I'm fascinated with Twin Tower photos. They were really impressive sort of brutalist structures in person. Some shots are just amazing. Like this one, taken during construction showing the elevator shafts and the skeleton of the buildings. It's like something out of Blade Runner.
At least for a time, after construction, the buildings were visible top to bottom from the river view, which was just spectacular. Seeing the entire structures made them even more majestic and almost surreal. See here:
This shot is also just gorgeous. The towers were great canvases for light. So many different moods to be had, nearly endless possibilities.
In an earlier tweet I discussed seeing them for the first time as a kid from a cab window, how it was surprising and overwhelming. The close-up wide-angle view was really something for photos. The twin aspect really played uniquely for the camera at these close ranges.
Here's another good one top to bottom:
While they were majestic in an imposing, awe-inspiring way during the day, at night they took on a whole other vibe. Their structures receded into the darkness. Very futuristic seeing absolutely huge twin twinkling monoliths all lit up like that on the skyline.
While the view from a distance gets all the attention, close up the New Formalism style details really made the buildings special. There was more going on than just the big gray rectangles most have come to know in stock images.
Sadly, I never went inside. I wish I did. It was a Modern/New Formalism/International style design dream:
Finally, back to where it began. The towers being constructed in the late 1960s/early 1970s, you can see just how massively they had already changed the Manhattan skyline:
Anyways, thanks for taking this trip down memory lane with me.
Never Forget.
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People on here stating “see I predicted China could launch drone swarms from ships off the coast two years ago!” are so funny. Bro some of us have been on this for well over a decade. And in great detail, not a tweet. The cruise missile threat from a similar vector tis literally a 25 year old issue the DoD has been working. You think F-15s got AESA radars 20 years ago just because it’s just a better radar for shooting down fighters?
Everyone suddenly a drone expert. It’s like clockwork. Love the guys that shit on it or dismissed it for years now suddenly all knowing visionaries on it.
So much bad info out there on this. People use a lot of big, fancy, complex terms but their knowledge base is totally hollow, that's always the #1 red flag with anything like this. Be aware, we have to back out so much bad info. Youtube is probably the worst in this area.
For over a decade I have outlined the exact scenario as we just saw in Russia. It could happen in the U.S. tomorrow. This was a pivotal event. U.S. military and political leadership cannot live in partial denial of this threat anymore. Our most prized aircraft are sitting ducks.
I have focused on this issue above all else in my career. I care deeply about it. The failure of the DoD to foresee what was totally foreseeable, with obsessions with yesterday's threats is such a failure. We need to educate our non military leaders on what this is, a huge issue as well (see New Jersey). So much work to be done. Hardened aircraft shelters is still be debated in the Pacific. We are really in a bad spot here.
The biggest challenge with this issue is education. Many just don't take the time to learn the ins and outs of the UAS threat, there are many layers and nuances, emerging technologies. There are high up people in the military that don't even really understand these basics. Then really terrible assumptions fill the gaps. Our pilots, our troops, our generals, our local officials, need a crash course on all this NOW.
For the FH-45 Skunk Works came to the conclusion that airfield independence was MOST important, paired with stealth, supersonic cruise and unlimited magazine depth!
Airframe was derived from a previous mothballed development program that was ran out of a particularly shady group within the Agency. The demonstrator was revived and proved breakthrough advantages against triple digit SAMs and other brightly pained helicopters with laser weapons
Absolutely nothing that has happened in terms of drones over US bases is a surprise. The DoD and other agencies totally failed on this and my team have documented this in extreme detail for a decade+.
Thank you 60 Minutes for giving us the credit we deserve.
It took Langley AFB to get invaded for them to really wake up (and we broke the Langley story just like all the other incursion stories, but it was later stolen/repackaged without credit by WSJ months later). This should be very alarming and troubling.
We have more coming on what can be done. The problem is about to get far more complex as well. For a primer on what I mean by this, read: twz.com/news-features/…
Posted this in January. You don't need a 'kill switch' to severely hamper the utility of an exported weapons system, you just stop providing support for it and it will wither away, some systems very quickly. The more advanced the faster the degradation. This is in addition...
the impact from being locked out of centralized cloud-based system like F-35's ODIN (ALIS) that does so many things, including mission planning w/threat intel integration. Your jets would be far more vulnerable to loss without it...
let alone all the other stuff it does to keep the F-35 flying. Israel has invested in and made a deal for cutouts regarding these vulnerabilities. Nobody else has this deal or capabilities.
As we noted in our story last night on the H-60/CRJ collision, the Capital Region is the most highly surveilled area of sky in the United States. Beyond radar, including ATC, military fire control, CUAS microwave radar systems, electro-optical/infrared sensors and passive detection systems also thickly blanket the area. There is nowhere else like this in the United States. So the data on these flights, specifically off-board telemetry, will far more detailed and plentiful than in a normal accident investigation. Stories for background... 1/X