As much as I like the F-22 restarting the line isn’t really practical or feasible. It’s not like the factory that made F-22s is just sitting their idle and waiting for someone to turn the lights back on and start cranking out F-22s again. The machines that produced them are gone, supposedly in storage most likely in…

I don’t know, all I know is that they’re supposed to carry AIM-9Xs and AIM-120s but I don’t know much more than that, hell, until this article I had no idea that we even had an AIM-120C, I thought that we were still on the A or no letter model. Of course, in my mind we replaced the Sparrows with AMRAAMs not all that…

Because we’re still quite far away from having unmanned fighters. There’s issues with latency and signal drops, hacking, and situational awareness issues since looking through a video camera is like looking through a soda straw. Our AI tech isn’t there yet to create an AI controlled drone fighter and even if we could,…

No, it’s called the Joint Strike Fighter because it’s being used by the Marine Corps, Navy, and Air Force. In US military parlance, Joint means that it encompasses or is being shared by more than one branch of the military whether it’s a command or a weapon, it has nothing to do with being sold to our allies.

I’d imagine that there would be procedures and protocols in place for the pilot on what to do in case of ejection behind enemy lines. He almost certainly will be instructed to destroy the helmet as soon as possible by whatever means necessary, they might even issue a thermite grenade for just that purpose.

I think that this is what’s happening to the F-35 program, and a lot of other DoD acquisitions programs, while some of the cost overruns is because of LockMart not really caring because it’s cost plus I think that a portion of it is also the DoD going to LockMart and asking them to put in this new XYZ…

I think that what Will was trying to say that it’s supposed to be able to launch AIM-120Cs but at present can only handle (older) AIM-120s, does that make sense? So it’s not so much that it can’t handle AIM-120s, it just can’t use the newer/newest versin of the missile that it’s supposed to be able to handle.

I hope that the combination of the F-35, LCS, and the Ford class teaches the Pentagon that concurrency is not a good thing and definitley not the way to go when developing a new weapons platform, esp. when the tech in question exists only on paper. I’m not saying that we rely solely on old/legacy tech but we shouldn’t…

Isn’t the F-35 only capable of carrying something like 2 - 4 missiles internally? If an F-35 is going be to carrying a mix of Sidewinders and AMRAAMs in any real numbers then they’re going to be hanging them on external pylons which is going to effectively negate, or at least greatly reduce, its stealth advantage.

That was freaking hilarious! Well done!

For the very reason that they kill off Steven Seagal early on makes Executive Decision one of my favorite movies of all time.

Reading about the Tomcat 21 makes me wonder if they fielded the D in greater numbers for longer, could they have progressed to a modified Tomcat 21 design that takes the Stealth Eagle approach and make some mods to the Tomcat to make it stealthy. Could you cant the tails, add an internal weapons bay, mod the intakes…

Wouldn’t the M61 also pretty much shred the unarmored Zero? I know that our .50s pretty effectively shredded Zeroes I could only imagine what a modern 20mm round would do, esp. given the number of rounds that would likely be hitting it from a single burst.

They’ve worked with Iran in the past so it’s possible that their scientists traded notes with the Iranians. That and the Kim regime hardly cares about anything but themselves and their military so a lot of the money that normal countries would spend on their populace goes to keeping the Kims and their close cronies…

But not all 15 are going to be active at all times, figure maybe half will be actually available at any time. Then you’re going to have some of those at home after having been on patrol to at least give their crews some down time. You also have to figure that not all 7 or 8 DDs are going to be assigned to the Kirovs,…

The sad fact is that unless we want to source all of our military hardware from overseas we need to pump money into these companies in order to keep them afloat so that there’s actually some competition and so that they’re around when we need them. That’s why the job of building the Virginia class subs is split…

That still means a lot of man hours going into keeping these old birds from falling out of the sky. The older the platform the more it takes to keep them flying and that’s what we’re running into, these airframes are ancient and are going to require more inspections and more time in the hangar than they will in the…

Hope you don’t mind that I steal this and post it up on Facebook, it’s just too funny not to share.

Because our B-52s are practically ancient right now and really need replacing and there aren’t enough B-1s or B2s to replace them and the production lines to build more are closed. Not to mention that the B-1 is starting to get a bit long in the tooth itself, not nearly as much as the B-52 but they’re getting up there…

The way cost-plus should work is if it’s going to cost more because the contractor over promised or otherwise messed up then the cost overruns are on their dime. On the other hand, if it’s a matter of the DoD moving the goal posts and keep on telling the contractor to change and/or add things then it’s on the DoD’s…