Final Countdown Dogfight Scene

My all time favorite aviation movie is,  The Final Countdown.   It was produced in 1980, and starred Kirk Douglass and the US Navy supercarrier Nimitz. Simple premise: what if a modern era US Navy carrier taskforce found itself in a time warp and ended up poised to resist the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor that triggered World War Two?

The scene that never fails to thrill involves World War Two era Japanese zero fighter aircraft attacking a defenseless cabin cruising yacht. 

The propeller driven zeros are then confronted by two modern era F-14 Tomcat fighter jet aircraft.  The Tomcat is now retired from duty, but 33 years ago, when The Final Countdown was made, it was the Navy's 'Top Gun' airborne, lethal weapon.
 
The thing I like about this aerial combat sequence is the morality dance at play  The zeros cravenly attack an unarmed civilian vessel and blow it up.  Enter the US Navy jets with vastly superior performance and the moral high ground to boot.  The overmatched, bad boy Zeros get what's coming to them. Not complicated; stirring music, good versus evil, designed to elicit cheering and emotion.

Japanese Zero Fighter

F-14 Tomcat Navy Fighter Jet

Here is a link to this very exciting movie example of aerial combat. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyjNInIH4Hw

Micro-Drones - Talk About Scary

So,  I've had ocassion to write about drones before.  I just became aware of a new 'micro' type of drone that are cheap to make and are designed to function in swarms.  They can be used to observe, find and identify, and, potentially, to destroy a human target.  

The military using these things is scary enough. The next step after that, given how cheap and how easy they will surely be to produce - the next step will be for these to be available on the open market.  Slight modifications will allow your average psychopath to use them to hurt or kill, with little risk of getting caught.  Settling scores with lethal precision will be a simple matter of modifying a drone you can buy for $25 and sending it on its way.

Here is a link to a video about this new, very scary kind of drone.  Here's the link... http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2281403/U-S-Air-Force-developing-terrifying-swarms-tiny-unmanned-drones-hover-crawl-kill-targets.html

Veteran's Day

So, it's another Federal holiday; a day set aside to remember and honor our miltary and all the veterans who have lost their lives as well as those who risked all to defend our nation. I am proud to have served for more than six years in the U.S. Army, on active duty in Germany and later in the Army Reserve.

I strongly support our government's efforts through the Veteran's Administration to provide healthcare and access to jobs and  education for the men and women who stood tall in defense of America.  These good people deserve our respect and must never be forgotten.

I have to say that I believe the wars we waged in Iraq and also in Afghanistan did a terrible disservice to those in uniform. We know now that the Bush/Cheney Iraq war should never have happened.  The case for that war was fabricated by politicians, who used false claims of 'Weapons of Mass Destruction' that never existed to justify American military action.  Even now, the cost of this folly has not been fully calculated.  Thousands of Americans and perhaps a million or more Iraqis died in that war that should never have been.  More than a trillion American tax dollars were squandered  on a war that, in the end, served no one other than oil oligarchs and defense contractors fattening their bank accounts callously at the expense of the American people and the soldiers who were sent into harm's way.

Likewise, the war in Afghanistan has gone very badly and never should have happened, at least not in the way it did.  Going after Bin Laden and his terrorist band was certainly right and worthwhile.  Evolving the mission into one of nation building was a mistake from the get-go.  

George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and their cabal of sociopathic neocons bear total responsibility for these two wars and their lasting consequences.  History is already judging them very harshly for the extreme harm they did to America and its people, as well as the people of Iraq and Afghanistan. 

I am thankful that President Barak Obama has ended the war in Iraq and our military presence there, and is on track to removing the last of our troops from Afghaistan in 2014.  Extracting our military from war is a lot harder than getting ourselves into that kind of conflict.

At this point in history,  we need a complete review and reordering of American military doctrine.  Right now, the Federal budget is still weighted down by annual military expenditures that exceed $700 billion.  That's more than the defense budgets of all the rest of the world's developed nations combined. There is absolutely no justification for that.  The only area where more money should be spent is in Veteran's care and services. We don't need more Navy ships. We don't need more expensive missiles and war fighting aircraft.  Enough already. We have more of that kind of broad front war fighting hardware than we will ever use.  It makes no sense to break the economy to buy military capability we are highly unlikely ever to need.  A strong economy is the best defense against the kind of conflict we deal with these days.

The best thing we can do for American Veterans is to committ ourselves to keeping them out of harm's way unless our country is truly threatened. A step in the right direction would be to recognize a jingoistic fool running for congress when we see one and avoid voting for him.

My Time in the Army

After I completed my first four years of college, I enlisted in the U.S.Army.  My father had been an officer in the Army Air Corps (now the U.S. Air Force) during World War Two. He went to officer Candidate School (OCS), so I signed up for OCS as well. I began my military service as an enlisted man. I went through basic training and advanced enlisted training at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. Not a pleasant place. Hot and sticky humid in the Summer; cold as hell in the winter.  Adjusting to military life was not easy.  Mentally and physicallly, it was and remains the toughest thing I have ever experienced. 

It took about 16 weeks, but I got through enlisted training okay.  I was then assigned to the Army Officer Candidate School at Fort Belvior, Virginia, about 15 miles south of Washingfton, D. C. The enlisted training was a cake walk compared to OCS. The first twelve weeks were near constant stress.  I understand why they did it. The whole idea is to train candidates to function effectively in a stressful environment. We're talking about soldiering.  Officers are supposed to lead. They're supposed to be able to function effectively in the most stressful and dangerous circumstances.

We were pushed to our personal limits and beyond. Despite my personal immaturity,  I made it. I got all the way through the 26 weeks of training. I was commissioned a Second Lieutenant.   I am the oldest child and it met a lot to my father that I followed in his footsteps...at least far as the military is concerned. He was proud of me.  I also felt pretty good about myself, having endured the experience and pushed my personal envelope well beyond its previous limits.

I was assigned to a branch of the Army called the Adjutant General Corps. I went on from Fort Belvior to Fort Benjamin Harrison, Indiana for branch training.   Compared to the guys that were assigned to combat branches like infantry, artillery, and armor,  a gig in A.G. was relatively easy duty.  Indianapolis was a nice city.   I extended my stay there and took the officer training course in data processing management.

After that, I received my first actual duty assignment in Germany.  My time based in Europe had its ups and downs. I was there for a total of fourteen months before a twist of fate gave me the opportunity to end my active duty military commitment early.  I was honorably discharged and a few months later, I was back living in Seattle, Washington, where I was admitted to the University of Washington for post-graduate studies.  

While a student at the UW, I served in the Army Reserve at a base called Fort Lawton in Seattle. After a few years, I was promoted to the rank of Captain.  That was very gratifiying for me and my dad, because he reached the rank of Captain in the Army Air Corps during World War Two. 

When I completed my post-graduate studies at the University of Washington, I decided to move on to seek my fortune in Los Angeles.  I ended my military service at that time.

I can't say that I enjoyed being in the Army. The regimen left little room for independent thought.  They had written regulations for everything.  We used the term, 'by the numbers' to refer to how things should be done in the Army. Some people thrive in that kind of environment. I did not. But, I don't regret my time in the service. I am a better person for having done it.