Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel Fired

Vice President Joe Biden is the Obama Administration's Counter-Terrorism (CT) rather than Counter-Insurgency (COIN) advocate.

POTUS can't fire VPOTUS.

Secretary Hagel was the first enlisted man to serve as Secretary of Defense.  He was a far cry from Secretary Donald Rumsfelt.

Michelle Obama is the right person to replace Hagel.

She probably has more clout than Joe Biden.

The New Narrative

Charity begins at home; take care of yourself first.  Democrats lie.

The old narrative was that when the media identified a problem the Federal Government should/would solve it for us.

Note to Chris Christy:  Richard Feynman said that an honest politician can't be elected.  We know that New York and Maryland politicians are crooked.  Feynman didn't specifically address a politician who tried to have someone else lie for him.

If a Federal Government shutdown presents a problem, the Federal Government is too large.  A commentator on TV earlier tonight said that James Madison was turning over in his grave.

We now realize that Postmodernism is not the answer.  We do know lots of narratives that the lawyers and Democrats have been expounding.  #WOW, #VAWA, Gruberspeak

Milton Friedman was right about a lot of things.  If you want a really big screw up, you have to get the government involved.  The Keynesians tried to negate his most obvious argument (timing).

Comments on Julia Pierson's Resignation

I built on a "saying" that it takes new PhDs two years to do anything useful to "observe" that it takes about 2 years to be productive in a new job.

A US Army Colonel commented once that he always did his old job for 2 years.  He served with the Weapons Systems Evaluation Group (WSEG) which was co-located with the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA) which was known as DoD's "think tank".

The US Army had the Research Analyses Corporation (RAC), the US Navy had the Center for Naval Analyses (CNA), and the US Air Force had RAND which made all the others necessary.

I worked with the Army Colonel on a project for the newly established US Army Operational Test and Evaluation Agency (OTEA) while I was employed by BDM (bought TRW except automotive part) which is now Northrop-Grumman.

My model became it takes good people about a year to notice that the new job is different and about a year to "work on" the new job.  I thought "new PhDs" could probably do this.  [All particle physicists at the time were probably "bright enough" to do it.]

Charles J. DiBona, who became (former Governor of Colorado) John Love's deputy when they created the first version of the Department of Energy.  Mr. Di Bona was of the McNamara whiz kid variety who had resigned his commission in the US Navy (as a Lieutenant Commander) to become President of the CNA while I was there.

One benefit of leaving high energy physics as a profession I expected was that things could be completed in less than 5 years.

It is very difficult to see significant change in 5 years.  The easiest changes to observe are related to related to wars or terrorist acts.

Eliot Richardson was a Republican with a fabulous resume during the Nixon era but he was never anywhere long enough to do any good (or harm).

Julia Pierson accepted a very challenging job.  A change of culture is difficult and usually takes the most time.

It is difficult (but not impossible) to get Governmental action related to meeting “urgent combat needs”.  Anything else may (and should?) take a generation or more in which to observe a change.

 

Would we really want the world to know all the recent failures that have involved the Secret Service?

 

President Obama, James Clapper, and Susan Rice should resign because of obvious inability to do their respective jobs. 

 

 

 

 

Technical Reference Models

Today’s Thoughts

Interoperability is greatly facilitated by a shared Technical Reference Model.  The US Department of Defense developed these as a part of the Corporate Information Management (CIM) Initiative.  A current TRM is available at http://ce.sharif.edu/courses/87-88/1/ce448/resources/root/EIAP-methodologies-references-models/DOD_TRM_V0.4_10Aug.pdf.

Satellite Communications is shown in context in Figure 6 on page 17 in the above reference.

The OSI Technical Reference Model describes a seven-layer protocol stack.

See http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc977591.aspx.

 

 

MH370 Fact and Hypotheses

MH370 Facts

The plan took off nearly on time.

Things were normal throughout the first controller’s tenure.

The InMarSat data has been accurate and reliable.

The range of the flight has been uncertain.

Hypotheses:

The P-3 dropped sonobouy detected Tireless.

US Assets added nothing to the realization that the aircraft was on the Southern Arc.

US National Authorities wish they had assets capable of contributing.

MH370 Flight Path

Without knowing the uncertainty in the altitude values for the military radar, we really do not know that it forces deviation from the otherwise determined flight path.

The maximum likelihood fit to the data is that the plane went down on the southern arc of the circle.

Who benefits most?

The media has been focused on the loss of MH370 for two weeks.

Who benefits most, Obama or Putin?