Windows Vista – Pile of Crap

I’ve decided how I will choose which tech support personnel I will talk to. Immediately upon introducing themselves, I’ll say, “QUICK! Top five reasons Windows Vista sucks balls!!” If they can’t answer, I’ll politely ask to be redirected to somebody that can respond to my inquiry.

You may be asking me, “but Mickey P, why so angry?” Well if your computer locked up into an unrecoverable crash on average of 3 times a day (and keep in mind I’m at work all day during the week) you’d be a little irritated too.

You read right, my computer, the one I’m writing this on right now, completely locks up about 3 times a day. Now, to give some background here, I’m not an idiot that can’t figure out which button turns the thing on, I built my last two computers from the motherboard up. And while doing that assumes quite a good bit of risk with system problems (and believe me, I’ve seen some doozies) I’ve never put together a system that was as unreliable as this. The last operating system I used before this was Windows 2000. For whatever reason, I decided to be lazy and just buy a pre-built system by HP complete with Windows Vista. Allow me to reiterate: BIG MISTAKE.

I’ve never heard of an operating system that turns every click into a gamble. Basically, you try to open a program and hope that Vista is willing to cooperate. A few rules though: never try to open anything shortly after login while the hard drive light is still flickering, and never try to open two things simultaneously. Guaranteed lockup in both cases. The other thing that confused me is the lack of an interrupt. The old Ctrl-Alt-Del no longer breaks through system lockups like in the good old days of Windows 2000. Apparently it’s just another function to Vista, in other words if your system locks up and you Ctrl-Alt-Del, NOTHING HAPPENS BECAUSE THE SYSTEM IS LOCKED UP. What kind of stupid crap is that?

This is the epitome of an under-tested, rushed through quality control, resource-hogging, system locking steaming pile of dog crap operating system ever. Maybe Microsoft should pull its head out of its ass next time it tries to design one of these, because I can confidently say that while I’ve never designed an operating system before, I could fuck up and do better than this.

F-22 Myths

There have been two big myths about the “mighty” Raptor that I just need to talk about or write down before they make my head explode. Two of the biggest things that the designers aimed for were not met. At all. Part of it being a misnomer of sorts (to fool the less educated?) and the other being a rather persistent misunderstanding of certain concepts behind what makes an airplane go.

I never got my degree in Aeronautical Engineering, but I’ve had the “crash course” in the theory of flight and even that level of understanding leaves one confused as to why the Raptor was designed the way it was. For example, it’s common knowledge that of the four forces in flight, two are quite undesirable. Those being weight and drag, in which the Raptor is unacceptably sloppy. Of the other two, the only category that I can see it doing well in is lift. Maybe. And while it has a seemingly impressive amount of thrust, when compared to its weight that amount becomes a lot less impressive. But I digress, on to the mythbusting.

Supercruise: First, I need to lay down two very basic definitions of two very basic words, because somehow they seemed to escape the head honchos in all this. Super – In this case, it refers to flying supersonically. Very simple. Cruise – The speed at which the vehicle (car/airplane/hummingbird) is the most efficient. You go the farthest when cruising, while using the least amount of gas.

Still with me? Good. So what’s the problem? Well, the Air Force for whatever reason defines “Supercruise” as the ability to go supersonic in dry thrust alone. Other than completely missing the point, apparently they forgot that every other supercruiser ever built has done it with some form of afterburner. Ask Col. Riccioni about it. As one pilot put it to me, if they want to stay up a bit longer, they’ll keep it around .8-.9 Mach. Wait, what? I thought it cruised supersonically? That’s what supercruise MEANS. You mean to tell me that the Raptor is a SUBcruiser??? So much for that.

Range: So for some reason, no one in the design department of this thing knows what it is that makes a plane go far. It’s no secret, lots of people know exactly what does it, and thankfully those people were on the job when the Air Force needed the F-16. The Air Force tends not to think in the realm of the relative, which is exactly the reason why they continue to miss the point. It’s not the amount of fuel that determines range, it’s the RELATIVE fuel. In other words, the weight of the fuel divided by the total weight of the aircraft including the fuel. It’s the fuel fraction. That and the relationship between lift and drag (you know, if the engines have to work against a buttload of drag to get the necessary speed for the wings to generate enough lift to get the plane off the ground, they’re not being very efficient).

So now back to the point. The examples are everywhere about why the two criteria above are the determining factors to aircraft range. The YF-16 upon its unveiling not only had longer range than the larger F-15, but it had longer range than any other fighter in the Air Force. Before the AF got their grubby paws on it and crammed as much heavy crap on it as possible, it had a takeoff fuel fraction of .30+. The F-15 is somewhere around .28. For better examples, the extremely long-legged MiG-31 runs at about a .45, and the aircraft that made it around the world in one try had a fuel fraction of .75! So where does our airplane in question lie? A meagre .275, give or take. More likely take, because with every new “upgrade,” it just gets heavier. Around here they’re proclaiming it to be 80,000lbs!

So there you go, the next time someone talks about the F-22 being the longest-legged supercruiser in the world, you can immediately let anything else they say just fall right on out the other side of your head. Then wonder why you hang out with these people.

Air Tactics

I’ve been thinking. Usually that’s a dangerous thing, mostly because my ideas are met with such sarcastic criticism from my classmates.  I still get ridiculed for liking the F-16 more than the F-22. But I’m hoping what I’ve been trying to piece together will make some sense. So instead of getting scoffed for having different views, I’ll put it in a blog that nobody reads. Thanks blogosphere!

So here’s the lead-in: the USAF’s doctrine department has been out to lunch since 1947 as far as I can tell. Despite the obvious leaps in technological advancement, the general construct of how we plan to win wars has changed little, if at all. It hinges around blowing up any enemy air assets and anything on the ground that isn’t ours as well. Quite 2nd Generation/Attritionist. Today’s doctrine is no different from that of decades ago, the only changes being the addition of radar, missiles, and other technological advancements. Same package, different wrapping.

The questions I’ve been trying to get help with are as follows: First, are there ways to incorporate 3rd Generation Maneuver Warfare thinking into a conventional air war scenario? Do we really need to destroy everything the enemy has in order to break their will to resist? What kinds of tactics can we employ that might break from the “hey-diddle-diddle-straight-up-the-middle” method? How can we better manage the air war from a bottom-up perspective, or is that even possible?

One scenario I’ve been rolling around in my head has to do with classic Sun Tzu cheng and ch’i setups. Despite the Air Force wanting to replace its F-15’s with F-22’s and its F-16’s and A-10’s with the F-35, it’s not going to happen. It’s a given that we’ll still rely on our trusty 4th-generation fighters for the reason of numbers alone. Couple that with their COMBAT PROVEN EFFECTIVENESS and it’s obvious they won’t be going anywhere. That said, we can still find a niche for the F-22’s and F-35’s, probably more in the ch’i section supposing we accept their stealth capabilities. The overall goal here would be to fix the enemy’s attention on our conventional fighters while slipping the smaller contingent of 5th-gens to their objectives. Or, if on the same counter-air mission, have the 5th-gens come around the back door, putting them outside the limits of the enemy aircraft’s radars and sensors. Makes more sense than flying straight at them and hoping they can’t see you.

Of course, this is a rough construct. Much like Sun Tzu’s observation that with only five colors one can produce all the hues that can be seen, same here. It’s an idea, work around it to fit your situation. I’m still learning about how we conduct the air war here at ABM school so I’ll be updating this as more things pop into my head.

To be continued when more ideas solidify…

Bored

So I was sitting at the computer this morning after gorging myself on two cans worth of Chef Boyardee when I realized I probably wasn’t going to do anything today. So I didn’t. Well, nothing productive anyways. I fiddled around with Windows Movie Maker to smash together a semi-power hour-like montage but only got up to minute 8 before I ran out of music video clips to distract the viewers. And, A.D.D. being the beast that it is, I grew tired of doing it too. Although I do like the timed out scenes indicating when you’re supposed to drink, for mine it’s a dogfight between an F-15 and my all-time favorite, the F-16. When you hear the 16 pilot say he’s going in for the kill, that’s your cue to do what you do. The rest of the day was well spent playing Battlefield 2142, and ended with my fiance calling me on her way home telling me that Virginia is on fire. That’s not good.

So now I’m sitting here still, only this time with an empty plate which used to contain what I like to call “Messy Eggs”. If anyone has the same cooking style as I do, i.e. throw a bunch of stuff into a pot/pan and cook the hell out of it, just about everything comes out as a messy something. It’s just those oh so few dishes that don’t turn out that way that make them special. This one is so special it should be wearing a helmet and taking the short bus.

And I’ve digressed once again. But then again, I should’ve had a topic to begin with to even be able to digress. It’s my weblargh, I’ll digress from nothing if I want to. Nobody reads this anyways.

So, the mighty F-16. Not what it was supposed to be, and that makes me sad. But I do think it ironic that it has performed so well and proven itself quite necessary despite how much the Air Force didn’t want it. But in the words of someone greater than I, “You can’t always get what you want…sometimes you’ll find you get what you need.” And now I’ve lost interest in talking about that too. I was toying with the idea of putting down my gripes about the F-22 but I wanted to go back and read some more of Col. Riccioni’s stuff as well as Pierre Sprey’s. Then coupled with what I’ve seen/heard by working with them, we’ll see what comes out. And I’m done.

OK, I thought of something to write.

Well, I decided to put this up and see if I get any response. This is straight out of my profile description:

“I’m a greenhorn 2LT in the Air Force, in the middle of Air Battle Management training. I started my own blog mainly to be able to comment on the DNI page, but I might contribute my own articles as well. I read Robert Coram’s book “Boyd” for the first time my freshman year of college (Virginia Tech, GO HOKIES!!!), and since then have re-read it two or three times. Then I started picking up anything relating to his ideas that I could get my hands on. I’ve read a number of Chet Richards’ books as well as Grant Hammond’s biography of Boyd. And for good measure I’ve started reading a series of books by H. John Poole about the current enemy we’re facing.

Basically, I want to educate myself in the best way to compete in a wartime environment, as opposed to my current AF education which puts Boyd’s trinity (people, ideas, hardware) in the REVERSE order. I’m hoping to be able to bounce ideas off of several people on a number of subjects ranging from war strategy and small unit tactics to aircraft design.

Ultimately, I want to get a better grasp on how Boyd’s ideas could be applied to the air. Any help is appreciated.

-MickeyPvX”

Now, pertaining to that last part of the info, it’s not like we haven’t seen/used those ideas in the air war, it’s just that we give it little to no credit as to how much good it did. In the most recent block of academic training I went through, we talked a lot about planning considerations for different parts of the air war. Deception was actually in there!!! If you couldn’t tell, I was surprised. But what irked me was how little time we spent discussing it. Blargh. I guess we don’t like learning from what worked. Hey at least I got a good callsign last week.

“Those of you who are not in this class need to leave. PAUL!…HI!”

Not entirely sure why I started this blog, maybe it was that time. I have no idea what it will encompass as far as themes and whatnot, it may very well turn into random blurbings as seen on anything I comment on. Who knows? Won’t you join me?

On the other hand, I might completely forget I made this and never write anything. What a waste of webspace, somebody who contributes nothing to their own blog. Is anyone even reading this? Good day.

This is MickeyPvX. This is my Weblargh.