Random News and Notes 20 March
We start off this Friday edition of RNN with some very sad news. I have to report that Chuck Norris has died. His family confirmed the news with a SocMed post this morning.
Chuck had been rushed to a hospital in Hawaii yesterday for an unspecified medical emergency.
Chuck Norris was 86.
Requiescat in pace.
Today marks the first day of Spring. Spring officially sprung at 1046 EDT today.
How many of you know that there is a partial government shutdown in effect? Not many I’m betting. The shutdown only affects portions of DHS like the TSA. Major airports like Atlanta, Houston, and LaGuardia saw hours-long TSA queues extending into parking lots and outdoors on Friday. This is due to high staff callouts of up to 55% and over 300 officer resignations since mid-February.
The delays stem from a partial DHS shutdown now over a month old, triggered by a Senate standoff.
Epic Fury News
As the US-Israel-Iran war hits its third week, the Houthi rebels in Yemen warned Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and the UAE via Yemen’s SABA news agency that intercepting their missiles aimed at Israel will make those countries targets, treating them as part of the ‘Zionist entity.’ This follows fresh Iranian launches under “Operation True Promise 4” on March 20, with Israeli media reporting impacts near Tel Aviv amid multiple alerts.
The Arab states – particularly Jordan – have aided in Israeli missile defense before. Personally, I’d like the Houthi to stick their necks out. It seems to me that the US is running out of big targets in Iran. Maybe it’s time to play a little whack-a-houthi in Yemen.
In a somewhat new development, the B-52 – the last one was delivered in June of 1962 – is now a launch platform for one of the Air Force’s newest weapons systems, the JASSM cruise missile. The AGM-158 Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile is a low detection standoff air-launched cruise missile developed by Lockheed Martin. It is a large, stealthy long-range weapon with a 1,000-pound armor piercing warhead. It completed testing and entered service with the U.S. Air Force in 2009 with an extended range variant – the JASSM ER being introduced in 2014. The F-16 was the first platform to be certified for delivery. Now every US fighter with the exception of the F-22, all the bombers as well as the C-130, C-17 and C-5 cargo planes can carry the JASSM. The cargo planes use a palletized system called Rapid Dragon to launch the JASSM.
The B-52 carries up to 20 of them, 12 on external pylons and 8 on an internal rotary launcher.