The Right Stuff?
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dude..when i say read up...i meant READ UP on my previous post..Originally posted by SingaporeTyrannosaur:If this is your brilliant response, that I assume that you have conceeded defeat.
While I have patently proven each and every one of your fallacies carefully and pointed out the real issue at hand, that FF is a result of large amount of factors, almost all of which have little, if anything to do with pilot incompetence at all, on the other hand, you have done quite a good job of repeating the same mantra of "It must be the pilot's fault for dropping the bombs." while completely ignoring all the facts that have been presented.
Of course, you quote the spec ops incident to death. It's amazing how you can contuine to cling to the "pilot never radio back" completely ignoring all that led up to the incident... which started with a spec operations operative on the ground who was too hasty to give specific coordinates, confirmed the fire mission and target type, and told the pilot to go ahead to bomb the target.
To insist on blaming the pilot come what may, is prehaps akin to blaming american WW2 tank commanders of being incompetent because they took heavy losses fighting German tanks in their inpotent M4 Shermans that had been designed by a compromise committe. And make grandose claims on how tank commanders should be more competent in fighting German armour. See the real issue here?
You have yet to produce any solid evidence supporting your case of pilot fault except from your vague, personal impressions of the whole incident gleamed from BBC. Ironically, even the BBC operators INVOLVED in the incident hold a far more rational, and objective view of the incident then you do. Just look at their report.
If you think I haven't been reading up, I urge you then, for my and everybody's benefit, post the links here. Other then that, your opinions of this incident and it's credibility as an argument is as thin as figurative paper. Airchair generals make hotheaded, simplistic claims, true soldiers acess the true, tatical picyure.
It would behoove you to stop shadow boxing, it's far more productive then posting irrational thoughts followed by more irrational reasons pulled out of thin air to support them.
u repeat the same thing by point on your previous post..do u think i really have the damn time to answer every single one of your post..
u think im ignorant..i think you are naive..same thing repeat again n again..im sure u feel that way too..
pls use your brilliant brain to think thru before u say anything..
its your view vs my view...whose view is the right stuff?
i dun mind replying all your post if it just take 30min of my time per day..just be patience for any late reply..
dude..about the tank stuff u talk..i think u better think thru again on this whole debate.. -
So youÂ’re saying that I almost ended up candling because I jumped too heavy, and not because the pilot was going 20 knots too fast? I was doing a clean fatigue jump at the time, which means my weight was less than 65 kilograms. Or, in your expert opinion, is that already too heavy? Also, why would tailwinds, thermals, and unseen air currents affect airspeed? All three contribute to a bumpy ride, which I have no issue with.
It appears that you are mixing up my posts with Nathan’s. My stance has always been as follows: given my personal experience with pilots, my conclusion is that the process of weeding out pilots with an attitude problem that prevents them from doing the job right (NOT incompetent pilots) is inadequate. It was in response to Nathan’s anecdote about the pilot saying that pilots are superior – my point is that they as fallible as the rest of us. My arguments therefore address both human error and incompetence, but not circumstances. Also, you seem to think that I have proposed some grandiose solutions – read my posts again and you will see that I have proposed no solutions, grandiose or otherwise. So far I have not even gotten to identifying what to fix yet – thanks to the current direction of this argument, we cannot yet get to that point.
If youÂ’re getting so excited that you canÂ’t even remember who said what, perhaps it is you who is the hothead here.
It is not a case of taking a myopic or cellular view here. You are proposing that the Air Force weeds out poor pilots, and I am debating your point – as the one proposing the point, the burden of proof is upon you. All I need is a single piece of evidence disproving your point, and I already have two.
At this present point in time, I don’t have any interest in your sweeping plans of how to fix the problem. The issue here is simple – you said that they weed out all poor pilots and I disagreed with the two examples I presented, so why don’t we just stick to that? Your helicopter’s flying all over the place, so your view is of little relevance to my point.
By the way, don’t go embarrassing yourself trying to tell me about numbers. My doctorate thesis was in statistical analysis, and of all people I know how numbers can be controlled to present a distorted version of the truth. That is the importance of the disproof that I mentioned earlier – if the numbers contradict what you actually know from experience, betting odds are that the numbers are wrong.
With your example of crossing the road, I accept “most and “usual” enough to take my chances crossing the road. However, I am not as foolish as to use those numbers to propose that the driving test process weeds out all bad drivers.
With the rope incident, the very simple SOP of checking with the despatchers for an all-clear before pulling the release lever was already in place, and was violated by the pilot. In the case of my jump, the pilot violated the 115 knot limit stipulated in the TSR. IÂ’d classify these as unnecessary risks.Unlike the commandos, the air force certainly does not have an atmosphere that encourages or condones mindless risk taking with lives and equipment.
Really now? And upon what basis do you base the CommandosÂ’ attitude? Having been one, and speaking from personal experience (as much as you are grieved by personal experience), I would heartily disagree with you. Please refer to my posts in the drowning incident thread for an expansion of what I learned in Cdo.
You have no intention of contradicting yourself? Hogwash:a few black sheep (which are rapidly weeded out under a merciless system)
I am defending the large majority who do their job right, and on them should the reputation of the air force be based.
Or does your macro view absolve you from sticking to your statements? First you categorically state that they are weeded out, then you say that there are some about. What’s it going to be? My issue with you has always been the first statement – they are not weeded out, and that’s the point of my examples. Look, the gist of what you have written subsequently indicates that you acknowledge that the selection system does let some idiots through. Why don’t you just retract your categorical statement about the weeding out (which you already have contradicted yourself about anyway), and then we can get on to bigger and better things? -
i think ST just cannot accept that a lot of the military pilots around simply have the "fly boy" attitude.
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Nah, wouldn't be fair to say that, Heng - after all, ST has acknowledged that there are some pilots out there with an attitude problem. What it looks like is that he's mixed up everybody's arguments.
Faulty target acquisition system, perhaps? Or perhaps friendly fire upon himself?
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its a sad thing that..we have murphy's law to blame..n we cant do anythingOriginally posted by Gedanken:Nah, wouldn't be fair to say that, Heng - after all, ST has acknowledged that there are some pilots out there with an attitude problem. What it looks like is that he's mixed up everybody's arguments.
Faulty target acquisition system, perhaps? Or perhaps friendly fire upon himself? 
my argument its the same as yours..there are pilots with attitude problem..but cockiness is not a problem to him.. -
Originally posted by SingaporeTyrannosaur:
Why don't I break it down further for you?
After repeated
requests the Americans eventually gave us a briefing on condition we didn't say where it came from.
[b]During it we were told that a member of the American special forces, seemingly under great stress, had
requested an air-strike on the Iraqi tanks a mile away from us.
He told the pilot he didnÂ’t have time to give
him a grid reference; though looking back we still canÂ’t see why he was under such pressure.
We were given details of the exchange between the plane and the man on the ground.
The pilot says: "I see a road, I see an intersection, I see vehicles." The man on the ground says "Roger, thatÂ’s your target, youÂ’re cleared to fire." But it was the wrong intersection; the vehicles were ours and those of the Kurdish and the American
special forces we were with. One of them radios up shortly afterwards: “Ceasefire. Ceasefire" he says.
"You’re hitting friendlies. We’ve taken casualties.”
There may well have been recklessness on the part of
some of those involved. But the real problem seemed to be the particular[/colour] [color=red]system of close air support the Americans were using.
It meant they could drop a 1000 pound bomb on such inadequate information. No co-ordinates No grid references.
As you can see, there are multiple factors that led up to the unfortunate bombing of those hapless people. Does the blame rests soley on the shoulders of the pilot? Or does it lie in the system, a lax way of providing information to pilots in a combat situtation?
Viewed from any angle, not just your own myopic one, almost anyone could be blamed for this disaster. But at the end of the day, what did was done? Run lessons to increase pilot competence? Cease all air support? No, they now conducted CAS with a great amount of detailed information now, making sure good intel reaches the pilot before he is told to drop the bomb. And has it worked? Since that incident, aircraft now only bomb under detailed information and the final go-ahead now rests with the operator calling the airstrike. (read stragetypage.org on the AAR on FF incidents, despite a long list of things identified to cause FF, not once did they mention troop/pilot incompetency)
It has been estimated over 50 friendly fire incidents that would have happened on the old SOP were avoided. In any one of these changes did they increase pilot competence above a level then they already are in any way? No, it affected the entire force, both ground and air as a whole.
Avoiding FF is not about getting better pilots, especially in our context when we are already getting as good as we get. It lies in establishing proper procedures to minimise the risk of FF as much as possible.
[/b]It was supposed to have been a routine "close air support operation." A group of U.S. special operations forces aiding a convoy of Kurdish fighters radioed two American fighter jets to strike an enemy tank that was firing at them about a mile away.
i wonder y the same incident have 2 different story?
But instead of striking the Iraqi tank, one of the aircraft dropped a bomb on top of the convoy, killing 18 Kurds and injuring three U.S. soldiers.
Pentagon sources say the attack may have been caused by a simple mix-up: Transmitters worn by special operation forces to avoid "friendly fire" were compatible only with Air Force planes, and not the Navy jets that bombed them.
The convoy attack is one of a small group of friendly fire incidents during the Iraq war that highlight the technological advances -- and problems -- in preventing fratricide on an increasingly complex battlefield.
nervous Spec Ops? -
Murphy's laws of combat are as old as combat themself, they are not strictly laws of combat, but observances of how combat takes place, many people have bled and died for these laws to be formulated. Hold contempt for, or ignore them at your own risk.Originally posted by NathanG5:its a sad thing that..we have murphy's law to blame..n we cant do anything
my argument its the same as yours..there are pilots with attitude problem..but cockiness is not a problem to him..
You can't do anything about murphy's laws, they are there and they are as fixed as the nature of combat itself.
To "do anything" about them, it would mean knowing to understand these rules, and work his way around them.
Cockiness is not a problem with RSAF pilots any more then it is a problem with cockiness in any other unit. They can hold a other-worldy, competitive "stuck up" attitude, which is found in extent in all outfits that have distinguished themselves... but at the end off the day they must know their stuff and get the job done, hence living up to their reputation. -
Hmm, more interestingly, in any of the both versions, did any of it point to problems stemming from the pilots' level of competence, or do both of them point towards laspes in equipment and procedure that led up to this?Originally posted by NathanG5:i wonder y the same incident have 2 different story?
nervous Spec Ops?
Anyway, whoes do you believe? The BBC or the CNN version? I believe the both stories are by themselves correct, they do not contradict each other at all, but present different parts of how things played out, the Spec Op's operative stress, compounded with laspe of procedure (or simply poor procedure) led the Navy jets to the wrong target, tragically, this was made worse by the fact that they had no correct transponders to be IFFed by the Navy jets, and were bombed.
Had procedure been clearer, or equipment correct, some friendlies would have been alive today.
Anyway the conclusion of your quoted article hits the hammer bang on the nail... these incidents indicate the technological advances... and problems... in avoiding FF incidents.
War is still a terribly confused affair, even with modern technology. Even an laspe as not turning on your headlamps (or turning them off), can attract deadily fire from your own side.
As one Delta operative puts it simply at the end of the day. "You can't control all these things from happening, that's just war.What matters is that you did your duty and did it to the best of your ability" -
Originally posted by SingaporeTyrannosaur:
dude..aint it better to just post in a nice way?
Hmm, more interestingly, in any of the both versions, did any of it point to problems stemming from the pilots' level of competence, or do both of them point towards laspes in equipment and procedure that led up to this?
Anyway, whoes do you believe? The BBC or the CNN version? I believe the both stories are by themselves correct, they do not contradict each other at all, but present different parts of how things played out, the Spec Op's operative stress, compounded with laspe of procedure (or simply poor procedure) led the Navy jets to the wrong target, tragically, this was made worse by the fact that they had no correct transponders to be IFFed by the Navy jets, and were bombed.
Had procedure been clearer, or equipment correct, some friendlies would have been alive today.
Anyway the conclusion of your quoted article hits the hammer bang on the nail... these incidents indicate the technological advances... and problems... in avoiding FF incidents.
War is still a terribly confused affair, even with modern technology. Even an laspe as not turning on your headlamps (or turning them off), can attract deadily fire from your own side.
As one Delta operative puts it simply at the end of the day. "You can't control all these things from happening, that's just war.What matters is that [b]you did your duty and did it to the best of your ability"[/b]
lets get back to the topic...no the 2 article never say anything of the pilots competency?
the problem lies on using eyes to differentiate target?
certainly a convoy looks like a convoy...with american flags(maybe too tiny) but arent they flying low?
straight line convoy...too obvious to notice?
the operators have the wrong transponders..do the enemies have transponders? when u cant decide which is the right stuff..what u do?
i didnt get the article from both news agency...
i certainly dun trust both BBC or CNN article 100%
same with my own articles..
n it doesnt make sense to me..the operators did not fight a very hard battle from the start of the war...the kurds are doing all the fighting...y the pressure all of sudden? -
Originally posted by Gedanken:
[b]So youÂ’re saying that I almost ended up candling because I jumped too heavy, and not because the pilot was going 20 knots too fast? I was doing a clean fatigue jump at the time, which means my weight was less than 65 kilograms. Or, in your expert opinion, is that already too heavy? Also, why would tailwinds, thermals, and unseen air currents affect airspeed? All three contribute to a bumpy ride, which I have no issue with.
Erm, tailwinds, thermals and unseen air currets play a very big role in affect airspeed. This is because these can actually make the plane go faster or slower then it really is (increase/reduce lift, drag and trust), and also play around with the instrument sensors, giving the pilot false readings. So while up in the cockpit, the pilot may be reading that he's going at the correct speed, the Herc itself is actually going a bit faster. And nobody is all the wiser.
Of course, if the Herc hit an air pocket while doing a jump (the kind which makes the news when it happens to CV airlines), the result could be disaster.
There are steps to minimise these problems but they cannot be avoided altogether, but it will happen, and will contuine to happen not because of our pilot ability but because we simply do not have technology to allow for on the knot Falcon 4.0 autopilot flying. So the jumpers go out into a surprisingly strong slipstream.
Of course I'm not saying that this is the case in all of the cases, but consider this: Why would any sane pilot want to play dice with people's lives just for kicks? Especially being a C-130 pilot, they would have been WARNED, not just told about the things that can go wrong when they do things wrongly during a jump, along with constant reminders of the punitive punishments for not heeding these warnings?
Would any even vaguely normal-quality RSAF C-130 pilot play dice with his job and the lives of all the jumpers just for kicks and to show off how he can do his job wrongly? Especially when the reward for such behaviour is not applause, but an tribunal and court martial.It appears that you are mixing up my posts with NathanÂ’s. My stance has always been as follows: given my personal experience with pilots, my conclusion is that the process of weeding out pilots with an attitude problem that prevents them from doing the job right (NOT incompetent pilots) is inadequate.
/b]
What then would be an adequate system? One that weeds out all bad pilots? Such a system is ideal but is it attainable?
Our current selection system is second only to the IAF in weeding for the suitable candidate for our aircrew.
Out of 3,000 suitable hopefuls which fit the strict starting citeria ranging from everything from physical to mental tests, only 30 actually make it to train in aircraft, and out of these 30, only 3 finally get behind the helm of the RSAF's precious aircraft.
The thing is, they know that getting there is serious work, and that there are no shortage of candidates who would be willing to take their place should they screw up.
This is also coupled with a system they have to abide by that is completely no-nonsense and anal about safety. Everything must be done by the book and all of their moves are carefully watched. This means that after a bad jump or even a good one where not everything was followed to plan, they better have a good reason for so or they're lunchmeat.
The penalty for showing contempt or willfully disregarding these rules are severe, and usually clips one's wings.
For them, it is make or break, they have to do the job right because should anything go wrong, it is picked to pieces with every detail pored over. Even not sticking to their flight plan by as simple as +500 angel can cost them a lot. And if anything goes wrong, their necks are the first on the line.
Having family members in the force, I can know how strict the airforce is. Unlike the Commandos, the air force is not in the habit of protecting or condoning their pilots and any kind of laxness or fun with a multimillion dollar aircraft and the lives in their cargo hold.
In fact, the RSAF is so strict, that some in here have argued that these policies actually reduce our air force's combat effectiveness by creating pilots that are too cautious to do anything, or are tied up with tons of procedures and rules that operational ability is compromised.[b]It was in response to Nathan’s anecdote about the pilot saying that pilots are superior – my point is that they as fallible as the rest of us. My arguments therefore address both human error and incompetence, but not circumstances.
One only needs to look at any war fought in history to see if pilots are ever even close to being infaliable. If you have been getting the picture that I have been defending the notion of the infaliable pilot, I'm afriad you have just been responsible for a bad case of friendly fire, but I'm okay with that, this is "the fog of heated debate anyway".
As a matter of fact, one of the Murphy's laws of combat tells pilots not to think that they are supermen.
But my question is, are our pilots doing their very best? And are they doing their jobs to the best of their ability?Also, you seem to think that I have proposed some grandiose solutions – read my posts again and you will see that I have proposed no solutions, grandiose or otherwise. So far I have not even gotten to identifying what to fix yet – thanks to the current direction of this argument, we cannot yet get to that point.
Then we better, after all picking out problems without providing solutions is not constructive at all, but I urge you to actually know how the air force currently works before you propose any solutions.
[At this present point in time, I don’t have any interest in your sweeping plans of how to fix the problem. The issue here is simple – you said that they weed out all poor pilots and I disagreed with the two examples I presented, so why don’t we just stick to that? Your helicopter’s flying all over the place, so your view is of little relevance to my point.By the way, don’t go embarrassing yourself trying to tell me about numbers. My doctorate thesis was in statistical analysis, and of all people I know how numbers can be controlled to present a distorted version of the truth. That is the importance of the disproof that I mentioned earlier – if the numbers contradict what you actually know from experience, betting odds are that the numbers are wrong.
So what are the numbers currently telling you? That it is unsafe to operate with our air force? Does striking a lottery (having a bad jump) betting odds are the conclusion, that it is unlikely to win the lottery wrong?With your example of crossing the road, I accept “most and “usual” enough to take my chances crossing the road. However, I am not as foolish as to use those numbers to propose that the driving test process weeds out all bad drivers.
[b]
I never claimed that the RSAF selection system weeded out all the bad drivers. But enough to have all bad things that happen in which our first instict is to blame the pilot be given a second, or even third look before we sic it on the pilot.
But since you have a doctorate in statistical analysis, I think you can agree with the proposition that having more information makes your conclusion more precise.
Strange that having a doctorate in statistical analysis, you are not alien to the idea of a zero percent error rate due to pilot failure... what exactly are you seeing in the numbers that I am missing.
In which case, what you assume to be problems that can be simply fingered towards pilot laxness or attitude problems, can be attributed to far many other factors, once you have all the data.
I have never proposed that the selection system weeded out all the idiots, but I propose the idea that it weeds out enough of the idiots that most of the bad incidents that do happen are more likely to be a combination of other factors that do not have to always to with pilot incompetence or laxness.[b]With the rope incident, the very simple SOP of checking with the despatchers for an all-clear before pulling the release lever was already in place, and was violated by the pilot. In the case of my jump, the pilot violated the 115 knot limit stipulated in the TSR. IÂ’d classify these as unnecessary risks.
I have no argument with the rope incident, the pilot got what he deserved. And not waiting for the all clear before releasing the rope is not just unnecessary, it is contray to common sense. So hence, this is a violation that I am not even trying to justify.
In the case of your jump, there is not enough data to suggest what really happened, but suffice to say, is the pilot's attitute really the factor contributing to tis snafu? If it is, he will have a lot to say once he touches down on the tarmac, and it's likely there'll be bad consquences on his wings if he had been found guilty of any wrongful doing or unnecessary risk. After all, jumping from an aircraft is hardly anything to be played around with.
Also given all the amazing stories I have been hearing about roller coaster rides, there are several conclusions:
Either the air force is not serious about its policies, and the whole thing is just a wayang. In which case we are doomed. And also unlikely as tons of serious accidents prehaps even more imfamous then the P.O.W training case would have happened by now. How do you cover up one entire stick of jumpers pancaking from reckless flying?
The pilots are knowingly violating the rules to applease their egos and then covering their butts (unlikely, considering that any compliant from your co. on their flying can get them canned)
Or our grunts are seeing things they are not supposed to see, like evil, showoff pilots because of inherent nervousness in a loud, heavy machine held up by nothing but several rotating blades flying at over 100 kph through the air.
Of course, I'm not even sure when your jump happened, if it did back then before the RSAF started it's current pro-safety policy to cut any kinds of operational snafu that may arise from human error by any means pratical, then it is hardly valid for judging the force now. -
Dude... Isn't it better to post stating plain facts and conclusions rather then making emotional statements to make a point that obstructs the passage of logic?Originally posted by NathanG5:dude..aint it better to just post in a nice way?
lets get back to the topic...no the 2 article never say anything of the pilots competency?
the problem lies on using eyes to differentiate target?
certainly a convoy looks like a convoy...with american flags(maybe too tiny) but arent they flying low?
straight line convoy...too obvious to notice?
the operators have the wrong transponders..do the enemies have transponders? when u cant decide which is the right stuff..what u do?
i didnt get the article from both news agency...
i certainly dun trust both BBC or CNN article 100%
same with my own articles..
n it doesnt make sense to me..the operators did not fight a very hard battle from the start of the war...the kurds are doing all the fighting...y the pressure all of sudden?
Anyway, Mark 1 eyeball with neural net processor is still the most reliable and intelligent way of aquiring targets, however in modern fast jets, the human eye is limited by the fact that unlike birds of prey, we were designed to spot and aquire detail from targets in moderate distances of up to a kilometer. Even at 500 meters to perfect eyesight, a man or tank just looks just like a small dull blotch which is almost impossible to tell from the enemy. From the top, there is a added problem of not being able to see the side or front profiles of the unit. Everything looks similar from the air.
And contray to popular opinion, or at least what some thing, flying low makes things even harder to observe as the reduced field of view makes things zip by really fast, giving you very little time to actually spot them. Just as when you are travelling in a car, the objects further away seem to move a lot slower due to your wider field of vision relative to your motion.
And yes, a flag is almost impossible to spot with any kind of accuracy. In WW2, tests showed that the even small standard bright orange identification panels (previously standard issue to prevent aerial FF) could be easily missed by friendly aircraft and the only way of having even sometimes reliable identification was to hang one real big mother of a panel on the back of a tank. And even then, some units were attacked mistakenly. This was a time when planes flew a lot slower and there was far more time to aquire the target by eye.
A small american flag? Even one of normal size in a fast F-14 where you have only a few seconds to spot the convoy, let alone pick out the flag, this is no reliable way of visual identification.
Hence is it vital that those pilots get a clear picture from ground controllers what to bomb when providing CAS, where their targets are, and what their targets were.
In a way to overcome the limitations of visual identification, the transponders were an electronic means, where they would alert the jet's IFF to the presence of friendlies in the area before they dropped the bomb, but it didn't work. Any doubt in the mind of the pilot was removed when he was given the confirmation of the "target" and the go-ahead to bomb them.
In air combat, the rule of the thumb is, a target does not respond to electronic IFF is to shoot first and ask questions later. Even this was programmed into the Patriot missile system which shot down the Tornado it though was a ballistic missile. Hence the lack of IFF response and the confirmation of a target, the two key factors, led the pilots to add up the math and conclude that there is almost a complete certainty that the target was hostile, as it would have been in almost all other cases. But nobody figured on a double failure of wrong transponders and wrong info, either one working would have prevented the incident.
And as for pressure, it is hard to tell in war, but completely possible. The moment heavy fighting breaks out or a bullet snaps pass your head, or simply being involved in battle, even if you are not under direct fire, is massively stressful. -
You seemed to have missed this doozy of a quote:Originally posted by SingaporeTyrannosaur:I never claimed that the RSAF selection system weeded out all the bad drivers. But enough to have all bad things that happen in which our first instict is to blame the pilot be given a second, or even third look before we sic it on the pilot.
But since you have a doctorate in statistical analysis, I think you can agree with the proposition that having more information makes your conclusion more precise.
Strange that having a doctorate in statistical analysis, you are not alien to the idea of a zero percent error rate due to pilot failure... what exactly are you seeing in the numbers that I am missing.
In which case, what you assume to be problems that can be simply fingered towards pilot laxness or attitude problems, can be attributed to far many other factors, once you have all the data.
I have never proposed that the selection system weeded out all the idiots, but I propose the idea that it weeds out enough of the idiots that most of the bad incidents that do happen are more likely to be a combination of other factors that do not have to always to with pilot incompetence or laxness.
Note, it's not "most of which" or even "some of which", but just plain "which" - sounds pretty categorical to me. That is the one and only issue that I have here, and you still can't seem to address that.Originally posted by SingaporeTyrannosaur:a few black sheep (which are rapidly weeded out under a merciless system)
I'll take what you've said to be as close as you'll ever be man enough to make a retraction. In the meantime, why don't you apply for an Egyptian passport? After all, you seem to be spending a fair bit of time living in denial. -
I have made no retraction, though it may boosts your ego to say so.
The problem would lie in your of reading too much from the line that you have taken to assume to mean that ALL the black sheeps are weeded out, compounded by your desire to exploit the smallest possible handle to fit your points in, taking words beyond the literal, as well as failing to apply common sense and reason when reading my points.
Of course, should I follow your way of reading posts, I can also say that you quite obviously contradict yourself when you present the mistaken notion that I am somehow proposing the idea that our system weeds out all black sheep and produces infaliable pilots and then tell a forumite at the next turn to give me a break because I do not think so.
My point remains, and has remained the same, the system is one that is extremely efficent for weeding out black sheep, but some jokers will still remain, for the simple and unavoidable fact of reality that an idiot-proof system will only produce a better idiot that somehow slips through the cracks and causes most of the disasters.
Given your obviously impressive doctorate credentials, impressive experience and learned views on our armed forces which I take to be of credibility for your sake. I am amazed that you are unable to second guess, or moderate your impressions from reading statements from such simpleton as me apparently making a fool of myself in here.
I guess that would be a failure on your part to actually take my statement in the context of what the entire case I am making, which is not surprising, considering your responses have always seemed to be shooting way to the left.
I great temptation, I would like to insert a witty comment about booking passports, but I prefer to remain in the realm of reality and reasoned debate rather then unproductive word splitting.
I urge you, to discuss in tangible terms, what exactly you think is wrong and why, rather then dance around boxing with shadows and vague notions. On my part, I think I have spelt out what I think the current system is doing right and what I precieve to be the actual picture of things. What's yours?
I eagerly await your next, hopefully productive response.
Of course, I still wonder how valid you hold your unfortunate personal experience to be in the light of prehaps several things that might, or might not be revelational to your understanding of flying aircraft, courtesy of my relations from the force. -
It's fine, ST, you can say whatever you want to weasel your way out of a tight spot, but I have already presented the hard evidence.
The issue here is simple - you made a categorical statement that in my view is incorrect and instead of addressing it, you choose to try and skirt around the issue by throwing red herrings in. Why should I bother discussing the bigger issues with you, when you don't even have the integrity to acknowledge an error on a relatively small one? Figure out how to fix it - pfft. Your statement is that the sytem weeds out the "black sheep" - if that's the case, why bother looking at solutions to a problem that you say doesn't exist? Get a grip.
Feel free to throw in all the chaff that you want - hell, you can even call it semantics if that helps you sleep better at night. I've got the measure of you and what you're made of already, and I don't need to know any more about you or your helicopter view.
You want to talk about the larger issues here? What's your claim to actual knowledge? I already have a report with recommendations on situational awareness that the Royal Australian Air Force is using for their selection of pilots and air traffic controllers, so what you have presented so far does not impress me enough to overlook your lack of intellectual honesty. -
dude..what facts did u show me?Originally posted by SingaporeTyrannosaur:Dude... Isn't it better to post stating plain facts and conclusions rather then making emotional statements to make a point that obstructs the passage of logic?
Anyway, Mark 1 eyeball with neural net processor is still the most reliable and intelligent way of aquiring targets, however in modern fast jets, the human eye is limited by the fact that unlike birds of prey, we were designed to spot and aquire detail from targets in moderate distances of up to a kilometer. Even at 500 meters to perfect eyesight, a man or tank just looks just like a small dull blotch which is almost impossible to tell from the enemy. From the top, there is a added problem of not being able to see the side or front profiles of the unit. Everything looks similar from the air.
And contray to popular opinion, or at least what some thing, flying low makes things even harder to observe as the reduced field of view makes things zip by really fast, giving you very little time to actually spot them. Just as when you are travelling in a car, the objects further away seem to move a lot slower due to your wider field of vision relative to your motion.
And yes, a flag is almost impossible to spot with any kind of accuracy. In WW2, tests showed that the even small standard bright orange identification panels (previously standard issue to prevent aerial FF) could be easily missed by friendly aircraft and the only way of having even sometimes reliable identification was to hang one real big mother of a panel on the back of a tank. And even then, some units were attacked mistakenly. This was a time when planes flew a lot slower and there was far more time to aquire the target by eye.
A small american flag? Even one of normal size in a fast F-14 where you have only a few seconds to spot the convoy, let alone pick out the flag, this is no reliable way of visual identification.
Hence is it vital that those pilots get a clear picture from ground controllers what to bomb when providing CAS, where their targets are, and what their targets were.
In a way to overcome the limitations of visual identification, the transponders were an electronic means, where they would alert the jet's IFF to the presence of friendlies in the area before they dropped the bomb, but it didn't work. Any doubt in the mind of the pilot was removed when he was given the confirmation of the "target" and the go-ahead to bomb them.
In air combat, the rule of the thumb is, a target does not respond to electronic IFF is to shoot first and ask questions later. Even this was programmed into the Patriot missile system which shot down the Tornado it though was a ballistic missile. Hence the lack of IFF response and the confirmation of a target, the two key factors, led the pilots to add up the math and conclude that there is almost a complete certainty that the target was hostile, as it would have been in almost all other cases. But nobody figured on a double failure of wrong transponders and wrong info, either one working would have prevented the incident.
And as for pressure, it is hard to tell in war, but completely possible. The moment heavy fighting breaks out or a bullet snaps pass your head, or simply being involved in battle, even if you are not under direct fire, is massively stressful.
to tell me the pilot dunno which is which?
how abt mobile A/A Gun? any mobile A/A trucks...
in that case we're in deep Shlt...
in tat case any one who wear glasses can be a pilot..even both eyes total up to a 1000 degree..
if u dunno who is down there...coms back
ask when u are not sure...
we all learn that from young..i learn it the hard way in NS..
about a bullet snap pass my head..yes indeed its stressful..
but in the above case..i didnt know tank can be use as A/A gun?
stress? -
Weasel my way out of a tight spot? Tempted as I might be to even consider this preposterous depiction slightly for it's comical value, I must politely decline, given the fact that I am quite comfortable with the case I have built and have no intention of going anywhere quite yet. But in the event you do actually bother to look into them seriously without irrational and emotional bias, do give me a flag anytime, I'll will completely happy to indulge you.Originally posted by Gedanken:It's fine, ST, you can say whatever you want to weasel your way out of a tight spot, but I have already presented the hard evidence.
The issue here is simple - you made a categorical statement that in my view is incorrect and instead of addressing it, you choose to try and skirt around the issue by throwing red herrings in. Why should I bother discussing the bigger issues with you, when you don't even have the integrity to acknowledge an error on a relatively small one? Figure out how to fix it - pfft. Your statement is that the sytem weeds out the "black sheep" - if that's the case, why bother looking at solutions to a problem that you say doesn't exist? Get a grip.
Feel free to throw in all the chaff that you want - hell, you can even call it semantics if that helps you sleep better at night. I've got the measure of you and what you're made of already, and I don't need to know any more about you or your helicopter view.
You want to talk about the larger issues here? What's your claim to actual knowledge? I already have a report with recommendations on situational awareness that the Royal Australian Air Force is using for their selection of pilots and air traffic controllers, so what you have presented so far does not impress me enough to overlook your lack of intellectual honesty.
In fact, with somebody who says, quote "you can say whatever you want" One wonders who is the actual one doing the real dodging and weaseling.
It's with amazement that I read your post, given how you describe yourself so perfectly.
The issue lies with you being unable to comprehend and take my statements in their context, and when exposed, quite stubbornly refusing to see things for the way they are, applying your own inflexible understanding to them, and them attempting to quite expertly squirm your way out by laying down a barrage of personal assualts questioning my "honesty", and setting up a field of straw dummies to tear down and hence take the fictional moral high ground from which you can some how contuine.
Since you have proven yourself to be quite the Charlatan, I suppose any attempt to engage in productive banter would prove fruitless, as you have chosen instead to respond from a position of make believe.
Unfortunately, rebuttals fired at dummy targets do not hit anything, which is unfortunate, considering you have done nothing productive as of yet but to constantly harp on your two sacred incidents, and yet at the same time consistently refuse to actually look into the issues for what they really are.
Your concern for troop safety, coupled with the amazing ability to avoid facing the remote possibility that all the mishaps that you think is easily attributed to poor quality of work in the pilots, may not be so anyway, but then again, reading your truth avoiding, self-deceptive manner of posts, I should not have expected any other outcome.
Like all sterotypes, the concept of poor piloting is easy to set up and tear down, but ultimately solves nothing, which is what you are apparently expert at doing, firing thousands of rounds downrange for apperance but with none actually in the direction of the target.
The classical forumal getaway, paint a dummy target of your counterpart, concentrate fire on it, lay down a smoke screen, and then escape in a charade of personal assualts that hopefully deter anybody who might be foolish enough to actually believe them from responding with something that forces you to apply logic, rather then rethoric.
So be it. -
Finally we are getting somewhere, after this charade.
The ground spec ops operative that ordered the attack was described as "under stress", not the pilot. Go read.Originally posted by NathanG5:dude..what facts did u show me?
to tell me the pilot dunno which is which?
how abt mobile A/A Gun? any mobile A/A trucks...
in that case we're in deep Shlt...
in tat case any one who wear glasses can be a pilot..even both eyes total up to a 1000 degree..[/quote]
Heh, now then you know? That seeing things on the ground from an aircraft at speed is very difficult? That's why they are currently trying to get a reliable technological means for identifying who's friendly and who's not. Visual identification just isn't enough. Nearly 80 years of air combat has though us that, and the jets aren't getting any slower and response times are getting shorter and ground pictures more littorial.
From 300 feet above at 200 knots, a Bradley looks pretty much like a BMP-2, a dull, rectangle moving with a dust trail behind it. I assume you've taken a plane before, just look at the ground objects that you though were easy to identify just moments after takeoff, attitude makes a massive difference.
The human eye has a resolution of 0.59 arc minutes on a 50mm "prime" lens, there are limits to how much it can see from the air, we don't have eyes of birds of prey unfortunately, we were designed to see in acute colour with general, widefield steroscopic vision, hardly the binocular vision that would make identifying friendlies from the air easy.if u dunno who is down there...coms back
ask when u are not sure...
we all learn that from young..i learn it the hard way in NS..
Erm, if you read the transcript, you'll notice that they pilot did radio to the ground operator and described his "target" and the location when it reached it after been ordered to bomb targets there, the ground operator radioed back in the okay and he hit it.
[quote]about a bullet snap pass my head..yes indeed its stressful..
but in the above case..i didnt know tank can be use as A/A gun?
stress? -
Heh, now then you know? That seeing things on the ground from an aircraft at speed is very difficult? That's why they are currently trying to get a reliable technological means for identifying who's friendly and who's not. Visual identification just isn't enough. Nearly 80 years of air combat has though us that, and the jets aren't getting any slower and response times are getting shorter and ground pictures more littorial.
heh..in that case we are truly in trouble..
From 300 feet above at 200 knots, a Bradley looks pretty much like a BMP-2, a dull, rectangle moving with a dust trail behind it. I assume you've taken a plane before, just look at the ground objects that you though were easy to identify just moments after takeoff, attitude makes a massive difference.
The human eye has a resolution of 0.59 arc minutes on a 50mm "prime" lens, there are limits to how much it can see from the air, we don't have eyes of birds of prey unfortunately, we were designed to see in acute colour with general, widefield steroscopic vision, hardly the binocular vision that would make identifying friendlies from the air easy
read up on the case again..how many truck convoy are there during the incident?
10? 20?
there is only one convoy..straight line..does tanks firing at enemy does a armor colunm in staright line?
think before giving me anything about vision on plane or chopper..
think again in this incident...does a straight line convoy look like tanks firing position?Erm, if you read the transcript, you'll notice that they pilot did radio to the ground operator and described his "target" and the location when it reached it after been ordered to bomb targets there, the ground operator radioed back in the okay and he hit it.
im saying ask again..duh
there are suppose to be 2 group of vehicles one teh ground..aint it obvious the pilot only saw one group of vehicles?
think...u are the pilot i saw only one group vehicles? n its in a straight line...whats in your mind now?The ground spec ops operative that ordered the attack was described as "under stress", not the pilot. Go read.
its either u forgot whats u type or something else..im refering to this-->In air combat, the rule of the thumb is, a target does not respond to electronic IFF is to shoot first and ask questions later. Even this was programmed into the Patriot missile system which shot down the Tornado it though was a ballistic missile. Hence the lack of IFF response and the confirmation of a target, the two key factors, led the pilots to add up the math and conclude that there is almost a complete certainty that the target was hostile, as it would have been in almost all other cases. But nobody figured on a double failure of wrong transponders and wrong info, either one working would have prevented the incident.
go read again.
And as for pressure, it is hard to tell in war, but completely possible. The moment heavy fighting breaks out or a bullet snaps pass your head, or simply being involved in battle, even if you are not under direct fire, is massively stressful. -
Fine by me. At the end of the day, you are the one who has yet to address a simple issue: you said "a few black sheep (which are rapidly weeded out under a merciless system) " - nothing about "most of" there, so it's plainly categorical, but in light of your later statements, plainly untrue as well. Is that simple enough for even you to understand?
If you can't even take care of something so elementary, and then you even go on to mix up everyone's arguments, how can you expect me to place any stock in anything else you say? You can't even deal with single trees, but you want to talk about the whole forest - now that is truly side-splitting. So, yes, you can say whatever you want - you're the one telling us that you can't back up what you write, and the evidence is all in this thread.
Call me fussy, but if I'm to hold a serious discussion with someone, I'd like to know that I'm talking to someone who's big enough to admit when he's wrong, especially when the error is so obvious. After all, if you can't even set a relatively trivial issue straight, what's that say about everything else you write? -
heh..in that case we are truly in trouble..
I'm not any happier then you about the risk of friendly fire, considering my butt is on the line too. That's why I am very interested in finding out the real underlying reason and getting to that rather then blame the pilot all the time. If it's the pilot, go get him, but if there are many other factors to fix, let's work on that first!
read up on the case again..how many truck convoy are there during the incident?
10? 20?
there is only one convoy..straight line..does tanks firing at enemy does a armor colunm in staright line?
think before giving me anything about vision on plane or chopper..
think again in this incident...does a straight line convoy look like tanks firing position?
That's the problem of war you see, it is inherently a very dangerous affair. As long as there are munitions flying around, it is impossible for the people near by to be 100 percent safe. In a highly fluid situtation where enemy and friendlies are everywhere, it becomes even more dangerous, there's no denying it.
As much as we would like to automatically have safe and reliable CAS, which I'm sure the pilots try their best to give, effective CAS is heavily dependent on having up-to-date information, proper communication, and good intelligence, especially when there are no strict lines to be drawn in the battlefield. If we are lacking in any of these areas in any one time, there is a very real risk a bomb will fall on us. This is the nature of war.
To good news is, if we establish these things properly, CAS is a very effective and safe thing to be around. Hence the onus is on us to make sure that we identify ourselves clearly to our side, and make sure everybody KNOWS were we are currently, as well as have all the proper equipment to prevent misidentification. We cannot rely on the pilot, who is trapped up in his jet at 200 knots who barely has a few seconds to see and figure out everything from a visual picture of dull blotches and dust trials, to work on poor intelligence and directions and expect him to still bomb the right things. In the same way we respect our firearm safety rules, the rules of calling down CAS must also be obeyed carefully, or else accidents will happen.
It's as basic as not trying to signal to friendly aircraft during combat with a signal mirror as the pilot might mistake the glare for gunfire and engage! We on the ground must make every attempt to make the job for the pilot as easy as possible as he does the same as us. If we have done everything we can and still get bombed... then let's tear him limb from limb.
CAS aside, if you have a Spector Gunship up there, you can see how the need to communicate proper and precise instructions to them and not rely on the aircrew to figure out things from what they can see becomes immediately apparent!
Proper air ground communication made the Little Bird strafing runs highly effective in the Battle of the Black Sea, imagine what would have happened if the infantry just told the pilots to "yeah strafe that area on the left intersection (whose left?)" instead of using infrared strobes or other means to mark the Somali positions, which were in some cases just across the street from them with no margin of error.
Of course, seeing a convoy in a staight line to a pilot may mean anything, it could be friendlies, or a convoy of Iraqi irregulars on technicals heading to engage vastly outnumbered friendly forces. And given how lacking the Iraqis are in proper manuver, anything is to be expected from them. That's why the pilot radioed back to the ground controller what he was seeing, unfortunately the ground controller seemed pretty sure in radioing back.im saying ask again..duh
Well what's on my mind is that the pilot hardly had time to make sense of this up in the air approaching at high speed, expecially that of a fluid situtation. As I said, the Iraqis as an enemy are highly irregular in their tatics and anything, professional or tatically poor, is to be expected from them.
there are suppose to be 2 group of vehicles one teh ground..aint it obvious the pilot only saw one group of vehicles?
think...u are the pilot i saw only one group vehicles? n its in a straight line...whats in your mind now?
Sadly, it is impossible for the pilot to actually see anything, especially in a rapidly developing combat situtation. That's why they are dependent on ground operators. In the time they recieved the fire mission and reach the target area, the groups could have merged, split up, or done something else funny. In modern combat, espeically in CAS intelligence, 2 minute intelligence is old news liao.
I mean we can sit back and relax and think about what went wrong and how this and that should or should not have happened and what should have been done, but understand that in combat such retrospective thinking is next to impossible and usually we have to rely on the simplest methods to get the job done. There's little time to think about why the target doesn't exactly fit the information given, and less to think about given the info was vague and the situtation is fluid.
That's why the onus remains on us again to guide them unerringly to the target. If we give them the go ahead, they will do it... it is as important for them as it is for us.
The funny thing about modern warfare technology is that it has little problem hitting targets, but finding the right targets all the time still remains a problem, and will become worse as the ability to kill improves.
It's all about communication, not pilot competence... unless the pilot was stone dumb.
Remember this is not a problem that is just going to go away especially when UCAVs come on the scene, operated by an operator that sees out of it's narrow sensors and worse, if some of them are automated. Robots do not question much at all, and the bulk of the burdern in preventing FF will then fall even more on us!
That's why we should not look down on the signals corps, we need promising talent there man.its either u forgot whats u type or something else..im refering to this-->
I think you mistaken what I ment liao, I was writing on why the ground operative was stressed in response to your question on combat stress. Maybe I have mistaken your post to refer to the ground operator when you were to the stress pilot? What's the history? Clarification?
quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In air combat, the rule of the thumb is, a target does not respond to electronic IFF is to shoot first and ask questions later. Even this was programmed into the Patriot missile system which shot down the Tornado it though was a ballistic missile. Hence the lack of IFF response and the confirmation of a target, the two key factors, led the pilots to add up the math and conclude that there is almost a complete certainty that the target was hostile, as it would have been in almost all other cases. But nobody figured on a double failure of wrong transponders and wrong info, either one working would have prevented the incident.
And as for pressure, it is hard to tell in war, but completely possible. The moment heavy fighting breaks out or a bullet snaps pass your head, or simply being involved in battle, even if you are not under direct fire, is massively stressful.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
go read again. -
What's harder to miss, that, at the end of the day, you are proving yourself to be quite the lawyer but with little constructive to contribute.Originally posted by Gedanken:Fine by me. At the end of the day, you are the one who has yet to address a simple issue: you said "a few black sheep (which are rapidly weeded out under a merciless system) " - nothing about "most of" there, so it's plainly categorical, but in light of your later statements, plainly untrue as well. Is that simple enough for even you to understand?
If you can't even take care of something so elementary, and then you even go on to mix up everyone's arguments, how can you expect me to place any stock in anything else you say? You can't even deal with single trees, but you want to talk about the whole forest - now that is truly side-splitting. So, yes, you can say whatever you want - you're the one telling us that you can't back up what you write, and the evidence is all in this thread.
Call me fussy, but if I'm to hold a serious discussion with someone, I'd like to know that I'm talking to someone who's big enough to admit when he's wrong, especially when the error is so obvious. After all, if you can't even set a relatively trivial issue straight, what's that say about everything else you write?
At the end of the day, it's you inability to understand, or even vaguely see my attempts to clarify my statements to fit your rigid intellectual protocols as anything more then an attempt to "weasel" myself out is what that cripples you. Not unexpected, considering you have had a consistent track record of being unable to see beyond your own narrow paradigm or even consider for a moment, and possibilty exists beyond your own. The problem is not with being fussy, it's with being so nonsensically obessed with the innane.
I do not claim to have a watertight case, but I can claim to have a really good one, of course, for somebody who has claimed to be out of touch with Singapore for 10 years, and coming back with such strong opinions, prehaps it would behoove you to stop and listen a little more.
Your inane ability to get hung up on your "intellectual rules of engagement", or violate them at your whim when it proves advantageous also builds up the inconsistency of your statements.
As some unknown person said. "Getting straight to the point is far better then getting entangled in fancy notions of intellectualism."
Given your affinity for fancy intellectualism, painting fancy but ultimately infantile and daft pictures on these notions, hair splitting and a quite apparent effort to avoid the issue, it's apparent that you have learnt well from a certain political party whose method is to avoid reason at all costs and whose main political weapon is not the application strong logic, but deploying a minefield of "acceptable intellectual behaviour" to deter opponents, character killing and the uncanny ability to go deaf at just the right moment. -
And what is any discourse worth if you cannot either back up or amend what you say? If anything, it is you who are using the tricks of the party - "don't worry about that bit, just let me distract you with this instead". Nothing doing, boy.
What you call rigid intellectual rules, I call the intellectual honesty required in any true debate. Say what you mean and mean what you say, otherwise nothing you say will be worth anything. -
I also see that you have a rather active imagination there, what with some so-called consistent track record - should I be flattered that you've been paying close enough attention to claim to be able to cite a litany of sins? Who's obsessive then, eh?
As for being "out of touch with Singapore for 10 years", again it's an impressive bit of artistic licence employed on your part. Just because I've been out of Singapore for 10 years does not mean that I've been out of touch. I happen to keep regular contact with one of Sembawang Air Base's former COs, plus some of the senior officers on the maintenance side. On top of that, contrary to your "us and them" assumption (emphasis on the "ass" part), I do in fact keep in touch with a number of officers, some of whom are pilots and others ground crew. What they've bee telling me over the last 10 years gels much more with what Nathan says than your paperback pipe dreams.
So it's fine, you can just carry on like a two-bob watch. The rest of us know better. -
to sum it all up issue..seriously i have no problem agreeing with from the start..Originally posted by SingaporeTyrannosaur:I think you mistaken what I ment liao, I was writing on why the ground operative was stressed in response to your question on combat stress. Maybe I have mistaken your post to refer to the ground operator when you were to the stress pilot? What's the history? Clarification?
the numbers sound logical..but numbers are numbers..
but on seeing 1st hand on the various incident myself..i seriously doubt our young local pilots capability..
we dun have transponders..we dun have much high tech equipment to prevent any FF..look thru our post on the FF issue..the American have the most high tech equipment in the world..
look at us again..we are just beginning to harness our technology knowledge..
my base still uses AR-15...n some others old age equipment..
im defending an airbase..so i know my butt will be in a safe place..
cant help to think whats gona happen to our infantry boys..
im not typing nonsense..
wana know the latest incident that happen?
2 F-16(variant unknown) land with two damage..
one with a scratch belly..one with a bended fin(what u call it? the tail fin?)
y it happen? they did a unwarrant stunt..
yes..they are good enough to land safely..but to me they are not competent enough not to do it( the stunt) -
Originally posted by Gedanken:
Circular reasoning has it's appeal to you apparently, going on wild goose chases to reach back to square one. And should you agree with Nathan, it's good to note that while you have been bushwacking, people have been making good progress in understanding the issue and relations between accidents and personnel quality. I wonder where eactly in the fossil record do you stand now? Or are your views just a frankestien of hearing what you want to hear, pick and mix, with a verdict that demands evidence, and not the other way round?
As for So it's fine, you can just carry on like a two-bob watch. The rest of [b]us know better.[/b]
Of course, given your ability to suddenly become ignorant of pivotal facts that could upset your preception.
Sedulously using the very same methods you happily split hairs over, you are truly a contradiction in terms.
Of course, I recently had a chat with a paratrooper less then 24 hours ago... it seems that your views are anything but common. He had no illusions about the safety of his duty, but was a lot less whiny then you about the Herky pilots. To him, the main issue with jumping safety is not really pilot safety, but the brain dead things jumpers can do during the jump.
Apparently the quality of our jumpers needs to be looked into as well. But I suspect going there with will will spawn a tangential ramble of posts obessed on singular incidents, fact ignoring, and fancy intellectual ballroom dancing.
You can keep up the riverdance preformance, but I suspect a lot of people knows better then you, or me... but unlike you, I would't be as brash as to say that the rest of "us" (emphasis on the Uuuuu now) knows better then you.
It's unfortunate, but not unexpected, the other phonetic version of "us" stays firmly with you, given your sudden affinity and taste for it.