Between a hot dog vendor and the guys who’ve been actually working with these weapons systems - who have been a part of the test programs, stood up squadrons, planned operations in combat areas, planned massive joint training exercises, trained aircrews, deployed to combat theaters - done all of that on a daily basis…

- B-52s don’t have to worry about salt corrosion that the F/A-18 fleet has to.

- B-52s haven’t been racking up hours enforcing no-fly zones for the past 24 years. After Desert Shield and Desert Storm there was Provide Comfort, Northern Watch, Southern Watch, Deliberate Force, Desert Fox, Allied Force, Noble Eagle, Endur…

Just like we’ve done with the B-52 for all these years...

I think he’s a hot dog vendor.

He’s a self-described “Aviation Technology Aficionado.” Not an engineer, not an operations planner, not a pilot, not aircrew of any kind. An aficianado.

Because:
A. The youngest F-15C is 30 years old.
B. The airframe is 2-3x over it’s structural life
C. The Su-27 was designed to be an Eagle-killer
D. The F-15 isn’t survivable against double-digit SAMs
E. As you start adding on things like AESA radar, IRST, sensor fusion, etc. basically all the avionics to make it…

I will be submitting my plan for force structure alternatives soon, as I did years. Ago,

Funny how every time you go apeshit over how dumb the USAF is that there’s actually a rational reason why we all can’t have ponies.

CFTs carry less fuel than the wing drop tanks, and last I checked, bombs aren’t zero drag. So you’ve got a net loss in range/station time, which means more trips to the tanker. That means more time transit to/from the tanker and less time over the kill box. Those extra bombs aren’t doing anyone any good of you have to…

Because those legacy platforms are 30-40 years old, have been deployed for combat constantly over the past 24 years and they were built with only so much structural life in them. Metal wears out. We’ve literally flown some of these aircraft apart.

The only threat CFTs pose to is the the F-16 fleet. We’ve already had to…

Define “much less.”

What would it cost to upgrade an F-16 to the same capability as an F-35. Range, payload, sensor fusion, etc.?

And as Vietnam showed, an older, less sophisticated aircraft can still be lethal. How many F-4s were downed by MiG-17s and -21s?

I would rather see a writer take a bold position, and defend it

Because:
A. He has no practical or firsthand knowledge, so he really doesn’t know what he’s talking about (but that’s never stopped him before).
B. That wouldn’t support his narrative of “AIR FORCE, BAD! TYLER, GOOOOOD”

“Adding CFTs would add endurance and free more weapons stations from US F-16s.”

I wish I could like that comment more than once.

Although this whole operation is impressive, what could drastically improve is the Pentagon’s ability to strike any target in a much tighter time-span than 24 hours.

Autorotations are something pilots train for. My close friend was an Apache pilot in this decade. I asked him how common autorotations were. He replied “as common as dual engine failures.”

I’ve yet to hear a single fighter pilot complain about CSAR helicopters.

You also have X number of targets to hit and so many planes available on the boat to hit them with. Targets were on opposite coasts of the Gulf of Sidra. There were 27 F-111Fs and 15 A-6Es in the air that night over Libya. The Navy is but a fraction of the total amount of US air power and operations such as these are…

F/A-18s didn’t have night attack capabilities in 1986. At the time, they could use HARM, but that was the only weapon they could use at night against ground targets. A-7Es also performed SEAD.