Bad aerospace websites and video channels (unwanted here)

[tychosis]

He was a lot better when he was interviewing aviators, but he started getting clicks for the "deep intel" stuff and moved the channel in that direction. I've mostly stopped watching because his "deep intel" is too often shallow clickbaity type stuff.

Yeah, this 'scope creep' is something you see in a lot of defense-related channels. Gotta keep the clicks coming in.

There's a notorious submarine YouTuber who started out just streaming gameplay and telling sea stories, and frankly I was 100% behind him--because getting young smart people interested in submarines is good for the fleet and for the industry.

Upon building an audience, he pivoted from streamer to overall submarine "expert" and gets way out of his lane discussing topics he has no real innate understanding of. (Hell his understanding of systems he actually operated is pretty shaky.)

Enthusiasts can't really tell when you've overstepped your bounds of capability and some creators prey on that. Be wary.

 

[Bruno Anthony]

Yeah, this 'scope creep' is something you see in a lot of defense-related channels. Gotta keep the clicks coming in.

There's a notorious submarine YouTuber who started out just streaming gameplay and telling sea stories, and frankly I was 100% behind him--because getting young smart people interested in submarines is good for the fleet and for the industry.

Upon building an audience, he pivoted from streamer to overall *submarine expert* and gets way out of his lane discussing topics he has no real innate understanding of. (Hell his understanding of systems he actually *operated* is pretty shaky.)

Enthusiasts can't really tell when you've overstepped your bounds of capability and some creators prey on that. Be wary.

I forgot his name. It’s the guy who pronounces Seawolf as Seawoof.
Really passionate about Soviet/Russian equipment.

 

[GTX]

So the retired Admiral whoring & contradicting himself and Ward knowing it.
The Pakistani “journalist” and his take on what happened in that conflict and his Chinese arms sales pitch.

You didn’t hear that?

And exactly what Info from the Admiral do you have an issue with? I saw nothing wrong in that interview

 

[Bruno Anthony]

And exactly what Info from the Admiral do you have an issue with? I saw nothing wrong in that interview

He went from saying that 6th Gen, 5th Gen, whatever Gen were just pieces of a puzzle to ending the video saying that this aircraft was crucial to surviving a PRC AA/AD environment. He admits he works for Boeing and then shamelessly plugs how Boeing totally has the capacity to build this aircraft in the required numbers and therefore the funds must be found.

 

[tychosis]

I forgot his name. It’s the guy who pronounces Seawolf as Seawoof.
Really passionate about Soviet/Russian equipment.

Nah, it's an American creator with little passion for Soviet/Russian boats haha.

 

[Bruno Anthony]

Nah, it's an American creator with little passion for Soviet/Russian boats haha.

The one I’m thinking of is a heavyset American

 

[tychosis]

The one I’m thinking of is a heavyset American

Ah okay, likely the same then. I suppose I never noticed the pronunciation or the passion for Soviet/Russian boats.

 

[Bruno Anthony]

Ah okay, likely the same then. I suppose I never noticed the pronunciation or the passion for Soviet/Russian boats.

Mostly Russian active sonars. I forgot his name.

 

[isayyo2]

Mostly Russian active sonars. I forgot his name.

Sub Brief? Got paraded around by War Zone as an “expert” on submarines and it got to his head.
https://youtube.com/@SubBrief/videos
https://www.twz.com/24638/retired-s...zing-video-explainers-on-sub-tactics-and-tech

 

[Bruno Anthony]

Sub Brief? Got paraded around by War Zone as an “expert” on submarines and it got to his head.
https://youtube.com/@SubBrief/videos
https://www.twz.com/24638/retired-s...zing-video-explainers-on-sub-tactics-and-tech

Bingo

 

[Colonial-Marine]

I mentioned the National Interest as being just an awful source with endless clickbait-y nonsensical articles. Here is one of their latest works claiming that the Northrop/Dornier ND-102 somehow led to the F-22, which is just an absurd statement. Their rational is that Northrop was involved with the ND-102, it had design features to reduce radar cross section, and they wanted it to be able to supercruise.

By 1982 the big American aerospace companies were submitting a wide range of different concepts responding to an Air Force RFI for the eventual ATF. Perhaps there was some degree of relation between the early light fighter concepts Northrop put out there and their work related to the ND-102. But the ATF didn't go in that cheap light fighter direction, and then there is the fact that ultimately Northrop didn't win the ATF contract, Lockheed-Martin did.

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/how-canceled-german-fighter-design-led-to-f-22-raptor-bw
Do people actually get paid to write this or is it just ChatGPT at this point?

 

[Brett Davidson]

A YouTuber Vlad Vexler has used the term 'village philosopher' which can explain scope creep and quality erosion. The village philosopher, as opposed to the idiot, is the smartest person in the village and people come to them for advice - and it's good advice and it helps. Thus they have high status and trust. Then they visit the city and they know nothing about the city or what people need there but they've only learned to be a trusted, wise philosopher, so they keep acting the same way. NOW they start looking like an idiot.

 

[tychosis]

A YouTuber Vlad Vexler has used the term 'village philosopher' which can explain scope creep and quality erosion. The village philosopher, as opposed to the idiot, is the smartest person in the village and people come to them for advice - and it's good advice and it helps. Thus they have high status and trust. Then they visit the city and they know nothing about the city or what people need there but they've only learned to be a trusted, wise philosopher, so they keep acting the same way. NOW they start looking like an idiot.

This is very astute and "village philosopher" isn't a term I've ever heard--but it's a phenomenon I see constantly.

It happens quite often as people go through their cycles in life. You're the smartest guy in high school then you get to college and realize (hopefully) that you're no longer the big fish. Same thing happens when you leave college and enter the workforce. Ideally you have the maturity and self-awareness to realize that you're effectively starting over... but not everyone does.

It is unfortunately pretty common in veterans. I see it all the time. I left the fleet and moved on to work in engineering, but I had the self-awareness to realize I didn't truly understand 10% as much as I thought I did. I'm still in the submarine industry and work with a lot of guys off the boat who unfortunately don't have this self-awareness and sometimes even have this sense that they already need everything they need to know. (These people are generally useless and mostly end up at the program office or--it saddens me to say--in logistics or writing your tech manuals haha.)

People who don't enter the industry but profess to be experts are even worse, as they'll go spouting the blatantly incorrect (or at least heavily abstracted) information they "learned" on the boat for the rest of their lives.

 

[Aubi]

Related term is Fachidiot. Somebody who's really good at his job, understands it well, and then sadly tries to explain completely unrelated things trough the same lenses altough he has absolutely no background to understand them.
Sadly it seems to be an engineer's dissease.

 

[Arjen]

Not just engineers. Linus Pauling, for all his accomplishments in other areas, was one of the fathers of the abomination that is orthomolecular medicine.

 

[tychosis]

Related term is Fachidiot. Somebody who's really good at his job, understands it well, and then sadly tries to explain completely unrelated things trough the same lenses altough he has absolutely no background to understand them.
Sadly it seems to be an engineer's dissease.

Most of my work is in integration so I end up engaging with all disciplines, and honestly software developers are the worst about this. The Dunning-Kruger levels are off-scale with some of those folks.

 

[dannydale]

Most of my work is in integration so I end up engaging with all disciplines, and honestly software developers are the worst about this. The Dunning-Kruger levels are off-scale with some of those folks.

Is this where the culture of being aggressively confidently incorrect on reddit, techbros, and ai llms comes from?

 

[tychosis]

Is this where the culture of being aggressively confidently incorrect on reddit, techbros, and ai llms comes from?

I have met staggeringly few people (in both the military and in engineering) who have the self-awareness to accurately assess their own skills and abilities. Some people are far more capable than they believe... some far less.

(I'll leave it to you to guess which side of the ledger the vast majority reside in.)

 

[Graham1973]

Another definite AI channel, 'The Rev Line', seems to focus on fake missile projects, but other military stuff crops up from time to time. One other odd thing, the Philippines crops up in the titles quite a lot.

 

[Graham1973]

Not strictly an aerospace channel, but 'Train Disaster Documentaries' appears to be another AI Slop channel, it actually started off with two aircraft disaster videos before switching to rail disasters. Not all the thumbnails use AI generated artwork but the ones that do are particularly annoying.

 

[lastdingo]

Airpower Australia
https://www.ausairpower.net/
Usually correct on facts, burnt reputation due to its author's opinions/conclusions.

Hasn't been very active in a while and thus not irritated much lately.

edit:
"lately" = last 11 years

 

[Bruno Anthony]

Airpower Australia

Old news when it was news

 

[lastdingo]

About Army Recognition:
I once sent them an error correction and they applied it.
So it's not worst of worst for sure.

It's just not terribly diligent, same as deagel.

 

[Reddington777]

For the sake of laughter, disdain and eternal lament that this is the state of media these days...a regurgitation article framed as a flaming crock of shit from the national interest:

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/b...pgrades-and-why-theres-no-need-for-an-f-47-bw

 

[ComradeVortex]

what about Zona Militar?

 

[overscan (PaulMM)]

I mentioned the National Interest as being just an awful source with endless clickbait-y nonsensical articles. Here is one of their latest works claiming that the Northrop/Dornier ND-102 somehow led to the F-22, which is just an absurd statement. Their rational is that Northrop was involved with the ND-102, it had design features to reduce radar cross section, and they wanted it to be able to supercruise.

By 1982 the big American aerospace companies were submitting a wide range of different concepts responding to an Air Force RFI for the eventual ATF. Perhaps there was some degree of relation between the early light fighter concepts Northrop put out there and their work related to the ND-102. But the ATF didn't go in that cheap light fighter direction, and then there is the fact that ultimately Northrop didn't win the ATF contract, Lockheed-Martin did.

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/how-canceled-german-fighter-design-led-to-f-22-raptor-bw
Do people actually get paid to write this or is it just ChatGPT at this point?

Its lazy and wrong. For starters two nonafterburning PW1120 wont get you to mach 2.0 no matter how low your drag is. This was something Bill Gunston said in error repeated ad infinitum since.

 

[lancer21]

Anything from the bald bearded guy, can't even recall the name of the channel, that btw is kept being pushed in your face by algorythms, but yeah that one.

 

[DWG]

Its lazy and wrong.

I saw something from them earlier this week (I was googling the Boeing strike) where they were listing Boeing St Louis's projects, which they claimed included "the Red Hawk, also known as the T-6 Texan II", which looks awfully like the kind of errors I keep seeing in AI-generated stuff.

 

[pathology_doc]

can't even recall the name of the channel,

If it's the one I'm thinking of, he seems to pop up on a differently titled one each time I see him. Don't know if it's the same channel rebranded or a new one entirely, and I don't care enough to dig in and check. I push the 'do not recommend' button every time I see him.

 

[dannydale]

If it's the one I'm thinking of, he seems to pop up on a differently titled one each time I see him. Don't know if it's the same channel rebranded or a new one entirely, and I don't care enough to dig in and check. I push the 'do not recommend' button every time I see him.

Oh yeah, Simon has at least a dozen different yt channels.

 

[Aubi]

Whistlerverse currently contains:
Megaprojects - meh, depends on the writer
Sideprojects - similar
Today I Found Out - ditto
The Causal Criminalist - great one!
Brain Blaze - the OG great one
Decoding the Unknown - usually very good
Places - not bad
Biographics - ditto; he might already left this channel
Celestium - don't know anything about that one
Warfronts - formerly Warographics, usually very good
Into The Shadows - usually very good
Highlight History - problably in the meh cathegory; Simon left this channel
Xplrd - ditto; now probably dead
Almost Interresting - ?

Edit:
And now there's also PoliticalFronts, started two months ago.

 

[Graham1973]

Got another 'AI Clickbait' channel that popped up in my YouTube feed 'Wild Iron'. Sample thumbnails are attached, one of which does not use an AI generated image, but rather a screen shot from one of the Transformers movies.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlL6c528py4

 

[dannydale]

Yeah I blocked that ish on sight!

 

[Brett Davidson]

On WIRED's now infamous 1997 'Long Boom' prophecy. The magazine was the predecessor of the YouTube Explainer (it should have been called OOH, SHINY!). Even back then it struck me as something that would be printed in a pamphlet handed out by some wide-eyed cultist.

https://davekarpf.substack.com/p/the-curse-of-the-long-boom

 

[overscan (PaulMM)]

I used to buy Wired quite often back in the day. Also The Guardian on Saturday (enough reading for a week).

 

[Graham1973]

Another AI channel that popped up in my feed 'Navy Media' many of the titles on this channel end with the words "...Then THIS Happened...' which I'm assuming is an attempt to get the curious to click on the video. Sample thumbnails are attached.

 

[dannydale]

RealStoriesofHistory on youtube by one @snack.size.videos slop channel

 

[Graham1973]

Another probable AI 'History' channel, 'History Blitz'

 

[Graham1973]

Another 'Al History' channel this one calls itself 'War Echoes'

 

[Graham1973]

A third 'AI History' channel, this was calls itself 'Military History HQ', how it attracts viewers should be pretty clear from the thumbnails.