naval-gazer

In Aviation there are nautical miles for ground distance, knots for speed and feet for altitude. But in US aviation there are also statute miles for airport visibility and feet for runway visibility.

Customary units are bigger mess than imperial vs. metric.

Typical modern war is net loss for every participant.

The US could probably do without China but US partners would not. Australia, Japan, South Korea etc. would at some point break rank.

The US and Taiwan don't have military alliance. The Taiwan Relations Act is carefully worded to avoid any commitment and maintain strategic ambiguity and keep both sides in check. The strategic interest of the US is limited in terms of the cost of defending Taiwan.

The article and many articles like it fail to explain the big picture. The US has indirect way to counter Chinese aggression. Sea blockade from distance where the US has military advantage would cut almost all sea traffic to China and isolate it from the world economy. Chinese are well aware of their position as a logistic cul-de-sac. The Belt and Road Initiative can be seen as long term strategic plan to go around this problem. It loses money but Chinese need it to work so they do it anyway.

There are two possibilities:

1. it's practical impossibility to make unarmed nuclear warhead to explode spontaneously. The worst thing that can happen is conventional explosion that spreads the contents into the sea.

2. it's ancient fission bomb designs where water getting inside the warhead slows down neutrons and starts the chain reaction.

I'm 99.9 percent sure than no ICBM ever had the #2 types. Only bombers had them few decades. Even if there were, putting one into a sub would be the definition of insanity. One mistake and Murmansk is gone seems too risky even for Soviets.

Power efficiency makes lasers in fighters problematic. The current cutting edge lasers have 35 percent efficiency. If you heat the target with 100 kW power, the fighter absorbs 300 kW of heat. You can use fuel to absorb the heat but heat exchangers adds lots of weight and extra complications.

Reflective mirror surface is good for stealth if the angle is right.

Despite what other commentators say, mirrors would work in theory. In fact lasers themselves have mirrors.

High quality mirror material with > 99.8% reflectivity near infrared region would do the job. Multi layer metal substrate, usually copper based or fused silica to withstand thermal expansion and dielectric coating. High macroscopic surface quality is not needed. It's enough that it reflects.

Even the mirrors used in laser erode. Laser weapon uses larger mirror area to focus tighter beam to the target. But unlike laser mirror missile surface don't have to withstand erosion long time and you can rotate the missile to divide the thermal power to larger area.

There are practical reasons why the best practical option is not mirror but material with high thermal resistance. Hypersonic missiles already use those materials and they are protected against current generation of military lasers (50 to few 100s of kilowatts). You need megawatt lasers if you try shooting down HGV.

This is not anecdotal information.

This is public person directly involved laying down criminal blackmail attempt accusation whose goal was to stop him from investigating the source of the information. If Besoz is lying, Pecker and AMI can sue him for false accusations and win handsome sum of money.

Things that make this interesting case:

Pecker was not worried about himself, because National Enquirer has right to publish pictures they get. He wanted to hide source of the information. That's weird.

Pecker surely is not worried about the wellbeing of some paparazzi or low level information source. Attempted a blackmail and exposing himself to criminal liability means that there is something there.

It looks like criminal blackmail attempt. In a normal case Bezos would just forward all evidence to authorities for more investigation and prosecution. He would issue short press release later when the case goes to court.

Because Bezos thinks there is a political angle, and he wants to really find out who is behind this and expose them, this seems to be the best course of action.

The sole reason for this blackmail attempt was to make Bezos to back down and stop trying to find the source of this information. This means someone was worried and it's not just normal paparazzi stuff. Peckers attempt has backfired spectacularly.

With all the publicity, any individual in the government or in some telecom company who might have illegally gained access to those records must be panicking.

If there is foreign involvement, this will become a counterintelligence investigation. If Trump is involved, Mueller will take a look. Pecker has already cooperation agreement with Mueller, so Pecker is in real trouble.

Paying for informants is one of the most efficient uses of government money. It's not a large sum.

In many states FBI has run out of replacement tires for vehicles, DNA swab kits, trace evidence filters. FBI can't pay for translator services, etc. They can't pay for informants.

Root causes for this mess:

* Navy culture where chronic sleep deprivation is used as substitute for battlefield heroics. Navy aviators have enough sleep scheduled. Surface Navy has not seen battle for ages. Being tired is a way to show you are pushing it to the limit. Everybody being so tired that they microsleep in the bridge is the standard condition. People in the bridge start teleporting from one place to another because you keep falling asleep constantly. Driving a car that tired is not allowed, but it's OK in the Navy.

* Lack of basic seamanship skills and experience. Officers are rotated inside the ship and outside the ship to completely unrelated posts. They learn basics of everything but master nothing. Navy officers have less experience in basic ship driving than anyone in the merchant fleet. Other navies specialize officers for different areas. Training is cut because there is no time for it, but that's not the core reason. You would need less training with more specialization.

* 7th fleet leadership continues to be a corrupt mess. Most of the ongoing bad stuff related to Navy happens in the 7th. Fat Leonard scandal, collisions...