[LATIMES] A brand-new Æthiopian airlines plane bound for Nairobi crashed Sunday, killing all 157 people on board, including eight Americans and 18 Canadians.
The recently acquired aircraft was the same Boeing 737 Max 8 model involved in a crash in Indonesia in October. Preliminary investigation into that accident focused on a malfunctioning sensor and computer system that pushed the plane's nose down.
Flight data from the Æthiopian crash appears to show a similar erratic flight path to the Indonesia crash, with the plane first ascending, then descending, then ascending sharply before it fell from the sky.
According to the Æthiopian Airlines chief executive, Tewolde Gebremariam, the flight took off at 8:38 a.m. and lost contact six minutes later, crashing near the city of Bishoftu less than 40 miles to the southeast of Addis Ababa.
"The pilot mentioned he had difficulty and he wanted to return so he was given clearance to Addis," he said.
"It is a brand-new airplane, it had no technical remarks and was flown by a senior pilot and there is no cause we can see at this time," he added, saying the plane was only four months old, had flown 1,200 hours so far and had arrived from Johannesburg that morning.
[IsraelTimes] Ambassador Hanan Godar says he was on the same aircraft last week that crashed Sunday en route to Nairobi, killing all on board.
The Æthiopian Airlines aircraft that crashed on Sunday experienced engine trouble three days ago, Israel’s Ambassador to South Sudan Hanan Godar said, noting that he was a passenger on board the jetliner last week.
The plane carrying 157 people crashed shortly after takeoff from the Æthiopian capital, killing everyone aboard and carving a crater into the ground, authorities said. At least 35 nationalities were among the dead, including two Israelis. The Israelis have yet to be publicly identified.
Godar told Channel 13 that he traveled on the same aircraft overnight Thursday, on a route from Addis Ababa to Tel Aviv.
Before takeoff, "the passengers understood there was a problem. It was hot, they didn’t give out water," he said.
The pilot informed them of a problem with one of engines, telling them: "We’ll operate one engine to see if it catches, and if it catches, we’ll start the other engines," Godar said.
After a test run, the plane took off, and arrived safely in Tel Aviv. From there, it returned to Addis Ababa, and then headed to Nairobi in its fatal, final route, he said.
It was not clear what caused the Æthiopian Airlines plane to go down in clear weather. The accident was strikingly similar to last year’s crash of a Lion Air jet that plunged into the Java Sea, killing 189 people. Both crashes involved the Boeing 737 Max 8, and both happened minutes after the jets became airborne.
The Æthiopian pilot sent out a distress call and was given clearance to return to the airport, the airline’s CEO told news hounds.
The accident is likely to renew questions about the 737 Max, the newest version of Boeing’s popular single-aisle airliner.
The Æthiopian Airlines CEO "stated there were no defects prior to the flight, so it is hard to see any parallels with the Lion Air crash yet," said Harro Ranter, founder of the Aviation Safety Network, which compiles information about accidents worldwide.
The Æthiopian plane was new, having been delivered to the airline in November.
State-owned Æthiopian Airlines is widely considered the best-managed airline in Africa and calls itself Africa’s largest carrier. It has ambitions of becoming the gateway to the continent and is known as an early buyer of new aircraft.
"Æthiopian Airlines is one of the safest airlines in the world. At this stage, we cannot rule out anything," CEO Tewolde Gebremariam said.
#4
Honeywell is up today even though it might have been their avionics that are responsible
Posted by: lord garth ||
03/11/2019 11:38 Comments ||
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#5
righty tighty, lefty loosy
Not This Week in Books:
In one of those curious coincidences our Universe is famous for, I just finished reading Michael Crichton's Airframe, a novel about a plane manufacturer trying to pinpoint the cause of a mysterious crash. It's a typical Crichton techno-thriller page turner that goes into great detail about the process of tracking down the cause of a plane crash. I was fascinated by how similar this is to debugging a computer program.
Even though it features a Strong Female Lead, it will never be a movie due to the in-depth look at airplane manufacturing necessary to the plot. Those who like this sort of thing will definitely like this one.
#5
Actually, nobody has made one quite like the Raptor before.
The Raptor is a full-flow staged combustion methalox engine. There is a lot of new technology in that sentence. Highest specific impulse and a chamber pressure of any engine out there,including the legendary Russian RD-270. All of the mass of propellants in the engines passes through the turbopumps and/or turbines before entering the combustion chamber. That means there is a fuel-rich turbopump and a oxidizer rich turbopump. No methane-powered engines have been used for orbital rockets. High chamber pressure of the rocket allows for many advantages, notably mugh higher thrust and specific impulse versus size. And higher pressures mean the fuel is more completely converted to energy, meaning much more efficient.
I considered posting this as an obit. A Russian went to investigate. I suggest following the whole twitter feed.
What caused the Guri failure? Corpoelec union leader Ali Briceño said it was brush fire under the 765 KV trunkline which caused a surge in the system and caused Guri to shut down. There are no skilled operators left there to restart it.
Most people I talked to say the problem had to occur inside Guri’s turbines themselves. And that’s a scary thought. If they are damaged, they will be very hard to replace or repair. No money or skilled people.
San Geronimo B is the only path for high-voltage (765 KV) supplies from Guri to 80% of Venezuelan population (Caracas, Central & Western Venezuela). pic.twitter.com/DGACmEQ5tg
Passed it around here to interested folks as no believable info is coming out of Corpoelec.
Almost surreal in their reporting.
Posted by: Mullah Richard ||
03/11/2019 8:59 Comments ||
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#4
The New York Times reports the following:
The government has tried to restart Guri four times since the start of the blackout on Thursday. The latest attempt led to the explosion of a secondary substation near Guri on Saturday. Every time they attempt to restart, they fail and the disruption breaks something else in the system, destabilizing the grid yet further,” said Mr. Aguilar. “Obviously, they are hiding something from us,” he said of the government.
Venezuela’s hospitals, already struggling with shortages of supplies and equipment amid an economic meltdown, entered crisis mode on Thursday when the South American nation’s power system went down.
Public hospitals typically have generators to provide back-up electricity in the event of an outage, but doctors consulted by Reuters said they were either damaged or idled for lack of fuel.
Julio Castro of the non-governmental organization Doctors for Health says the blackouts have stretched Venezuelan hospitals to the breaking point. The group says at least 21 people have died in public hospitals during the outage.
Posted by: Frozen Al ||
03/11/2019 16:31 Comments ||
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#5
As usual, the guest comment are gold:
it’s unlikely the Regime can do anything for Lara and Zulia in at least 36 hours.
The regime knows this, and it’s not asking to activate the Venezuela - Colombia link to feed Western Zulia and Maracaibo.
Or warn people
This amounts to genocide.
Posted by: Frozen Al ||
03/11/2019 17:09 Comments ||
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#6
from the article: they sent most of the cows home friday.
beef; its whats for dinner, at least this friday
[PULSE.NG] Venezuela's embattled President Nicolas Maduro grappled Sunday with a crippling power outage and mounting protests as a top White House aide said members of the country's military were talking about possibly shifting allegiance to the opposition.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/11/2019 00:00 ||
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[ALMASDARNEWS] Thousands of supporters of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro Venezuela's attempt at producing a Muammar Qadaffy... erupted into the streets of Caracas on Saturday, to show support for the Venezuelan supremo during an ’anti-imperialist’ march.
While speaking at the rally, Maduro said "we’re dealing with an electricity war, it’s a war imposed by the imperialist government of the United States of America as a war of legacy, they attack the economy and the daily life of the population."
Posted by: Fred ||
03/11/2019 00:00 ||
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#1
"We were told there would be food?"
Posted by: Frank G ||
03/11/2019 10:58 Comments ||
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#2
#1 "We were told there would be food?"
"There is. Your fellow protesters. Of course you're their food too. May the best man eat!"
[Task & Purpose] It's hard to wage war when nature calls, so Russia is installing toilets in its troubled third-generation T-14 main battle tanks, Russian state media revealed Thursday.
The days of relieving themselves in fuel and ammo cans or hopping out to dig single-use latrines are apparently over for Russia's tank crews, at least those manning the T-14 Armata tanks, Ilya Baranov, a senior official at the Ural Design Bureau of Transport Machine-Building in Yekaterinburg, told TASS News Agency.
"A major hassle for [tank crews] is that they cannot relieve their natural functions," Baranov explained, "That is, water and field rations are available in the tank, but all the other conveniences are, unfortunately, absent."
The Armata has solved this problem. "This tank provides this possibility for a crew to perform lengthy combat missions" without having to stop, he said.
The T-14, presented as a devastating supertank featuring upgraded armor, armaments, and engine technology, made its public debut at the 2015 Moscow Victory Day Parade, where one embarrassingly broke down and had to be towed away during rehearsal.
Russia had initially intended to mass produce and field as many as 2,300 Armatas by 2025, but, as has been previously reported, that number has been reduced to no more than 100, The War Zone reported last year. Russia has less than two dozen prototypes available for testing.
State trials for the T-14 are expected to begin this year, and the first Armatas will be delivered to the 1st Guards Tank Regiment of 2nd Guards Tamanskaya Motor Rifle Division, according to The Diplomat.
As early as 2015, there were signs that the cost of this state-of-the-art tank, which includes an unmanned turret and other expensive features, was way over budget. The actual cost of the Armata was estimated to be 2.45 times the figure in the State Armaments Program for 2020.
#3
Now, let's ask ourselves what sort of toilet this will be. An actual flushing toilet or will be a more traditional military Russian Toilet as seen on their 'State of the Art' naval vessels. A hole in the deck with painted feet over where to stand?
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
03/11/2019 11:23 Comments ||
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#6
I've heard it speculated that part of the problem is that the people who are skilled enough to build the tank have left for civilian jobs. So they only have Ivan and his vodka left to build them. There is also a faction in the Russian armed forces that think they will be facing various UAV's when battling peers so they need to hold off in investing in too many manned tanks.
#10
M-60 had one of those - it was the hatch in the bottom.
First off, its Russian made with a lot of "high tech" in it, like the autoloader. Maintaining that with a 3 man crew will be a nightmare. I bet their readiness rates drop, and field breakdowns will be huge. Let's see them break track in the mud with just a 3 man crew. Mobility self-Kill.
[Chicago Tribune] North Korea said on Sunday that sanctions imposed by the United Nations ...an organization which on balance has done more bad than good, with the good not done well and the bad done thoroughly... last week are an "act of war," and Pyongyang vowed to bolster its nuclear force in an outright rejection of the resolution.
"We define this 'sanctions resolution' rigged by the U.S. and its followers as a grave infringement upon the illusory sovereignty of our Republic and as an act of war violating peace and stability in the Korean Peninsula and the region," North Korea's foreign ministry said in a statement on state media.
The U.N. Security Council voted unanimously Friday to impose additional sanctions on North Korea because of its missile tests, the third time the Security Council had ratcheted up sanctions this year. This latest round tightens North Korea's oil imports and calls on other countries to expel North Korean guest workers within two years. Those guest workers are a major source on foreign income for Pyongyang, and two of the biggest employers of North Koreans are Security Council members China and Russia.
The sanctions are part of a continuing effort to coerce the North Korean government into negotiating an end to its development of nuclear weapons. The previous round of sanctions, imposed in mid-September, was followed by more than two months of calm without a missile or weapons test. But on Nov. 29 Pyongyang launched a missile, identified as a Hwasong-15, that it said could reach any part of the United States.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/11/2019 00:00 ||
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#1
Although, to be fair, looking at them funny is an 'Act of War' too.
You want skynet? 'Cuz this is how you get skynet.
[NakedSecurity] The US Army has been forced to clarify its intentions for killer robots after unveiling a new program to build AI-powered targeting systems.
The controversy surrounds the Advanced Targeting and Lethality Automated System (ATLAS). Created by the Department of Defense, it is a program to develop:
Autonomous target acquisition technology, that will be integrated with fire control technology, aimed at providing ground combat vehicles with the capability to acquire, identify, and engage targets at least 3X faster than the current manual process.
That text comes from the US Army, which has announced an industry day taking place next week to brief industry and academia on its progress so far, and to source new expertise.
To translate, ATLAS is a project to make ground robots that are capable of finding and shooting at targets more quickly than people can. This raises the specter of lethal AI once again.
Ethicists and scientists are already hotly debating this issue. Some 2,400 scientists and other AI experts including Elon Musk and DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis signed a pledge under the banner of the Boston-based Future of Life Institute protesting the development of killer AI.
The UN has not yet taken decisive action, but Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has called for an outright ban.
The Army clearly realizes the controversial nature of the project, because it updated the industry day document last week to include new language:
All development and use of autonomous and semi-autonomous functions in weapon systems, including manned and unmanned platforms, remain subject to the guidelines in the Department of Defense (DoD) Directive 3000.09, which was updated in 2017.
Nothing in this notice should be understood to represent a change in DoD policy towards autonomy in weapon systems. All uses of machine learning and artificial intelligence in this program will be evaluated to ensure that they are consistent with DoD legal and ethical standards.
Directive 3000.9 is a 2012 DoD document outlining the policy associated with developing autonomous weapons. It says:
Semi-autonomous weapon systems that are onboard or integrated with unmanned platforms must be designed such that, in the event of degraded or lost communications, the system does not autonomously select and engage individual targets or specific target groups that have not been previously selected by an authorized human operator.
However, the policy also allows higher-ups to approve autonomous weapon systems that fall outside this scope under some conditions.
According to specialist publication Defense One, the US DoD is already fielding broader ethical guidelines for the adoption of AI across various military functions.
Meanwhile, tensions are high around the technology industry's engagement with the military. Google faced an employee revolt after signing up for a Pentagon AI project called Project Maven to help automate video and image footage analysis. The company has since announced that it won't renew Maven when it expires this year, and also refused to bid on the DoD's massive JEDI cloud computing contract, arguing that it might not align with the ethical AI principles that it introduced last year.
Microsoft, on the other hand, continues to engage the DoD, announcing last October that it will sell the military AI technology in spite of protests from its own employees.
[Task & Purpose] After years in development, the Army will field its brand new body armor, combat helmet, and protective gear to soldiers with the 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne division later this month, officials told multiple media outlets on Monday.
The Army's new Integrated Head Protection System (IHPS) is designed to replace the Enhanced Combat Helmet (ECH) used by close-combat units for the last two decades with with "100 percent greater blunt impact protection," Lt. Col. Ginger Whitehead told Military.com. The IHPS was originally scheduled for a battlefield debut in 2020.
In addition, 3rd BCT soldiers are picking up the Modular Scalable Vest version II and Ballistic Pelvic Protection, as well as new eyewear with transition lenses, Col. Stephen Thomas told Army Times. The MSV is part of the Soldier Protection System and is the Army's next-generation Personal Protective Equipment system.
These details were revealed to reporters in attendance at a Monday ceremony at Fort Belvoir for Staff Sgt. Steven McQueen to celebrate the ECH that deflected a head shot from a 7.62mm round during an insider attack in Afghanistan last September.
#10
Correction: Vest is 5 lbs lighter, headgear lighter than the current 3.3 lbs lighter, integrated rails, included, are removable too. Faceguard optional.
[TESLARATI] SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft successfully returned to Port Canaveral aboard recovery vessel GO Searcher, wrapping up an orbital launch debut that tracked through its milestones so flawlessly that Commercial Crew Program Deputy Manager Steve Stich went so far as to say that the spacecraft "did better than [NASA] expected."
The culmination of the better part of a decade of constant work and NASA support, the flawless success of SpaceX’s DM-1 Crew Dragon mission is a testament ‐ above all else ‐ to the many hundreds of thousands or millions of hours SpaceX employees have put into the spacecraft’s design, production, operation, and recovery. While just one half of a critical pair of demonstrations, DM-1’s success should translate into extremely good odds for Crew Dragon’s Demo Mission 2 (DM-2), in which SpaceX will launch two NASA astronauts to the International Space Station on the company’s first crewed launch ever.
"I can’t believe how well the whole mission has gone. I think on every point, everything’s been nailed, all the way along‐particularly this last piece. We were all very excited to see re-entry and parachute and drogue deploy and main deploy, splashdown‐everything happened just perfectly, right on time the way that we expected it to. It was beautiful." ‐ Benji Reed, Director of Crew Mission Management, SpaceX
SpaceX Director of Crew Mission Management Benji Reed’s unqualified appraisal of Crew Dragon’s debut serves as a perfect example of the attitude almost universal throughout the company in the twilight of the mission’s completion. While sources suggest that there were more than a few hiccups during the mission, they were extremely mild and came as no surprise for what effectively amounted to the first shakeout mission of a brand new vehicle. According to CEO Elon Musk, Crew Dragon shares almost no hardware ‐ aside from its Draco thrusters ‐ with Cargo Dragon, the uncrewed orbital spacecraft SpaceX has now launched into orbit 17 times in the last eight years.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/11/2019 00:00 ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[LATIMES] A brand-new Æthiopian airlines plane bound for Nairobi crashed Sunday, killing all 157 people on board, including eight Americans and 18 Canadians.
Venezuela's attempt at producing a Muammar Qadaffy...
North Korea
[TESLARATI] SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft successfully returned to Port Canaveral aboard recovery vessel GO Searcher, wrapping up an orbital launch debut that tracked through its milestones so flawlessly that Commercial Crew Program Deputy Manager Steve Stich went so far as to say that the spacecraft "did better than [NASA] expected."
