[PJMedia] China and Russia evidently have concluded a 30-year gas deal which shifts the balance of Russian hydrocarbon exports eastwards, but that's not the thing to focus on. Pravda reports:
The central themes of the talks between the two leaders will be two projects in the field of aviation -- the creation of a joint wide-body long-haul aircraft and the production of Mi-26 heavy helicopter in China, the Kommersant reports.
Russia, entering into such cooperation with China, indicates that it is ready to open access to Russian aircraft technologies, despite the fact that China previously resorted to building unlicensed copies of well-known Russian aircraft.
Energy is important, but military and aerospace technology may be even more important. As the Russian newspaper observes, Russia had restricted exports of its best equipment to China because of intellectual property violations. Two weeks ago Putin approved sale of Russia's new S400 air defense system to China; this reportedly will give China air cover over the whole of Taiwan, among other things.
Russia always has had first-rate designers, but its production capacities never matched the ideas. Merge Russian designs with Chinese engineering, and the likelihood that the Sino-Russian combination might challenge US technological superiority is high. It's not surprising that Russia responded to US sanctions by cutting off exports of the rocket engines on which the US depends to launch spy satellites. Bloomberg reports that it will take the US six years to build replacement capacity. Provided Democrats don't win 2016 elections?
#2
Bloomberg reports that it will take the US six years to build replacement capacity.
Bloomberg is overlooking the SpaceX Falcon 9 which is flying today. Payload to low earth orbit 13,150kg (28,991 lb) and to Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit (GTO) 4,850kg (10,692 lb).
The Falcon Heavy (first launch in 2015) has a payloasd of:
LEO-53,000kg (116,845 lb)
GTO-21,200kg (46,738 lb)
The existing Atlas V Heavy with RD-180 Russian engines has 29,400 kg (64,816 lb) payload to Low Earth Orbit.
The existing Delta IV Heavy has 27,569 kg (net with 1221 kg payload attach fitting) payload to LEO.
It might take Boeing and Lockheed-Martin six years to produce the Atlas Phase 2 but SpaceX is here now.
#3
Squinty: there is no such thing as an Atlas V heavy. The highest LEO payload that actually available models can carry is about 18000 kg.
It would be a lot more cost effective to just ramp up the production of Delta IV, which would probably lower the cost.
Lockheed said they were going to build a Atlas V heavy, just like they said that the RD-180 wasn't a risk. Guess what, they were lying both times. And Midnight Basketball for Russia has been a complete waste of time and money.
[DAWN] THE fate of 65-year-old Khalil Ahmed was sealed on the day he was accused of blasphemy. It was his death warrant. He was killed while in police detention hours after he was locked away. Yez got nuttin' on me, coppers! Nuttin'! A schoolboy, who has not been identified by name, reportedly walked into the cop shoppe and shot Ahmed dead in full view of the officers. What motivated the teenager to commit this cold -blooded murder?
Perhaps he was inspired by the glorification of other murders committed for alleged blasphemy. Or perhaps he was incited by some zealot. The young boy had been growing up watching Mumtaz Qadri, the murderer of governor Salmaan Taseer, being garlanded. Qadri also had a mosque outside the capital named after him, and his larger-than-life portraits adorn certain public places. The young killer might have been told that the same glory awaited him.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Fred ||
05/22/2014 00:00 ||
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#1
Where vets used to use a brass fleam,
Pakistanis just say, "You blaspheme!"
From a trickle of blood
To a river of mud,
From a speck in the eye to a beam.
[DAWN] WITH his State of the Law alliance beating all other electoral blocs, Nouri al-Maliki ... Prime Minister of Iraq and the secretary-general of the Islamic Dawa Party. Maliki imposed order on Basra wen the Shiites were going nuts, but has proven incapable of dealing with al-Qaeda's Sunni insurgency. Reelected to his third term in 2014... has now every chance of becoming Iraq's prime minister for a third consecutive term. Even though full results of the April 30 polls will take time, his Shia-led State of Law group seems headed towards a convincing win, with other alliances trailing far behind. He himself has polled the highest number of votes for an individual -- 721,000. This is astonishing for a leader who had been roundly blamed by the opposition, that includes Shia groups, for failing to control sectarian violence which this year alone has resulted in more than 3,500 deaths. Sectarian terror is now the oil-rich Arab country's scourge, and seems to be rising again. The peak was reached in 2006 when 35,000 fell victim to terrorism. It then dropped, with 2012 seeing 'only' 5,000 deaths. In 2013, there was a surge -- 8,000 killed. If this is not checked by the new government, Iraq could face a serious threat to its existence, especially because the Sunni-majority, oil-rich Kurdistan, already enjoying a measure of autonomy, could think in terms of independence.
All said and done, the third general election -- the first since the American withdrawal in 2011 -- with an impressive 63pc turnout shows the Iraqi people's determination to live in a democratic dispensation. In all probability, Mr Maliki will be able to cobble together a cabinet whose first concern must be security -- the Syrian civil war has also created pressures for Iraq and gunnies allied to Al Qaeda have moved into Syria. In Iraq itself polling was not possible in parts of the Anbar province because of the threats of the hard boy group Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant ... the current version of al-Qaeda in Iraq, just as blood-thirsty and well-beloved as the original... . While the new government will, of course be responsible for meeting the sectarian challenge, it is the duty of all sections of the Iraqi people, especially the politicians, to give peace to their country by making a success of the democratic experiment.
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05/22/2014 00:00 ||
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#1
Finally, this new reality presents a challenge that rises above a mere counter-terrorism problem. ISIS no longer exists in small cells that can be neutralized by missiles or small groups of commandos. It is now a real, if nascent and unrecognized, state actormore akin in organization and power to the Taliban of the late 1990s than Al Qaeda. Unless ISIS collapses on itself, which is a long tradition in jihadi circles but looks increasingly unlikely, neutralization of the group will require significant ground combat by someone, with the support of airpower. Such an outcome is increasingly likely as the flow of funds and recruits to ISIS continues despite conflict with Al Qaeda and other militants in Syria. To date, the geographic location of ISIS and the reticence of Western governments to be involved in the nominal territory of either Iraq or Syria (though for very different reasons for each), coupled with the weakness of both the Iraqi and Syrian armies (and the latter fighting against numerous opponents of varying alliance with the West), has prevented an effective challenge to ISIS.
And yet ISIS presents a clear and present danger to American and European interests. The group does not have safe haven within a state. It is a de facto state that is a safe haven. Arguably, ISIS presents an even more vibrant incubator for international terrorism than did pre-9/11 Afghanistan. It would be the greatest of historical ironies if just at the moment when the operation in Afghanistan to banish Al Qaeda safe havens is concluded, an even more dangerous sanctuary emerges in the deserts between Baghdad and Damascus.
Pulling out of Iraq was a good idea because, why again?
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.
[DAWN] THE fate of 65-year-old Khalil Ahmed was sealed on the day he was accused of blasphemy. It was his death warrant. He was killed while in police detention hours after he was 
Nouri al-Maliki
