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Showing posts from April, 2016

Canada's defense policy: Have your say!

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The time has come. The time has come for every armchair admiral , internet "expert", and members of the " Chairborne Rangers " to come forth and do their part. Do not worry, I am not referring to actual combat or military service. The time has come for everyday Canadians to help determine the future defence policy of Canada.  Not in specific procurement or strategies, but the general direction Canada's military should take in the upcoming years. The Government of Canada has launched a Defence Policy Review  that will engage the Canadian public regarding the following: The main challenges to Canada’s security The role of the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) in addressing current threats and challenges The resources and capabilities needed to carry out the CAF mandate More details regarding the public consultation can be found here  (Warning: 6.6MB PDF file!). Canadians can submit their suggestions either online, by mail, or at one of six roun

On Bias... [RANT]

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   No...  Wait...  That's  To bias. I am going to take a break from fighter jets for the moment, for reasons that will (hopefully) become clear later in the post. Why do we like the things that we like?  Why do we become so enamored with certain personal choices, whilst berating those that do not agree with us? The answer, of course, is  bias.   Our understanding of the world around us is modified by our own personal life experiences, education, and upbringing.  The value we place on things, be it politics, lifestyle choices, or even basic esthetics are modified by our own cognitive bias.  For example, someone who grew up with a more pragmatic upbringing would likely place less importance on appearance then someone who grew up surrounded by works of fine art and architecture. Simply put, if someone does not agree with you, it is not necessarily because they are less intelligent, more intelligent, or being contradictory, it is because they have a different set of values an

Upcoming Technologies

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With word of a hypersonic successor to the SR-71 on the way, combined with sixth-generation fighters for the USAF and USN , now would be a good time to look at the technologies and engineering that will debut in these new platforms. Propulsion: While everyone is familiar with the workings of current turbojets, turbofans, ramjets, scramjets, and jamjets.   For a number of years now, work has been proceeding in order to bring perfection to the crudely conceived idea of a aeronautical turbine that would not only supply inverse reactive current for use in unilateral phase detractors, but would also be capable of automatically synchronizing cardinal grammeters. Such an instrument is the turboencabulator. Now basically the only new principle involved is that instead of power being generated by the relative motion of conductors and fluxes, it is produced by the modial interaction of magneto-reluctance and capacitive diractance. The original machine had a base plate of pr