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More good news: https://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/the-f-35-cant-beat-the-plane-its-replacing-in-a-dogfigh-1714712248 The F-35 Can't Beat The Plane It's Replacing In A Dogfight: Report 106,859 47 Tyler Rogoway Filed to: F-35 SAGA 6/29/15 5:29pm We’ve heard of significant shortcomings before with the fighter jet that’s supposed to be America’s future, but this is just as bad as it gets. The F-35 performed so dismally in a dogfight, that the test pilot remarked that the it had pretty much no place fighting other aircraft within visual range. And it’s even worse than a mere maneuverability issue. At one point, the pilot’s helmet was so big he couldn’t even turn his head inside the cockpit. That’s according to a scathing report obtained by our friends over at War Is Boring that details the results of visual range air-to-air engagement tests between an F-35A and an F-16C. The F-35, which the US Air Force, Navy, and Marines are expected to rely upon, in addition to the air arms of militaries across the world for at least the next few decades, was supposed to be better than its F-16 predecessor in all respects. The F-35’s ability to compete against other fighter aircraft in a close-in dogfight, even against the decades old designs it looks to replace, has always been a contentious issue. Long ago, the F-35’s maneuverability was planned to far exceed that of fourth generation fighters. Over time, those claims eroded to the point where the troubled stealth jet is described as being “about as maneuverable as an F-16.” The fact that the F-35 can carry its weapons and fuel internally was of course the major deciding factor in being able to make such a claim. Keep in mind, all of this is anecdotal, but testing reports over almost the last decade have supported the fact that the F-35 was not nearly as nimble as many would like it to be. Still, all claims regarding its performance against other fighters in a dogfight remained largely academic, with only bits of data to compare in a vacuum. Which is why the candid report described in the War Is Boring article finally gives us a good first hand account as to how capable – or incapable as it may be – the F-35 is in the within-visual-range fight. The test pilot flying the F-35 makes it very clear that the new jet, even in its ideal configuration without any external stores, was no match against a Block-40 F-16C in a less-than-ideal configuration with a pair of under-wing fuel tanks: Even with the limited F-16 target configuration, the F-35A remained at a distinct energy disadvantage for every engagement. In dogfighting, energy is everything, and if your enemy has more kinetic and potential energy for maneuvers than you do, then you’re toast. The report even goes into what is akin to a fairly desperate move usually only used in one-on-one air combat maneuvers, known as a rudder reversal, that the F-35 is apparently decent at performing at slow speeds. The fact that this was even detailed in the report as a useful tactic is telling. In reality, using such maneuvers means you are probably going to die if any other bad guys are in the area as it rapidly depletes the aircraft’s energy state, leaving it vulnerable to attack. Another area that the test pilot highlights on is the F-35’s abysmal rearward visibility. David Axe from War Is Boring writes: And to add insult to injury, the JSF flier discovered he couldn’t even comfortably move his head inside the radar-evading jet’s cramped cockpit. “The helmet was too large for the space inside the canopy to adequately see behind the aircraft.” That allowed the F-16 to sneak up on him. The report goes on to make other telling remarks about the F-35’s air combat maneuvering performance. It should be noted that the aircraft’s flight software can probably still be tweaked to offer a little wider envelope for pilots to traverse during a hard turning dogfight, but seeing as this test occurred this year (almost a decade after the first F-35 flew), the amount of extra agility that can be squeezed out of the F-35 is most likely marginal at this point. All of this also reminds us of the fact that we cannot believe the information coming from the program itself, which is troubling. Only as the aircraft continues to enter the fleet (which is a whole other ridiculous story) will we begin to hear more honest reviews of its performance, as in the past we have had to rely on unclassified congressional watch dog reports and other unbiased sources to identify trends and key data points. Major Obvious: F-35 Pilot Says A-10 Will Always Be Better At Air Support F-35 pilot Major John Wilson said the obvious in an interview with Danish aviation reporters; the…Read more Eisenhower, and others to some degree, did warn us gravely to beware of the military-industrial complex, I supposed of which the F-35 is the poster child. Arthur C Clarke Warned Us About The F-35 And Its Damning Costs The fantastic and haunting short story "Superiority," written by the science fiction…Read more The fact that the F-35 is maybe not really a good fighter at all is reminiscent of the question that we’ve been asking for years — if you don’t really need competitive maneuverability, than why do we need a fighter at all?

https://www.dodbuzz.com/2015/01/16/general-praising-the-a-10-to-lawmakers-is-treason/ General: Praising the A-10 to Lawmakers is ‘Treason’ By Brendan McGarry Friday, January 16th, 2015 2:13 pm Posted in Air, Policy A top U.S. Air Force general warned officers that praising the A-10 attack plane to lawmakers amounts to “treason,” according to a news report. Maj. Gen. James Post, vice commander of Air Combat Command, was quoted as saying, “If anyone accuses me of saying this, I will deny it … anyone who is passing information to Congress about A-10 capabilities is committing treason,” in a report published Thursday on The Arizona Daily Independent. In a response to the news outlet, a spokesman at the command, based at Joint Base Langley-Eustis, Virginia, described the comments to attendees of a recent Tactics Review Board at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada as “hyperbole.” In an e-mail to Military​.com, spokeswoman Maj. Genieve David said, “The intent of his comments were to communicate the Air Force’s position and decision on recommended actions and strategic choices faced for the current constrained fiscal environment.” She added, “Our role as individual military members is not to engage in public debate or advocacy for policy.” The Air Force is seeking to retire its fleet of almost 300 of the Cold War-era gunships, known as the Thunderbolt II and nicknamed the Warthog, even as pilots fly the aircraft — whose snub-nose packs a 30mm cannon — in the Middle East to attack targets affiliated with the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. Congress rejected the service’s requests to begin the process of divesting the low, slow-flying aircraft this year and included about $337 million in the budget to keep it in the inventory. While they did allow the Air Force to move as many as 36 of the planes to back-up status, they blocked the service from sending any of them to the bone yard. Air Force officials say they’ll renew the effort as part of the fiscal 2016 budget request, which is expected to be released in a couple of weeks. In a briefing Thursday at the Pentagon, Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James said the service’s use of A-10 in U.S.-led air strikes against ISIS isn’t inconsistent with its strategy to eventually retire the plane. “There are a number of strike platforms that are engaged” in the operation against ISIS, including the F-15 and F-16, she said. The A-10 is “a great contributor, but so are the other aircraft,” she said. Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh, himself a former Warthog pilot, said the proposed retirement of the gunship is “an emotional issue inside the Air Force.” Pilots “love their airplane — they should love their airplane,” he said. “For the Air Force … it’s a sequestration-driven decision,” Welsh said, referring to automatic, across-the-board budget cuts Congress and the White House agreed to in 2011 as part of deficit-reduction legislation. The cuts are slated to return with greater effect in fiscal 2016 unless lawmakers agree on an alternative plan. “We don’t have enough money to fund all the things that we currently have in our force structure,” Welsh said. Even if the service’s request to retire the A-10 was approved as part of the fiscal 2015 budget, he added, the aircraft would have remained in service until 2019. Sen. John McCain, the longtime Republican from Arizona and new chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, was part of a group of lawmakers who worked to preserve funding for the A-10. ““We are going to do away with the finest close-air-support weapon in history?” he questioned during a press conference last year on Capitol Hill. The senator, a longtime critic of the F-35 fighter jet – the Pentagon’s most expensive weapons acquisition program designed to replace the A-10 and other aircraft – questioned why the Air Force would begin to get rid of the Warthog before it has started operational flights of the stealthy, radar-evading jet. The F-35A is scheduled to reach initial operating capability, or IOC, in 2016 but only by employing a less lethal version of software. “And we are then going to have some kind of nebulous idea of a replacement with an airplane that costs at least 10 times as much — and the cost is still growing — with the F-35?” McCain said at the news conference. “That’s ridiculous.” And now possibly hearings on all of this... https://www.arizonadailyindependent.com/2015/01/20/posts-comments-generate-calls-for-congressional-hearing/

For our airline brethren, time to change this antiquated 77-year old law which gives almost all labor negotiating power to management. https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/repeal-or-change-railway-labor-act-put-stop-lenghty-negotiations/jMz3ckM7

The KC-46 will not have a 787 cockpit, but it will have the 787's 15.1" large display system (LDS). You will get a type rating on the 767 then take KC-46 differences training so I don't think you'l receive a 787 type rating for that. Anyway, my guess (and hope) for FTU and MOB1 & MOB2 are McConnell, McConnell or Fairchild, and McGuire, Rickenbacker or Pittsburgh. Being a reservist commuting to a base is a big consideration, which leaves Altus and Grand Forks out the door!