Tuesday short takes – Ferry, Balloon, Fishing dispute

Let’s start with a good one for once. You may have read that a ferry, the Walla Walla up Washington way, lost power and ran aground this weekend. Bound from Bremerton to Bainbridge Island, she had 596 passengers and 15 crew. Included in the passengers were many off-duty sailors from Naval Base Kitsap, many of them headed to Sunday’s Submarine Ball.

“It was just second nature at that point. It was a different boat with different people,” Stroud explained to KOMO. “We all kind of worked together and helped everyone do life jackets and guide them were they needed to go.”

The U.S. Coast Guard Pacific Northwest confirmed that all 596 passengers and 15 crew members on board were rescued by Kitsap Fast Ferry vessels without injuries.

Yahoo   News reports credit the Navy men as being a big help – I’d say an evacuation of over 600 people with no injuries is a roaring success.   Good on yer, lads.

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And… back to that “weather balloon” shot down a few weeks back after it traversed the width of the country.  Docs leaked by our favorite ANG video gamer show that said balloon was equipped with synthetic aperture radar, which allows it to take images of the ground regardless of clouds, fog, dark etc.

Synthetic aperture radar is the solution to the problem with real aperture radar, which cannot create high-resolution images without an impractically large antenna. SAR “synthesizes” a large antenna, but the concept is the same — it releases bursts of electromagnetic energy to an object on Earth, and a sensor then records the wavelength of energy it receives back, according to NASA. These sensor readings then allow the radar to create a reconstruction of whatever objects are below the energy beam.

Because SAR isn’t taking photos and is instead using electromagnetic data to create a high-resolution image, the technology can “see” in the dark, as well as through clouds, smoke, and rain. It can also help with three-dimensional reconstructions, unlike cameras, which can only capture what is openly visible from above.

Business Insider   yeah, weather balloon my sweet Fannie Adams. Wonder when/if the administration was going to let us know what factoid?

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If you thought the Norks and the Chicoms were firmly joined at the hip, think again. Like most marriages of convenience, there are some differences.

Saturday, a North Korean chasing a Chinese fishing boat out of Nork waters was fired on by a ROK patrol boat for wandering into South Korea’s territorial waters.

The North Korean patrol boat crossed the so-called Northern Limit Line at around 11 a.m. Saturday while pursuing the Chinese boat in waters near South Korea’s Baekryeong island but immediately retreated after a South Korean naval vessel fired warning shots, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said Sunday.

While there were no exchanges of fire between the North and South Korean vessels, the South Korean high-speed vessel collided with the Chinese boat as it responded to the intrusion amid poor visibility, causing bruises and other minor injuries to some of the South Korean sailors.

AP via Yahoo

Shot across the bow or not, I’m betting the radio spectrum was just full  of traffic about then.

Category: China, Navy, North Korea