Eideard

One person died when a pipe bomb exploded outside a nightclub in West Virginia early Saturday morning.

The incident, which took place at Cactus Joe’s in Barboursville in the southwestern part of the state, occurred around 2:30 a.m.

“We have an individual that brought explosive devices outside of the business. One of the devices detonated, proving fatal for the individual,” Cabell County Sheriff Tom McComas said. “I don’t know an exact age of the victim. We’re still in the infancy of this investigation…”

Angie Ferguson, assistant supervisor of Cabell County 911, said authorities found another pipe bomb that had not been detonated. She said there were no other casualties from the incident…

“It would be imprudent for me to speculate at this point if the bombing was an act of terror,” McComas said, adding “it was strange activity” for the working-class town, which sits eight miles east of Huntington…

Police were examining a sport utility vehicle the victim was believed to have driven to the club, McComas said…

Ferguson called the blast an “isolated incident” and said it was unlikely that the explosion was related to terrorism. “We don’t have much of that here.”

“Co-owner of Cactus Joe’s, Kathy McComas, says that the man responsible was banned from her bar, because he came there to stalk his ex-wife..”

Sounds about right.

A test explosion on a Boeing 747 has shown that a US Christmas Day flight would have landed safely even if a bomb on board was detonated successfully.

The plane’s fuselage did not break in the controlled blast, which used the same explosives that were on Flight 253 from Amsterdam to Detroit.

However experts said it showed the suspected bomber and the passenger next to him would have been killed…

The controlled experiment was carried out for the BBC Two documentary How safe are our Skies? Detroit Flight 253.

Dr John Wyatt, an international terrorism and explosives adviser to the UN, replicated the conditions on board the Detroit flight on a decommissioned Boeing 747 at an aircraft graveyard in Gloucestershire, England.

The same amount of the explosive pentaerythritol (or PETN) allegedly carried by Mr Abdulmutallab was placed to mirror the location where he was sitting on the plane.

Captain J Joseph, an air accident investigator, and Dr Wyatt both concluded that the quantity of explosive used was nowhere near enough needed to rupture the skin of a passenger plane.

RTFA. I don’t worry about things like this anymore. I refuse to subject my life to the statistical absurdities of the TSA or the fears of cowardly lions in Congress.

Still, it’s encouraging to see the 747 and most of the passengers would have made it.

Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

The Air Force will train more drone operators than fighter and bomber pilots combined for the first time this year, signaling a fundamental shift for the 61-year-old service.

The growing ranks of drone operators mark a turning point for the Air Force as it looks to a future that relies increasingly on unmanned aircraft. Over the next few decades, the Air Force plans to develop drones that would serve as fighters, bombers and tankers, the heart of its manned fleet, according to its Unmanned System Update. The document says piloted aircraft will be used in concert with drones…

The Air Force will train 240 pilots to fly Predator and Reaper drones compared with 214 fighter and bomber pilots for the budget year that ends in September. Overall, there are 550 drone pilots compared with 3,700 fighter and 900 bomber pilots. The current emphasis for drones reflects the need for persistent, eye-in-the-sky surveillance to track and kill insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“The capability provided by the unmanned aircraft is game-changing,” Gen. Norton Schwartz, the Air Force chief of staff, told USA TODAY in an e-mailed statement. “We can have eyes 24/7 on our adversaries. The importance of that is clear in the feedback from the ground troops — this is a capability they don’t want to be without.”

Loren Thompson, a military analyst with the Lexington Institute, said intelligence gathering has been a weakness for the Pentagon for years but has improved recently. “The Air Force has now gotten the message that it’s important to be responsive to the war fighters on the ground,” he said.

Uh-oh. I have a few buddies – military pilots – who will find this really disturbing. I am certain they will raise more technical questions than I might about this strategic decision.

Will this lessen the number of required fighter and bomber pilots – or simply involve an increased number of gamers/drone pilots? It looks like the reduction has already begun.

The Air Force said the first crash of a B-2 stealth bomber was caused by moisture in sensors and estimated the loss of the aircraft at $1.4 billion.

The crash probably could have been avoided if knowledge of a technique to evaporate the moisture had been disseminated throughout the B-2 program, said Maj. Gen. Floyd L. Carpenter, who headed an accident investigation board.

The Spirit of Kansas abruptly pitched up, rolled and yawed to the left February 23 before plunging to the ground at Andersen Air Force Base on the island of Guam. Both pilots ejected safely just after the left wing made contact with the ground; it was the first crash since the maiden B-2 flights nearly 20 years ago…

Water distorted preflight readings in three of the plane’s 24 sensors, making the aircraft’s control computer force the B-2 to pitch up on takeoff, resulting in a stall and subsequent crash.

A technique learned by some two years ago that had gone widely unknown and unadopted probably would have prevented the crash, Carpenter said. The technique essentially heats the sensors and evaporates any moisture before data calibrations.

“This technique was never formalized in a technical order change or captured in ‘lessons learned’ reports. Hence, only some pilots and some maintenance technicians knew of the suggestion,” according to Carpenter’s executive summary of the accident.

Haven’t yet had a chance to discuss this with any jet jockeys. The essential reason for this crash was poor communications skills and procedures?