libertyhouse

Not sure you are were trying to be serious or not, but the DEF-H was one of the defensive systems used to jam surface to air threats. The system had two "modules" with one in the left and one in the right chine.

An offensive RF/cyber operation would be very interesting indeed.

Most likely TIANLIAN satcom

Most likely using the Chinese TIANLIAN satcom for C2 and data backhaul.

This looks like it was the two seat trainer version of the U-2 which doesn't carry mission equipment like the SYERS sensor or a data-link.

You believe that the Government could hide/destroy all archival Target Development packages, SIGINT Reporting, Full Motion Video, Tactical Reports, Collateral Damage Estimates, Judge Advocate and other leadership decisional communications, Battle Damage Assessments, Political Communications, and other material about any particular strike in question to prevent the investigation of a whistleblowers claims?

Yes - the question assumes that innocents are not intentionally targeted.

I understand you are responding in a flippant manner, but in warfare many innocents are inevitably killed, and it would be best to have a common understanding of an agreeable percentage in order to support decision/policy making, and to determine the merits of this particular case.

Assuming some future declared moral war, what would be an acceptable percentage of collateral casualties?

This doesn't really answer the question though. What is a reasonable percentage that would be acceptable to most readers here? If it helps we can assume equity in terms of ability to inflict casualties on bystanders by participating combatants?

Can somebody please confirm the percentage of bystanders allowed to be killed when fighting war in a moral fashion? I'm assuming no war/technology is perfect, and nobody can reasonably expect it to be so. I'm also assuming most readers here are OK with our Government fighting a moral war. What percentage is morally acceptable to the readers here?

You mean he wasn't capable of gaming out the consequences of the Government reacting poorly to the use of official whistleblower mechanisms and wouldn't therefore be able to go to the press in the manner in which he did?

It's likely that the sentence wouldn't have been as harsh had there been evidence that he tried official channels first.

I probably shouldn't have said it's "easier" to declassify. It's more of simply being a matter of deciding that the NIIRS (basically resolution) rating of the imagery from the OBC is low enough relative to other sensors and collection platforms that it won't provide much of an advantage to an adversary.

The embedded Linux system that was added to the OBC also provided a continuously variable Velocity over Height (V/H) control that allowed the OBC to collect imagery at lower altitudes than what it was originally designed for. This improves the quality of the imagery but at a lower area coverage rate as a tradeoff.

Film from the OBC is digitzed, ortho-rectified, and exploited as soft-copy. Back in the day it was done on mechanical light tables.

A good video that shows some of the film and other details is located here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uemrNDEWgzA

The U-2 is the only U.S. surveillance aircraft still flying a "wet film" camera called the Optical Bar Camera, or OBC. Ironically, this relatively old technology keeps the U-2 mission from being completely transitioned to other aircraft like Global Hawk, due to the film imagery being easily releasable and able to be declassified.

Around 2007, a PC-104 embedded computer running Linux was integrated into the OBC camera to allow correlation of flight data with the imagery, as well as supply an OBC camera status page on the cockpit multi-function display.

I wish more SR-71 stories focused on the sensors and defensive systems. Although not a sexy as the aircraft, in some ways the SR-71 could be considered a "sensor truck." Post-mission processing and analysis of raw data was a huge part of the total SR-71 program. The system and sensor manufacturers were on the cutting edge of airborne reconnaissance and remote sensing. Good page on some of the sensors here: http://www.sr71.us/sr_sensors_pg3.htm

Fantastic transcription - really interesting! These early U-2 pilots had a lot of courage and love for flying.

Thank You for posting this.

No - that's not true. Pilots are fully aware of the sensor configuration. There are a number of sensor controls and circuit breakers in the cockpit that are checklist and operator items. Pilots must be able to help troubleshoot some types of sensor failures.

The pilots don't usually see raw product because it's really not in their lane - but they are the aircraft commander and pretty much know quite a bit of detail about stuff mounted to the aircraft.

Film alone doesn't determine performance - the whole instrument must be considered. The OBC trades "resolution" for area coverage rate. The digital electro-optical imagery from the U-2 is produced using an instrument (SYERS-2) with a different optical design. Intelligence Imagery (IMINT) is rated on the NIIRS scale and the OBC imagery is most-likely unclassified now due to it being at the mid-range of the NIIRS scale.

You make a good point about the scanning. Any wet film product these days must generally be scanned to allow for further production in our "soft-copy" world.

Not true. Landlords may prefer to forgo a new tenant and keep rent increases reasonable for many reasons. The cost of tenant turnover can be very high. They may not want to take the risk of a new tenant over a know good tenant. The local rental market may not support a rent increase.

I have been a landlord and not raised rents many times. I have also been a renter and have had no rent increases or very modest rent increases for many years while renting.

Your 15% leveraged return is only true if you have no borrowing costs. If you had a 4% mortgage you would actually be losing 1% the first year.

A leveraged return L = (asset return - ((1- %down) x loan) rate)/%down. With a 4% mortgage that's (3% - ((1 - 20% ) x 4%))/20% = -1%

Renting or owning from a purely financial point of view is a relatively straightforward problem and is answered quite nicely with the NY Times Rent vs. Buy calculator (with the caveat that the calculator has not been updated to reflect the new tax laws).

That being said, the biggest reasoning mistakes I run across are:

1. "You pay the landlords expenses plus some profit." Not true. The rental market is just that - a market that fluctuates with supply and demand. There are plenty of landlords who are losing money on their rental property.

2. "Once I have paid off my house I'm done paying for housing." Not true - you still have taxes, insurance, and maintenance whose costs will most likely increase over time.

3. Forgetting about the opportunity costs. Great - you paid off your mortgage. Now you have $500k in equity. Guess what - if you took that $500k and put it in a 5 year treasury you can earn a risk free 3% or 15k/year on that money. Better yet stick it in a broad based index fund and you will grow 6% albeit with more risk. That's your opportunity cost of your equity.

Overall this is such an emotional subject for most. I'm personally glad to see some push-back on the "buying is always better" argument because its been dogma for some time.

Edit: fixed typo