Webster

The Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions." --American Statesman Daniel Webster (1782-1852)


Thursday, June 8, 2023

The Air Force is studying "Autonomous Planes".

 I remember a few days ago "Old NFO blogged about an AI and the issues." and Now I read about this in a 3rd party email so I figured I would tie it into this article and something to think about.

 

X-62

The X-62 took off from Edwards AFB on May 25 with the digital model of the Fury loaded into its unique simulation system.

Credit: Giancarlo Casem/U.S. Air Force

An autonomous aircraft named the Fury, which does not yet physically exist, was moments from “taking off” for the first time at Edwards AFB, California, on May 26. When the moment came, the manufacturer’s lead representative had to break away from an impromptu interview.

“Fury’s flying,” said Andrew Van Timmeren, a vice president of Blue Force Technologies (BFT), moving back to a makeshift control center to focus on telemetry from a laptop display and on comments by two flight-test pilots streaming into his headset. 

  • The Fury’s digital model was flown on the X-62
  • Flying simulator enables rapid testing of synthetic pilots and digital aircraft models

The Fury exists only as a digital engineering model loaded into a computer onboard the Air Force Test Pilot School’s (TPS) X-62 Variable In-Flight Stability Test Aircraft (VISTA). 

In 2022, the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) commissioned the design of the Mach 0.95 Fury from Morrisville, North Carolina-based BFT, a small company seeking to break into the military’s future fleet of autonomous aircraft with a relatively cheap and high-performance design. 

Facing historically staggering odds in a quest to win a production contract for an Air Force combat jet, BFT is relying on a series of ground and flight tests onboard the X-62 flying simulator, hoping to show service officials that the Fury’s navigation and control software is mature enough to warrant the award of a follow-on development contract. With the Air Force searching for a new Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA), low-cost designs submitted by nontraditional suppliers may be considered.

  • Download Aviation Week’s new app at AviationWeek.com/App for our team’s up-to-the-minute coverage from the Paris Air Show.

The Fury is part of a series of AFRL projects with a common theme: proving that the next generation of autonomous aircraft can be delivered at a fraction of the cost of their predecessors by leveraging digital design, low-cost manufacturing, and in some cases, modular features. 

The AFRL’s campaign began in 2015 with the Low-Cost Attritable Aircraft Technology (LCAAT) project. LCAAT funded the development of the $4 million Kratos XQ-58 Valkyrie, which began flying in 2019. The LCAAT program was succeeded by the Off-Board Sensing Station (OBSS) program. 

In late 2021, the AFRL selected the General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc. (GA-ASI) Gambit design for the OBSS contract. In a new approach to low-cost design, the Gambit is to be built with interchangeable wings, inlets, nacelles and control surfaces, allowing the operator to select different configurations depending on the mission.

The Fury shares the common, low-cost manufacturing goal of the AFRL’s XQ-58 and Gambit projects, but started out on a different track. Instead of being submitted in response to an AFRL solicitation, BFT proposed the Fury to AFRL’s AFWerx technology directorate in 2019 for a Small Business Innovation Research grant. 

Unlike the armed LCAAT or surveillance-gathering OBSS aircraft, BFT proposed the Fury as a low-cost, autonomous aggressor aircraft, replacing contracted jets or scarce Air Force fighters to play the role of a target for human pilots learning how to launch simulated missile attacks. In the meantime, the service could install synthetic pilots generated by artificial intelligence (AI) in Fury aircraft playing the aggressor role.

crews run ground-based simulations of the Fury

Calspan, U.S. Air Force and Blue Force Technologies crews run ground-based simulations of the Fury before the X-62 flies. Credit: Giancarlo Casem/U.S. Air Force

Developing an autonomous aircraft for the adversary air (ADAIR) mission initially received broad support. The AFRL launched the Bandit program in 2021 and selected BFT to design the Fury demonstrator in March 2022, with the award of a contract worth $15 million. Meanwhile, the Air Force inserted about $67 million into long-term spending plans to build an aircraft for the ADAIR mission and met with a group of potential suppliers last October. 

But the Air Force’s priorities had already begun to shift. By March, service leaders unveiled plans to spend $5.8 billion over the next five years, starting in fiscal 2024, on a new class of CCA. The funding that had been set aside to build the experimental ADAIR aircraft, meanwhile, disappeared, and Air Force officials informed industry in March that the program would be discontinued. 

The decision puts the Bandit program—and BFT’s Fury—in a critical position. So far, BFT has completed an integrated propulsion test of the jet engine and nacelle and a critical design review of the Fury. But the program may need additional funding to start building the first aircraft and commence flight testing. 

In the meantime, BFT engineers want to learn more about the design of the Fury—especially how the software for the guidance, navigation and flight control systems performs in flight. Although no Fury has been built, one of the Air Force’s most unique test resources can help. 

That explains why a small team of BFT engineers, AFRL managers and TPS faculty gathered inside historic Hangar 1207 on South Base at Edwards AFB in late May to witness the Fury’s first digital flight. Nestled in a corner of a hangar occupied by seven other Lockheed Martin F-16s, three Northrop T-38s and a Calspan Learjet 25, the X-62’s blue, white and orange-striped livery still stands out. 

Originally built as an F-16D Block 30 for Israel, the fighter was diverted off the production line in the late-1980s and sent to the AFRL. The laboratory modified the redesignated NF-16D with Block 40 avionics approved for Bahrain—omitting all classified features—and recommissioned the two-seat fighter as a flying aircraft simulator. 

Ownership then passed to the Edwards AFB-based TPS, which has upgraded the aircraft to become the X-62, featuring a more powerful flying simulation system. The new configuration, dubbed the Gen2020 modernization program, also added a new feature. The X-62 now also can be commanded by a remote operator or an AI-generated synthetic pilot. 

To mimic the flight characteristics of the Fury’s digital engineering model, the X-62 uses a model-following algorithm devised by Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works, which is loaded into the onboard, Calspan-supplied VISTA Simulation System (VSS). The VSS receives throttle-and-stick commands for the Fury, then translates those inputs for the X-62’s fly-by-wire control laws. 

Thus, if a pilot commands a right turn, the X-62 simulates making a right turn as if it were the digital version of the Fury—or any other aircraft that happens to be loaded into the VSS. 

“So we will click ‘turn 90 deg.,’ as an example,” Van Timmeren said. “That [command] will then be sent via the ground control station through a data link up to VISTA. The guys up in the jet could have their hands up in the air, but they’re going to see the aircraft turn 90 deg. to the right.”

Blue Force Technologies design of the Fury

Blue Force Technologies has completed the design of the Fury but is waiting for funding to build the first physical test aircraft. Credit: Blue Force Technologies

The X-62’s flying simulator can be controlled by an operator on the ground or an AI-generated synthetic pilot. By sending commands to the newly installed System for Autonomous Control of the Simulation (SACS), an operator on the ground or an AI agent can take charge of the aircraft, with a human safety pilot still on board for takeoff and landing and in case anything goes wrong. 

The SACS received its first workout last December. Synthetic AI “pilots” created by four different organizations—EpiSci, PhysicsAI, Shield AI and the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory—logged a total of 17 flight hours onboard the X-62, contributing research data to the AFRL’s Autonomous Air Combat Operations and DARPA’s Air Combat Evolution programs. 

“One of the big benefits there is just the early involvement of the testing community and being able to integrate our architecture into this flying testbed to get the practice . . . of sending the messages up to the onboard control system, working out a lot of those kinks before there’s actual hardware yet built,” says AFRL Bandit Program Manager Alyson Turri.

The SACS offers a new approach to testing new synthetic pilots rapidly. In previous tests of the AFRL’s Skyborg autonomy agent, the Air Force needed to use elaborate airspace deconfliction procedures to operate uncrewed host aircraft, such as the XQ-58 and GA-ASI MQ-20 Avenger. By hosting such agents in a SACS onboard the X-62, the crew can take off like any other fighter, fly to a designated block of airspace in a test corridor and transfer control to the AI-generated synthetic pilot.  

The same approach—minus the model-replicating VSS—is planned to be used as the Air Force ramps up experiments on future concepts of the SACS beyond the X-62. Project Venom, which was disclosed in the Air Force’s fiscal 2024 budget request, proposes to modify six F-16Ds to host AI-generated synthetic pilots, with the goal of rapidly improving the software through a high rate of testing.

“The one key technical nuance to understand is that Venom-enabled F-16s will allow for autonomy testing, just like we did with VISTA [in December],” says Col. Matthew Niemiec, the AFRL’s experimentation lead for autonomous aircraft. “But the [Fury testing], with integration of the vehicle model to make VISTA fly like a different airplane, that is a test that is unique to the VISTA platform. It is not something that the Venom-modified F-16s will be able to represent.” 

In the future, a production version of the Fury could be flown by an AI pilot. For the purposes of the X-62 tests in late May and early June, however, BFT controlled the Fury’s digital model from the ground. A data link relayed a ground controller’s commands from Vigilant Spirit—an AFRL-developed ground station—to the SACS onboard the X-62, which in turn commanded the model of the Fury loaded into the VSS. 

“We thought this was kind of an interesting case in that we have a vehicle that has been digitally designed that is yet to be built, and we have the opportunity to go do some flying with that model and just see how well the design works, and out in real airspace, flying on a real airplane,” says TPS Director of Research Christopher Cotting.

Another novelty about the Fury’s first virtual flight test is the status of the X-62, which itself remains in development. As of May 26, the TPS had loaded software version 1.31 into the VSS. Several more software updates are necessary to complete VSS development with version 1.6. 

“Although we’re already using it for testing, this has not finished its development cycle and its current upgrade. It won’t finish its upgrade cycle until next March,” Cotting says. “So part of the goal of VISTA [right now] is bringing in people like Blue Force with their Fury model for us to test how we’re integrating things and how well the system works. We’re learning things and finding problems as we’re working with them.”

The X-62 flew about 1.5 hr. on May 26 with the Fury’s digital model loaded into the VSS. Despite a few connection dropouts between the Vigilant Spirit ground station and the X-62, TPS and BFT officials considered it a successful first flight.

“We were able to accomplish some basic maneuvers, which included climbs and descents,” Van Timmeren said. “And we were able to characterize the performance of the jet using the X-62 as a surrogate. It was awesome.”

 

Tuesday, June 6, 2023

"Why The American Experience in WWI Matters"...

 

I saw this article from "Angry Staff Officer" and sometimes I use his stuff on my blog if I really 
like it.  He is really opinionated  and "Mack" twigged me onto this guy years ago.

Why the American Experience in World War I Matters Today

One would say that picking the day before the anniversary of D-Day in World War II is an odd time to talk about the first world war, yet, here we are. Because the more that I look at the war in Ukraine, the more I am drawn back to World War I. And no, not because of trenches and massed artillery bombardments. Those have been staples of modern war and are hardly unique to the fighting going on now. Hell, earthen protective positions have been around as long as someone realized that you could put a big mound of dirt between you and the person trying to kill you. Instead, I look at it from the American perspective and context of the Great War.  Now, since the U.S. perspective is mostly overlooked, this will require a lot of explaining. So, let’s get to it.

As the war in Ukraine continues in its second year, there are many in the U.S. Army who look towards it with great interest. Indeed, I would hazard to say that there have been few contemporary conflicts that have captured the attention of the U.S. military as has Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. From the doctrinal standpoint, an Army that is attempting to extricate itself from decades of low intensity conflict can watch large scale combat operations play out in real time. And it’s not like it takes a lot of imagination to see ourselves in this conflict, given that we can watch our equipment and technology as used by the Ukrainian military. Nor are we lacking accounts of Americans to follow as U.S. veterans travel to Ukraine to fight – for some, hoping to find a “good” war, to counterbalance their own years in Iraq or Afghanistan. In all of this, there are ties back to the American experience in World War I.

When the U.S. entered World War I in April of 1917, it could hardly be described as a dominant land power. The Army was small and lacked the new technology of the day – machine guns, heavy artillery, tanks, airplanes – in any large numbers. Nor did we have doctrine to take into account what all this new tech did to the essentially fragile human soldiers who would fight with it. These same soldiers would somehow have to be drawn from all parts of the U.S. population. It is not too far a stretch to say that the U.S. Army of 1916 was closer to the Army of 1865 than the Army of 1918. Change, therefore, was in the air.

Of course, change is the evil “c” word for the Army. It is highly resistant to organizational and institutional change. And yet, between 1917-1918, the Army underwent a radical transformation shaped by the new realities of war and technology. As we today struggle to figure out how unmanned aerial systems and the space and cyber domains will change warfare, the Army of 1917 struggled with how the machine gun and pneumatic recoil artillery had changed the battlefield. They asked the same questions that we do today: is new technology best used at the lowest level, where it can provide direct support to the ground pounder? Or is it best used en masse, in a formation commanded by someone who is intricately familiar with its capabilities? The Army of 1917 eventually determined that machine guns should be grouped into machine gun battalions, which could be broken up by companies and platoons, if needed, to support the infantry. Artillery was grouped into divisions, with two regiments of light artillery and one of heavy – too few, as it turned out in the end.

But because General John J. Pershing believed the rifle was still the dominant weapon in war, all force structure changes due to technology were based around supporting the infantryman. Pershing designed massive divisions of 28,000 soldiers each, all based around supporting the advance – and attrition – of the division’s four infantry regiments. Technology and doctrine – albeit misguided doctrine – shaped force structure. Flawed doctrine resulted in flawed force structure that turned out to be too unwieldy and cumbersome for the modern battlefield. Nor did that doctrine account for aircraft, tanks, and other emerging technologies.

View of a supply tank named “Griff” carrying supplies for advanced troops in the Caution Paddock, near Villeret, France, involving the 30th Division. The tank went where other transportation could not go (September 29, 1918) [Photograph by: U.S. Army Signal Corps, #24532].
 
From George T. Skinner Papers, WWI 59, WWI Papers, Military Collection, State Archives of North Carolina, Raleigh, N.C.

This adaptation of force structure to fit technology was not an easy change. Old, established units were broken up and turned into entirely different units. Cavalry troops in the National Guard traded their sabers for machine guns. Coast artillery soldiers picked up rifles or manned field guns. Infantry platoons now carried such things as automatic rifles and grenade launchers, while other infantrymen trained on 37mm guns and Stokes mortars. The old ways of doing business – almost unchanged for 50 years – were going by the wayside. Modern war required adaptation and moving away from the “Well that’s how we’ve always done it,” approach. The Army was rapidly changing. Just as it must today to adapt to the needs and hazards of the modern battlefield.

Who was serving was changing as well. In order to man this massive force, the War Department had requested Congress to authorize conscription. Soon, millions of people found themselves in uniform. Women were in service, granted official military status for the first time although having served in every war since the founding. In a war fought between ethnic groups in Europe, the U.S. was unique in fielding units that seemed to boast every ethnicity in its ranks – with the glaring absence of African Americans, who were segregated in separate units. Despite the wishes of many racists in the War Department, the American Expeditionary Force fielded two divisions of Black combat troops who acquitted themselves incredibly well in dehumanizing circumstances. The Army was changing, because modern war doesn’t care what color you are – or what your sexuality or gender identities are, either, I might add.

Although technically serving in non-government organizations like the Red Cross, Salvation Army, and YMCA, young women served just behind or sometimes even on the front lines of the AEF, coming under artillery, gas, and aircraft attack (Courtesy of the State Library of Massachusetts)

In a matter of months, the American Expeditionary Force (A.E.F.) ballooned to several hundred thousand troops in France between the fall of 1917 and the spring of 1918. By the late summer, there were over a million Americans in the theater of operations. By the fall – and the Armistice – over two million. Casualties, too, were exponentially high: over 50,000 dead and 200,000 wounded, in about six months of sustained combat operations. Misguided doctrine, abbreviated training, and inexperienced leaders caused many casualties. However, as the rest of the combatants of that war demonstrated, most of those casualties came because modern war – modern large scale combat operations – comes with a staggering price tag. A nation that will go to war must be prepared to give up her young people.

And World War I taught the United States that it must be the entire nation which goes to war. War – as we see it in Ukraine – must be a whole of government endeavor. One part of the nation cannot go to war while the other goes to the mall, as has been the experience of the U.S. for the last two decades as laid out by military and political leaders alike. Large scale wars, where entire cities are obliterated, are so horrendous that you must leverage all of a nation’s resources to end the war as soon as possible. And that nation must be willing to pay the requisite price in blood and treasure.

W.J. Duke of Co. L, 103rd Regt. Inf., wounded but still able to smile for the camera, near Mery, France, July 22, 1918. U.S. Army Signal Corps Collection, National Archives, 111-SC-16370.

For the U.S. of 1918-1919, that price was too high. The nation turned away from international affairs and stepped back from the world stage. Veterans, however, remained incredibly proud of their service. They formed organizations like the American Legion and dedicated memorials to their fallen comrades in towns and cities across the U.S. and France. They went back to France in mass numbers to visit their comrades buried there and to visit the places they had been during the war. In 1927, 30,000 veterans and their spouses travelled France in what was called the “Second A.E.F.” By 1937, their numbers had diminished to fewer than 10,000 but the pilgrims still came. There would be no more. Between 1939 and 1945, the veterans of World War I watched as everything they fought and bled for was washed away in a tide of bloodshed and fury. Like the veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan today, they watched as familiar towns and cities fell to a conquering enemy. It was surely hard to find a good answer to the question, “What was it all for?” One veteran in the 1980s answered the question, “Was your service during World War I of any specific benefit (or detriment) when you returned to civil life?” with, “No, just the loss of about 2 years that the world didn’t seem to feel was of any value to the country.”1 Many today could echo that sentiment.

Today, many veterans of the Global War on Terror find themselves asking that same question. Moral injury in the U.S. military and veteran community is not something that has been significantly addressed in any large way. People deal with it in many ways. Many have chosen to go back to war, to take the skills they acquired and use them in what is thought of as a “good” war, to help preserve Ukraine as a nation and as a people. Many World War I veterans sought to find “good” wars as well, some serving in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in the Spanish Civil War. Many served in the Allied forces in World War II. Moral injury takes a strong toll.

No war changed the U.S. Army in the way that World War I did. And very few wars have been forgotten so quickly. As much as those who follow the combat operations in Ukraine want to look at maneuver operations from World War II for comparisons, I would invite them to reexamine World War I. The paradigm shifts in technology and manpower were extreme. They might look very familiar for those today interested in how armies adapt to new technology and new ways of fighting war. Most importantly, studying World War I can help today’s veterans of the war on terror find a linkage to another group of veterans who struggled to make sense of their service and sacrifice.

 

Monday, June 5, 2023

Monday Music "Its My Life" By Talk Talk

 I am still running my favorite songs theme, this will run for a few more weeks.  Then I will switch to songs that I flat out can't stand.  But for now these are songs that I will hit the "Repeat" button over and over again....because I can. 


     This song to me is really good when I am on my motorcycle, I will play this song over and over again...especially the extended version. The Band is part of what I call the 2nd British invasion, that was mostly the "New Wave" that defined the 80's music and the decade that is my favorite decade for music.  Don't get me wrong, I like the 70's and 60's also, but the 80's was my decade.  A personal preference thing.

"It's My Life" is a song by the English new wave band Talk Talk. Written by Mark Hollis and Tim Friese-Greene, it was the title track on the band's second album and released as its first single in January 1984. It reached number 46 on the UK Singles Chart, but did better in several other countries, reaching number 33 in Germany, number 32 in New Zealand, and number 25 in France. In North America, it entered the Top 40 in both the United States (at number 31) and Canada (at number 30). It peaked at number 1 on the US Dance Club Songs chart


 

The single was re-released in the UK in 1985, but reached only number 93. In 1990, however, "It's My Life" was reissued again to promote the compilation album Natural History: The Very Best of Talk Talk. This time, the song was a hit in the UK, reaching number 13, the band's highest chart-placing single in its native country. 


 There are two versions of the video for "It's My Life". The first, envisioned by director Tim Pope as a statement against the banality of lip-synching, consists almost entirely of footage from the 1979 BBC wildlife documentary Life on Earth, interspersed with shots of Talk Talk lead singer Mark Hollis standing in various places throughout the London Zoo. He keeps his hands in his coat pockets and his mouth pointedly shut tight, the latter often obscured by hand-drawn animated lines that occasionally appear in the documentary footage sequences as well.


 The second version, recorded at the behest of EMI, consisted of the entirety of the original video projected on a green screen behind Hollis on guitar and vocals as well as his two bandmates as they lip-synched and mimed the song, deliberately poorly and with comic exaggerated gestures(I am unable to find this version on Youtube)

 

 

    

Friday, June 2, 2023

Russia being asked to Legalize "Wet Leasing" by their airlines.

 I have been super busy with Overtime and have been unable to blog, sleeping is been more my interest since returning from Florida.

The War in the Ukraine has raised havoc with the Russian Commercial Aviation Industry, and they have bent the rules like a pretzel trying to keep flying.

Russia

Credit: Sipa US/Alamy Live News

Russia’s two largest airline groups—government-controlled Aeroflot Group and privately owned S7 Airlines—are calling on Moscow to legalize wet leasing in the country.

Wet leasing—when one airline provides an aircraft with crew, maintenance and insurance to another airline, which pays by hours operated—is prohibited in Russia. 

“An airline can’t use an aircraft of another carrier for its flight now unless it has a codeshare agreement for this particular route,” Fyodor Borisov, a senior expert at the Institute of Transport Economics and Transport Policy Studies at Moscow’s HSE University, tells Aviation Week.

Russia’s Federal Air Transport Agency, or Rosaviatsiya, banned wet leasing at one time because it misinterpreted ICAO recommendations on safety threats in operational leasing, of which wet leasing is a variant, Borisov says. “But the ICAO document explicitly states that, given the liberalization in the aviation transport sector, the volumes of operational leasing will increase, and this should be taken into account when developing national requirements,” Borisov continues. To legalize wet leasing, amendments would need to be made to existing federal aviation regulations.

Speaking at the St. Petersburg International Legal Forum (SPBILF 2023) earlier in May, Anna Khomyakova, the head of Aeroflot’s legal department, advocated in favor of legalizing wet leasing. She argued it could open up options to carriers which have taken financial hits due to external factors, such as Western sanctions and the pandemic. Wet leasing aircraft out would help maintain fleets and workforce, providing stability for a certain period due to a guaranteed flow of lease payments, she said. 

“There is [also] an opportunity for the lessee to make up for the shortage of the aircraft [in its] fleet when new destinations appear and passenger traffic grows,” Khomyakova added.

Maxim Astafiev, deputy general director for legal support of the S7 group, backed rival Aeroflot’s position. “Today this form of contractual relations is in high demand,” Astafiev says.

Borisov says both Aeroflot and S7 would benefit from the legalization of wet leasing as it would allow them to redistribute aircraft more freely between their AOCs, which they are currently doing on dry lease—minus crew. 

In the event of legalization, aircraft could be wet leased outside of airline groups as well, which could mitigate against the gradually shrinking number of airworthy aircraft within Russia due to the shortage of spare parts and maintenance services. Despite the problems the country’s airlines are contending with, the Russian government expects carriers to maintain services and increase passenger traffic by 6%, up to 101.2 million people, in 2023.

As Russian airlines struggle to maintain their fleets, “there is a risk that more countries, including such popular destinations with Russian leisure and business travelers like Turkey and the UAE, may not allow Russian operators’ flights into their airspace due to the unknown airworthiness condition of their aircraft,” warns Seattle-based aviation consultant Boris Rybak. A recent white paper from the Flight Safety Foundation (FSF) called on states not to allow Russian flights into their airspace if they could not provide adequate safety oversight of Russian-operated aircraft. 

The Russian government is working to expand the country’s international air service beyond the 22 countries where Russian airlines can currently fly to, and in May opened up service to Georgia. Further expansion is limited as long as airspace over Europe, the U.S. and Canada remains closed to Russian carriers, while the use of Russian-operated commercial aircraft outside the country is restricted either by western sanctions or because of their dual registration.

Legalizing wet leasing could help Russian carriers keep international operations, Rybak suggests. Wet leasing has been used in the past by other nations placed under sanctions or which have experienced airworthiness problems. Iran used to operate Tu-154 and Il-62 passenger aircraft wet leased from Russia and other post-Soviet states until the end of the 2000s. And in Cuba, Cubana de Aviacion still attracts foreign aircraft under wet lease contracts to operate international flights when it runs out of airworthy airliners.

However, the sources of wet leased aircraft for Russia are particularly limited. A European leasing expert tells Aviation Week that European companies would not risk providing their aircraft to Russian operators due to the risk of secondary sanctions. “Everything which involves Russian money is toxic,” he says. 

Rybak says the aircraft needed for Russian international services are likely to be wet leased from friendly states with proven airworthiness. Relationships like this have already formed on the maintenance side. In April, Aeroflot sent one of its Airbus A330-300 widebody airliners to Iran for technical maintenance for the first time

 

Tuesday, May 30, 2023

"How the FBI and DOJ Undermined Themselves"

 I am a contributor on Quora and also follow several people, one is a guy named "Anthony Cady", Well I shamelessly cut and pasted his answer to some leftie that wanted examples of how biased the DOJ was to the people on the right side of the political aisle.  I thought it was "Nickworthy"

    The meme came from my "stash" on my computer.

The DOJ and FBI have undermined themselves.

 


 

 

The Mueller report found no collusion. The FBI knew there was no collusion before Mueller was appointed but continued to investigate and got a Mueller appointment anyway because Comey and the gang didn’t like Trump.

The Durham report states that the Mueller investigation never should have taken place and the Crossfire Hurricane investigation had no legal foundation for it to have continued.

An FBI lawyer plead guilty to altering an e-mail from the CIA to say the opposite of what the CIA actually said in order to justify continuing warrants on a Trump campaign staffer. Something that impacted an election and hampered a Presidency and the guy didn’t even lose his law license.

The Obama White House was briefed by the CIA that Hillary Clinton’s campaign was going to try and tie Trump to Russia to distract from her e-mails, yet, the FBI still pursued the false allegations.

The FBI cancelled an investigation of Russian money being poured into the Clinton foundation, and gave Clinton and her campaign defensive briefings, yet never did the same for Trump showing a clear double standard.

James Comey, FBI director leaked classified material to a friend which later showed up in the press.

The FBI was found to have violated the FISA process several times in the Trump Russia investigation.

The FBI ignored warnings from British intel that collusion was nonsense to the point British Intel flat out refuse to help the FBI, and the FBI ignored attempts by British intel to completely distance themselves from Christopher Steele who was basically persona non grata in British intel circles. MI-6 were incredulous when the FBI opened an investigation based on the Papadapoulos-Downer bar conversation as there was evidence of nothing in that meeting, and they were equally baffled by the so-called evidence that the FBI paid Stephan Halpar for which the British said was a whole lot of resources used to gather nothing incriminating.

The inspector General found the FBI violated the FISA process in far more cases than the Trump Russia investigation. They also found violations where FBI agents have recieved gifts and money from the press in exchange for leaks. Almost all have only benefitted one side of the political aisle.

A US. Attorney has just resigned from the DOJ for attending Biden fundraisers, and participating in an election campaign in which she leaked confidential DOJ information in order to make it appear the opponent of her backed candidate was under investigation. She continued to leak confidential info after the opponent won an election in order to damage that person in the general election. She initially lied to investigators until they found texts that proved her guilt. She faces no charges.

Despite responding to the release of the Durham Report by saying changes have already been made, Just yesterday the FISA court said the FBI conducted illegal warrantless searchs through NSA databases almost 300,000 times including searchs of people involved with Jan 6th, and George Floyd protests.

The DOJ has been caught trying to justify use of terrorism laws to target parents who voice dissenting opinions to school boards.

Despite little effort to hold pro-choice vandals accountable the FBI used a tactical team to raid a pro-life activist’s home who would have simply turned himself in. That guy was acquitted at trial.

Former members of the intel community that signed a letter saying that Hunter’s laptop bore the hallmarks of a Russian disinformation campaign have admitted they did so to help Biden win an election, but worse, an active member of the CIA helped circulate it and claimed the CIA itself was involved in verifying just that when they did not.

The FBI and DOJ continue to stonewall Congressional requests and subpeonas for information which isn’t even classified.

These are facts that show the FBI, DOJ, and Intel community has continually abused their powers, have shown double standards based on politics, have completely undermined themselves with little to no consequence, and they feel entitled to continue because most of the press has been in on it all.