No Guns Here...

In the wake of the Sandy Hook mass murders, it is often difficult to separate truth from fiction between the warring factions.  Here to help you think is NY Senator Charles Schumer, who yesterday said, of NRA Executive VP Wayne LaPierre:

"LaPierre "blames everything but guns, movies, the media, President Obama, gun-free school zones, you name it, the video games, he blames them," Schumer said. "Now, trying to prevent shootings in schools without talking about guns is like trying to prevent lung cancer without talking about cigarettes."

With apologies to Candy Crowley, I'd like to correct the Senator on a couple of points.  LaPierre did indeed mention the president FOUR times in his official remarks.  Three of them were to point out that the president, as well as members of congress, are themselves protected by armed security, but that they think that denying the same protection to your children in schools makes them SAFER.  The fourth mention was this:

Ladies and gentlemen, there is no national, one-size-fits-all solution to protecting our children. But do know this President zeroed out school emergency planning grants in last year's budget, and scrapped "Secure Our Schools" policing grants in next year's budget.

At this point, at least half of you should probably stop reading, as hearing for the first time the actual message that LaPierre delivered may cause painful cognitive dissonance.  Return to your TV and what LaPierre REALLY MEANT to say will be repeated to you for the next few days, as part of the greater campaign against high capacity magazines, military style weapons, gun owners, and the second amendment.  

As to his point that LaPierre doesn't talk about guns, there are TWENTY mentions of guns in the official remarks.  Here are a few of them and I hope that you might agree with at least some of his points...

As brave, heroic and self-sacrificing as those teachers were in those classrooms, and as prompt, professional and well-trained as those police were when they responded, they were unable — through no fault of their own — to stop it.

As parents, we do everything we can to keep our children safe. It is now time for us to assume responsibility for their safety at school. The only way to stop a monster from killing our kids is to be personally involved and invested in a plan of absolute protection. The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. Would you rather have your 911 call bring a good guy with a gun from a mile away ... or a minute away?

Now, I can imagine the shocking headlines you'll print tomorrow morning: "More guns," you'll claim, "are the NRA's answer to everything!" Your implication will be that guns are evil and have no place in society, much less in our schools. But since when did the word "gun" automatically become a bad word?

A gun in the hands of a Secret Service agent protecting the President isn't a bad word. A gun in the hands of a soldier protecting the United States isn't a bad word. And when you hear the glass breaking in your living room at 3 a.m. and call 911, you won't be able to pray hard enough for a gun in the hands of a good guy to get there fast enough to protect you.

So why is the idea of a gun good when it's used to protect our President or our country or our police, but bad when it's used to protect our children in their schools? They're our kids. They're our responsibility. And it's not just our duty to protect them — it's our right to protect them.

A brave new world for Army maintenance...

Hold the phones and stop the presses... the Army Research Laboratory has developed NEW aircraft maintenance technologies for the FAA.  

Before we send out the thank you notes, what exactly are these cutting edge and heavily researched technologies that our taxpayer-funded researchers hath wrought?  
The first one is the Health and Usage Monitoring System, or HUMS for short.  This quite valuable and capable system collects data from various sensors on helicopters which aims to predict impending failures of critical components.  It was developed by... wait for it... helicopter operators in the offshore oil industry.  And we have had it fielded in our civilian helicopter fleet for many years.

The second and even more technically advanced system that is sure to rock the civil rotorcraft industry is called "Condition Based Maintenance" or CBM.  For the less technically inclined, CBM means "replacing parts when they need to be replaced" which will eventually supercede the former Army system of "time-scheduled maintenance" or "replacing parts regardless of whether they need to be replaced".  

In practice, CBM states that you will regularly inspect certain components and replace them when necessary, while time scheduled maintenance means your maintainers spend countless man hours removing components at set times regardless of the condition.  Quite like changing your engine every 3,000 miles instead of changing the oil.  This is known in some quarters as "wasteful", "pointless" "stupid" and "a grievous waste of time and money".  

This is why civilian operators, with limited budgets and clients with limited patience, have been doing condition based maintenance for years, with strict governmental oversight.  

Some in the military will argue that time scheduled maintenance has historically been necessary because of the size of Army aircraft, the stress on components, the pace of operations, blah blah and so forth.  This argument works best on those who believe that the Army is the sole repository of aviation knowledge on the planet and think that an aircraft with 10,000 hours belongs on a pole in front of a museum.  

I would argue that the Army pays thousands of people millions of dollars to keep hundreds of aircraft broke most of the time, and that they are idiots with unlimited funding who think they know everything.  Regardless of how you might feel about this, I would bet you a paycheck that most civilian companies would be out of business by lunchtime if they managed maintenance like the Army.

I will further argue that the most outside-the-box thinkers in the Army probably brought these long standing civilian processes and systems under the Army umbrella, relabeled them with a cool sounding acronym, and then got themselves a nice OER bullet out of it.  

Glad to see the greatest minds in the Army are slowly catching up, and I can't wait to see what they come up with next.  

Keep the tail behind you

Today's video demonstrates why you should not slide laterally at a low hover.  

This accident occurred in Germany and a bystander was fatally injured by flying debris.