I’ve been to a few of these countries, throughout Europe and Asia. Two things Americans need to learn, situational awareness, and not making yourself a target. You can play it as safe as you want by staying out of “dangerous” areas, but you can make yourself a target for thieves by being clueless and not paying…

Let’s just down play $1 trillion because it’s a number that no one can really grasp. How about we put it this way. Each aircraft costs $100 million. Each flying hour is “estimated” to be at least comparable to the F22 which is already $68,000/hr. The F35 has gotten so expensive countries that were originally buying…

I don’t know if you know this, but the AF is required to wear reflective PT belts for EVERYTHING. With that in mind, do you really think the brass would let them fly in a plane without a helmet?

The issue with the F35 isn’t the “hiccups” in development, everyone expects that. It’s the way they’re going about developing the system. Everything has been done concurrently instead of testing systems prior to executing production. Back when Foxtrot Alpha covered this stuff and not Gizmodo, Tyler Rogoway wrote…

That’s the mentallity of everyone in the military. No one in the military ever expects the best equipment in the best working order, so they make it work. It’s how we fight.

The only deterrence the F35 provides is to show rival militaries that a trillion dollar jet that can’t do its job can and will bankrupt your air force.

It has mattered ever since we’ve realized we can’t run wars on multiple fronts for 10+ years and expect our economy to handle it. Hence the downsizing of the military and the budget cuts we’ve seen in the past 5 years. Our current military leaders are having trouble justifying the unlimited budgets they’ve seen since…

http://www.armytimes.com/story/military…

I’m waiting for the inevitable comparison between the German Autobahn and their unrestricted speed limits versus American speed limits. As others have mentioned already, there are numerous contributions to the increase in traffic fatalities in the past 30 years. Speed is only part of the pie.

I think we’ve established that simply hopping the fence doesn’t equate to a bullet in the chest. Entering the house on the other hand, I think that’s a reason to put a bullet in someone, especially since you can shoot a bad guy entering your own home, not just the WH.

Ya, that’s perfect for the next fence hopper. It’s not like the door was locked anyway.

I can’t wait to see the circus that ensues when the Saudis deliver those MANPADS. We’ll get to see how the Soviet media spins the inevitable shoot down of another aircraft.

Everyone is issued a weapon due to random attacks on base. It’s called Green on Blue and it’s because we don’t trust those assholes there to “protect” us.

Saying there was a 0% causality rate for the SR-71 is comforting in hindsight. Like The Devil Drives a Rotary said, there were numerous attempts to shoot it down. The risks taken by those pilots went beyond attempts to shoot them down. Flying at the edge of space in an aircraft that was on the brink of tearing itself…

I think it’s funny they used “yards” in the first place. Last time I checked almost all of the FAA regulations regarding seperation of aircraft, clearance of obstacles, and the like involve either feet or miles. Whatever the legal team wants to use to obscure the facts I guess they’ll use it.

I keep hearing rumors they’re going to put that thing in the museum around the corner, but I feel like it’s just more rumors. I don’t know where they’ll find space for it in there, but I think that’d be a great piece to remind the Army of a time when we had an “F35" on the books.

Oh ya, I mean planes and helicopters practically fly themselves nowadays so I don’t even know why they pay these pilots so much money, let alone why we even have them anymore. They should just raffle tickets from now on for who gets to sit up in the cockpit and press buttons.

When I watch this stuff I think about those old, Holiday Inn Express commercials.

I think they should start citing gravity as more of an issue in those NTSB investigation reports, maybe then we’ll figure out a way around it.

Think it could have been a powertrain failure based on the sound of it. You can hear the engine spool up and the rotors don’t keep up with it. Np and Nr, are no longer working in conjunction with each other. And because he was in the “dead man’s curve” for helicopter pilots (which is that shaded area in the…