The latest Trump interview once again reveals total disregard for the rule of law
]]>True, though it seems some @ FOX have had enough of the circus. So, you never know! 😉 😀
]]>Fox won’t run the photoes showing Trump & Co. are liars, and the Trump supporters don’t watch anything else.
]]>Regarding lying about meeting Russians, I think it’s just a reflex now. Even when there’s photos of the meeting, like with Jeff “I didn’t meet them!” Sessions, Trump and his cronies lie about it just to lie about it. Sad.
]]>Trump, Putin had second, undisclosed, hour-long encounter at G20
It’s worth sitting through Maddow’s rambling intro to listen to Ian Bremmer who broke this story. The comparison to Nixon is noteworthy, though unsurprising now. Video is about 11 min’s. 🙂
The number of *irregularities* are astonishing. the high-point for me was Trump tweeting (as usual) that the 2nd meeting was fake news, in spite of most of the attendees witnessing it! 😆
Truly a laugh a day!
]]>Luckily for Aus., the FB-111 was delayed 5 years because we demanded an aircraft that would work. And not have the wings falling off. If we’d gotten them by ’68 or ’69, History would have been very much different!
]]>Yes, combat conditions are different than training standards, but, damn, you can’t keep grounding wings, because of maintenance problems. Their computer models obviously suck.
]]>Love it! 😀
But I was getting bored, so decided to see what was up with the F-35. Found this! 😆
F-35 Unreliability Risks Strain on Pentagon Budget, Tester Says
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The availability of spare parts for the 203 F-35s already assigned to bases “is getting worse, affecting fly rates” and pilot training, according to the presentation dated May 8 and obtained by Bloomberg News. Reliability metrics linked to “critical failures have worsened over the last year,” as improvement “has stagnated.”These trends mean long-term “lifecycle costs” of the aircraft are “likely to increase significantly” over the current $1.2 trillion estimate and affect budgets of the services, according to the presentation, which updated the testing office’s annual report released in January.
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“Even if an F-35 squadron can get to where it is needed, what good is it if it can’t fly them on missions?” analyst Dan Grazier of the Washington-based Project on Government Oversight said in a March 30 review of the test office’s January assessment. “This is one of the most enduring problems of the F-35 program. The fleet has had a notoriously poor reliability track record.”
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“One key metric is the average number of flight hours between critical failures, those that could render an aircraft unsafe to fly or unable to complete its mission. The goal for the Air Force’s F-35 is 20 hours between failures after 75,000 hours of flight. As of August, Air Force models were averaging only 7.3 hours between failures after 34,197 hours of flight, according to the testing office presentation.”
Mind you, that last paragraph is somewhat disingenuous & misleading. Several problems flagged as Code Three in peace time & testing would be waived during combat operations. Happened often when I was with GD with our F-111’s (& the FA-18’s). Happens with all combat aircraft. Also, problems can be reported either by ground crew or the pilot. And they typically have a different view of what is *critical*. An example of the FA-18 was the TIT (Turbine Inlet temperature) indicator, specifically the red marker for the range limit indicator. They are usually a sticker (because the TIT is designed to be used for a variety of engines which keeps cost down & they are easy to get, but the range limit varies). Sometimes the sticker comes off & the pilot flags it as Code Three (which generally makes the maintenance crew sigh heavily because the time to do the paperwork takes far longer than replacing the sticker! Usually, they’ll paint the mark on). 🙂
I’m not giving the F-35 a pass, just saying that the reality is often not quite the same as the media’s view! 😉 😀
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