Tag Archives: United States Air Force
Viral Videos: Yves Rossy Flies Over Grand Canyon, Alligator Bites Cop Car, In-N-Out Burger Line, BYU Rain Delay
This week, these four videos are virally spreading on YouTube. The first video is Yves Rossy flying over the Grand Canyon in a jet pack in about 8 minutes. The second video is an alligator biting a cop car. The third video is a long In-N-Out Burger line in Allen, Texas. And the fourth video is of the BYU baseball team entertaining a crowd during a rain delay against the Air Force team. Check out all of the videos below:
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U.S. Air Force C-5 Galaxy Cargo Plane Gets A Successor
U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. Scott Erickson has been piloting the C-5 Galaxy cargo plane for over 10 years now. The C-5 Galaxy can hold about 60 tons of cargo or even 6-7 Apache helicopters. Recently the Pentagon has decided to upgrade the C-5 Galaxy which has been in operation for about 40 years. The C-5 Galaxy is the largest plane in its fleet.
The new C-5M model is quite different from the C-5 Galaxy. The new model has 22% more thrust than the older models. There is about 50,000 lbs. of thrust for each of the four engines on the cargo plane. The new plane is expected to save ttime and money for the Air Force.
“When you’ve got more thrust, you can take off with more cargo and more fuel, and from my point of view we might not have to aerial refuel with a tanker to get where we’re going” stated Lt. Col. Erickson in an interview with Wired. “It’s one less thing we have to plan for as pilots, and certainly one less thing the Air Force has to pay for.”
The new plane even utilizes GPS navigation now. The previous model relied on the inertial navigation system which is not as high tech as modern GPS devices. Don’t take your GPS navigation for granted ever again. Not everyone can get them right away.
[via Wired]
Categories C-5 Galaxy, United States Air Force
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U.S. Air Force Discusses GPS Concerns On Twitter
As GPS devices are becoming more accessible on mobile phones and in box-shaped devices, humans are becoming a lot more dependent on them, including myself. I spent Memorial Day in Chicago and it was especially useful having a GPS to determine what road I was on when driving around downtown and Lake Shore Drive.
Col. Dave Buckman stated that there is a potential risk with GPS satellites becoming degraded, but the issue is under control by the government. “The issue is under control. We are working hard to get out the word. The issue is not whether GPS will stop working. There’s only a small risk we will not continue to exceed our performance standard,” stated Buckman on Twitter.
“We have 30+ satellites on orbit now. We’ll launch another in Aug 09, and again early 10. Going below 24 won’t happen,” stated the Air Force from the Twitter account.
The last time I wrote about the Air Force and Twitter was when the government agency used the micro-blogging platform for recruitment purposes.
[via PCW]
Army Using Twitter and Facebook For Recruitment
The U.S. Army is trying innovative new ways to reach out to today’s youth for recruitment. In this case, they are turning to both Twitter and Facebook.
Lieutenant General Benjamin Freakley oversees recruiting for the Army and is managing the social networking initiative. Facebook is a key way to reach 18-24 year olds according to Freakley. You could become friends with the recruiter and then the recruiter would be able to talk to your friends.
General Raymond Odierno, a top commander in Iraq set up a Facebook page where anyone can ask questions and receive answers regarding the mission in Iraq. The U.S. Air Force and The U.S. Coast Guard has also launched a social networking initiative on Facebook recently as well.
Some of the questions that have been asked include “Can I have a dog in the army” and “Can I be married in the Army?” Lindy Kyzer updates the Army’s Twitter feed and blog. To maintain transparency, negative posts are not removed.
Air Force Gets Most Secure Version of Windows XP
The Air Force will be getting the most secure version of Windows XP. Critical security patches could be installed on the Air Force computers within 72 hours rather than the average 57 days it usually takes. Steve Ballmer was persuaded to provide the Air Force with the secure version of XP in order for them to save about $100 million in contract costs.
Many government agencies have the power to convince vendors to create higher security products, but most of the time they take what they are given. The Air Force took exception with the case of the more secure version of XP. Making things more secure for the government and then to consumers later on is called a “trickle down approach.”
When the Air Force met with Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, they specifically requested a more secure version of XP which would require less time for administrators to reconfigure and maintain patches. Ballmer himself agreed and became personally involved with the implementation.
“He has half-a-dozen clients that he personally gets involved with, and he saw that this just made a lot of sense,” stated former Air Force CIO John Gilligan. “They had already done preliminary work themselves trying to identify what would be a more secure configuration. So we fine-tuned and added to that.”
[via Wired]