the pictures to the neurons on the input side of the system. On the output side, you have all of the possible answers that it might produce,” Ferguson says.

    Imagine you want the system to label an image for you. It has a neuron on the outside for a dog, wrench, and bus, and a neuron for all of the things that it might want to label the image. “You train the system by literally showing it an image hundreds of billions of times and looking to see how the neurons on the outside are lighting up,” he adds. “Show it an image –you know what it is – of a dog. Then you look to see how lit up the dog neuron is and you can strengthen all of the different connections in this big jumble of connections that will make it more likely for it to be a dog. But you just strengthen it a tiny bit – and you keep doing it a bunch of times with labeled data – so that eventually when you show it a dog, the dog neuron lights up brighter than any of the others. And if you show it a cat, the cat neuron lights up brighter than any of the others.”

    This simple process – if it has huge amounts of data – can do extremely well at labeling images. “It can do as well as humans in terms of how often it gets them right or wrong,” Ferguson says.

    Most of the code in a big AI system “has to do with handling the data or translating the pixels into the right format, or if it’s text, dealing with the different kinds of codes for the way the text is formed,” Ferguson says. “The little pieces that do the learning and then make decisions at the end are usually only about two or three pages each. The code that actually makes the magic – both the learning and deciding – is a very small bit of code.”

    While neural networks started out with a ton of code in the 1960s, in modern machine learning (ML) systems it’s just a little bit of code combined with a lot of data. “The trick is that it’s got a lot of data to learn from,” he adds. “There’s a very simple algorithm that figures out which things to reinforce when it wants to get a certain answer. And the rest of it just happens.”


    What can neural networks do?

    Neural networks can take on problems with two key characteristics: First, it’s well-defined what the system should look at each time it needs to do its job: a movie or a picture or even a big set of pictures. Second, the type of answer it should give must also be well-defined. For example, it should label it and either approve or not approve, or it should translate it into another language. “So you need a well-defined problem and a ton of data, typically labeled data,” Ferguson says. “Literally tens of millions of examples of where the problem has been solved correctly that it can look at it and learn from.”

    Extremely competent systems today use enormous piles of labeled data. Self-driving cars, for example, are learning via hundreds of millions of hours of humans driving cars. “They put a camera in front of the car so you can see outside the car and they record everything the human driver does,” Ferguson says. “They try to get the neural net to imitate that behavior. Once it does, they put it through simulated worlds where they know the right thing to do because they’re running the simulator. Finally, they try it out in the real world. But there’s a huge need for labeled data. That’s why a lot of expert human behavior isn’t possible to do right now – because we don’t have huge bunches of labeled data being done correctly.”

    Creating massive amounts of labeled data can be somewhat of a privacy issue, however; in other cases, data isn’t even being stored yet. “There are lots of mail carriers delivering mail right now, but we’re not taking careful video of them opening and closing mailboxes and looking at the letters to figure out where the letters go,” Ferguson points out. “If we were going to build robot mail deliverers, we’re a long ways from it because we’re not even gathering the data right now that you’d need to train them. There are huge obstacles to gathering that data: political, logistical, and computational. It’s really difficult.”


    Challenges of neural networks

    Neural networks have come a long way, but they still face barriers to use. Until recently, the biggest hurdle was to get them to perform well enough to prove their usefulness. “Until about 10 years ago, neural networks were sort of a curiosity,” Ferguson says. “It’s been hard to get enough data and computational power to these systems. They’re typically trained in the cloud now, where a few, sometimes hundreds, of computers will look at all of this training data as the system is becoming competent. Once the system is trained, it doesn’t require anywhere nearly as much computation to make it do its job – show it a new image and have the system label it. You just present the image to the input side of the neurons, the signal strength flows through the net, and it makes its decision on the output side. It does this fast, usually within a few thousandths of a second.”

    So neural nets have become competent within the past 10 years. But can you actually find enough big data yet for any particular problem you’d like to solve? This is a major limitation of the system: “There are a whole bunch of labeled images on the Internet, thanks to Google and all of the search engines that can find this stuff,” Ferguson notes. “So neural nets have become really good at captioning images, labeling images, translating language, but it needs piles and piles of examples of a job done right.”

    Another problem, Ferguson observes, is that neural nets don’t tell you why they make the choices they do. “Hundreds of thousands of neurons in the system are simulated and passing little signals to each other, and you can say, ‘Wow, it learned,’ but we have no idea why or how it’s decided that this particular picture of a zebra is a zebra,” he says. “We’re trying to figure out why it happens and to explain it to people. It’s interesting to be building systems without entirely understanding how they work. We’ve got our little algorithm that trains them, but we really don’t know everything it’s doing inside to make the tasks possible.”


    On the path to “explainable AI”

    Neural networks have reached the point where, to move forward, “explainable AI” must play a critical role. This is where DARPA’s XAI program comes in. It’s attempting to create a suite of ML techniques that both produce more explainable models and a high level of performance. “Explainable AI will increase trust in the system and humans’ ability to know when they should use the system or when it might be best not to rely on an automated system,” Ferguson says.

    Right now, the program is still in the basic research stage. “We’re literally working with pictures of cats, dogs, buses, and pictures of streets,” he adds. “We’re publishing all of our research. DARPA does this sort of thing when it’s trying to make progress and wants to see what’s possible. Much later on, we’ll potentially be looking at DoD applications, but we’re not there yet with this program.”

    The end goal of the entire endeavor: Building trust via explainable AI.


    Source

    Takka and (SBB) Storm like this

  13. On 10/4/2016 at 11:52 PM, Solaris said:

    One thing I've been playing around with since I started working on this new project is serial output from physical radios to controller interfaces to kind of make the transmission VoIP to operator stations. I've only seen this done in proprietary applications with radios like Harris, URC and Motorola so far, using a DB25 to RJ45 adapter on the back of the controller card (2x RJ45 for two channels, pinouts split on serial for 2 ports; see pic), but I'm trying to find a way to do this with consumer radios with DB25/DB9 output. Making serial cables isn't super hard if you have a soldering station and the patience to build them. I don't know of any consumer level controllers though. I can't imagine it would be an out-there technology that wasn't already an open standard in some respect to convert serial radio to VoIP. 

     

    prod_6992522015?src=http%3A%2F%2Fimages.bidlessnow.com%2Ffull%2FELL%2FELL-1312070.jpg&d=e4cf2ac9f6225f1a62aaaca66795243356656964&hei=245&wid=245&op_sharpen=1&qlt=85

     

    Any headway on this project? Very interested to hear what you've got so far. 

    Solaris likes this

  14. I tend to stay away from politics around this time of year and have been making an effort to reduce my involvement concerning politics in general; however this case in particular has been taken widely out of context and being purposefully misreported.  

    The NRA itself is not the subject of the fine, but an administrator that was issuing coverage for the NRA's "Carry Guard" program, New York State fined Lockton Cos., LLC $7M, which the NYS DFS claims was providing insurance coverage for "acts of wrongdoing", meaning the insurance and the package itself wasn't unlawful, but it's coverage of certain "wrongful" acts is. However, NYS DFS never goes on to explain or define what those unlawful acts are...

    The NRA's case is a preemptive action to bring attention to what clearly appears to be a legal witch hunt by the Governor's Office, which Gov. Coumo clearly established with his comments of willingness "to put the NRA out of business 20 years ago" and that one of the oldest civil rights organizations is an "extremist organization".

     




     


  15. Thanks, It's something I've considered writing on for a while. Unfortunately it was a bit quick and dirty due to time restraints, I had wanted to go into more detail on the varying sects a bit more and have the overall piece more grammatically refined, hopefully I'll have time to clean it up and add more detail in the future. 

    One of my many complaints with Blogger, they do have a section to adjust the column's width, but it just shows a message stating it's not applicable. I've been thinking about moving to a more updated site that has better support, most likely WordPress.

    Sunstriker7 likes this

  16. Thought I'd provide some updated photos;



     AR /w new MRD optic

    20180430_170239.jpg

     

     

    Coated the MRD, new Magpul grip, and the PT-24/7 in .40S&W

    20180711_154244.jpg

     

    The Arms Room

    20180725_192322.jpg