Most people know the tragic story of the McDonnell Douglas DC-10, a unmistakable flying disaster. In its early years it killed many hundreds of people.

However, I suspect very few know the flip side of that story, where military rigor and strict maintenance rotated the DC-10 disasters into the KC-10 with decades of reliable success.

The KC-10 Extender has been a stalwart workhorse in the United States Air Force’s fleet for decades. […] “In the 1 1/2 years that the KC-10 has been at [Prince Sultan Air Base], they’ve accomplished over 1,300 missions with over 9,000 flying hours, and delivered nearly 73 million pounds of fuel to over 11,000 receivers,” said [Saudi Arabia, Brig. Gen. Akshai Gandhi, 378th Air Expeditionary Wing commander]

The USAF makes it fairly clear how their KC-10 program differed in approach (pun not intended) from for-profit commercial airlines and ruthless manufacturers trying to squeeze quality.

At the forefront of keeping the aging KC-10 in the air, are the hardworking maintainers who have ensured maximum operability of the aircraft. Despite the hot and sandy conditions the AFCENT AOR is known for, and the limited availability of parts for the aging aircraft, Airmen of the 378th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron (AMXS) have ensured the KC-10’s last deployment was just as effective as its first.

“To prepare a KC-10 for flight, we typically invest about 3 hours,” said Tech. Sgt. Nikolie Ambriz, 378th AMXS maintainer. “This time is primarily allocated to performing avionics operation checks and conducting thorough visual inspections enabling us to identify potential issues before aircrew arrive at the aircraft.”

Taxpayer dollars at work. It’s almost like a government run version of the DC-10 dramatically increased its survivability versus the market-driven one.

[Despite shareholder profits expected from] its quick design process, the DC-10 is more known for the variety of incidents it was involved in, with 32 hull loss incidents and over 1,200 passenger fatalities.

Even more to the point, and with a nod to Boeing’s recent 737 MAX disasters…

…seeking greater efficiency, American Airlines, Continental Airlines and United Airlines had developed alternate procedures that saved approximately 200 man-hours per aircraft. […] This repositioning caused unseen structural damage to be done to the wing’s pylon attachment points. Then, like a ticking time bomb, tail number N110AA continued to fly an additional eight weeks, with the damage increasing with every takeoff and landing.

The USAF quietly says their KC-10 variant has become a legend, as they sunset it, and they are right in more ways than one.

Researchers have highlighted the simple fact that a Tesla purchase loses value faster than other car brands.

As of February, “year over year, used EV prices have fallen 24%, with Teslas losing the most value in that period,” Liz Najman, lead researcher at Recurrent, told me in an email. “Looking at just the past few months, Tesla values are still dropping faster than industry average and faster than many of their competitors, such as Ford, Nissan, Chevy, and VW,” Najman said.

Tesla owners apparently have experienced a whopping 32.09% drop year-over-year, the highest price decrease recorded (Models X, Y, 3, and S) and 10 points worse than the average for other used EVs.

Of course this has to be called out because the CEO of Tesla, engaging in an obvious fraud, repeatedly promised his customers and shareholders that the value of his cars would go way up.

Back in 2019, Elon Musk made an astonishing claim for Tesla vehicles. Tesla cars, he said, would go up in value, not down, after purchase. […] He repeated this claim as recently as June 2023. […] During the past year, the price of a used 2021 Tesla Model 3 sedan has dropped, on average, about 29%, going from $40,522 in January of 2023 to just $28,700 in January 2024, according to data from Edmunds.com. In general, model year 2021 used vehicles of all types lost about 19.5% in value over that same period.

Some have actually tried to respond directly to the Tesla CEO, as if writing a letter to a mad barking dog would produce some kind of resolution instead of just wasting time.

Elon Musk Outlines How Teslas Will Be Worth Five Times What You Paid. Here’s How His Math Is Wrong

Math wrong?

Let’s be honest here. Everything is wrong when a CEO can so brazenly lie and cause so many people to lose their life, let alone investments.

Buying a “death trap” Tesla isn’t just a bad financial decision, it’s a terrible life decision and a threat to society.

Related:

• Tesla Now Slowest Selling Used Car in America
• Tesla Announces Bleeding Its Customers Dry Before They’re Killed in a Fire

Promises of low risk high pay jobs for Indians led them to join the Russian army. It turned out to be a human trafficking operation instead, where their lives are thrown away.

After two Indians died after being tricked into the Ukraine-Russia war, the role of an Indian man, who lured several people with the promise of lucrative jobs in the Russian army, has come to light. The man is identified as Faisal Abdul Mutallib Khan, who runs a recruitment agency and a popular YouTube channel called Baba Vlogs

The victims paid money for jobs, thinking they were gaining social entry, yet were sent straight into harms way on the front line. It’s a story of callous fraud, reminiscent of the Tesla experience for many Indians.

Russian strategy has been to exhaust Ukraine’s military resources by using fraud to redirect tens of thousands of unprepared and ill-equipped immigrants into suicide missions.

“When he spoke to us in December, he said that his passport had been taken away and he had been forcibly deployed to the front lines in Ukraine. Since then, for over two months we did not receive any call or news from him,” Mohammed Imran, Afsan’s brother, told reporters in Hyderabad this week. […] Sajad Ahmad Kumar, Aazad Kumar’s elder brother, told VOA that Aazad was hospitalized for three weeks after being hit by a bullet during training. “After he recovered from the injury he was sent to the battlefield. When I spoke to him on January 14, he said that he would be sent to the front line within a day or two. That day he was crying badly over the phone.

The BBC quotes a recent computer science PhD graduate at TU-Berlin, apparently with no work or operations experience, on how spies may have intercepted a German military call.

Eyebrows were raised when it emerged the call happened on the widely-used WebEx platform – but Berlin has insisted the officials used an especially secure, certified version. […] A researcher in cryptography in Berlin, Henning Seidler, believes the most likely theory is that the officer dialled in via his mobile phone and the call was picked up by spies’ antenna who can also “forward” the traffic onto the main, official antenna.

Dial-in is an assertion that is easily tested and proven.

Webex for Government supports end-to-end encrypted meetings in Webex App and Webex Meetings.