Federal auditors are once again sounding alarms over the Pentagon's embattled F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, which has soared hundreds of billions of dollars over budget.
Besides being the Defense Department's most expensive weapons program ever, countless problems with the F-35, including design and systematic issues, have continually pushed back the ready-for-combat date. It is now years behind schedule.
Engine issues are one of the major problems inspectors have flagged. The Government Accountability Office reviewed data from flight tests earlier this month and concluded that the reliability of the F-35's engine, made by Pratt & Whitney, is "very poor." That makes the likelihood that the jet will soon be ready for battle even more dubious.
The Marine Corps' version of the F-35 flew just 47 hours because of engine design issues, instead of the 90 hours it was scheduled to fly, GAO officials told Bloomberg. Likewise, the Air Force and Navy versions of the F-35 flew just 25 hours instead of the 120 hours planned.
The GAO's findings come just as lawmakers are considering whether to grant the DoD an additional $1.2 billion for the jet engines next year. They've already approved roughly $17 billion of the total $67 billion for the F-35's engines alone. The entire program's price tag is about $391 billion and counting.
"This means that the engine is failing at a much greater rate and requiring more maintenance than expected," auditors said in the report. "While overall reliability has increased, engine reliability over the last year has remained well below expected levels. Improving the F-35 engine reliability to achieve established goals will likely require more time and resources than originally planned."
Pratt & Whitney disagreed with the GAO's findings, saying that the auditors didn't account for the new designs that are being incorporated into production.
Separately, while all that money is being poured into the program, auditors are raising concerns about how well the DoD is managing the massive project. A new report released today by the DoD's Inspector General slams the Pentagon's management and oversight of the engines system and says Pratt & Whitney isn't following all of the Pentagon's procedures and guidelines -- which could be leading to overspending and delays.
The IG found identified 61 "noncomformities" or violations of federal regulator requirements -- and recommended that the DoD implement new guidelines and provide more oversight of the company in charge of the engine development. The Pentagon agreed with some of the auditors recommendations but defended the program, saying it's still in development.
The report comes just after the House Armed Services Committee launched an "independent look at the engine program" before approving extra funding.
This is just the latest issue with the F-35, which has attracted a barrage of negative media attention for of its endless problems and ballooning price tag -- estimated to cost $850 billion over its 55-year lifespan.
Although the jet faces increasing scrutiny, the top official in charge of the program, Air Force Lt. General Christopher Bogdan, told reporters last month that the Marines' version of the F-35 will be ready for combat by this summer. Insert Morgan Fairchild image here.
...and the Nigerians just can't find a miserly 20 billion.
The IG found identified 61 "noncomformities" or violations of federal regulator requirements -- and recommended that the DoD implement new guidelines and provide more oversight of the company in charge of the engine development
1 - retire all the senior officers involved. No ceremony. No ribbons.
#3
That there are so few deficiencies is remarkable given what this plane is supposed to do. And yes, it should have been designed as a twin engine plane, much like the F-4, 14, 15, 18, and A-10, but since it is a single engine plane, that engine has to do more with less. It will take a while to sort out.
The F-35 program is certainly in better shape than the Russian T-50 program, so it has that going for it too.
#4
And a bit of history: when the USN was looking for a replacement for the A-7 Corsair, the F-16 performed better than all other candidates, especially in the carrier environment, but the LAF* decreed 2 motors so we got the F-17, that turned in the much loved F/A-18.
#6
People who need it to fail will always see FAIL (side of global warming with that?) People who think it will still be cancelled have never worked procurement or lobbied / been lobbied by a huge manufacturer with its life on the line. Is it (can it ever be) a good airplane? Irrelevant to the people who decide whether it gets bought / paid for. Bad news if it's a bad kite, but the game will continue apace...
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
04/27/2015 19:55 Comments ||
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Don't worry. This isn't happening in the US. Yet. That I know of.
Doctors are being told to ask all patients over 75 if they will agree to a 'do not resuscitate' order.
New NHS guidelines urge GPs to draw up end-of-life plans for over-75s, as well as younger patients suffering from cancer, dementia, heart disease or serious lung conditions.
They are also being told to ask whether the patient wants doctors to try to resuscitate them if their health suddenly deteriorates.
The NHS says the guidance will improve patients' end-of-life care, but medical professionals say it is 'blatantly wrong' and will frighten the elderly into thinking they are being 'written off'.
In some surgeries, nurses are cold-calling patients over 75 or with long-term conditions and asking them over the phone if they have 'thought about resuscitation'.
Other patients have spoken of the shock of going in for a routine check-up and being asked about resuscitation.
The extraordinary new guidance has been brought in despite the outcry over the use of 'do not resuscitate' orders under the Liverpool Care Pathway (LCP).
The discredited pathway was scrapped last year after the Mail revealed that doctors were placing 'DNR' notices on patients without their knowledge and depriving them of food and fluids.
The guidelines -- which also recommend patients should be asked if they want to die at home -- have been drawn up by experts advising NHS England, the organisation which runs the health service.
One expert last night said the guidance was 'the thin end of the wedge of assisted suicide'.
Professor Patrick Pullicino, who spearheaded the campaign against the LCP, said: 'What is most blatantly wrong is trying to get someone to agree to a 'do not resuscitate' order before they are even sick. For somebody who is perfectly well, or has got a mild or not a serious illness, that would be totally out of place.'
Roy Lilley, a health policy analyst and former NHS trust chairman, said: 'It will give some older people the impression that no-one wants to bother with them. It looks as though they're being told: 'You're old, how do you want to die because you're in the way'.
'It's a very clunky thing to do -- it's completely unnecessary.'
Roger Goss, of Patient Concern, said: 'There will be some people who will be put out, disconcerted and think they are not going to get the best available care. They might think this is a way of saving money for the NHS. Other patients will be prepared to talk about it and think it sensible.'
A 'do not resuscitate' order is meant to stop a patient suffering unnecessarily where their lives are likely to be extended for only a short period of time.
Resuscitation can be traumatic and cause broken ribs or damage to organs, including the spleen.
Doctors estimate that only 10 to 15 per cent of patients are brought back to life and some suffer permanent brain damage.
But asking patients to make such a decision when they may have many years to live will prompt concerns that the NHS is writing them off.
In some parts of England, practice nurses have been instructed to cold-call patients and fill out an advance care plan for them over the phone.
Ruth Nicholls, a palliative care nurse in the South East, told how her brother-in-law, who has a heart condition, was contacted immediately after he had a hospital appointment.
In an interview with Nursing Times, she said: 'He came back from an outpatient appointment having not had very good news and later that afternoon got a phone call from one of the practice nurses at his GP surgery.
'She said: 'Hello, we're ringing all our patients with chronic conditions to see how you are and whether you have thought about resuscitation.'
'This conversation was absolutely out of nowhere. My brother-in-law was shocked and my sister was distraught.'
She also said an elderly patient was asked about resuscitation by a district nurse he had never met during a routine visit.
'One of the first questions he was asked was whether he wanted to be resuscitated,' she said. 'People are being left in great distress.'
The controversial Liverpool Care Pathway was phased out last year following harrowing reports that patients were being left so dehydrated they were left to suck on wet sponges given by relatives because nurses had banned water.
#1
As a lung physician, I've dealt extensively with DNR orders. It is very true that an out-of-hospital arrest is seldomly resuscitated and restored to former health status. Ditto for the very large majority of in-hospital arrests, even witnessed ones.
Further, death has 100% penetrance: we're all going to die of something. It's a fair question to discuss with an older patient, or any patient with a chronic, debilitating illness with a downward course, just how much they want done and how heroic they want the medical system to be. Most patients are clear-eyed, realistic and get it. Some need a little more time.
With that said, what NHS is doing is indeed trying to intimidate older patients simply to save money. If they'd like to prove otherwise, the high level managers could start by posting on-line their own DNR orders.
Cold-calling is inappropriate: DNR, living will, and heroic measures should be discussed at a time and setting conducive to answering questions, comforting people in a time of a potentially upsetting conversation, and ensuring that there is sufficient time to answer all questions. I do some work with ALS patients, and my initial consultation with them is 90 minutes precisely for this reason.
I'd look NHS in the eye and remind them that I wear a white coat, not a black robe.
Posted by: Steve White ||
04/27/2015 12:34 Comments ||
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#2
Advance directives as a part of a living will are not new. Most people discuss such things with their attorney prior to the need. I was in a conversation with my physician about Obamacare and it's impact on healthcare the other day. He mentioned a patient he was treating for cancer. He said he could provide curative treatment for the patient but the insurance company would only cover palliative care, i.e. care which would make his quality of life better for awhile but not cure the disease. The point is that in the U.S., insurance companies, in fact, often make the end-of-life decisions for you.
#3
Further, death has 100% penetrance: we're all going to die of something
Yep, Death is a pie chart. Move one radii to make one area smaller only makes another area larger. Oh, and that's area special interest group scream louder for more research funding.
#6
OOOOOOOOOOO, you just know that GWCC intensifies towards Year 2050, + the US-World + mighty OWG-NWO = SPACE GOVT-ORDER = SPACE COMMAND starts building Spaceships + "Off-Earth Bases", "SOLYENT GREEN" WILL BE THERE!
[AA.TR] China has said it will severely punish organizers of strip shows at funerals in rural areas in an effort to curtail illegal performances. Oh, well, hell! If I can't have a strip show I ain't dyin'.
The Ministry of Culture said in a website statement that it would work with various departments to intensify supervision of such profit-oriented shows, while boosting law enforcement.
"Illegal performances such as strip dances have been occurring in rural areas from time to time that have disrupted the cultural market and created a negative influence on the social environment," it said.
The state-run China Daily reported Friday that people have been paying troupes to play folk music at funerals and perform racy acts, in the hope that more people will come.
"They want to have as many people as possible attend the funeral," Zhang Chengdong, vice-president of the Jiangsu Festivals and Events Association, said.
"In this way, they feel they fulfill their obligation of fidelity to their elders."
The ministry has cited the case of a "Red Rose Troupe" -- an art group from Handan in northern Hebei province -- who presented what the authorities characterized as a strip show at the funeral of an elder on Feb. 15
It also said "what was said to be an obscene act" had taken place at a funeral in the eastern coastal province of Jiangsu on Feb. 27.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/27/2015 00:00 ||
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#3
Chinese cultural and religious cerimonies are something that never really made it to the West except in a sanitized form.
I lived next to a Chinese temple for a couple of years in Singapore. Plenty of burning of paper money, houses, cars, etc, but no strippers that I noticed though.
#8
A strip show would brighten up most funerals. We had a party after our wedding and had a belly dancer, bag piper, and guitarist. We got no complaints.
[DAWN] At least 26 people were killed and more than 180 injured Sunday after a storm struck Pakistain's northwest city of Beautiful Downtown Peshawar ...capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (formerly known as the North-West Frontier Province), administrative and economic hub for the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan. Peshawar is situated near the eastern end of the Khyber Pass, convenient to the Pak-Afghan border. Peshawar has evolved into one of Pakistan's most ethnically and linguistically diverse cities, which means lots of gunfire. causing dozens of buildings to collapse, officials said.
Fallen trees, rubble from buildings and mobile phone towers had blocked several main roads, an AFP news hound at the scene said, while flood water from torrential rainfall had reached three feet (one metre) deep in some parts of the city of more than three million people.
"The corpse count has risen to 26 and 180 people have been injured," senior local government official Riaz Khan Mehsud told AFP. Dr Niaz Saeed, a senior police official, confirmed the figures.
Mushtaq Ali Shah, director of the provincial meteorological department, described the storm as a "mini cyclone with wind speeds of 110 kilometres per hour (68 miles per hour)".
Posted by: Fred ||
04/27/2015 00:00 ||
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#1
The corpse count has risen to 26 and 180 people have been injured
[AA.TR] Nigeria's President-elect Muhammadu Buhari has vowed to investigation a claim that a whopping $20 billion of oil revenues were not remitted to government account by the state-owned Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC). Ask Sani Abacha's kid where it is. He was secretly trying to move it out of the country last I heard from him.
Did he send you an email asking you to deposit some money for him, too?
"You all know what the Emir of Kano talked about when he was the governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria," Buhari told some politicians who visited him in capital Abuja on Sunday.
"He said $20 billion dollars, not naira, were unaccounted for; they [the government] said it was a lie. Instead of investigating it, they sacked him," Buhari recalled.
"And since this was documented, the new administration will take a look at it," he vowed.
In 2013, former central bank governor Sanusi Lamido Sanusi claimed that up to $20 billion oil revenues were never remitted to the government purse, a claim that the NNPC denied at the time.
Sanusi was removed from office shortly after under circumstances observers say was vindictive and meant to silent him.
He has since been crowned the Emir of Kano, the second most powerful monarch in Nigeria's northern region after the Sultan of Sokoto, who is considered the leader of Nigerian Moslems.
An audit sponsored by the government later said that $1.48 billion were not remitted.
Petroleum Minister Diezani Alison-Madueke said last week that the NNPC - which is under her control - has started refunding the missing fund into the government account.
Buhari defeated incumbent President Goodluck Jonathan ... 14th President of Nigeria. He was Governor of Bayelsa State from 9 December 2005 to 28 May 2007, and was sworn in as Vice President on 29 May 2007. Jonathan is a member of the ruling People's Democratic Party (PDP). He is a lover of nifty hats, which makes him easily recognizable unless someone else in the room is wearing a neat chapeau... in the presidential election.
The former military ruler, who contested the vote promising to battle corruption and restore public confidence in government, will be sworn in on May 29 in line with a tradition that dates back to 1999, when the military handed power over to a civilian administration after decades of military rule.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/27/2015 00:00 ||
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#1
"your account number is 419"
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/27/2015 10:35 Comments ||
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#2
They're also looking for a 'missing' 20 in Detroit, Philly, Boston, Trenton, Springfield,....
A US sailor has suffered serious injuries after jumping from the 10th floor balcony of a hotel into a swimming pool in Perth. Police say the 22-year-old suffered a broken leg and internal injuries in the incident at the Parmelia Hilton at about 1:00am. He is undergoing surgery in Royal Perth Hospital.
Police said they were called to an incident involving a man and a woman from USS Carl Vinson, currently off Perth after a stint in the Middle East. It is believed both were involved in an altercation before the man jumped from the balcony. Police said both were believed to be heavily intoxicated.
The small pool is outdoors on the second floor of the hotel, next to the gym. It is about 20 metres long and has a depth of 1.1 metres at the shallow end, dropping to 2.2 metres at the other end. It is understood he landed in the shallow end of the pool, with police estimating he landed in 1.3 metres of water.
A senior police spokesman told the ABC it was an extremely dangerous stunt and "a sober person wouldn't do it".
A hotel guest, Malcolm, whose room overlooked the pool, said he heard the man crying out for help. "I just heard his screaming and he sounded intoxicated," he said. "I'm very surprised he attempted it. "I thought he was lucky to make the water, to be quite honest with you. He's lucky to be alive."
Another guest said she thought it was amazing he survived the jump.
Details of the incident have been handed to the US Navy for an investigation. Maybe 60 meters. You are pretty close to terminal velocity. Very lucky to be alive.
#2
Yeah, even 100 ft is way too freaking far. During training we're told that jumping off the rig into the water straight is the absolute last resort, much better to shimmy down a line or SOMETHING to get closer to the water if you have to go that way instead of via the lifeboats. Course, we have several rope ladders that can be tossed over the side that will hit the water. Thing is, you'd best swim fast away from the rig because the waves are going to smack you into the legs if you don't.
Course there's always the "Let's not get to that point." which is my personal favorite method of not jumping off the rig:p
#8
So maybe I am missing something, but how can a shallow end of the pool, at 1.1 meters, hold water to a depth of 1.3 meters? (unless it was ice and stacked up)
and yes, during a port visit to Perth back in 1980, I really wanted to stay, but for some strange reason the Boomer 1 (CO) said no.
#1
Well, to me, that means either he's been getting a lot of big donations from the LNG crowd or someone on the DNC has bought a lot of oil and gas stock recently.
#4
US had started some LNG import plants on the Gulf Coast (to go with export plants in West AFrica) before they discovered how effective fraccing could be. Several of these are being modified to be LNG export plants, presumably to European markets, though I don't see how they can be competitive with exporting LNG form Africa, or the Persian Gulf. In either case, the geopolitical game is providing Western Europe with an alternative to being held hostage to Russian gas - single supplier for anything, gas to health care, is a ticket to disaster. East Asian gas market is mainly for LNG from Australia - and China is rapidly developing alternate sources, domestic and via pipeline from Central Asia.
#6
Plenty of supply of LNG for Japan a lot closer in NW Australia. Those LNG tankers are very expensive to build and operate, so distance matters - a lot. Now, if Canada gives up on Keystone and builds to a West Coast port, they could have the Chinese and Japanese bidding for their tar sand crude.
#8
Glenmore---do you think that a gas line from Alaska's North Slope to tidewater would be a viable alternative for LNG shipment to Japan and South Korea?
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
04/27/2015 17:36 Comments ||
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[AnNahar] The Turkish coastguard has rounded up 350 mainly Syrian migrants in an operation against a ship planning to take them to Europe, the official Anatolia news agency said Sunday.
Coastguard personnel overnight Saturday to Sunday raided the Mongolian-flagged "Ole" vessel after a tip-off that migrants were being carried on board.
The coastguard picked up 71 migrants on board the ship off the southeastern Turkish city of Mersin and captured 279 others waiting their turn at the port to board the vessel, Anatolia said.
It said the migrants, including women and kiddies, were seeking to reach European Union ...the successor to the Holy Roman Empire, only without the Hapsburgs and the nifty uniforms and the dancing... countries, in particular Italia.
Police detained 10 crewmen and seized the inflatable boats used to transfer the migrants to the ship.
The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire.... , which already hosts 1.8 million Syrian refugees from the civil war, has become a key transit point for migrants seeking a better life in Europe.
Mersin has become known as an increasingly important hub for Syrian migrants, with local authorities saying that 1,754 illegal migrants were apprehended at sea off the port last year.
Turkish authorities have stepped up operations on migrant boats amid a surge in the numbers attempting the perilous crossing, following the Mediterranean's worst migrant disaster recently in which as many as 800 people drowned off Libya.
The Global Warming Policy Foundation has enlisted an international team of five distinguished scientists to carry out a full inquiry.
Last month, we are told, the world enjoyed "its hottest March since records began in 1880". This year, according to "US government scientists", already bids to outrank 2014 as "the hottest ever". The figures from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) were based, like all the other three official surface temperature records on which the world's scientists and politicians rely, on data compiled from a network of weather stations by NOAA's Global Historical Climate Network (GHCN).
But here there is a puzzle. These temperature records are not the only ones with official status. The other two, Remote Sensing Systems (RSS) and the University of Alabama (UAH), are based on a quite different method of measuring temperature data, by satellites. And these, as they have increasingly done in recent years, give a strikingly different picture. Neither shows last month as anything like the hottest March on record, any more than they showed 2014 as "the hottest year ever".
Back in January and February, two items in this column attracted more than 42,000 comments to the Telegraph website from all over the world. The provocative headings given to them were "Climategate the sequel: how we are still being tricked by flawed data on global warming" and "The fiddling with temperature data is the biggest scientific scandal".
My cue for those pieces was the evidence multiplying from across the world that something very odd has been going on with those official surface temperature records, all of which ultimately rely on data compiled by NOAA's GHCN. Careful analysts have come up with hundreds of examples of how the original data recorded by 3,000-odd weather stations has been "adjusted", to exaggerate the degree to which the Earth has actually been warming. Figures from earlier decades have repeatedly been adjusted downwards and more recent data adjusted upwards, to show the Earth having warmed much more dramatically than the original data justified.
So strong is the evidence that all this calls for proper investigation that my articles have now brought a heavyweight response. The Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) has enlisted an international team of five distinguished scientists to carry out a full inquiry into just how far these manipulations of the data may have distorted our picture of what is really happening to global temperatures.
The panel is chaired by Terence Kealey, until recently vice-chancellor of the University of Buckingham. His team, all respected experts in their field with many peer-reviewed papers to their name, includes Dr Peter Chylek, a physicist from the National Los Alamos Laboratory; Richard McNider, an emeritus professor who founded the Atmospheric Sciences Programme at the University of Alabama; Professor Roman Mureika from Canada, an expert in identifying errors in statistical methodology; Professor Roger Pielke Sr, a noted climatologist from the University of Colorado, and Professor William van Wijngaarden, a physicist whose many papers on climatology have included studies in the use of "homogenisation" in data records.
Their inquiry's central aim will be to establish a comprehensive view of just how far the original data has been "adjusted" by the three main surface records: those published by the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (Giss), the US National Climate Data Center and Hadcrut, that compiled by the East Anglia Climatic Research Unit (Cru), in conjunction with the UK Met Office's Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction. All of them are run by committed believers in man-made global warming.
For this the GWPF panel is initially inviting input from all those analysts across the world who have already shown their expertise in comparing the originally recorded data with that finally published. In particular, they will be wanting to establish a full and accurate picture of just how much of the published record has been adjusted in a way which gives the impression that temperatures have been rising faster and further than was indicated by the raw measured data.
Already studies based on the US, Australia, New Zealand, the Arctic and South America have suggested that this is far too often the case.
But only when the full picture is in will it be possible to see just how far the scare over global warming has been driven by manipulation of figures accepted as reliable by the politicians who shape our energy policy, and much else besides. If the panel's findings eventually confirm what we have seen so far, this really will be the "smoking gun", in a scandal the scale and significance of which for all of us can scarcely be exaggerated.
#1
One has to wonder why so many on the left so readily sign on for Hillary as well as global warming. You also have to wonder why the leftists didn't bail out when the meme was changed from "global warming" to the all-encompassing "climate change" when the "global warming theory" wasn't working.
#3
I drove my son's ultra liberal brother in law into a full on screaming fit by questioning the "science".
What finally set him over the edge was my questioning the computer models since that's an area of my expertise and I'm well aware of all the ways to fudge the numbers.
I just told him "Don't forget, GIGO" and he went kaboom. It was very funny.
#7
I drove my son's ultra liberal brother in law into a full on screaming fit by questioning the "science".
It is easy with these folks to go from a calm, easy-going mode of 0 to 90 in 1-2 seconds flat. The unhinged side of them comes out when you don't agree with them. They cannot discuss the scientific aspects (or lack of in this case) rationally. Once they set up their deities, they don't want you to be an iconoclast and destroy their idols. You will get attacked and get accused of being a Taliban. I suppose it is a deep-seated insecurity that does not tolerate discussion, dissent, and disagreement.
#10
It was interesting to me that 2014 was the hottest year on record (136 years) by 0.0167 degrees. But NASAWAS only 38% certain of this but that proves global warming is real and man-made.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
04/27/2015 16:32 Comments ||
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#11
When you cook the books, you always have to un cook them if you want real data.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Federal auditors are once again sounding alarms over the Pentagon's embattled F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, which has soared hundreds of billions of dollars over budget. 
[AA.TR] China has said it will severely punish organizers of strip shows at funerals in rural areas in an effort to curtail illegal performances.
Goodluck Jonathan
The Global Warming Policy Foundation has enlisted an international team of five distinguished scientists to carry out a full inquiry.
