Virtual tours have been around a long time, I suppose, although I’ve not spent much time wandering through homes for sale or checking out the rooms available at a bed and breakfast. But this is different.

The link below takes you into the astonishing world of aviation history as preserved in The National Museum of the United States Air Force. With maps, numbered positions, left/right, up/down, zoom in/out in a full-screen mode and with high resolution images, this is a delight for anyone the least bit interested in the world of flight.

One click below will get you started. Enjoy.

NMUSAF Virtual Tour

In a my previous post concerning the incident in which a Southwest Airlines Boeing 737-300 lost a portion of fuselage skin, I concluded that the problem was not caused by a flaw in design, materials, or construction of the airplane. I still believe that to be the case, but an additional issue deserves attention.

The hole in the upper fuselage developed when undetected cracks compromised the structural integrity of a “lap joint” where one section of aluminum skin overlaps another and both are fastened to a “stringer” with glue and rivets. This is a common method used by all aircraft manufacturers, and there’s no indication that the joint had not been properly constructed at the factory.

No one likes to think that aircraft design engineers guess at anything, even if the prediction is a well-educated one, but that’s the reality when it comes to determining the rate at which metal fatigue will affect the integrity of an aircraft structure. Boeing engineers postulated that the fuselage lap joints in the 737-300 would remain problem-free for up to 60,000 pressurization/depressurization cycles. In practical terms, this means that inspection of these joints would not be necessary until many years after manufacture.

The fact that the incident aircraft had logged only 39,871 cycles, and three other 737-300s in the Southwest fleet showed evidence of cracks along lap joints, obviously directs the spotlight on procedures used to develop the fatigue prediction. Fortunately, the incident resulted in no major injuries and we can be thankful that the potential for similar incidents in the future will be reduced, if not eliminated, by an abundance of caution in adopting changes to inspection criteria.

The purpose of this post is to highlight the potential for surprises when aircraft design engineers blaze new trails in the aviation wilderness, and the example used to illustrate the issue is that of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner, the newest in a long list of stalwart Boeing aircraft in the 700 series.

The Dreamliner is a long-range, mid-size, wide-body, twin-engine jet airliner. It seats 210 to 330 passengers, depending on the variant. Boeing states that it is the company’s most fuel-efficient aircraft to date and the world’s first major airliner to use composite materials for most of its construction. The 787 consumes 20% less fuel than the similarly-sized Boeing 767. Some of its distinguishing features include a four-panel windshield, noise-reducing chevrons on its engine nacelles and a smoother nose contour.

With primary construction in progress at the Boeing factory in Everett, Washington, the process might as well be on the Moon in terms of visibility to any but industry watchdogs. Dominic Gates, Seattle Times aerospace reporter, is one such bloodhound as indicated by his assessment published December 8, 2010, titled “Dreamliner’s Woes Pile Up.”

And as a friend of mine put it, “Outsourcing is a major factor of this whole expensive scary mess. Again, Rule #1 – Never fly or drive the ‘A’ model of anything.”

With only minor editing, Gates’ article follows:

As Boeing prepares to announce yet another delay for the 787 Dreamliner,
 at least three months, possibly six or more, the crucial jet program is in even worse shape than it appears. The problems go well beyond the latest setback, an in-flight electrical fire last month that has grounded the test planes.

A year after the airplane’s first flight, the cascade of systems failures caused by that fire, as well as two major problems since summer with the 787’s Rolls-Royce engine, have raised red flags with aviation regulators. A top Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) official 10 days ago warned Boeing that without further proof of the plane’s reliability, it won’t be certified to fly the long intercontinental routes that airlines expect it to serve.

Meanwhile, on the production side, one veteran employee on the 787 said he’s witnessing “the perfect storm of manufacturing hell.”
 The global supply chain is at a standstill, and outside the Everett factory the rows of partly finished jets will take many months to complete. To deliver the 20 Dreamliners built since the six flight-test planes, mechanics will have to complete more than 100,000 tasks.

Among the 787’s lesser ongoing problems is “rain in the plane,” the term used for heavy condensation dripping inside the jet’s composite plastic fuselage. Yet that issue is piddling compared with the major flaws that have brought a wave of successive delays.

“The purpose of flight tests is to find out what you did wrong,” said a senior engineer who expects the 787 will ultimately prove successful. “But the amount of stuff we are finding is horrible. We shouldn’t be dealing with this many issues this late in the program.”

With the Dreamliner nearly three years overdue and a postponement of the mid-February target for first delivery expected to be announced by Christmas, analysts estimate Boeing’s cost overruns at a staggering $12 billion or more. The head of the 787 program, Scott Fancher, conceded in an interview this past week that he and his team have “a tough job in front of us. There’s no doubt we’ve had a lot of challenges. The development of a new airplane is hard, especially one with as much innovation as this.”

Costs soaring

More than a dozen people who work on the Dreamliner or have some knowledge of the program’s state were interviewed for this story. All were granted anonymity because Boeing doesn’t permit employees to speak publicly about its internal problems.
 Boeing has bet its future on the 787, which made its maiden flight one year ago. The company aimed to reduce the cost and risk by outsourcing an unprecedented share of manufacturing and design work to partners around the globe. It’s the first new Boeing jet in more than 15 years, and the first airliner built largely from light, tough carbon-fiber-reinforced composite plastic.

And it’s been a marketing blockbuster: Despite a total of 120 cancellations, Boeing still has 846 orders. 
Yet the 787 has run into more trouble than any previous Boeing jet. The company’s original internal target for its own development costs was $5 billion. But with yet another delay, several Wall Street analysts estimate that fixing the litany of manufacturing problems, plus paying penalties to suppliers and airlines, has piled on an additional $12 billion to $18 billion.

The 20 built but incomplete Dreamliners sitting in Everett are emblematic of all that has gone wrong.
 They are so far from done that the total number of unfinished jobs exceeds 105,000. Counting further rework planned after some of the jets are flown to San Antonio, Texas, for refurbishment before delivery, the tally of incomplete jobs is more than 140,000.

“Some jobs take a day, some take weeks,” said a worker dealing with the backlog.
 Boeing is reworking six partly finished jets at a time, two of them in an empty bay inside the factory, two in a hangar at the south end of Paine Field, and two more on the flight line. Mechanics can complete only about 500 jobs a month out on the field, and perhaps 1,000 jobs a month on those inside the factory, the person said.

These jets have no seats or sidewalls, and many interior systems are missing or incomplete. Passenger doors are missing. Mechanics installed temporary air-conditioning units after those fitted initially kept failing. Horizontal tails poorly built by Alenia in Italy are still being reworked.
 With the workmanship on the tails varying from one plane to the next, mechanics have to painstakingly customize the fixes plane by plane.
 (That headache at least produced one piece of good 787 news for this region. Alenia will still build 787 tails, but as Boeing ramps up beyond seven planes a month, it plans to build the additional tails in the Puget Sound area, possibly at its parts-manufacturing plant in Auburn, according to employees.)

Despite the attention focused on achieving the first delivery, the manufacturing quagmire suggests that Boeing will be slow to deliver the next few dozen planes.

“Hopping around”

With its parked Dreamliners many months from completion, Fancher said Boeing is likely to skip over earlier planes that need more work and move up the delivery of some later-built, more completed jets. “You may see us hopping around a bit,” he said, adding that it’s a matter of balancing the most efficient way to finish the work with the customers’
need to get a specific jet by a specific date.
 The worker dealing with the backlog puts it differently: “They’ve dug a hole so deep, they have no choice but to go around it and leave the hole there.”

On Boeing’s 747, 767 and 737NG programs, parts shortages and late redesigns on early planes also stacked up dozens of incomplete jets on the flight line. But the company worked through those stacks without skipping over a significant number of deliveries.

Meanwhile, the flight tests have brought new design problems to light. After runway tests in Roswell, N.M., in September, four Rolls-Royce engines had to be swapped out from the flight-test airplanes. According to a person familiar with the problem, mechanics discovered cracking of small blades called airfoils in one of the engine’s compressors.
 GE and Rolls both provide 787 engines, but the Rolls engine will power most of the early Dreamliners.

A separate and more serious incident occurred a month earlier, when a Rolls engine blew up on a ground test stand in England, sending metal pieces shooting out of the engine casing. Another person with knowledge of that event said an investigation afterward revealed that one of the engine shafts can, under certain conditions, turn too fast. That may not have caused the blowup, but it is out of compliance with FAA regulations.

Rolls is testing hardware and software changes to solve the problem, though it hasn’t won approval from the regulatory agencies.
 Company spokesman Josh Rosenstock said Rolls is convinced the engine will pass muster with the FAA in time for Boeing’s delivery schedule. However, the engine modifications, plus an electrical system redesign needed as a result of the in-flight fire last month, will add to the glut of out-of-sequence work in the jets already built.

FAA issues

Worse, the engine and electrical issues have also raised crucial questions late in the program about the plane’s reliability, potentially affecting regulators’ certification of the airplane.

Earlier this month, John Hickey, the FAA’s deputy associate administrator for aviation safety, visited Seattle and warned 787 executives that in the current state of the program, the jet cannot be certified for long-distance transocean and transpolar flights, according to a person familiar with the details.

Boeing designed and marketed the 787 as an ultra-long-range jet, and its customers are counting on that capability from the moment the plane enters service.
 But the 787 wouldn’t be allowed to fly more than 60 minutes from the nearest airport without the certification known as ETOPS, for Extended-range Twin-engine Operational Performance Standards. That would drastically curtail the use of the jet for many airlines, including launch customer All Nippon Airways of Japan.

Hickey, a former Boeing engineer, put Boeing on notice that to get an early ETOPS rating the company will have to do more to demonstrate the plane’s reliability, including specifically the reliability of the engine and electrical systems.
 Dreamliner chief Fancher confirmed the recent meeting with the FAA over ETOPS and acknowledged that engine and electrical system reliability were discussed. But he said that such meetings about the FAA’s certification requirements are “typical,” and that Boeing will “fully address their concerns.”

Also drawing separate FAA scrutiny is repeated poor-quality workmanship in the 787 fuel tank, including issues with fasteners, said the person familiar with the FAA visit.
 That problem reaches back into the 787 supply pipeline, which continues to stutter.

Suppliers go slow

In November, for the fourth time this year, Boeing stopped moving planes forward on its final assembly line and halted deliveries of the major sections to Everett. Just one airplane had come off the line since the previous line stoppage in October.
 Fancher said the line halts are part of his “balancing act” to allow some suppliers to catch up with others and to slow the flow onto Paine Field of new planes needing to have the latest fixes applied. Despite the slowdown, he said, the supply chain is improving.

Fancher cited “solid progress” at Boeing Charleston, which makes the 787’s rear end. He conceded that Alenia of Italy “definitely remains a challenge.”
 The other partners and the final-assembly team in Everett are “coming down the learning curve nicely,” he said.
 For now, though, the pipeline is still blocked.

Spirit AeroSystems of Wichita, Kan., which makes the Dreamliner’s forward section, has reassigned most of its 787 work force until work picks up again. And though in recent years Boeing’s 787 employees have worked through most of the Christmas holidays to catch up, a worker at Boeing Charleston said that plant this year will largely shut down its production lines.
 The latest delay will at least give engineers more time to test design fixes, including some for less consequential troubles, not uncommon on new jets, such as the maddening drip, drip, drip of “rain in the plane.”

On 787 flight tests, drip trays padded with squares of absorbent cloth are positioned to collect the condensation.
Fancher said “a good design fix” to dehumidify the interior is being installed and will be tested when the Dreamliners resume flying.
 Employees working on the 787 complain about insufficient oversight of suppliers and a management system that the senior engineer called “totally broken.”

“This program is not like anything we’ve seen,” said the veteran 787 employee. “It’s a screwed-up mess.” Yet Fancher said the feedback he receives is that employees are “proud to be part of an adventure like this.”
He insists his team will surmount all the problems.

“This is a great airplane. It will deliver on the promises,” Fancher said.
” Our job is to get it over the goal line.”

Within the past few weeks, a couple of friends have approached me to ask (and I’m paraphrasing), “It’s okay to fly Southwest, right? They’ve got the planes fixed?”

Anyone except a bird can understand the motivation behind the question. When you have to rely on a man-made machine to be safe up there, you’d prefer that it remain in one piece, and that all the pieces stay where they’re supposed to. Then you read about a Southwest Boeing 737 that lost a portion of the upper fuselage, and a photo taken by a passenger shows a seat back with sky above it. Not a comforting sight.

Okay, so what caused this disturbing incident? From the comfort of this writing desk, and not privy to details of the investigation, here’s an informed opinion.

Assuming adequate design, materials, and construction, airplanes can remain structurally sound indefinitely. And from the standpoint of the historical record, the Boeing 737 has a stellar reputation during many years of extensive service with airlines all over the world. I’ve not read anything to suggest that this or any similar instance in the past has been caused by potential flaws that arrived with the airplane when it was delivered brand-new to the user.

The issue is structural fatigue, and in this case, the integrity of the fuselage was compromised by the loss of a section of “skin.” You can think of the fuselage as an aluminum tube that serves as a “pressure vessel” to provide an environment where humans can exist in relative comfort when conditions on the other side of the skin are hazardous to health.

And in terms of the fuselage, the most significant cause of fatigue is the expansion and contraction that occurs on every flight when the aircraft is pressurized during the takeoff sequence and depressurized on landing. “Short-haul” aircraft like the 737 accumulate many more such “cycles” per hour of flight time than larger jets, and Southwest’s unique business model and route structure increase the ratio even further.

Commercial airliners are governed by the most restrictive regulatory burden of any airplane type when it comes to inspections and maintenance. You should be pleased to know, if you didn’t already, that the vast majority of time, effort, and money spent on maintaining a commercial jet is scheduled and preventative in nature, in which well-trained mechanics go looking for problems by conducting inspections. Unscheduled maintenance occurs, of course, but it’s nothing compared to the far more common actions that airlines have to perform on a regular and continuing basis.

Depending on the airplane, scheduled maintenance can be driven by either the calendar, the number of flight hours since the last inspection, or both (with the phrase, “whichever occurs first”). And since design engineers understand well the role of fatigue in compromising the strength and integrity of aluminum, the inspection interval typically decreases with increasing total number of flight hours. In some cases, inspections can also be driven by the number of cycles. In plain language, the more “used” an aircraft is, the more frequently it’s inspected.

That said, if we make the assumption that the evidence of metal fatigue in the section of skin that separated from the fuselage existed at some point prior to the incident, why wasn’t it found? Southwest Airlines, the Federal Aviation Administration, and Boeing Aircraft Company are all intensely interested in answering that question. Immediately after the incident, The FAA ordered Southwest and other carriers to immediately inspect about 175 of a total of 1,800 older B-737-300 jets for evidence of fuselage cracks. The number of airplanes affected by the directive was determined by an arbitrary (yet carefully considered) number of takeoffs and landings: 30,000. Southwest “grounded” about 79 aircraft until they could be inspected and found cracks in three more jets.

Here’s a partial quote from an April 6, 2011 article in Popular Mechanics by Matt Molnar:

A trip from Phoenix to Sacramento turned horrifying for 115 passengers aboard Southwest Airlines Flight 812 on April 1, when the cabin shuddered with a loud bang, a violent woosh of air and the sudden release of the overhead oxygen masks. A 5-foot hole ruptured in the Boeing 737-300’s aluminum skin as the jet reached 34,000 feet, instantly sucking the breathable oxygen out of the plane. The pilots quickly descended to a lower altitude with breathable air and landed safely in Yuma, Ariz., but not before at least two passengers passed out, a flight attendant suffered a minor injury and at least one terrified flier sent his wife a text message saying, “Plane is going down, I love you.”

Despite the happy ending, Southwest took a public relations beating for several days after, with speculative blame for the accident’s cause ranging from the airline’s use of older planes to cutting corners on maintenance. But now the focus of federal investigators has shifted to a problem in the design and testing of this 737 model: Boeing has acknowledged that a particular joint failed much earlier than its engineers expected. And because they didn’t anticipate trouble, the joint was not reviewed during the 737’s inspections, so any cracks in the fuselage went unnoticed.

Friday’s fuselage rupture occurred along one of the plane’s lap joints along the top of the plane, a spot where two pieces of metal overlap and are joined with rivets and adhesives to form an airtight and watertight seal that allows the cabin to be pressurized. Each time any aircraft pressurizes before takeoff or depressurizes after landing, that takes a toll on these joints.

Robert W. Mann, Jr., a Port Washington, N.Y.–based airline industry analyst and former airline executive, compares the tension exerted on the fuselage by pressurization to that of the surface of a balloon. The thin metal skin is attached to the “stringers” that form the plane’s internal skeleton, he explains. “Every time the cabin is pressurized, there is air pushing to get out,” Mann says. “This creates stress on the metal, especially at points where metal is attached to other parts of the structure.”

Each Boeing 737 has dozens of fuselage joints. Based on stresses measured during initial testing and subsequent use in service, the manufacturer, under the watchful eye of the FAA, sets guidelines for inspections and maintenance of these joints.

According to the FAA and National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), Southwest followed all the prescribed inspection and maintenance intervals for the 737 that ruptured. But, crucially, those inspections did not check out the lap joint near the top of the fuselage that failed. Boeing engineers expected these joints to endure 60,000 flight cycles of takeoff and landing before they would need inspections, but the Southwest 737 that ruptured had completed only 39,871.

End quote from the article.

My informed guess is that in the aftermath of this incident, relevant inspection criteria will be revised in two ways: reduce the total number of cycles beyond which additional attention must be paid to inspecting for the presence of fuselage cracks, and shorten the interval at which the inspections are performed.

So, the answer to the question posed by my friends, therefore, is, yes. Southwest Airlines has no intention for their original marketing concept of providing an alternative to the family car for shorter trips to become synonymous with leaving the SUV at home and riding in their convertibles.

Yes, this is another one of those email send-arounds. But in this case, someone put together a series of graphs based on carefully analyzed statistical data. The information is especially useful because it can be used to prove many of the things you have always known to be true but couldn’t justify with hard evidence. Now you need no longer rely on personal opinion.

Here’s the documentation you have always wanted at your fingertips:

One salient quality of human nature is the tendency to gather around us others with similar characteristics. We feel the most comfortable in those surroundings, and for the most part we don’t actively seek to stretch those boundaries by venturing too far “outside the gates.”

We’ve all heard the admonition about avoiding certain topics at the dinner table if we want to prevent a word fight becoming a food fight. There’s a certain logic to that, but it doesn’t mean that other occasions should necessarily suffer the same restrictions. Hopefully we are intelligent enough to manage the frequency at which we both encounter and precipitate situations that include volatile topics for discussion.

Although a friend of mine and I exist at opposite ends of the spectrum on some issues, and our discussions can get a bit vigorous, we never allow them to deteriorate below the basic level of mutual respect and cordiality. I can’t speak for him, but if the truth be known we would both probably love to present our side with such power of logic and persuasiveness that the other could only exclaim, “I never thought of it that way. Now I agree with you.” Needless to say, neither of us holds our breath waiting for that to occur.

We had been discussing the topic of forwarding emails. You undoubtedly know a friend or acquaintance who puts you in an address group and can’t resist the temptation to bombard you with the latest revelation that obviously has to be true because it’s on the Internet, right?

In this case, the discussion resulted in the following email from him that presented what I found to be a fascinating concept. With minor editing, here it is:

Tosh,

Thanks for the refreshing clarity and candor about e-life. No surprises, either–I think I have a half-good idea about where you come from and find it interesting and enlightening. I always enjoy sharing knowledge, opinions and differences in that positive spirit with people of general good will, integrity and intelligence.

Here’s a high-flown term of my own to describe where that process goes awry:  Lacunae Theory.

Lacunae is a medical jargon word. In psychiatry the term “superego lacunae” references gaps in an individual’s functioning conscience. An official online version of the term follows. Note how they use an abstraction in the quote:

la·cu·na (l-kyn) n. pl. la·cu·nae (-n) or la·cu·nas: 1) an empty space or a missing part; a gap: “self-centered in opinion, with curious lacunae of astounding ignorance” (Frank Norris); 2) anatomy: a cavity, space, or depression, especially in a bone, containing cartilage or bone cells.

So, what’s my point? It is a theory about communication and interaction that people online (or in person) may share and compare their deeper viewpoints, even aiming to share their “deepest.”

But in terms of those items mentioned above, and others–good will, integrity, tolerance for differences, management of aggressive irritabilities, mutual respect for intelligence, maturity and so on–people will have their individual lacunae of gaps, inabilities, disabilities in thinking, communication and mood management. The more supple and intelligent people are, the better they can handle, even enjoy, working within and around their differences.

Other people, the ones you mentioned in terms of sending around e-mails “. . . not even filtering with common sense . . .” have a tremendous difficulty getting past the lacunae they spot in others. And they may not have much sense of their own lacunae.

My theory is that mismatches or overall size and proportion of lacunae in two individuals will be highly influential or determinative in their ability to communicate over an extended time. Of course, lacunae mismatches can be addressed and evolve. I hope my description of Lacunae Theory reveals the spirit that I use in approaching differences.

End quote.

Now that’s a great contribution to the process of interacting with others well even in situations that can deteriorate in a heartbeat if individuals allow emotional responses to overcome reason. This is particularly true when one side of the conversation reverts to a classic failure of logic known as the ad hominem argument: against the man. This unfortunate development occurs when a person allows their side of the issue to degenerate  from an argument of substance to an argument of being.

To illustrate with an over-the-top example, you’ve been debating a topic with someone and suddenly the other person says, “You really must be dumber than a stump.”

Ah, yes. They couldn’t convince you they were right, which obviously means there’s something very wrong with you.

Using my friend’s words, I might be tempted to reply, “And it’s obvious to me that in the place of your brain resides a very large lacuna, dude!”

A friend sent me a video link that I absolutely must share. It’s as if I’m compelled to write this post for deeply personal reasons I cannot ignore. I’m calling it Part One because watching the video generated conflicting thoughts and emotions, and to address them in a single post feels like trying to mix oil and water.

First, let me define the following acronyms: TIC (Troops In Contact), CAS (Close Air Support), and FLIR (Forward-Looking Imaging Infrared).

TIC refers to combat situations in which “grunts,” (an attack pilot’s term of respect for any friendly forces on the ground) are in close contact with the enemy. CAS is what attack pilots provide to assist the grunts. FLIR is the system that generates video based upon differences in “IR signature,” which simply means variations in temperature. Night doesn’t become day, but it’s no longer night.

During my two combat tours in Vietnam, I flew many CAS missions. In my personal papers are cherished thank-you’s from grunts who felt that my intervention and that of other fighter pilots on the mission saved their lives. It does not get any better than this in terms of personal satisfaction for a job well done.

This post will not address the specifics of conducting CAS in fighters. I’ll save that for another time. But what it will do is connect the words and actions of attack pilots in the video to those of myself and other fighter pilots 45 years ago. At the core of this post resides that commonality, and it is a bond that no one who hasn’t experienced it will ever fully appreciate. All I can do is try to give you a hint of what it’s all about.

Few (if any) attack pilots I have known would look down from the cockpit and say, “Gee, I wish I were down there.” And I’ve never met a grunt who wanted to be up there with me.

Think about that for a moment. The attack pilot’s attitude isn’t hard to understand. Who in their right mind would want to leave the relative comfort and safety of the cockpit thousands of feet above the fight and get right down into it with an M-16?

But why wouldn’t the grunt wish for the ability to say, “Beam me up, Tosh!” and leave the horror of close combat behind? I’ve never understood that, and so it remains a mystery to this day.

And yet in spite of the fact that attack pilots and grunts exist in polar-opposite universes, the single, overriding and unbreakable connection spanning the divide is mutual respect. What you will see in the video is the modern equivalent of that reciprocal admiration as demonstrated every day and night in Afghanistan, Iraq, and anywhere else in the world that our government (and by proxy, the citizens of America) choose to put our servicemen and women in harm’s way.

The action documented in the video and audio is from an AH-64 Apache twin-engine attack helicopter. On the ground in the dark of night, grunts on patrol have encountered a sniper in a single-story building, firing from the left of three windows, and who has hit one of their buddies.

The wounded man lies exposed to the sniper’s continued fire, but he’s still able to return fire as his comrades take cover behind a wall and maneuver to engage the sniper. The problem is that from their position, they are facing a side of the building with a solid wall and they can’t put any rounds inside the building and on target.

Enter the Apache, and what you see and hear is the rapid and precise coordination between the grunts and the attack pilot required to eliminate the threat. The action is interspersed with interviews from both sides of the grunt/attack pilot divide, and I encourage you to watch and listen carefully as these warriors talk about their mission.

The action video is from the FLIR with information superimposed on it, including the most important item, the “gun sight” or aiming point for the Apache’s M230 30mm chain gun.

Note the amazing detail as the Apache circles the fight: muzzle flashes from the sniper’s weapon in the window and from the wounded grunt’s M-16 as he lies in the open; other grunts moving past a gap in the wall providing their cover; and a really astonishing detail, hot shell casings from the wounded grunt’s M-16 arcing from the ejector port on the weapon and landing on the ground to his right.

Then get ready for the real show as the 30mm turns the building into the concrete version of Swiss cheese.

I’m going to stop here. In a follow-up post, I’ll address another element of my personal connection to this amazing display of US firepower, which is how and when and for what purpose we choose to use it.

Here’s the link. I encourage you to select full screen, turn up the volume, and watch it all the way through. And if this topic interests you even the least bit, please be on the lookout for Part Two.

http://weaselzippers.us/2011/03/13/video-apache-air-support-in-afghanistan/

In the United States of America, the Department of Homeland Security defines five threat levels using no-nonsense terminology.

This is good, because it promotes an equivalent pragmatic approach to the task of keeping Americans safe within our borders. If we all stayed home, that would be great. But of course we don’t.

As a public service, therefore, I’ve decided to publish the text of a recent announcement on the British Broadcasting System read by none other than John Cleese.

Before planning your next trip abroad, I highly recommend that you take a close look at how other countries respond to the terrorist threat. It provides a fascinating contrast in national behavior as defined by culture.

The English are feeling the pinch in relation to recent terrorist
 threats and have therefore raised their security level from “Miffed” 
to “Peeved.”

 Soon, though, security levels may be raised yet again to “Irritated”
 or even “A Bit Cross.” The English have not been “A Bit Cross” since
 the blitz in 1940 when tea supplies nearly ran out. Terrorists have
 been re-categorized from “Tiresome” to a “Bloody Nuisance.” The last 
time the British issued a “Bloody Nuisance” warning level was in 1588,
 when threatened by the Spanish Armada.

The Scots have raised their threat level from “Pissed Off” to “Let’s
 get the Bastards.” They don’t have any other levels. This is the
 reason they have been used on the front line of the British army for 
the last 300 years.

The French government announced yesterday that it has raised its 
terror alert level from “Run” to “Hide.” The only two higher levels
 in France are “Collaborate” and “Surrender.” The rise was
 precipitated by a recent fire that destroyed France’s white flag
 factory, effectively paralyzing the country’s military capability.

Italy has increased the alert level from “Shout Loudly and Excitedly”
 to “Elaborate Military Posturing.” Two more levels remain:
 “Ineffective Combat Operations” and “Change Sides.”

The Germans have increased their alert state from “Disdainful
 Arrogance” to “Dress in Uniform and Sing Marching Songs.” They also 
have two higher levels: “Invade a Neighbor” and “Lose.”

Belgians, on the other hand, are all on holiday as usual. The only 
threat they are worried about is NATO pulling out of Brussels.

The Spanish are all excited to see their new submarines ready to 
deploy. These beautifully designed subs have glass bottoms so the new
 Spanish navy can get a really good look at the old Spanish navy.

Australia, meanwhile, has raised its security level from “No worries”
 to “She’ll be alright, Mate.” Three more escalation levels remain:
”Crikey!” and “I think we’ll need to cancel the barbie this weekend” and “The barbie 
is canceled.” So far no situation has ever warranted use of the
 final escalation level.

A friend of mine is a retired law enforcement officer who has been approached on occasion by people wanting to know how to identify a meth lab. The individuals were concerned about whether there might be one in their neighborhoods.

The question is an important one for the safety of you, your family, and your neighbors. Meth labs are extremely dangerous because the materials used in the process are toxic and produce poisonous and flammable byproducts.

Below you will find pictures of four labs. Study them carefully so that you will be able to identify a meth lab at a glance.