The great explosion of research in the post WW-II years could not quite reach even a stable level. Even for military products the best of the production examples were below the peak in performance for reasons that seemed almost trivial. Those trivial blocks seemed to appear with almost certainty. One of the most difficult to achieve was vertical or short takeoff and landing (V/STOL) combined with combat performance and useful ferry range. Before I arrived in Southern California a promising advance the Joint United States/ Federal Republic of Germany US/FRG V/STOL was awarded to Fairchild Hiller Republic. This was an old line aircraft builder in Farmington, New York. Of interest to electronics people today is the Fairchild Electronics sponsorship of integrated circuits that led to INTEL. What was that pervasive genius that could not be stopped? After winning the communications aircraft contract for Apollo I spent time on Douglas’s new DC-9 military applications. This led to an unexpected meeting with someone I knew to be the intended test pilot for any V/STOL bid by Douglas. He was an exchange RAF officer with experience with fixed wing and helicopters. This is how I accompanied him on a visit to Nellis AFB with a potential meeting with the “Wild Weasel” Republic “Thunderchief” squadron. Would a new aircraft program come out of this meeting with an operational USAF organization? The USAF personnel saw us as “birds of a feather” as losses of A-4 Skyhawk and Thunderchief were mounting up in North Viet Nam. I had in my papers graphs that showed takeoff and landing distances for the DC-9 and an F-4 “Phantom-II,” to show where tactical airfield needs were. Early 1970’s was four years later and looking out of the bus that took me from Dulles Airport to the Airline Terminal in Washington, DC. In a bright sun and light rain, I could see old townhouses with basement interiors and steps going down. On the railing with flowers sprouting out of the minimal separation to the sidewalk were hand-lettered signs like “War is dangerous for little children and other living things.” A rumble of thunder might have revealed that the numbers of F-105’s had diminished to the point it was no longer a viable base for squadrons sent to Thailand. The Skyhawk program had taken over from France’s Dassault as a supplier to Israel and the 1973 Yom Kippur War had not yet occurred. I had assisted a exchange fighter pilot from Indonesia in late 1969 in putting together a weekend white paper to support a US Marine Corp program to use the “Harrier” V/STOL fighter as their primary air-to-ground asset. The total package of an aircraft to carry a heavy bombload and penetrate at low level supersonically was not yet ready. Would it ever be? The F-105 feature had been a 720-knot calibrated airspeed at low level up to where Mach number cutoff it’s maximum speed near Mach 2.0. It originally carried a single nuclear bomb on a rack on a rotary door so it could be internal up to the target point. Usage in Viet Nam had involved the Douglas develop Multiple Ejector Rack (MER) and the Triple Ejector Rack (TER). Most of the ordnance delivered was M-117 blast bombs with stainless steel bodies and MK-82/83/84 fragmentation bombs with cast iron bodies. Many of the Mark series of low drag ordnance had Snake Eye fins dropped slick to use what had been bought for low altitude use earlier including in toss bomb tactics. Now I need to stop before I try to explain the Low Drag General Purpose bomb. This is a fragmentation device designed to compensate for miss distance. The Army root of the Air Force insisted on contact fusing the AIM-4 on the F-105. This kind of discipline continues today in the Ballistic Missile Defense Hit-to-Kill. What was learned with Patriot and the SCUDs launched at Israel and how some broke up in descent as they had no reentry shielding for extreme range velocities achieved masked the effectiveness of the Patriot warhead. The Katyusha rockets fired from suitcases in informal artillery siting in Viet Nam began a new phase in what had been a black powder musket and ball with bayonet international review that seemed to reward military discipline at the Alamo in the 1830’s. The later dismissal of any superlative for this at San Jacinto where Kentucky rifles and long-distance shooting ended the power of a better formed opponent even when horses and cavalry were mixed with cannon also limited to ball. I made a trip to Aberdeen, Maryland, and the Ordnance Museum in 1983. I looked down the maw of all the guns and saw there was a consistent about 1/8-inch land that sometimes was space by two. I looked at the Russian anti-tank rifles of WW-II that showed how barrel length and muzzle velocity could make up for projectile size in penetrating armor. And, yes, I looked at the RPG-7 and RPG-9 hand-held grenade launchers that at that time were considered defeated. What had been the biggest driver of development, the cruise missile, was absent so limited to Naval battles. Can I now shuffle backwards to the Civil War in the US when the appearance of breech-loaded Naval rifles on gun boats seemed to dominate on the Tennessee River until the Rebels in cavalry action captured the moored and undefended craft. This super bushwhacking at the boundary of peace and war was seen again in Isis taking all the weapons from the Iraqi Army when they began their march to Mosul and took over Fallujah after the War itself was declared over and the American withdrew to Kuwait and then to the continental US. As you can now tell I lack the good interaction of Fort Leonard Wood or the USAF General and Staff school at Maxwell AFB. I came in at the point the USAF wanted a contractor to manage the support of a small fleet of transports. Later, handing off the security of State Department from the USMC to Blackwater was another element in limiting the all-out nature of war to what could be managed to limit collateral damage and civilian casualties. The All-Volunteer-Force and the Warrior emphasis on minimum tooth to tail ratio was an effort to avoid the need for a draft. Support when it was needed was moved to civilian contract. The large Air Material Areas for depot maintenance and management of support were first transferred to civilian employees on contract and then closed. As the need for support in the field came with the inability to wind down the Afghanistan action the National Guard was called up and even given joint custody of war material and weapon systems. With Base Realignment and Closing (BRAC) once bustling military facilities lost units and civilian airfields and centers became joint with the Guard. Not to put too fine a point on this treatise but pistols fire subsonic projectiles in general and rifles fire supersonically. No one has ever put it in writing it seems but civilians ruled by police lethal force object to not hearing the shot that kills them. Instead, there is the beach head story that the whistling of artillery rounds is not a danger as you cannot hear the one that kills you. Leaping ahead to something not yet committed to combat, the F-35 “Lightning II’ is supersonic in a major way and in B version is V/STOL, so it can sneak in like a rebel and knock out the gunboats but not yet capture and use them. I haven’t mentioned the smooth bore guns that became popular with the intended tactical nuclear artillery rounds and led to the Sheridan and M-60A1 now obsolete. My intent was to put up a nice image of an F-105 “Thunderchief” with this. I have one that was taken on a rainy day in Midland, Texas before the Commemorative Air Force moved to Dallas. There is a “Hun” in the rear in one of my examples so I could have made this a rave on Century series. Or now I could put up a Sheridan from the Fort Bliss museum. In my mind, I see that vehicle with no usable armament patrolling Haiti after an earthquake in 10th Mountain Division colors or maybe it was in 1990 and civil unrest.