![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/040612-1.jpg\" "\\"040612-1\\"")
\n(Patriot Advanced Capability-3 Missiles in box launcher. Photo courtesy US Army).<\/p>\n
\n(Patriot Advanced Capability-3 Missiles in box launcher. Photo courtesy US Army).<\/p>\n
It was a lovely day in Arlington. We produce a lot of CO2 here, in the form of hot air being emitted from the various life forms of politicians, but it is a trace gas, after all, though possibly a contributor to the severe weather we have been having of late.<\/p>\n
But there was no visible pollution in the air, temperatures were crisp but comfortable in a light sweater and shirt. The leg kept me shackled at the desk most of the afternoon, but it was pleasant enough looking out at the weather, and toggling on the computer to see the box score on the Tiger\u2019s home opener in Detroit against the Red Sox.<\/p>\n
I was gratified to see the messages pour in when the Tiggers managed to squeeze in a run in the bottom of the ninth, taking the opener 3-2 though an error kept ace hurler Justin Verlander from notching the win after a sparkling eight innings. I closed up shop, making piles of things to demolish on Friday, including a note to my partners that the stupid Judge had upheld the stupid protest by the pathetic company that couldn\u2019t figure out how to get onto the base and was late in delivering their proposal.<\/p>\n
The non-compliant cry-babies based their appeal on the fact that the government was stupid, too, and the judge was receptive. So the nonsense is going to continue through\u00a0 and took the elevator down to G-3 where the Bluesmobile was waiting in one of the handicapped spots.<\/p>\n
I have Raven\u2019s placard that is good through 2014, though he of course is not, and it has been a godsend during the recuperation from the stupid fall. Progress is being made day by day, and I considered walking over to Willow but decided the carbon footprint of the massive police cruiser would be insufficient to alter the arctic ice sheet and took the easy way out.<\/p>\n
I found a meter just across Utah Street from the entrance to the bar and hobbled on over.<\/p>\n
Old Jim was at his usual place, and Senior Exec Jeff was in mine next to him next to John-with-an-H. Jim was in his usual corduroy jacket and dark mock-turtle. John-with had clearly come from the office, and looked formally prep en dishabille. SEJ was definitely casual- open collar, suede jacket and a stubble beard.<\/p>\n
\u201cWork from home today?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cNah,\u201d he said, sipping a tall glass of amber beer. \u201cFlew in from London.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMan,\u201d I said. \u201cI love that town. What were you doing?\u201d<\/p>\n
SEJ smiled his wolfish grin. \u201cImportant meetings. Flew over on Sunday, got in and wandered around on Monday. Got my body clock right for the sessions that started Tuesday. Flew back today.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cArms must be tired,\u201d said John-with, waving his happy hour red. No one responded to the ancient wheeze.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd that means it is about 2300, body time, for you,\u201d I said peering at my watch.<\/p>\n
SEJ nodded, his silver hair fashionably long over his collar. \u201cYeah, I am beat.\u201d He used to be an Army colonel, and I suspect he enjoys being free from the barber as much as I do. It is remarkable, I thought, our ability to jet all over the planet and still be at the local tavern at the end of the day.<\/p>\n
He and John-with are in the counter-proliferation business for the government, and his cell went off with a strident ring-tone that mimicked an old-fashioned rotary-dial phone. He fished it out of his pocket and began to talk sotto vocce to an unknown party.<\/p>\n
\u201cKoreans or Iran?\u201d I asked. John-with shrugged. \u201cMust be the Koreans,\u201d I continued, turning to Old Jim. \u201cApparently the North is going to try to launch a satellite in honor of Kim Il-Sung\u2019s hundredth birthday. They are celebrating all month, opening power plants and crap. The missile launch is a celebration of their advances in peaceful rocket technology.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAssholes. Didn\u2019t they say they were going to stop their nuclear program and work on ICBMs?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYes,\u201d said John-with. \u201cThat was intended to get us to continue food deliveries to keep their people from starving. Then they said they would launch a satellite anyway. Totally different than a missile to carry nukes.\u201d He smiled with heavy irony and took a sip of wine.<\/p>\n
SEJ ended his call and slipped the phone back in his pocket. \u201cThe office sends their love,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou were a Russian specialist on active duty, right?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, I was a Foreign Area Officer. I had a lot of fun with the Russians. We toured the \u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBut all FAO\u2019s have to qualify in combat arms first, don\u2019t they? What branch were you?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cADA,\u201d he said, straightening. \u201cAir Defense Artillery. There is nothing that flies that I couldn\u2019t shoot down. Started in Hawks and then Patriots.\u201d We talked about the only species on earth- Fighter Pilots- who think otherwise. They are of the opinion that there are two types of airplanes- fighters and targets. \u201cTo me,\u201d said SEJ \u201cThere are only targets up there.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat is the difference between fighter pilot and pigs?\u201d I asked. SEJ shrugged, inviting the punch-line.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou don\u2019t see pigs in bars at two in the morning trying to pick up Fighter Pilots,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
Everyone at the end of the bar groaned. \u201cDid you hear the Japanese have deployed Patriot Advanced Capability-3 missiles to Okinawa? They want to be able to shoot down the North Korean rocket if they have to.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDoesn\u2019t work that way,\u201d said SEJ. \u201cThey could not engage in a boost phase intercept scenario.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cCould they shoot the tankage from the boosters coming down?\u201d I asked, surprised. \u201cI thought the Patriot ruled back in the first Gulf War.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNot as much as they claimed at the time. It is all about orbital mechanics,\u201d said SEJ. \u201cYou have to have your missiles deployed to the place you want to defend. The North isn\u2019t trying to shoot at Japan, though they might shoot over a little part of it on a north-to-south trajectory.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat about the Navy Aegis cruisers? They shot down that Chinese satellite in 2008 with SPY-1 with the exo-atmospheric patch on the software and the Standard Missile-2 Extended Range Block-4 missile.\u201d<\/p>\n
SEJ sighed as only a professional can. \u201cYou Squids are too much. The patch just allows the radar to see things that are not targets. And there is no block-4. That program got cancelled when missile defense was cut back. And besides, they had three cruisers out there in the North Pacific and were lucky to get USS Lake Erie underneath the projected impact area, and it was a fuel tank, not a satellite. It was coming down anyway.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou don\u2019t mean to tell me that was a stunt, do you?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSquids.\u201d SEJ took a deep draft of his beer and waved as Jon-without-an-H arrived and attempted to negotiate a Black and Tan from the lovely Katya without much success. No Guinness, apparently, and the specific gravity of what she had behind the bar to concoct a B&T was as complex to negotiate as orbital mechanics. I asked him why he was drinking the beer mixture instead of his usual flavored vodka and iced tea.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou gotta keep it mixed up,\u201d he said, straightening his bow tie. \u201cNeed to stay fresh. I am sort of like the North Koreans that way.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThey are crazy,\u201d I said. \u201cDid I tell you I got to King Il-Sung\u2019s birthplace one time?\u201d
\nJon-without expressed mild interest, dividing his attention between the two vague shades of amber in his glass and the Great Leader\u2019s nativity. \u201cThere are four of their submarines deployed, too. There are all kinds of crap going on.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen is this all supposed to happen?\u201d growled Old Jim. \u201cI may want to stay indoors.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBetween the 12th and the 17th,\u201d I said. \u201cThe Great Leader was born on income tax day, and some commercial imagery from Digital Globe shows they have oxidizing tanks on the launch pad and an Unha-3 rocket on the pad. The fuel is corrosive, so it is use it or lose it now.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/040612-2.jpg\" "\\"040612-2\\"")
\n(Missile Defense Agency X-Band Radar platform. Photo MDA).<\/p>\n
\u201cThey claim it is a Kwangmyongsong-3 satellite on top of the stack,\u201d said John-with. \u201cPurely peaceful purposes,\u201d he smirked. \u201cThe Missile Defense Agency is deploying that crazy x-band radar platform to the region. This is a full production number.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat radar is supposed to be able to detect the stitching on a baseball at a hundred miles,\u201d I said. \u201cPACOM or STRATCOM must want all the data they can get.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cEveryone has to look like they are doing something. It is a cover your ass drill,\u201d growled Jim.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe government is calling it highly provocative,\u201d I said. \u201cEven if there is not a lot we can do about it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe can look busy,\u201d said SEJ. \u201cAnd that is about the best we can do unless they are shooting right at us.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cRoger that. Sort of like holding a hand up in front of your face and daring the bastards to try to hit it. They never did declare peace on the Peninsula, after all. I guess we will just have to see how the orbital mechanics work out.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSquids,\u201d said SEJ, and ordered another beer.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
\nwww.vicsocotra.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
(Patriot Advanced Capability-3 Missiles in box launcher. Photo courtesy US Army). It was a lovely day in Arlington. We produce a lot of CO2 here, in the form of hot air being emitted from the various life forms of politicians, but it is a trace gas, after all, though possibly a contributor to the severe […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2812","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily-socotra"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2812","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2812"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2812\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2815,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2812\/revisions\/2815"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}