Bombs and rockets – Page 8 – a sibilant intake of breath

Control in an interrogation

An interrogation is a mind game in which you have to use your wits and knowledge of the detainee to convince or steer him to cooperate, and essential to this is to show that you are in control. If a suspect thinks that you lack knowledge of what he’s talking about or sees that you are flustered, enraged, or pressed for time—these would be signs that he was winning and shouldn’t cooperate. We kept the fake smiles plastered on our faces and let Abu Jandal speak.

Soufan, Ali H. The Black Banners: The Inside Story of 9/11 and the War Against al-Qaeda. 2011. p. xvi

Aimen Dean on “How to win”

As Labib al-Nahhas, a senior and moderate voice within the Syrian Islamist group Ahrar al-Sham, put it: ‘The Islamic State’s extremist ideology can be defeated only through a home-grown Sunni alternative — with the term “moderate” defined not by CIA handlers but by Syrians themselves.

Moderate imams — whether in the community or visiting prisons — are not going to impress young men already halfway to jihad. Islamic academics and theologians cannot alone formulate counter-messaging against al-Qaeda and ISIS. They don’t understand what makes these groups tick.

To make an impact, to chip away at the certainty which binds such groups, requires us to recruit respected Salafi fundamentalists, men whose ideological outlook is close to that of the terror groups but who eschew their violence. Men who have already travelled that route and then seen a better way can be precious allies. They can help detect and disrupt radicalization; they can help rehabilitate those either tempted by or convicted or conspiracies. But they have to be credible, and their work can only flourish in a society where tolerance and diversity are championed. A rise in hate crimes; a resurgence of the far right on both sides of the Atlantic; a sense that police don’t afford equal protection to all; discrimination in the workplace — these are just a few of the factors that will undercut any efforts to counter radicalization. There’s a great danger that in Europe, maybe even in the United States, too, Islamist and right-wing extremists will feed off each other in a vicious cycle.

Dean, Aimen with Tim Lister and Paul Cruickshank. Nine Lives: My time as the West’s top spy inside al-Qaeda. 2018. p. 398

Jihadism from frustration with politics

Sadly, many Muslims would subscribe to this perspective [of Islam in conflict with the rest of the world] rather than acknowledge the crisis within Islam. They think the conflicts ravaging their lands stem from a Western conspiracy to steal their natural resources. So perfidious is that conspiracy that many Muslims even blame terror attacks in the West, from 9/11 to the November 2015 gun rampage in Paris, on the CIA and Mossad. They interpret these attacks as wicked plots to put Western boots on the ground and drones in the air across the Middle East.

This persecution complex is the outgrowth of a sense of hopelessness among millions who see their lives are bereft of opportunity and their social environments as stacked against them. They think politics is useless and, unable to change the system, they set out to smash it. Muslin states are home to a proliferation of non-state actors because the state is held in contempt, is corrupt and frequently oppressive. Jihadism has become the Muslim version of anarchy — on steroids.

Dean, Aimen with Tim Lister and Paul Cruickshank. Nine Lives: My time as the West’s top spy inside al-Qaeda. 2018. p. 382–3

Blown by Cheney’s office

‘So let me get this right,’ I said. ‘I am one of less than a handful of people working inside al-Qaeda for Western governments. I have identified senior leaders, was on the inside of plots in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and provided the only intel you have on al-Qaeda’s WMD programme. And in my spare time I tracked networks here in England, a job that’s more urgent now.

‘And MI6 thought my work was so important that you shared it with the CIA, which then took it to the White House, which then gave it to a journalist. Which means you now have one fewer than a handful of agents inside the world’s most dangerous terrorist group.’

…

It was useless. I knew MI6 was not responsible for the leak; there was a bigger play going on. The British liked to show the US they punched above their weight, still brought gold to the table, still knew how to deploy and gather human intelligence better than anyone. In the process, they shared information that was thrown into the roulette wheel of leaks and spin for which the US government was notorious.

Dean, Aimen with Tim Lister and Paul Cruickshank. Nine Lives: My time as the West’s top spy inside al-Qaeda. 2018. p. 322

saganangst — fear of nuclear war, and particularly nuclear winter

We live under constant threat of sudden destruction via nuclear war. It wouldn’t take that many warheads falling on major cities to darken the atmosphere — making the consequences of even a regional exchange (or the payload of a single ‘boomer’ sub) global, and potentially a threat to the integrity of human civilization. The control systems carry a frightening risk of malfunction, particularly in a crisis when nuclear-armed forces may be out of communication with higher level command and at immediate risk of nuclear attack.

The only safe option is to disarm as a global community — spare everyone the costs of the nuclear arms complex, while greatly diminishing the total severity of potential wars.

Bright or invisible rocket exhaust

LOX and RP-1 never burn absolutely clean, and there is always a bit of free carbon in the exhaust, which produces a luminous flame. So when you’re looking at TV and see a liftoff from Cape Kennedy—or from Baikonur for that matter—and the exhaust flame is very bright, you can be sure the propellants are Lox and RP-1 or the equivalent. If the flame is nearly invisible, and you can see the shock diamonds in the exhaust, you’re probably watching a Titan II booster burning N₂O₄ and 50–50.

Clark, John D. Ignition! An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants. Rutgers University Press Classics, 2017. p. 96

One-way rocketry

Finally somebody in authority sat down and thought the problem through. The specifications of JP-4 [jet fuel] were as sloppy as they were to insure a large supply of the stuff under all circumstances. But Jupiter and Thor [ballistic missiles] were designed and intended to carry nuclear warheads, and it dawned upon the thinker that you don’t need a large and continuing supply of fuel for an arsenal of such missiles. Each missile is fired, if at all, just once, and after a few dozen of them have been lobbed by the contending parties, the problem of fuel for later salvoes becomes academic, because everybody interested is dead. So the only consideration is that the missile works right the first time—and you can make your fuel specifications just as tight as you like. Your first load of fuel is the only one you’ll ever need.

Clark, John D. Ignition! An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants. Rutgers University Press Classics, 2017. p. 95–6

Pre-computer rocket propellant chemistry calculations

[Calculating rocket fuel performance mathematically] gets worse exponentially as the number of different elements and the number of possible species [of reaction products] increases. With a system containing carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, you may have to consider fifteen species or more. And if you toss in boron, say, or aluminum, and perhaps a little chlorine and fluorine—the mind boggles.

But you’re stuck with it (remember, I didn’t ask you to do this!) and proceed—or did in the unhappy days before computers. First, you make a guess at the chamber temperature. (Experience helps a lot here!) You then look up the relevant equilibrium constants for your chosen temperature. Devoted and masochistic savants have spent years in determining and compiling these. Your equations are now before you, waiting to be solved. It is rarely possible to do this directly. So you guess at the partial pressures of what you think will be the major constituents of the mixture (again, experience is a great help) and calculate the others from them. You add them all up, and see if they agree with your predetermined chamber pressure. They don’t, of course, so you go back and readjust your first guess, and try again. And again. And eventually all your species are in equilibrium and you have the right ratio of hydrogen to oxygen and so on, and they add up to the right chamber pressure.

Next, you calculate the amount of heat which would have been evolved in the formation of these species from your propellants, and compare that figure with the heat that would be needed to warm the combustion products up to your chosen chamber temperature. (The same devoted savants have included the necessary heats of formation and heat capacities in their compilations.) And, of course, the two figures disagree, so you’re back to square one to guess another chamber temperature. And so on.

Clark, John D. Ignition! An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants. Rutgers University Press Classics, 2017. p. 84 (italics in original)

What it’s like to hear but not see the Toronto Air Show

A tweet of mine, written in a moment of irritability aggravated by the sound of jets roaring overhead, has gotten some attention by virtue of being incorporated into some news articles about social media commentary on the Toronto Air Show.

In addition to my standard gripes about the wastefulness of jet engine use, the undesirability of unwanted background noise, and the militarism embodied in combat aircraft development, I suggested that there are people in Toronto who find the experience of being a bystander during the noise as troubling or a reminder of trauma, having heard military jets operating at close quarters during any number of recent conflicts, from Gaza to Afghanistan to Yemen, or during interception flights carried out by domestic air forces.

A disturbing amount of the response on Twitter expressed anti-immigrant sentiment, particularly an assertion that (a) people who have experienced conflict and now live in Toronto now live in preferable life circumstances and therefore (b) they owe certain moral obligations to people who previously lived in the place they now inhabit, to wit just lumping it and not complaining while these acrobatic displays are put on. To some extent my interpretation of the comments was inevitably coloured by Twitter’s reputation as an especially hostile and personal platform, but I think even when viewed with as much objectivity as can be mustered they brought unnecessary hostility to a discussion ultimately about public policy, specifically whether such spectacles should continue.

It’s entirely fair to criticize me for assuming what somebody else’s life experience would mean, in terms of their experience of these noises. That being said, the basic parameters of something like post-traumatic stress disorder are publicly known and it seems plausible to me that anyone who has traumatic memories of being close to combat in which jets operated (whether as a soldier or a civilian) would have some chance of being triggered by the sound of an air show. Given the population of Toronto, it’s plausible that hundreds of people with PTSD are within earshot of each loud noise made by flying aircraft. It’s much more speculative, but I have also wondered about the number of people who can have panic attracts triggered by a stimulus like a jet engine sound find it triggering due to associations they have made through fiction, specifically quasi-realistic military computer games and films which realistically depict violence like Saving Private Ryan. Statistically very few people, even during times of mass conscription, faced intense combat of the kind depicted in the film, but probably a majority of the adult population has now seen multiple detailed immersive representations, whether through films like Spielberg’s or depictions like HBO’s Generation Kill or Band of Brothers.

I don’t want to suggest that it’s the same thing at all, but I have my own negative associations with hearing but not seeing military jets at low altitude nearby, as I lived in North Oxford within earshot of at least some of the approaches to RAF Brize Norton and we used to listen to Vickers refuelling aircraft and B-52s flying in at all times of day and night (familiar eventually in their shrieks and rumbles) and speculate about whether they were coming back from Iraq or from Afghanistan, maybe carrying coffins.

I don’t think social media griping is going to lead to the abolition of the airshow, but I do think it’s a good thing to have a public dialog about what people in the city are going through in terms of their mental health and the choices we make together affecting it.

Those with any opinions on the matter are invited to comment, anonymously if you like.

Attractions of monopropellants

A monopropellant is a liquid which contains in itself both the fuel and the oxidizer, either as a single molecule such as methyl nitrate, CH₃NO₃, in which the oxygens can burn the carbon and the hydrogens, or as a mixture of a fuel and an oxidizer, such as a solution of benzene in N₂O₄. On paper, the idea looks attractive. You have only one fluid to inject into the chamber, which simplifies your plumbing, your mixture ratio is built in and stays where you want it, you don’t have to worry about building an injector which will mix the fuel and oxidizer properly, and things are simpler all around. But! Any intimate mixture of a fuel and an oxidizer is a potential explosive, and a molecule with one reducing (fuel) end and one oxidizing end, separated by a pair of firmly crossed fingers, is an invitation to disaster.

Clark, John D. Ignition! An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants. Rutgers University Press Classics, 2017. p. 7 (italics in original)