Well, this was a surprise...

Followed a link from Rantingly, and found this: 

The Drive: This Is The First Photo Ever Of A Stealthy Black Hawk Helicopter

(Edit to add, plus edits inline...) This prototype/test stealthy Blackhawk was clearly not built on a UH60, but on an EH60A "Quickfix IIB" Electronic Warfare bird.

See those antennae on the tail boom? Those are the port side direction finding dipoles. There are two more on the starboard side. And you can barely see the "stinger" antenna for the ALQ17 jammer. (Which is little different from the far more common TLQ17 ground vehicle version.)

(Follow the link above for more photos, and discussion.)

The original concept was that the jammer -- just the jammer -- was mounted in a UH1 "Huey", which then became an EH1. This would be "launched" when the jeep- or truck- mounted jammers were shifting position, which, doctrinally, they were supposed to do after each jamming mission.

(The TLQ17 was originally mounted in a jeep. The GLQ3 was on a truck. Later, the MSQ138 was on a tracked vehicle, but neither the system itself nor it's power supply, nor the track were reliable enough that you could expect one to be operational...)

Then some genius came up with the idea of adding a direction finding system. Which left the Huey so overloaded it was pretty much worthless. So they put it in a Blackhawk instead. 

It was somewhat revolutionary at the time, the DF system was supposed to be able to link with the ground based systems, so that theoretically you'd have 8 DF systems on the ground (5 Trailblazers, 3 Teampacks) plus one to three Quickfix aircraft in the air. 

The problem was that it was a lot cheaper, and therefore easier to slip in the budget, to upgrade the ground-based systems than to do us. So by the time I got to my first Quickfix unit, Ft. Carson in '92, our data rate was slow enough that establishing the net was... chancy.

(Assuming the ground based systems even rolled, the tracks were epic pieces of shit. Eventually they put them on 5 ton trucks, which were absolutely reliable, but had other issues. But that's another post.)

In my last assignment, Korea in '99-2000, I think we actually established a link once. Allegedly, one of the team leaders had a heart attack from the shock. And allegedly, our data rate was so slow compared to what they were running that we effectively shut the net down. 

Allegedly. 

Also, the aircraft were all "A" models, nearly 20 years old, and pretty worn out. The Electronic Warfare systems in the aircraft put the weight, with crew, right at the max capacity. 

To be quite honest, I have mixed feelings about that last tour. In many ways, it was my dream assignment, I was getting dozens of flight hours a month, was responsible for planning and executing collection missions that were in the daily White House brief (not that I believe that BJ Clinton gave a shit) and, frankly, making full non-rated crew pay, the only SFC on the entire peninsula actually authorized to do so. 

But I had, um, issues with some members of the chain of command, and by that time I was fed up with spending every other year away from Mrs. Drang. 

Then the bastards extended me with seven months to go to retirement...

...Anyway.

I cannot imagine why they chose an EH to try this stealth mod on. To the best  of my knowledge, the platform was retired, I'm not even sure why they would have mothballed them with all the antennae on. I'm sure they pulled all the mission gear when they mothballed them. So, aside from bringing back fond (and not so) memories, this really has me scratching my head. 

“I Am An Adverb!”

So, there I was. 1980. Defense Language Institute, Presidio of Monterey, California. Basic Korean Course. (For “listeners”, AKA "geeks"; they had a separate course at the time for interrogators, AKA “rubber hosers.”)

Now, the recruiters had taken one look at my test scores and decided I should take the Defense Language Aptitude Battery, or DLAB. I had not done so well in Spanish classes in school, but they insisted, so I went ahead.

When I walked out of the room I felt like my brains were running out of my ears.

There were multiple portions to the test. One checked for general knowledge of foreign languages; I recall one where the sentence said “le poisson est sur la table”, and you had to select the correct drawing, which variously featured a fish and a bottle of poison on, under, and beside a table.

Another section used English vocabulary, but made-up grammar. As I recall, it actually was similar to what I would be learning in Korean: “The boy went to the store” might be rendered “’Boy-ga’ ‘store-ay’ ‘go-ed’”; The “ga” suffix attached to “boy” indicates the subject of the sentence, and the “ay” suffix on “store” indicates his destination. The verb comes at the end of the sentence, and instead of using “went” you use “go” with a past tense indicator. Both the test and the Korean language were/are a lot more complicated than that. As I recall, by the end of that section of the test we were reading paragraphs and answering (trying to answer) questions about who did what to whom.

Earworm, 05/16/2016, Terminal Ballistics Edition

A comment elsewhere in a discussion of effective ammunition planted today's earworm in my head.

 I bet you can figure out what the comment said.

This extended cut video includes the original video, which was edited on MTV, with live concert shots.

That original video may be NSFW, so be warned.



One thing I didn't know until I was doing the usually-inadvisable reading of the comments is that the song "Twilight Zone" was inspired by the original Jason Bourne novel.

Also, I can confirm that the extended cut is an excellent driving song in the middle of the night when there are no others vehicles out there...

We never did, really...

‘We don’t have the gear': How the Pentagon is struggling with electronic warfare - The Washington Post

Code..

Speaking of amateur radio reminded me of this:

Fort Huachuca bids farewell to Morse code training | Article | The United States Army

The thing is, what was taught at Ft. Huachuca (my alma mater) was morse intercept.  That is, "ditty chasers", the continuous wave (as we call it in the ham radio world) version of what I did in the Army.

(When I enlisted their MOS was 05H, and they gloried in the nickname "Hogs." They would grudgingly accept being referred to as "Oh 5 Aytch". I knew one once who insisted that he was an "oh 5 Hotel", and no one trusted him. Even after the MOS was changed to 98H, to coincide with the rest of us SIGINT Geeks, the old-timers still insisted on being called "Hogs.")

Apparently, while ditties still need chasing it is no longer a full-time job, and will be taught as a secondary function, by the Air Force at my other alma mater, Goodfellow AFB.

On a related note: Interesting facts about Samuel Morse and the Morse code - Life and style.

Oddly, to me, they don't mention that what we call Morse code is not what Samuel Morse devised, which was just numbers. 1 Development and history

A couple of neat radio links

What with Amateur Radio Field Day being this coming Saturday, I guess maybe I'm paying a little more attention to my radio news feeds.  (Both are from eham.net.):

• Morse Code and World War I - ABC South Australia - Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC)

Radio was young enough in WWI that there was little use of a "wireless" in the trenches themselves, and a radio that could transmit target data to artillery would max out the weight limits on fighter aircraft of the day.

I'd like to be a "know code" ham (as opposed to "no-code") but I have a hard time finding the time to study for the Amateur Extra exam, let alone learn code, too!

• Kate tries code-breaking at restored WWII center | The Kansas City Star

Pretty cool.  Bletchley Park definitely is on the list of things to go and see and do if when Mrs Drang and I visit  The Old Country. ("Countries".)

Earworm, 10/17/2013

Lyrics:

1984
Knockin' on your door
Will you let it come?
Will you let it run your life?

1984
Knockin' on your door
Will you let it come?
Will you let it run your life?

Someone will be waiting for you at your door
When you get home tonight
Ah yes, he's gonna tell you darkness gives you much more
Than you get from the light

Classic plastic guards well they're your special friend
He sees you every night
Well he call himself the brother but you know it's no game
You're never out of his sight

1984
Knockin' on your door
Will you let it come?
Will you let it run your life?

It's time you started thinking inside your head
That you should stand up and fight
Oh just where will you be when your freedom is dead
Won't you listen tonight?

Those classic plastic coppers, they are your special friends
They see you every night
Well they call themselves protection but they know it's no game
You're never out of their sight

1984
Knockin' on your door
Will you let it come?
Will you let it run?

1984
Knockin' on your door
Will you let it come?
Will you let it run?

Hear him, hear him!

Daddy Bear on the whole FBI/NSA surveillance/wiretapping/email snooping scandal: Betrayal by Those Who Should Know Better | DaddyBear's Den
He says what I wanted to, but couldn't without devolving into incoherent profanity.

To give you an idea of where I am on this, we went to Ace Hardware earlier, and it was all I could do not to go price manila hemp rope.

Also, seen in comments at that post, not sure what to think about this: DHS insider: It’s about to get very ugly

Is that a black helicopter?

Analysis: Secret memos expose Obama's double-standard on 'targeted killings' - Defense - GovExec.com

Where is the outrage? For all the anger over Bush-era torture policies, where is the commensurate condemnation over President Obama’s justification for killing American citizens with no due process, no transparency, and no accountability?

An administration memo uncovered by NBC reporter Michael Isikoff strips the veil from the Obama’s oft-Orwellian justification for assassinating American citizens believed to be “senior operational leaders” of al-Qaida or an associated force--even if there is no evidence of an imminent attack against the U.S.

Strike that: Killing suspected terrorists who happen to be American “is not an assassination,” according to the president’s Justice Department. “In the Department’s view, a lethal operation conducted against a U.S. citizen whose conduct poses an imminent threat of violent attack against the United States would be a legitimate act of national self-defense that would not violate the assassination ban.”

Oh, and disregard that part about imminent threat: Although Attorney General Eric Holder told the public in March that killing Americans could be justified if government officials determine the target poses “an imminent threat of violent attack,” his memo creates a massive loophole. It coins a chilling little phrase--“broader concept of imminence”--to absolve the government of the responsibility to find a clear and present danger.

Analysis: What's Wrong With Having a Secret Assassination Court? - Defense - GovExec.com

At least the president's appropriation of power to summarily kill Americans is extra-legal. It hasn't been codified or approved by any other branch of government. In justifying assassinations, Obama can't invoke any congressional or judicial actions; he can only repeat Richard Nixon's infamous maxim: "If the president does it, it's not illegal."

So it's not surprising to learn that the Obama Administration has considered establishing a special, secret court to authorize targeted killings. Modeled after the FISA court, which authorizes national-security-related domestic surveillance, a Targeted Assassinations Program (TAP) court -- my name for it -- would provide judicial cover for the president's actions without providing substantive judicial review.

"Having the executive being the prosecutor, the judge, the jury and the executioner all in one is very contrary to the traditions and the laws of this country," newly elected Maine Senator Angus King asserted, in support of proposals for a TAP court.

But in essence, the executive would remain prosecutor, judge, and jury, even if the law required a little judicial approval.

sigh
Instapundit » Blog Archive » FBI: Our Surveillance Strategy Is “Privileged And Confidential.”

[The] Obama administration’s surveillance strategy in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision that the installation of a GPS tracker on a vehicle amounted to a search under the Fourth Amendment remains “privileged and confidential,” the Justice Department claims in newly released memos.
What has been made public is that, following the high court’s Jan. 23 decision, the Federal Bureau of Investigation pulled the plug on some 3,000 GPS trackers. The bureau’s general counsel, Andrew Weissmann, acknowledged that fact while speaking at a legal symposium at the University of San Francisco last year.
He also said the government issued two memos on how to proceed following the so-called “Jones” decision — memos the government now claims are not for public consumption. What that boils down to is this: If the government told you how it was spying on you, it would have to kill you.

Very funny, Wired. As Professor Reynolds aptly noted, "They have drones for that." On a not-entirely-unrelated subject: Instapundit » Blog Archive » IT’S MOSTLY JUNK SCIENCE: Jacob Sullum: The Problem With the ‘Public Health Research on Gun Violence’ That Obama Wants You to Pay For.…

CDC research on guns and violence has been dishonest, and debunked as such in the past. Why is it likely to be better? It’s not. As Sullum says: “Why would Obama want to waste taxpayer money on this sort of tendentious, prejudice-confirming research? I bet you can figure that out—without a government grant.”

I know far more about firearms and firearms safety, and firearms law, for that matter, than anyone the CDC is likely to select for any such study. And yet I don't get to make public health policy...

Why should self-defense and firearms policy be treated as a "public health" measure, anyway? I mean, it's not like they're going to declare their political opposition insane and ship them off to Siberia, is it...?

And as for the gun banners' favorite argument (well, second favorite, if you consider "for the chiiiiildren!" to be an argument), "I suppose you want a nuke, too?", Milt Wolfe has some advice on How to crush Democrats' dumbest (but pervasive) gun control argument

The limits of the Second Amendment is a fair question that deserves an answer. It's simple: Law-abiding, free people should have the right to arm themselves with whatever weapons their government would use against them.

If the world is sufficiently dangerous that the police require semi-automatic rifles with large-capacity magazines, then do not the free citizens who are sovereign over the police and who also live in the same dangerous world deserve to similarly protect themselves from it? In fact, are not the citizens -- not the police -- always the first ones who are forced to face those dangers?

Read the whole thing, and admire the photo collection...

In a post aptly entitled Unicorn salesmen, Robb Allen noted the following quote a while back:

The Brady bill will make the streets of America so safe that our nation's police will not even need to carry guns anymore.
William Jefferson Clinton, on TV, while signing the Brady bill in 1993

Battlespace Preperation

By way of Bobbi and Tam, I learned yesterday AM that China Condemns U.S. Gun Ownership As Human Rights Violation.  (Also at the commies' NY Consulate, Full Text of Human Rights Record of the United States in 2011; and at David Codrea.)


Meanwhile, by way of Daily Pundit, it seems that China Daily feels that US Memorial Day marked by excessive patriotism|.

I do believe that we have here a new definition of "chutzpah."  The old definition, of course, was murdering your parents and then pleading for mercy as an orphan.

Now, it's murdering a hundred million citizens subjects, either by shooting or starvation or grinding them under the treads of tanks on global television, ruining your agricultural base so millions more starve, ruining schools and more farms by forcing the adoption of an absurd "micro-industrial" model, restricting reproductive rights, forcing mass migration, Great Leaps Forward and Cultural Revolutions, destroying thousands of years of cultural artifacts, invading other nations with no cultural or linguistic relationship, committing cultural genocide by suppressing those nations cultures, languages, and religions, and then claiming that "Oceania has always been part of..." they have always been part of your country...

...lecturing other nations that point out your failings to mind their own business...

...And then telling Americans (and the world) that the facts that Americans love their country and own a lot of guns is an indication that America is some kind of hell hole where "basic human rights" are denied or non-existent...

I see the following possibilities:

1. The Chicoms are hoping that liberals/progressives/socialists/Occutards will believe it, and that they can get Obama re-elected "to fix it."
2. The Chicoms have given up on Obama, see a great conflict coming, and this is Battlespace Preparation¹.  That is, they are hoping to weaken public opinion at home (a la Viet Nam) and to isolate us internationally, before that reckless cowboy Romney is elected...
3. Either way, they are angling to have reduce our effectiveness in the United Nations, which is about to consider a world treaty on small arms, including restrictions on private ownership of same.

 This all reads like standard-issue commie propaganda, White variety².

Things to consider:

• China's economy is in no better shape than ours, and is possibly worse.  Just because they can build a lot of factories, and pay the slaves peasants workforce a pittance, does not mean they are prosperous or even developing.  See reports of phantom cities, for example.
• China can buy a surplus Russian aircraft carrier, but it still can't round up enough canoes to invade Taiwan^{3.  Hell, they're having trouble getting that flattop shipshape, let alone sea-worthy.}
• They outnumber us.  So what?  Westerners have always been fascinated by the sheer size of the Chinese population, convinced that it was the ultimate market, or an invincible force.  Neither.  It's a lot of peasants. And those peasants are broken up into a multitude of ethnic groups, most of whom don't care for each other, or Beijing. Works for whatever bunch of bandits are currently running things, as long as the MPs have plenty of ammo.  Don't run out.

Now, I'm not saying I think the commies are planning on initiating force with us.  I think they'd be utter idiots to do so.  If they do, I advise them to take out the entire Anglosphere, including all of it's deployed military forces.  Especially any SSBNs that may be lurking... anywhere, really.


1.  What we used to call Intelligence Preparation of the Battlefield; propaganda falls under Psychological Operations, which in turn falls under Military Intelligence.
2.  Propaganda comes in three basic flavors, white, gray, and black.  White propaganda is attributed to the force or organization that devised it, i.e., the Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, etc.  Gray propaganda is attributed to a third party, i.e., any reporting in the MSM about the Great and Good Saint Obama.  And black propaganda is either unattributed, or is run by a "false flag" operation.  Any of the three may be either the truth, the truth "spun" to make one side look good or bad, or a pack of bald-faced lies. 
3.  Yes, I know, they could pull something sneaky involving special operations forces secreted in great big wooden horses on container ships.  Calls for a lot of coordination and luck.   Any nation that tries such an operation based on luck deserves to get it's ass kicked.

Out Of The Shadows

CIA remembers those lost in covert war on terror | Local News | The Seattle Times

Code-talkers seek recognition

NCPR News - Mohawks seek recognition for WWII code talkers

Everyone knows about the Marines' Navajo Code-Talkers in WWII.  Not much is known about the variety of Native American Code-Talkers the Army used in both World Wars.

According to The Comanche Code Talkers of World War II by William C. Meadows, in WWI tribes involved included Cherokee, Cheyenne, Choctaw, Comanche, Osage, and Sioux, mostly with the 36^th Division, out of Oklahoma.Most of them simply spoke their language, but the Choctaw developed specific codes for military terminology from their language.

In WWII, use of Native American "Code Talkers" by the Army expanded to include those who served in that role in WWI, as well  as Assiniboine, Cherokee, Chippewa/Oneida, Hopi, Kiowa, Menominee, Muscogee/Creek, Pawnee, Sac/Fox, Seminole, and other Sioux nations. Most of these were part of National Guard (state-raised) units, but a few were recruited for or assigned specifically to communications units with the intent of using them as a sort of organic Communications Security asset.

So, why haven't we heard more about these?  Why do most think the Marines' Navajo were the original, and only, Code-Talkers?  Well, the Naval Service has always been more savvy about public relations; note those who question the Navy helping with the making of a movie about the SEALS...

Seen at eHam.

Cracked!

Modern Algorithms Crack 18th Century Secret Code | Wired Science | Wired.com

The mind boggles

Really.

Obama ordered to secure denver airport bunker by military-Larkinized.com

A disturbing report prepared by General Alexey Maslov, the Senior Military Representative of the Permanent Mission of Russia to NATO, states that he has been notified by the Americans of their plan to hold a DEFCON 1 “Cocked Pistol” maximum readiness alert drill on 27 September which will be overseen by President Obama at one the United States most secure bunkers located beneath the Denver International Airport.

Big freakin' deal, right? A drill, so what?
Read the rest, if you don't mind gettin' teh crazy all over your monitor...

"Lost in Translation"

Or: The more the Army changes, the more it remains the same.
Lost in Translation: How the Army Wastes Linguists Like Me | Danger Room | Wired.com
I was offered the opportunity to deploy to support Desert Storm.  "I'm a Korean linguist, what'll I be doing, guarding the SCIF?"
"No, driving a truck."
"Did that on an exercise in Egypt, I'd rather storm Baghdad, it'd be safer."

Dear Hindmost

Do you really want to piss off guys who can pull off stunts like this?

Silly question, I know, of course you do.

Schmuck.

Added to "holds" at the library

After reading Julia Child’s Life as a Spy, the review from the Noo Yawk Slimes' "Dining and Wine"* pages: A Covert Affair, by Jennet Conant. "A group portrait of idealists, including Julia and Paul Child, who served in the O.S.S. during World War II."

*NOTE:  I received the review in the NYT Dining and Wine RSS Feed; at the end of the review was a statement that the book review was from the April 3 NYT Review of Books;  since I spend even less time with that than I do with the standard edition of the NYT, I have no idea whether  it will appear in the (increasingly irrelevant) dead tree edition of the Times...

South of the Border...

Rantburg points us to Global Politician's interview with Scott Gulbransen, Author of

"The Silent Invasion" describing Marxism, terrorism, intelligence operations, covert economic warfare, corruption and enemy operatives in Latin America. Gulbransen makes a stunning case that the rumors about units of Chinese, Cuban, Russian, and North Korean nationals being in Mexico, engaging in various anti-American activities. Armed with enough investigation, facts and eyewitness reports to make any defense lawyer whimper, Gulbransen reveals a fraction of the frightening truth about what is going on south of the border, where all threats to the USA mingle. With an overwhelmed and overestimated intelligence community, it is people like Gulbransen who we can rely on to finally notice these things.

If his allegations are true--and I see no reason to believe that they are not true--then Mexico is host to a myriad of agents working against our national interest.

Not that having a myriad of agents in Mexico working against the United States' national interest is anything new.

"Where Fore Art Thou Terrorist?"

From the Emergency Management Magazine blog, Where Fore Art Thou Terrorist?  looks at a policy paper entitled Assessing the Terrorist Threat.

Running the numbers on how many "Americans are known who have been charged or convicted of Islamic terrorist crimes in the USA or elsewhere since January 2009" they inform us that

• 21% are Caucasian-Americans
• 18% are Arab-Americans
• 14% are South Asian-Americans
• 9% are African-Americans
• 4% are Hispanic-Americans
• 2% are Caribbean-American
• 31% of the above, and the largest block, are Somali-Americans

I wonder at the fact that Somali-Americans are not considered African-Americans; perhaps the distinction is between native-born Americans of African descent, and immigrants.

No matter: Hard to reach any useful conclusions when your sample size is only 57 people.

OTOH, it does raise questions about the effectiveness of racial/ethnic profiling for security purposes in the US.  While one African-American Seattle Police Officer I knew did famously state that anyone would be justified in questioning his off-duty presence in then (notoriously, stereotypically Scandinavian) neighborhood of Ballard in the middle of the night, it gets a little trickier when you are dealing with (for example) an airport in a city with the mixed ethnic make-up of Seattle.  (Not to mention the amount of international business.)

I don't know what the answer is; I was an MI Geek, but I was a SIGINT guy, which means I am biased to the technological side of things; profiling and the like is for HUMINT pukes.  (Hell, I took one of those Internet quizzes for Asperger's Syndrome and came up with full-blown, barely functioning autism.  According to that test, I can barely spell "empathy.")

This all sort of ties in with another article at EM Mag's blog, TSA Aggressive Inspection Issue Undermines Public Confidence.

Analysis...

Donnie Baseball, commenting on reporting of His Imperial Majesty's struggle to find a new head of National Intelligence, asks Is It the Boss Rather Than the Job?

A story at WSJ.com caught my eye with the lede 'Obama Struggles to Fill Intelligence Job.' When I clicked through I encountered the title 'The Job Nobody Wants.' Let me posit an alternative title based on what may be closer to reality: 'The Boss Nobody Wants.' Yes, I think that precious few people are clamoring to serve in an administration whose approval rating is setting land speed records in the southerly direction and that may be on the cusp of getting obliterated into lame-duckdom at the polls. Remember, Obama didn't have deep connections coming into his term so he resorted to ex-Clintonites and his academic cronies. Given the tax troubles of many, he has resorted to some pretty appalling B-Teamers, but it was the dawn of a new age for America and there was no shortage of true believers to fill posts under The One. Can the same be said now? I think any available Clintonites have been given the secret signal to stay away from the cratering Obama administration. So beyond this loyal party core, are there really people out there looking to sign up with an administration that could go down in history as so feckless as to bring the world into wars, an administration that encouraged the most crooked distortions of the legislation process to pass a 2,700 {page} pack of lies that will ruin healthcare for the majority of Americans, an administration that is nothing remotely close to what it billed itself to the American people? Are there really those people out there? Maybe.

By Jove, I think he's on to something!