We need to learn quickly to keep up with the massive change around us so we don't get run over. We need to outrun change.
More cool pictures of Heritage Flight presentations, all courtesy of U.S. Air Force:
Nice view from underneath of two P-51s and an F-15, with great comparison of relative size. Notice space used for engine(s) for visual of relative power, with intake, engine, and exhaust of F-15 being about same length as an entire P-51:
P-51, F-16, and F-15:
Came across a great resource on nuclear armaments as I browsed the web looking for some particular information. The book is Physics and Nuclear Arms Today (Readings from Physics Today)
It has lots of articles from the late 1970s through 1991. Reason I bought the book is for one specific article in 1983 dealing with US and Soviet nuclear forces. A table within that article was updated with a detailed inventory of strategic weaponry as of 1990. Several posts will discuss the 1990 inventory in detail.
Likelihood of destroying a hardened missile silo
Continue reading “Comments on US and Soviet nuclear arsenals in 1983 – #1”
Saudi Arabia and Russia had a falling-out over the weekend about controlling production levels and prices. As a result Saudi Arabia is going to cut prices and increase production.
They have announced they will cut prices by somewhere between $6 and $8 a barrel in April, depending on destination.
Overnight SpaceX successfully launched a Falcon 9 booster with fully loaded Dragon capsule on a Commercial Resupply Service mission (CRS-20), lifting supplies to the International Space Station.
This specific capsule already has been to ISS twice. This will make its third trip up and third recovery.
Successful recovery of this specific Falcon 9 booster back at Cape Canaveral marked the 50th time that SpaceX has recovered a booster. Astounding.
This launch was at 10 minutes before midnight, resulting in quite different visuals than a daytime launch. You can watch the launch, recovery of the booster, deployment of the capsule, and deployment of the solar panels here:
Continue reading “50th successful recovery of a SpaceX Falcon 9 booster”
To provide reference points for really big numbers, I’ve been accumulating information from articles that describe big things.
An article in the Wall Street Journal gives some detail of the fourth quarter financial results for Wells Fargo: 1/14/20 – Wall Street Journal – Wells Fargo CEO: A Wonderful Bank That Made ‘Some Terrible Mistakes’.
Top-line Revenue for 4th quarter:
Continue reading “Reference points of big numbers from the banking industry”
Some cool pictures of Heritage Flight presentations, all courtesy of U.S. Air Force:, with two more sets of photos to follow:
Superb profiles of P-51, F-15, and A-10 with great comparison of size of WWII and modern fighters:
A great age span – F-86 (Korea), P-38 (World War II), F-4 (Vietnam and Cold War), and A-10 (Cold War, Global War on Terror):
William H. Hughes, Jr., also known as Barry “Tim” O’Beirne deserted from the U.S. Air Force in 1983. He was found in 2018, arrested, tried by a general court martial, then convicted on September 5, 2018. He was dismissed from service and given a reprimand. He also spent 45 days in prison.
On October 8, 2019 the United States Air Force Court of Criminal Appeals upheld the conviction.
At the end of this post, I’ll ponder the severity of the sentence.
The disgraced former-officer, now-felon is William H. Hughes, Jr.
He had been hiding for 35 years under the assumed name of Barry “Tim” O’Beirne.
Previous post provides more detail on Deserter from the U.S. Air Force apprehended and tried.
Watching news reports sometimes provides a glimpse into worlds far away that I’ll never visit. Such reports give some hint of what that world is like. There are lots of posts on my blog about such worlds. I wrote lots of posts about Silk Road, the on-line drug/ weapon/ body parts/ hacking tools/ contract murder web site.
An article in the Daily Bulletin on 2/29/20 provides another from a telescope of a distant planet: Authorities seize 2,669 pounds of meth from San Bernardino County stash house and storage facility.
DEA led several raids on February 20 and 21 with the only explicitly mentioned assistance being San Bernardino County Sheriff deputies.
What they found:
A treasure trove of formerly classified materials on nuclear launch procedures in the 1960s and 1970s were published by National Security Archive on 3/13/19: How the Strategic Air Command Would Go to Nuclear War.
I will mention a variety of tidbits I found particularly interesting. If you enjoy this post, you will definitely want to read the full article.
You may see a lot of material you haven’t seen in print before.
Just to be clear, every comment in this post from this point forward is based on specific comments made in the linked article.
Article has extensive discussion on the increasing readiness of bomber and missile forces. Preparedness at levels DEFCON 5 through 1 are described.
Article also describes some of the various Postures, with explanation of what aircrews, maintainers, and missile crews would have been doing at different levels of readiness. Postures are described as immediate efforts to get bombers and missiles launched.
Previous post strung together my guesses, assumptions, and speculation to develop a table of how many nuclear weapons are on day-to-day alert and how many additional weapons could be generated to alert in what length of time.
Those guesses are for 2020, well after the U.S. won the Cold War and the Soviet Union, the bad ol’ Evil Empire, collapsed.
What would a comparable estimate look like for the depths of the Cold War? This post combines another string of guesses, assumptions, and speculation to figure out the available of U.S. nuclear weapons in 1980. Why that date? Well, it corresponds to when President Reagan won election, took office the following year, and then took necessary steps to conclusively win the Cold War. It also corresponds to the time frame when I was active duty.
Strategic Bombers
I’m fuzzy on number and armament of strategic bombers back in the 1980s. Wikipedia has List of B-52 Units of the United States Air Force. Going through the list of units active in 1980 I count 17 wings with 29 squadrons.
Continue reading “Number and alert status of U.S. nuclear weapons in 1980.”
Release of the December production data in North Dakota lets us look at production for the full year. Following graphs show the average daily production and total for the year. Multiplying the monthly data by the sweet crude price in North Dakota reported in the Director’s Cut lets us see the value of production by month and total value for the year.
For a few indicators of the cost for some big projects and thus some reference points for big numbers, take a look at the Nuclear Notebook – United States nuclear forces, 2020, published by The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists.
Some projects with their specific costs mentioned in the article:
Previous posts have described the count of nuclear weapons in the U.S. inventory and how they are deployed. Future posts will dive into the inventory of other nuclear powers. Plan to have some discussion of the U.S. inventory at various times in the past.
Reading the various articles made me wonder how many weapons are available in what time frame.
(Update 2/28/20: Realized the photos of 1970s and ’80s weapon originally included in this post would be better in a comparable post discussing weapons in 1980. Photos moved. New photos added to this post.)
For example, the Minuteman-III loaded with the Mk12A reentry vehicle can carry 3 warheads but are only loaded with 1. It would take months to reconfigure 200 missiles with another 400 warheads.
Of the 12 Ohio-class subs not in refueling, 8 are usually at sea with 4 of those on-station. The other 4 are hours or days away from their assigned station.
There are guessed 200 ALCMs at Minot and 100 gravity bombs at Whiteman which would take a fair amount of time to load. It would take an even long time to transport the remaining 550 weapons out to Minot and Whiteman.
So, I took a wild guess at how many weapons are available to the president immediately and long it would take to get the remaining inventory on line.
Continue reading “Number and alert status of U.S. nuclear weapons in 2020.”
Some background data for oil in North Dakota provides insight for the production info.
Drilling rigs have become more productive in recent years. In the past, say before 2014, the number of rigs directly tied into production levels. Now, with a variety of technologies, such as multi-well pads for example, the drilling time is down so the wells per rig are up.
A far lower number of rigs is needed to keep new well production rolling.
Rig count since 2010:
Continue reading “Details behind North Dakota oil production.”
North Dakota oil production in December 2019 is fourth highest level on record, after setting new production level in 5 of last 6 months.
Average daily production in the state was 1,475,685 barrels of oil per day (bopd) (preliminary) after hitting the highest level ever of 1,519,037 bopd (revised) in November. The November production broke the state’s record for the fifth time in six months, and the twelfth time in the last twenty months.
The routine record-level production is being achieved with stable and low level of drilling rigs and without the wild-west craziness in the local economy that existed before 2014.
Graph of the average daily production in the state and in the Bakken pool: