ClearedHot

Number of gun related deaths in the U.S. in 2009 = 12,632 Number of deaths on U.S. highways in 2009 = 33,963 I guess we better ban cars, they are far more dangerous...

Things are different when you are racing through the air six miles above the ground. Mundane mistakes can become disruptions for hundreds of people, creating news and likely even fodder for comedians. And so it was for pilots of United Airlines Flight 940 on Monday night. One spilled coffee accidentally on the Boeing 777’s avionics while over Canada en route to Frankfurt from Chicago. When radios went goofy, a pilot put the “No Radio” code (7600) in the transponder but mistakenly entered 7500, which means hijacking or unlawful interference. When that happens, there’s a lot more than crying over spilled coffee. A Transport Canada report said Canada’s defense department was notified, but that with the help of United’s dispatch staff the flight crew confirmed it to be a communication issue and not a hijacking. The plane diverted to Toronto. A spokeswoman for Transport Canada told the Associated Press that in addition to communications problems, the plane also had some navigation problems. The Boeing 777 was carrying 241 passengers and a crew of 14. United said it flew them back to Chicago on another plane and put them up in hotel rooms overnight. They flew to Frankfurt on Tuesday aboard another 777. Spilled coffee, by the way, has long been a problem for commercial jets. Airlines typically have to repair corrosion in cockpit floor and sidewall areas that results from years of coffee spills.

Same to you brother.

Geez brother you are gonna have a stroke with all that anger. I was NOT having a go at you and wish you and your magazine nothing but success. I was looking for context when you show up out of the blue offering a free calendar after having cut us all off because someone made a suggestion. For what it is worth I enjoyed reading the magazine and know that you went to considerable cost to produce and mail it.

Last time this went down everyone got pissed and you cancelled my sub?

The movers broke my my friend's 46" plasma this past summer and I think he mentioned a limit on reimbursement for plasma TV's. Have that TV mounted on the wall in my Man Cave. Internet Ready and a superb picture.

When I completed the test the guy made a big deal about my excellent score and said I should go by clothing sales on my way out and pick up a patch...I chose to go to the Class Six instead.

All, I can personally vouch for "Congressman". I know him personally. He is legit and is asking for honest input (no rumors, no emotions, just facts), so that he can ask honest questions about what happened. CH

In a related story, Rep Hank Johnson is now worried Texas will tip over from the weight of M2's guns.

Want this patch...

Ok....horrible story, but what about the hat??? Firefighter Pat Quagliariello charged in hit-and-run death of Brooklyn immigrant An NYPD detective took his brother to a firehouse instead of a police station after the smoke eater mowed down a pedestrian in Brooklyn and left him for dead, authorities say. Pat Quagliariello vanished from the firehouse and waited at least four hours before turning himself in at the 62nd Precinct stationhouse. Prosecutors charged him Tuesday with criminally negligent homicide, speeding, leaving the scene of a fatal accident and using a mobile phone while driving. Guatemalan immigrant Manuel Tzajguachiac, 25, was killed. "He was texting and speeding when he struck the pedestrian," Assistant District Attorney Craig Esswein said at the firefighter's arraignment. Detective Anthony Quagliariello wasn't disciplined for picking up his brother after the 12:30 a.m. wreck on Oct. 10 at 20th Ave. and 65th St. "The detective was forthcoming in reporting what happened, and there's nothing at this point to indicate that he interfered with the investigation or prosecution of his brother," Deputy Police Commissioner Paul Browne said. It wasn't clear if Pat Quagliariello was drinking before the Bensonhurst crash. After his initial arrest, he admitted just that he owned the BMW SUV. Then he got a lawyer and clammed up, police sources said. Prosecutors said Tzajguachiac, who worked two jobs, crossed against the light. Quagliariello, who joined the FDNY in 2004, pleaded not guilty and was ordered held on $50,000 bail. He was suspended for 30 days after the wreck and has since been assigned to desk duty. The firefighter's lawyer, Joseph Tacopina, told the court that Tzajguachiac had a blood-alcohol content of .24 - three times the legal limit. Prosecutors didn't challenge the statement. Esswein said Tzajguachiac's DNA was found on Quagliariello's vehicle and vowed to win the case. "There will be a jail sentence - an upstate jail sentence," Esswein said.

Don't forget the bacon Infused bourbon...two of my most favorite things in one!

Drones Converge on California, Ready to Take Off Five years ago, the Pentagon was on cusp of an air-combat revolution. For a few brief, heady months in late 2005, it looked like the U.S. military might soon launch full-scale development of a new class of fast, lethal Unmanned Aerial Vehicles eventually capable of replacing all kinds of fighter jets, from the older F-15s, F-16s and F-18s to the latest F-22s. But the revolution fizzled when the Air Force abandoned its share of the so-called Joint Unmanned Combat Air System effort. Manned jets continued to dominate, culminating in today’s mammoth, $300-billion F-35 program. The embers of upheaval kept burning, almost invisibly. The technology from the 2005 effort survived in various forms, slowly maturing amid a growing demand for combat UAVs. Today, no fewer than three separate killer drone designs — two of them direct descendants of the original J-UCAS demonstrators — have converged on two airfields in California for flight tests. The revolution flared up again without many people noticing. While the F-35 still gobbles up the bulk of the Pentagon’s fighter funding, jet-powered killer drones are back — and revolution is once again a real prospect. High-endurance armed drones such as the General Atomics Predator have been a fixture of U.S. military operations since the mid-1990s air war over the Balkans. Besides being cheaper to buy and operate, robot aircraft carry fuel in place of a pilot and so can stay in the air longer. Plus, if they crash or get shot down, nobody gets hurt. That means the military can assign drones to what a robot-industry insider from Boeing called the “worst down-and-dirty missions that even the nuttiest pilot wouldn’t want to do.” But today’s drones are “fair-weather” killers, too slow to survive the sophisticated air defenses of, say, China or Iran. To bring the advantages of robot aircraft to high-intensity warfare, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency along with the Air Force and Navy sponsored J-UCAS starting in 2003. Boeing’s X-45 (pictured) competed with the Northrop Grumman-built X-47 to “demonstrate the technical feasibility, military utility and operational value for a networked system of high performance, weaponized unmanned air vehicles,” according to Darpa. By 2005, the J-UCAS program had sent its prototypes on mock bombing runs and proved the drones could develop their own tactics on the fly. The “Common Operating System” meant to control the speedy, lethal bots was particularly promising, and with it J-UCAS even threatened to upstage the $300-billion F-35 manned-fighter program. The new drones were “on the cusp of making history in the aviation world,” said the insider. Then in 2006, the axe fell. The Air Force withdrew from the program. Officially, the Air Force wanted to shift its focus and cash to the new, manned (and ultimately short-lived) “2018 bomber.” There were concerns that algorithms might not be trustworthy to make combat decisions, quite yet. Unofficially, the move away from J-UCAS might have reflected concerns among the Air Force’s top brass that the new killer drone could hasten the demise of the traditional fighter pilot. In any event, without the Air Force J-UCAS collapsed. The Navy continued funding the X-47 for a modest series of tests. The original X-45 ended up an exhibit in the Smithsonian’s Air and Space Museum, never to fly again. Or so observers believed. In fact, Boeing had secretly continued work on a new version of the X-45, apparently believing the Air Force would come back around to the idea of fighter-style killer drones. Meanwhile, a high-profile think piece co-written by future Navy undersecretary Bob Work (.pdf) helped persuade the Navy to raise its expectations for the X-47. Sensing a new momentum for armed UAVs, General Atomics spent its own money to develop a bigger, jet-powered cousin of the Predator called the Avenger. In the summer of 2009, the Air Force published a “road map” showing how robots might replace nearly every kind of manned aircraft in today’s arsenal. Just a few months later, the air branch lifted the (patchy) veil of secrecy surrounding its fighter-like MQ-170 spy drone, built by Lockheed Martin. The stage has been set for an unofficial revival of J-UCAS. There are no official requirements for a new fighter drone — yet. But the Pentagon is obviously very, very interested. As is often the case, the drama is taking place in California. Northrop’s X-47 is at the Navy’s China Lake base in the Mojave Desert, running ground tests prior to a planned first flight “before the end of the year.” Not to be outdone by its former J-UCAS rival, Boeing two weeks ago bolted the new-and-improved X-45 to the back of a 747 for a ride from St. Louis to the Golden State’s Edwards Air Force Base, where the bot will have its first flight early next year. General Atomics beat both of the bigger companies into the air: The Avenger has racked up scores of test flights at Edwards since 2009. Years ago, one analyst called J-UCAS “the worst-funded good idea in decades.” There’s still not a lot of government money behind the current revival: The Navy has allocated around a billion dollars for X-47 tests. The X-45 and the Avenger are both company-funded efforts. But the idea is as good as ever. And with the impending first flights of the X-45 and X-47, killer drones are about to get a second shot at transforming aerial warfare. Danger Room will be there, every step of the way.

I have the DVD to watch this weekend and have been reading the book "War" written by Sebastian Junger who is the journalist that shot the video for the movie. There is also an associated picture book called "Infidel" written by Tim Wetherington that documents all the key players. This is a must read if you want to understand what it is like on the front lines of hell in Afghanistan.

You understand the local situation better than us but given some of the other videos of this same guy that are out there, there should be some leadership changes. Such a tremendous waste and a lot of people had to know what was going on.

Houston Store Owner Kills 3 Would-Be Robbers HOUSTON -- Police say a Houston jewelry store owner has shot and killed three men who tried to rob his business. Houston police spokesman Kese Smith says two men were in the store Thursday afternoon pretending to be customers when a third man burst into the store and stated, "This is a robbery." All three men then pulled out pistols, tied up the store owner's wife and took her to a back room. They were trying to tie up the owner, when he took a handgun from his waistband and fatally shot one of the suspects. Smith said he then grabbed a shotgun and shot and killed the other two suspects. The store owner was shot in the stomach and taken to a Houston hospital. Smith says his wife was not hurt.

Harumpfff

Mexican aerial drone crashes in backyard of El Paso home EL PASO (AP) — An unmanned drone belonging to the Mexican government crash landed Tuesday in El Paso's Lower Valley, officials confirmed today. "I was told that it crashed in somebody's back yard, and that no one was injured. I was paged at 6:28 p.m. on Tuesday, so it happened shortly before that. We were told it was not a police matter," said Detective Mike Baranyay, a spokesman for the El Paso Police Department. The crash occurred at Yarbrough and Loop 375. Police said the U.S. Border Patrol seized the aircraft, which was to be transported back to one of the international bridges so that Mexican officials could recover the drone.

Jerusalem (CNN) -- The Israeli Air Force shot down an unidentified flying object over the Dimona nuclear plant in the Negev Desert Thursday, the Israel Defense Forces said. The object appeared in a designated no-fly zone, the air force was scrambled and the object was shot down, the IDF said. The object could have been a party balloon, the IDF said, but forces have not yet found the debris to determine what it was. There have been unconfirmed media reports that it was a motor-driven object. The air force reacted according to procedure when the object was spotted, the IDF said. The Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz reported that last October "IDF warplanes intercepted an Israeli ultralight aircraft that accidentally flew into the area and forced it to land at an airstrip in southern Israel." It also reported that "an Israeli surface-to-air missile downed a crippled Israeli fighter-bomber that strayed into the restricted zone" during the Six Day War in 1967. The craft's pilot was killed.

With the promotion I break even.

Yeah...what I said.

Mission first, People always.

Well...sort of...he is in an odd situation and I think he could argue rate protection to the amount he is currently making. I don't see them taking money because you are promoted. He certainly will NOT get the 2010 rate for the next rank, but his BAH should not go down.

"Two"...No HUD...gasp, how did us old farts ever learn to fly or land the T-38? I never found T-38 TOLD to be that difficult, I guess because in the old days we did it with an abacus.