Another Week... and Summer's Nearly Gone

So, didja go outside last night or early, early this morning to watch the Perseid meteor shower? I stepped outside last evening around 2230 for 15 minutes…just before I went to bed… and came up empty. No meteors. I got up at 0430 this morning, lit off the coffee pot and spent about an hour outside, or until the eastern sky started getting pink. Grand total: three meteors. Not quite what I’d call a “shower.” But the three I saw were spectacular. There’s something mystical about meteors…the flash of intense light across the black sky and the faint trail they leave strike some sort of primeval chord. Did you know there’s a folk story associated with The Perseids? You can read it here…

The Second Mrs. Pennington and I watched The Perseids in the summer of 1977, when I was stationed up in North Dakota and lived in Big Sky country. We grabbed a blanket, stocked up the cooler, drove out of town to an isolated bluff, parked the car, and spent hours on the hood of my old ‘72 Chevy Nova, leaning back on the windshield, watching the shower and talking about our future together. And the Perseids were truly a shower that year, Gentle Reader. We must have seen a meteor a minute for at least three hours. Truly awesome and impressive, it was. But this morning? Not so much.

From Air Force Magazine’s Daily Report (an e-mail newsletter I get):

Turning Back the Maintenance Clock: The Air Force may be returning to a structure in which aircraft maintainers work for operations. Chief of Staff Gen. Michael Moseley would like to see the service "structured by mission and not by function," reports SSgt. J.G. Buzanowski. Moseley's predecessor-Gen. John P. Jumper-made the shift away from this arrangement primarily to give young maintenance officers a more dedicated career path to maintenance leadership positions. Now, Moseley believes that "moving maintenance units to the flying squadrons is best" and notes that the "partnership between crew chief and aircrew goes back to our roots." However, he says that this structure may not suit all flying squadrons. He is gathering feedback from squadron, group, and wing commanders. Most appear to agree, but Moseley says the verdict is still out. "I'm convinced this is absolutely the right thing to do for fighters, but I'm still getting input on whether it should apply to UAVs, airlifters, tankers, and special operations aircraft as well."

And from that linked article above (“career path”), here’s General Jumper holding forth on flying and fixing jets:

To make this new concept of operations work, one of the first things the service must do is ensure it has the right individuals in charge of maintaining aircraft. "The two hardest things we do in our Air Force [are to] fly and fix airplanes," Jumper said. There is a well-established flying career path that young pilots can follow to reach leadership positions, he said, but there is no similar path for those who fix airplanes--the maintainers.

It’ll be interesting to get SN1’s perspective on this, as his job is “maintenance officer” …in fighters. So, it certainly sounds like Buck will be working for the wing commander in the near future…this reads like a “done deal” for the fighter community. Ops and maintenance are close by definition, but I get the feeling the relationship is often adversarial when the functions have different low-level priorities. But the mission is the same, obviously. And the Devil will be in the details.

Perspective:

Of course, one suicide bombing or IED is one too many, but every society is violent in its own way. The 58 killed by IEDs and suicide bombers in Khost could be compared with the 2006 murders in some American cities with around Khost's one-million population: There were 29 murders in San Jose, 108 in Indianapolis, and 373 in Detroit.

Just one interesting little fact out of many I took away from “On the Road to Jalalabad; Don't believe the naysayers. Afghanistan is doing as well as anyone has a right to expect,” in today’s WSJ. The author opens her article with a direct rebuttal to Her Hillaryness, to wit:

AFGHANISTAN--Sen. Hillary Clinton has cynically charged that we are "losing the fight to al Qaeda and bin Laden" in Afghanistan. But on my eighth trip to Afghanistan (last month) I saw that the trend lines are up, not down.

Hillary? Cynical? Get OUT! I recommend reading the article if you want or need good news from the front… Or, you could just listen to Hillary. This IS America; you do have a choice.

Today’s Pics: When all else fails…like imagination…Yellowstone is always good for a pic or two. These are self-explanatory.

May, 2000.