Affirmative Action in the Air

Amazon is one of the more woke companies, it is no surprise they are among the earliest to pay the price.

 https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/legacy-of-a-lie-the-crash-of-atlas-air-flight-3591-519a3a7bd6ec

Scrutiny of Aska’s records from all of these airlines revealed numerous training difficulties. First he failed to complete training at two different airlines. Then at Trans State Airlines, he failed an oral exam on the ERJ-145, then failed a check ride (a graded flight with an instructor) in May 2014, followed by a failed line check (a regular line flight, but graded by an instructor) in August, after which he resigned. In May 2017 at Mesa Airlines he failed to upgrade to captain. In September 2017, at Atlas Air, he failed his Boeing 767 type rating exam “due to unsatisfactory performance in crew resource management, threat and error management, non-precision approaches, steep turns, and judgment.” After most of these failures, he went to remedial training and eventually passed.

To learn more about why he failed so many times, the NTSB interviewed the examiners and check airmen who had graded him. The Atlas Air check airman who failed First Officer Aska on his Boeing 767 type rating examination told the NTSB that Aska lacked situational awareness, “overcontrolled the airplane,” was “very nervous,” “did not work well with the other pilot,” and forgot to perform emergency checklists. Aska was constantly behind his airplane and its actions would catch him by surprise. When confronted with something unexpected, he would panic and start pushing the wrong buttons. The check airman worried that the failure was so traumatic that Aska would not be able to “mentally recover.”

Next, the NTSB interviewed the check airmen who had trained First Officer Aska at his previous employer, Mesa Airlines. According to three instructors at that airline, Aska had no trouble with rote tasks; however, they confirmed that when faced with an unexpected event, he would start pressing random buttons in order to feel like he was doing something. His ability to fly the plane manually was weak, but he wasn’t any better with the automation, because he struggled to use the flight management computer. 

Like the check airman at Atlas, they stated that Aska had poor situational awareness and didn’t understand what his airplane was doing. One Mesa Airlines check airman said that Aska’s piloting ability was among the worst he had ever seen. Another told the NTSB that despite all the evidence to the contrary, Aska didn’t think he was a bad pilot, or at least he was unwilling to admit it. Every time he failed he came up with an excuse, blaming his poor performance on the hotel where he spent the night, his simulator partner, or the instructor. He had no idea that he lacked basic airmanship skills, refused to accept feedback, and didn’t understand why he couldn’t upgrade to captain. 

NTSB investigators were left utterly astounded. Naturally, they had encountered some poor pilots over the years — but none quite so bad as Conrad Jules Aska. It seemed obvious that, for his own safety and the safety of the public, Aska should have been forced to pursue a different career. So why did he keep getting hired?

A Naval blockade of Taiwan

 https://navy-matters.blogspot.com/2016/07/a-ships-fool-to-fight-fort.html

https://thediplomat.com/2012/09/anti-access-and-the-fortress-fleet/

https://thediplomat.com/2016/06/defeating-chinas-fortress-fleet-and-a2ad-strategy-lessons-for-the-united-states-and-her-allies/

The Space Shuttle's SRB problem

Once the SRB ignition is complete and combustion pressure has reached its full operating value, there is a greater effect on the walls than on the joint because the joint is more rigid to hoop stress. Thus, the joint rotates and the gap expands. The last thing you want.

Alaska Air 216

 https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Reports/AAR0201.pdf

Let me reiterate, aircraft must be maintained with care and at all cost. 

Alaska Airlines expanded rapidly in the years before this accident. With the goal of becoming more profitable, as they became bigger and busier the pressures to keep their planes on schedule put increasing stress on their maintenance facilities. And this took its toll. The Federal Aviation Administration seemed to know this, but was nowhere effective in preventing the tragic chain of events. 

So N963AS began its fateful path in a C-check years before falling to the ocean. Its maintainers found a jackscrew that needed to be pulled, but no spare was found and, as the part was arguably acceptable, they pushed the plane back into service, with no watch list, no trailers, or orders to keep track of its condition. There were no specific procedures to do so, and no one thought enough to ask for one. 

The aircraft was arguably, that is technically, legal, and it was probably safe, if it was carefully greased. It was not, we know that without question. And the lengthened inspection intervals were such that it was not to be looked at again, until it was in our laboratory. 

When it finally failed, ground support from Alaska Airlines seemed to encourage the crew to proceed with a broken plane on to their scheduled destination, for reasons perhaps of convenience both to passengers and maintenance -- we won't really ever know. 

But the impression is inescapable. An aircraft that had been hustled out the door three years earlier for the convenience of scheduling was now encouraged to keep to its appointed routing. It is less coincidence than culture. 

Hubble's spherical aberration

By far the best description of Hubble's spherical aberration you will see.

 https://iopscience.iop.org/book/978-0-7503-2038-2/chapter/bk978-0-7503-2038-2ch1

The conference room in Goddard's Building 3 was packed that afternoon as the lead engineers gave technical status reports about the various spacecraft systems for which they were responsible—thermal, electrical, pointing control, computers, science instruments, and telescope optics. The Optics Lead Engineer, Charlie Jones from Marshall, reported a continued lack of success in attempts to find an alignment and focus position of the telescope optics that would produce sharp stellar images. At that point, Chris Burrows, an astronomer and optics expert from the STScI, stood and said, with an edge of anger in his voice, "You have about a half wave of spherical aberration, and there's nothing you can do about it!"

Behind the scenes Chris Burrows, and independently Jon Holzman and Sandy Faber from the WFPC Team, had been analyzing the Hubble images. They had correctly deduced the nature of the problem with the telescope's optics, namely spherical aberration (Burrows et al. 1991). Up to that time, the Marshall engineers and the telescope's manufacturer, Perkin-Elmer Corporation in Danbury, Connecticut had ignored the astronomers' conclusions and denied that anything was wrong with the telescope. That's why Chris was angry. He had been frustrated for some time trying to convince the telescope makers that "the emperor had no clothes," that the telescope's primary optics were defective. They didn't believe it. They didn't want to believe it. But now Chris, Sandy, and Jon felt that their evidence was ironclad. The room resonated with a stunned silence.

The designers of Hubble had anticipated that, in going from 1g on the Earth's surface to the microgravity of low Earth orbit, the telescope's 2.4 m primary mirror might deform slightly so as to produce a variety of "higher order" aberrations or distortions of the focused image. For this reason, the telescope's design included 24 pads situated behind the primary mirror, that could be actuated in various combinations so as to apply gentle pressure to the back of the mirror to adjust its shape and remove the aberrations. The one aberration that could not be corrected in this way was the simplest of optical aberrations—spherical aberration.

Every amateur astronomer who grinds his or her own mirrors by hand tests for spherical aberration and removes it in the grinding process. But one of the world's most sophisticated telescope makers, Perkin-Elmer Corporation, who reputedly had produced a number of similar large mirrors for Earth-observing spy satellites for the U.S. Department of Defense, had failed to detect this most basic of aberrations in the primary mirror they had built for Hubble.

Almost a decade later Lew Allen and his Board uncovered what had happened during their investigation on the scene at Perkin-Elmer. They demonstrated that the 1.3 mm error in the spacing between the lens and the lower mirror in the reflective null corrector, and the corresponding polishing error in the shape of the Hubble telescope's primary mirror, precisely explained the amount of spherical aberration observed in the camera images Hubble was sending back from space.

Ironically, two other optical test devices clearly showed the mirror's defect in data they provided at the time, independent of the reflective null corrector. But both Perkin-Elmer and NASA chose to ignore this, having become convinced that those other two instruments were not sufficiently accurate to provide credible data at the high level of precision required. They thought only the reflective null corrector could do that. The Allen Board demonstrated that this was not true. Both of the other devices were accurate enough to reveal a major, gross error of the magnitude that had been built into the Hubble mirror.

The investigations revealed myriad failures of management oversight, technical processes, and quality control on the part of both Perkin-Elmer and the NASA Hubble Project. There were a lot of excuses. Perkin-Elmer was badly behind schedule and over budget in manufacturing both the telescope and the Hubble fine guidance sensors for which they were also responsible. So there was much pressure to work quickly and perhaps to cut corners. The division of Perkin-Elmer that had the job of grinding the mirrors and conducting the optical testing operated in a closed-door environment. According the report of the Allen Board, neither people from NASA nor from other divisions of Perkin-Elmer had easy access to the Optical Operations Division for purposes of oversight. 

Although the Department of Defense denied any responsibility for this state of affairs, the review team speculated that a culture of secrecy prevailed within that group because it reputedly had also produced optical systems for classified satellite payloads in the same plant. Finally, the small cadre of personnel the Hubble Project at Marshall assigned to monitor the work at Perkin-Elmer really did not have the experience or expertise needed in the area of large optical telescope systems.

What did critics say about the F-15 and F-16?

John Boyd, defense analysts Tom Christie and Pierre Sprey, and test pilot Col. Everest Riccioni and aeronautical engineer Harry Hillaker formed the core of the self-dubbed "Fighter Mafia" which worked behind the scenes in the late 1960s to pursue a lightweight fighter as an alternative to the F-15. The group strongly believed that an ideal fighter should not include any of the sophisticated radar and missile systems or rudimentary ground-attack capability that found their way into the F-15.

In retrospect, the group's greatest contribution was the promotion of E-M as a basis for evaluating and designing aircraft for air combat maneuvering. At a time when the US military was seemingly obsessed with technological solutions, the Fighter Mafia acted as the opposite extreme from which a more balanced approach to fighter design would emerge. 

However, this can be seen as ultimately a defeat of the Fighter Mafia and its ideals. While this balanced approach would result in the highly successful F-15, F-15E, F-16, F/A-18 and F/A-18E/F, it did so at the betrayal of the Fighter Mafia's campaign for the US military to adopt a single-role, low-tech fighter in large numbers.

The group's uncompromising disdain of and campaign against advanced weapons, radars, ECM, and multi-role designs, what they characterized as "gold-plating", would prove erroneous. For example, the Fighter Mafia argued that the ground attack mission should be handled by more appropriate, dedicated aircraft such as the A-10, which has had an outstanding record in that area and that the addition of more electronics to F-16 caused its weight to rise to the point where it lost its edge in dogfighting, the mission for which it had been designed. The vision of the group would have seen the US build thousands of dedicated short-ranged, low-tech, fighter-only aircraft to counter Soviet air power on a numerical superiority basis, a plan that was never endorsed by the USAF or the USN.

Instead, the success of US military aircraft has shown that the same technology would protect aircraft from missiles in an increasingly sensor-saturated battlefield, and would enable the multi-mission capabilities of modern aircraft. And while the US aircraft has engaged in few air-to-air encounters since Vietnam, the trend continues to show that missiles and in particular increasingly mature long-range missiles are the primary weapon of choice in modern combat, a trend that started as far back as the Vietnam War but continues to be downplayed by the Fighter Mafia.

Although Sprey often portrays himself as a "principal designer" of the F-16, the actual plane that entered service included the long-range missiles, sensors and multi-role capability that he continues to criticize today.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fighter_Mafia

Was the F/18 E/F Super Hornet a good idea?

Sometimes it's interesting to read opinions from the past so we can see how accurate they were:

In a publication called “Inside Washington,” the Navy’s director of operational testing is quoted as saying that the Super Hornet was superior to its earlier models “…in every category but three: acceleration, maximum speed and sustained turning performance.”

This pronouncement boggled our minds because these are the very performance capabilities that determine a tactical airplane’s survival. Then, as if to justify this “hand grenade,” the officer is quoted as stating that the Navy has sacrificed speed in the Super Hornet for other beneficial capabilities, and he asserts, “brute speed is no longer the discriminator it once was when the benchmark was the Soviet threat.”

 It is clear that this Naval officer doesn’t have a clue about aerial combat and the importance of total energy in the complex equation of energy maneuverability. Nor does he seem to understand that Third World countries all around the globe are purchasing the very latest operational Russian-built fighters that are also licensed for production in China. The Russian aerial threat still exists; what has changed is that the pilots aren’t Russians.

Contrary to what we’re officially told, a tanker variety of the Hornet is simply not the answer. In an attempt to make it supersonic, the F-18E has been given a low aspect ratio and a razor blade of a wing. This hurts subsonic drag and carrier takeoff payload when compared with the KA-6 tanker, which is an aerodynamically efficient solution.

Equally silly is the proposal for an EW version of the F-18E. The same aerodynamic reasons apply for this airplane, plus it has an external stores dilemma. To get sufficient range to support a deep-interdiction mission, the EF-18E would have to use up precious external store stations with fuel tanks rather than ECM pods as carried on the EA-6B. Perhaps the Navy should consider putting the EA-6B back into upgraded and modernized production and build some of them as tankers?

In combat-maneuvering flight, the aircraft had severe “wing-drop” problems that defied resolution, despite the use of every aerodynamic analytical tool available. Eventually, one test pilot came up with a “leaky-fold-joint” fix that opened chordwise air slots to aspirate the wing’s upper surface flow and thereby prevent the sharp stalling of one wing before the other. They stalled more or less together, but much easier and more severely than before. This new fix is what the aerodynamicists call a “band aid.” It causes aircraft buffeting, which is generally a source of wing drag. But a “fix” that combined “acceptable” wing drop with “acceptable” buffeting had been achieved. One test pilot commented dryly, “I’d like the buffeting levels to be a little lower so I could read the heads-up display!”

Owing to its high drag and weight (and probably other factors), the F/A-18E is significantly poorer in acceleration than the F/A-18A. Also, its combat ceiling is substantially lower, and its transonic drag rise is very high. We have stayed in touch with some pilots at the Navy’s test center and have gathered some mind boggling anecdotal information. Here are some examples:

An F/A-18A was used to “chase” an F-14D test flight. The F-14D was carrying four 2,000-pound bombs, two 280-gallon drop tanks, two Phoenix missiles and two Sidewinder air-to-air missiles. The chase airplane was in a relatively “clean” configuration with only a centerline fuel tank. At the end of each test flight, the chase airplane was several miles behind the test airplane when the chase airplane reached “bingo” fuel and had to return to base.

An F/A-18E Super Hornet is tested using the same chase airplane, an earlier model Hornet, in the same configuration. The chase airplane does not need full thrust to stay with the test airplane.

An F/A-18E/F in maximum afterburner thrust cannot exceed Mach 1.0 in level flight below 10,000 feet even when it is in the clean configuration (no external stores). At 10,000 feet, the F-14D can exceed Mach 1.6.

A quote from a Hornet pilot is devastatingly frank: “The aircraft is slower than most fighters fielded since the early 1960s.”

The most devastating comment came from a Hornet pilot who flew numerous side-by-side comparison flights with F/A-18E/F Super Hornets and says: “We outran them, we out-flew them and we ran them out of gas. I was embarrassed for them.”

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/595147/posts