Airborne Combat Engineer

Some suicide bombings have a favorable outcome

[LINK] Ernie's house of Whoop*** (wmv clip) via Six Meat Buffet

Point of order question:
Does a bomber earn his 72 virgins when his mission fails?

Note the use of a robot.

Warning: not for children or the squeamish

optional personal observations in the continuation

Can a .50 BMG travel nearly 5 miles?

... as the VPC and others have been known to say?

Yes, technically a .50 BMG round can travel 4 2/3 miles, but only if you fire it at a 38 degree angle, like a mortar. (Try finding a scope you can adjust to 38" elevation.)

Of course, since it's coming down at a very steep angle, it would be difficult to hit the target accurately, and the speed and energy are greatly depleted.

Not to mention: If you're shooting at a moving target, you'll need to lead it quite a bit, as the flight time is nearly 3/4 of a minute.

Data source (pdf)

In a vacuum, the optimum angle for maximum range would be 45 degrees. In air, it works out to 33-38 degrees, depending upon the caliber.

A-C-E midweek hitching post, 29MAR06

Whatya got to share with us?

A-C-E had over 900 visitors and 2000 page views yesterday, thanks in large part to a link from Defense Tech.

Many find A-C-E by virtue of searches, as there are now well over 3K posts.

A-C-E has 646K hits since its inception in Nov 2003.

Flat-shooting

[LINK] "Ultra long-range rifles and cartridges" by Chuck Hawks

Maximum Point Blank Range (MPBR) is the range at which you can aim at the center of the vital zone and (assuming no error) hit inside the vital zone if the target is anywhere within that range (typically assuming the sight is 1.5" over the barrel). It depends upon the radius of the vital zone (which varies by animals for hunters, but 3" is commonly used to compare bullets), the bullet (bullets with higher BCs moving faster through the air), the barrel length, and the zero point (which can be optimized to maximize the MPBR for a given cartridge and barrel length):

There's an MPBR for a given zero range, and there's an optimum zero to maximize the MPBR for a given barrel and loaded cartridge.

The Army is looking at off-the-shelf vehicles

[LINK] Libby John, Army News, ROA, 14 MAR 2006 (via Set Condition 1)

While the Army continues to spend millions of dollars to reinforce the armor on its humvees and wheeled vehicles seeing action in Iraq, officials from several Army organizations recently reviewed 13 off-the-shelf vehicles that could possibly provide soldiers better protection from roadside bombs and land mines.

The vehicles, and two armored gun boxes, were assessed during a vehicle and technology demonstration held from Feb. 24 to March 6 at Ft. Knox, KY. The event was held to support the Army’s Comprehensive Force Protection Initiative, which is working to identify gaps and prescribe changes to protect soldiers and convoys from threats such as improvised explosive devices.

Maj. Gen. Robert Williams, Fort Knox Commanding General, told Inside the Army March 6 that the demonstration was to showcase platform capabilities that could be available today if the Army decided it wanted to improve some of its capabilities.

Thanks to "fm" for linking this in a comment to the previous A-C-E post, in which I was suggesting the Army look at currently avaialable vehicles as an interim replacement for the Humvee. Looks like at least one person in the Big Green has similar thoughts.

MG Williams is to be commended, but like he says:

“Whether or not the Army decides there’s a requirement here is not determined at this point. And whether or not this goes into an acquisition process has not been determined.”

Why not buy an interim replacement for the Humvee?

[LINK] Dingo 2 (pdf document)

Yes, the US military-industrial complex likes to build its own tools of war.  That's fine, go ahead and take until 2009 to lock in on a replacement for the Humvee, with a projected roll-out in 2011. Issue a lot of development contracts (like the one given to GTRI for the AP vehicle), followed by "sources sought" and ultimately testing.  I'm sure it will be the most awesome such vehicle in the world.

In the meantime, why not select one of several existing vehicles, such as the Dingo 2, and roll it out as an interim vehicle to help the troops in 2007 (four years earlier).

OK, so it's not that sexy looking.

The Caddilac Gage division of Textron already has an agreement to produce it near New Orleans.

STOP (as early as possible) weighting down a utility vehicle with armor, causing its engine and transmission to fail prematurely, while still not providing an optimum undercarraige design to deflect IEDs.

Yeah, I've been preaching this since 2003. Guess nobody of any importance has been reading it, or buying the logic. Meanwhile, ... (well, you know).

The Humvee problem

[LINK] Andrew, Wash Park Blog

Don't know what his background is, but Andrew does a good job of summarizing where we're  at with the Humvee, and how we got there.

I especially like his ideas of simply using civilian vehicles for garrison duty, and commercially available vehicles, boats and planes when they will do the military job just as well (with a few modifications, perhaps).

Like I said in an early post, our troops shouldn't have to wait until 2011 to see a replacement for the Humvee which is designed for hazardous roads such as they are encountering in Iraq. There are better vehicles available today (such as the Dingo), for about the same money required for an armored Humvee. Just order some and get out the stencils and spray cans. (Yes, I understand it's really more complicated than that, but it shouldn't take five years.)

Way back when I was at Ft. Bragg, the Army used butt-ugly 60s-era Dodge pickups (painted olive drab and stenciled) around the base. They did fine. White pickups would have done just as well.

Best way to cripple the terrorists and insurgents:

Analyze, then take away their internet communications

[LINK] John Arquilla, interview at Technology Review

The real answer is about understanding the enemy as a system and trying to pull that system apart. But we're not doing that. We're going simply for the technological fix and that's one reason we've had so much trouble with these IEDs. Since we're spending so much on military affairs, maybe some of that should be directed towards technologies that will break our opponents' communications. In World War II, there was an investment in creating the first high-performance computers, for that very purpose. Today, it may be an investment in creating the most effective quantum computing or figuring out how to structure the vast ocean of data that masks the movements of al-Qaeda on the Net and the Web. We need a new Bletchley Park [the country house where the German WWII codes were broken], if we're going to win this war.

TR: Aren't our enemies in Iraq an entirely human network? It's not clear that breaking into their Internet communications...

JA: Oh, but they don't exist without the Web and the Net. You don't move around that country easily and even the old-school Baathist insurgent elements rely on the Web. A networked insurgency doesn't have anything like a traditional leadership. Most of the leadership they get is by going on websites, where they share information very quickly.

TR: Could we take down the Net in Iraq and would it have the effect of downing the insurgency to a significant degree?

JA: You could end all Internet access in Iraq and it would in many ways cripple the insurgents, in terms of slowing them down tremendously. But you'd also cripple reconstruction.

Former SoD Casper Weinberger dies

Fox is reporting "Cap" Weinberger, President Reagan's Secretary of Defense ('82 to '87), has passed on. He was born in 1917.

He will best be remembered for his role outspending the USSR, leading (in part) to its demise and the ending of the Cold War.

The other side of that coin is a massive increase in the national debt (in part due to military spending, but also due to entitlement and welfare programs), the ceiling for which has just been upped to $9 Trillion.

RIP

Charlie Sheen responds

[LINK] Infowars.com

See Charlie Sheen's response to editorials about him at the link.

Optional personal notes in the continuaton