India’s National Defense Academy complains that it’s frequently harassed by a gang of no-good monkeys:

It says the langur monkeys are disrupting training exercises, attacking cadets, vandalising equipment and ripping up plants … Officials want the monkeys tranquillised, sterilised and released back into the wild … But the tender has angered forestry officials who say the academy’s jungle location gives monkeys the right to roam. [Ananova]

They still give rifles to Indian army cadets, right? This problem could easily solve itself with a little, ahem, target practice. If they get any static from forestry officials, the cadets can just claim the monkeys were found to be enemy combatants fighting for Pakistan. Then instead of getting a rebuke, they’ll be honored with a ticker tape parade. And there you have another problem solved for the better with firearms. When will monkeys learn?

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Quick, who caught my song reference in the title? Niraj forwards us this article from the BBC about Pakistan’s recruitment of female fighter pilots. So hot.

The Pakistan Air Force (PAF) academy has been all-male for more than 55 years – but now it is going through major change.

Women are now allowed to enrol on its aerospace engineering and fighter pilot programmes and are doing rather well.

To the great surprise of many men, some of the female recruits will soon start flying jet-engine planes.

Male cadets are having to come to terms with the fact that masculinity itself is no longer a condition for reaching this prestigious institute.

But can women withstand the forces that maneuvering a fighter plane puts on one’s body, and perform as well as men? Of course. We KNOW they can from years of experience but it is insightful to point to the data.

Extended periods of hard labour and limited caloric intake are common military conditions. Maximum normal acceleration forces during combat have increased from peak averages of 5 g to 9 g. Besides physical strength, air combat manoeuvring requires significant g-tolerance. G tolerances of 102 women and 139 men were subjected to a Standard Medical Evaluation and the G Profiles were compared. Unpaired t-tests revealed that there was no significant difference between the women and men in either relaxed or straining G tolerance. Covariance analysis controlling for differences in tolerance due to age, height, weight, and activity status revealed that the women have marginally lower tolerance; the analysis also identified height as a factor having a strong negative influence on G tolerance, and weight as having a positive influence. When the women were matched only by height to the men in the comparison group, the women’s mean G tolerances were significantly lower than the men’s. On Standard Training G Profiles, 88% of 24 women and 80% of 213 men completed the runs, but this difference was not significant. G tolerances of 47 women were measured on the Medeval Profiles both during and between menses, but no significant differences related to menstruation were found

Basically this means that the best fighter pilots are short and stocky with a lot of muscle, because this body type tends not to pass out as easily when the blood get sucked from the brain. You want to minimize the distance between the heart and the brain. Without the benefit of a G-suit I’ve even become light headed even at 2.5-3 Gs. Continue reading →