London Bullshit Company

I was puzzled with LBC's reporting the belated evacuation of UK citizens in the wake of the third episode in the Gulf War franchise, as the photo's a stock image dating back to 2005 of a First Choice aircraft taking off at London Gatwick... despite the impression LBC hope to give of evacuees arriving at London Stansted this morning.

Lesson being in this century get news from wherever you can, when individuals are as good a guide ~ if not better ~ to what's going on in the world than the media.

Wrong flight phase, wrong year, wrong aircraft, wrong passengers, wrong airport, wrong time and wrong airline... although we can all agree that it is an aeroplane.

Accordingly, see the exclusive below from your own trusted news source instead:

The Government's first charter flight to evacuate British nationals from
 the Middle East has arrived in the UK. Picture: Wacky Races

Back to the Future #24

After unloading two tins of primer I'm pleased with the result. 'A fine vessel Sir and no mistake, aharrrr...' as our First Sea Lord commented following the email I sent.

I like the cut of the man's jib, whilst everyone is choosing grey with a black trim for their new cars here in the UK and so this suits the vibe besides appealing to the RN.

I shall probably mount tuna-tin lift-motors for the PR push and remove them after, as this first prototype will be tested purely as a boat with a pair of pushers. Frankly too, if it doesn't work as a boat then it doesn't work at all, does it?

Happily on that score there is enough room given the outline to swing 24" props instead of 22". This is good to have in reserve ~ along with upgraded motors and a higher voltage ~ should the proof of concept require more power.

I shall also mount real motors on the power-bar at the rear, as we'll need to see the resting trim in water; for which I'll have to brave the local pond else build a static test-tank in the back yard.

Watch this space.

Ed. There's a theory the colours people choose for new cars suits the zeitgeist viz. orange, pink or purple in the 1960s, as against fifty shades of Soviet grey today.

Heal the World, Make it a Beta Place.

Having just consumed coffee and scones I had planned to sit in my dressing-gown and binge on episodes of Frasier this morning, but then news of this courtesy of the VFS suggests there might be better things to do with the Spring that is upon us here in the UK.

For Amazon have just invested in a 5.3% stake in Beta, whose 'Alia' eVTOL-come-CTOL has just completed successful trials in Norway. The thinking at Amazon goes something like this: the Alia is a conventional fixed-wing aircraft to which lift motors can be added whenever electric vertical operation gains traction years from now.

If this sounds at all familiar, let us remind ourself that we are pioneering a drone I'd like to see piloted one day that can be operated as a conventional watercraft, whilst also being adaptable as a surface-effect aircraft to skim the sea as when conditions permit: by adding, as do Beta, four more motors.

Which with apologies to Frasier, I ought to be getting on with?

In the days I had money, I walked into a hotel bar near Amalfi where the only guest was Woody Harrelson of 'Cheers'. Doing the same in Mallorca, Bob Geldof (whilst Lauren Bacall walked the gardens beyond). There've been a lot of hotel bars in my life, which you can read about in the second instalment of my bio, 'Hotel Barred'. See also the first, 'Nasty, Brutal and Short'.

Winning Battles, Losing Wars?

Picture's emblematic of the age, being what Ukranian company Skyeton made last century and what it has replaced it with in this. More significantly its partners in the UK ~ we don't make, we partner ~ suggest that it is set to replace the billion-pound domestic experiment in the UK.

The reason billion £/$ (delete as necessary) procurement experiments fail is that Western defence is built around a consumer boom and military-industrial complex... and why YouTube futurist Professor Jiang has predicted that (a) Trump would win the presidency (b) would go to war with Iran and (c) lose.

For his suggestion is that the US military is designed for war in the 20th century and not the 21st. He adds that the AI boom sustaining the US economy is financed to a great extent by petrodollars, the flow of which war will constrain; while threats to either desalination plants or the Straits of Hormuz could choke off the supply of food and water to places like the UAE and Saudi Arabia within weeks. And we forget whilst watching QVC that you can't do without those.

Meanwhile the author of The Art of the Deal bemoans the fact he has no Churchill, author of A History of the English-Speaking Peoples to deal with, and he is probably right. For Churchill was of his time, a product of economies that produced instead of consuming, and we are of ours.

And that is to say that after 2,500 years of war or more instead of 250, Europeans are belatedly wise to the merits of defence at least, even if it needn't extend to pre-emptive attack. What's happening around the Gulf is inflating oil and gas, bolstering Russia's efforts in Ukraine... be careful what you wish for and choose friends wisely.

In response the suggestion is that warships escort oil tankers through the Straits, so the global economy proceeds as normal. Not a stone's throw from where I write tho' is the underground museum from where the Battle of the Atlantic was fought, and orchestrated by said Churchill.

Problem was ships carrying supplies to Europe, plus their escorts, were being sunk by numerous and comparatively inexpensive submarines hunting in packs.

Sound familiar, anybody?

One of my flying students served on the final convoy aimed at relieving beleaguered Russians via the northern route during WW2, prior Churchill pulling the plug given losses from U-boats.

F(U?)-15

Within an hour or two, seems what I planned to suggest was confirmed anyhow viz. loss of three F-15s in a short period over Bahrain* most likely a case of friendly fire.

Reasons being (a) in previous Gulf conflicts the F-15 has proven the most capable aircraft on the block, and as I recall was never lost to a dog-fight.

And in any event (b) this would imply that there were hostile aircraft to engage overhead one of several US bases thereabouts, which would barely be credible.

Then there's (c), the fact that in every case there appear to have been one or both engines with an unconfined fire, or at least smoking.

And (d) they were in a flat spin with no airspeed, possibly orchestrated preparatory to ejection.

All of which suggests that the aircraft will have been intercepted from ground level by something not overly catastrophic: of the sort for instance that might dispatch a drone or missile, or indeed an F-15 by the more excitable.

The takeaway from which is probably a realisation that what was considered to be impregnable ~ albeit of a previous generation ~ can still be eliminated by relatively inexpensive means.

Which itself points to the inherent value of sheer numerical advantage: those many hundreds of drones being launched at all points west having in a number of cases overwhelmed defences to the extent they were able to strike target**.

To the best of my knowledge you cannot buy an F-15 because they are no longer... hello, are still produced in a form much uprated since debut in '72. They're around $100 million dollars apiece, however, and you get Shahed-loads of drones for that.

1972 was also the year before the first oil crisis, and thus... what goes around?

* Ed. Kuwait actually. We put this to our blogger, who said he looked up, mistakenly thought it was a Bahrain and opened laptop.

** Ed. One in twenty on current estimates.

The Cone's Tale

Delivering scrap metal to its final resting place I spot the above, the tail-cone from a CFM-56 turbofan. How could I mistake it, this thing I'd walked around a thousand times upon the pan?

"Alas, poor tail-cone." I said to a colleague, "I flew him, Horatio."

Ed. On no other VTOL blog do you get Shakespeare, methinks.

By the Shahed-Load

I got to wondering what the most successful aircraft has been, and setting aside the Airbus 320 and Boeing 737 ~ each of which I flew at the time they achieved a rank of best-selling airliner ~ the answer if apparently the Cessna 172 above. Since its appearance in 1955 it has sold 44,000.

Now however it will have been supplanted by Iran's Shahed drone, of which they've 80,000 in stock and licensed versions of which are produced at rates of upto 500 per day by Russia, which launches as many as 5,000 monthly.

Costing $50,000 to make but selling for $200,000, then compared to the $400,000 required for a Cessna you do get more bangs for your buck*. Nonetheless if it's purely a numbers game the drone does have the advantage it is not intended to survive a single flight, whereas you'd like to think that your Cessna would do a little better.

Confusing the issue tho' as it will for you as it did for me, there is not just one type of Shahed drone but any number, the company itself bearing the name. This one tho' is the one I suspect the stats relate to, and does if nothing else demonstrate that if it is sheer volume you're set upon then foam and plywood go a long way to meet that goal.

But we knew that already, didn't we?

* Ed. with apologies to anyone on the wrong end of a guided missile. The phrase originated with the US military around the time the 172 was being developed, since entering common parlance as meaning 'value for money'.