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Thoughts On A Sunday

It still being March, we are seeing another round of snow here at the lake. After some warm days and rain, much of the snow cover around here has melted away. It’s mostly the snowbanks that remain. But we’ll be seeing between 1 and 6 inches of snow by the time it’s all done. (There are conflicting forecasts with one saying 1-3 inches and another saying 3-6 inches. Time will tell.)

Not that either range will be causing major problems. Probably the worst we’ll see is some slick roads and a small amount of snow that we’ll need to shovel off the driveway.

One related issue we’ll be dealing with is the end of ice fishing season. New Hampshire Fish & Game is reminding ice fisherman their bobhouses need to be off the lake by April 1st. For some, it may be too late to remove their bobhouses easily as their only way off the ice is blocked by open water. They’ll have to float them across the open water to get them to shore. This is nothing new as there are always a few procrastinators who wait until the last minute only find they can’t reach them without using a boat.

And so it goes at the ‘official’ close of winter here at the lake.

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How often over the past 20+ years have we heard that the US Air Force wants to do away with the A-10 Warthog? It is a formidable Close Air Support aircraft that can carry a considerable amount of ordnance on 11 hard points as well as shred targets with its GAU-8 30mm Gatling gun.

The Air Force says the F-35 is more than capable of filling the role presently held by the A-10, but a lot of the ground troops – Army and Marines – think otherwise. We are certainly see it filling a role in the Iraq war, taking out boats and smaller ships of the Iranian Navy in the Straits of Hormuz to safeguard ships wishing to pass through the Straits.

The close-support aircraft, battle-proven in the Gulf War and Global War on Terror, has been threatened with retirement for decades. Congress has often pushed back; the most recent National Defense Authorization Act caps the number that can be scrapped until the Air Force details its retirement strategy. Experts told Defense One that the aircraft’s latest operations prove the war in Iran shouldn’t be the Warthog’s last rodeo.

The A-10s renewed use in the Middle East should serve as a “wake-up call” for lawmakers and the military calling for its retirement, said Dan Grazier, a Stimson Center senior fellow and the director of the nonprofit’s national-security reform program.

“The longer the A-10 exists, the more impressed I am with that aircraft,” Grazier said. “It’s just proof positive that when you design a weapon system that is stripped down and all the decisions that were made in the course of its design were all made for matters of military effectiveness, you get a really effective aircraft.”

One of the biggest issues with this argument about whether the A-10 should be retired was whether or not the F-35 could fill the role of the A-10. It turns out there was a “fly off” competition between the A-10 and the F-35 some years ago…and the results were buried, at least until recently.

A report on the controversial close air support-focused flyoff between the A-10C Warthog and F-35A Joint Strike Fighter that took place between 2018 and 2019 has finally emerged. The declassified review, which was only completed last year and has been essentially buried until now, is heavily redacted and raises more questions than it provides answers in many areas. However, it does still offer valuable details that have not previously been made public even as the U.S. Air Force looks to retire the last of the Warthogs no later than the end of the decade.

--snip--

One of the things that is immediately unclear from this report is why it took nearly three years to produce this final product in the first place or why its core findings were never announced publicly or even distributed to stakeholder communities in the military. It is The War Zone‘s understanding that very few people had previously seen any portion of this document, or details from it, and that it was not provided to members of the A-10 community or F-35 communities. In essence, it has been effectively ‘buried.’

I do have to wonder why the report has been buried. Could it be the A-10 showed to be the better aircraft when it comes to close air support (CAS), airborne forward air control (FAC[A]), and combat search and rescue (CSAR) than the F-35?

It looks like every time the Air Force tries to kill one of the most effective air support aircraft in the world it proves to the rest of the world that it is anything but old and ineffective.

While it is not a multi-mission type aircraft like the F-35, that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. One of the truisms that anyone familiar with military aircraft is that multi-mission aircraft don’t perform some aspects of their missions nearly as well as mission-specific aircraft.

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It looks like some folks are finally waking up to the fact that Iran has had the capability to strike targets in Europe with ballistic missiles for some time. This realization was brought about when Iran launched a couple of missiles at the joint UK-US base on the island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, a distance of ~2361 miles. Neither missile reached its target as one failed in flight and the other was shot down by US Navy warship using an SM-3 interceptor missile.

The distance between Tehran and Paris is 2610 miles.

The distance between Tehran and London is 2750 miles.

The distance between Tehran and Berlin is 2200 miles.

Estimates puts the maximum range of the missiles of the type used by Iran to attack Diego Garcia at 2800 miles.

So Iran hasn’t been a threat to anyplace but the Middle East?

Another talking point busted.

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Talk about hypocrisy!

All the hypocrites whining about Trump’s reaction to Mueller’s death stayed silent while Democrats mocked Charlie Kirk.

Trump posted that he was “glad” Mueller was dead.. Not something I would post, but Trump doesn’t hide how he really feels, especially about fraud like Robert Mueller.. Now of course Democrats, the media and some worthless RINO Republicans are whining about Trump’s reaction… These are the same scum who either had nothing to say or participated in the mocking of Charlie Kirk, and his wife after the assassination of Kirk in Utah.

When there are a mass of people mocking the death of Robert Mueller, and it even being applauded on networks like Fox when TMZ went live, then get back to me.. Until then, STFU.. You have no leg to stand on and you are nothing more than hypocrites.

It seems their hypocrisy has no bounds. Therefore we need not listen to anything they have to say.

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the ice on the lake is getting thinner by the day, plans to pull our boats out of storage are being made, and where Monday is returning all too soon.

Iran

I have been watching the news and online content covering the war with Iran. I have seen hundreds of different opinions about it running the gamut from “Let’s finally finish this long war once and for all!” to “Trump has gotten us into another forever war and attacked Iran for no reason!”

I will admit that my own opinion leans more towards the former and not the latter.

I remember when Iran fell to the Islamists with the return of the Ayatollah Khomeini and the exile of the Shah of Iran. I remember when the new Islamic Republic of Iran committed an act of war against the US by invading the US Embassy in 1979 and taking a number of embassy personnel hostage, holding them for 444 days. (That hostage situation ended the day Ronald Reagon took office because the Iranian regime understood that Reagan was nothing like Jimmy Carter.)

Iran has supported terrorism across the world, has attacked its neighbors, has killed thousands of Americans directly and indirectly, killed thousands in the Middle East directly and indirectly. It has also killed thousands upon thousands of its own citizens, with approximately 40,000 killed by the regime recently because they had the temerity to protest against the theocratic government that has been a thorn in the side of the world for almost 50 years. It is a brutal dictatorship with one thing on its mind – nuke Israel and the US in the name of Allah and to kill anyone who disagrees with the regime, including other Muslims.

This tacit war with Iran has been going on since 1979 and I know I would be just fine with bringing it to and end by ending the power of mullahs and returning it to the people of Iran.

Do I think our present hostilities against Iran is a bad idea or illegal or immoral?

No. It is long overdue.

Is the war causing economic disruptions around the world? Of course. I would expect any such action to do just that. But what be would the economic effects of a nuclear weapon detonating in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem or New York or Washington? Mind you, if something like that did happen, I would expect Tehran, Qom, and a number of other Iranian cities and military bases and installations to suffer the same fate.

Is that something I want? Don’t be silly. Almost no one wants that.

I would like to see the war against Iran to succeed, to depose the mullahs, eliminate the IRGC and basij, and return Iran back into a civilized nation.

Friday Funny - The Husband Rulebook

I'll Tell You The Story - Hijinx With Binky

Thoughts On A Sunday

It has been one of those weird weekends where a number of different events have come together. I’m still trying to wrap my head around it. Between my ex moving into the same neighborhood as The Gulch (No, I am not upset about that)]; BeezleBub being away which has left me, his mother, and his girlfriend taking care of his steer; and a change in our little town’s zoning ordnances which has an effect on Short Term Rentals, i.e. AirBnB’s/VRBO/Vacasa, that also affects the neighborhood here at the Gulch. I am also most of the way through emptying out my storage unit so I won’t have to pay the monthly rent anymore. (This ties back to my ex moving into the neighborhood because she also had a lot of stuff there that is now being moved into her new home.)

It’s going to be busy during the coming week as work continues as the ex continues moving into her new home, duties at work as equipment calibration comes due, town duties, and making sure the sole member of the feline contingent here at The Gulch makes it to her appointment with the veterinarian.

And so it goes.

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A Blast From The Past (Month):

Cuba Becomes The First Country To Reach Net Zero.

Of course, it must be said that Cuba hadn’t planned to reach Net Zero.

[W]ith a small assist from the United States, the island nation of Cuba has almost entirely ended the use of fossil fuels. Finally, we have the first country in the world to achieve the climate movement’s Holy Grail and nirvana — Net Zero! Or at least a very close approximation. This should be cause for a huge celebration.

But has anyone asked the people of Cuba if they’re happy to be the first country in the world to reach that goal? Somehow, I doubt it.

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Seeing the Democrats’ efforts to ‘punish’ the GOP for not reigning in ICE as it does its job turn into punishing the American people by making the US even more vulnerable to terrorist attacks has me in a bit of a quandary. Is it “punishment” or are the Democrats hoping that by crippling our antiterror defenses by refusing to fund DHS that they are facilitating terror attacks that they can then use to win the mid-term elections in November? Seeing just how much the Democrat Party has decayed into a tacit socialist/communist party, I think it may be both.

Democrats have imposed a partial government shutdown to cripple DHS, the department responsible for defending us from Islamic terror. Their explicit purpose is to hamper ICE, which would facilitate unlawful entry into the country by hostile foreign agents.

According to leftist Senator Brian Schatz (D-HI), Democrats are “very serene” about how this will play out. Even now, they believe the media can prevent voters from realizing what they are doing to the country.

It’s like they’re working hard to destroy America and trying to the lay the blame should such destruction succeed upon the GOP.

Nothing new there.

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This illustrates one of my reasons for not buying into solar to be a large part of ‘baseload’ capacity, that being its vulnerability to severe weather as seen recently in Indiana and Illinois.

In the quiet town of Wheatfield, Indiana, a powerful storm system unleashed chaos on March 10, 2026, leaving a trail of destruction in its wake. While initial reports suggested hail as the primary culprit, investigations point to a suspected tornado as the main force behind the widespread damage. The Dunns Bridge I and II solar farms, key components of Northern Indiana Public Service Company’s (NIPSCO) renewable energy portfolio, bore the brunt of the storm’s fury. These facilities, located in Jasper and Starke counties, represent a combined capacity of approximately 700 MW of solar power, making them among the largest in the region.

Eyewitness accounts and drone footage circulating on social media depict twisted metal frames, shattered panels, and debris scattered across acres of farmland. NIPSCO confirmed the damage in an official statement, noting that teams were on-site to assess and secure the area as soon as conditions allowed.

I have seen other instances where solar farms were heavily damaged during thunderstorms when hailstones smashed thousands of solar panels. One has to remember that solar panels are, for all intents and purposes, glass. Glass doesn’t like hailstones hitting them as they tend to crack or shatter.

There was one solar farm that had been proposed in my town many years ago that would have roughly 500KW of generating capacity if it were built. The developer had put up a small demonstrator solar ‘farm’ at the proposed location consisting of three panels to show how it would work. One thunderstorm later and it was offline, heavily damaged. The thunderstorm that caused that damage wasn’t even all that much of a thunderstorm. It wasn’t hail that damaged the panels, but a wind gust that caused a tree branch to break off and ‘fly’ almost 30 yards before it hit the demonstrator, cracking the panels and knocking over the portable setup.

I think I’d rather have a Small Modular Reactor rather than a solar farm any day.

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I’m glad the climate change faithful were so wrong on this one.

Climate Alarm Brews False Coffee Crisis As Global Production Sets Records

WTAE ABC, Pittsburgh, published a story titled, “Climate change affecting global coffee production, study finds.” The study is false, perpetrated by a climate activist group called Climate Central, and uncritically echoed by WTAE meteorologist Jill Szwed.

Had Szwed or WTAE fact-checked Climate Central’s claims against real-world data, they would have found coffee production has increased dramatically around the world amid the modest recent warming, including in each of the countries cited in WTAE’s story.

I have to wonder if these are the same folks who predicted climate change would also cause shortages of chocolate because cocoa bean yields would be negatively affected. So far I haven’t seen any indications of chocolate shortages. Have you?

So far the predictions made by the climate change faithful over the past few decades have not come to be. Have there been weather ‘anomalies’? Of course there has. But these anomalies are not climate and have always occured. Trying to turn them into indications of climate change works against them because they haven’t been repeating as one would expect if they were indicators of climate change.

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee where we’re expecting a lot of rain and temps in the upper 50’s on Monday, hopefully the snow banks will continue to shrink, and where we’re still getting used to the change to Daylight Saving Time.

Something New To Be Paranoid About

As I mentioned in last Sunday’s TOAS, I came across an article that had my level of paranoia rise. Not that it went off the chart, but it did go up when I realized that people, including the government, have a new way to track your car or truck without having to use a GPS tracker, that new method being using your vehicle’s Tire Pressure Monitoring System (TPMS).

Most people don’t realize the TPMS system in their vehicle uses a radio signal from each sensor – one in each wheel – to measure the tire pressure in each tire. That radio signal, weak as it is, can be received from roadside receivers. Each TPMS sensor transmits tire pressure data along with the sensor serial number so the vehicle’s system knows which tire’s data is being sent. That also makes it possible to identify the vehicle transmitting that data.

But wait! There’s more!

Researchers at IMDEA Networks Institute in Spain, together with European partners, have found that tire pressure sensors in modern cars can unintentionally expose drivers to tracking. Over a 10-week study, they collected signals from more than 20,000 vehicles, revealing a hidden privacy risk and highlighting the need for stronger security measures in future vehicle sensor systems.

--snip--

However, the researchers found that these tire sensors also send a unique ID number in clear, unencrypted wireless signals, meaning that anyone nearby with a simple radio receiver can capture the signal -- and recognize the same car again later. Most vehicle tracking today uses cameras that need clear visibility and line-of-sight to a car.

TPMS tracking is different: Tire sensors automatically send radio signals that pass through walls and vehicles, allowing small hidden wireless receivers to capture them without being seen. Because each sensor broadcasts a fixed unique ID, the same car can be recognized repeatedly without reading a license plate. This makes TPMS-based tracking less expensive, harder to detect, and more difficult to avoid than camera-based surveillance, and therefore a stronger privacy threat according to the researchers.

To test how serious this risk is, the team built a network of low-cost radio receivers, located near roads and parking areas. The necessary equipment costs only $100 per receiver. In total, they collected more than 6 million tire sensor messages from over 20,000 cars.

The sensors use 315MHz in the ISM (Industrial, Scientific, and Medical) license-free band in North America and most of the rest of the world, and 433MHz in Europe. Receivers capable of receiving those frequencies are readily available. Decoding the signals isn’t difficult since they employ data formats laid out in the TPMS specifications. In the US, TPMS requirements and specifications are laid out in 49 CFR § 571.138 - Standard No. 138.

Those involved with the study have addressed the issue, bringing up the security of automotive systems including TPMS.

"As vehicles become increasingly connected, even safety-oriented sensors like TPMS should be designed with security in mind, since data that appears passive and harmless can become a powerful identifier when collected at scale," says Alessio Scalingi, former PhD student at IMDEA Networks and now assistant professor at UC3M, Madrid.

Despite these risks, current vehicle cybersecurity regulations do not yet specifically address TPMS security. The researchers warn that without encryption or authentication, tire sensors remain an easy target for passive surveillance.

"TPMS was designed for safety, not security," adds Dr. Yago Lizarribar, former PhD student at IMDEA Networks during the research study, and now a researcher at Armasuisse, Switzerland. "Our findings show the need for manufacturers and regulators to improve protection in future vehicle sensor systems."

Therefore, the research team urges the manufacturers and policymakers to strengthen cybersecurity in future cars, so that safety systems do not become tracking tools.

The question is, will those manufacturers and policymakers make the changes needed? I have a feeling that they will, but not anytime soon.

Friday Funny - Are You A Newspaper?

I'll Tell You The Story - Binky Votes

Thoughts On A Sunday

Once again, we have had to make the change from Standard to Daylight Saving Time, something I wish we could end. Being at the easternmost edge of the Eastern Time Zone it would work better for us if we remained on DST year-round or changed from the Eastern Time Zone to the Atlantic Time Zone and remain on Atlantic Standard Time year-round. (If you cross from Maine into New Brunswick you also cross from the Eastern Time Zone to the Atlantic Time Zone.) I know a lot of folks around here are certainly tired of the twice-a-year change. It doesn’t really serve a purpose, at least not this far east in the time zone.

Another change – we will be seeing temperatures in the 50’s and 60’s over the next few days which means a lot of melting snow, shrinking snowbanks, and more potholes in the roads. Most of the snow has disappeared from the roof of The Gulch, with most of the remaining snow being on roof of the garage which is unheated. The snow on the roof of the heated portion of The Gulch is gone except for one small portion that does not receive any sunlight.

I by no means believe that we are all done with snow as I have seen too many late March/early April snowstorms that have dumped a foot of snow or more. In fact, there was an April Nor’easter two years ago that dumped almost 20 inches of snow and caused a power outage here at The Gulch that lasted almost 2 days. The Official Weekend Pundit Generator got a workout during and following that storm.

It is that storm that convinced a lot of my neighbors to spend the money for standby generators for their homes so they wouldn’t have to deal with another lengthy power outage without power. Now, over a third of the homes surrounding The Gulch have them. A few others, like the Gulch, have portable generators. A couple of them are also dual-fuel which means they can use either gasoline or propane. I primarily use propane because it doesn’t go bad like gasoline can. In the seven years I’ve had the Official Weekend Pundit Generator I’ve never had to use gasoline. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t have my gas caddy filled and ready to go if needed.

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I agree with Nick Sortor (by way of Dr. Helen) on this one: Unhinged.

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A big deal was made by the media about “devices found outside Gracie Mansion” during an anti-Muslim rally and counterprotest. The media implied the devices came from the protesters, trying to paint the protesters as Islamophobic. But there’s one problem with that assertion.

It is totally false.

It turns out the “bombs” were thrown at counter protesters by Muslim men who yelled “Allah akbar” at the crowd.

So much for that narrative.

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Oh, I like the headline on this one:

40-year trail of failed forecasts: ‘If the Climate Crisis were a commercial product, it would have been recalled for false advertising decades ago’.

As they say up here, “Ayuh.”

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It seems that even the increasingly Islamist United Kingdom is feeling the effects of the war with Iran, in this case finding they only have a couple of days supply of natural gas left since their supply has been cut off.

The UK’s gas reserves have shrunk from 18,000 GWh worth last year to 6,700 GWh – enough for just 1.5 days of demand, according to new data published by transmission operator National Gas.

A similar amount is stored in tanks as liquefied natural gas. Europe, by contrast, has built up reserves of several weeks-worth of gas.

The crunch in supplies has resulted in traders charging the UK a premium for gas, exploiting its need to outbid rivals in other countries. It means the UK is now paying the highest wholesale gas prices in Europe.

Hmm. Could this be why the UK has suddenly gotten involved in the war with Iran?

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The question isn’t whether or not I am paranoid. The question is “Am I paranoid enough?”

I came across a story in an industry publication that had me sitting up and taking notice. Looking into it I decided I had to delve deeper to find out if what this article claimed was true. To what am I referring?

The Tire Pressure Monitoring System (TPMS) on vehicles can be used to track cars and trucks.

I will look into this and will post about this if it turns out to be accurate.

Great. Yet another thing we have to worry about…

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the weather is going to be warm for the next few days, Town Meeting for a lot of towns in New Hampshire take place on Tuesday, and where I find I am back to doing some farm chores for my son while he’s away.