Saturday, March 15, 2014

Are you sure this Drone stuff is working out Mr. President?

Yahoo News via Drudge is saying one of our drones has been captured buy Russian forces in Crimea. The article is very poorly worded and is repeated almost verbatim everywhere you look so there is of course one source everyone is copying from. The articles all identify Rostec as the source.

This started as a simple chase to find out if we really did lose one of our drones to the Russians and then it just exploded.

Who or what the heck is Rostec?

Rostec is the Russian state arms and technology group and looks to be what you would get if you combined our DARPA with Raytheon, Texas Instrument, GM, Microsoft and Dow Chem. The company was formed by a law Putin pushed through in 2007. They are a HUGE conglomerate of 663 entities formed into 13 holding companies, all headed by one man, Sergey Chemezov, chairman of the Union of Russian Mechanical Engineers, and a lieutenant-general. An example is, Rostec just built their 3,500th Mi-17 Kazan Helicopter, export version, 80 of which have been delivered to India, with 70 more coming. Yes that's three thousand five hundred helicopters in 7 years. And you thought Bill Gates ran a big company, this guy runs over 600.

Hell, WE are buying a billion dollars worth of the Mi-17 Helicopters ourselves and are planning to give them to Afghanistan's security forces. That is just one product from one of six hundred and sixty plus companies under Rostec. Holy Crapski comrade! Did we already pay them? How do we get our money back and why are we giving them to Afghanistan? And why did we use a Russian company instead of an American company?

But back to the drones. It looks like the Russians used an electronic counter measure operations vehicle called the Avtobaza also know as the EW 1L222. (EW= Electronic Warfare) The EW 1L222 is the same platform Iran is said to have used to capture our drone a while back. The EW 1L222 is capable of over riding our drone control signals and then stealing control of the drone. The EW 1L222 is of course made by Rostec.

Rostec's web site denies they are the source of the article and say the information comes from a Russian site whose name translates to Military Observer. Also a Greek web site called EL.GR is also stating that on 3 March the Voice of Russia announced that one drone had been captured and another one has been shot down. They went on to say that the story has since been pulled.

A US Military drone is considered a military aircraft just like a fighter or a bomber, so does shooting one down or capturing it qualify as an act of war? Normally yes, not in this case probably, but normally yes. Did they really shoot one down or capture one, who knows? I'm thinking they got at least one in some fashion.

Question, why don't the Russians have drones? Everybody has some, from Turkey to Peru. But you never hear about Russia having one, and if you google Russian drones you mostly see what looks more like a Cruse Missile than a drone. But it looks like Russia has 44 types, only one of which is considered a killer drone. But Sukhoi, a Russian aircraft manufacturer, is building a massive drone. Our Reaper drone weighs in at 3.5 tons, the Sukhoi is reportedly to weigh 20 tons. Can you say drone fighter aircraft? Sukhoi air works is by the way a division of Rostec.


Links:
Yahoo original story
http://news.yahoo.com/russia-says-intercepted-us-drone-over-crimea-arms-180430584.html;_ylt=At_B0i8Ttqvgrn8ZH8ESDpzQtDMD;_ylu=X3oDMTBsdmNodWplBGNvbG8DYmYxBHBvcwMzBHNlYwNzcg--

Repeat from SBS.com
http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2014/03/15/russia-says-us-drone-found-over-crimea

Rostec Wiki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rostec

Rostec Boss
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Chemezov

Rostec Home Page
http://rostec.ru/en/

Rostec Denial
http://rostec.ru/en/news/4416

Military Observer Article
http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwarsonline.info%2Fukraine%2Famerikanskiy-bespilotnik-mq-5b-perechvachen-v-nebe-nad-krimom.html&hl=en&langpair=auto|en&tbb=1&ie=UTF-8

Greek page talking about two drones downed
http://translate.google.com/translate?client=tmpg&hl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fhellasxgtopvideos.blogspot.com%2F2014%2F03%2Fuav.html&langpair=el|en

Avtobaza also know as the EW 1L222
http://www.flightglobal.com/blogs/the-dewline/2011/12/avtobaza-irans-weapon-in-rq-17/

Russian Mi-17 Helo sale to India
http://rostec.ru/en/news/4394

USA buying Mi-17 Helos
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Latest-News-Wires/2013/1207/Why-is-US-buying-Russian-helicopters-for-Afghan-military

Big Ass Russian Drone
http://www.livescience.com/40222-russia-attack-drone.html

Wednesday, March 5, 2014

Did you ever think, "What if I water ski so fast my skis catch fire from the friction with the water and I have to jump off of them and maybe drown." Well don't worry under the new medical coding system when they carry you into the ER there will be a code for that so they can appropriately bill your Obamacare provider. It's code V9027XA: “Drowning and submersion due to falling or jumping from burning water-skis, initial encounter.” Apparently the government thinks this situation may be common enough that you may encounter it more than once in your life so they had to identify it as the the "initial encounter". That explains all those screaming balls of fire you see chasing speed boats across the lake.
The government will in October bring on line a new medical coding system that must be used by all healthcare providers. The process is receiving the same testing as the Obamacare roll out, i.e. none. Failure to correctly code your condition will result in the provider not being paid and repeated incorrect coding will result in the provider being penalized (fined). The expected costs for conversion in a small doctor's office is only $83,000. Someone like St. E's or Memorial will pay about $2,700,000. And the government is telling providers to have at least six months of revenue on hand to cover the anticipated delays in payments. Now a three doctor office generates about 2.5 million in revenue so they would need to set aside about 1.2 million dollars and do nothing with it just to survive the year. Add in the conversion costs and it is huge investment just to keep the doors open. But not to worry I'm sure it will be just as successful as Obamacare has been. But on the up side, if you are ever sucked into a jet engine you are covered, V9733XA (Sucked into jet engine, initial encounter), is there ever a second encounter?


 Code Chaos