When you transmit information through turbulence—motion in the atmosphere caused by turbulent cells or "wind"—it's distorted just like the information coming from the light reflected off a distant, twinkling star to your eye. It's fuzzy. You have to overcome that by using adaptive optics to rectify the distortion and get a better quality signal.

That's what Dr David Hughes, from the US Air Force Office of Scientific Research, says. He claims that the technology has been tested successfully with both stationary and flying situations, which means that they can easily implement it in the battlefield, with not too much effort. [The Register]

According to the USAF, the driver lost control of the truck because a "large insect" landed on the driver's back. The truck was hauling Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile parts from Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota. Fortunately—and unlike other recent incidents that originated at the Minot Air Force base—the crash didn't involve any nuclear warheads. Or an attack by Mothra, for that matter. [Danger Room]

The IBM SAGE spoke to me. It was old, but unlike other machines from the era, with crude punch interfaces, it had a GUI, a light gun, and hell, an ashtray. And a big yellow screen. The ashtray was so operators didn't have to leave their posts for cigarette breaks. Spotting incoming planes from the Soviet Union was precise work that needed constant attention.

You see, after World War II, it was believed that bombers were invincible; That their high altitude, distanced attacks from above and multiple engines would allow them to drop their deadly payloads and fly away without any resistance. It was believed that the only way to intercept these attacks was by having planes in the air at all times, to detect them and immediately respond with force.

SAGE stood for Semi-Automatic Ground Environment and its sole purpose was to analyze radar data in real time and relay targeting information to fighter planes' autopilots. It was built by IBM in 1954 based off of MIT technology and was a fore bearer of additional *amazing futuristic ideas* like magnetic core memory, networking, and modems to facilitate communication between the 27 bases. Each of those bases had a SAGE. And a backup that could be hot swapped. The entire system had a then impressive 99.6% uptime in an age when most computers would blow a vac tube at every day or so. The computer's console referred to a much larger back end that was 300 tons and took up an entire floor of a usually faceless concrete building. The software was written by the Rand corporation because IBM didn't know what they'd do with 2000 in house programmers after the project was done, something they admitted was a part of their historically out of touch vision of just how important programmers would eventually become to big blue. The code itself was 250,000 lines long. Nothing compared to a modern operating system on even your phone, but it was the most complex of its time, employing 20% of the world's programming force at the time.

What's sad is that these glorious machines, even at their best and earliest warnings of incoming missiles, would only be informing the United States of the inevitable: there wouldn't have been enough time to intercept a real threat, says the Computer History Museum. Thank god for the great vastness of the Pacific, the Atlantic, Canada and Mexico.

The SAGE was retired in 1983 when ICBMs rendered them even more obsolete. But before then, adding shame to uselessness was the fact that in the end, the only place to get SAGE replacement tubes was from the Soviet Union itself. The industrial war machine is a complex and nonsensical thing. Sometimes that complex nonsensicality costs several billion taxpayer dollars.

Update: "This also fails to mention that operators could order the launch of either nuclear armed BOMARC or Nike Hercules Surface-to-Air missiles." From CPUZapper in the comments, which happen to be stellar in this post.

[Computer History Museum, Wikipedia]
The Computer History Museum is a wonderful place. If you're in northern CA, I recommend you find a way to stop by. We'll be running pieces from their collection as an ongoing series. Special thanks to Fiona Tang, John Hollar and the amazing Dag Spicer for showing me around.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.The US Air Force said yesterday that they are going to buy an arsenal of these bombs, which will be incorporated into the B-2A bomber fleet. Manufactured by Boeing, they are designed to destroy any bunker buried under ground, so you know these are designed for the Kim Jong-Ils, Bin Ladens, and Ahmadinejads of this world. If you fall into any of these three categories, mark your calendars now: The Holmes will reach operational status in June 2012.

The GPS-guided GBU-57A/B has a 2.7 metric ton high explosive warhead, and can penetrate 200 feet (60 meters) of 5,000 psi reinforced concrete, 26 feet (8 meters) of 10,000 psis reinforced concrete, or 130 feet (40 meters) of moderately hard rock. [The Dew Line and Wikipedia]

[The Dew Line]

The Thunderbirds, aka the U.S. Air Force Air Demonstration Squadron, are comprised of eight pilots, four support officers, three civilians, and more than 130 enlisted personnel, say the folks at CNET who read over the unit's official fact sheet.

They typically fly for about an hour during an air show appearance, during which time they complete 30 jaw-dropping maneuvers and then presumably land. Although, not all the time. [CNET]

DARPA is now aiming for a $1.5 billion plant that will make 100,000 barrels of fuel per day, while producing zero CO2 emissions and using only 0.5 kilograms of water per kilogram of coal converted—I'm clueless about this, but it seems like an awful lot of water to me, specially compared to the alternative of not flying the airplanes so much. The cost for each gallon of JP-8 jet fuel would be $3.

Together with extensive tests on alternative synthetic fuel mixes, the US military wants to make its air machinery as green and cost-effective as possible, since petroleum-based fuels are becoming too expensive. Coal reserves in the US, however, can fix this. [Aviation Weekly]

They are much higher performance and a much more demanding environment. That was just another risk reduction step to prove the aircraft was not leaking fuel and the engines were behaving nominally. We asked them [the pilots] point-blank if they noticed any difference in performance and they said it was a "non-event". In other words, they couldn't tell the difference. The aircraft behaved the same.

The test this time started with a 50-minute ground test, pushing the engines to full afterburner. In the flight, the pilots put the F-15 to Mach 2.2, approximately 1,450mph. Hopefully, this experiments will also change the civilian airline industry, all in the name of costs and a cool looking environmentally-friendly brochure. [Defense Tech]

Apparently, there are some conflicts in the Pentagon about who has the control over cyberspace. According to an Air Force source, Admiral Mike Mullen—chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff—wants the Navy to be involved. And while the kids fight for their shiny toys, the Russians hackers are now fighting on the internet for real. Great. Thank God that we have the CIA and the NSA looking out for the well-being of the Free World. [NextGov via Ars Technica]

According to Aviation Week, the X-37B test will use a launch slot previously reserved for another Atlas V, which would have carried NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite. This mission would have to be posponed to February-March 2009.

At first sight, it looks like the US military is starting to feel the heat of the May 2010 deadline for the space shuttle program—which will limit their capacity to service military satellites as well as their secret orbital base, with all those nuclear heads and chemical lasers capable of blowing up Teheran in a millisecond. However, the reality is that an "end-of-2008" launch was announced back in 2006. The spacecraft—as well as the X-40, its predecesor—has already been tested numerous times, one of them flying underneath the White Knight from Mojave Spaceport. [Aviation Week]

The piddle pack hose is linked to a paperback book-sized pump that drains the wearer's wee into a collection bag. With both male and female models (a pouch for the boys, a sanitary towel for the girls) it could mean that the USAF's planes are safer. Mid-air accidents have occurred, resulting in at least two crashes as F-16 pilots unbuckled to take a leak.

The AMXD costs about $2,000 from Omni Medical Systems, and it's worth having a shufti through the instruction manual, as it's fascinating stuff. [Omni Medical Systems via Wired]

The Launch Complex 40—and 41—was the base for the largest US expendable rocket, the Titan IV. It started operations in 1965 with Titan IIIC rockets, and it was home for the legendary Mars Viking (1975) and Voyager missions, which has been crossing our solar system since 1977. The site was also the launch pad for the failed Mars Observer mission, as well as the successful Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn, which departed Earth on October 15, 1997.

The last launch was for a Lacrosse-5 reconnaissance satellite, launched on April 30, 2005 on board a Titan IVB rocket.

M&S did not identify an alternative shift schedule which would result in improved work effectiveness over that predicted for the current schedule [...] the root problem for this population was not the shift system features themselves, but rather a lack of adequate manpower to provide sufficient recovery opportunities.

Simply put: they don't have any idea about why this is happening. To begin with, these pilots work from the comfort of a chair in their home bases—with no real dangers beyond a few extra pounds and evil hemorrhoids. Just like bloggers.

Unlike "real" fighter or bomber pilots, however, these crews fly the Predators using computer stations that offer them a virtual view of the Predator is seeing, as well as all the on-board instrumentation. In a way, it's like any flight simulator user, except that the images, data and target are real, as well as the payloads.

It even sounds relaxing and fun, but some time ago the Pentagon ordered a study about the health of these elite office chair pilots and found that they were indeed the most fatigued of the military flight crews. As a result, they put a plan into action to help ease their situation: the flight crews got better schedules and one extra day off to enjoy.

However, even after these measures, the new study has found that they still sleep badly and the situation is exactly the same: "nearly 50% of surveyed crewmembers met the diagnostic threshold for levels of daily sleepiness which can be expected to adversely impact job performance and safety."

Quite frankly, I find hard to image how a Predator pilot could be more fatigued than a fighter pilot doing combat missions from an aircraft carrier, but who knows, maybe the aviator eyeglasses give these special powers, while making ground crews look like a moron like me. [Navy Study (PDF) via The Dew Line]