Aviation buffs consider "The Blue Max" to be the greatest aerial combat movie evah.
Resentful plebs like me consider its tale of the low-born Bruno Stachel (George Peppard) humiliating the aristocratic Krupp and Junker flyboys while screwing their woman (Ursula Andress, who should have had a stunt double to do her acting) vivifying.
Yep. read it and weep. For a total purchcase cost of $400 Billion we the U.S. public have developed an all-purpose aircraft that can't win dogfights, isn't allowed to fly in the rain, can't fire it's main gun until a software patch arrives sometime in the future, has major avionics components that are specially designed and obsolete now, due to rollout delays, occasionally kills its own pilots due to oxygen deprivation and features what was state-of-the-art Stealth tech that the Chinese advanced radar systems can detect now.
OTOH, a bunch of civilian scientists, engineers, technicians and contractors designed, built and launched a piano sized interplanetary probe called New Horizons at 16.26 k/second towards a tiny spot in the sky where Pluto would be 9 years later, passing 6000 klicks from the planet, sweeping up data with 7 sensitive instruments and beaming the stored telemetry back to Earth over the next 16 months. Flawlessly. After this feat, New Horizons will travel the outer regions of the Solar System and beyond for years until the RTG's power runs out , beaming back data that will increase the human races' knowledge of its place in the universe immeasurably.
All for the total mission cost of $650 Million.
Now speak to me about wasteful Government science.
That's interesting, because the future of aerial combat is remotely-piloted vehicles and sensors, not Blue-Max-style dog-fighting. The flyboys who run the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps always want to do dog-fighting and will scorn any aircraft they don't consider good at it. They fought off "drones" until lobbyists for General Atomics and other companies made Congress cram them down their throats.
But it shouldn't be too long, if it hasn't happened already, before UAVs can shoot each other down way more efficiently than aircraft with people in them.
Yeah, an F-35 fitted out as an UAV might just be a half decent strike aircraft. Drone pilots don't look nearly as good on the recruiting posters as the Ray-Ban wearin' motorcycle ridin' steeley-eyed "Maverick" handled live USAF jet jockeys.
You know, I wouldn't mind all these nation states waiving their ever more complicated dicks at each other as long as they didn't cost a fortune and they never got to, you know use them.
I can't + the actual reports large enough to read
Sorry…try this linky to a summary:
| https://medium.com/war-is-boring/test-pilot-admit…|
Thanks!
Try, on each section : [right click] view image , then zoom from there.
Ah, yep a bit better, thanks! But it's pretty lo-res. I think Lot49's other linky gets the basic points across.
….dead meat in a real war against a determined foe…
Well, silly, that's why we don't attack anybody with real capabilities anymore.
Not a problem, since we're always welcomed as liberators!
I guess I've always been bi-plane curious…
Aviation buffs consider "The Blue Max" to be the greatest aerial combat movie evah.
Resentful plebs like me consider its tale of the low-born Bruno Stachel (George Peppard) humiliating the aristocratic Krupp and Junker flyboys while screwing their woman (Ursula Andress, who should have had a stunt double to do her acting) vivifying.
That's more of a "fuselage à trois."
Well, at least if the US plan to invade the UK or Canada, they'll both be flying the same shitty F35s, which evens things out a little….
Fun Facts about the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.
Yep. read it and weep. For a total purchcase cost of $400 Billion we the U.S. public have developed an all-purpose aircraft that can't win dogfights, isn't allowed to fly in the rain, can't fire it's main gun until a software patch arrives sometime in the future, has major avionics components that are specially designed and obsolete now, due to rollout delays, occasionally kills its own pilots due to oxygen deprivation and features what was state-of-the-art Stealth tech that the Chinese advanced radar systems can detect now.
OTOH, a bunch of civilian scientists, engineers, technicians and contractors designed, built and launched a piano sized interplanetary probe called New Horizons at 16.26 k/second towards a tiny spot in the sky where Pluto would be 9 years later, passing 6000 klicks from the planet, sweeping up data with 7 sensitive instruments and beaming the stored telemetry back to Earth over the next 16 months. Flawlessly. After this feat, New Horizons will travel the outer regions of the Solar System and beyond for years until the RTG's power runs out , beaming back data that will increase the human races' knowledge of its place in the universe immeasurably.
All for the total mission cost of $650 Million.
Now speak to me about wasteful Government science.
That's interesting, because the future of aerial combat is remotely-piloted vehicles and sensors, not Blue-Max-style dog-fighting. The flyboys who run the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps always want to do dog-fighting and will scorn any aircraft they don't consider good at it. They fought off "drones" until lobbyists for General Atomics and other companies made Congress cram them down their throats.
But it shouldn't be too long, if it hasn't happened already, before UAVs can shoot each other down way more efficiently than aircraft with people in them.
For whatever good all of that would do.
Yeah, an F-35 fitted out as an UAV might just be a half decent strike aircraft. Drone pilots don't look nearly as good on the recruiting posters as the Ray-Ban wearin' motorcycle ridin' steeley-eyed "Maverick" handled live USAF jet jockeys.
You know, I wouldn't mind all these nation states waiving their ever more complicated dicks at each other as long as they didn't cost a fortune and they never got to, you know use them.
I for one welcome our UAV overlords.
Hey! Those boondoggles don't build themselves you know!
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/…