The stupidity of Lockheed Martin and the Defense Department

To start with, why bring up Ethernet? That is primarily a cabling standard. And it followed many cable standards that came before it.

Systems like what the military used were based upon TCP, which is to make it simple a non-routable foundation of which later we all know as TCP/IP. And that was standardized in 1970 after half a decade of development. The routing aspect of "Internet Protocol" was not implemented until much later when the basic ARPANET (which we now know as the Internet) went beyond a few military locations and think tanks.

And at that time, the numbers of nodes was so insanely high that most thought it was gross overkill, but accepted it because it was simple.

And you are confusing the acceptance of national and international standards, into a system that only has single use designed into it from the start. The military has done things like this before there were no standards like that, and made their own. And because most were proprietary and classified they did not share them.

But the US phone systems were already installing thousands of miles of fiber cable by the early 1970's. Hell, I remember getting a lamp that used fiber optic in the 1960's. In an era where most of the US still used pulse rotary dialed phones and only captured TV from the air, why would anybody but government and huge corporations need it?

The PATRIOT system is old, really old. A Kennedy era program, built during the Nixon Administration and tested during the Ford Administration. Ordered during that of Carter and fielded under Reagan. And much of that system had to wait for other parts of the puzzle to be designed and implemented. They knew from day 1 that copper would not do it, this was one of the first systems designed from the very start to use fiber. You can even see this if you ever see the very first PATRIOT launcher. It was the one tested in 1975, and it is open for all to see at the White Sands Museum. It has a TFOCA connection on the passenger side.

Oh, and I made a typo. I dragged that fiber optic cable up to almost 1,000 meters, not 100 meters. Imagine dragging a cable almost a kilometer long through the desert, not fun. In a real "war time pack up and go" scenario, we would not even pick up the cable but leave it behind, because the longest step of preparing to leave was rolling it back up onto the spools.





And yes, this TFOCA basically started as a military standard, which very few adopted (cost, size of connections). It is still used today, but primarily only in areas where the "standard" fiber standards will not cut it. I can put those inside a wiring closet inside an office building, but say at a mine or large construction site I am running TFOCA.

 

I worked with fiber optic commo systems in the late 1960's and early 1970's. As I recall, our main roadblocks were the switching speeds of the transistors available, and the number of inputs a microprocessor could handle, and while a single fiber could indeed be used to send many different wavelengths of signals, your options were to splice the receiving ends with multiple splices to separate transistors, of go with multiple cables to separate transistors; the mapping and timing diagrams were monsters to calculate, even with digital systems. The production of faster transistors and other components were in turn limited by the quality of vacuum systems that could be produced and in what size chambers, metallurgical advancements, etc., all combined and inter-dependent technological advances, which still awe me today when I try and document timelines and developments in their proper order of achievements. But, I do know most of the stuff was already 'invented' in the late 1940's and 1950's, and had to await the relatively slow development of larger and cleaner vacuum systems technology and the ability to produce ever cheaper and larger lots of micro components. With fiber you were limited to the speed of light and wavelengths, with components you had to much lower speeds and possibilities then.Now with almost all optical components we are in a different era.

 

Please respond to the other part of my post that was more on topic.

Your assertion that Ethernet is primarily a cabling standard is incorrect. It is far more a software standard than a cabling standard. CSMA/CD is at the heart of it and it is fundamentally mostly independent of the physical link.

I have counter arguments to some of your assertions in this post, but they are pretty trivial, so I'll not get into them.

Thanks for the clarification of the 1km vs 100m cable pulls, it definitely makes more sense to justify fiber....

 

I know it is more, but as it was implemented it was more the cable than anything else.

When I think "Ethernet", I primarily think twisted pair 8 wire, that uses an RJ-45 connector. As opposed to coax with a BNC connector, ThickNet Coax with a Vampire Tap, or that weird (I want to say 15 pin) connector we normally associated with Token Ring. I know it is much more than that, but in designing, installing, and working on networks in the 1980-1990s that is how we generally thought of it.

Today it is very different, and EtherNet rules it all. But until the 1990's we still had a great many cable standards, and when we talk about Ethernet we are 90% of the time talking about that, not the other layers that come into play. When it comes to the software layer and not the hardware layer 99% of the time we are now talking TCP/IP. And not IPX/SPX, NetBOIS, NetBEUI, or any of the others.

Hell, I can not even remember working with anything but TCP/IP since 1997 other than a few odd hybrid networks. And I have not seen anything other than traditional RJ-45 since 2001. Although about 15 years ago I did help a guy diagnose a problem with his ThinNet BNC Ethernet issue. He made a classic mistake of grounding the termination resister at both ends (you only ground 1 end). But I never saw it, that was talking in the store I worked at then and he told me a few days later that was the solution.

But remember, almost all of what we know today as networking really originated with the military. They basically created standards where none existed. And because so much was classified at the time, when the civilian sector developed it they went a different way. I do know that the protocol that PATRIOT uses is routable, but it is not compatible with any protocols used in the civilian sector. Working with specialized military hardware can be quite interesting if you never worked with it.

Hell, the PATRIOT system still updates the software through a JAZ Drive. When they included that in a major update in 1996, it was an amazing technology, and far beyond having to use 8" floppies like the original. Now it is antiquated and I know they are seeking a replacement, and "futureproofing" such equipment has become an increasing challenge as the years pass.

Most forget that the system is now over 40 years old, and first tested 45 years ago. And even the newest THAAD uses the same protocols, in order to maintain backwards compatibility with the older system. Plus there is really no need to change. I asked a Northrup TechRep once long ago about what it uses, and he told me it was a modified variant of the original TCP protocol, akin to when IP routing was first implemented (and before things like subnets and supernets).

 

Most today really do not grasp the challenges we went through 20, 30, 40+ years ago. They see what we worked on as "quaint", and really do not understand how groundbreaking it was for the time.

The first computer I owned was 1 KHz. I later jumped up to an amazing 4.77 KHz. I was networking my home in 1992, and never cared that it was 10 Mbps because at that time it was so fast it was lightyears beyond SneakerNet. And the early iteration of DSL, OMG! 6 Mpbs! At a fraction of the cost of an ISDN line! It was only then that I bothered to jump from essentially CAT3 to CAT5.

In an era of Gigabit Ethernet in the home, most do not understand the latency of a lot of that old equipment. I would love to see some today screaming of "slow Internet", and throw them on a V.32 9600 MODEM (or even a V.22bis 2400). Even in the early 1990s the capability of networks is archaic compared to today.

 

It is against defense acquisition regulations to have only one source for critical items. Every component having to do with DoD aircraft. weapons, vehicles, sensors, etc has a qualified second source. Its the law.

 

I don't get it. I just don't get it. We do these things to ourselves and then want to complain. That doesn't make any sense.

It's simple: Do you want your own country's economy to grow or do you want to support some other countries' economy with the understanding that you are ultimately undermining yours when you do the latter.

But, heaven forbid, they can't prepare for the big Zombie Apocalypse!!!

http://www.politicalforum.com/index...russian-arms-and-ammo.591521/#post-1072891646

 

Of course it makes no sense. Who said that people need to make sense?

Just look at any protest in the last decade. Mostly kids, marching around and screaming against "consumerism" and "Capitalism", drinking their Starbucks beverages and recording it all on their iPhones. Then uploading them to YouTube and screaming how "Corporations Suck!" as they drive home in their cars.

And meanshile, you have still others that encourage it, and they will spout out something about being a "Post-Industrial Society", or some such garbage. Makes absolutely no sense to me, but they sure do seem to believe that garbage.

 

How would you like to do that?

To do what you think is "best" (snicker) for America then you need to increase your population to ~750 Million on the assumption that a standard E-Pop Ratio of 62% will give you 465 Million workers:

1) Open your borders and allow unrestricted immigration; or
2) Send your military to foreign countries, kidnap 430 Million foreigners at gun-point, bring them to the US and put them to work.

I guess you would be excited about:

1) being a minority in your own country;
2) walking down the street and not hear English spoken;
3) having few people in the work-place speak English.

Do you think those foreigners will vote Republican?

If you decide to kidnap 430 Million foreigners, maybe platoon leaders can hold up an elephant and point to it, and then any foreigner that nods their head your soldiers can kidnap and stuff on a C-130 to fly back to the US.

Of course, you can always not increase your population.

When you finish Middle School and go to high school, take a high school physics course.

You'll learn that one person cannot be in two places at the same time.

The reason I mention that is because you don't have to import 430 Million foreigners.

Yes, you can have your Utopia. You'll just have to totally alter your Life-Style and tone down your Standard of Living to circa 1970.

You'll only be able to have one car per family, because you'll have to shut down auto plants and move those workers elsewhere to produce other things for your Utopia, so there'll be a shortage of cars/trucks/SUVs.

You won't have 24-hour anything, except for a handful of diners at truck stops around the US.

You won't have the labor to run fast-food, restaurants, grocery or retail 24/7. They'll all have to close between 6:00PM-9:00PM.

And they'll be closed on Sundays. TV will suck. The cable TV industry will collapse and TV will shut off at midnight because you won't have the labor.

You'll have to choose between plastic kitchen gadgets/utensils and iPhones, because you won't have the labor to produce both, and if you tried, then you'd have severe shortages causing prices to sky-rocket way out of your reach.

Personally, I'd choose iPhones.

You can always eat with your hands. The Indians and Pakis do and so do many others. Or, you could use chop-sticks. Everyone would end up using woks anyway, since you won't have the labor to produce pots and pans and if you tried, they'd be outrageously expensive.

You'll lose 90% of your service industry.

Figure it out yet?

One reason to, um, "export" (snicker) jobs is to free up labor to perform other jobs.

Long Wang in Vietnam earns $1.35/hour operating his Japanese-made Nissei plastic injection molding machine that produces 12 plastic kitchen gadgets per hour.

Hi Chin in China earns $1.45/hour operating his Japanese-made Nissei plastic injection molding machine that produces 12 plastic kitchen gadgets per hour.

Batalog in the Philippines earns $1.60/hour operating his Japanese-made Nissei plastic injection molding machine that produces 12 plastic kitchen gadgets per hour.

Cosmin in Romania earns $2.25/hour operating his Japanese-made Nissei plastic injection molding machine that produces 12 plastic kitchen gadgets per hour.

Fat Union Fred in the US earns $30/hour operating his Japanese-made Nissei plastic injection molding machine that produces 12 plastic kitchen gadgets per hour.

Which one is more productive?

That is a trick question, since they are all equally productive, producing 12 plastic kitchen gadgets per hour.

But, wouldn't you rather have Fat Union Fred producing high-tech electronic devices or specialty milled items instead of plastic kitchen gadgets?

We can see you really thought things through.

 

Actually, it was unions.

Zenith and its union could not compete globally against South Korean Life's Good (you know, "LG") and its unions.

Zenith and its unions couldn't turn a profit globally, but South Korean LG and its unions could.

South Korean LG used its profits to buy up stock in Zenith, because Zenith execs were stupid and didn't keep enough cold hard cash on hand to buy back their own stocks.

Eventually, South Korean LG owned 51% of Zenith stocks, making it the majority shareholder.

Then Zenith filed for bankruptcy and South Korean LG bought Zenith at a fire-sale.

But, hey, the Zenith union workers got their union benefit and now they get to work at Starsucks, McDonald's and Wal-Mart.

Americans have always been grotesquely overpaid, and the only thing that's happening is the Laws of Economics.

When you violate the inviolable Laws of Economics, you suffer. Period. There's no escaping it. Ever.

Why do you think the US created AFRICOM?

Because the difference in wages between China and sub-Saharan States is not so great. It's not even close to the massive difference in wages between Americans and Central/South Americans, sub-Saharan Africans, Asians or Eastern Europeans.

China's development of sub-Saharan Africa will create perpetual trading partners for all eternity because the wage difference isn't so vast. China can sell to sub-Saharan Africa who will be able to afford Chinese goods, and the Chinese can import cheap goods from sub-Saharan Africa.

The purpose of AFRICOM is to destabilize the sub-Saharan States and stymie their economic, political and social development so China cannot benefit.

I feel sorry for you all. A massive paradigm shift is underway and your suffering will be legendary, even in Hell.

 

Actually, if you knew the history of Zenith, you would know that is wrong.

They like most of the other US companies lost the TV business as people bought for price and not quality.

And their computer market became their only major business, with all of their barrels resting in the big US Military contract they had from around 1986 until 1993. Then they lost that, and were begging for anybody to give them they money to stay open. LG was still transitioning to that name from Goldstar at the time, and tried to bail them out as they were not a major name in the US computer industry. 4 years later Zenith went completely bankrupt, and they bought them out of Chapter 11.

It was not the unions, as much as refusing to change. They had the first large US Military desktop and laptop contracts, and continued to just sell the same thing for far to long. Even in 1989 when the 80486 was starting to come out, they were barely moving to the 80386 platform. And most of their laptops were still 8088 systems. The military was given a better offer for faster computers, and dumped them.

 

Zenith to Seek Bankruptcy Protection; Become a Division of ...
https://www.wsj.com › articles
May 22, 1998 — Zenith said it will file for bankruptcy-law protection and become a unit of its largest shareholder, LG Electronics, of South Korea.

Which part of "LG bought up Zenith stocks to gain majority shareholder status then filed bankruptcy and got bought be LG" is wrong?

LG products are quality products.

Not only were LG products superior to Zenith (who sat on its laurels) they were more innovative than Zenith.

Same thing. American unions stymie growth, development and innovation.

I qualified that, because American unions do not operate the way foreign unions do, thus making it impossible to compare US unions with foreign unions. They can however, be contrasted (which is not the same as comparing.)

Then by your own admission, Zenith was unable to compete globally.

 

At that time, they had just changed their name from "Goldstar". In case you are not old enough to remember, they were about on par with Sanyo, and a ton of other cheap imports. Nothing really good, just cheap.

When a Walkman cost $50, a Goldstar version was $24.95. And a 25" TV was $500, they only charged $350. Goldstar VHS decks, around $150 when name brands were $200+.

You are comparing now, to then. You can't do that, because you have to put it into the context of the era.

 

And of course you have some objective measure to quantify quality, rather than your unqualified musings, right?

I had a Sanyo tape deck to go with my Bose 901s (only $714 with stands at the PX) and my Sansui tuner and Kenwood pre-amp and Marantz amp and Garrad turntable.

I also had a Sound City SMF Tour Series head and two Sound City Twin 15 stacks wired in a series-parallel 4x12 X-pattern for my bass.

I also used RadioShack microphones mic the stack and my vocals and a 3rd one for my Fender acoustic.

You probably think RadioShack mics were "cheap."

Thing is, when you pulled off the rubber-sleeve at the end of the mic and looked inside, it was stamped "Shure."

Those were Shure microphones sold under the RadioShack label.

No, difference in quality, but a big difference in price.

People like you often equate "foreign" to low quality without any basis in fact.

 

That all depends. You are aware that Tandy did not actually make them, right? Almost everything they sold were rebranded and made by other makers.

I actually used a Radio Shack SSM-1200 mixer board for a great many years. That was the one that remained at my home studio as I used my Gemini PMX-3500 on the road. And the thing is, The SSM-1200 was made by Pyramid. Specifically the PR-8200 Echo.






And for my home use, it was excellent. With a staggering 12 inputs and dual slides for mixing 4 channels at once it was amazing for home studio use. I actually laughed when I saw it at a pawn shop about 20 years ago, the pawn broker made the same mistake as seeing "Radio Shack", and had it listed for $50. When the identical Pyramid was still selling for over $200 easy.

So yes, Radio Shack mics were also made by such companies as Shure. But they also used cheap imports also, you got what you paid for.

I do not equate "Radio Shack" with junk, never did. But I was aware that they sold both cheap stuff for normal users, and professional level equipment also.

But nice try.

 

L-M seems to have got this one right.
F-35's Century of Dominance? - Dan Goure, RealClearDefense

 

Everythig changes when we unleash CHAMP and the bad guys unleash their version.

 

I would be less concerned with Turkey, which we often disagree with but they are still a NATO ally. Our real concern is our dependence on China for rare earth metals.

 

When did the procurement regulations change? I spent decades in defense procurement and no contract was allowed to be let without multiple sources for parts and materials. The whole idea was to prevent reliance on a single source. When did they change the regulations?

 

I think sole source contracts have been around forever.

 

Sole source contracts are often based on cost. But even there, secondary sources for raw materials must be identified, just in case the country of origin goes Democrat... er... uhm... communist and becomes a hostile nation. The letting of a contract is a different issue tan identifying secondary sources... just in case.

 

Actually, most of the time it is related to time demands, or simply that it involved proprietary technology.

A lot of people screamed that Haliburton got so many in the early 2000's. But the simple fact is, those support contracts they got, they were really the only company that could fulfill them, and they had to be granted immediately. Some of them were later farmed out to other companies. I want to say the Laundry contract at the base I deployed to in the mid-2000's went from Haliburton to Hyatt. And the food service contract finally went from Haliburton at about the same time to a big European hotel chain.

But they needed to supply dozens of services to scores of bases. And there was just no time to use the normal procurement system when a single company could provide all of them almost immediately. Over the next decade a lot of them did go to other companies, scores of them.

And many contracts like missiles and RADAR went to the same firms over and over, because the same company had worked on the generation before. Hughes, Litton, Northrop, they generally split up different contracts, and kept them for ages. Simple because making the Mark I Thingamabob gave them the inside edge on making the Mark II Thingamabob. And they could ensure that the Mark I and Mark II could work together flawlessly.

Like the PATRIOT system, which was made by Raytheon. Who also made the predecessor system, the HAWK. And even though THAAD is a Lockheed-Martin project, the RADAR is still made by Raytheon, and maintains compatibility with the PATRIOT system. Because in the original concept for "ADA in the 21st Century", Battalions by 2015 (laugh) would have incorporated both PATRIOT and THAAD launchers, all connected to the newer generation RADAR of THAAD. And by this time, PATRIOT other than PAC-3 would have been phased out, replaced by MEADS (another L-M designed launcher, with a Raytheon RADAR).

And all are still backward-compatible with the HAWK system. As there are still over a dozen countries that still use that 1950's era system. Ironically, even though the US phased the HAWK out in the early 1990's, they are still updating and improving it for their allies. The current AN/MPQ-64 fire control RADAR is even better in some ways that the current PATRIOT RADAR.

 

Fantastic to hear from someone that has some insight. Thanks for your post. A couple of things, though. HAWK is as obsolete as a musket. I remember we had a HAWK battery in the trees on my Kaserne in Babenhausen in the late 70's. It was an analog system. Seriously musket.

And PATRIOT PAC-3 guidance is now based on the Israeli ARROW missile guidance system. Patriot was not designed to be a national defense missile system. It was designed to be something which kept our maneuver forces from being attacked by SCUD's and similar. As such, it was an AREA defense system that detonated near the incoming fire and simply knocked it down. When this was used to defend Israeli cities and strategic assets, the falling incoming SCUD did lots of damage to assets on the ground. The most casualties we took in Desert Storm was a SCUD knocked out in the air but fell on a aircraft hanger full of our troops... mostly medics.

The ARROW missile guidance system, designed to DESTROY incoming, not just knock it down where it might fall on Israeli cities, is not an AREA detonation system, but a PRECISION detonation system designed to destroy the incoming in flight, not just knock it down. Israel gave us their ARROW precision guidance system to help save their own cities in Desert Storm.

 

I'm a big fan of Halliburton. I got to Iraq as a civilian in May 2003, as a contractor to train the NEW Iraqi Army at KMTB (Kir Kush Military Training Base) colocated with The 1/10 Cav and Camp Caldwell. We ate MRE's for 4 months and had no toilets, no air conditioning (one day it hit 140 degrees). We had no refrigeration and lived in old Saddam barracks that we had to sweep free of animal feces before we could move in. We lived like that for months. Then, Halliburton showed up. We had toilets, A/C, hot chow, windows. real beds, clean water (our trucked in water usually tasted like diesel), and so much more.

Halliburton has a special place in my heart.

You really cannot appreciate the crunch of a piece of fresh lettuce until you have been there.

 

Sorry, most of that is not true, sorry.

The last generation of the HAWK that even the US used was digital, the old analogue was phased out in the 1970's. The current stuff is still being made for it, close to PATRIOT in capability against aircraft, if shorter range.

And no, PAC-3 is not based on the Arrow. From day 1 PAC-3 used a kinetic kill missile, and is a short-medium range system. Arrow was a two stage theater area weapon (closer to THAAD than PATRIOT. And PATRIOT is still primarily an anti-aircraft system. And the issue in the Gulf War (long ago resolved) is that it was a kludge of prototype software, with a missile that was never designed to take out missiles. Long ago resolved with GEM and later generation missiles.

But a downside of Arrow is that it is a "one trick pony". It can only be used against ballistic missiles, and nothing but ballistic missiles. It can not be used against aircraft, drones, or cruise missiles. Where as almost everything the US uses is capable against multiple threats. And in case you did not know, the PATRIOT after the upgrades in the mid-1990's was just as capable. In 2003, it was used to engage 12 inbound Iraqi missiles. And between PAC-3 and PAC-2 GEM all 12 were destroyed.

And no, PATRIOT was never designed to take out ballistic missiles like the SCUD. It was a Kennedy era program, designed entirely to take out aircraft. Even when it was fielded during the Reagan Administration, it was still only anti-aircraft. In 1989 Raytheon started playing with some of the "Star Wars Tech", and realized that theoretically, it could be used however as an anti-missile system as the RADAR was mostly modified form the Navy's AEGIS system. So when the Gulf War started, they literally rushed over an "Alpha Version" of the software. And the results were basically what was expected. Hit ratios were actually high, but kill ratios were low because the missiles were never designed to take out a hardened target like a ballistic missile.

If you ever are on the White Sands Missile Range, drive down the road that goes around the Operation Paperclip V-2 launch site and keep going. Eventually you will find a rather interesting area.

https://www.google.com/maps/place/W...1188767bf20c3!8m2!3d32.7872403!4d-106.3256816

Now I will explain exactly what this is. To the left on the East-West road, the largely destroyed and abandoned areas are the original NIKE test areas. Those were the first launch locations for the entire NIKE system, destroyed after the ABM treaty was signed.

Then keep going right. I spent months at that location, the "Birthplace of PATRIOT". You can still see the "Air Defense Star" layout, which was a common blueprint for ADA installations at the time PATRIOT was in development (1960's). If you zoom in on the eastern side, there is one building that is strangely canted 45 degrees from all the others. Draw a line NW from there, you see a horseshoe berm, and right before that what looks like a metal building also at an angle. And most times now, PATRIOT launchers on a large asphalt pad.

That building is actually sitting on wide railroad tracks, and used to move. You can not tell from overhead, but the face of that angled building is at an angle, with a darker outline. Literally, the original PATRIOT RADAR system. The outline of the Phased Array antenna is still visible, even decades after it was removed. And as this was top-top secret in the 1960's and 1970's, they knew when Soviet satellites would go overhead, and would cover the original PATRIOT launcher with that metal building.so it could not be seen (if you compare it to the launchers parked without the HEMITT truck, the building is just a bit bigger than the launcher). The horseshoe berm was where the first test fires were conducted, and would be covered with netting otherwise (the remnants are still in there).

https://www.google.com/maps/search/desert+ship+white+sands/@32.3854354,-106.47833,39m/data=!3m1!1e3

Right by the main gate is the White Sands Missile Museum. And the large yellow thing with the launch platform at an angle is the original PATRIOT launcher. To the right of that, is a mock-up of the original Fat Man bomb. The exact same one you can see me sitting on (a'la Dr Strangelove) in my profile picture (taken in 2007).

I spent a lot of 2011 there, working on the upgrades to the system. And figured out a lot of this, which I confirmed when talking to some "old timers" that were still there form that era. On the deck appear to be 3 PAC-2 launchers, but no RADAR systems. But multiple control vans hooked up to the building, which is a DUST facility (Drive-Up Self-Test). Where they can work on system integration, without the need of an active RADAR operating.