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To give us all a relief from postings about the latest outrage from this administration we’re treated today with articles on aircraft carriers in some foreign navies, the advance of LED lighting, and the claim that cheating is the favorite pastime of America’s favorite pastime.

A blog named War is Boring starts us off with Your Aircraft Carrier Is A Piece of Crap. First the post is about Russia’s Admiral Kuznetsov, then two countries, India and China, who purchased decommissioned carriers from the Russians. The close is about Brazil’s purchase of a French carrier.

The Admiral Kuznetsov, Russia’s only aircraft carrier, was launched in 1985 and joined the fleet in 1991. Since then the 55,000-ton, fossil-fuel-powered flattop has managed just four frontline deployments—all of them to the Mediterranean, and all of them just a few months in duration.

By contrast, American flattops typically deploy for at least six months every two years. The nuclear-powered USS Enterprise, commissioned in 1962, completed 25 deployments before leaving service in 2012.

One of Admiral Kuznetsov’s major problems is her powerplant. The vessel is powered by steam turbines and turbo-pressurized boilers that Defense Industry Daily generously described as “defective.” Anticipating breakdowns, large ocean-going tugs accompany Admiral Kuznetsov whenever she deploys.

Poor maintenance makes life difficult and dangerous for Admiral Kuznetsov’s 1,900 sailors. A short circuit started a fire off Turkey in 2009 that killed one seaman.

Her pipes are bad. “When it’s this cold, water freezes everywhere including pipes which may cause a rupture,” English Russia reported. “To prevent this, they just don’t supply almost 60 percent of the cabins with water (neither in winter nor in summer). The situation with latrines is just as bad. The ship has over 50 latrines but half of them are closed.” 

Almost 2,000 men. Twenty-five latrines. Do the math. …

.. In 2004 New Delhi inked a $1.5-billion deal for the 1982-vintage Russian flattop Admiral Gorshkov. In Russian service, the 45,000-ton vessel had carried a few helicopters and small Yakovlev jump jets; the Indians paid to have the flight deck expanded and a bow ramp fitted to accommodate up to 16 MiG-29 fighters.

Renamed Vikramaditya, the flattop was due to enter service in 2008. But the poorly-managed Russian shipyard was overwhelmed by the scale of the refit. The cost doubled and trials were bumped back to September 2012. And when the crew pushed the conventionally-powered ship to her theoretical top speed of 32 knots, her boilers overheated.

“India didn’t want to use asbestos as heat protection for the boilers,” Defense Industry Daily explained. “Instead, the boilers’ designer had to use firebrick ceramics. Which, as we see, didn’t work so well. Especially on a ship that Russia put up for sale in 1994, after a boiler room explosion.” Our emphasis. …

… Not all shitty aircraft carriers are Russian. The U.K. and France have both sold to poorer navies decommissioned flattops that probably should have been permanently retired. In 2000 the Brazilian navy acquired the former Foch from Paris for $12 million. …

Next we’re treated to parts of the Wikipedia entry on the first Chinese carrier. We have only the parts about the purchase and the 17,000 mile tow to China.

… In mid-2000, the Dutch International Transport Contractors tugboat Suhaili with a Filipino crew was hired to take Varyag under tow. Chong Lot could not get permission from Turkey to transit the dangerous Bosphorus strait; under the Montreux Treaty of 1936 Turkey has obligations to permit free passage, but has certain sovereignty and refusal rights. The hulk spent 16 months under commercial tow circling in the Black Sea. High-level PRC government ministers conducted negotiations in Ankara on Chong Lot’s behalf, offering to allow Chinese tourists to visit cash-strapped Turkey if the travel agency’s ship were allowed to pass through the straits. On November 1, 2001, Turkey finally relented from its position that the vessel posed too great of a danger to the bridges of Istanbul, and allowed the transit.

Varyag was escorted by twenty-seven vessels, including eleven tug boats and three pilot boats, and took six hours to transit the strait; most large ships take an hour and a half. The Russian press reported that sixteen pilots and 250 seamen were involved. At 11:45 a.m. on November 2, the hulk completed its passage and made for Gallipoli and Çanakkale at 5.8 knots (10.7 km/h; 6.7 mph). It passed through the Dardanelles without incident.

On November 3, Varyag was caught in a force 9 gale and broke adrift while passing the Greek island of Skyros. Sea rescue workers tried to re-capture the hulk, which was drifting toward the island of Euboea. The seven-member crew (three Russians, three Ukrainians and one Filipino) remained on board as six tugboats tried to reestablish their tow. After many failed attempts to reattach the lines, a Greek coast guard rescue helicopter landed on Varyag and picked up four of the seven crew. One tug managed to make a line fast to the ship later in the day, but high winds severely hampered efforts by two other tugs to secure the ship. On November 6, Aries Lima (reported as both Dutch and Portuguese), a sailor from the tug Haliva Champion, died after a fall while attempting to reattach the tow lines. On November 7, the hulk was taken back under tow and progress resumed at about three knots.

The Suez Canal does not permit passage of “dead” ships — those without their own on-board power source — so the hulk was towed through the Strait of Gibraltar, around the Cape of Good Hope, and through the Straits of Malacca. …

Craig Pirrong reacts to the Chinese carrier in a post from last November.

In the comments, (a reader) mentions the successful Chinese landing of a J-15 jet on its new aircraft carrier as evidence of China rising.

It is an advance for China, definitely. But a baby step when you consider the complexity of carrier operations, especially at a true operational tempo, with 120 sorties (takeoffs and landing) per 12 hour flight day, sometimes surging to 190 per day. The ballet of the deck is an amazing-and amazingly dangerous-thing. Especially when you start doing it with live ammunition hanging from wings and waiting on deck, and especially when you do it day after day and crews become fatigued.

The US Navy has been doing this for close to a century. The accumulated experience and knowledge will take the Chinese a generation to match. (Only four navies-the US, Japan, the UK, and France have operated carriers in a serious way.)

And by the time China catches up with that, the US will have moved on. It is already moving on. For on virtually the same day China landed a manned jet on a carrier, the US loaded an X-47B Unmanned Aerial Vehicle onto the USS Harry Truman for flight testing:

So while China takes its first steps into the 20th century doing what the US (and the UK) first did in 1945-land a manned combat jet on a CV-the US is moving into the 21st by testing unmanned combat jet on a CV.

So who is really making history? And is a gap closing, or opening?

Pirrong’s forecast of drone operations on a carrier has come about. Gizmodo has the story of landings and takeoffs from carriers. First launch was in was in May and the first landing was in July. At the end of the article we have some links to videos of the events.

It’s not often that we get to witness aviation history being made, but when we do, it’s often awesome. Such is the case with the U.S. Navy’s X-47B which just became the first unmanned aircraft to land on an aircraft carrier.

Landing a drone on an aircraft carrier was not a cheap or easy task. The so-called “Salty Dog 502″ has been in training to accomplish such a feat for years now, and the program has cost the government over $1.4 billion. It won’t spend anymore, because the Navy is retiring its two X-47B’s and sending them to Navy museums in Florida and Maryland. The aircraft deserve nothing less than being enshrined. “Your grandchildren and great grandchildren, and mine, will be reading about this historic event in their history books,” Rear Admiral Mat Winter told the press ahead of the landing. “This is not trivial.”

How untrivial is it? Some of the top brass say that Wednesday’s accomplishment is second only to the introduction of naval aircraft way back in 1911. And the thought of robot planes zipping on and off of floating runways is probably just as scary to the people of 2013 as the idea of planes on boats was to the people of 1911. …

Forbes article about LED lights coming into their own.

The 23-story Bank of America Plaza in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.,– known as the Las Olas City Centre – is the latest iconic skyscraper to undergo an exterior lighting makeover with the aim of reducing energy consumption without sacrificing safety or aesthetics.

Its project, spearheaded by the building’s developer and manager Stiles, involved scrapping 144 metal halide fixtures on the tower’s signature ziggurat, along the rooftop and several faces in exchange for a system that uses 288 Philips Color Kinetics LED fixtures. The system can change colors and is being used to promote events or causes – like what has traditionally been done with the Empire State Building, which underwent its own facelift several years ago.

The overall impact of the installation is a 77 percent reduction in the power draw, which will translate into an annual savings of $26,897 in energy and operating costs.

The investment that it took to make the upgrade hasn’t been disclosed, but installations like these typically pay for themselves over several years when electricity savings and rebates are taken into account. In this case, the project was part of a retrofit undertaken with the aim of earning a Gold certification for the entire building under the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) rating system.

If changing just a few fixtures can result in savings of this nature, imagine what happens when you transform an entire city.

Overhauls across both Las Vegas and Los Angeles offer a vivid illustration of what’s possible – especially when you consider that street lights can account for up to 40 percent of a given city’s electricity bill. …

Now we get to the piece about cheating in baseball from Pacific Standard.

… 1994: Albert Belle was one of the best power hitters of any generation, and his 1994 season kicked off three straight MVP-caliber seasons. Unfortunately, those other two seasons failed to match the transcendent absurdism of Belle’s ‘94 campaign.

In the first inning of a July 15 game against the Chicago White Sox, Belle, then of the Cleveland Indians, was accused of using a corked bat by White Sox manager Gene Lamont. The bat was confiscated and locked away in the umpires’ dressing room for later inspection, which set off one of baseball’s great capers.

Belle’s use of corked bats was an open secret in the Indians clubhouse, and the team could ill-afford to lose their best hitter to a suspension. Desperate for a solution, Indians relief pitcher Jason Grimsley was enlisted to retrieve the bat. Grimsley accessed a false ceiling, crawled across it to reach the dressing room, and swapped out the bat with an uncorked one belonging to teammate Paul Sorrento. During the sixth inning of the game, the umpires’ custodian noticed signs of a break-in, and the Chicago police were called in. Major League Baseball even flew in a former FBI agent to investigate the theft.

Still unaware of what exactly happened, Major League Baseball demanded the Indians produce the confiscated bat or risk the FBI getting involved. The team acquiesced, and an inspection of the bat revealed it was indeed corked. Belle was eventually suspended for seven games, but Grimsley’s involvement remained secret until a 1999 interview with The New York Times. As for why he replaced Belle’s bat with one belonging to Sorrento, the correct answer is the simple one: all of Belle’s bats were corked. No one knows how any part of this story could be any more perfect. …

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It’s “smart diplomacy day.” First with Daniel Henninger on the president’s disappearing credibility.

The collapse of ObamaCare is the tip of the iceberg for the magical Obama presidency.

From the moment he emerged in the public eye with his 2004 speech at the Democratic Convention and through his astonishing defeat of the Clintons in 2008, Barack Obama’s calling card has been credibility. He speaks, and enough of the world believes to keep his presidency afloat. Or used to.

All of a sudden, from Washington to Riyadh, Barack Obama’s credibility is melting.

Amid the predictable collapse the past week of HealthCare.gov’s too-complex technology, not enough notice was given to Sen. Marco Rubio‘s statement that the chances for success on immigration reform are about dead. Why? Because, said Sen. Rubio, there is “a lack of trust” in the president’s commitments. …

… Bluntly, Mr. Obama’s partners are concluding that they cannot do business with him. They don’t trust him. Whether it’s the Saudis, the Syrian rebels, the French, the Iraqis, the unpivoted Asians or the congressional Republicans, they’ve all had their fill of coming up on the short end with so mercurial a U.S. president. And when that happens, the world’s important business doesn’t get done. It sits in a dangerous and volatile vacuum.

The next major political event in Washington is the negotiation over spending, entitlements and taxes between House budget chairman Paul Ryan and his Senate partner, Patty Murray. The bad air over this effort is the same as that Marco Rubio says is choking immigration reform: the fear that Mr. Obama will urge the process forward in public and then blow up any Ryan-Murray agreement at the 11th hour with deal-killing demands for greater tax revenue. …

OK, so Henninger is from the Journal. How does David Ignatius from WaPo look at the US/Saudi crackup?

… What should worry the Obama administration is that Saudi concern about U.S. policy in the Middle East is shared by the four other traditional U.S. allies in the region: Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates and Israel. They argue (mostly privately) that Obama has shredded U.S. influence by dumping President Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, backing the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsi, opposing the coup that toppled Morsi, vacillating in its Syria policy, and now embarking on negotiations with Iran — all without consulting close Arab allies.

Saudi King Abdullah privately voiced his frustration with U.S. policy in a lunch in Riyadh Monday with King Abdullah of Jordan and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed of the U.A.E., according to a knowledgeable Arab official. The Saudi monarch “is convinced the U.S. is unreliable,” this official said. “I don’t see a genuine desire to fix it” on either side, he added.

The Saudis’ pique, in turn, has reinforced the White House’s frustration that Riyadh is an ungrateful and sometimes petulant ally. When Secretary of State John Kerry was in the region a few weeks ago, he asked to visit Bandar. The Saudi prince is said to have responded that he was on his way out of the kingdom, but that Kerry could meet him at the airport. This response struck U.S. officials as high-handed.

Saudi Arabia obviously wants attention, but what’s surprising is the White House’s inability to convey the desired reassurances over the past two years. The problem was clear in the fall of 2011, when I was told by Saudi officials in Riyadh that they increasingly regarded the U.S. as unreliable and would look elsewhere for their security. Obama’s reaction to these reports was to be peeved that the Saudis didn’t recognize all that the U.S. was doing to help their security, behind the scenes. …

Karen Elliot House former publisher of the WSJ was moved to come out of retirement for a comment on our feckless foreign policy.

… To understand the U.S.-Saudi rift, it is essential to realize that from the capital in Riyadh the world looks more threatening than at any time since the founding of modern Saudi Arabia in 1932. There have been other menacing times. Egypt’s President Gamal Abdel Nasser in the 1960s sought to destabilize the Al Saud by fomenting trouble in neighboring Yemen. In 1979, religious fanatics took over the Grand Mosque in Mecca and had to be ousted by military action. The Saudis feared, in 1990, that their kingdom was next after Iraq’s Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. In all those troubled moments, the U.S. was either a trusted if silent supporter of the Saudis or an active defender, as in the 1990 Gulf War.

Today, the Saudis find themselves alone regarding Syria, trapped in a proxy war with Iran, their religious (Sunni Saudi Arabia vs. Shiite Iran) and political enemy. The Saudis had sought and expected U.S. help in arming the rebels against Syrian ruler Bashar Assad, but the military aid never materialized. Instead, last month at the United Nations General Assembly gathering, President Obama eagerly sought a private meeting with Iran’s new president, Hasan Rouhani, to discuss its nuclear program. Mr. Obama seemed desperately grateful merely to get him on the phone.

A few days later, the Saudi foreign minister abruptly canceled his own speech to the General Assembly. Then last week, Saudi Arabia took the extraordinary step of turning down a Security Council seat it had long sought. According to a Reuters report this week, Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan, head of the kingdom’s intelligence and national security operations, told European diplomats that both moves at the U.N. were intended as a blunt message to the Obama administration.

Only a year ago, Saudi officials expressed great confidence that Assad would be ousted from Syria by this fall. Instead, the Saudis now find themselves trapped with their foot on the snake Assad: They can’t step away, lest the snake strike, but lacking American help, they don’t have the means to kill the snake either. …

John Hinderaker of Power Line posts on the Saudi king’s opinion of the president.

… Heh. Welcome to the club, Your Highness. Anyone looking for honesty, consistency, loyalty or even common sense will have to seek out someone other than Barack Obama.

Still, the administration’s falling out with the Saudis is shocking. My opinion of the administration’s foreign policy is very low, but I never imagined they could destroy our relationship with our most important Gulf Arab ally.

And how are things in Europe you ask? Michael Rubin has answers.

… The situation with Europe is no better. Obama bent over backwards to insult Great Britain, presumably acting upon a grudge based on its treatment of his Kenyan grandfather. Yesterday, the White House sought to assuage German Chancellor Angela Merkel, but its carefully parsed words did not deny that the US government had previously tapped the phone of a woman who grew up under the Stasi.

What Obama—and so many of his realist mentors—never understood is that calculating interests is not a sterile endeavor. His advisors counseled him to view the world through the filter of short-term interests, and he obliged. When it came to understanding alleged allied anger, he took his echo chamber seriously, and conflated polemic and truth.

Cultivating allies is like paying a mortgage: The reward comes years later, and it would be silly to walk away 29 years into a 30 year mortgage just because it’s hard to balance that last payment with the reboot image and buy a new car. In effect, Obama ignored the value of alliance and friendship paved over decades by predecessors.

Alliances have value, and so do reputations. The two Bush’s, Clinton, and Reagan each understood the importance of standing with friends, and prioritizing long-term interests over short-term gain. By embracing stark realism, however, Obama has demonstrated so many realists’ failures to calculate the value of friendship, and to understand how investment in allies pays dividends over time. Alas, Obama did not. Now, far from being the president who would repair America’s image, Obama has become its soiler-in-chief, and it will take years if not decades to restore the trust of those which Obama has treated so cavalierly.

More on our European disaster from The NY Times’ Roger Cohen.

Germany, of course, has already concocted a compound word for it: Handyüberwachung. That would be spying on cellphone calls.

The U.S. surveillance in question targeted the phone of Chancellor Angela Merkel. Or at least she was convinced enough of this to call President Obama, express outrage at a “serious breach of trust” and declare such conduct between allies “completely unacceptable.”

The White House’s assurance to her that the United States “is not” and “will not” monitor her communications was tantamount to confirmation through omission that in the past it has.

Merkel is measured. For her to lift the phone and go public with her criticism leaves no doubt she is livid. As she said last July, “Not everything which is technically doable should be done.” This, on the now ample evidence provided by the former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, is not the view of the N.S.A., whose dragnet eavesdropping has prompted fury from Paris to Brasília.

Obama, in his cool detachment, is not big on diplomacy through personal relations, but Merkel is as close to a trusted friend as he has in Europe. To infuriate her, and touch the most sensitive nerve of Stasi-marked Germans, amounts to sloppy bungling that hurts American soft power in lasting ways. Pivot to Asia was not supposed to mean leave all Europe peeved.

But all Europe is. …