MoD Goes Back To Jump Jet

About a year ago, the British decided to switch from the STOVL F-35B to the catapult and arrestor hook F-35C.

They were building two carriers, but they would only equip one with the necessary equipment to launch and land the aircraft, leaving the remaining carrier as the world's most expensive helicopter carrier.

Well, they are back to the B model: (Paid subscription required)

In the depths of the crisis about 18 months ago surrounding the Stovl model, the U.K. walked away from the F-35B, saying it would instead buy the F-35C and denigrating the jump-jet version as an inferior aircraft. But since the F-35B gained the Pentagon's blessing as having its Stovl-unique questions resolved, London is now embracing the variant it abandoned, in part citing the development progress. “The Stovl aircraft has made significant progress since the SDSR was published over 18 months ago,” the Defense Ministry says.

The back-and-forth is not just about semantics. The U.K. decision during the 2010 Strategic Defense and Security Review to opt for the F-35C added weight to those hoping to cancel the F-35B, irking U.S. Marine Corps officials who were eager to see the version survive.

U.K. Defense Secretary Philip Hammond, in announcing the move to Parliament, still defends the 2010 ruling. He says the decision on carriers “was right at the time, but the facts have changed and therefore so, too, must our approach. This government will not blindly pursue projects and ignore cost growth and delays.”

The U.K. expects to take delivery of its first Lockheed MartinF-35B Joint Strike Fighter in July. Credit: Lockheed Martin

In the end, it was cost that brought the U.K. back to the F-35B. The price to fit HMS Prince of Wales—the second Queen Elizabeth-class carrier—with catapult launch and arrestor gear doubled to £2 billion ($3.2 billion) since the initial estimates were made going into the 2010 review , Hammond asserts. Moreover, U.K. planners were increasingly concerned about higher manpower costs associated with operating such an aircraft carrier. The decision is a setback for General Atomics, which hoped to sell its electromagnetic aircraft launch system (EMALS) to the U.K.

Hammond also says the conversion would have delayed the restoration of the U.K.'s carrier strike capability by three years to 2023. The current plans call for HMS Queen Elizabeth to begin sea trials in 2017, with aircraft to fly from the deck in 2018 in preparation for an operational capability around 2020.

Understand that the Brit carriers are gas turbine powered, and so could not be retrofitted with steam catapults, and EMALS is still showing problems, and the cost is increasing.

Also, the MoD was committed to building both ships (the cancellation clauses are pricey) but only had money to convert to CTOL, which meant that when it was in retrofit, they would have no carrier capabilities.

It is yet another testament to David Cameron's "genius" at governance:

For the government, the about-face on JSF is domestically embarrassing. While vowing to fix the lax acquisition practices that it blamed on the Labour administration, it is now reversing course on the first major item in its procurement agenda.

Yeah, like that competence is fairly oozing from the Tories.  (Not)

The Pedophile Protection Society Goes After Girl Scouts

Well what do you know, in their latest attempt to distract people from their actions protecting child predators, they have put the the Girl Scouts in their cross hairs.

Why the Girl scouts, because it's not like they are going to f%$# them, that's the boy scouts:

The sometimes tense relationship between the Catholic Church and the Girl Scouts appears to be moving toward a resolution, as the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has asked scout leaders to clarify programs and material that some religious conservatives think promote contraception and abortion.

Potentially at stake is whether troops can continue meeting in Catholic churches, and whether many Catholic girls, who make up a quarter of the nation’s 3 million Girl Scouts, will continue in scouting as the organization marks its 100th year.

In a letter dated March 28, the head of the bishops committee that has been looking into concerns about the Girl Scouts said he wanted to identify and address all remaining questions. The letter was written by Kevin C. Rhoades, bishop of Fort Wayne, who was a leading critic of the University of Notre Dame when it awarded President Obama an honorary degree in 2009.

The Associated Press reported on the letter Thursday, referring to it as an “official inquiry.”

The Girl Scouts???  Seriously?!?!?!? The US Confrence of Bishops has gone off the f%$#ing deep end.

Just Lovely

India is looking to start MIRVing its nuclear missiles:

Agni-V, India's most powerful missile with a strike range of over 5,000 kms, is set to get substantially higher destruction capabilities with plans to equip it with multiple warheads.

"We are working in this area. It will take time for us to develop but our work is on," DRDO Chief Dr V K Saraswat told the news agency when asked whether the agency is developing capabilities to produce a variant of Agni-V missile which can hit multiple targets.

Known as Multiple Independently Targeted Re-entry Vehicle (MIRV), the missile would be capable of carrying multiple warheads to destroy several targets.

Asked about the plans in that regard, he said, "Basic vehicle (missile) will remain the same. The first three stages will also remain the same and only the kill vehicle or the payload delivery system will need changes."

Terming it as a "force multiplier", the DRDO chief said, "If I am able to do force multiplication with this... where I was using four missiles, I may use only one missile. So it becomes a force multiplier given the damage potential."

It also destabilizes the the situation with Pakistan, because it allows multiple warheads to be taken out in a single strike.

Not good news.

Huh, this Might Explain the Current Turn in Israeli Politics

Benyamin Netanyahu had announced that he would be holding snap elections in the fall, which would was assumed to give the Likud a better electoral position.

Then, he announced that there would be no election, because he had formed a coalition with the 2^nd place party, Kadima.

For Kadima, which looked to be destroyed in a future election, dropping to 4^th or 5^th place, it made sense, but it didn't appear to make sense either Netanyahu or Likud.

I kind of shrugged, and put it off to the rather Byzantine nature of Israeli electoral politics, but Harvard's Noah Feldman appears to have an explanation, and, in what might be a first for Benyamin Netanhahu, it appears that he reshuffled the coalition in order to make a deep and fundimantal change in Israel's society,  and the only reason that we would make that change is because he thinks that it was the right thing.

If this calculus is true, I agree with him:

Israel’s newly expanded governing coalition may be more cautious about bombing Iran, and it may be marginally more open to serious negotiations with the Palestinians. But neither issue was the immediate reason the centrist Kadima party joined the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on May 8.

The fundamental issue was the relationship between Israel’s secular and ultra-Orthodox populations.

A looming crisis in Israeli politics was created when the country’s highest court ruled in February that ultra-Orthodox men studying in Israeli yeshivas, academies of higher Talmudic learning, must be drafted into the Israeli army as of Aug. 1. Since Israel was founded in 1948, ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students have been exempt from compulsory military service, as have religious Jewish women and Palestinian Arabs who hold Israeli citizenship. Those exempt can choose nonmilitary national service, but few do.

The exemption was the product of a deal between David Ben- Gurion, Israel’s legendary first prime minister, and the ultra- Orthodox minority, which was then tiny. At the time, many ultra- Orthodox Jews in Israel and abroad rejected the very idea of a Jewish state, believing that only God had the authority to re- create Jewish sovereignty in the land of Israel. To hasten the messianic age was a sin, and secular Zionism was its incarnation.

…

The latest round of coalition building may have broken that cycle. [Of having to kowtow to small religious parties to maintain the coalition] Netanyahu feared that passing a new law to address the high court’s ruling might bring down his government, and had called early elections to avoid the conflict. He canceled that plan two days later, however, after expanding his government. With 94 of the 120 seats in parliament, the new government can address the ruling without fear of collapsing because of defections. The centrist and secular Kadima, led by former military chief of staff Shaul Mofaz, is likely to see eye to eye with Netanyahu’s Likud party on this issue.

If these maneuvers are intended to change this policy, then it is an unalloyed good.

The idea that Yeshiva Bochers are to be exempted from the basic requirements of citizenship is wrong.

Furthermore mandatory service (largely military, though the Orthodox might end up working in public service) has the effect of exposing members of this community to the rest of society in a day-to-day professional environment.

Should this new policy come into effect, it will have a major impact on the coming generations of Heredim.

One hopes that this will also result in more of them working for a living, as opposed to sponging off subsidies from the government, which is good both from a societal and halachic (religious law) perspective.

The sages clearly state that, "Torah is not a spade," meaning that religious scholarship should not be an excuse not to support one's self and family.

Despicable People, Heredi Edition

Specifically, the Orthodox Jews in New York, who are shunning and harassing co-religionists who report child rape to the authorities:

The first shock came when Mordechai Jungreis learned that his mentally disabled teenage son was being molested in a Jewish ritual bathhouse in Brooklyn. The second came after Mr. Jungreis complained, and the man accused of the abuse was arrested.

Old friends started walking stonily past him and his family on the streets of Williamsburg. Their landlord kicked them out of their apartment. Anonymous messages filled their answering machine, cursing Mr. Jungreis for turning in a fellow Jew. And, he said, the mother of a child in a wheelchair confronted Mr. Jungreis’s mother-in-law, saying the same man had molested her son, and she “did not report this crime, so why did your son-in-law have to?”

By cooperating with the police, and speaking out about his son’s abuse, Mr. Jungreis, 38, found himself at the painful forefront of an issue roiling his insular Hasidic community. There have been glimmers of change as a small number of ultra-Orthodox Jews, taking on longstanding religious and cultural norms, have begun to report child sexual abuse accusations against members of their own communities. But those who come forward often encounter intense intimidation from their neighbors and from rabbinical authorities, aimed at pressuring them to drop their cases.

Abuse victims and their families have been expelled from religious schools and synagogues, shunned by fellow ultra-Orthodox Jews and targeted for harassment intended to destroy their businesses. Some victims’ families have been offered money, ostensibly to help pay for therapy for the victims, but also to stop pursuing charges, victims and victims’ advocates said.

This behavior is profoundly and deeply evil.

Retaliating against people who report child rape to the authorities is contemptible, and I call on the Brooklyn DA to pursue anyone who does participates in these efforts at intimidation to the fullest extant of the law.

It's Jobless Thursday!

This week, everything improved, but only marginally.

Meh.

Ka-Ching!

Barack Obama's campaign raised over a million dollars after he announced that he supported gay marriage.