Lawman

Yeah. And this *insert derogatory term here* isn't even a full mission capable gun pilot yet. She's a non progressed flight school grad serving as a PL who went to Ranger School after graduating. Whatever she does from here out I hope this follows her because she disrespected some extremely good men. Cabby was a guy that would walk on/through fire for you, and there is a lot of rumint coming out of his crash (E model at Campbell) that it was a catastrophic mechanical failure that might ground the Echo fleet. She can stick her opinions up the aforementioned body part referenced in my previous post. On top of that Facebook seems to be doing its best to take it down anytime anybody shares it.

One of the first female Army Ranger School grads demonstrating the leadership gained from the prestigious school.... WTF Also I knew one of the pilots in both Apache crashes over this week that led to the safety stand down. So the word I want to use here rhymes with a practice of batting sometimes seen in baseball.

I'm torn because for every time we see examples of a major western country like Germany not spending anywhere near the required amount I see first hand a country like Poland punching way above its weight with actual guys on the ground in crapghanistan.

I thought that was just standard for that side of this argument. "You don't want women in line combat roles because of any number of legitimate reasons and my rebuttal is Sexism! Sexism!

It'll be the bullsh!t game between all the services to see whoever can make a Tier 1 female operator first wins. Seals, SF, PJ, etc. just find somebody/anybody and get them through the program. Same garbage game that gave us Kara Hultgren.

Crazy stuff. The only other country (besides Us) that has done something with anywhere near this level of complication or integrated was England launching the Black Buck Vulcan raids during the Falklands campaign. That says a lot for a country a lot of people continue too try and sell as the broken confused pile of garbage it was after the wall came down.

While this isn't going to have any A/C model implications... First full up flight student winged and heading to B models

That's because no factory or tooling to build A-10s exist. Fairchild didn't just stop building the plane, they stopped being a company. Nor does the engineering expertise that built her since most of them are retired/living in nursing homes/dead at this point. You would literally need to reverse engineer and then design a production line to produce more plans since there isn't a room full of filing cabinets stuffed with blueprints and plans.

And the band played on.... Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Meh, you pretty much just described every FMS program ever. At least with Israel they are gonna buy enough copies of it to make it worth while in the long run money game. It's the countries that buy a token set piece of aircraft/etc to fly around the flagpole with FMS programs that bug me. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Anybody surprised by this hasn't paid attention to every other aircraft bought by the Israelis over the last 30 years. Look at a picture of a Boeing built AH-64D.... Then look at the Israeli version of it. It starts very quickly looking like a different helicopter. The Israelis have an outstanding domestic avionics and weapons development industry. They however need to keep that monster fed so plumbing jets with their own stuff just makes sense. They want to be able to stick their bombs/missiles/Python Vs not be subject to the changing winds of arms regulation. As for additional gas and EW remember The IAF doesn't have near the support capability that we do. I wouldn't be surprised to see Japan do the same thing. Again working with their 60s some of the guys from Sikorsky should take notes because they had stuff years before we were asking for it on the Mike models we are building today.

Yup. Lot of dumb lemmings parroting the phrase "be more like Europe" without having any clue as to how those countries manage that system. I wonder how he would have felt if she had been told at age 12, "no sweetheart you didn't qualify high enough so you aren't going to college." Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Bro it was a joke as to the negative trends in the lifestyle required by military service (missing meals, drinking rip it's every day, eating high carb processed crap full of sodium and going to bed because of ops cycle, etc) not a stab at the drone community to "suck it up." I don't know how many more different types of surveys and trackers (PDHRA, GAT, this one, etc) military leadership is going to need to do to understand the same conclusion... In general Military living is bad for you.

So similar to every non deployed service member ever... Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I'm not sure what they would do across service. In the Army you would give it to your S-1 for upload into IPerms at HRC. If you need a new certificate, I'd try calling the Brigade S1 for the school house at Campbell. I would look up a contact but I'm in the field right now typing this via cell phone internet.

Air assault is just a certificate since it's a pass/fail course. You don't get the 4 check block course completion report card like you would for other courses (flight school XXI for example). Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I'm sure we can get that developed... After we integrate it. We gotta install it first and pay for it to find out how it works you know.

Somebody brought up a similar point at meeting on ADS-B integration with the Army. Basically his point was even stateside this could be a vulnerability. Basically this shows your hand. Like if say something like Panama was happening in the age of instant internet access and a potential country to be invaded could just watch air traffic way back in our national airspace system and suddenly see a whole metric butt load of C5s landing at Polk to pick up the guys due to jump into your country. Now instead of airborne shock and awe you're jumping into a defended and prepared site that expected you for the party.

Exactly. The guy is standing on a soap box of "we don't need this we don't do offensive ops with air power," but that's pretty obviously BS. He says he wants to funnel the money into refits and upgraded Navy ships but the party he is part of spent a decade not putting anything into their military the last time they were in power. Somehow it sounds like step 1 for their upgrade plan also supports changing their minds and being step 1 of more money for socialized whatever.

APX-123s are becoming the standard transponder on all US Army aircraft.... Part of the program with PM is to include ADS-B broadcast in the 123 by 2018. Receive may never happen in the current generation but at least one sided compliance is being viewed as the lube to go with telling the FAA to sit on it.

True, but the liberal Canadian party they just put in power wouldn't spend a dollar to upgrade their 30 year old Hornet fleet either so it's not F-35 being to expensive that's the problem for them.

I had an S6 that was a Bronie.... No kidding, he asked us to fly his dolls over Afghanistan. We figured they were for his daughters.... The horror....

No he's right, that should have been squad. Corrected for accuracy. Point still stands the Hawk was invented to do one job and haul occasional ass and trash when it wasn't doing that job. It wasn't made to two an anti mine sled like the 53D so the Navy had to come up with a way for it to do that job, which included ideas as crazy as bolting a 40 mm cannon to it. It wasn't made to go very far while carrying anything(seriously small tanks) but strap on ESSS and tanks or an IFR probe and a whole lot of crap and suddenly it can do the job of a 53G.... Like I said multi role or no role. Mission creep is a bitch, but it's here to stay when we can't afford multiple MWS's. Apaches are being used as essentially a crappy mileage ISR platform and relay system for TOC porn. That's a hell of an underutilization for a 35 million dollar gunship that is so so at the role.

All good points but the "Multirole or no role" writing has been on the wall for decades now. Hawg and the light grey Eagles are really the only guys who have survived the culling of that model to today. And the Eagle guys are really only gonna last as long as we keep that platform since Raptors can and now have done strike. Remember just 25 years ago we had an airplane whose sole job in life was SEAD, the Navy and Air Force both operated a tactical strike aircraft with no air to air capability (111/Intruder) and we had a fleet of light strike A7s who like you only really worried about ground attack. Institutional knowledge is outstanding, but if you can make SEAD a squadron mission and not an aircraft mission for assigned aviators like you have done in the AF with the Viper it's hard to make the argument you can't do that with CAS and still be successful. Same thing has happened in rotary wing. Ever since the 60 showed up there has been the effort to make what is the smallest size you can still call medium lift helicopter meant to be an assault/utility helicopter only based around an 11 man squad model, and make it do roles traditionally done by much larger much more capable airframes (CSAR, anti mine, sub hunting, etc). It was a Huey replacement... It turned into a Huey/H3/SH2/SH3 replacement.

But those issues are not exclusive to the F-35. The whole of development programs for the military over the last 25 years has been a game of political tie ins vs mission creep slowed development. Comanche, Armed Aerial Scout, the LCS, every one of those programs suffered as much or more than the 35 did from that problem. The only reason programs like the Super Hornet don't get the attention is they look like winners by comparison not because they were so well run. That doesn't have anything to do with what the jet can or will do operationally. Being built in 50 states or tied in with partner nations doesn't have anything with its ability to go against SA10/20 vs using our current aircraft. And that's my problem with these hatcheted articles that get broadcast on social media like chum for people who have no reference but want to demand cancellation of this program because it's the one in the spotlight.