View From The Porch: Sigh.

Thursday, November 11, 2010

Sigh.

While I'm being controversial, may I suggest that the reason US Airways Flight 808's contrail was so spectacular was because the exhaust was seeded with nanothermite?

Relax: If you feel you are lacking missile-based drama in your life, just remember that even if the ChiComs didn't pickle off an SL-2 war shot from a Jin-class SSBN in LA harbor the other day, there are still plenty of nuclear warheads pointed right at you. And the best part is that our jillion-dollar Defense Department replied "Duh?" instead of "USA808. Idjit."

37 comments:

George said...: I used to know a guy who had done 'Navy spy ship duty', in the '70s.
He said the Chi-Coms regularly and consistantly faux-attack the West Coast, checking for weaknesses.
(I keep thinking of the velociraptors in Jurrasic Park.)
And, we keep borrowing their money...; 6:19 PM, November 11, 2010
New Jovian Thunderbolt said...: Yeah, I been telling people flight 808. No one wants to believe it's that, apparently.; 6:27 PM, November 11, 2010
New Jovian Thunderbolt said...: Or MAYBE, the Norks have been making SEVERAL attempts to shoot a modified scud with an EMP warhead to pop off over Hoover Dam! We've been lucky that they forget the ship should be sailing north, not south, to get the missile to go east. It is the North Koreans, and they have that limited amount of technical savvy.

Why is Kim Jong Il doing this instead of his standard demonstration back home followed by demands? That's his standard MO. Well, it seems that he finally got a DVD of Team America World Police and man is he pissed! So he's been acting a bit rash, trying to plung the West coast from Oregon to Baja and as far east as Omaha into darkness. Then we'll know what his nights are like in Pynogyang.; 6:32 PM, November 11, 2010
BGMiller said...: Occam's Razor has been replaced by the MSM's mantra of Everybody Panic!!!!

BGM; 6:33 PM, November 11, 2010
The Jack said...: Yeah, that DoD reaction does make me feel better. Top Men and all.; 6:34 PM, November 11, 2010
Tam said...: One thing that kills me is how many of my fellow monkeys need a "definitely" instead of a "maybe".

I've been perfectly comfortable with going from "Oh, that's probably a missile launch" to "Oh, that's probably a jet contrail" based on evidence provided over time; the keyword being "PROBABLY".

Some people jut ain't happy unless you can remove Occam's Razor from the equation...

Okay: Suppose it WAS a Chines/US Navy/Russian/Iranian/Indian SLBM launch... This changes your life how, exactly? Are you going to shoot it down with your SKS?; 6:45 PM, November 11, 2010
bluesun said...: Hey, don't knock contrails--I mean Chemtrails! Those nannites in your blood will dissolve without them, and then how would the GOVERNMENT track us all? Plenty of conspiracy theories to go around!; 7:00 PM, November 11, 2010
NMM1AFan said...: Um, isn't San Nicolas Island part of the Point Mugu Naval Weapons Center? Don't they launch Black Brant sounding rockets from there?; 7:04 PM, November 11, 2010
Ed Foster said...: Hey, don't knock all SKS's. I picked up a Chicom "paratroop" carbine with a Simmons scope and a Butler Creek black plastic stock for $115, figuring to sell it to one of the Polish immigrants at work for $150. Had to shoot it first though, just so I could bitch about the 7 inch groups.

M.O.A., all damned day, with Winchester white box. And, it did it with half of everybody I knew at the club watching, and Kenny Hagenow (President's Hundred and he teaches Designated Marksman at Benning) on the spotting scope.

Short, handy, rugged as hell, the ideal back of the seat pickup rifle. But I don't think it could shoot down an IRBM, and, after my initial WTF!, I had to go along with Mr. Noggle's quite knowledgeable observations.

With, I might add, full attribution. I suspect you will have several new readers from the New Britain CT area in the next day or two. Teabaggers everyone of them, that I talked down from a position of high dudgeon. As distinct from low dudgeon, which I imagine is no fun at all.

So, any chance of getting you back along with all the other world shaking gun bloggers, either before or after the Vegas SHOT Show? You wouldn't believe some of the steak houses around here, and there's all kinds of gun factories to visit, F4U's and B-24's to kick, neat stuff like that.; 7:09 PM, November 11, 2010
Anonymous said...: Did you get the feeling from all those various departmental disclaimers that there is actually not *a* DOD, but rather several unrelated D'sOD, and none of 'em are quite sure what the others are up to?

What we really need is a whole 'nother Department...call it Department Of Defense Overseers (DODO), just to keep all the little fiefdoms on the same page when it comes to missles and shit. But that's gonna cost at least another jillion...

AT; 8:08 PM, November 11, 2010
Owen said...: i think the whole DOD name is BS, and needs to be returned to "War Department" or whatever it was.; 8:11 PM, November 11, 2010
Anonymous said...: Hello!?!!! Point Mugu Naval station!?? Get real peaple!! You are only told what they want you to hear!! What part of test flight don't you understand!!?? NATIONAL SECURITY!? DUH!? NMM1AFAN is very right.; 8:15 PM, November 11, 2010
Anonymous said...: Jeez. Wrong spectrum for DOD/NORAD observation. Visual aspects of contrails aren't recorded, monitored or noted. Ignite a truck filled with thermite in your back yard and see who shows up.; 8:51 PM, November 11, 2010
BGMiller said...: "Ignite a truck filled with thermite in your back yard and see who shows up."

The fire department?

Heh...

BGM; 8:57 PM, November 11, 2010
rickn8or said...: NMM1AFAN is right San Nicholas Island is part of the Point Mugu Weapons Center test range.

This event, however, was the public incineration of Teh Won's birth certificate and related documents...; 8:57 PM, November 11, 2010
Tam said...: "Hello!?!!! Point Mugu Naval station!?? Get real peaple!! You are only told what they want you to hear!!"

Shut up.

And learn how to spell "people" while you're at it.; 9:04 PM, November 11, 2010
Firehand said...: Ed, that's like what I ran into with a Yugo 59/66; didn't expect much, but I could bust clay pigeons at 100 yards every time if I did my part. Never did try for "Just how accurate"(those sights with my eyes?), but it was a fine little rifle.; 9:20 PM, November 11, 2010
Bubblehead Les. said...: Let's see, oh yeah. The last time I launched a SLBM was back in August '87 when we brought the USS Ulysses S. Grant (SSBN 631) out of Overhaul and went down to Cape Canaveral. They had to put on a huge frigging mast, send a tracking ship downrange, have another one standing by near the Boat, there were 3 times the number of people on board just for the test shot, and we had to keep running in and out of Port Canaveral several times and go 50 miles out to sea to make the whole thing happen. So if some Boomer out of Bremerton was testing a Trident, it was in the wrong place (I think the West Coast guys work out of Pearl), the "Oh Shit" sequence to make it happen is so freaking small that it would be crushed to death by a single piece of Nanothermite. Plus the way things leak out of the Puzzle Palace nowadays, it would have had a Youtube video out by now.

Nope, not an American SLBM. If it was a Foreign Boat trying to send us a message, well, I think that only the TinFoil Brigade would believe it. Do you know how much those Birds cost? Not even the Kim Family would waste that much money on a useless stunt.

But the "Duh Factor" that has come out of the Pentagon over the last few years disturbs me. But what do you expect from Washington anymore, competence? Makes we wonder how much butt covering was being spread around the E-ring instead of finding the facts and nipping it in the bud before the "Truthers" crowd was revitalized by their latest "Conspiracy Proof".; 9:46 PM, November 11, 2010
James said...: You silly Americans. Even my eyes can see that the contrail is a result of a submarine launching a ballistic missile at US Airways 808. Jeez, how could you guys have missed that?

As for ballistic missiles being inappropriate to launch at planes, well, that's what they want you to think!; 10:44 PM, November 11, 2010
Joe in PNG said...: Open your eyes sheeple:
It. Was. RODAN!

They only want you to think that giant radioactive Japanese monsters are only fiction... because (mumblemumbleconsparacymumble), as everyone knows.; 11:21 PM, November 11, 2010
Joanna said...: Next week, on Mythbusters ... :-P; 12:16 AM, November 12, 2010
Mark Alger said...: I swear. This has shown me two things:

1) People just NEED controversy. If they don't get regular doses in their diets, they make it up.

2) Nobody in this whole wide world EVER looks at the sky. If they did, they'd have been able to see what I did the INSTANT I first saw the video -- high-altitude, 4-engine jet. No rocket. Not even close. If you looked UP once in awhile, you'd see its like a dozen times a day.

Sheesh!

M; 1:08 AM, November 12, 2010
Kristophr said...: Ya know, the first SKS I ever bought was a Norinco.

It included a pamphlet of instructions, including telling me to set the sights at 400 meters when shooting at paratroopers, and that it was absolutely forbidden to allow my rifle to become sunburned.

I wonder where on the ladder do I need to set the sights for chemtrail shooting?; 3:08 AM, November 12, 2010
Justthisguy said...: I liked the spiral trails over Norway better. Now that looked like a real inter-dimensional (dementional?) portal, and was right pretty, to boot.; 4:07 AM, November 12, 2010
Anonymous said...: Owen:

Back when the USA had a Department of War, we never lost a war. Since we've had a Department of Defense, We've never won one.

cap'n chumbucket; 8:09 AM, November 12, 2010
Anonymous said...: "And the best part is that our jillion-dollar Defense Department replied "Duh?" instead of "USA808. Idjit." "

Well, they knew it wasn't anything THEY cared about, and frankly "the visual presentation of contrails at 5pm viewed from a helo in LA" probably isn't what you'd call high on their list priorities.

so once they'd run through their logs and said, "not one of ours" and "Sure as heck not anyone elses missile either" then it falls into the "don't know, don't care, unwilling to spend any overtime finding out either, bucket"

I'm sure USAF and USN spend millions every year tracing interesting weather anomalies, not care about the useless ones.

They might have opined "airliner?, who cares" though.; 9:52 AM, November 12, 2010
DJ said...: "And the best part is that our jillion-dollar Defense Department replied 'Duh?' instead of 'USA808. Idjit.'"

I'm going to come to the defense of our Defense Department here.

Let us suppose that this was only an airliner leaving a contrail. What should we expect?

On the screens of the watchers, it would appear to be just another airliner, and so not worthy of any special notice. There would be NOTHING on those screens which would tell them that, from the ground at a certain vantage point, it would look like a missile contrail that people might make noise about. There would be NOTHING to raise an alarm among the watchers.

So, if someone on the ground elsewhere says, "Holy shit! That's a missile launch!", I would EXPECT their reaction to be, "Say what?"

Determining just what was seen would require some work, and so some time, correlating the location, azimuth, and elevation from the point it was viewed with flight schedules and such. So, it would take some time and effort to determine that it was "Flight USA808" in particular.

Now, think through what kind of real-time effort and tax-paid expense would be required to be ready to respond INSTANTLY to ANY claim of "Holy shit! That's a missile launch!" with just what airplane it was. Is that how you want your tax dollars spent?

The complaint I have is with people who respond to the sighting with "That's a missile!" instead of "What was that?" Data should come before conclusions, not after.; 10:27 AM, November 12, 2010
Tam said...: DJ,

"Data should come before conclusions, not after."

It's too bad I'd get in trouble for writing this on people's foreheads in indelible ink... ;); 10:30 AM, November 12, 2010
theirritablearchitect said...: All of this talk of "nano-thermite,"cer in jest or not, has me 'bout ready to break out the ball bat for some skull bashing.

Jeezis.

I just can't fucking stand people using that term, as if were real.; 10:38 AM, November 12, 2010
theirritablearchitect said...: Oh, I can't stand Blogger comments sometimes, either.

wv: redig. Yes, try again, and do it right this time.; 10:41 AM, November 12, 2010
Tam said...: irritablearchitect,

I just think it's funny. The minute the word comes out of someone's mouth, they have effectively branded themselves a moron as effectively as if they told me they believed in phrenology, and they don't even realize it and just keep talking!; 10:42 AM, November 12, 2010
theirritablearchitect said...: Tam,

All the more reason for hastening the process with that stick of ash, no?

Letting the knuckle-draggers walk among the rest of us sans intervention, waiting for natural attrition to clean them out, is inviting them the necessary time to swap the appropriate bodily fluids for perpetuating their status in the decidely non-Darwinian food chain that we've established...somehow.

I'd like my air back.; 12:07 PM, November 12, 2010
Tam said...: What this world really needs is a 20-ft. long flying predator...; 1:07 PM, November 12, 2010
NotClauswitz said...: It's those SoCal afternoon Santa Ana ultra-high nano-winds.
We don't get the big kerfluffel up here in NorCal on United flight #35 because it's in the morning, and #34 returns at 9:00 so it's nano-invisible.; 1:56 PM, November 12, 2010
Sigivald said...: I'm with DJ.

I've seen this rough quote elsewhere, but I'm going to repeat it: "I'm glad DoD doesn't have people on staff waiting for people to mistake a civilian plane for a missile and issue calming announcements".

(That and... remember how conspiracy nuts work.

If the DoD "it was just a plan, idjits" guy got the wrong flight through any sort of simple error, that would be "proof of a giant coverup".

Silence is the most reasonable and best response.)

(Also, I want a nano-thermos. To keep nano-coffee in.); 3:17 PM, November 12, 2010
Tam said...: Yeah, there would be those who pointed to a statement that the original flight number "had to be pulled" as proof that the plane had been shot down because, you know, "pulled = blowed up".; 3:24 PM, November 12, 2010
DJ said...: "It's too bad I'd get in trouble for writing this on people's foreheads in indelible ink... ;)"

You'd have to write it backwards so they could read it, and they'd call that a conspiracy to, well, something ...; 3:45 PM, November 12, 2010

View From The Porch

Thursday, November 11, 2010

Sigh.

37 comments:

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