The hidden problems with the F-111 program have really turned me off to them.

No one’s told the current USAF staff then, looking at a well known AOR in the world. 😉

So true on so many levels. We live in dangerous times.

Its not unusual for less complicated aircraft to have better safety records when the pilots have less than 500 hours. But after the 500 hour mark the more complicated aircraft is generally more survivable because the crew has more options to save the day. This is why twin engine civilian aircraft training starts with single engine planes. Its only after 500 hours of flight time that the faa certifies a pilot for the provisional multi-engine certification.

When the Airbus A330-200 went down over the Atlantic it probably didn’t matter, either. If an engine malfunctions on takeoff – let alone from a manpads attack – you have the makings of quite the human catastrophe.

Twin engine aircraft don’t exactly thrill me…

Out of 2,500 McDonnell Douglas DC-9, 77 have ended in crashes.
Airbus A300 had 11 crashes.
Airbus A310 had 8 crashes.
The A320 had 10 crashes.
The A330 had 3 crashes.
Boeing 737 had 84 crashes.
Boeing 757 had 9 crashes.
Boeing 767 had 9 crashes.
Boeing 777 had 1 crash.

Not to wander too far off subject, but one thing has always bugged me. Its a shame that the larger airplanes can’t be catapulted off their runways and recovered using the other USN trick of snag lines to cut down landing strip length requirements. The USN has used catapults for 50 years to save them takeoff room.

I remember reading a few decades back that darpa dumped a lot of research into motorized trucks that would help accelerate planes on takeoff, but nothing ever seemed to come of it. Specialized trucks that are akin to drag racers were supposed to tug the planes at the beginning of the takeoff run to save the plane time and energy. The really large planes would be opened up to operate from so many more places.

I over exaggerated a little bit calling it waste, but there are huge dividends for cutting fuel usages at the rail. In the states we could be augmenting a lot of intermodal traffic with RE in the form of regenerative braking, augmenting diesel usage with hybrid motors fed electricity from remote windmill stations and solar, pushing down locomotive velocities to more efficient ranges, and automated traffic patterns.

Most traffic moving west to east (which is the majority these days) travels across barren land that has untapped natural resources of wind and solar energy. The mountains in the west are very good grounds for windmills that could be charging flywheels while trains aren’t on the track. When trains hit the rail nearby the flywheel energy could be converted into electrical energy to push the trains up the inclines. And on the declines the trains could be using the electric motors they have for smart braking to store energy. As it is now the braking energy is cooked off into the open air!! They should be feeding it back to some kind of storage for later use.

Most intermodal rail traffic is pushed through the system at one speed, a high speed. Priorities should be placed on specific traffic; higher rates for cargo that needs to be delivered quicker and reward the users of economy delivery expectations with real lower costs. Slower trains cause congestion nowadays because the few high speed trains that need to move quickly put a lot of stress on the system as a whole. All trains will be a mixture of tangibles and intangibles with no regard to shelf life or inherent market value because the traffic is chartered out for months and years at a time. (They sometimes run empty trains because the agreement called for it to run on that schedule, but then when they need the extra capacity it cannot be recouped by the customer.)

Placing Amtrak passenger trains on the same track as cargo lines is but one of many asinine decisions through the years. The wheel loading doesn’t justify the congestion for so few of travelers. The Amtrak trains shouldn’t be using the high quality lines that were built for the heaviest of cargo traffic. If people want to travel by train then let them choose to ride either specialized high speed trains or slower trains that move with the cargo.

All railway traffic that moves transcontinental is still planned out by people with no formal aim of improving efficiency. The railways save 30% of their total fuel these days compared to just a couple of decades ago when they found out that they could use smarter braking to keep tension among the cars. Slack between cars caused an awful strain on the engines and they lost a lot of efficiency.

The hard reality is that the more eyes that poor over the code the more developed it becomes. You hide the code to keep trade secrets. Perhaps they’ve cornered the software markets for their industries and don’t want to let the secrets out. You really lose all your leverage on an industry once everyone knows how to do something.

But trade secrets do not protect one from legal tort in the case of an accident. Unfortunately these industries have been trying to hide from tort for decades now. When their products kill their own there is no consumer product safety board to review the cases. The manufacturers want to hide all the flaws they can to avoid the legal repercussions.

However you try to twist it, fact remains:

-SDB II is in very early stages, quite far from being operational.

The thing about the SDB II program is that they are adding an eyeball to an otherwise plain SDB package. The original SDB has a penetrator front end. So you’re exchanging penetration capability for making it a smart weapon. You still can command link the original SDB, but hitting a moving target becomes a skill set and is not by design.