Science and Technology
Wanna fly a Blackhawk? Maybe you can
No, this isn’t a come-on for flight warrant school and a vacation at beautiful tropical Ft. Rucker. Sikorsky has announced an unpiloted version of the Blackhawk, to be called the U-hawk, is ready to go. Only took the maker 10 months to design it and get it ready. The latest variant of the UH-60 […]
AI comes riding to the rescue
Don’t know if anyone is tracking the growing number of articles on how people are using AI. Some are pretty clever application, and barring Skynet belatedly becoming aware (the original movie self-awareness date was August 29, 1997) the potential is there. But there are still humans feeding info into the learning, and what they […]
Alien visitors… next week
Meet Abraham “Avi”Loeb, the Frank B. Baird Jr. Professor of Science at Harvard University. He chaired the Department of Astronomy from 2011 to 2020, and founded the Black Hole Initiative in 2016. And seems to have chucked a few chunks of cortex down a black hole in recent years. Remember a while back in 2017 […]
India retires MiG-21s
India is retiring its fleet of MiG-21 fighters. Their primary combat threat for over 30 years, the plane leaves behind a decidedly mixed legacy, nicknamed a “flying coffin” for its many crashes. Reminds you of some of our Western “widowmakers” and such, doesn’t it? India started acquiring the then-blistering fast MiG in 1966, and since […]
History rhymes
The old saw says that “History may not repeat itself, but it does rhyme.” Popularly attributed to Mark Twain, the primary source of most American wisdom, it didn’t appear until long after his death and is not in any of his writings. But it makes sense, sort of like Harry Truman’s “the only new thing […]
More on the Midnight Hammer raid
I mentioned reading an article on Iranian concrete technology in the comments on the BDA column – here is some more on that subject. On Saturday, June 21, 2025, following a spate of unprecedented aerial attacks that Israel carried out against Iran just days before, the United States joined the war and used bunker-busting bombs […]
Kennedy’s MAHA release a bit embarrassing
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, JR released his much-anticipated “Make America Healthy Again” report on May 22. The Secretary, who is on record against many immunizations, flouridated water, and quite a few other positions considered controversial, had promised a sort of roadmap to help the country’s children get healthier. Unfortunately, there were a few problems […]
Busy week for nomenclatureists?
Originally wanted to call this “Xes and Os” (no resemblance to the pudgy Schneider offspring*) but it turns out the Army doesn’t call all their prototypes by an X prefix. Ah well – I learned something. The Army has given its Future Long Range Assault Aircraft Bell V-280 (their equivalent to a CV-22 Osprey) the […]
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