Special Ops had three types of Blackhawks for three separate missions and they preformed well. The extractions mission for downed aircrew can’t really be performed effectively by an Osprey because of the landing/take off procedure. The Osprey presents a huge radar target and halts before landing. The Blackhawks zip in and out, often without ever stopping completely. If that wing can’t tilt, you have to bail out, because you can’t land it. A nice but impractical concept that they actually built [wander away shaking my head…]
The Navy and Marines want two engines like every other current fighter/attack aircraft they currently have. The squadron that is doing the F-35 training here grab a couple of F-16s so their pilot could maintain enough flight time while waiting for F-35s to be fixed. There is a reason the Air Force flight demonstration team flies F-16s.
I wouldn’t be so upset if these aircraft didn’t fly right over my house several times a week at low level going to ranges.
]]>You’ll notice that when President Obama boards Marine One to fly to Camp David, he never boards an Osprey. Just sayin’. 🙂
The reality is that nobody needs the F-35. The F-16 is more than enough fighter for virtually anybody on the planet, and it’s 1/5th the price of a F-35. If the F-16 isn’t enough, the F-18 Super Hornet will haul more ordinance a longer distance. The F-35 won’t haul as much ordinance as far as either of those planes, and dogfights like a dog too, all for 3 times the price of even the Super Bug. Yay, what a bargain.
]]>I remember seeing that Canada’s new PM is talking seriously about dumping the F-35, and I feel sure others will follow suit, making it even more expensive for the US. You can’t convince the Pentagon or Congress that specific aircraft for specific missions, like the A-10 for ground support, makes sense. They keep trying for one system fits all uses. There is an old saying about that: jack of all trades and master of none.
]]>The F-35, in particular, looks like it’s going to suck the life out of not one, not two, but *three* organizations — the Air Force, Navy, and Marines. The cost of this golden albatross, created to fight a threat that doesn’t exist and which will be obsolete within ten years because its stealth technology is vulnerable to advanced radar technology that the Chinese and Russians are experimenting with as we speak (in much the same way that the F-117 was rendered obsolete by Russian radar advances based on the Serbians’ experience shooting one down) and which isn’t even as good at being a fighter as the F-16 that costs 1/5th as much, will be sucking the guts out of their budgets for the next twenty years. No advances in missiles, or avionics, or radars, or anything are going to happen because every dime is going to be going into these flying albatrosses.
But that’s how things swing now in the modern kleptocracy. It’s always been like this, to an extent — look up the story of the Brewster Buccaneer for a perfect example (this is a bomber that was created by a company that had never built bombers before, that didn’t even have their own factory, that sucked up a ton of taxpayer money to build not only the bomber but the factory to build it, and in the end the bomber sucked so much that the whole investment had to be wiped out and the dive bomber contract given to Curtiss). But in the past, these scams weren’t so expensive as to wipe out the whole budget of an entire military service. The Buccaneer situation was an annoyance, but Curtiss was already working on their Helldiver so it wasn’t as if there weren’t any alternatives. But today’s scam artists learned from the Brewster experienced and make sure that any alternatives are destroyed before they’re allowed to compete with their scam. Thus all heavy lift and manned space capability at NASA that wasn’t the Space Shuttle was destroyed, and all possible modifications to the F-16 and F-18 that could have kept them competitive in modern warfare were destroyed as a threat to the profits that could come from LockMart’s flying boxcar.
So it goes. These vultures are going to suck us dry in the end. Maybe they’re right to think only of the short term, though. I know I’m sure not seeing much long term for the USA, at least not as it’s currently comprised. Too many stupid people, too little investment in education and infrastructure, too many ideological idiocies. Donald Trump, for example, reminds me of late-era Roman senators who led anti-immigrant riots… against the same immigrants whose men were the armies that were keeping barbarians from conquering the last vestiges of the Western Empire. Oops!
]]>The Columbia is up next.
]]>Yes. The experts warned the powers that be. But photo op’s & expedience overcame common sense & expertese once again.
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