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the Blackbird, which was actually the world’s first operational stealth aircraft. It was 140,000 pounds and 108 feet long, about the size of a tactical bomber called the B-58 Hustler, but with the incredibly small radar cross section of a single-engine Piper Cub. In other words, that is what a radar operator would think he was tracking. Its peculiar cobra shape was only part of the stealthy characteristics of this amazing airplane that flew faster than Mach 3 and higher than 80,000 feet. No one knew that its wings, tail, and fuselage were loaded with special composite materials, mostly iron ferrites, that absorbed radar energy rather than returning it to the sender. Basically 65 percent of low radar cross section comes from shaping an airplane; 35 percent from radar-absorbent coatings. The SR-71 was about one hundred times stealthier than the Navy’s F-14 Tomcat fighter, built ten years later. But if I knew the CIA, they wouldn’t admit that the Blackbird even existed.
Skunk Works
Ben R. Rich and Leo Janos
Could the impact of Hanson have been less if I had attacked her more strongly and openly immediately after her maiden speech? I think not. Pauline Hanson was an accident, but accidents constantly happen in politics. A more vigorous response from me would have intensified the frustrations felt by those Australians to whom she gave a voice, and gratuitously alienated them from me — and for what purpose, other than the political benefit of the ALP? Those frustrations were bound to surface at some point and, coming as they did from many citizens whose natural political bent was Coalition rather than Labor, it would have been foolish in the extreme for me to have treated them with the contempt urged upon me by my many critics.
Lazarus Rising
John Howard
Yet the stimulus never really stopped. Instead, debt has become the motor at the core of Chinese growth. In absolute terms, China’s debt looks manageable. It’s difficult to measure precisely, but at the end of 2016, the total stock of nonfinancial debt in China, relative to the size of the economy, was about 260%, roughly the same as that of the United States (although some estimates put it significantly higher). However, the concern is not the total amount of debt but the speed at which it has accumulated. In 2008, China’s debt-to-GDP was only 160%. Experience shows that when a country accumulates too much debt relative to the size of its economy too quickly, a crisis typically follows. In fact, China’s debt accumulation could be among the fastest in modern history. According to the People’s Bank of China, since 2008, the Chinese economy has added about $12 trillion worth of debt, roughly the size of the entire U.S. banking system in that year. China’s banking system has quadrupled in size over the last nine years. Alarms are starting to go off in financial centers around the world.
China's Great Wall of Debt
Dinny McMahon
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