Trent Telenko

Shawyer Space Drive…Arriving.

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A science fiction writer acquaintance of mine, John Ringo, is already going nuts about this “Shawyer Drive” on his Facebook page, because he
is friends with one of the scientists involved.

See power point page and the links below:

Magnetron driven, reaction massless, "Shawyer Drive"
Magnetron driven, reaction massless, “Shawyer Drive”

Magnetron powered EM-drive construction expected to take two months
http://nextbigfuture.com/2015/04/magnetron-powered-em-drive-construction.html

Emdrive Roger Shawyer believes midterm EMdrive interstellar probe could flyby Alpha Centauri
http://nextbigfuture.com/2015/04/emdrive-roger-shawyer-believes-midterm.html

The drive seems to be a quantum “zero-point energy” phenomena that you put electricity into and get reaction massless thrust out of.

_AND_ it looks to be both scalable and improvable with better magnetrons.

This is also dovetailing nicely with a Lockheed Martin compact fusion reactor that

1. Generates more power than it uses and
2. Produces something on the order of 7.4 megawatts

See:

http://www.lockheedmartin.com/us/products/compact-fusion.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_beta_fusion_reactor

Given the reality of Space X’s and Blue Origin’s reusable rocket successes, and it seems that Mankind is about to burst out from this planet in a very big way.

See:

http://www.spacex.com/news
http://www.wired.com/2015/04/jeff-bezos-blue-origin-just-launched-flagship-rocket/

And all of the above is driving John Ringo to despair on his science fiction writing career.

President Obama’s Iranian Hostage Crisis?

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…And right in the middle of the U.S. Senate fight over his surrender of nuclear technology to Iran?

That would be both a Democratic political nightmare and a Republican political gift from heaven, and it seems to have just happened.

See the following hotlink to an Ed Morrissey piece at the Hot Air newsblog on why that is–

Breaking: Al-Arabiya reports Iranian forces seize US cargo ship, Pentagon confirms; Update: Marshall Islands-flagged ship; Update: DOD: Ship was in Iranian waters

I wonder if Pres. Obama will treat Marshall Islands regards this Iranian aggression the way he has treated Ukraine to Russia’s Crimean and Donbas aggressions.

Update:

Looks like someone in Tehran made a quick decision about which they wanted more, nukes or immediate humiliation of America —

Zaid Benjamin
✔ ”Ž@zaidbenjamin

#Iran has released Marshall Islands-flagged Maersk Tigris cargo ship according to al-Jazeera

History Weekend — MacArthur’s Parachute Resupply in the S.W. Pacific

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When I started writing my History columns here on Chicago Boyz, one of my objectives was to explore the “military historical narratives” around General Douglas MacArthur, so I could write with a better understanding about the “cancelled by atomic bomb” November 1945 invasion of Japan. But in doing so for this column, the strangest experiences are doing deep, original, historical research. Trying to follow a trail of research on something you think you know — in this case trailing the classified “Need to know” Radar hunting “Section 22” in 6th Army Administrative Orders — and then going down Alice’s rabbit hole and finding a “Detailed Reality” about something completely different. The “completely different” in this case being a provisional parachute supply company created in February 1944 that used the Rebecca & Eureka, a “Retro-high tech” VHF (AKA Television bandwidth) Radar Interrogator-Beacon System — a distant technological ancestor to the civilian “secondary radar” transponders used for air traffic control on today’s wide body passenger jets.

The Rebecca and Eureka radar beacon system represent something of a “Keystone military technology” By that I mean an analogy to the biological concept of a “Keystone species” in an ecosystem, not unlike the role of algae in the ocean ecosystem or grass for a prairie ecosystem. Rebecca and Eureka radar beacons are the “Keystone technology” for a wide range of ‘unconventional’ operations including clandestine supply, intelligence & pathfinder operations ranging from planting a few agents to the support operations for an airborne army. or large naval landing.

Rebecca and Eureka was WIDELY used by the British Special Operation Executive (SOE) and American Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in N.W. Europe, Italy, Yugoslavia, and Burma. This beacon system was also used by American airborne pathfinder operations at Normandy plus Operations Dragoon, Market-Garden and Varsity. And now, its use is documented with this 6th Army Parachute Supply Company in the South West Pacific to support air drops to 6th Army Reconnaissance assets and possibly with both the Allied Intelligence Bureau agents and Filipino guerrillas.

Rebecca & Eureka radar beacon

Figure 1 – Rebecca & Eureka radar beacon system diagram with both aircraft and ground elements shown. Photo Source: https://wrotetrips.wordpress.com/2015/06/04/a-salute-to-the-troop-carrier/The Duxford Radio Society, of the Imperial War Museum, Duxford, England, describes the Rebecca & Eureka radar beacon (shown Fig 1 above) as follows:

A VHF (Secondary) Radar Interrogator-Beacon System
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Rebecca & Eureka formed a system of portable ground-based beacons and airborne direction finding equipment initially designed to assist the air-drop delivery of supplies to the Allied Armies and Resistance groups in occupied Europe.
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Rebecca was the airborne station, and Eureka was the ground based beacon
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The ground based beacon consisted of a super-regenerative receiver and transmitter, originally operating in the frequency range 214 – 234 MHz**, powered from a battery via a vibrator power supply unit. A portable tripod mounted aerial was erected when communications was required.

[**This Rebecca & Eureka bandwidth covers upper Channel 12 and and lower channel 13 in American Television.
See “Retro-High Technology Background Notes” at the end of the column.]

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History Week End — Who Were Those Guys? Section 22, GHQ, SWPA as of Oct 1944

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One of the most frustrating things in researching General Douglas MacArthur’s World War 2 fighting style is dealing with the mayfly like life of the many logistical and intelligence organizations his military theater created. Without their narrative stories, you just cannot trust much of what has been written about the man’s fighting and command style. Nowhere is that clearer than with the radar countermeasures (RCM) and electronic intelligence (ELINT) Section 22, General Headquarters, South West Pacific Area (Sec 22, GHQ, SWPA). Born in November 1944 to support the air campaign against the Japanese bastion of Rabaul and dissolved in mid-August 1945 after the Japanese surrender. Section 22 gets but two ‘unsourced’ sentences in US Army lineage series history CMH Pub 60-13 Military Intelligence published in 1998 and not even a single mention CMH Pub 70-43, U.S. ARMY SIGNALS INTELLIGENCE IN WORLD WAR II, A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY, Edited by James L. Gilbert and John P. Finnegan, published in 1993.

Yet Section 22 was a large, continent spanning, intelligence organization with squadrons of radar/electronic intelligence gathering planes, ships, submarines and multiple teams of “Retro-High Tech Commandos” doing their own tropical 1944-45 raids on Japanese Radar sites equivalent to the British “Operation Biting” or “Bruneval Raid” did 2728 February 1942 to gather technical data on the German Wurzburg radar. See the poor copy of a microfilm document Section 22 organizational chart from Alwyn Lloyd’s rather eclectic book ‘Liberator: America’s Global Bomber’ (1993) below.

The order of battle of MacArthur's Section 22 Radar Hunters as of October 7, 1944.
* The order of battle of General Douglas MacArthur’s Section 22 Radar Hunters as of October 7, 1944.

The job of peeling back the who, what, where, when, why, and how history of Section 22 — and why that history was buried for decades — is the work of many books and articles visiting archives across three continents. This column can at best occasionally take you on journeys describing Section 22 like that proverbial “blind man describing an elephant”.

This column has twice dealt with General Douglas MacArthur’s will-o-the-wisp Section 22 radar hunters. First with field units 12 and 14, “High tech Radar commandos” and later with the radar hunting USS Batfish — the US Navy’s champion submarine killer of WW2. Today’s column will pull back its focus from individual Field Units and show Section 22 over all at the peak of it’s size, capability and influence.

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History Weekend — MacArthur’s Section 22 Submersible Radar Hunters

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One of the more frustrating things in dealing with General Douglas MacArthur’s World War 2 (WW2) fighting style was how many ‘will of the wisp’ intelligence, logistical and special forces operations he created and that were buried in post-WW2 classified files in many military services of several nations, located on several different continents. Often times, when you go looking for one of these outfits, something completely different turns up. Such was the case with “Submarine Field Unit” of Section 22, General Headquarters, South West Pacific Area. And as it turned out, the submarine that the Field Unit operated on is sitting in a museum four hours drive from where I live in Dallas, at Muskogee, OK!

The USS Batfish, the home of one of General MacArthur's Section 22 field units and the killer of three Japanese submarines in a single Feb-March 1945 patrol. -- Photo credit, Wikimedia commons, 2013
The Balao-class submarine, USS Batfish (SS-310), at Muskogee, Oklahoma. It was the home of one of General MacArthur’s Section 22 field units starting with its 5th War patrol. The field unit helped the Batfish kill three Japanese submarines in 76 hours in February 1945, during its 6th War Patrol. — Photo credit, Wikimedia commons, 2013

As I stated in my “MacArthur’s High Tech Radar Commandos” column, I have been on the trail of Section 22 for some time. Section 22 of MacArthur’s General Headquarters (GHQ) South West Pacific Area (SWPA) was his radar intelligence branch — what is referred to today as electronic intelligence or “ELINT” — under his Chief Signals officer General Aiken. It was made up of personnel from Australia, Britain, the Netherlands, New Zealand, as well as the United States Army, US Army Air Force, US Navy and the US Marine Corps. Most Section 22 personnel were Australian Military Forces (AMF) and not Americans. So most day to day reports — for instance casualty records — with which you build a unit history, will be in the Australian archives.

It turns out that the National Archive of Australia (NAA) has digitized and posted on-line a significant portion of Section 22’s analytical work in the form of a Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) copy of the Section 22 “Current Statements,” AKA reports on Japanese radar site locations and excerpts of technical analysis of captured radar documents or components, covering the period of 14 January 1945 to 20 March 1945. In those 66 days Section 22 generated 43 “Current statements” numbered 0260 to 0302. What I read of the file demonstrated a high pressure, fast paced, operational intelligence organization providing timely “actionable” intelligence to fighting units across the SWPA.

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